The Crisis Over Slavery

1
The Crisis Over Slavery

• 1848-1860
• (Chapter 13)

2
Background

• 1848 U.S.-Mexican War over, and Treaty of
  Guadalupe-Hidalgo extended U. S. borders to the
  Pacific Coast
• 1849-1859 California Gold Rush brought thousands
  of new migrants as well as immigrants to
  California
• Known as the Forty-Niners
• 1850 California joined Union as a free state
  after controversy over issue of slavery
• Controversy and debate over slavery became so
  important in Congress, that some compromise was
  needed to pacify southern slave states

3
Compromise of 1850

• Southern slave states were enraged that
  California would join the Union as a free state,
  since the balance would be tipped in favor of the
  North in Congress
• Many issues were addressed in the Compromise of
  1850
• California was to join the Union as a free state
• Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and
  Nevada would decide to be free or slave states,
  when they joined the Union
• Texas border issue was to be settled in exchange
  for 10,000,000 to Texas in exchange for the land
• Washington D.C. would ban slave trade, but
  slavery was still legal in the district
• 1852 Fugitive Slave Act passed with the idea of
  pacifying angry slave states about the now,
  majority free states in the Union

4
Fugitive Slave Act of 1852

• A very controversial Act
• Favored whites and was completely unfair to
  blacks, free or slave
• It required citizens to assist in the recovery of
  fugitive slaves
• It denied a fugitive's right to a jury trial
• There would be more federal officials responsible
  for enforcing the law
• Free blacks entering free states were rounded up
  and returned into slavery
• Act resulted in many blacks fleeing to Canada
• The Underground Railroad became very popular
• Abolitionists of the North also felt that the Law
  was unfair, and were even more determined to
  remove slavery
• Act brought slavery issue to the forefront and
  set the path to the Civil War

5
Regional Economies Conflicts

• U.S. was going through rapid change in the
  mid-19th century
• Lots of different people were living in the U.S.,
  and each region had its unique economy
• Regional economies
• California Gold
• Midwest Food (Bread-basket of the Nation)
• Northeast Textile Mills
• South Cotton
• These regional economies were being molded into a
  national economy with
• Railroads
• Factories
• Farm Equipment

6
Territorial Expansion in the 19th C.
7
Native American Economies

• The Five Southern Tribes (Creek, Choctaw,
  Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole) relocated to
  Oklahoma, struggle initially, but eventually set
  up schools, churches, and newspapers
• Plains Indians (Sioux, Arapaho, Kiowa) use horses
  to carry on trade and daily life
• U.S. signed 2 treaties with Plains Indians
• Treaties were to assure settlers to move through
  area without being attacked, and to allow
  building roads and forts along the way towards
  the west coast, in exchange for food and supplies
• Inconsiderate and selfish attitude towards
  Indians by white settlers

8
Conflicts in the Southwest

• 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
• Lots of territory gained from Mexico in
  U.S.-Mexican War
• 1853 Gadsden Purchase added more land to U.S.
  territory, and ended U.S. continental expansion
• Tejanos and Euro-Americans clash over land in
  Texas
• Tejano land titles were disregarded by U.S.
  courts
• 1859 Cortinas Wars (led by Juan Cortina) broke
  out between Tejanos and the U.S.
• Cortinas group lost and Cortina was imprisoned

9
Ethnic Economic Diversity in the Midwest

• Main economy in the Midwest based on agriculture
• Soon came to become the bread-basket of the
  Nation
• Upper Midwest (Northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
  Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota) known as the
  Yankee Strip Germans, Belgians, Swiss, and
  Scandinavians
• Lower Midwest (southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
  had people who had moved from the South
• People were mostly farmers, dependent on weather
  for their livelihood
• Invention of machinery boosted grain production
• John Deere invented steel plow
• Cyrus McCormicks horse-drawn reaper

10
Regional Economies of the South

• Four groups of people living in the South Rich
  planters Slaves Poor, white, tenant farmers
  Yeoman farmers
• Slavery discouraged immigrants
• Ethnic diversity in Southern Coastal Cities

11
Free Labor Ideology of the North

• Free Labor Ideology was direct contrast to slave
  system
• Followed in North-east and Mid-Atlantic States by
  farmers
• Farmers believed in self-reliance, and were not
  dependent on answering to anyone but himself
• By 1850s this changed with increased competition
  from the Midwest, and poor growing conditions
• Rural farmers moved to urban areas to work in
  textile and shoe-making factories
• They joined all groups of people in the work
  force
• Indentured servitude/apprenticeship became common
• Wage Slavery became rampant
• Each region dependant on another for economic
  growth of their local area

12
Individual vs. Group Identity

• People of different backgrounds were treated
  differently
• Nationality, religion skin color were common
  biases in society
• Race decided what jobs they held
• Many held an optimistic view of Individualism,
  which in reality, did not do much for most people

13
Racial tendencies

• Ideas of racial inferiority barred people from
  rights of citizenship, landownership and better
  employment
• Texas Anglo laws facilitated the seizure of land
  by U.S. law enforcement agents and the courts
• California U.S. officials justified exclusion of
  blacks, Indians, Chinese, and Mexicans from
  citizenship rights
• Patterns of work CAChinese laundries and
  domestic servants TX Mexican cowboys,
  freighters MA African Americans confined to
  kitchens, and menial jobs
• Chinese, African-American, and Mexican people
  were pigeon-holed as less intelligent,
  promiscuous, and slier than people of white
  blood

14
A Teeming Nation

• Transcendentalism and its followers became
  popular in the 1850
• Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Whitman and their
  writings encouraged people to connect to the
  external world as well as their inner spirit, in
  order to gain personal growth
• Thoreau supported abolition of slavery
• Thoreau criticized American materialism and
  encouraged people to connect with nature and her
  wonders
• Walt Whitman believed in individualism

15
Challenges to Individualism

• Collective Identities
• Native Americans celebrated kinship and village
  life over individual
• African Americans Northern and Southern blacks
  destiny linked joined mutual-aid societies to
  help people of their kind
• Women compared their plight to slaves
• Self-sacrifice, family obligations, pride in
  being nurturer, and loving wife
• Seneca Falls Convention (1848) encouraged women
  to look upon themselves as equal to men and get
  same privileges as men

16
Party System in Disarray

• New party now in existence called Free-Soil Party
• Free-Soilers favored Wilmot Proviso of 1846
• Wilmot Proviso Amendment added to a
  congressional appropriations bill, prohibiting
  slavery for ever existing in any territories
  acquired from Mexico in the U.S.-Mexican War
• Proviso passes in House, fails in Senate
• Democrats and Whigs followed a policy of
  avoidance of any issue that proved controversial
  (slavery)

17
Election of 1848

• Whig Candidate Zachary Taylor
• Taylor won election and became President
• Taylor died after a year and a half in office,
  and replaced by VP, Millard Fillmore
• Democrat Nominee Lewis Cass
• Cass was the father of popular sovereignty
• Popular Sovereignty The idea that individual
  territories applying for statehood should decide
  the issue of slavery for themselves idea
  supported by many antislavery forces
• Free Soil Party nominee Martin Van Buren

18
(No Transcript)
19
Compromise of 1850

• California entered the Union as a free state
• Territorial governments were organized in New
  Mexico and Utah to apply the principle of popular
  sovereignty
• The slave trade was abolished in the District of
  Columbia
• A new Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Taylors death permits passage of slightly
  altered Compromise as separate measures

20
Compromise of 1850
21
Consequences of Compromise

• Political alignment along party lines grew
  stronger
• Previously unheard, Americans were now discussing
  ideals of higher law than the Constitution
• Abolitionists stepped up work on the Underground
  Railroad and several states prohibited elected
  officials and organizations from participation in
  slave hunting

22
The Party System in Crisis

• Parties need new issues after 1850
• Democrats succeed
• claim credit for the nation's prosperity
• promise to defend the Compromise of 1850
• Whigs fail, become internally divided
• 1852--Whig Winfield Scott loses a landslide to
  Democrat Franklin Pierce

23
(No Transcript)
24
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

• 1854 Stephen Douglas introduces Kansas-Nebraska
  bill organizing the Nebraska Territory which
  included Kansas
• apply popular sovereignty to Kansas, Nebraska
• repeal Missouri Compromise line
• Southerners opposed the organization of the
  territory unless slavery was permitted Act passes
  on sectional vote
• Northerners outraged
• Issue inflamed all sides of the slavery issue,
  dragging the country closer to war

25
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
26
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

• Whig indecision causes party to disintegrate
• Mass defection among Northern Democrats
• Anti-Nebraska candidates sweep North in 1854
  congressional elections
• Democrats become sole Southern party
• President Pierces effort to acquire Cuba
  provokes antislavery firestorm

27
The Know Nothings

• Nativist political action party comprised mostly
  of former Whigs who were dedicated to staunching
  the tide of foreign immigrants to the United
  States
• Know-Nothings (American Party) appeals to
  anti-Catholic sentiment
• If asked about their affiliation with the group,
  members were told to respond, I Know Nothing.
• 1854 American party surges
• By 1856 Know-Nothings collapse
• Probable cause no response to slavery

28
Kansas and the Rise of the Republicans

• Republican party unites former Whigs,
  Know-Nothings, Free-Soilers, Democrats
• Appeals to Northern sectional sympathies
• Defends West for white, small farmers
• Bleeding Kansas helps Republicans
• struggle among abolitionists, proslavery forces
  for control of Kansas territory
• Republicans use conflict to appeal for voters

29
Bleeding Kansas

• On the eve of the Civil War, militant
  abolitionist John Brown and a few followers crept
  into a pro slavery settlement outside of
  Lawrence, Kansas
• They dragged five men out of their homes and
  hacked them to death with swords
• This act led to a series of violence in the
  divided territory

30
Bleeding Kansas
31
Sectional Division in the Election of 1856

• Republican John C. Frémont seeks votes only in
  free states
• Know-Nothing Millard Fillmore champions sectional
  compromise
• Democrat James Buchanan defends the Compromise of
  1850, wins election
• Republicans make clear gains in North
• Sectional quarrel becomes virtually
  irreconcilable under Buchanan
• Growing sense of deep cultural differences,
  opposing interests between North and South

32
Cultural Sectionalism

• Major Protestant denominations divide into
  northern and southern entities over slavery
• Southern literature romanticizes plantation life
  (George Fitzhugh)
• South seeks intellectual, economic independence
• Northern intellectuals condemn slavery
• Uncle Tom's Cabin an immense success in North

33
The Dred Scott Case

• Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) Supreme Court
  decision regarding the claims of freedom of a
  slave that had been transported into a free state
• Court refuses narrow determination of case
• Major arguments
• Scott has no right to sue because neither he nor
  any other black, slave or free, was a citizen
• Congress has no authority to prohibit slavery in
  territories, Missouri Compromise unconstitutional
• Ruling strengthens Republicans

34
The Lecompton Controversy

• 1857 rigged Lecompton convention drafts
  constitution to make Kansas a slave state
• The pro-slavery Lecompton constitution was
  created without a mandate from majority of
  settlers of Kansas it led to an uncertain status
  for Kansas and divided the Democrats further
• House defeats attempt by Buchanan, Southerners to
  admit Kansas
• Lecompton constitution referred back
• People of Kansas repudiate
• Stephen Douglas splits Democrats in break with
  Buchanan over Lecompton

35
Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1858

• The Lincoln-Douglas debates held in Illinois
  Lincolns persuasive debates were regarding
  slavery
• Debates were to decide who would win the Illinois
  seat in the U.S. Senate
• Lincoln
• decries Southern plot to extend slavery
• promises to work for slaverys extinction
• casts slavery as a moral problem
• defends white supremacy in response to Douglas
• Stephen Douglas accuses Lincoln of favoring
  equality
• Lincoln loses election, gains national reputation

36
Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1858

• Douglas I care more for the great principle of
  self-government, the right of the people to rule,
  than I do for all the negroes in Christendom.
• Lincoln my wish is that the spread of
  slavery may be arrested, and that it may be
  placed where the public mind shall rest in the
  belief that it is in the course of ultimate
  extinction.

37
Harpers Ferry

• October, 1859 John Brown raids Harpers Ferry
• Still on the lose after the Kansas massacre, John
  Brown hoped to provoke a general uprising of
  eastern slaves by attacking the federal arsenal
  at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
• Brown was captured, tried, executed, and
  eventually became a martyr for the abolitionist/
  Unionist cause

38
Election of 1860

• Democrats Party splits
• Northern Democrat, Stephen Douglas
• Southern Democrat, John Breckenridge
• Constitutional Union Party Candidate John Bell
  who promises compromise between North and South
• Republicans Abraham Lincoln nominated
• home state of Illinois crucial to election
• seen as moderate
• Platform to widen partys appeal
• high tariffs for industry
• free homesteads for small farmers
• government aid for internal improvements
• Lincoln wins by carrying North
• Republic of equal rights vs. the Southern way of
  life

39
Election of 1860
40
The South's Crisis of Fear

• Republicans seen as radical abolitionists
• Southerners convinced they must secede on
  election of Republican president
• On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded form
  the Union by February, six other Deep South
  states had followed her lead
• A week later a delegation met in Montgomery,
  Alabama to create the Confederacy
• On April 12, shelling of Fort Sumter signaled the
  start of the American Civil War

41
Conclusion

• Rift between North and South widens
• Major issue SLAVERY
• Republican Party brought hope of removal of
  slavery from U.S., to blacks as well as
  abolitionists in the North
• Southern plantation owners were determined to
  preserve institution of slavery as a southern
  way of life, even if it meant going to war
• Foundation laid for outbreak of Civil War