Crises of the late 1840s and 1850s
Missouri Compromise, 1820
Abolitionists
Sarah
and
Angelina
Grimke
Theodore Weld
Harriet Tubman
William Lloyd Garrison
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionists and the “The Slave
Power” in the 1830s-1840s
• Abolitionists brought the issue of slavery to the attention of the
nation and made it a moral issue.
• They also raised the specter of a Slave Power that would stop
at nothing to extend and protect slavery, including violating the
rights of whites.
• They were never a majority and often the object of violence,
insults, opprobrium. And yet, when many northerners saw
abolitionists beaten and mobbed, and their mail confiscated by
the federal government and their petitions to the House of
representatives automatically tabled without discussion
(“gagged”)
• The mobbing, beatings, killings of abolitionists and the
confiscation and destruction of their mailings to the South, and
the automatic tabling of their petitions to Congress (Gag Rule,
1836) suggested to many that the abolitionists might be right
the existence of a “Slave Power.”
Mexican War and Cession, 1846-1849
--Alamo and Texas
Independence,
1836
--Disputed border:
Nueces-Rio
Grande Rivers
--War
--Mexican
Cession
Wilmot Proviso, 1846
• Polk wrote in his diary:
“Late in the evening of
Saturday, the 8th, I learned
that after an exciting
debate in the House of
Representatives a bill
passed that body, but with
a mischievous and foolish
amendment to the effect
that no territory which
might be acquired by
treaty from Mexico should
ever be a slave holding
country.”
Compromise of 1850
1. California
admitted as a
free state.
2. Utah and New
Mexico
Territories:
Popular
sovereignty
3. Slave trade
abolished in
D.C.
4. Fugitive Slave
Law
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
• Results:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nullified the Mo.
Compromise line.
Popular Sovereignty in
both territories.
Break-up of the Whig
Party.
Creation of the
Republican Party.
Lincoln returns to
politics.
Mini-Civil War in Kansas
– Sack of Lawrence, 1856
– John Brown at
Potawatomie
– Caning of Sumter by
Brooks on the Senate
floor.
Dred Scott decision:
•
•
•
•
Dred Scott was a
slave and had no
right to sue in court.
Blacks were not, had
never been, and
could not be
citizens.
Because of the
Constitution’s
protection of
property, Congress
had no right to
prohibit slavery in
the territories.
The implication was
that states and the
people of territories
could not ban
slavery.
Lincoln Douglas Debates, 1858
John Brown’s Raid, 1859
•
While in jail, Brown
transformed his image from
that of “avenging angel” to
sorrowful Moses.
•
•
•
Brown sought to
inspire a slave
revolt and failing
that hoped to
provoke a
sectional crisis.
Republicans
condemned the
raid, but
southerners
claimed it was the
natural result of
Republican antislavery doctrine.
Evidence of
abolitionist
support for John
brown’s raid and
the sympathetic
reaction in parts
of the North to his
execution,
maddened the
South.
Many southerners
feared that a
Republican
president would
not send troops
to suppress
future raids.
Election of 1860
John C.
Breckenridge
John Bell
Election of 1860
• The Crittenden Compromise proposed
extending the 36,30 line across to the
Pacific with slavery allowed south of the
line and banned north of the line.
• Lincoln rejected it because he would not
accept the extension of slavery.
Secession
Civil War, 1861-1865
• You cannot receive a passing mark for the
exam unless you get these dates correct!!
• Seriously!!
• Most European observers and experts
believed that, despite the North’s many
advantages, the South was simply too
vast for the North to defeat and occupy.