the union in peril. free-soil movement whigs and northern democrats supported wilmot proviso...

24
The Union in Peril

Upload: chad-richardson

Post on 29-Dec-2015

218 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Union in Peril

Page 2: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Free-Soil Movement

Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso• Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken from Mexico• Passed House twice• Twice defeated in Senate

Prelude to Civil War?• Increased tension between N&S over new territories acquired in war• Renewed sectional debate over extension of slavery• Many Northerners saw war as “Southern plot” to extend slave power

Whigs and Northern Dems also supported idea that all African Americans-free and slave- should be excluded from any lands gained in Mexican Cession

Southern Position:• Saw attempts to restrict slavery as violation of constitutional right to take and use their property as they wished• More moderate Southerners favored extension of Miss. Compromise line to Pacific

Page 3: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Popular Sovereignty• Proposed by Michigan senator Lewis Cass• Instead of Congress deciding issue in new territories and states, people who settled the territory would decide based on popular vote

Election of 1848• Democrats adopted platform of popular sovereignty nominated Cass• Whigs took no position on slavery, nominated Mexican War hero Zach Taylor• Free-Soil nominated former president Van Buren

• Two factions1. “conscience” Whigs: opposed slavery2. anti-slavery Democrats: aka “barnburners” b/c their

defection to Free-Soil Party threatened to destroy the Democratic Party

Zachary Taylor wins, in part due to split in Democratic Party. Dies soon after, Millard Fillmore becomes president.

Page 4: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Compromise of 1850Clay's Resolutions• Senator from Kentucky

• The Compromise of 1850 began in 1849 with the newly acquired California wishing to be admitted as a free state.

• This admittance, much like the earlier application of Missouri, would upset the balance of slave and free state representatives in Congress.

• To resolve the issue, Clay created a series of resolutions he wished to be adopted by Congress.

• After seven months of debate in the Senate, his legislative package was voted down.

Page 5: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

John C. Calhoun

• Senator from South Carolina

• John C. Calhoun was too ill to deliver his speech on Clay’s Compromise himself, so it was read by another senator with Calhoun present in the Senate Chamber.

• Calhoun, so ill he had to be helped out of the Chamber after the speech by two of his friends, died on March 31, 1850.

• Calhoun warns the Senate that it must take measures to ensure the Southerners can remain in the union "with their honor and their safety" intact.

Page 6: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Daniel Webster • Senator from Massachusetts

• Webster viewed slavery as a matter of historical reality rather than moral principle.

• He argued that the issue of its existence in the territories had been settled long ago when Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and divided regions into slave and free in the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

• He believed that slavery where it existed could not be eradicated but also that it could not take root in the newly acquired agriculturally barren lands of the southwest.

Page 7: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

William Henry Seward • Senator from New York

• William Henry Seward delivered a speech that he called "Freedom in the New Territories.“

• Southern extremists argued that the

Constitution alone provided sufficient authority for the extension of slavery to the territories.

• Seward acknowledged that the Constitution's framers had recognized the existence of slavery and protected it where it existed, but the new territory was governed by a "higher law than the Constitution" -- a moral law established by "the Creator of the universe."

• He warned the South that slavery was doomed and that secession from the Union would be futile.

Page 8: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Compromise of 1850 • The Compromise of 1850, a series of

five statues shepherded to passage by Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, was approved in September.

• This Compromise:– called for the admittance of California

as a free state, – set the present boundaries for Texas, – allowed the territories of New Mexico

and Utah to be organized on the basis of popular sovereignty,

– strengthened the fugitive slave law, – abolished the slave trade in

Washington D.C.

• Contradicted certain tenets of the Missouri Compromise, resulting in discontent among many northerners.

Page 9: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The United States in 1850 • This map shows how the United States had become a nation containing

two, rival social and economic systems by 1850.

• In 1850 the Congress, led by Stephen Douglas of Illinois, hammered out a convoluted compromise legislation that promised to ease the mounting political tensions between the two sections.

• But Douglas' drive to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories west of Iowa and Missouri for statehood only reopened the sections' competition for political primacy.

• The question remained: Would the new states of Kansas and Nebraska allow slavery, or ban it? This issue brought Abraham Lincoln from political retirement and helped to organize the new Republican Party.

Page 10: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The United States in 1850

Page 11: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Fugitive Slave Law• Southerners saw as consolation for losing California• Fugitive slave cases now under jurisdiction of federal gov’t• Warrants for arrest• Free African Americans captured and denied the right of trial by jury

Underground Railroad• Loose network of Northern, free blacks, ex-slaves, some white abolitionists• Harriet Tubman

escaped slave who made at least 19 trips south to helpmore than 300 slaves escape

Books on SlaveryUncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher StoweImpending Crisis of the South – Hinton R. HelperSociology for the South and Cannibals All! – George Fitzhugh

Page 12: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Election of 1852• Compromise of 1850 many believed to be the end of the slave issue and

expansion.• Optimism in the Election of 1852.

Franklin Pierce (NH) Democrat

Winfield Scott (VA) Whig

John P. Hale Free-Soil

Why did the Whigs not re-nominate Milliard Fillmore? In anattempt to ignore slavery issue.

Page 13: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Franklin Pierce and Election of 1852

• Democrat from New Hampshire

• Democrats saw him as a “safe” compromise candidate

• Although a Northerner, Southern Democrats supported him because he supported the Fugitive Slave Law

• Whig Party split, anti-slavery northern and southern factions

• Democrats win in landslide (Party’s days were numbered)

Page 14: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Kansas-Nebraska Act• The Compromise of 1850 dealt with lands that were part

of the Mexican Cession, but not with the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.

• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)- Stephen Douglas proposed that the Nebraska Territory be split into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska.– The settlers living in each territory would be able to decide the

issue of slavery by popular sovereignty.

Page 15: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

• Southern leaders supported it because they assumed Missouri farmers with slaves would move across the border.– President Franklin Pierce supported the bill and pushed it

through Congress.

• Northerners were unhappy with the decision.– Said Missouri Compromise had already banned slavery in the

area and that this repealed that act. – Some protested by openly challenging the Fugitive Slave Act

Page 16: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Bleeding Kansas• Kansas was now open for settlement.– Antislavery settlers moved from New England– Proslavery groups also came in

• Border Ruffians – gangs that battled anti-slavery forces

• Two Governments – 1855 Kansas held elections– Border Ruffians came in and voted illegally and elected a

proslavery legislature– Antislavery settlers refused to accept the proslavery laws.– Because of these issues, gangs roamed the territory.

Page 17: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

“Bleeding Kansas”

• Proslavery men destroyed homes and businesses.

• John Brown, an abolitionist, decided to strike back– He and his sons murdered five

proslavery settlers.– Both sides engaged in guerilla

warfare.– More than 200 people were

killed.

Page 18: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Violence in the Senate• Charles Sumner of MA spoke

against slavery and criticized Southern senators, particularly Andrew Butler of South Carolina.

• A few days later, Butler’s nephew, congressman Preston Brooks, marched into Congress with a cane and beat Sumner unconscious.

• Northerners outraged, Southerners applauded him

Page 19: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Birth of the Republican Party

• Founded in Wisconsin in 1854 in direct response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Coalition of Free-Soilers, anti-slavery Whigs, and Democrats

• Goal: not to end slavery itself, but to oppose the spread of slavery into the territories

• Called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Violence in Kansas led more and more people to join, soon became the second largest party in the country

Page 20: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

1856 Presidential Election

1856 Presidential Election

√ James Buchanan John C. Frémont Millard Fillmore Democrat Republican Whig (American)

√ James Buchanan John C. Frémont Millard Fillmore Democrat Republican Whig (American)

Page 21: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

1856Electi

on Resul

ts

1856Electi

on Resul

ts

Page 22: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

Lecompton Constitution

• Buchanan’s first major challenge as president

• Accept or reject pro-slavery state constitution for Kansas submitted by southern legislature at Lecompton

• Buchanan knew it didn’t have the support of the majority of the settlers

• Asked Congress to accept the document and admit Kansas as a slave state

• Congress rejected the Lecompton constitution

• The next year it was rejected by Kansas settlers, most of whom were antislavery Republicans

Page 23: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Dred Scott Case• Dred Scott Case (1857) – Scott was

a slave who moved with his owner to Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, which did not allow slavery.

• After they returned to Missouri, Scott’s owner died.

• Antislavery lawyers helped his bring a lawsuit stating that because Scott lived in a free state, he had become a free man.

Page 24: The Union in Peril. Free-Soil Movement Whigs and Northern Democrats supported Wilmot Proviso Proposed bill to forbid slavery in any new territories taken

The Dred Scott Decision• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

– Court ruled that Scott could not file a lawsuit because as an enslaved person, he was not a citizen.

– Congress didn’t have the power to deprive any person of property without due process of law; if slaves were a form of property, then Congress could not exclude slavery from any territory.

– Made Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because it excluded slavery from Wisconsin and other Northern territories

Reactions:• White Southerners were thrilled with the decision because

it allowed slavery everywhere.• Northerners and African Americans were outraged.