The Crisis of Union. Road to Crisis Missouri Compromise or Compromise of 1820 Westward expansion The Gag Order Abolition movement.

The Crisis of Union

Road to Crisis

• Missouri Compromise or Compromise of 1820

• Westward expansion

• The Gag Order

• Abolition movement

Conscience Whigs

• Whigs who broke party line and viewed the Mexican War as a Southern conspiracy to add new slave states in the West

• Leaders were Charles Francis Adams and Joshua Giddings

Wilmot Proviso

• David Wilmot, a Democrat Congressman from Pennsylvania proposed a proviso that would limit the gains the South would reap from the war

• Prohibit slavery in any of the new territory gained from Mexico.

• Passed the House, but the Senate voted it down

Southern Position

• Any attempt to restrict the expansion of slavery was unconstitutional

• Hated Abolitionist and Free Soilers

• Moderate Southerners wanted to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific

Popular Sovereignty

• Lewis Cass – Michigan

• Let the people decide slavery issue

• Squatter rights

• Adopted by many of the Western Democrats.

Slavery Conspiracy

• Slave Power" had: – entrenched slavery in the Constitution; – caused financial panics to sabotage the

Northern economy; – dispossessed Indians from their native lands;

and – fomented revolution in Texas and war with

Mexico in order to expand the South's slave empire.

Political Disunion

• During the 1850s, the American political system incapable of containing the sectional disputes between the North and South

• One major political party--the Whigs--collapsed. • Another--the Democrats--split into Northern and

Southern factions.• With the breakdown of the party system, the

issues raised by slavery exploded.• The bonds that had bound the country for more

than seven decades began to unravel.

Slavery’s Future?

• Some white Southerners called for the reopening of the African slave trade.

• These people believed that non-slaveholding Southerners would only support slavery if they believed they had a chance of owning slaves themselves.

• Most Southern leaders, the best way to demonstrate slavery's viability was through westward expansion.

Compromise of 1850

• admitted California as a free state; • allowed the territorial legislatures of New Mexico

and Utah to settle the question of slavery in those areas;

• set up a stringent federal law for the return of runaway slaves;

• abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and

• gave Texas $10 million to abandon its claims to territory in New Mexico east of the Rio Grande.

• Bought time for the Union

Ostend Manifesto• Southern slave owners had a special interest in

Spanish-held Cuba. • Thought Manifest Destiny should be extended to

Cuba. • In 1854 three American diplomats, Pierre Soulé

(minister to Spain), James Buchannan (minister to Britain), and John Y. Mason (minister to France) met in Ostend, Belgium.

• Issued a warning to Spain that it must sell Cuba to the United States or risk having it taken by force.

• Not authorized by President Pierce administration

The Knights of the Golden Circle

• The Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret antebellum organization that sought to establish a slave empire encompassing the southern United States, the West Indies, Mexico, and part of Central America

• Knights hoped to control the commerce of the area and have a virtual monopoly on the world's supply of tobacco, sugar, and perhaps rice and coffee

Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act

• Federal judges and special commissioners would decide the status of African Americans in the North

• Denied Constitutional rights of trials

• Violence breaks out in the North protecting free African Americans

• Popular movements in the North helped to make enforcement of the law moot.

Literature on Slavery

• Pro : George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for the South and Cannibals All!

• Con: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Impending Crisis of the South– Hinton R. Helper (a racist) Slavery has a

negative impact on the Southern economy

Kansas Nebraska Act

• Stephen Douglas's bill created two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and declared that the Missouri Compromise was "inoperative and void."

• With solid support from Southern Whigs and Southern Democrats and the votes of half of the Northern Democratic members of Congress, the measure passed.

Kansas Nebraska Act

• Douglas had long insisted that the democratic solution to the slavery issue was to allow the people who actually settled a territory to decide whether slavery would be permitted or forbidden.

• Popular sovereignty, he believed, would allow the nation to "avoid the slavery agitation for all time to come."

New Political Parties

• Republican Party - A combination of antislavery radicals, old-line Whigs, former Jacksonian Democrats, and antislavery immigrants, the Republican Party was committed to barring slavery from the western territories

• Know Nothing Party (American Party) –Anti-immigrant , anti-Catholic political party

Election of 1856

Bloody Kansas

• Since Nebraska was too far north to attract slave owners, Kansas became the arena of sectional conflict.

• For six years, proslavery and antislavery factions fought in Kansas as popular sovereignty degenerated into violence.

• Two state constitutions passed. One declared Kansas slave territory (Lecompton Constitution), while the other supported freemen (Topeka)

Bloody Kansas

• On May 21, 1856, 800 proslavery men, many from Missouri, marched into Lawrence, Kansas, to arrest the leaders of the antislavery government.

• The posse burned the local hotel, looted a number of houses, destroyed two antislavery printing presses, and killed one man

The Attack on Senator Sumner

• Sumner accused Senator Butler of taking "the harlot, Slavery," for his "mistress" and proceeded to make fun of a medical disorder from which Senator Butler suffered

• Two days later, Senator Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, entered a nearly empty Senate chamber.

• Sighting Sumner at his desk, He swung so hard that the cane broke into pieces.

• Brooks caned Sumner, rather than challenging him to a duel, because he regarded the Senator as his social inferior.

The Attack on Senator Sumner

• Brooks then quietly left the Senate chamber, leaving Sumner "as senseless as a corpse for several minutes, his head bleeding copiously from the frightful wounds, and the blood saturating his clothes.“

• It took Sumner three years to recover from his injuries and return to his Senate seat.

John Brown

• John Brown, a devoted Bible-quoting Calvinist who believed he had a personal duty to overthrow slavery, announced that the time had come "to fight fire with fire" and "strike terror in the hearts of proslavery men.

• The next day, in reprisal for the "sack of Lawrence" and the assault on Sumner, Brown and six companions dragged five proslavery men and boys from their beds at Pottawatomie Creek, split open their skulls with a sword and cut off their hands

John Brown

• A war of revenge erupted in Kansas.

• Before it was over, guerilla warfare in eastern Kansas left 200 dead.

Scott v. Sanford (1857)

• In 1846, a Missouri slave, Dred Scott, sued for his freedom.

• Scott argued that while he had been the slave of an army surgeon, he had lived for four years in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory, and that his residence on free soil had erased his slave status.

• In 1850 a Missouri court gave Scott his freedom, but two years later, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed this decision and returned Scott to slavery.

• Scott then appealed to the federal courts.

The Dred Scott Decision

• In March 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney announced the Court's decision. By a 7-2 margin, the Court ruled that Dred Scott had no right to sue in federal court, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress had no right to exclude slavery from the territories.

• The South rejoices

Lincoln Douglas Debates

• The 1858 Senate campaign pitted a little-known lawyer from Springfield named Abraham Lincoln against Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1860.

• Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination with the famous words: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free."

Lincoln Douglas Debates

• For four months Lincoln and Douglas crisscrossed Illinois, traveling nearly 10,000 miles and participating in seven face-to-face debates before crowds of up to 15,000.

• Lincoln insisted that black Americans were equal to Douglas and "every living man" in their right to life, liberty, and the fruits of their own labor.

Lincoln Douglas Debate

• Lincoln outdebates Douglas and maneuvers him to make some anti slavery statements

• Lincoln loses the election but becomes a national player.

The Raid on Harpers Ferry

• Brown's plan was to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), and arm slaves from the surrounding countryside.

• His long-range goal was to drive southward into Tennessee and Alabama, raiding federal arsenals and inciting slave insurrections.

• Failing that, he hoped to ignite a sectional crisis that would destroy slavery.

The Raid on Harpers Ferry

• At 8 o'clock Sunday evening, October 16, John Brown led a raiding party of approximately 21 men toward Harpers Ferry, where they captured the lone night watchman and cut the town's telegraph lines.

• Encountering no resistance, Brown's raiders seized the federal arsenal, an armory, and a rifle works along with several million dollars worth of arms and munitions.

• Brown then sent out several detachments to round up hostages and liberate slaves.

The Raid on Harpers Ferry

• John Brown's assault against slavery lasted less than two days.

• Five of Brown's party escaped, ten were killed, and seven, including Brown himself, were taken prisoner.

• He was found guilty of treason, conspiracy, and murder, and was sentenced to die on the gallows.

The Raid on Harpers Ferry

• I...am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

• After Harpers Ferry, Southerners increasingly believed that secession and creation of a slaveholding confederacy were now the South's only options.

Election of 1860

• Northern Democrats selected Stephen Douglas as their candidate.

• Southern Democrats choose John C. Breckinridge as their nominee.

• Constitutional Union Party, which consisted of conservative former Whigs, Know Nothings, and pro-Union Democrats nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President.

• the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln

Election of 1860

• Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in 10 states.

• Lincoln won only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, but received 180 Electoral College votes, 57 more than the combined total of his opponents.