15: The Coming Crisis, the 1850s

The majority rules and law rests on numbers, not on intellect or virtue. . . while theoretically holding that no vote of the majority can authorize injustice, we practically consider public opinion the real test of what is true and false; and hence, as a result, the fact which Tocqueville has noticed, that practically our institutions protect, not the interest of the whole community but the interests of the majority. Abolitionist Wendell Phillips

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852 Rochester, NY

Henry Clay addressing Senate, 1850 -- the CA gold rush pushed the Wilmot Proviso into the spotlight when CA applied for statehood in September of 1849

CA as a free stateTerritorial governments for Utah and NMSlave trade in D.C. was abolishedStrict fugitive slave lawTexas land claims settledMA Senator Daniel Webster 1782-1852 who worked with Clay for 8 months on the Compromise of 1850

Millard Fillmore 1800-1874 US President when Zachary Taylor died in July 1850Taylor had opposed 1850 Compromise while Fillmore supported it

A slave coffle in Washington, D.C.

Boston handbill, 1851, warning colored people of slave catchers

San Francisco celebrates first Admission Day

San Franciscos Vigilance Committee hangs two men in 1856 6,000 vigilantes marched through the city

Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory [present day Arizona]

1852 Cuban sugar estate many Americans invested in Cuban sugar plantations

President Franklin Pierce elected in 1852, supported 1853 $130 million effort to purchase Cuba Ostend Manifesto threatened US seizure of Cuba

Commodore Matthew Perry 1794-1858 -- brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, sent to open Japan in 1852

Japanese admiring technological gifts, Tokyo in July 1853

1854 Honolulu -- President Pierces foreign policy he called Young America attempted unsuccessfully to annex Hawaii

NY city torchlight meeting of Know-Nothings or American Party, Nov. 1855

A Know-Nothing cartoon they elected governors in NY and MD

The Hurly-Burly Pot cartoon issues that threatened US in 1850s

Stephen A. Douglas 1813-1861 -- Little Giant proposed popular sovereignty for both Kansas and Nebraska

Chicago 1865

Bulls Head stockyards in Chicago, opened in 1848

An illustration from Uncle Toms Cabin, 1852

Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-1896 -- daughter of Lyman Beecher and sister of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

Harriet Tubman 1821-1913 -- helped John Brown organize armed raids against slavery from her farm in Canada

Walt Whitman 1819-1892, Leaves of Grass in 1855, anti-slavery

Salmon P. Chase 1808-1873, early leader of Republican Party after Bleeding Kansas caused Whigs to leave their party

Ripon, Wisconsin schoolhouse where Republican Party held first meetings

SC Senator Andrew Butler 1796-1857, After Sen. Charles Sumner of MA accused him of a conspiracy of Kansas slaveholders, Sumner was attacked on May 21, 1856

Congressman Preston Brooks of SC 1819-1857, hitting Sumner with cane Sumner didnt recover for nearly 3 years

General John C. Fremont 1813-1890First Republican candidate for president in 1856An antislavery Southerner who married daughter of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri

James Buchanan 1791-1868, Elected 15th US President in 1856, was Polks Secretary of State during Mexican War

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney 1777-1864, Maryland slaveowner who manumitted own slaves, 1857 Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott with wife Harriet. She sued Dreds former owner who brought him into the Wisconsin Territory where they met. [Both brought back as slaves]

Governors mansion in LeCompton, Kansas Territory in 1857 They held proslavery constitutional convention boycotted by Free Soilers. Douglas broke with Buchanan when asked to admit Kansas as slave state

Bleeding Kansas in 1858 [Pottawatomie Creek massacre by John Brown, May of 1856]

5th Lincoln Douglas debate at Knox College in Illinois -- October 7, 1858

Lincoln and William Herndon had law office on this street in Springfield, Illinois

Lincolns home for 17 years in Springfield, Illinois

Lincolns Springfield kitchen

Campaign cartoon accusing Honest Abe of being two-faced about own ambitions -- Lincoln was chosen over frontrunner William H. Seward of MA

Harpers Ferry in [West] Virginia ca. 1856

John Brown 1800-1859 daguerreotype from 1856 or 1857

John Brown and 17 others seized the federal arsenal, armory, and a rifle works on October 16, 1859 but he surrendered from this fire station two days later.

Col. Robert E. Lee, led US Marines that captured Brown 10 of Browns men were killed

Chronology

1820 Missouri Compromise 1832 Nullification Crisis 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Zachary Taylor; "free-soilers" 1850 Compromise of 1850; American "know nothing" movement; Millard Fillmore president 1851 Northern reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law; Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin 1852 Franklin Pierce elected president 1854 Ostend Manifesto; Kansas-Nebraska Act; treaty renegotiations; Republican Party begins 1855 William Walkers "filibuster" in Nicaragua 1856 Looting of Lawrence, Kansas; John Browns Pottawatomie massacre; Buchanan president 1857 Dred Scott decision; Buchanan accepts proslavery Lecompton constitution; Panic 1858 Congress rejects Lecompton constitution; Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1859 John Browns raid at Harpers Ferry 1860 4 parties run candidates for president; Lincolns election; S. Carolina secedes 1861 6 additional "deep South" states secede; Confederate States formed; Lincoln takes office

Bibliography

Davis, William C. An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government. [2001Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. (1978)Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. (1970)Franklin, John Hope. A Southern Odyssey: Travelers ih the Ante-bellum North. (1976)Oates, Stephen. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown. (1970) and With Malice toward None: A life of Abraham Lincoln. (1977)Potter, David. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. (1976)Stampp, Kenneth. America in 1857. (1990) and The Causes of the Civil War. (1974)Takaki, Ronald. A Proslavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade. (1971)Woodward, C. Vann. American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue. (1971)

Chapter Focus Questions Why did the Whigs and Democrats fail to find a lasting political compromise on the issue of slavery?What caused the end of the Second American Party System and the rise of the Republican Party?Why did the secession of the southern states follow the Republican Party victory in the election of 1860?

A: American Communities

Illinois Communities Debate SlaveryIllinois voters gathered in 1858 to hear Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debate slavery and the future of the Union. Douglas accused Lincoln of favoring social equality of whites and blacks. Lincoln denied this and accused Douglas of supporting the spread of slavery. Although Douglas won the senatorial election, the debates established both Lincoln and the Republican Party as contenders for national power. The debates demonstrated that the slavery question had divided American communities, but that Americans strongly valued their democratic institutions.

B: America in 1850

Expansion and GrowthAmerica had grown rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century. The nation had experienced great growth of wealth, industry, and urbanization. Equally important, southern economic influence was waning.

Cultural Life and Social IssuesAn American Renaissance produced writers who focused on social criticism, including:Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson who experimented with poetic formNathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville who wrote about the darker side of human natureFrederick Douglas autobiography and Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin condemned slavery

Political Parties and SlaveryPrior to the 1840s, compromises had eased the divisions of American on slavery. The national party system had forced Whigs and Democrats to forge inter-sectional coalitions. By 1848 sectional interests were eroding these coalitions. Sectional divisions in religious and other organizations had begun to divide the country.

States Rights and SlaveryJohn C. Calhoun had laid out the states rights defense by claiming that:the territories were the common property of each of the statesCongress could not discriminate against slave owners. Northerners grew increasingly concerned over what they saw as a Southern conspiracy to control the government: the "slave power."

Two Communities, Two PerspectivesBoth North and South:were committed to expansion, but each viewed manifest destiny in its own termsshared a commitment to basic rights and liberties but saw the other as infringing on them. Two communities with two perspectives had emerged. 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 chances for national reconciliation were slim.

Conflicts of 1850The California gold rush forced the issue of the status of slavery in the new territories. Other conflicts had been developing as well. The three aging regional leaders - Daniel Webster of the North, Henry Clay of the West, and John C. Calhoun of the South - attempted to resolve the issues of 1850.

The Compromise of 1850The Compromise of 1850 was actually five separate billsCalifornia came in as a free stateother southwest territories were to be settled by popular sovereigntya stronger fugitive slave law was enactedthe slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C.the Texas-New Mexico border dispute was settled

The Great Sectional Compromises in PerspectiveThe Compromise of 1850 threatened the framework of settling the slavery issue established by the Compromise of 1820.

The Fugitive Slave ActThe issue of runaway slaves further divided the nation. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 put the full force of the federal government behind slave catchers. States had previously passed acts against aiding slave catchers. Mobs of northerners unsuccessfully tried to prevent the law from being carried out. Black fugitives described their experiences as slaves, helping to raise Northerners consciousness.

The Election of 1852 and the Politics of ExpansionThe growing polarization of opinion strained the party system. The Democrats won in the election of 1852 by avoiding sectional issues. The new President Franklin Pierce supported independent efforts to seize territory by "filibusters" like William Walker and endorsed efforts to buy Cuba.

C: The Crisis of the National Party System

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1854, Stephen Douglas pushed through a bill to open Kansas territory. To win southern support Douglass bill declared that the territory would be organized on the principle of popular sovereignty, even though slavery in that territory had been banned under the Missouri Compromise.

The Impact of the Kansas-Nebraska ActThe Kansas-Nebraska Actdestroyed the Whig Partynearly destroyed the northern wing of the Democratic Partynegated treaties with Indians removed to Kansas in the 1830s.

"Bleeding Kansas"The territory became a battleground of sectional politics. On election day, pro-slavery Missourians crossed over the border and took control of the territorial legislature.Northerners quickly responded by founding free-soil communities. By the summer of 1856 open warfare erupted.

The Politics of NativismConcurrent with sectional pressures came an outburst of anti-immigrant feeling. Reformers were appalled by the influx of Irish into American cities. Former Whigs formed the "Know Nothing" or American Party to prevent what they saw as a takeover by the immigrants. But the Know-Nothings succumbed to sectional divisions.

The Republican Party and the Election of 1856The Republican Party linked northern nativists and former Whigs. In 1856, Democrats nominated James Buchanan as a compromise candidate. Southern Know-Nothings ran Millard Fillmore.Northern Republicans ran John C. Fremont who defeated Buchanan in the North. Buchanan carried nearly the entire South and won. The election signaled the rise of the Republican Party and showed northerners were more concerned about slavery than immigration.

D: The Differences Deepen

The Dred Scott DecisionThe Dred Scott decision worsened sectional divisions. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories and that Dred Scotts long-term residence in free territory did not make him free. While southerners applauded the decision, northerners denounced it.

The Lecompton ConstitutionConflict continued in Kansas as free-soilers:organized their own territorial governmentboycotted the proslavery governments elections for a constitutional convention The proslavery "Lecompton constitution" was submitted to Congress. Stephen Douglas fought against it, alienating his southern supporters.Kansans rejected the constitution and came into the Union as a free state. The defeat of Lecompton came as Congress continued to divide along sectional lines.

The Panic of 1857Adding to the conflict was a financial panic and sharp depression in 1857-58.The Panic affected northern more than southern exports.Southerners believed the Panic showed the superiority of their system.

John Brown's RaidSectional tensions intensified when John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in an unsuccessful effort to instigate a slave revolt. Brown was hanged but Southern opinion was shocked, by northerner's attempts to make Brown a martyr and northern support for slave revolts.

E: The South Secedes

The Election of 1860In the election of 1860, four candidates ran for president. The Democrats split over a proposed slave code for the territories. Stephen Douglas won the nomination but Southerners nominated John C. Breckinridge. Southern and border state Whigs created the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell. Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, a moderate. Breckinridge and Lincoln represented the extreme positions on slavery in the territories. Douglas and Bell tried to find a middle ground. Lincoln won the election with 38 percent of the vote by virtually sweeping the North.

The South SecedesSoutherners responded to the election of 1860 by initiating secession movements. The Lower South seceded, but the Upper South remained in the Union.

The Norths Political OptionsVarious Northerners unsuccessfully tried to find some compromise that would satisfy all sides. Some Northerners were willing to allow the South to go in peace. Lincoln believed that the idea of free government would be threatened if the South were permitted to leave.

Establishment of the ConfederacySoutherners established the Confederate States of America.Jefferson Davis, a moderate, was chosen as its president.Davis tried to portray secession as a legal, peaceful step. Lincoln resolved to keep the nation together.

Refer to Lincoln-Douglas Debate, p. 432

Click on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.Refer to Uncle Toms Cabin, p. 439Refer to Clay, Calhoun and WebsterClick on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.Refer to Overview: The Great Sectional CompromisesClick on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.Refer to Border Ruffians, p. 448Refer to Know-Nothings, p. 450Click on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.Refer to Dred Scott, p. 452Refer to Worried Crowd, p. 454Refer to Harpers Ferry, p. 455Click on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.Click on title to view Adobe Acrobat map.