The Origins of War:

Free Soil and

Slavery Expansion

Dr. Bruce Levine, UCSCTeaching American History

2/4/06

In 1860, “one eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. Those slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.” – Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, March 4, 1865.

Supporters of the Confederate flag

demonstrate in South Carolina

“African slaves ... convert[ed] hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South.” These were achievements “for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.” Therefore, “with interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.”

As for “our new government... its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition.”Alexander Stephens, 1861

“Fourteen of the States have … assumed the right of deciding upon the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; the have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and eloin [carry off] the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain have been incited by emissaries, books, and pictures, to servile insurrection.”

South Carolina’s “Declaration of Causes of Secession,” 1860.

Already at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 it was "pretty well understood that the real difference of interests lay, not between the large & small but between the N. & South'n States. The institution of slavery & its consequences formed the line of discrimination." -- James Madison, secretary of the convention

Slavery is “the greatest and most vital of all the interests

and institutions of the South.”-- John C. Calhoun of South

Carolina, 1849

James Henry Hammond, 1845

"In the face of discussions which aim at loosening all ties between master and slave,... We have to rely more and more on the power of fear. We must, in all our intercourse with them, assert and maintain strict mastery ... We are determined to continue masters, and to do so we have to draw the rein tighter and tighter day by day to be assured that we hold them in complete check.”

The Workday Begins

Abolitionist William Lloyd

Garrison

Slavery ends in the North

Nat Turner,symbol of slaveholder fears

Destruction of Elijah Lovejoy’s Press, 1837

TEXAS

1844: Polk vs. Clay

The Oregon Dispute

The War in Mexico, 1846-48

“Every battle fought in Mexico and every dollar spent there, but insures the acquisition of territory which must widen the field of Southern enterprise and power in the future. And the final result will be to readjust the power of the confederacy, so as to give us control over the operation of government in all time to come.”-- Charleston, S.C., Courier, 1846.

Southwestern expansion, 1845-53

Moderate Ohio Whig

Thomas Corwin

Illinois Whig Abraham

Lincoln

Pres. Martin Van Buren

A “Doughface” contemplates

his dilemma

Rep. David Wilmot

(D-Pa.)

New Hampshire’s John P. Hale

In favor of “every just and well-directed effort for the suppression and extermination of that terrible scourge of our race, human slavery.” (1846)

Drawing “a line of political and social demarcation around the Slave States” would leave them “flanked on every side… with those who would continually excite our slaves to insurrection and revolt…” -- The Charleston (S.C.) Mercury, 1847.

Westward expansion in the early 19th century

The Missouri Crisis, 1820

Henry Clay urges compromise again, 1850

Boundaries created by the “Compromise” of 1850

Stephen A. Douglas, D-Ill.,author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

A Fugitive Slave Notice, 1847

Seeking a fugitiveon a northbound train

Free Soil, Free Labor & Fremont

Fremont and Dayton

Pro-slavery Missourians Enter Kansas

The “Sack” of Lawrence, KS, 1856

Ruins of the Free State Hotel after Missourians attacked the town

Sumner on Kansas, 1856

The “shameful imbecility

of Slavery”

Brooks Attacks Sumner, 1856

The Election of 1856

The Dred Scott Case, 1857

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland

In the United States, blacks had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” – Dred Scott decision, 1857

The “Freeport Doctrine”“[I]if the people of a Territory want slavery, they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the necessary police regulations, patrol laws, and slave code; if they do not want it they will withhold that legislation, and by withholding it, slavery is as dead as if it were prohibited by a constitutional prohibition, especially if, in addition, their legislation is unfriendly, as it would be if they were opposed to it.” -- Stephen A. Douglas

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

War among the Democrats: Buchanan vs. Douglas

Election of 1860

The 1860 Vote by County

Class structure of the white South, 1860

Lincoln & the Promise of Free-Labor Society

“Advancement -- improvement in condition -- is the order of things in a society of equals.”

Lincoln Elected, November 1860

Ft. Sumter after its fall to Confederate troops, April 1861

““... and the war came.”... and the war came.”

Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, July 1863