Foner Ch 13 The 1850s

Abraham Lincoln’s nickname, “The Railsplitter”

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Picture of America in 1850• America is by then 2nd only to Britain in industrial output

• The South’s powerful national position is undermined.• • Its the “Free Labor” North & Midwest vs. “Slave Power” South• • Values of the new Middle Class predominate.• • Penny Newspapers, Magazines

Compromise of 1850

– included:

• Admission of California as a free state

• Abolition of slave trade (not slavery itself) in District of Columbia

• Stronger Fugitive Slave law

• In Mexican Cession territories, local white inhabitants would determine status of slavery.

(“Popular Sovereignty”)

A Dose of Arsenic

• The Great Debate– Powerful leaders spoke for and against the

Compromise:• Daniel Webster (for the Compromise)• John C. Calhoun (against the Compromise)• Clay, Calhoun, and Webster’s swan song.

– President Taylor, who opposed the Compromise, died in office, and the new president, Millard Fillmore, secured the adoption of the Compromise.

•Senator Stephen Douglass (who beat Lincoln for Senator from Illinois) shepherded the Compromiseof 1850 through Congress.

A Dose of Arsenic

– Fugitive Slave Act allowed special federal commissioners to determine fate of alleged fugitives

– without benefit of jury trial – or even testimony by the accused individual.

A Dose of Arsenic

• Fugitive Slave Act• In a series of dramatic confrontations,

fugitives, aided by abolitionists, violently resisted capture.– The fugitive slave law also led several thousand

northern blacks to flee to safety in Canada.

Fugitive Slaves

• Boston — center of abolitionism

• Shadrach — freed by African-Americans, got to Canada

•Thomas Sims — shipped back w/ help of 300 fed troops!

Anthony Burns — 1854

• Anthony Burns’ attempted rescue failed; one fed killed.

• Pres Franklin Pierce sent the “Marines, cavalry & artillery“

1855 broadside depicting life of Anthony Burns

Northerners hated the F S Law; they were not for social equality, but thought slavery was wrong.

This, in turn, inflamed the South, who were agitated by their “fire-eaters” (those who wanted to secede now & get it all over with.)

Douglas and Popular Sovereignty

– Franklin Pierce won 1852 presidential election.

– Stephen Douglas introduced bill to establish territorial governments for Nebraska and Kansas so that a transcontinental railroad could be constructed.

• Slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty (territorial voters, not Congress, would decide).

Stephen A. Douglas daguerreotype from around 1853.

Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854

– Under the Missouri Compromise, slavery had been prohibited in the Kansas-Nebraska area.

– The Appeal of the Independent Democrats was issued by antislavery congressmen opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill because it would potentially open the area to slavery.

MAP 14.2 Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Map 13.6 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

Had been promised in perpetuity.

In 1854 the northern part was offered by the govt to whites for settlement.

It was Stephen Douglass who proposed it.

HE wanted the railroad to pass through his city — Chicago.

Indian Territory?:

Douglas cut a deal with the Southern Senators.

They wanted the new territories of Kansas & Nebraska to be open to slavery.

Douglass suggested POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.

Figured Slavery wouldn’t work in these territories.

He made a Big mistake.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

– Kansas-Nebraska Act became law.

• Democrats were no longer unified because many northern Democrats opposed the bill.

• Whig Party collapsed.• The South became solidly Democratic.• Republican Party emerged to prevent the further

expansion of slavery.

The Rise of the Republican Party

• The Northern Economy– Rise of the Republican Party reflected underlying

economic and social changes.• Railroad network

– By 1860, North had become a complex, integrated economy.

– Two great areas of industrial production had arisen:• Northeastern seaboard• Great Lakes region

The railroad network, 1850s

The Lackawanna Valley

Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings

– In 1854 the American, or Know-Nothing, Party emerged as a political party appealing to anti-Catholic and, in North, antislavery sentiments.

George Catlin’s 1827 painting Five Points

The Rise of the Republican Party

• The Free Labor Ideology– Republicans managed to convince most

northerners (antislavery Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-Nothings) that the “slave power” posed a more immediate threat to their liberties than Catholics and immigrants.

• This appeal rested on the idea of free labor.

The Rise of the Republican Party

• The Free Labor Ideology

– Free labor could not compete with slave labor so slavery’s expansion had to be halted to ensure freedom for the white laborer.

– Republicans as a whole were not abolitionists.

Bleeding Kansas and the Election of 1856

– Bleeding Kansas seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of leaving the decision of slavery up to the local population—thus aiding the Republicans.

• Civil war within Kansas• Attack on Senator Charles Sumner

– Election of 1856 demonstrated that parties had reoriented themselves along sectional lines.

A contemporary print denounces attack on Senator Charles Sumner

Map 13.8 The Presidential Election of 1856

“Opening” Japan

– U.S. navy’s commodore Matthew Perry sailed warships into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that Japan negotiate a trade treaty with United States (1853–1854).

– Japan opened two ports to U.S. merchant ships in 1854.

– United States was interested in Japan primarily as a refueling stop on the way to China.

Transportation of Cargo by Westernersat the Port of Yokohama

The Dred Scott Decision

– After having lived in free territories, the slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom.

– The Supreme Court justices addressed three questions:

• Could a black person be a citizen and therefore sue in federal court?

• Did residence in a free state make Scott free?• Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a

territory?

Dred Scott as painted in 1857

The Dred Scott Decision

– Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roger A. Taney declared that only white persons could be citizens of United States.

– Taney ruled that Congress possessed no power under the Constitution to bar slavery from a territory, so Scott was still a slave.

• The decision in effect declared unconstitutional Republican platform of restricting slavery’s expansion.

Emergence of Lincoln

• Decision’s Aftermath– President Buchanan wanted to admit Kansas as

slave state under the Lecompton Constitution; Stephen Douglas attempted to block the attempt.

• Lincoln and Slavery– In seeking reelection, Douglas faced an

unexpectedly strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.

The Emergence of Lincoln

• Lincoln and Slavery– Lincoln’s speeches combined the moral fervor of

the abolitionists with the respect for order and the Constitution of more conservative northerners.

• The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign– Lincoln campaigned against Douglas for Illinois’s

Senate seat.

Abraham Lincoln in 1858, year ofLincoln-Douglas debates

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Emergence of Lincoln– The Lincoln-Douglas debates remain classics of

American political oratory.• To Lincoln, freedom meant opposition to slavery.

• Douglas argued that essence of freedom lay in local (white) self-government and individual self-determination.

• Douglas asserted at the Freeport debate that popular sovereignty was compatible with the Dred Scott decision.

The Emergence of Lincoln

• The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign

– Lincoln shared many of the racial prejudices of his day.

– Douglas was reelected by a narrow margin.

John Brown Attack at Harpers Ferry

– Armed assault by abolitionist John Brown on federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, further heightened sectional tensions.

– Placed on trial for treason to the state of Virginia, Brown’s execution turned him into a martyr to much of the North.

1835 painting of federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry

John Brown in an 1847

The Rise of Southern Nationalism

– By the late 1850s, southern leaders were bending every effort to strengthen the bonds of slavery.

• The Democratic Split– The Democratic Party was split with its

nomination of Douglas in 1860 and the southern Democrats’ nomination of John Breckinridge.

The Emergence of Lincoln

• Nomination of Lincoln– Republicans nominated Lincoln over William

Seward.• Lincoln appealed to many voters.

– Republican party platform:• Denied the validity of the Dred Scott decision• Opposed slavery’s expansion• Added economic initiatives

Presidential Election of 1860

Emergence of Lincoln

• Election of 1860– In effect, two presidential campaigns took place in

1860.

– Most striking thing about election returns was their sectional character.

– Without a single vote in ten southern states, Lincoln was elected nation’s sixteenth president.

1860 engraving of mass meeting in Savannah

Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln

The Impending Crisis

• The Secession Movement– Rather than accept permanent minority status in a

nation governed by their opponents, Deep South political leaders boldly struck for their region’s independence.

– In the months that followed Lincoln’s election, seven states, stretching from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the Union.

The Secession Crisis

– President Buchanan denied that a state could secede but also insisted that federal government had no right to use force against such a state.

– Lincoln rejected the Crittenden Plan for because it allowed for the expansion of slavery.

The Secession Crisis

– Confederate States of America was formed before Lincoln’s inauguration by the seven states that had seceded.

• Jefferson Davis as president

• And the War Came– Lincoln issued a veiled warning: “In your hands,

my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.”

And the War Came

– After the Confederates began the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to suppress the insurrection.

– Four Upper South states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) then seceded and joined the Confederacy rather than aid Lincoln in suppressing the rebellion.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter

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Chapter 13: A House Divided, 1840-1861