SECTIONALISM INTENSIFIES CHAPTER 6

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SECTIONALISM INTENSIFIESCHAPTER 6
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THE MEXICAN CESSION

• In the War with Mexico, the US received a huge
  grant of land.
• This new land presented the Congress with a huge
  problem.
• The Louisiana Purchase had been mostly above the
  Missouri Compromise line, so the territories that
  became states would be mostly free states
• The territories of the Mexican Cession would
  mostly be slave states.
• This caused sectional tensions to increase.

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The Wilmot Proviso

• The Wilmot Proviso, one of the major events
  leading to the Civil War, would have banned
  slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico in
  the Mexican War known as the Mexican Cession.
• Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Proviso
  in the House of Representatives on August 8,
  1846.
• It passed the House but failed in the Senate,
  where the South had greater representation
• It was reintroduced in February 1847 and again
  passed the House and failed in the Senate.
• John C. Calhoun argued against the Proviso
  because he said that the territories were owned
  by all the states and that should be able to
  enter any state, including slaves. Calhoun said
  that the Congress had no right to ban slavery in
  any of the territories.
• What it did was to unleash all the passions of
  the slavery and anti-slavery supporters.

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POPULAR SOVEREINGTY

• A doctrine under which the status of slavery in
  the territories was to be determined by the
  settlers themselves.
• Although the doctrine won wide support as a means
  of avoiding sectional conflict over the slavery
  issue, its meaning remained ambiguous.
• First proposed in 1847 by Lewis Cass in his 1848
  presidential campaign
• the doctrine was incorporated in the Compromise
  of 1850 and four years later was an important
  feature of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• Stephen A. Douglas was principal promoter of the
  doctrine.
• Stephen Douglas called it "popular sovereignty,"
  but proslavery Southerners, who wanted slavery
  extended into the territories, contemptuously
  called it "squatter sovereignty."

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THE FREE SOIL PARTY

• The conflict over the issue of slavery in the
  territories led to the creation of a new
  political party, the Free Soil Party.
• Anti-slavery Democrats and northern Whigs made up
  most of the party.
• They believed that slavery should not be allowed
  in the territories. They did not say it was
  morally wrong, but instead said that it was an
  economic issue.
• The Free Soilers opposed the use of slaves on
  farms because it put free white men out of a job.

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CALIFORNIA GOLD STRIKESUTTERS MILL

• The California Gold Rush (18481855) began on
  January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by
  James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, California.
• News of the discovery brought some 300,000
  people rushing to California from the rest of the
  United States and abroad.
• The early gold-seekers, called "Forty-niners" (as
  a reference to 1849) traveled to California by
  sailing boat and in covered wagons across the
  continent
• While most of the newly arrived were Americans,
  the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from
  Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China.

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COMPROMISE OF 1850

• The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package
  of five bills, passed on September 4, 1850, it
  was passed to avoid the sectional conflict that
  arose from territorial expansion with the Texas
  Annexation (December 29, 1845) and the following
  Mexican-American War (18461848).
• It avoided secession or civil war at the time
  and quieted sectional conflict for four years
  until the divisive KansasNebraska Act.
• The Provisions of the Compromise of 1850 were
• Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico
• The Wilmot Proviso was thrown out.
• the South was promised the possibility of slave
  states by popular sovereignty in the new New
  Mexico Territory and Utah Territory.
• a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in practice
  outraged Northern public opinion. The law called
  for ordinary citizens to turn in runaway slaves
  or face imprisonment themselves. The Fugitive
  slave act probably caused more damage than good
  for the south.
• the slave trade was banned in Washington D.C.
• Senator Henry Clay designed the compromise,
  which failed to pass in early 1850.
• In the next session of Congress, Senator Stephen
  Douglas and Senator Daniel Webster narrowly
  passed a slightly modified package

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UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

• The Underground Railroad was an informal network
  of secret routes and safe houses used by
  19th-century black slaves in the United States to
  escape to free states and Canada with the aid of
  abolitionists who were sympathetic to their
  cause.
• Both Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were
  important conductors on the Underground
  Railroad.

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UNCLE TOMS CABIN

• Stowes main goal with Uncle Toms Cabin was to
  convince her large Northern readership of the
  necessity of ending slavery.
• Most immediately, the novel served as a response
  to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
  which made it illegal to give aid or assistance
  to a runaway slave.
• Stowe created an exposé that revealed the horrors
  of Southern slavery to people in the North.
• Uncle Toms Cabin was published in episodes in
  the National Era in 1851 and 1852, then published
  in its entirety on March 20, 1852.
• It sold 10,000 copies in its first week and
  300,000 by the end of the year, astronomical
  numbers for the mid-nineteenth century.
• Many historians have credited the novel with
  being a major factor in the outbreak of the Civil
  War.

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KANSAS NEBRASKA ACT

• The KansasNebraska Act of 1854 created the
  territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
• Repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820
• It allowed settlers in those territories to
  determine if they would allow slavery within
  their boundaries.
• The initial purpose of the KansasNebraska Act
  was to create opportunities for a Mideastern
  Transcontinental Railroad. It became problematic
  when popular sovereignty was written into the
  proposal. The act was designed by Democratic Sen.
  Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.
• The act established that settlers could vote to
  decide whether to allow slavery, in the name of
  popular sovereignty.
• Opponents of the act denounced it as a concession
  to the slave power of the South.
• The new Republican Party, which was created in
  opposition to the act, aimed to stop the
  expansion of slavery and soon emerged as the
  dominant force throughout the North.

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BLEEDING KANSAS

• Pro-slavery settlers came to Kansas mainly from
  neighboring Missouri.
• Resident Missourians who crossed into Kansas
  solely for the purpose of voting for slavery.
  They formed groups and were dubbed border
  ruffians,
• Abolitionist settlers, known as "Jayhawkers"
  moved from the East with express purpose of
  making Kansas a free state. A clash between the
  opposing sides was inevitable.
• Successive territorial governors, usually
  sympathetic to slavery, attempted unsuccessfully
  to maintain the peace. The territorial capital of
  Lecompton, Kansas, the target of much agitation,
  became such a hostile environment for
  Free-Staters that they set up their own
  unofficial legislature at Topeka.
• John Brown and his sons gained notoriety in the
  fight against slavery by brutally murdering five
  pro-slavery farmers in the Pottawatomie Massacre
  with a broadsword. Brown also helped defend a few
  dozen Free-State supporters from several hundred
  angry pro-slavery supporters at the town of
  Osawatomie.
• Hostilities between the factions reached a state
  of low-intensity civil war, which was damaging to
  Pres. Pierce. "Bleeding Kansas caused the
  formation of the Republican Party. Routine
  ballot-rigging and intimidation practiced by both
  pro- and anti-slavery settlers failed to deter
  the immigration of anti-slavery settlers, who won
  a demographic victory in the race to populate the
  state.

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The Know Nothings

• The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American
  political movement of the 1840s and 1850s.
• It was created by popular fears that the country
  was being overwhelmed by German and Irish
  Catholic immigrants
• Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it tried to curb
  immigration and naturalization, though
  unsuccessfully.
• Membership was limited to Protestant males of
  British lineage over the age of twenty-one.
• There were few prominent leaders. They were
  mainly middle-class and entirely Protestant. Most
  ended up joining the Republican Party

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DRED SCOTT1857

• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) commonly referred
  to as The Dred Scott Decision, was a decision by
  the United States Supreme Court that ruled that
  people of African descent imported into the
  United States and held as slaves whether or not
  they were slaveswere not protected by the
  Constitution and could never be citizens.
• It also held that the United States Congress had
  no authority to prohibit slavery in federal
  territories. This effectively rendered the
  Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.
• Lastly, the Court ruled that slavesas chattel or
  private propertycould not be taken away from
  their owners without due process. The Supreme
  Court's decision was written by Chief Justice
  Roger B. Taney.

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THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION1857

• The Lecompton Constitution was a proposed
  constitutions for the state of Kansas
• It was written in response to the anti-slavery
  position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James
  H. Lane and other free-state advocates.
• The territorial legislature, consisting mostly of
  slave-owners, met at the capital of Lecompton in
  September 1857.
• This new constitution enforced slavery in the
  Kansas and protected the rights of slaveholders..
• President Buchanan endorsed the Lecompton
  Constitution before Congress.
• On 4 January 1858, Kansas voters, having the
  opportunity to reject the constitution altogether
  in the referendum, overwhelmingly rejected the
  Lecompton proposal
• In Washington, the Lecompton constitution was
  defeated by the House of Representatives.
• Though soundly defeated, debate over the proposed
  constitution had ripped apart the Democratic
  party, paving the way for Abraham Lincoln's
  election in 1860.

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LINCOLN AND SLAVERY

• Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual
  extinction of slavery by stopping its further
  expansion into any U.S. territory, and by
  offering compensated emancipation
• Lincoln stood by the Republican Party platform in
  1860, which stated that slavery should not be
  allowed to expand into any more territories.
• Most Americans agreed that if all future states
  admitted to the Union were to be free states,
  that slavery would eventually be abolished.
• Lincoln believed that the slavery that existed in
  the Southern states was guaranteed
  constitutionally and could not be outlawed. But
  he did say that the slavery in the South could
  not be exported to the West.

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JOHN BROWN AND HARPERS FERRY 1859

• John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt
  by white abolitionist John Brown to start an
  armed slave revolt by seizing a United States
  Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859.
• Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S.
  Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee.
• John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman to
  join him when he attacked the armory, but on the
  night of the raid she was ill, and therefore did
  not show up.
• The raid was seen by most Southerners as being an
  attempt to kill them and saw Brown as a danger.
• Northern abolitionists thought that Brown was a
  martyr on the level of Christ.

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THE ELECTION OF 1860(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
RIGHT)ABRAHAM LINCOLN REPUBLICAN PARTYSTEPHEN
DOUGLAS NORTHERN DEMOCRATIC PARTYJOHN C. BELL
CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY JOHN C.
BRECKENRIDGE SOUTHERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
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ELECTION OF 1860

• The presidential election of 1860 set the stage
  for the American Civil War.
• The nation had been divided throughout most of
  the 1850s on questions of states' rights and
  slavery in the territories.
• In 1860 this issue finally came to a head,
  fracturing the formerly dominant Democratic Party
  into Southern and Northern factions.
• This split the Democratic vote and brought
  Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to power
  without the support of a single Southern state.
• Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's
  victory came declarations of secession by South
  Carolina and other states

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CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE

• The Crittenden Compromise (December 18, 1860) was
  an unsuccessful proposal by Kentucky Senator John
  J. Crittenden to resolve the U.S. secession
  crisis of 18601861.
• There were many unpopular features of the
  compromise that led to its failure. It guaranteed
  the permanent existence of slavery in the slave
  states and addressed Southern demands in regard
  to fugitive slaves and slavery in the District of
  Columbia. But the heart of the compromise was the
  permanent reestablishment of the Missouri
  Compromise line

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CONFEDERACY1861

• The Confederate States of America was a
  government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven
  southern slave states of the United States that
  had declared their secession from the U.S.
• Asserting that states had a right to secede,
  seven states declared their independence from the
  United States before the inauguration of Abraham
  Lincoln as President on March 4, 1861
• four more states seceded after the Civil War
  began at the Battle of Fort Sumter (April 1861).
• The Union regarded secession as illegal and
  refused to recognize the Confederacy.

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JEFFERSON DAVIS

• Jefferson Davis was elected the first (and only)
  president of the Confederacy
• The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama,
  to write their constitution. Much of the
  Confederate States Constitution replicated the
  United States Constitution verbatim, but it
  contained several explicit protections of the
  institution of slavery, though it maintained the
  existing ban on international slave-trading.
• In certain areas, the Confederate Constitution
  gave greater powers to the states than the U.S.
  Constitution of the time did, but in other areas,
  the states actually lost rights they had under
  the U.S. Constitution.
• the Confederate version prohibited the central
  government from using revenues collected in one
  state for funding internal improvements in
  another state.

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BORDER STATES

• border states refers to the five slave states of
  Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West
  Virginia, which bordered a free state and were
  aligned with the Union.
• Though every slave state (except South Carolina)
  contributed some white troops to the Union as
  well as the Confederate side,the split was most
  severe in these border states, with men from the
  same family often fighting on opposite sides.
• Had Maryland also joined the Confederacy,
  Washington DC would have been totally surrounded.