The Coming Crisis

The 1850s

America in 1850• From 1800-1850, the US doubled its number of

states to 31, tripled its size, and had a population of 24 million (majority lived west of Appalachians)

• The nation had experienced a great growth of wealth, industry, and urbanization, as southern economic influence diminished

Politics, Culture, and National Identity

• Pride in democracy was one unifying theme in a growing sense of national identity and new middle-class values, institutions, and culture that supported it

• An American Renaissance produced writers that focused on social criticism:o Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson experimented with unrhymed verseo Henry David Thoreau’s Walden celebrated the pastoral life in Americao Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of the darker side of

human nature (Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables)

o Frederick Douglass’s autobiography told of his brutal experiences as a slave

o Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin condemned slavery, and became the all-time best seller in America at that point

Cracks in National Unity

• The national party system of Whigs and Democrats began to crack apart as they forged inter-sectional coalitions, but by 1848 these interest groups were eroding

• The debates leading up to the Compromise of 1850 summed up the final act of three political careers: Calhoun, Clay, and Webster

• Calhoun argued his defense of states’ rights saying the territories were the common property of each of the states, and Congress could not discriminate against slave owners (protection of property); and that the states had a legal right to secede if necessary

• Webster argued against secession, and that the North needed to compromise with the South

• Henry Clay would argue for compromise (his last one) and would be too ill to see it through (Stephen A. Douglas of IL would push it through)

North v. South• Both the North and South were committed to expansion

but viewed manifest destiny on its own terms; and shared a commitment to basic rights and liberties, but saw the other as infringing on them

• Northerners viewed their region as a dynamic society that offered opportunity to the common man, in contrast to the stagnant slave owning aristocracy of the South

• Southerners viewed their section as promoting equality for whites by keeping blacks in a perpetual state of bondage

• The stereotypes of immoral slave owners, hypocritical manufacturers, backwater societies, and urban decay all were fixed in the peoples’ minds

The Compromise of 1850

• California becomes a free state• Other southwest territories were to be settled by

popular sovereignty (people decide, not Congress, whether on not to allow slavery)

• A stronger fugitive slave law• The slave trade in Washington, DC is outlawed• Settled the New Mexico-Texas border

The Fugitive Slave Law

• Put the full force of the federal government behind slave owners and catchers

• Increased the power of owners to recapture their slaves in the North

• Northerners unsuccessfully tried to prevent the law from being carried out

• Free blacks in the North were not safe (Solomon Northrup’s 12 Years a Slave)

The Election of 1852• Zachary Taylor, a tough reminder of Jackson, had died

(2/2 Whigs elected and died in office) in 1850 making Millard Fillmore (a weak pro-South Whig) president

• The party system was incredibly strained• It was an apathetic election (less than 70% of voters

turned up)• The Whigs nominated the blowhard Gen. Winfield

Scott (hoping for another military hero)• The Democrats rallied behind a young, New

Hampshirite Franklin Pierce• With the help of Democratic political machines

enticing the immigrant vote, Pierce easily won

The “Young America” Movement

• Franklin Pierce came into office on a wave of good feelings supporting the adventures of the “Young America” movement

• Between 1845 and 1848 the US became a continental nation, fulfilling manifest destiny

• European democratic revolutions reinforced America’s sense that their ideals of democracy were to be achieved

• After the Mexican War, some looked South into Central America (Nicaragua) and even to Cuba, which the Pierce administration wanted badly

• The Ostend Manifesto of 1854 was an international embarrassment for Pierce as it basically implicated the US as territorial predators seeking to wrest Cuba from Spain

• Pierce did see some triumph Far East as Commodore Matthew Perry negotiated open trade relations with Japan

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Stephen Douglas pushed through a bill to open Kansas territory (in hopes to extend the Transcontinental Railroad through his home state, IL)

• Douglas declared that the territory would be organized by popular sovereignty, even though technically slavery had been banned in the territory due to the Missouri Compromise

• This Act would finally destroy the Whig party, alienate the northern democrats from the southern, and negate treaties with Indians removed to Kansas in the1830s

“Bleeding Kansas”• The territory became a battleground of sectional politics• Proslavery Missourians (dubbed the “Border Ruffians”)

crossed into Kansas and took control of the legislature, overstuffing ballot boxes

• Northerners and abolitionists founded “Free Soil” communities, such as Lawrence

• Summer of 1856 erupted into warfare• Lawrence Kansas received shipments of “Books” which

were in fact crates of rifles, known as “Beecher’s Bibles”• John Brown, God’s instrument, led his sons on a

butchering raid into proslavery Kansas (Pottawatomie Creek) and hacked unarmed people to death

The Border Ruffians

Nativism• Concurrent with sectional pressures came an

outburst of anti-immigrant sentiments; reformers were appalled by the influx of those Catholic Irish into American cities

• Former Whigs and some northern democrats, formed the American Party (the Know-Nothings)

• Despite its meteoric showing in the mid-1850s, the party eventually split on its view of slavery

The Republican Party• Some northern Know-Nothings, northern democrats,

free-soilers, and former Whigs all linked together under the new Republican Party

• Basically, the new party was a nationalist party that took on many Whig policies; it favored westward expansion, but most importantly, the party sought to end the expansion of slavery into the territories

• The election of 1856 signaled the rise of the Republican Party:o The Democrats nominated James Buchanan (who won the South)o American Party ran Millard Fillmore, and claimed over 20% of the popular

voteo The Republicans ran John C. Fremont who defeated Buchanan in the North

but only gained 1/3 of the popular vote

Massachusetts senator and abolitionist Charles Sumner is violently beaten by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Sumner would be out of commission for about two years and never was quite the same. He would be a leading member of the Radical Republicans after the Civil War.

The Dred Scott Decision

• Dred Scott was a slave who went north with his master, and now was suing for his freedom

• 1857: The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories and the African Americans did not have the right to bring suits before federal court because they were not citizens

• It effectively invalidated the Missouri Compromise• USSC Chief Justice Roger Taney (79 years old) read

the entire ruling aloud (unprecedented) • This ruling created a great sectional divide

between the North and South

The Lecompton Constitution

• A proslavery constitution for Kansas was submitted to Congress and was greatly supported by President Buchanan

• Douglas fought against it (which, combined with the Lincoln debates, would destroy his relationship with the South)

• Kansas rejected the constitution and entered the Union as a free state in 1861

The Panic of 1857• Banking crisis and depression of 1857-1858 that

affected the North more than the South• The South’s recovery, due to cotton, further

enhanced their feelings of superiority to the industrial North

John Brown at Harpers Ferry

• John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame raided a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in an unsuccessful effort to start a slave revolt

• Brown’s raid was stopped and he was captured by Virginia colonel Robert E. Lee

• Brown was tried and hanged for treason• Brown was made a martyr by Northern media and

this enraged the South, because they feared slave rebellions would become something that Northern radicals and fanatics would start doing regularly

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Illinois voters gathered in 1858 to hear Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debate slavery and the future of the Union (a total of seven)

• Douglas needed to win reelection of his Senate seat in order to be a contender for the 1860 presidential election

• Douglas’s popular sovereignty had backfired in Kansas and was trying to strengthen his national appeal by arguing that the Republicans were sectionalists and radicals, who favored social equality for blacks

• Lincoln did not believe in the social equality of blacks and was careful to take a moderate stance on slavery sticking to stopping the spread of slavery, rather than abolish it (though he was opposed to slavery outright): “A house divided against itself cannot stand…” (June 16, 1858)

• Lincoln accused Douglas of promoting the expansion of slavery, which Douglas denied

• Douglas won reelection but hurt his relationship with Southern Democrats• Lincoln helped establish the Republican Party as a NATIONAL party and

put him in the national spotlight as a top contender for the 1860 Republican nomination

The Election of 1860• Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, but Southern

outrage over his statements on slavery had them nominate their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge

• Douglas would run on his popular sovereignty platform, Breckinridge on the Federal protection of slavery and its extension into the territories

• The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln who opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories

• The Constitutional Union Party, a compromise party, ran John Bell

• Lincoln wins the North, and the election, receiving no votes in the South

• He is “minority” president (only 40% of the pop. vote)• South Carolina secedes in protest

The South Leaves the Union

• South Carolina leads the Lower South (Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia) in secession before Lincoln took office (December 1860)

• No more compromises, and though some Northerners wanted to let the South go in peace, Lincoln refused stating that the idea of free government would be threatened if the South was permitted to leave

• Eight slave states still had not acted…

The Confederate States of America

• Jefferson Davis, a moderate from Mississippi, was elected president

• Alexander Stephens, a former Whig from Georgia was elected VP

• Davis and Stephens sought to portray secession as a legal, peaceful step, citing the Declaration of Independence as a model for rebellion.

• “Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent, the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people.” (Davis’s Inaugural Address )

Lincoln’s Inauguration• “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but

friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” (March 4, 1861)