Western Lands and the Coming
of the Civil War
Making the Avoidable Seem
Inevitable, 1848-1861
What to Do With Lands Acquired
From Mexico As a Result of the
Mexican War?
Slave or Free?
Who gets to decide?
4 Basic Positions
• Let Congress Decide
– Wilmot Proviso (Keep it out)
– Divide territory (Missouri compromise
Precedent)
• Territories belong to all the citizens of all
the states
• Popular Sovereignty
• Let the Supreme Court decide
1848 Election
Lewis Cass—Democrat—Popular
Sovereignty
Zachary Taylor—Whig—divide
territory/nationalism over sectional issue of
slavery
Free Soilers—Martin Van Buren—keep
slavery out of the territories
Zachary Taylor
1848 Election Results
• Taylor Won
• Van Burenites hurt Democrats in New York
and Whigs in Ohio
• Democrats continued with popular
sovereignty.
1848 Election Results
Gold Rush in California sped up
process
California Petitioned for Admission
as a free state
Forging the Armistice of 1850
• Congress struggled to elect Speaker of
House
• Taylor hoped to admit California and New
Mexico as states quickly without dealing w/
issue of slavery in Territories.
Clay’s Omnibus Proposal
• California admitted as
a free state
• Remainder of Mexican
Cession/no restrictions
on slavery
• Little Texas
• U. S. assumes Tx’s
debt
• No slave trade in D. C.
• Slavery in D. C.
• Stronger Fugitive
Slave Law
• Congress can’t
interfere with
interstate slave trade
Henry Clay
Great Debates
• Daniel Webster’s 7th of March Address
• Calhoun’s Valedictory
• Seward’s Higher Law Speech
Valedictory of Great Triumvirate
Making the Armistice
• No Votes for Omnibus
bill
• Death of Zachary
Taylor/Millard
Filmore played more
constructive role.
• Stephen Douglas
engineered passage of
5 bills containing
essence of Omnibus
• No real compromise.
• Fruits of Armistice
exacerbated rather
than ameliorated
sectional tension
Stephen Douglas
Fruits of Armistice
• Fugitive Slave Act of
1850
– Furthered belief of
Slavepower conspiracy
– Northern
interposition/Personal
Liberty Laws
– Mobs rescued alleged
runaways
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
– Made abstraction of
slavery personal to
Romantic reading
public
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Franklin Pierce Administration
• Democratic Dark Horse and “Doughface”
– Appointed Southerners to key posts; these folk
appeared to pursue proslavery agenda
– Ostend Manifesto
Franklin Pierce/1852 Election
Kansas Nebraska Act
•
•
•
•
•
Stephen Douglas wanted Kansas Organized
Needed Southern votes
Agreed to overturn Missouri Compromise
Popular Sovereignty seemed “democratic”
Weakened Democrats in North; “Appeal of
the Independent Democrats”
• Weakened Whigs in the South
Major Significance of KNA
• Emergence of Republican Party
• “Bleeding Kansas”
– Difficult to Organize Territory without added
burden of slavery
– New England Emigrant Aid Society/Border
Ruffians
– Sack of Lawrence—May 1856
– Pottawatomie Creek Massacre—John Brown
John Brown
Impact of Bleeding Kansas
• Confirmed image of Lawless Southern
slaveholders in Northern Mind
• Led to Sumner-Brooks Incident
Sumner—Brooks Incident
“Bleeding Sumner”
• Southerners think Sumner got what he
deserved
• Northerners see Southerners as brutal
barbarians
• Transformation of Northern Politics (Rise of
Republican Party)
Abraham Lincoln
Rise of Republican Party
• American or Know Nothing Party was a
dominant party in North and 2d to
Democrats as National Party through May
1856
• Republicans ran 2d in 1856 Election—
Bleeding Sumner made their anti-slavery
message appealing
• Research done by William E. Gienapp
1856 Election
• John Charles Fremont (Republican)
crusaded against those “twin relics of
barbarism—polygamy and slavery”
• James Buchanan—Doughface—popular
sovereignty and nonintervention.
1856 Election Map
1857: The Year Everything Went
Wrong
• Dred Scott v. Sandford
• Panic of 1857
• Lecompton Constitution
Dred Scott
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
• Douglas won, but L.’s version of Antislavery made him extremely popular
• “In the right to eat the bread earned by the
sweat of his brow, he is equal to me, to
Judge Douglas, and to everyone else.”
John Brown’s Raid
• A conspiracy to Arm Slaves in Rebellion
• Many Northerners thought Brown “will
make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”
• Southerners especially fearful: “All
northerners are abolitionists, and all
abolitionists are John Browns.”
1860 Presidential Election
• Charleston
Convention divides
Democrats/Federal
Slave Code in
Territories
• Northern Democrats
nominate Douglas;
Southern Democrats
nominate Breckinridge
• Lincoln wins
Republican
nomination/no
extension of slavery
• John Bell of Tennessee
is Constitutional
Unionist Candidate
1860 Election Map
• Lincoln—180
Electoral Votes
• Douglas—12 elect.
Votes
• Breckinridge—72
Electoral votes
• Bell—39 Electoral
Votes
Secession of Lower South
• South Carolina, followed by six other deep
South states seceded before L. took office
• Why?
– Internal Subversion thesis.
– Republican Cordon Strategy
Confederate States of America
• Established in
Montgomery, Ala.
• Constitution based on U.
S. Constitution
• Jefferson
Davis/Alexander
Stephens
• Emphasis on Right of
Revolution and morality
of slavery
Buchanan/Compromise
• Buchanan took no provocative actions: Fort
Pickens Truce and Fort Sumter standoff
• Crittenden Compromise failed
• House Committee of 33 proposed 13th
amendment failed