Renewing the Sectional Struggle,
1848–1854
• Key Concept 5.1: The United States became more
connected with the world, pursued an
expansionist foreign policy in the Western
Hemisphere, and emerged as the destination for
many migrants from other countries.
• Key Concept 5.2: Intensified by expansion and
deepening regional divisions, debates over
slavery and other economic, cultural, and political
issues led the nation into civil war.
• Key Concept 5.3: The Union victory in the Civil
War and the contested reconstruction of the
South settled the issues of slavery and secession,
but left unresolved many questions about the
power of the federal government and citizenship
rights.
Election of 1848
• Zachary Taylor- Whig
– War hero
– Won 163-127
• Lewis Cass- Democrat
• Martin Van Buren- Free Soil Party
• http://www.270towin.com/1848_Election/
Popular Sovereignty
• Democrats in 1848:
– Polk pledged himself to a single term
– National Convention turned to aging leader
General Lewis Cass
– Platform silent on issue of slavery
– Cass's views were well known because he was
reputed father of popular sovereignty
• Popular sovereignty—
• doctrine stated the sovereign people of a territory,
under general principle of the Constitution, should
themselves determine status of slavery
– Had persuasive appeal:
• Public liked it because it accorded with democratic
tradition of self-determination
• Politicians liked it because it seemed a comfortable
compromise between:
– Free-soilers' bid to ban slavery in territories
– Southern demands that Congress protect slavery in territories
• Popular sovereignty tossed slavery problem to people
in various territories
• Advocates hoped to dissolve slavery from a national
issue to a series of local issues
• Yet, popular sovereignty had one fatal defect:
– Might spread blight of slavery
• Free-Soilers' party platform:
• Condemned slavery not so much for enslaving blacks
but for destroying chances of free whites to rise up
from wage-earning dependence to self-employment
• Argued that only with free soil in West could American
commitment to upward mobility continue to flourish
• First party organized around issue of slavery and
confined to single section
• Foreshadowed emergence of Republicans
p379
Map 18-1 p380
The California Rush
• Discovery of gold near Sutter's Mill, California,
early in 1848
• Forty-Niners
• Tremendous influx of people
• Drafted a constitution that excluded slavery
and appealed for admission as a state
p381
• South in 1850 was relatively well-off:
– National leadership: Taylor in White House
– Had a majority in cabinet and on Supreme Court
– Cotton fields expanding
– Cotton prices profitably high
– Few believed slavery seriously threatened in
fifteen states
• South deeply worried by ever-tipping political
balance: 15 slave states & 15 free states
• Admission of California would destroy balance
in Senate
• Potential slave territory was running short
• Already agitation in territories of New Mexico
& Utah for admission as non-slave states
• California might establish a precedent
Southern “grievances”
– Angered by agitation in North for abolition of
slavery in District of Columbia
– Upset over loss of runaway slaves:
• Assisted by Underground Railroad
• Harriet Tubman
The Underground Railroad
p382
Map 18-2 p382
The Compromise of 1850
• Clay, Calhoun and Webster returned to the
Senate
• Spirit Calhoun and Webster documents
(pp.292-296)
• Webster's famed Seventh of March speech
(1850) was his finest:
– Visibly strengthened Union sentiment
– Pleased banking and commercial centers of
North—stood to lose millions by secession
– Free-Soilers and abolitionists called him a traitor,
– Reproaches most unfair; Webster regarded slavery
as evil, but disunion as worse
Breaking the Congressional
Logjam
• Heat in Congress:
– “Union savers”—Clay, Webster, Douglas—orated
across North on behalf of compromise
– Southern “fire-eaters” opposed concession
– June 1850, southern extremists met in Nashville:
• Took strong position in favor of slavery
• Condemned compromise measure
Table 18-1 p384
p385
Map 18-3 p386
p387
Map 18-4 p388
Defeat and Doom for the Whigs
•
•
•
•
Election of 1852
Franklin Pierce- Democrat
Winfield Scott- Whig
Whigs split over issue of slavery and Pierce
won
• Marked end of Whig party
• Whigs' complete death:
– Augured eclipse of national parties and rise of
purely sectional political alignments
– Won two presidential elections (1840, 1848) with
war heroes
• Greatest contribution was to help uphold ideal
of Union through:
– Electoral strength in South
– Eloquence of leaders Clay & Webster
Expansionist Stirrings South of the
Border
– Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) stipulated neither
U.S.A. nor Britain would fortify or seek executive
control over any future isthmian waterway
• (later rescinded by Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1910)
– Ostend Manifesto—urged administration to offer
$120 million for Cuba
• Secret manifesto leaked out
• Northern free-soilers enraged
Map 18-5 p389
The Allure of Asia
• Americans wanted access to the rich markets
of Asia
– Opium War—fought by Britain for right to peddle
opium in China:
• Britain gained free access to five so-called treaty ports
• Control of island of Hong Kong
• President Tyler wanted to secure comparable
concession for United States
• Treaty of Wanghia: first formal diplomatic
agreement between U.S. and China on July 3,
1844:
– secured vital commercial rights and privileges
from Chinese
– “Most favorable rights” granted to U.S.A.
– “Extraterritoriality”—provided Americans,
accused of crimes in China, a trial before American
officials, not in Chinese courts
– American trade with China increased
– Treaty also encouraged arrival of American
missionaries; thousands came
– Success in China prompted U.S. goals for Japan:
• Japan had earlier withdrawn into cocoon of
isolationism for over 200 years
• Tokugawa Shogunate protected Japan's insularity
• By 1853, Japan ready to emerge from self-imposed
quarantine
Commodore Perry and Japan
– President Fillmore dispatched Commodore
Matthew Perry in 1852 for Japan
– His four “black ships” steamed into Edo (later
Tokyo Bay) on July 8, 1853
– Perry requested free trade & friendly relations,
then left promising to return next year to receive
Japan's reply
– Perry returned in February 1854; persuaded
Japan to sign Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31,
1854
p391
– Perry “opened” Japan after its two-centuries of
isolation
– Less than a decade later, “Meiji Restoration”
would:
• End Shogunate
• Propel Japan headlong into modern world
• Eventually into military crash with United States
Pacific Railroad Promoters and the
Gadsden Purchase
Map 18-6 p392
Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Scheme
• 1854
• The Nebraska Territory would be divided into the
territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
• The status of slavery would be determined by
popular sovereignty.
• It would require the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise
• (Douglas had financial stakes in Chicago real
estate and railway stock and wanted to gain
Southern support for Chicago as terminus of new
railroad)
p393
• “And what does slavery ask now? Why, sir, it
demands that a time-honored and sacred
compact (Missouri Compromise) shall be
rescinded- a compact which has endured
through a whole generation. . . .”
• “The old questions between political parties
are at rest. No great question so thoroughly
possesses the public mind as this of slavery.”
– Salmon Chase, 1854
Map 18-7 p393
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Consequences
• Anti-slavery Northerners saw it as an act of
bad faith. All future compromise with the
South would be more difficult.
• The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 would no
longer be enforced
• Its passage shattered the Democratic party
The Republican Party
• -It began in the Middle West as a moral protest
against slavery. It included a range of disgruntled
elements (former Whigs, Free-Soilers, Democrats,
Know-Nothings, and others opposed to the
Kansas-Nebraska Act).
• by 1856 it had elected a Speaker of the House
• it was a second major party almost over night.
• it was a purely sectional party that did not exist
below the Mason-Dixon line.
p395