Brinkley, Chapter 13 Notes - Marlington Local Schools Chapter 13 Notes.pdfBrinkley, Chapter 13 Notes 3 Slavery in the territories fully r evived the sectional crisis regarding RRs.

Brinkley, Chapter 13 Notes

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Brinkley

Chapter 13

The Impending Crisis

Advocates of Manifest Destiny envisioned a vast new "empire of liberty" that included Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Pacific islands.

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny reflected:

* Growing pride that characterized American nationalism

* Idealistic vision of social perfection

* America was destined by God and by history to expand its boundaries

Henry Clay and others warned that territorial expansion would reopen the controversy over slavery.

"Penny Press" spread ideas of Manifest Destiny throughout the nation.

Americans in Texas

1824 - Mexican government offered cheap land and a 4 year exemption from taxes to any American willing to move into TX. Thousands flocked there with slaves to establish cotton plantations.

Stephen Austin established the 1st American settlement in TX in 1822. Austin created centers of power in the region that competed with the Mexican gov't.

1830 Mexico barred any further American settlement w/ little avail.

Friction between American settlers and the Mexican government grew in the

1830s when instability in Mexico drove General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

to seize power as a dictator.

Santa Anna led a large army into TX, where American soldiers were divided into several factions. Mexican forces annihilated the American garrison at the Alamo. Among the

dead was former Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett.

Fighting between Americans and Mexicans in TX began in 1835. In 1836 Americans in TX proclaimed their independence from Mexico.

After the Alamo, General Sam Houston kept a small force together and defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto and took Santa Anna prisoner. Under pressure,

Santa Anna signed a peace treaty giving Texas their independence.

Americans in Texas

Mexicans in Texas (Tejanos) fought with the Americans. After the war ended, their position was difficult, Americans did not trust

them, fearing they were agents for the Mexican government. Many were driven out of Texas back to Mexico. Most of those

who stayed were politically and economically inferior.

Blocked annexation and delayed recognizing Texas until 1837. Another attempt for statehood occurred in 1847 but was defeated by northern senators.

Sam Houston immediately asked for admission to the US. President Jackson, feared adding a large new slave state to

the Union would increase sectional tensions.

Democrats nominated James K. Polk to run against Clay. Polk won because he supported annexing TX & OR.

Democrats and ExpansionElection of 1844 - Henry Clay (Whig) tried to avoid taking a stand on the controversial issue of annexing TX.

Democrats appealed to both northern and southern expansionists. Before President Tyler left office, he saw Polk's victory as a mandate and admitted TX into the Union in 1845.

Polk resolved the OR question. Tried to compromise with British minister in DC over the US-Canadian border at the 49th parallel. Immediately rejected, but after some talk in both nations over a possible war, compromise was struck at the 49th parallel.

As soon as the US admitted TX into the union the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with the US. Then, a boundary dispute emerged. TX claimed the Rio Grande River as their southern border. Mexico claimed the border was the Nueces River.

Americans were also increasing their interest in NM and CA. Americans traded with Mexicans and Indians

in those regions. Polk was committed to acquiring both

territories.

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Whigs accused Polk of staging the attack at the Rio Grande River and forcing the US into war. As the public became more aware of the charges and the financial and human cost of the war, support waned. Victory did not come quickly.

The Mexican War

Polk dispatched a special minister to Mexico to try to buy off the Mexicans. The offer was rejected so Polk ordered Taylor's troops to move across the Nueces River to the Rio Grande River. There was stalemate for a few months until finally some Mexican troops crossed the River and attacked American soldiers. On May 13, 1846 Congress declared war.

Polk relied on General Winfield Scott to bring the US to victory. Scott managed to capture Mexico City just after a new gov't was installed. The new gov't negotiated a peace treaty.

Polk sent a special presidential envoy to negotiate the peace. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) - Mexico ceded CA and NM to the US. Mexico had to acknowledge the Rio Grande as the official border. The US paid Mexico $15 million for the new territories.

Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to TX to protect against a possible Mexican invasion. He also sent secret instructions to the commander of the Pacific naval squadron to seize ports if Mexico declared war and sent messages to Americans in NM & CA the US would support them if Mexico attacked them.

August 1846, Polk asked Congress for money to purchase peace with Mexico. Representative David Wilmot of PA, an antislavery Democrat, introduced an amendment to the appropriation bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. Passed the House but failed in the Senate. It led to the growing sectional debate.

The Sectional DebateThe Wilmot Proviso

As the sectional debate intensified, Polk supported a proposal to extend the MO Compromise line through the new territories to the Pacific Ocean. Others supported a plan called "popular sovereignty" which would allow the people of each territory to decide the status of slavery there.

Popular Sovereignty was supported by Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan.

1848 campaign - both Democrats and Whigs tried to avoid the slavery question.

Polk wanted to run again, but the Democrats chose Lewis Cass. The Whigs chose Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War.

Opponents of slavery were dissatisfied. The Free-Soil Party, arose out of their anger. Nominated Martin Van Buren. Taylor won a narrow victory.

According to northerners, the South was the antithesis of democracy - a closed, static society, in which slavery preserved an entrenched aristocracy.

Free Soil Ideology

In the North, assumptions about the proper structure of society came to center on the belief in "free soil" and "free labor".

While the North was growing and prospering, the South was stagnating, rejecting the values of individualism and progress. To Northerners, the South was extending slavery to destroy northern capitalism and replace it with aristocratic system of the South.

The only way to stop the south was to stop the spread of slavery and extend the nation's

democratic ideals. This ideology lay at the heart of the Republican party as well.

Emergence of Free-Soil Party signaled the inability of the existing parties to contain the political passion of slavery & was an early sign of the coming collapse of the 2nd party system in the 1850s.

The gold rush also attracted some of the 1st Chinese migrants to the US. Most Chinese were poor but went to CA with dreams of striking it rich.

The California Gold RushWhen Taylor took office, the pressure to resolve the question of slavery in the far West had become more urgent as a result of the discovery of gold in CA.

The population in California swelled. Conflicts over gold

intersected with racial and ethnic tensions to make the territory an

unusually turbulent place.

As long as new lands remained territories, the federal gov't was responsible for deciding the fate of slavery within them. But once

they became states their own gov'ts would be able to settle the slavery question. At Taylor's urging, CA quickly adopted a

constitution prohibiting slavery, and in December 1849, Taylor asked Congress to admit CA as a free state.

Rising Sectional Tensions

Taylor believed statehood could become the solution to the issue of slavery in the territories.

CA upset the balance of free and slave states at 15. The admission of NM, OR and UT might upset the balance further.

The Compromise of 1850Author: Henry Clay

* California was admitted as a free state.

* Territorial governments in land acquired from Mexico had no restrictions on slavery.

* Slave trade abolished in DC

* New more effective fugitive slave law. (Fugitive Slave Act 1850)

* Easier for slaveowners to catch and return fugitive slaves from the north

Compromise stalled in the Senate for 6 months. By July 1850 new leadership emerged in the senate and the death of the most powerful obstacle to the compromise that forged the compromise - Zachary Taylor. Millard Fillmore succeeded Taylor. Fillmore supported the compromise and used his powers of persuasion to swing northern Whigs into line.

Stephan A. Douglas proposed breaking up Clay's Omnibus bill (proposed law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics) into pieces and allowing the legislature to vote on it piece by piece.

As a result, by mid-September Congress enacted all the components of

the compromise.

* North appalled by the Act

The Whigs lost many members from the antislavery faction to the Free-Soil Party. The Free-Soil presidential candidate, John P. Hale repudiated the Compromise of 1850. Whig divisions produced a democratic victory in 1852.

The Crisis of the 1850s

In 1852, both major parties endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and both nominated presidential candidates unidentified with sectional passions.

Democrats chose Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire and the Whigs chose Mexican War hero General Winfield Scott.

Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act intensified quickly after 1850. Southerners watched with horror their defiance of the Act.

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Slavery in the territories fully revived the sectional crisis regarding RRs. In the Old NW, prospective settlers wanting to move farther West (to MN and IA), urged the gov't to open the area to them, provide territorial governments, and remove the Indians located there.

Slavery, Railroads, and the West

As the nation expanded west, broad support began to emerge for building a Transcontinental RR. The problem was where to connect the railroad's eastern terminus to existing eastern RR lines. Northerners favored Chicago. Southerners favored St. Louis, or New Orleans. Chicago was chosen leading the south to believe the federal gov't favored northern development.

Pierce's Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis of MS, removed one obstacle to a southern route.

Surveys indicated that a railroad with a southern terminus would have to pass through Mexican territory. In 1853, Davis sent James Gadsden, a southern railroad builder, to Mexico. He persuaded the Mexican government to accept $10 million in exchange for a strip of land that today comprises parts of Arizona and New Mexico. The Gadsden Purchase only fueled sectional rivalry.

To get Southerners to agree, Douglas inserted a provision that the status of slavery in the territory would be determined by popular sovereignty. The region could choose to open itself to slavery. When southern Democrats demanded more, Douglas agreed to an additional clause explicitly repealing the MO Compromise. The final form of the measure was known as the Kansas - Nebraska Act. President Pierce supported the bill.

The Kansas-Nebraska ControversyTo have the Transcontinental Railroad pass through Chicago, Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to organize and open settlement in Nebraska. Douglas knew the South would oppose the bill because it would create a new free state.

No piece of legislation in American history produced such sweeping consequences. The Whig party was divided and destroyed. Many Northern Democrats left the party because of the repeal of the MO Compromise. Spurred a new party that was sectional in composition. People in both major parties who opposed Douglas's bill called themselves Anti-Nebraska Democrats and Anti-Nebraska Whigs. In 1854, they formed a new organization - the Republican Party.

White settlers moved into Kansas almost after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

"Bleeding Kansas"

A few months later, a pro-slavery federal marshal assembled a large group of mostly Missourians to arrest the free-state leaders in Lawrence, Kansas. Scked the town burnt the "governor's" house, and destroyed property.

Spring 1855 - elections were held for territorial legislatures. There were only about 1,500 legal voters in Kansas by then, but thousands of Missourians ("Border Ruffians") swelled the vote to over 6,000. Pro-slavery forces elected a majority to the legislature that immediately legalized slavery. They chose their governor and petitioned for statehood.

The most fervent abolitionist, John Brown moved to KS to make it a free state. After the events in Lawrence, Brown gathered 6 followers & murdered 5 pro-slavery settlers. Known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

Led to more civil strife in KS. Northerners & Southerners believes the events in KS illustrated and were caused by the aggressive designs of the rival section. "Bleeding Kansas" became another powerful symbol of the sectional controversy.

Then, thousands of free-staters swelled Kansas, established a

"shadow government" and drafted the Topeka

Constitution supporting a free Kansas.

Term coined by Horace Greeley to describe pro and anti slavery violence in Kansas in the 1850s.

Pierce denounced the free-staters as traitors and threw support of the federal gov't behind the pro-slavery territorial legislature.

Another symbol soon appeared in the US Senate. 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a speech titled, "The Crime Against Kansas." He drew particular attention to Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina who defended slavery.

Southern "Chivalry"

The speech was perceived as vicious by Butler's nephew, Preston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives. Several days after the speech, Brooks approached Sumner at his desk in the Senate chamber and beat him bloody with a cane.

The North called him a hero - a martyr to the barbarism of the South. In the South, Preston Brooks became a hero

too. He was censured by the House and then resigned.

The Pro-Slavery ArgumentPro-Slavery forces rose in the South due to:

1. Nat Turner's uprising in 1831 that terrified White Southerners.

2. The expansion of the cotton economy into the Deep South.

3. Growth of the Garrisonian abolitionist movement that attacked southern Whites.

In response to these pressures, a number of white southerners produced a new intellectual defense of slavery. The Pro-Slavery Argument - anthology of views of white plantation owners.

The Pro-Slavery Argument

John C. Calhoun Slavery was "a good - a positive good". It was good for the slaves because they enjoyed better conditions than industrial workers in the North. It was good for southern society because it was the only way the two races could live together in peace, and good for the entire country because the southern economy, based on slavery, was the key to the prosperity of the nation.

Above all, southern apologists argued, slavery was good because it served as the basis for the southern way of life - a way of life superior to any other in the United States. White southerners looking at the North saw a spirit of greed, debauchery, and destructiveness. Biological inferiority of African Americans who inherently unfit to take care of themselves, let alone exercise the rights of citizenship.

1856 election - Democrats wanted a candidate who was not related to "Bleeding Kansas" and chose James Buchanan.

Buchanan and Depression

Republicans endorsed a Whiggish platform of internal improvements that further encouraged the anti-slavery movement. Republicans nominated John C. Fremont.

The Know-Nothing Party (almost dead) nominated Millard Fillmore.

Buchanan won a slim victory. Depression struck the nation in 1857. In the North, the depression strengthened the Republican Party because distressed manufacturers, workers, and farmers came to believe that the hard times were the result of the unsound policies of the Southern Democrats. They expressed their frustration by joining the Republican Party.

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In response, the pro-slavery territorial legislature called for a (2nd) constitutional convention. The free-state residents refused to participate, claiming that the legislature discriminated against in drawing district lines.

Deadlock over Kansas

Buchanan tried to resolve the controversy over Kansas by supporting its admission to the Union as a slave state.

As a result, pro-slavery forces won control of the convention, which met in Lecompton. Created a constitution that allowed slavery & refused to give voters a chance to reject it.

New legislature promptly submitted the Lecompton constitution to the voters, who rejected it by more than 10,000 votes.

Both sides resorted to fraud and violence, but

it was clear that the majority of the people in KS opposed slavery. Buchanan, however,

pressured Congress to admit Kansas under

the Lecompton Constitution.

Kansas entered the Union in early 1861.

Stephen A. Douglas and other Democrats refused to support the president's proposal, which died in the House of Representatives.

April 1858 Congress approved a compromise: The Lecompton constitution was submitted to the voters of KS again. If approved, KS would be admitted to the Union; if rejected, statehood would be postponed. Again, KS voters decisively rejected the Lecompton constitution.

The ruling did nothing to challenge the right of an individual state to prohibit slavery within its borders, but the statement that the federal government was powerless to act on the issue was a drastic and startling one.

The Dred Scott Decision

Southern whites were elated: the highest court sanctioned part of the extreme pro-slavery argument. In the North, the decision produced dismay.

President Buchanan timidly endorsed the Dred Scott decision of 1857

The Emergence of LincolnThe midterm elections of 1858 were especially important. Stephen A. Douglas & Abraham Lincoln vied for the Senate seat in Illinois.

Lincoln was a successful lawyer who was involved in state politics. Served several terms in the IL legislature and 1 term as Congressman.

He was not a national figure like Douglas so, Lincoln engaged Douglas in a series of debates called the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

The debates attracted much attention.

Lincoln believed slavery was morally wrong, but he was not an abolitionist. He could not envision an easy alternative to slavery in the areas where it already existed. He shared the prevailing view among northern whites that the black race was not prepared to live on equal terms with whites. He and his party would "arrest the further spread" of slavery.

At the heart of the debates was the issue of slavery. Lincoln believed if a nation could accept that blacks were not entitled to basic human rights, he argued, then it could accept that other groups - immigrant laborers, for example - could be deprived of rights too. If slavery were to extend into the western territories, he argued, opportunities for poor white laborers to better their lots there would be lost.

They would not directly challenge it where it already existed but would trust that the institution would gradually die out there of its own accord. Lincoln lost the election but his career was still on the rise.

He believed that by capturing Harper's Ferry, he could lead a slave insurrection into the South. The slave uprising did not occur, and he was captured by US troops under the command of Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried in a Virginia Court, found guilty, and hanged.

John Brown's Raid

The battles in Congress were almost entirely overshadowed by John Brown's raid on a US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown received private donations from prominent abolitionists.

No other single event did more than the Harpers Ferry raid to convince white southerners that they could not live safely

in the Union. Many southerners wrongly believed Republicans supported Brown's raid. They believed the North

was now committed to producing a slave insurrection.

The Democratic Party was divided between southerners who demanded a strong endorsement of slavery, and westerners who supported the idea of popular sovereignty.

The Election of Lincoln

When the party convention met in April in Charleston, South Carolina and endorsed popular sovereignty, delegates from eight states in the lower South walked out.

The decimated convention at Baltimore nominated Stephen Douglas for president. Southern democrats nominated John C.

Breckenridge of Kentucky.

The remaining delegates could not agree on a presidential candidate and finally adjourned after agreeing to meet again in Baltimore.

Republican leaders tried to broaden their base. Their platform included traditional Whig measures such as a high tariff, internal improvements, a homestead bill, and a Pacific railroad

built with federal financial assistance.

The Election of Lincoln

It supported the right of each state to decide the status of slavery within its borders. But it also

insisted that neither Congress nor territorial legislatures could legalize

slavery in the territories.

Lincoln won the presidency with only about 2/5 of the popular vote. The Republicans failed to win a majority in Congress. The election of LIncoln became the final signal to many white

southerners that their position in the Union was hopeless. And within a few weeks of Lincoln's victory, secession and civil war began.