____________________________________
7th Grade Social Studies
Mexico & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 134— Sectionalism and Compromise
March 31, 2014
Focus: What were the three components of the Missouri Compromise? What is the Wilmot Proviso?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will identify the difference between a “Free Soiler” and an abolitionist.
2. I will recall the impact of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in the controversy over slavery.
3. I will re-enact a sectional dispute between Henry S. Foote and Thomas Hart Benton on the Senate floor.
4. I will describe how the Compromise of 1850 affected the slavery issue.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 1 pgs. 476-481 (due 3/31)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 2 pgs. 483-487 (due 4/1)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/3)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/4)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Wednesday 4/9
Handouts:
none
I. Free-Soilers
II. Missouri Compromise
III. Foote VS. Benton
IV. Compromise of 1850
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Free-Soiler
Abolitionist
Henry Clay
Missouri Compromise
David Wilmot
Wilmot Proviso
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Popular Sovereignty
Henry S. Foote
Thomas Hart Benton
Great Compromiser
Compromise of 1850
Stephen Douglas
Omnibus Bill
Fugitive Slave Law
Henry Clay
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
What were the three components of the Missouri Compromise?
What was the Wilmot Proviso? How did it contribute to Sectionalism?
What were the five components of the Compromise of 1850?
Who was the Great Compromiser? Why did he get this name?
Notes
Class 134— Sectionalism and Compromise
March 31, 2014
Free Soilers:
 stop all African Americans from the territories whether they were free or slave
 Northern whites did not want to share the territories with slaveholders or with slaves-“did not want to compete
with slave labor or to permit any further extension of the political power of planters.”
 they would never interfere with slavery in the states
 greatly outnumbered the abolitionists in the North
Abolitionists:
 ban slavery
 only 10% of the population
Missouri Compromise:
 Maine Free state
 Missouri Slave state
 Slavery below the 36 degree 30’ line
Wilmot Proviso:
 outlawing slavery in the territories
 Wilmot doesn’t want whites to compete with African Americans for jobs
Election of 1848:
 Whigs-Zachary Taylor
 Democrats-Lewis Cass
 Free Soilers-Martin Van Buren
Popular Sovereignty-people decide if a state would have slavery or not
Compromise of 1850:
 California enters as free state
 Popular sovereignty would determine slave or free state in the Mexican Cession
 Slave trade banned in D.C.-gives foreigners a bad perception of the nation
 Stricter fugitive slave law
 Boarder dispute between TX and NM solved-Gov’t helps pay Mexican debts
Henry Clay-Great Compromiser
fugitive slave act
 All citizens had to participate in catching slaves
 Fined $1,000 or jailed for 6 months if helped runaway
 Special Courts-$10 for sending slave back-$5 for setting one free
 Northerners feel they are part of the slave system-the federal government had gone into the business of manhunting and required freeborn Americans to become man-hunters on occasion
 Far more than a law to overtake slaves that were running away but also a device to recover slaves that ran away
in the past
____________________________________
7th Grade Social Studies
Mexico & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 135— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
April 1, 2014
Focus: Look at the photograph on page 486. Read the caption entitled “Bleeding Kansas” and answer the question.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will describe the impact of the following events on the growing rift between North and
South:
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act.
2. I will analyze the troubled life and Presidency of Franklin Pierce.
3. I will reenact John Brown’s role in the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/3)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/4)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Current Events due Monday 4/7
-Chapter 15 Test Wednesday 4/9
Handouts:
Jane Pierce letter
I. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A. Harriet Beecher Stowe
II. Kansas-Nebraska Act
III. President Franklin Pierce
IV. Pottawatomie Massacre
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Franklin Pierce
Benny Pierce
John Brown
Bleeding Kansas
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas
Jane Pierce
Border Ruffians
Beecher’s Bibles
Pottawatomie Massacre
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
What was a Beecher’s Bible? How did they get that nickname?
Why did Douglas push for the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Why was Kansas known as “Bleeding Kansas?”
Jane Pierce to her dead son Benjamin Pierce
My precious child - I must write to you, altho' you are never to see it or know it - How I long to see you and say something to you as
if you were as you always have been (until these last three dreadful weeks) near me. Oh! How precious do those days now seem,
my darling boy - and how I should have praised [sic] the days passed with you had I suspected they might be so short - Dear, dear
child - I cannot bear to think of that agonizing [sic] time, when I had just seen you all alive to what was passing around and near me,
but not near enough - oh had you but been within reach of your dear father - in a moment changed my dear boy bright form into a
lifeless one insensible to your parents' agony - But you spirit yourself, my dear one - was not your redeeming savior ready to
receive you? Your sweet little brother? Your dear Uncle Lawrence? - but you are beyond my knowledge at once - Ah, I trust in joy,
but I would fain have kept you here - I know not how to go on without you - you were my comfort dear - far more than you thought. I
was thinking how pleasantly we should go on together when we found ourselves at home again - and I would do everything to make
you love me and have confidence in me and bring you along gently and sweetly - Oh! You were indeed "a part of mine and of your
father's heart". When I have told you dear boy how much you depended on me, and felt that you could not do without me - I did not
say too how much I depended on you and oh! My precious boy how gladly would I recall all that was unreasonable - or hasty - or
mistaken in my conduct toward you. I see surely and I did frequently see afterward that I had wronged you - and would have gladly
acknowledged it only that I feared it might weaken your confidence in me and perhaps on that account not be as well for you - and
now I am at home again dear boy. Oh what anguish was mine on returning without you, and feeling that it must still be so, while I
live - to see your little bed that you loved so much - and which I look at many times in the day, and at night feel as if I must see it
shape [?] out again and the clothes turned down for you - and unconsciously look in the morning for it and you - and listen for your
bright cheerful voice your blithe "good morrow" - and oh! to look around and see your books and everything so connected with you your dear self - and now on this Sabbath which you loved so much as you said often how I have marked for you each hour with its
wonted occupation - and oh to think of you kneeling by me at our evening prayer tonight, dear child - has not the Savior made you
His as we so often asked. But now I must kneel alone and beg for strength and support under this crushing sorrow, that the blessed
Savior would comfort the heart of your pain stricken Mother - and help me better to bear the burden of your loss which has brought
desolation such as I have never (with all my former griefs) known.
Dear precious boy! I have passed through the bitter time of leaving our home, and without my child, my own dear Benny. How did I
think of you - dear - in every moment - of all your little parting notes and the many good-byes - and again the ride in those rail cars
agonizing to my soul - we went in to the same little saloon as when we went down to Andover the last time - we three then, now
only two - but we seemed to see you as when there before - and now we are in Boston, still without ,you, but I fancying what I
should do and what I should say to you - continually, and now we must "journey on e'en when grief is sorest" with the whole head
sick and the whole heart faint. I will "look to Jesus" (how often I have directed you to him my precious one) and sought his blessing
for you and myself - but my son, my dear son, how much I feel my own faults in regard to you - I know that I did not take the right
way and should have dealt with you very gently often when I judged hastily and spoke harshly. I can see that I was "unreasonable"
and sometimes almost wonder that you loved me at all. God help me now to correct in bitterness my errors when oh! It is too late for
you to have the sweet benefit of it - and now this Sabbath evening you will come in fancy before me and I sit close by you, with your
hand in mine perhaps, or you will lean against me on the sofa, or as sometimes you did on Sunday evening sit on my lap a little
while and we talk together and say hymns and then play and then by and by you go to bed first putting your arms around me and
laying your dear head on my shoulder and then you get in your bed and we have our Sabbath night kiss - but to think I can never
have another - Oh Benny, I have not valued such a sweet blessing as I ought.
Notes
Class 135— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
April 1, 2014
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
 Might have been able to sway public opinion in European countries
 The book encouraged abolitionists, but enraged Southern slave-owners.
 When Mr. Lincoln first met her, he said, “So, this is the little lady who started the war!”
 She was an abolitionist.
 She had visited plantations in Kentucky.
 She published a novel in March of 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to highlight the cruelty of slavery. The book
featured a wicked overseer, a kindly slave named Uncle Tom, and the injustice he endured. “She made vivid the
plight of the slave as a human being held in bondage.”
Kansas-Nebraska Act:
 Kansas and Nebraska need a government so the RR could travel through
o Douglas wants a Trans-Continental RR-wants it to run through Chicago
 Kansas would enter the Union after addressing the slavery issue through popular sovereignty
 The Nebraska Territory would be further subdivided into smaller territories (such as the Dakotas).
 The Compromise of 1820 was repealed. Slavery could exist in the territories.
 Popular sovereignty would prevail. What does that mean?
 Supported by Franklin Pierce (D)
o Will not get nominated for a second term
o Truly viewed as a poor President and one who leaves the country in a mess
o Pro slavery
o Talks of expansion-Cuba, South America (keep Britain out) northerners view this as the expansion of
slavery
o Alcoholic
Bleeding Kansas:
 Popular Sovereignty would determine the slave question
o Boarder Ruffians from MO would commit voter fraud. They would say they had the right to vote because
they had their wash done in Kansas or buy land for their child who was nine and say he could vote. They
also used force to get to the poles.
 Armed with rifles, Bowie knives, revolvers, and wooden clubs
 Wore no uniforms and had no officers
o There were 2,900 people able to vote in Kansas, 6,300 votes were cast-pro-slavery forces didn’t have to
cheat to win, they outnumbered the free-soilers anyways
 How did the proslavery forces attempt to silence Free Soil voices?
o Legalized slavery, capital offense to assist runaway slave
o Militant organizations form
 Kansas now had two governments-slave and free. Pierce (D) and the Senate (D) recognized the slave
government and the House recognized the free-soiler- whole nation is now divided. In essence-the war starts six
years before Sumter.
 Sack of the town of Lawrence
 Pottawatomie Massacre
o John Brown and several other anti-slavery members kill and hack-up pro-slavery citizens
 Brown and his sons pass out “Beecher’s Bibles” (i.e., guns-Named for the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward
Beecher-Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother) to anti-slavery forces-Sharps rifles were shipped in crates marked
bibles, medicine etc.
____________________________________
7th Grade Social Studies
Mexico & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 136— Brooks Canes Sumner
April 2, 2014
Focus: Based on the honor system duels can only take place between what kinds of people? How does honor relate to
the Brooks-Sumner affair?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will analyze how the Brooks-Sumner affair portrays the intense sectional differences that were dividing the country
in the 1850s.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/3)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/4)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Current Events due Monday 4/7
-Chapter 15 Test Wednesday 4/9
Handouts:
Crime Against Kansas Speech-Charles Sumner
I. Brooks VS. Sumner
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Andrew P. Butler
Preston Brooks
John J. Crittenden
Ambrose S. Murray
Charles Sumner
Lawrence Keit
Honor
Edwin B. Morgan
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
Why did Brooks not duel Sumner?
Why did Brooks beat Sumner?
How did this event increase sectional tension between the North and South?
The Crime Against Kansas: The Apologies for the Crime; The True Remedy
Delivered to the United States Senate, 19-20 May 1856
by
Hon. Charles Sumner
The wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any
common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to
the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring
of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of Slavery in the National Government. Yes, Sir, when the whole
world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, making it a hissing to the nations, here in our
Republic, force -- ay, Sir, FORCE -- is openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of
political power. There is the simple fact, which you will vainly attempt to deny, but which in itself presents an essential
wickedness that makes other public crimes seem like public virtues.
This enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of crime which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when
it is understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine feud, not only in this distant Territory, but
everywhere throughout the country. The muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while
I speak, portents lower in the horizon, threatening to darken the land, which already palpitates with the mutterings of
civil war....
Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has
fallen from Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrong: I mean the
Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] and the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who, though unlike as Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza1, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the
elder Senator from his seat; but the cause against which he has run a tilt, with such ebullition of animosity, demands that
the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina
has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of
course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him,
-- though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight: I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always
profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of
her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy
of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea del Toboso is all surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock
equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the Slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of
the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames Equality under the Constitution, -- in other words, the full power in the
National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the
auction-block, -- then, Sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic
knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!
Not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was "measured," the Senator, in the unrestrained
chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls
them "sectional and fanatical"; and resistance to the Usurpation of Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating
fanaticism." To be sure, these charges lack all grace of originality and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator
does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, now
domineering over the Republic, -- and yet, with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position, unable to see himself as others
see him, or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who
resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the Government to
its original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery was national, while Slavery and not Freedom was sectional, he
arraigns as sectional. This will not do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senator that it is to himself,
and to the "organization" of which he is the "committed advocate," that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them.
For myself, I care little for names; but, since the question is raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is
in no just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national, -- and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high
places that tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from South Carolina is one of the maddest zealots.
1
Don Quixote is a fictitious novel written by Miguel de Cervantes in the 1600s.
Thus was the Crime consummated. Slavery stands erect, clanking its chains on the Territory of Kansas, surrounded by a
code of death, and trampling upon all cherished liberties, whether of speech, the press, the bar, the trial by jury, or the
electoral franchise. And, Sir, all this is done, not merely to introduce a wrong which in itself is a denial of all rights, and
in dread of which mothers have taken the lives of their offspring, -- not merely, as is sometimes said, to protect Slavery
in Missouri, since it is futile for this State to complain of Freedom on the side of Kansas, when Freedom exists without
complaint on the side of Iowa, and also on the side of Illinois, -- but it is done for the sake of political power, in order to
bring two new slaveholding Senators upon this floor, and thus to fortify in the National Government the desperate
chances of a waning Oligarchy. As the gallant ship, voyaging on pleasant summer seas, is assailed by a pirate crew, and
plundered of doubloons and dollars, so is this beautiful Territory now assailed in peace and prosperity, and robbed of its
political power for the sake of Slavery. Even now the black flag of the land pirates from Missouri waves at the masthead; in their laws you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife; while, incredible to relate, the President,
gathering the Slave Power at his back, testifies a pirate sympathy.
With regret I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler], who, omnipresent in this debate, overflows
with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas has applied for admission as a State, and, with incoherent phrase,
discharges the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There was no
extravagance of the ancient Parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from
truth which he did not make, -- with so much of passion, I gladly add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional
aberration. But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure -- with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes
of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in details
of statistics or diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope[n] his mouth, but out there flies a blunder....
Notes
Class 136— Brooks Canes Sumner
April 2, 2014
Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
Sumner’s Crime Against Kansas Speech:
 Calls Andrew P. Butler a Senator of South Carolina and cousin of Brooks the Don Quixote of slavery
 Immediately after Sumner’s Crime against Kansas speech a South Carolinian “could not go into a parlor, or
drawing-room, or to a dinner party, where he did not find an implied reproach that there was an unmanly
submission to an insult to his State and his countrymen.”
Butler was old and Sumner was a rather large and powerful man. Therefore, Preston Brooks, cousin of Butler “felt it be
my duty to relieve Butler and avenge the insult to my State.”
Brooks could not challenge Sumner to a duel. First, he knew Sumner would not accept. Secondly, a duel can only
happen between equals. To duel Sumner would be to admit he was a social equal and was a man of honor. Therefore
“to punish an insulting inferior one used not a pistol or sword but a cane or horsewhip.”
If he had believed Sumner to be a gentleman, he might have challenged him to a duel. Instead, he chose a light cane of
the type used to discipline unruly dogs. For Southerners, Brooks’ actions were manly and honorable. According to the
Southern Honor System, a duel could only be fought between equals. Whippings, canings, and other forms of physical
abuse were reserved for inferiors. “The lesson that slaveholders wanted to instill was fairly simple: to take up the
slave’s cause was to suffer like a slave, to have no honor, to be condemned to a “social death,,” and to be virtually
outside the rule of law.”
May 22, 1856 about 12:45 P.M-Brooks Canes Sumner on the Senate Floor
 Preston Brooks: “I struck him with my cane and gave him about 30 first rate stripes with a gutta perch
can…Every lick went where I intended. For about the first five or six licks he offered to make a fight but I plied
him so rapidly that he did not touch me. Towards the last he bellowed like a calf.”

Sectionalism
o It was duplicated by slavery proponents with the slogan, “Hit him again!”
o Brooks reported that “fragments” of his cane “are begged for as sacred relics.”
o Inspired John Brown-he visited Sumner and saw his bloodied coat
o Definition of manhood
 South
 Brooks-manly spirit and praised for manliness
 Sumner-unmanly, acting like a woman
 North
 Sumner-true manliness lay in self-control-not force
 Brooks-brute
What happens to both?
 Brooks did not get the 2/3 votes to expel him from Congress (sectional voting)
 Brooks resigns but is elected unopposed back to Congress.
 Sumner’s Chair remains empty for the next 2 and half years-suffered severe psychosomatic shock.
“When the two sections no longer spoke the same language, shared the same moral code, or obeyed the same law, when
their representatives clashed in bloody conflict in the halls of Congress, thinking men North and South began to wonder
how the union could longer endure. ‘I do not see how a barbarous community and civilized community can constitute
one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom (Ralph Waldo Emerson).’”
____________________________________
7th Grade Social Studies
Mexico & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 137— Republican Party and Dred Scott
April 3, 2014
Focus: How did the Dred Scott decision overturn the Missouri Compromise? What was the reaction to this decision in
both the North and the South?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will analyze how the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case further increased sectional tensions between
the North and the South.
2. I will analyze the values of the Republican Party.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/4)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Current Events due Monday 4/7
-Chapter 15 Test Wednesday 4/9
Handouts:
none
I. Dred Scott
II. Republican Party
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Dred Scott
Roger Taney
Missouri Compromise
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
Why was the Dred Scott so important to the topic of slavery?
What were the effects of the Dred Scott decision in terms of increasing sectionalism?
Notes
Class 137— Republican Party and Dred Scott
April 3, 2014
Dred Scott:
 suing on the ground that his former residence in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory made him free
 Scott couldn’t sue-not a citizen-slave=property
 Congress did not have the power to outlaw slavery in the territories-MO Compromise Unconstitutional.
 Backlash because:
o The court majority consisted of 5 Southerners and one Northerner, with the other Northern judges
dissenting
o 1st time the Supreme Court invalidated a major act of Congress
o Dealing with the Constitutionality of the MO Compromise, the Court took up a question that was not
properly before it
o Thomas Hart Benton- Scott was “turned back from the door, for want of a right to enter the court room—
debarred from suing for want of citizenship; after which it would seem to be a grave judicial solecism to
proceed to try the man when he was not before the court.”
Election of 1856:
 Republican Party created-makes slavery an official party platform
 John C. Fremont (R)
 James Buchannan (D)-wins
o Only president from PA
o Only bachelor president
____________________________________
7th Grade Social Studies
Mexico & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 138— Lincoln-Douglas Debates
April 4, 2014
Focus: Why do you think the whole country was paying attention to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will describe how the Douglas-Lincoln debates foreshadowed the future of our country.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Current Events due Monday 4/7
-Chapter 15 Test Wednesday 4/9
Handouts:
Lincoln-'First Joint Debate at Ottawa, August 21, 1858'
Lincoln-'Fourth Joint Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858'
Douglas-'Third Joint Debate at Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858'
I. Lincoln VS. Douglas
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Abraham Lincoln
Stephen Douglas
Popular Sovereignty
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
What were the differences between Lincoln and Douglas?
What were their similarities?
Abraham Lincoln
'First Joint Debate at Ottawa, August 21, 1858'
When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.
When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can
understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do
myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse
would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia - to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would
convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is
impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus
shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all,
and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in
slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make
them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that
those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the
sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.
We cannot make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their
tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South. When they remind us of their constitutional
rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming
of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary
criminal laws are to hang an innocent one. But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery
to go info our own free territory, than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law. The law which forbids the
bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be
distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter. I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this. I think he has the answer here to one of the
questions he put to me. I do not mean to allow him to catechize me unless he pays back for it in kind. I will not answer
questions one after another, unless he reciprocates; but as he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it before, he has
got it without my getting anything in return. He has got my answer on the fugitive-slave law.
Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any great length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard
to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect
social and political equality with the African American is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a
man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose,
either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no
lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality
between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will
probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity
that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior
position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the
world why the a is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge
Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But
in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
Abraham Lincoln
'Fourth Joint Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858'
While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing
a perfect equality between the African Americans and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion
to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying
something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the
social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or
jurors of African Americans, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in
addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid
the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do
remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having
the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is
to have the superior position the African American should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do
not want a African American woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can
just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife.
So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of African Americans. I will
add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect
equality, social and political, between African Americans and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance
that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness, and that is the case of Judge Douglases old
friend Colonel Richard M. Johnson. I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon
this subject), that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry African Americans if there
was no law to keep them from it; but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might,
if there was no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of
this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with African Americans. I will add one further word, which is
this: that I do not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of the African
American and the white man can be made except in the State legislature -- not in the Congress of the United States; and
as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror
that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose, as the best means to prevent it, that the judge be kept at home
and placed in the State legislature to fight the measure. I do not propose dwelling longer at this time on the subject.
Stephen Douglas
'Third Joint Debate at Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858'
But I wish to invite your attention to the chief points at issue between Mr. Lincoln and myself in this discussion. Mr.
Lincoln, knowing that he was to be the candidate of his party on account of the arrangement of which I have already
spoken, knowing that he was to receive the nomination of the convention for the United States Senate, had his speech,
accepting that nomination, all written and committed to memory, ready to be delivered the moment the nomination was
announced. Accordingly when it was made he was in readiness and delivered his speech, a portion of which I will read
in order that I may state his political principles fairly, by repeating them in his own language: “We are now far into the
fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object, and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery
agitation; under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. I
believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I
believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I
do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that
it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, North as well as South.”
There you have Mr. Lincoln's first and main proposition, upon which he bases his claims, stated in his own language. He
tells you that this republic cannot endure permanently divided into slave and free States, as our fathers made it. He says
that they must all become free or all become slave, that they must all be one thing or all be the other, or this government
cannot last. Why can it not last, if we will execute the government in the same spirit and upon the same principles upon
which it is founded? Lincoln by his proposition, says to the South, "If you desire to maintain your institutions as they are
now, you must not be satisfied with minding your own business, but you must invade Illinois and all the other Northern
States, establish slavery in them, and make it universal"; and in the same language he says to the North, "You must not
be content with regulating your own affairs, and minding your own business, but if you desire to maintain your freedom,
you must invade the Southern States, abolish slavery there and everywhere, in order to have the States all one thing or all
the other." I say that this is the inevitable and irresistible result of Mr. Lincoln's argument, inviting a warfare between the
North and the South, to be carried on with ruthless vengeance, until the one section or the other shall be driven to the
wall, and become the victim of the rapacity of the other. What good would follow such a system of warfare? Suppose the
North should succeed in conquering the South, how much would she be the gainer? or suppose the South should conquer
the North, could the Union be preserved in that way? Is this sectional warfare to be waged between Northern States and
Southern States until they all shall become uniform in their local and domestic institutions merely because Mr. Lincoln
says that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and pretends that this scriptural quotation, this language of our Lord
and Master, is applicable to the American Union and the American Constitution? Washington and his compeers, in the
convention that framed the Constitution, made this government divided into free and slave States. It was composed then
of thirteen sovereign and independent States, each having sovereign authority over its local and domestic institutions,
and all bound together by the Federal Constitution. Mr. Lincoln likens that bond of the Federal Constitution, joining free
and slave States together, to a house divided against itself, and says that it is contrary to the law of God and cannot stand.
When did he learn, and by what authority does he proclaim, that this government is contrary to the law of God and
cannot stand? It has stood thus divided into free and slave States from its organization up to this day. During that period
we have increased from four millions to thirty millions of people; we have extended our territory from the Mississippi to
the Pacific ocean; we have acquired the Floridas and Texas, and other territory sufficient to double our geographical
extent; we have increased in population, in wealth, and in power beyond any example on earth; we have risen from a
weak and feeble power to become the terror and admiration of the civilized world; and all this has been done under a
Constitution which Mr. Lincoln, in substance, says is in violation of the law of God, and under a Union divided into free
and slave States, which Mr. Lincoln thinks, because of such division, cannot stand. Surely Mr. Lincoln is a wiser man
than those who framed the government. Washington did not believe, nor did his compatriots, that the local laws and
domestic institutions that were well adapted to the Green Mountains of Vermont were suited to the rice plantations of
South Carolina; they did not believe at that day that in a republic so broad and expanded as this, containing such a
variety of climate, soil, and interest, uniformity in the local laws and domestic institutions was either desirable or
possible. They believed then, as our experience has proved to us now, that each locality, having different interests, a
different climate, and different surroundings, required different local laws, local policy, and local institutions, adapted to
the wants of that locality. Thus our government was formed on the principle of diversity in the local institutions and
laws, and not on that of uniformity….
I hold that a African American is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was
made on the white basis, by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be
administered by white men, and none others. I do not believe that the Almighty made the African American capable of
self-government. I am aware that all the Abolition lecturers that you find traveling about through the country, are in the
habit of reading the Declaration of Independence to prove that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Lincoln is very much in
the habit of following in the track of Lovejoy in this particular, by reading that part of the Declaration of Independence to
prove that the African American was endowed by the Almighty with the inalienable right of equality with white men.
Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the African
American whatever, when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to express by that phrase white men,
men of European birth and European descent, and had no reference either to the African American, the savage Indians,
the Fee-Jee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great
evidence that such was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that at that time every one of the thirteen colonies
was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration represented a slaveholding constituency, and we know that no
one of them emanciated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them, when they signed the Declaration; and yet, if
they intended to declare that the African American was the equal of the white man, and entitled by divine right to an
equality with him, they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to have put their African Americans on an equality
with themselves. Instead of doing so, with uplifted eyes to heaven they implored the divine blessing upon them, during
the seven years' bloody war they had to fight to maintain that Declaration, never dreaming that they were violating divine
law by still holding the African Americans in bondage and depriving them of equality. My friends, I am in favor of
preserving this government as our fathers made it. It does not follow by any means that because a African American is
not your equal or mine, that hence he must necessarily be a slave. On the contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend
to the African American every right, every privilege, every immunity which he is capable of enjoying, consistent with
the good of society. When you ask me what hese rights are, what their nature and extent is, I tell you that that is a
question which each State of this Union must decide for itself. Illinois has already decided the question. We have
decided that the African American must not be a slave within our limits; but we have also decided that the African
American shall not be a citizen within our limits; that he shall not vote, hold office, or exercise any political rights. I
maintain that Illinois, as a sovereign State, has a right thus to fix her policy with reference to the relation between the
white man and the African American; but while we had that right to decide the question for ourselves, we must recognize
the same right in Kentucky and in every other State to make the same decision, or a different one. Having decided our
own policy with reference to the black race, we must leave Kentucky and Missouri and every other State perfectly free to
make just such a decision as they see proper on that question. Kentucky has decided that question for herself. She has
said that within her limits a African American shall not exercise any political rights, and she has also said that a portion
of the African Americans under the laws of that State shall be slaves. She had as much right to adopt that as her policy as
we had to adopt the contrary for our policy. New York has decided that in that State a African American may vote if he
has two hundred and fifty dollars Worth of property, and if he owns that much he may vote upon an equality with the
white man. I, for one, am utterly opposed to African American suffrage anywhere and under any circumstances; yet,
inasmuch as the Supreme Court has decided in the celebrated Dred Scott case that a State has a right to confer the
privilege of voting upon free African Americans, I am not going to make war upon New York because she has adopted a
policy repugnant to my feelings.
Notes
Class 138— Lincoln-Douglas Debates
April 4, 2014

Lincoln faces off against Stephen Douglas (the Little Giant) in a series of senatorial debates.
o 7 debates-Debated what America ought to do about slavery-gives it special historical significance
 Festivity prevailed-like a Big Game in a college town
o Douglas-popular sovereignty-effective device to restrict slavery without a battle in Congress
 Anti-slavery man
 Callous scorn for African Americans
 Slavery was unworthy of a progressive society like the U.S.
 Slavery not worth a political crisis
 African Americans should never be a citizen/inferior to whites, government made by white men
for white men
o Lincoln-did not believe in perfect equality
 Morally wrong
 “I…contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil.”
 “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so
think, and feel.”
 Opposed expansion
 Two races would never achieve social and political equality, must always be a superior and an
inferior-superior=white race
 Not an abolitionist
 No voting rights to African Americans
 Conflicting values-valued freedom, which impelled him towards emancipation but also valued
Union which repelled him from emancipation because the South would react-shrank from “doing
anything to bring about a war between the free and slave states”
 Accepted obligation to leave slavery undisturbed where it existed and even the law to return
fugitive slaves
 Believed the Founding Fathers had given clear indication that they “intended and expected the
ultimate extinction” of slavery-end slave trade, banned slavery from the Northwest
 Lincoln recognized that most whites in the North would support emancipation, but not equality.
 Tried to get listeners to recognize they shared a common humanity with African Americans
 People see his tall stature.
 His sense of humor is evident.
 Lincoln states that a nation cannot survive half slave and half free-“House Divided…” speech
 Loses election but becomes part of the national spot light-Douglas wins immediate Stakes, the
Senate, but Lincoln gained position for the greater prize-President
o “The difference between Douglas and Lincoln—and in large sense between proslavery and antislavery
thought—was not that Douglas believed in chattel servitude (for he did not), or that Lincoln believed in
an unqualified, full equality of blacks and whites (for he did not). The difference was that Douglas did
not believe that slavery really mattered very much, because he did not believe that [blacks] had enough
human affinity with him to make it necessary for him to concern himself with them. Lincoln, on the
contrary, believed that slavery mattered, because he recognized a human affinity with blacks which made
their plight a necessary matter of concern to him.”