Buchanan and Sectional Politics

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Buchanan and Sectional Politics
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1857The Year Everything Went Wrong

• Dred Scott v. Sandford
• Panic of 1857
• LeCompton Constitution

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Dred Scott Case

• Facts of the Case
• Strader precedent
• Strange contingency puts case before SOCTUS
• Nature of ruling
• Slave Power Conspiracy
• For understandable reasons, Republican party
  critique of case colors legal matters. Was the
  bulk of Taneys ruling obiter dicta
• Ableman v. Booth

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Panic of 1857

• Real Causes
• Imagined causes
• results

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Lecompton

• Buchanan made it a test of party loyalty
• Douglas refusal to support lecompton swindle
  cost his support of Southern Democrats.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• A house divided against itself cannot stand.
• L. as a White Supremacist (Lerone BennettEbony
  Magazine)
• I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended
  the negro to be equal to the white man. He
  belongs to an inferior race, and must always
  occupy an inferior position.L.
• Lincolnian anti-slavery In the right to eat
  the bread, without the leave of anybody else,
  which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the
  equal of judge Douglas, and the equal of every
  living man.
• Freeport Doctrine MythSouthern Democrats already
  hated D. for abandoning Lecompton.

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Lerone Bennett (1928-
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Lincoln-Douglas Debate Sites
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Other Issues

• Northern opposition to Cuba and Southern
  opposition to Homestead Bill.
• Crusade to reopen the slave trade
• Wanderer Prosecution and aftermath
• Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis (1857)
• John Brown and Harpers Ferry
• William W. Freehling, John Brown and Three Other
  Men Coincidentally Name John John Fee, John C.
  Underwood, and John Clark. How internal
  subversion thesis could be demostrated.

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This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the
validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed
here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least
the New Testament. That teaches me that all
things whatsoever I would that men should do to
me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me,
further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as
bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that
instruction. I say, I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons.
I believe that to have interfered as I have done
as I have always freely admitted I have done in
behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but
right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I
should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the
ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children and with the blood of
millions in this slave country whose rights are
disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust
enactments, I submit so let it be done!