Chapter 13 The Crisis Of The Union

Manifest DestinyWar Expansion &

SlaveryThe end of the 2nd

party systemAbraham Lincoln & the Republican

triumph

As Plantation whites held onto Slavery, they often did it at the cost of poor Whites. Exempting slave property owners from taxation and enacting laws that penalized white yeoman farmers. Even requiring non slave owning whites, by law, to form posies to collect run away slaves.

• To resist the demands of their white Masters, slaves adopted various strategies that included Work Slow Downs, by feigning illness, or deliberately losing or breaking tools. They also resorted to arson and occasionally direct confrontation

From 1820’s to 1860 slightly more than 250 rebellions involving more than ten men are recorded.

Manifest Destiny• Between 1820 & 1860 White Planters in the South grew

rich & Powerful, but Democrats and Whigs had to work to keep a balance of Slave States and Free States, and at the same time there was a demand to expand the Nation Westward

which constantly tested the ability for compromise.

• The Concept of MANIFEST DESTINY , a term coined by John L. Sullivan the editor of Democratic review, stating; “ Our Manifest Destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

behind this was the idea of cultural & racial superiority.

• U.S. Army Explorer Stephen Long Came across the Great Plains and described it as being a great Desert unfit for cultivation. He instead recommended Southern Planters find their opportunity in Texas.

• Moses Austin negotiated an a treaty with Mexico in the 1821, where the Mexican government would give generous land grants to American migrants, in return the American’s would help develop Texas into a prosperous region of Mexico. A large American Settlement was the Result. In 1829 many Texans won a special exemption from a law ending slavery. But in the Mid 1830’s President & General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna took greater control of Texas and amongst other things insisted Texas abide by antislavery laws.

• American Settlers in Texas responded to Santa Anna’s power grab by dividing into two groups . One group led by Stephen Austin (Moses’ son) sought a Diplomatic solution, While the other side aggressively planned for war. Austin’s diplomatic envoy to Mexico failed to win over Santa Anna, and on route home Austin was arrested, and Santa Anna appointed a military commandment over Texas, Which provoked an immediate Rebellion and Declaration of Independence by the Texans.

• General Santa Anna Vowed to put down the Revolt and on March 6th he took down the Alamo with American legends Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and two hundred fifty men giving their lives in defense of the fort, while close to 2000 Mexican soldiers gave their lives taking it. Mexican Colonel Jose Enrique de la Peῇa recounted how the Mexican Army took heavy losses but broke through to win the battle…. “Some seven men had survived the carnage and under the protection of General Castillion.

• they were brought before Santa Anna… [Santa Anna] Ordered their execution.”

Fifty-forty or Fight !• From 1818 until the 1840’s The Oregon territory was

under the joint occupancy of Great Britain and the United States. In July of 1843, a bipartisan national convention was organized to discuss the future of Oregon determined that the U.S. should seize Oregon all the way to the Southern boundary of Alaska.

• Southerners were anxious about the future of the expansion of Slavery in the Western Territories because they feared an imbalance of free States to Slave states would politically weaken the South and threaten their economic and cultural system. The North Was in the same way fearful of a continuing expansion of Slave States. For this reason Andrew Jackson & Martin Van Buren declined to annex Texas because it would divide the Democratic party, The American population in general, and lead to war with Mexico

• When John Tyler became President , he paired the Annexation of Texas with the Annexation of all of Oregon, for the expansion of the West without creating a crisis of imbalance. There was still the question of War with Mexico, but that would be for President James K. Polk to resolve

• At first Polk sent John Slidell to Mexico to negotiate the purchase of Texas, but this failed as Mexico rejected the legality of the Annexation and refused to even see Slidell. Polk then charged that Mexico had invaded the U.S. and American Blood was shed on American soil. Most Whigs initially supported the war, but there were a few “conscience whigs” who opposed it. A freshman member of the house of Representatives, Abraham Lincoln, demanded Polk show the location of the attack, in what is known as the Spot Resolutions. Lincoln was not re-elected.

• Once the question of slavery came up, with regard to Texas, More Whigs came to oppose the war. David Wilmot, a Democrat ,proposes the Wilmot Proviso, which declared that slavery would be prohibited in any land acquired from Mexico . The Senate Killed it. annexation of Texas was going to have a tough time passing the House, so Pro-annexation Democrats engineered a joint resolution which only required a majority vote in both houses of congress.

• Meanwhile in California, before the mid 1840’s Americans have settled there as well as Texas, but More Californians are willing to assimilate the existing culture, Marrying into Mexican families, becoming Catholic and adapting Mexican Customs.

• The slogan for Oregon at 54, 40 or fight is tempered when in 1846 the outbreak of war with Mexico, forces Polk to realize that a simultaneous war with Britain must be avoided, and so a deal is worked out at the 49th parallel.

• At the end of the war with Mexico , the Free Soil Party shifted focus from the sinfulness of slavery to the need to keep the West open for settlement by white yeoman farmers and the establishment of republican institutions. William Lloyd Garrison bitterly criticized the Free Soil movement because it was essentially racist, because its anti slavery position was based on protecting settlement for white yeoman farmers, not for moral reasons.

• In 1848 the Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor for president because his position on the spread of slavery is not clear. In 1848 Gold is discovered in California and the need to bring it to statehood is accelerated. California’s constitutional convention votes to prohibit slavery (for Freesoiler reasons). This is a Problem because the ratio of slave state to free states was 15 to 15 in 1849.

• The California Compromise of 1850 attempts to resolve the issue by granting California Statehood as a free State, a Stronger Fugitive Slave law, a ban on slave trade in Washington D.C. and finally an idea championed by Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas: Popular Sovereignty which would allow territories to vote whether they want to be Slave or free states. In this case, the Compromise would Allow New Mexican and Utah territories to decide by Popular sovereignty .

• The Fugitive Slave act created a special commission in Northern States , determined Whether blacks living in the north were slaves. The accused slaves were denied jury trials or even the right to testify. Federal Marshals were required to support Slave catchers. About 200 fugitive slaves and free blacks were sent to the south as slaves.

• In 1852, Franklin Pierce is elected President over Winfield Scott. Pierce is a Northerner, sympathetic to the south, and very much an expansionist.

• In an attempt for Northern Merchants to find another Market, Commodore Mathew Perry is sent to Japan to open trade with the isolationist Japan. A very Large Canon convinces the Japanese that they want to trade with the United States. Pierce also sends James Gadsden to Mexico to negotiate the Purchase of a small piece of Land for which a Southern route for a transcontinental railroad is planned..

•

• Pierce also encourages a

plan to invade Cuba and rest it from Spain. Allowing for another slave state. But a declaration by 3 American Diplomats In Ostend Belgium, The Ostend Manifesto stated that America had a right to take Cuba from Spain, but that became public knowledge and then a scandal which forced the plan to go away.

• Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, wants to have the Eastern Terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad in Chicago, which would require it to go through the Northern part of Louisiana purchase. So he Introduces a bill to extinguish Native American rights and turns establishes the territories of Kansas & Nebraska.

• The Kansas Nebraska act of 1854, allowed the two territories to determine for themselves if they were to be free or slave States, through Popular Sovereignty. But Slave owners determined to bring Kansas in as a slave state no matter what, and moved in large numbers to Kansas, settled in Lecompton, Kansas and created a constitution for the state that included Slavery. In a election, citizens of Kansas could vote against the Constitution, but the ballot stated that Slavery would still be legal. Pierce made the mistake of recognizing the Lecompton legislature and its constitution. The majority of Kansas Residents were Free Soilers who refused to recognize the Lecompton Constitution.

• New political parties are developing at this time. The American Party, Commonly known as the “KNOW NOTHING Party” originates in Native American Clubs (not Indians, native European Americans) and other anti-Catholic Societies of the 1840’s, and their one agenda is to stop immigration from undesirable countries.

• around 1854,The Whig Party dies and a coalition of anti Slavery Northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats forms the Republican Party. Some of the Whigs maintain their allegiance to the American System of building a federally financed infrastructure, Radical Republicans wanted to abolish slavery completely, but the fundamental principle on which all Republicans agreed was the absolute opposition to the expansion of slavery into new territories.

Bleeding Kansas• Kansas , because of Popular Sovereignty became a battle ground over

slavery. In the Summer of 1856, a proslavery gang of 700 Attacked the Free Soil town of Lawrence, Looting, burning and destroying property. A small group of Free Soil Men, Led by John Brown, retaliated with the “Pottawatomie Massacre”, murdering and mutilating 5 proslavery settlers. This initiated a Guerrilla warfare that took about 200 victims

• AS a replacement for the Whig Party in the Election of 1856, the Republicans chose California’s John C. Fremont as their Presidential Candidate and even though the party had no representation in the South, it came very close to Democrat James Buchanan 1.8 million votes, with 1.3 million. Buchanan won the election with 45% of the vote. President Buchanan would also mishandle the Kansas issue, by trying (but failing) to have Kansas admitted as a slave State, and he divided the Democratic Party by backing the Lecompton proslavery government.

Dred Scott decision• Dred Scott was a Slave who sued for his freedom, claiming that since he had

lived with his master in the free state of Illinois for some years , & that this made him a free man. The Dred Scott v Sanford case came to the Supreme Court where 7 of 9 justices found against Scott. Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Negroes, free or enslaved could not be citizens of the United States and therefore could not bring suit in a federal court. He Also stated that the 5th Amendment prohibited the taking of property without Due Process of Law, so Slavery could not be prohibited anywhere.

Since Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in a territory , neither did the territorial government, therefore the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri compromise were unconstitutional.. Republicans now accused Buchanan and The Supreme Court of being a part of the “Slave Power” Conspiracy.

• In 1858, The former Whig, Abraham Lincoln, a four time state legislator in Illinois, Ran for the Senate seat occupied by Stephan Douglas. In his 4 terms, Lincoln promoted education, State Banking, and internal improvements. In 1858, Lincoln warns that a “A House divided against itself cannot stand…I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free… It will become all one thing or all the other. “

• During the Senate race, Lincoln debates Stephen Douglas and Lincoln asks Douglas how he could accept the Dred Scott decision and at the same time advocate Popular Sovereignty, Douglas responds with his “Freeport Doctrine” which states that settlers could exclude slavery from a territory by not adopting local legislation to protect it. This doctrine upset ProSlavery advocates enough that when Douglas wins the Democratic Nomination for president in 2 years, the Southern Democrats will leave the party to nominate their own candidate.

Lincoln Loses the Senate race to Douglas, but the Republican party won control of the House of Representatives in 1858.

• John Brown, not finished with his mischief, Begins a campaign to raise money to buy guns to distribute to slaves and encourage a mass slave revolt. While some politicians secretly support this idea, Henry David Thoreau, author of “Civil Disobedience” Publicly supports it. Brown gives up on collecting funds and in 1859, hatches a scheme to break into the military armory at Harper’s Ferry Virginia and dispense military weapons to the slaves. He succeeds at breaking into the armory, but remains at the armory and is captured by Robert E. Lee’s troops. He is tried and hanged and becomes a martyr.

• In the 1860 election The democrats Split into Northern and Southern Parts, With Douglas winning the Northern nomination but only taking Missouri’s electoral votes in the general election, and John C. Breckenridge (cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln) Winning the Southern nomination and the southern electoral votes. A new party , The Constitutional Union Party Chooses John Griffin Bell, Who carries the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia in the general election.

• In the Republican party, Senator William Seward & Salmon P. Chase were the front runners but could not get enough delegates to take the Nomination. Lincoln the dark Horse candidate takes the nomination on the 3rd ballot, as a more moderate choice. Lincoln wins the general election because of the division of the democratic party. Lincoln wins with 39% of the popular vote and 49% of the electoral vote.

End of Chapter 13

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Book convinced more northerners that the Fugitive slave act was wrong, and more Northerners became abolitionists