THE NATION SPLITS APART

PRE CIVIL WAR•War of 1812- nationalism after defeating Great Britain

•Missouri Compromise- Missouri annexed as slave, Maine as free. Slavery admitted below Missouri

• Industrial Revolution- Greatly impacts the country, mainly the North. Urbanization. South- cotton booms and so does slavery

•Texas Revolution- Free from Mexico, annexed to US

•Mexican American War- US defeats Mexico, gains more territory

POPULAR SOVERIGNTY • Consent of the people

• Voters in a territory can decide whether they want to ban or permit slavery

• Ex: Wilmot Proviso-to prohibit slavery in the Mexican Cession

• Stated that slavery would never exist in any part of the territory

• The House (Northern Majority) approved the proviso,

• Died in the Senate (Southern Majority)

• Significance: never became law, but it demonstrated the increase of Sectionalism

SLAVERY IN THE WEST• Mexican Cession revives the debate over slavery in the western territories

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CALIFORNIA• 1849: gold-seekers headed to California

• California boom towns

San Francisco

Sacramento

• Territory from Mexico must be organized

• Slavery question for California

• Taylor proposed to admit California and New Mexico immediately as states, rather than as territories first

• 49ers do not want to compete for jobs against slave labor

• Entering as a free state will upset the balance between free & slave states that had been set in the Missouri Compromise

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850• Senator Henry Clay… Addresses sectional disagreement

• Northern Abolitionists = Free CA

• Southerners = CA as a free state would destroy the balance of power in the U.S.

• Henry Clay dies before it’s passed

• Stephen Douglas divides bill into several laws, knowing it would not pass as one

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

1.) California = free state

2.) Divide Mexican Cession = Utah & New Mexico Territories

3.) Utah & NM = popular sovereignty

4.) Texas gives up land in New Mexico in exchange for financial aid from the U.S.

5.)Abolishes slave trade in Washington DC

6.)New fugitive slave law- heavy penalties against anyone aiding runaway slaves

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD• System of escape routes leading to freedom

• Members were called conductors

• Hiding places were called stations

• Harriet Tubman Was most famous escaped slave

Returned to the South over 20 times to help others

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

•Federal crime to assist runaway slaves

•Can be arrested even in areas where slavery was illegal

• Slaveholders & their agents could take suspect fugitive slaves before U.S. commissioners to prove ownership

• Any could testify, except the accused slaves

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

Trials

•Commissioners = $5 (Free Man)

•Commissioners = $10 (Slave)

Aiding Fugitive Slaves

• $1000 fine & 6 months in jail

• 343 Total Cases

• 11 blacks freed

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN• Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Tom, a kindly old slave taken from his wife and sold “down river” in Louisiana.

• Tom becomes a slave of a vicious planter who, in a fit of rage, beats Tom to death.

• The novel sparks outrage in the South

• Brought the horrors of slavery to the forefront of most Northerners

Copies Sold

• 1st Year = 300,000

• 10 years later = 2 million

KANSAS NEBRASKA ACT• Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois wanted to build a railroad to the Pacific

Ocean starting in Chicago

• Proposed bill that would divide Kansas & Nebraska

• Overturns Missouri Compromise

• Popular Soverignty- since the people vote, allows for the possibility in the North

• Southerners wanted the railroad to start in New Orleans and go through the south to SO Cal

• Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in May 1854

• The K-N act would divide the Louisiana purchase into Kansas and Nebraska

• Popular sovereignty would decide the question of slavery in each territory

• Congress did not pass Douglas’s railroad bill

BLEEDING KANSAS• Antislavery and pro-slavery groups moved to get

people to Kansas ASAP

• Abolitionists helped northern families to move to Kansas

• Southern families poured in as well

• Most settlers were pro-slave because they came from Missouri which was a slave state

• Elections were held about the slave status

• 1,000’s of men came from next door Missouri to vote pro-slave and then went home

• Slavery was accepted and the Pro-slave government set up in Lecompton, KA

• Abolitionists were outraged by the corrupt elections, formed their own govt in Topeka 30 miles away

BLEEDING KANSASSack of Lawrence

• 1856 an 800 man posse of pro-slavers rode to Lawrence to arrest free soiler (opposed slavery) leaders

• The leaders escaped before the posse got there

• Posse burned and looted the town, and murdered a man

Pottawatomie Massacre

• John Brown decide to get revenge, he said “fight fire with fire”- angry at abolitionists for not doing more

• John Brown pulled 5 ABOLITIONISTS from their homes at night & hacked them up with swords and knives

• Kansas fell into civil war and around 200 people were killed

BLEEDING KANSAS• N.Whig, Charles Sumner ridicules the Kansas-Neb. Act insults several S. Dem.s and slavery

• Preston Brooks, the next day confronts Sumner, and beats him in Congress with a cheering crowd watching

• Many congressmen start coming with guns & knives

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

LINCOLN AND TODD• Born in Kentucky

• Served four terms in Illinois legislature, one in Congress

• Was a Whig, joined Republicans in 1856

• Supported their effort to halt the spread of slavery

• Nominated for a Senate seat

• Challenges Douglas to 7 debates across Illinois

• Mary Todd Lincoln has been described as a short, lively woman who came from a prominent Lexington, Kentucky, family of slaveholders. Her husband, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, is supposed to have said that while God made do with one d, the Todds demanded two

STEPHEN DOUGLAS

•Democrat

•Influential Illinois Senator for 9 years

•Involved in the Kansas-Nebraska Act

LINCOLN V DOUGLAS- SLAVERYLINCOLN

• main issued in the campaign involved slavery in the West

• Claimed democrats wanted to spread slavery across the continent

• slavery was wrong but didn’t say he wanted to stop slavery

• “One of the methods of treating it as a wrong is to make provision [ensure] that it shall grow no larger”

• On his view of racial equality he says:

• “African Americans are not necessarily the political or social equals of whites”

• But, “in the right to eat the bread which his own hand ears, he [an African American] is my equal and the equal of Judge [Stephen] Douglas.”

DOUGLAS

• Douglas Race-Baits Lincoln

• Hoped that voters would be shocked by Lincoln’s comments and not vote for him

• “Lincoln thinks that the Negro is his brother…Those of you who believe that the Negro is your equal… of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln.”

• Criticized Lincoln for saying the nation could not,

• “Remain half slave and half free.”

• Douglas said that republicans wanted to make every state a free state

• “This would only lead to a dissolution [destruction] of the Union and warfare between the North and the South.”

LINCOLN V DOUGLAS

•Douglas wins position in Congress

•Lincoln wins popularity

DRED SCOTT DECISON

DRED SCOTT• Scott was a slave to Dr. John

Emerson, an army surgeon in St. Louis

• Scott traveled into free states with Dr. Emerson

• When Dr. Emerson dies, Scott sues for his freedom since he lived in free states

• The judge, Judge Taney, is from a slave owning family in Maryland and writes the majority decision

• Keep in mind, the majority of the Supreme Court was from the South

DRED SCOTT CASE

Supreme Court has 3 issues to decide

1.) Was Scott a US Citizen, therefore even able to sue in federal court

2.) If Scott lived on free soil, does that qualify him as free

3.) Is it constitutional to prohibit slavery in the Louisiana Purchase

MARCH 1857- DECISIONIssue #1- Was he a US citizen, therefore allowed to sue

African American’s free or slave were not citizens

They “had no rights which a white man was bound to respect”

Did not have the right to sue

MARCH 1857- THE DECISION

Issue #2- Since he lived on free soil, does that qualify him as free

Scott’s residence on free soil did not make him free

“Status as free or slave depends on the laws in Missouri”

MARCH 1857- THE DECISION

Issue #3- Constitutionality of prohibiting slavery in Louisiana Purchase

Declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional

Slaves were considered property therefore…

Congress had no right to ban slavery in any federal territory

DRED SCOTT CASE

LINCOLN’S RESPONSE TO THE DECISION• African Americans are “entitled to all the natural rights

in the Declaration of Independence; the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

• The sons of Peter Blow, Dred Scott’s original slaveholder, helped pay Scott’s legal bills. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, these childhood friends bought Scott and his wife Harriet and freed them. Scott died within the year.

THE RAID ON HARPER’S FERRY• John Brown, still trying to free all slaves comes up with plan for major slave rebellion

• 4 million slaves all united in revolt would easily over throw Southerners

• Oct 1859- Plan requires stealing federal weapons from Harper’s Ferry- weapons would be used to arm slaves to begin revolt

• Just over 20 men, including 2 freed slaves begin the raid, which initially is successful

• They take the weapons and he expects slaves to flock to him for their weapons- this does NOT happen

• They are captured two days later, asked to surrender and Brown refuses. Many of Brown’s men were killed, he was kept prisoner

• Brown and four of his men were convicted of treason and hung two months later in Dec 1859

• Though Northerners did not agree with his violence, they supported his cause and his story became famous.

• The Civil War begins less than a year later…

ELECTION 1860

•Republican Party is born in 1854

•Northern Whigs- Formed initially to oppose Jackson and the Second Bank, party not always on the same page.

•Northern Democrats- grassroots, urban workers, new immigrants

•Free-Soilers- opposed slavery- free soil

•Other miscellaneous opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

ELECTION 1860• Abraham Lincoln- Republican (liberal)

• Stephen Douglas- Northern Democrat (conservative)

• John Bell- Constitutional Union (Former Whigs, conservative)

• John C Breckinridge- Southern Democrat (conservative)

ELECTION 1860• Lincoln won only 40% of popular vote

• Lincoln won 0 electoral college votes in the South

• Southern votes split= North strong and united= Lincoln win

• South has lost all of its power, if added up, 123 electoral votes if South was united

LINCOLN• Gives his first inaugural in March 1861 from unfinished Capital building

• 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.

SCOREBOARD• Missouri Compromise 1818 (Slavery can expand) South

• Compromise of 1850 (Fugitive Slave Law) South

• The Kansas-Nebraska 1854 (Popular sovereignty) South

• The Dred Scot Decision 1857 (blacks not citizens) South

• The Election of 1860 (No Southern Support) North

• *****Southerners lose any effective chance to participate and succeed in the political process

SECESSION

SECESSION

•Southerners feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery and end their way of living

•Lincoln says I will not touch slavery in the South… but it must come to an end

•4 days after Lincoln’s election, South Carolina considers secession

•Secession- act of formally withdrawing from the Union

•December 20, 1860 South Carolina leaves the

SECESSION

•Can a state just up and leave the Union?

•Constitution does not mention secession..

•Southerners- Since every state voluntarily agreed to become part of the Union (United States), then they are allowed to also voluntarily leave the Union

•Northerners- You’re crazy, you cannot just come and go as you please

SECESSION

•Dec 1860 South Carolina secedes

•Feb 1861, SIX more states follow: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

•February 4, 1861 seceding states form the Confederate States of America- The Confederacy.

RECENT CONTROVERSY• Three flags fly over the South Carolina State House in Columbia, representing, from top, the United States, the state of South Carolina, and the Confederate States of America. Controversy over the flying of the Confederate flag over the State House increased in the late 1990s. Critics of the flag argued it should be removed as a vestige of slavery, while others claimed it should remain as a symbol of the state’s heritage.

• July 10, 2015 after weeks of debate because of racial tension, the flag was finally removed.

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

•Copied the Constitution, added slavery

•Jefferson Davis voted President, from Kentucky

•Davis personally against secession, would have rather just served as a general in the army-however he took the job anyway