• In what ways did the early nineteenth –century reform
movements for abolition and women’s rights illustrate both the
strengths and weaknesses of democracy in the early American
republic?
• In the period 1815 to 1860, improvements in transportation and
increased inter-regional trade should have united Americans, but
instead produced sectional division and finally disunion. Discuss
with reference to the impact of improved transportation and
increased inter-regional trade on the Northeast (New England
and Middle Atlantic states), the South, and the West.
• Discuss the impact of territorial expansion on national unity
between 1800 and 1850
• Analyze the ways in which supporters of slavery in the nineteenth
century used legal, religious, and economic arguments to defend
the institution of slavery.
• Assess the moral arguments and political actions of those
opposed to the spread of slavery in the context of TWO of the
following: Missouri Compromise
Mexican War
•
Compromise of 1850
Kansas – Nebraska Act
No Compromise with Sin:
The Radicalization of
American Anti-Slavery
I. Brief History American AntiSlavery
• No prob. majority history
• 18th: 1) Enlightenment (although also legitimated)
• 2) 1st GA (equality before God)
– Benjamin Lay vs. Anthony Benezet
• 3) American Revolution
• By 1810: Dying out N
– Gradual abolition, PA: 1780 - 1847
• 1810-1830:  Colonization
– South: examples
– North: “democracy”
II. William Lloyd Garrison
• 1805: Newbury, MA
– Come-outer Baptist mother; father alcoholic
• Printer’s apprentice journalist
• 1820s: Demon Rum
• 1828: Ben Lundy (“The Genius of Universal
Emancipation”) colonization
• Millennialism purer Ch’y
• John Noyes (founder Oneida commune):
perfectionism sinfulness = slavery
“universal emancipation”:
• Christian anarchism
III. Radical Abolition: A House on
Fire
•
•
•
•
A. Immediatism
1 Jan. 1831: Liberator : “I am in
earnest…I will not retreat an inch—
and I will be heard.”
Slavery:
– 1) Sin: lie of racial inequality
– 2) Crime: anti-AR
Strategy of conversion + revivalism
No compromise w/sin
– Doc B and E
• 1833 Am Anti-Slavery Society propaganda
violence + political suppression
• Gag rule (1836)
• 1834-8: mob violence: 1835 WLG symbolically,
1837 Lovejoy actually
• Change in tactics split gradualists +
immediatists
B. Abolitionism and Women’s Rights
• 1) Non-resistance: no compromise w/sin
• 2) Women’s rights: auxiliary groups
violation Victorian ideals: racial equality
fears of miscegenation, political activity
• Women lecturers: “promiscuous audiences”
• Catalyst: Angelina + Sarah Grimké lecture
tour
• Division w/in movement: 1) conservatives
vs. Garrisonians over women’s rights
• Even more: 2) 1840s: non-resistance calls
for northern secession
IV. Proslavery Argument
• Rage over Garrison positive good
• 1) Aristotle: “mudsill”
• 2) Bible: Old and New Testament (“curse of
Ham”)
• 3) King Cotton: economic determinism
• 4) Science of racism (multiple creations?)
• 5) Fiction writers: moonlight + magnolias
• 6) George Fitzhugh
V. Fitzhugh and the Attack on Free
Society
• Sociology for the South, or The Failure of Free Society (1854);
Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857)
• Slavery = servile labor of any form
– Chattel slavery kinder than wage: 1st modern welfare
state
• Slavery survive only if capitalist world market destroyed:
southern values could not survive competition +
bourgeois individualism
– Writing at same time as Marx in Europe, unclear if F
read M
• Free labor class conflict +
violence
• Slavery solves: master class
combines interest w/sentiment
security for masses (paternalism)
• Whole world must be all slave or
all free
– Compare Lincoln “House Divided”
speech
• Fitzhugh took argument farthest,
but basic ideas common in South
VI. Conclusion
• Heated anti- or pro-slavery sentiment was a
minority position before 1850s
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown
would change that on both sides
The Political Crisis
• Analyze the social, political, and economic
forces of the 1840s and early 1850s that led to
the emergence of the Republican Party. (09)
• Analyze the ways in which controversy over the
extension of slavery into western territories
contributed to the coming of the Civil War.
Confine your answer to the period 1845–1861.
(10)
I. American West as American
Future
• Westward expansion slavery national issue
• White southerners: exclusion block future
• White northerners: expansion death of
“equality”: even free blacks threaten whites
• 1840s-1861: 4 basic arguments
• 1) Total exclusion
• 2) Extend Missouri
• 3) Pop. sov’ty.
• 4) Total expansion
II. Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
• 1845 annexation Texas +
1848 Mexican-American War:
opens territory south of
36’30”
– Slave imperialism? “spot
resolutions”: 22 Dec 1847, A.
Lincoln, (Whig Rep., IL)
“Spotty Lincoln”
• Emerson: swallowing arsenic
• David Wilmot (D., PA): no
slavery ever in territories
echoes NWO
• No “morbid sympathy”
equity free white labor
• House passes 50 times, split
Senate rejects
III. Compromise 1850
• CA Gold Rush 80,000 w/in a year: mostly
North, some free blacks + slaves hostility
w/in CA
• CA Const no provision slavery: want no blacks
• CA request admit: Senate split + NM almost
ready (free) throw it 17 to 15 hints of
secession
• Henry Clay (master of Missouri Comp): 1) CA
free, 2) NM + UT pop. sov., 3) new fugitive
slave law, 4) end slave trade D.C.
• Pres. Z. Taylor promised to
veto Taylor dies July 4 binge
(cherries + milk + heart)
• Millard Fillmore favors Clay
• Stephen Douglas (IL)(“Little
Giant”): revives compromise
urban West connected E by
massive RxR (through Chicago):
requires Union
• SD breaks Compromise into
parts passes
IV. Fugitive Slave Act and Uncle
Tom’s Cabin
• Mostly symbolic support: only few thousand/yr,
few whites afford chase
• N blacks outraged: threat of false “return”
associations to resist
• HBS Uncle Tom’s Cabin: vision of Christ-like
black beaten “God wrote it”
• Focused impact w+b families; fugitive slave act
implicated all Americans in slavery: required to
aid chasers
• Appeal of UTC: slavery
breaks families; Ch’n
martyrdom Tom; sexual
abuse slave women;
educational neglect children
• Sensation: 3 million copies
sold by CW
• Gave slavery a face in
North converts thousands
to antislavery (had been
violently opposed)
• South: damnable lie
Eliza fleeing Simon
Legree across the frozen
Ohio River to freedom
V. Bleeding Kansas and Dred Scott
A. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
• Douglas: organize territory W of
Chicago (competition St. Louis)
– Republican Party forms to oppose
• Kick out Indians, organize
gov’t pop. sov’ty
• Breaks Missouri Compromise
S+N begin organizing (Border
Ruffians vs. Emigrant Aid
Company, “Beecher’s Bibles”)
• N outnumbers S illegally cross
border (Missouri) 60% votes
illegal
Rehearsal for War
• Proslavery gov’t: kick out
antislavery element, crime to
speak free soil arg., aiding
escaped slave capital offense
• Free soil gov’t: outlaws slavery,
bans entrance free blacks
• Attack on Free Soilers in
Lawrence  John Brown’s
“Northern Army”: “without
bloodshed there is no remission
of sin” guerilla warfare
B. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
• Taney Court invalidates Missouri
Compromise (Congress cannot ban slavery
anywhere in nation) and possibly pop. sov’ty
• Lecompton Constitution (1857): proslavery,
rejected by 10,000 votes Pres. Buchannan
(D) tries to push through Congress blatant
Slave Power
• Douglas: Freeport Doctrine (1858): territories
could still ban alienates southern
Democrats slavery would only be protected
in separate nation
VI. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
• Brown: directly appointed by
God to end slavery
– Trigger: Brooks beats Sumner
Southerners only understand
“masculine” violence
• Plan: slave insurrection
mountains VA free state
staging ground
• $4,000 to found Provisional
Army of US: 20 men
• Oct. 16, 1859: attacks US arsenal
at Harper’s Ferry, VA for guns
• Col. Robert E. Lee crush and
take to jail
• Brown’s letter to Gov.: refusing to concede, warns
slavery question would be resolved published in
papers terrifies rush through trial
• Dec. 2, 1859: hanged in presence 1500 nervous VA
soldiers
• South convinced real armies of terrorists waiting at
border (“Brown’s invasion”)
• VA paper labels Brown raid most terrible act
disunifying nation
• Despite Brown’s prophecy, war not fought to abolish
slavery (at least not at start)