The Politics of Slavery

The Main Idea

The issue of slavery dominated national politics during the 1850s. The federal government forged policies in attempts

to satisfy both North and South.

Reading Focus

• What factors made slavery in the United States an issue before 1850?

• How did the Compromise of 1850 seek to settle issues between North and South?

• In what ways did the North and South each hope to benefit from the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

• How did people in the North and South react to the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

1 - Slavery in the United States

By 1850, 200 years of slavery in America

History• Some northern states freed only children born after slavery was

banned and kept their mothers enslaved.• In several northern states, slavery continued to exist until the

1840s.• By 1850 two societies existed—the North, where workers

labored for wages, and the South, where a large number of workers were enslaved.

• Many southerners believed their economy depended on slave labor.

• Those who supported slavery believed that property rights came first.

• To many northerners who were truly concerned about slavery, the issue was one of basic democratic ideology.

2 - Slavery in the United States

By 1850, 200 years of slavery in America

• It was difficult for opponents of slavery to overcome the claim that slaveholders’ rights were protected by the Constitution, just as the rights of all property owners were protected.

• This was one reason why the abolition movement was slow to gain popular support in the North.

• After winning the Mexican-American War, the United States added more than 500,000 square miles of new territory.

• Now some antislavery activists wanted to ban slavery in the new territory. Others, mainly southerners, wanted to allow slavery there.

• When California applied to become a state in 1850, the number of free states and slave states were equal. The balance of political power was about to change.

3 - The Compromise of 1850

California applies• Residents of California

quickly approved a constitution banning slavery and applied for statehood, bringing the issue of slavery to the surface.

• Kentucky senator Henry Clay crafted a plan to Congress proposing a series of compromises on several slavery issues.

• One of the most famous Senate debates resulted. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina faced off.

Debates and decisions

• Calhoun opposed the compromises, but Webster felt the preservation of the Union was more important than the disagreement over slavery.

• William Seward attacked slavery itself, becoming known as a radical (extreme views) for his position.

• Calhoun’s death in March removed one of the obstacles to the compromise, since his successor, Millard Fillmore, supported the plan and helped Congress pass it.

• Five laws were passed based on Clay’s resolutions, forming the Compromise of 1850.

4 - The Fugitive Slave Act

The law was openly resisted in the North. Many who had previously been quiet on slavery issues were furious. Mobs rescued slaves from northern police stations and threatened slave catchers. By 1851, some southern leaders were again talking of seceding from the Union.

The Fugitive Slave Act (most controversial) made it a federal crime to assist runaway slaves. The law also allowed the arrest of escaped slaves in states where slavery was illegal.

One angry northerner, Harriett Beecher Stowe, had once lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. There she heard tales of slavery’s cruelty and horror. She wrote a series of short stories about slave life for an antislavery newspaper, and a year later the tales were published in an enormously successful novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book outraged many southerners and raised tensions over slavery to a new height.

5 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act

A proposed railroad connecting California to the rest of the nation was a dividing issue. Southerners wanted New Orleans as the eastern end, Douglas favored Chicago, but the northern route land had to be officially opened for settlement by the government.

End of an eraThe deaths of Clay and Webster led to new leadership in Congress. Stephen Douglas, an Illinois senator, gained power and influence.

Railroad proposal

Douglas proposed organizing the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, where the issue of slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty. Southern senators demanded the bill end the Missouri Compromise’s limits on slavery. In May 1854 his Kansas-Nebraska Act became law.

May 1854

6 - Reactions in the North and South

The North’s reaction• Hundreds of meetings were held

to protest the law. Northerners sent numerous petitions and resolutions to Congress.

• Northerners were outraged that many northern Democratic members of Congress had voted for the act. A great number of northern Democrats quit the party to protest.

• The effect on the Whig Party was even more severe. Some northern Whigs (Conscience Whigs) opposed slavery on moral grounds. Other Whigs in the North and the South (Cotton Whigs) strongly supported slavery. The two groups refused to work together.

Rise of the Republican Party• The Free Soil Party was formed in

1848 by some northern Whigs and Democrats, and members of the antislavery Liberal Party.

• The name was taken because opposition to the spread of slavery was its main issue. People of all political parties who opposed slavery’s spread were called free-soilers.

• The Republican Party was formed from a meeting of the Free-Soil Party, northern Whigs, and others in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

• Two new Republicans were William Seward and Abraham Lincoln.

Sectional Conflicts and National Politics

The Main Idea

Rising tension over slavery expanded from political rhetoric into outright violence.

Reading Focus

• Why did popular sovereignty lead to violent struggle in Kansas?

• In what ways did the presidential election of 1856 illustrate the nation’s growing division?

• What events of Buchanan’s presidency further divided the nation?

• Why was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry an important event in American history?

7 - The Struggle for Kansas

• Lawlessness– Many acts of slavery-related lawlessness plagued Kansas

Territory. By 1856 the territory was being called “Bleeding Kansas.”

– Kansas was a mighty stake in the slavery debate, and pro-slavery and free-soil forces soon were fighting for control.

• Control of elections – Each side tried to control the territory’s elections and,

later, a vote on a state constitution.

– Emigrant groups from both sides flooded into the territory in an effort to establish or prevent slavery.

8 - The Struggle for Kansas

Voter fraud occurred in the November 1854 election to choose the territory’s delegate to Congress, and in the March 1855 elections for a territorial legislature.

Popular sovereignty

Settlement of the slavery issue by popular sovereignty did not require settlers to vote on whether to allow it. Instead, the question was settled indirectly, electing a territorial legislature that would then pass laws on the subject.

First elections

When the legislature met, it quickly passed a strict slave code into law. Free-soilers refused to accept the new legislature, electing an antislavery governor and legislature of their own. By 1856, there were two governments claiming to be the legal government of Kansas.

Two governments

9 - The Struggle for Kansas

The Sack of Lawrence• The town of Lawrence had

become a center of antislavery activity.

• Although a New Hampshire Democrat, President Franklin Pierce seemed to be under the influence of pro-slavery elements in Congress.

• Pierce condemned the free-soil government in Kansas as rebels, prompting pro-slavery Kansas officials to charge free-soil leaders with treason.

• A pro-slavery posse rode into Lawrence to arrest these leaders, looting and destroying much of the town.

Pottawatomie Massacre

• John Brown was a committed abolitionist who went to Kansas, used violence to oppose slavery.

• He appointed himself a captain of the local antislavery militia.

• Outraged by what happened at Lawrence, Brown sought bloody revenge.

• He and a small group of followers dragged five pro-slavery settlers out of their cabins and executed them. This act became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

10 - The Struggle for Kansas

“Bleeding Kansas”

A civil war broke out in Kansas. Large bands of pro-slavery and antislavery forces roamed the territory. Most settlers on both sides had property looted or destroyed. Although federal troops brought the major fighting to an end in September, a guerrilla war of sabotage, ambushes, and other surprise attacks continued.Violence over Kansas spread to Congress. Sumner of Massachusetts delivered an angry two-day speech, directing vicious remarks at Andrew Butler of South Carolina, who played a key role in passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Two days later, Representative Preston Brooks, Butler’s nephew, attacked Sumner, beating him with a heavy walking stick until Sumner collapsed. Northerners were incensed by the brutal attack.

“The Crime against

Kansas”

11 - The Election of 1856

The Kansas controversy dominated the presidential election of 1856. The Democratic candidate was James Buchanan; the Republicans nominated John Frémont (1st Republican candidate), and the American Party (the Know-Nothings) candidate was Millard Fillmore.

Buchanan won the election for two reasons. Immigrant populations in the North were repelled by the Know-Nothings’ nativism, and the Democrats painted the Republicans as extremists on the slavery issue.

As a result, Buchanan was the voters’ choice in both the North and the South. Frémont, however, won all the states of the Upper North.

12 - Buchanan’s Presidency

The Dred Scott decision• Buchanan supported popular

sovereignty in his inaugural address, giving some hope that the crisis was past.

• But two days later, the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott, a slave who sued for his freedom with the argument that by living where slavery was illegal, he had become free.

• Southerners saw the 1857 Dred Scott decision as a victory.

• Fifth Amendment protected property rights of a person who held slaves.

Lecompton Constitution

• This was the pro-slavery state constitution written at the Kansas constitutional convention in June 1857.

• In supervised elections in October 1857, free-soilers won control of the legislature.

• Pro-slavery leaders proposed the voters decide on a special provision on slavery.

• If approved, slavery would be allowed. If defeated, importation of slaves would be banned, but slaves already in Kansas would remain enslaved.

13 - DRED SCOTT DECISION

Chief Justice Roger Taney denies Dred Scott his rights – Increased tensions between North and South.

14 - John Brown’s Raid

Attack on the arsenal

• John Brown and 21 followers attacked a U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.– Planning to use the guns to arm a slave revolt, on October 16,

1859, the group captured the arsenal.

– He sent some of his group to spread the word to the area’s slaves to rise up in revolt, but they returned with a few hostages. No slaves were willing to run away and join Brown.

After the attack

• Armed local townspeople followed by U.S. Marines fought Brown and his group.– Brown and his surviving followers were tried; all were

sentenced to hang. Brown was hanged December 2, 1859.

Lincoln’s Path to the White House

The Main Idea

After gaining national prominence in the late 1850s, Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860.

Reading Focus

• How did Lincoln’s personal views on slavery differ from his political position on the subject?

• How did the Lincoln-Douglas debates benefit Lincoln’s political career?

• What circumstances resulted in Lincoln’s election as president in 1860?

15 - Lincoln, Politics, and Slavery

• A frontier upbringing– Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room cabin near Louisville,

Kentucky, to poor parents who owned no slaves. Lincoln’s parents opposed slavery, and they moved to the Indiana Territory in 1816, settling near the Ohio River.

• Lincoln’s early politics – In 1834, at 25, he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly, serving

four terms. Lincoln studied law at home, becoming licensed to practice law in 1836. In 1842, he married Mary Todd, the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky slaveholder. By then he was practicing law full-time. Member of the Whig Party (1834–1854)

• Lincoln in Congress– In 1846 Lincoln successfully ran for Congress. Lincoln charged

President Polk, a slaveholding Democrat, with starting the Mexican-American War in order to spread slavery. Lincoln opposed slavery, but he believed each state had to decide. Lincoln’s proposal for compensation emancipation received little support, and he resigned from Congress in 1849 and returned home to practice law.

16 - Lincoln and Douglas Clash

Lincoln helped organize the Illinois Republican Party in 1856. He opposed Stephen Douglas’s bid for a third term in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln spoke eloquently at his nomination, taking the most radical stance against slavery with the prediction “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Lincoln returns

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln returned to public life after retiring twice.

“A house divided”

The debates were a series of public meetings where Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated the issues of their Senate campaign. While Douglas spoke with great flair, Lincoln’s manner was mild. His strength lay in the logic and reasoning of his ideas.

Lincoln-Douglas debates

17 - Lincoln and Douglas Clash

The Freeport Doctrine• The second debate was the

most critical.

• Lincoln challenged Douglas to explain how people could use popular sovereignty to keep slavery out of a place when the Dred Scott decision had said they could not.

• Douglas’s reply came to be known as the Freeport Doctrine. “If the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation . . . prevent the introduction of it into their midst.”

Lincoln’s social views

• Lincoln stressed the immorality of slavery in the debates.

• Douglas referred to Lincoln’s party as Black Republicans and painted an image of a society where the races were equal, pressing Lincoln on citizenship for blacks.

• Backed into a corner, Lincoln said, “I will say that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”

18 - The Debates’ Significance

• Deciding who won– Douglas retained his Senate seat, but most historians

judge Lincoln to have won the debates. He had argued the more famous Douglas to a draw and in the process made himself a national figure.

• Supporters – Douglas’s statements caused him to lose support of southern

Democrats, which proved critical when he faced Lincoln again in the presidential election. Lincoln’s moderate positions increased his standing among northerners, but southerners still thought Lincoln was a serious threat to slavery.

• Speaking to the people– Lincoln and Douglas took their arguments directly to the people

and made the issues of the day clear to the nation. The outcome directly affected the presidential election of 1860.

19 - The Election of 1860

William Seward seemed to be the frontrunner, but many felt his abolitionist views were too radical. The Republicans settled on Lincoln as the candidate with the most strengths and the fewest weaknesses. The party’s platform opposed slavery; called for free land in the West, improved wages, and tariff increases; and expressed a firm commitment to the preservation of the Union.

The Democratic conventionThe Democratic Party was seriously divided in the spring of 1860. Southern Democrats wanted to block Douglas’s nomination and a party platform protecting slavery. Northern Democrats supported Douglas and popular sovereignty. The northerners managed to push their platform through and nominated Douglas after a second meeting. Southern Democrats split and later nominated John C. Breckinridge.

The Republican convention

20 - The 1860 Campaign

The election was really two sectional elections: Lincoln versus Douglas in the North, and Breckenridge versus Bell, the candidate of southern moderates in the South.

Democrats in the North used an openly racist campaign: a Lincoln victory would bring runaway slaves pouring in. Republicans branded the Democrats as corrupt, promising that “Honest Abe” would restore good government.

The November vote was largely on sectional lines. Lincoln won nearly every northern state; Breckinridge and Bell split the southern vote. The split in the Democratic Party allowed Lincoln to be elected with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. The election results would spell trouble for the Union.

The South Secedes

The Main Idea

The election of Abraham Lincoln led to the secession of the southern states.

Reading Focus

• What led to the secession of the states of the Lower South from the Union?

• How and why was the Confederacy formed?

• Why did compromises and other attempts to save the Union fail?

21 - Secession!

The states break apart• Within weeks after Lincoln’s election, South

Carolina became the first state to secede, followed within months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

• Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas warned that if the federal government made any attempt to use force against a state, they would also secede.

22 - Secession!

There was varied reaction in the North. Some felt the Union was better off with the slave states gone; others bore southerners no ill will. They merely wanted the South to go in peace. Still others worried about the long-term effects of letting secession proceed. President Lincoln agreed, saying that no state could get out of the Union without the consent of the other states.

Southerners and secession

Southerners’ support for secession was not universal. In some conventions 30 to 40 percent voted against secession. Some wanted their states to issue a final set of demands to the federal government and secede only if those demands were not met. But radical secessionism prevailed, and there would be a united resistance against the U.S. government.

Northern response

23 - Lincoln Waits

Newspapers pressed Lincoln for a public statement that would calm the nation’s fears, but Lincoln worried about making matters worse.

Privately, Lincoln tried to convince southern leaders they would not be interfered with, but he was also committed to preserving the Union. Outgoing president Buchanan agreed secession was illegal, but said the Constitution gave the federal government no power to stop it.

Buchanan rejected a request to turn over federal property to South Carolina authorities, but he promised he would not attempt to reinforce the forts. Federal troops were all moved to the stronger Fort Sumter.

24 - Forming the Confederacy

In February 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama, representatives of the seven seceded states met to form a new nation.

– They wrote a constitution and chose Jefferson Davis as provisional (temporary) president.

– The new constitution, largely copied from the US constitution, recognized and protected slavery and recognized the “sovereign and independent” nature of each state.

– They named their new nation the Confederate States of America.

25 - Forming the Confederacy

Davis becomes president

• Jefferson Davis was not pleased with the news that he had been selected as president of the new Confederacy.

• His sense of duty forced him to accept the position.

• Davis gave an encouraging inaugural address, but privately he worried.

Confederate government

• The new nation had no currency or even a press capable of making some.

• The first cabinet meeting was held in a hotel room.

• No issue seemed too petty to debate.

• The Confederacy was on shaky ground.

26 - Compromise Fails

A Peace Convention began on February 4, 1861, in Washington, D.C. Most of the northern states were represented, as were all the remaining slave states except Arkansas. It offered a plan similar to Crittenden’s, but the Senate rejected the plan.

The Crittenden

Compromise

The Crittenden Compromise proposed amending the U.S. Constitution to ban slavery north of the old Missouri Compromise line and guarantee that it would not be interfered with south of that line. The plan was defeated by a vote of 25–23.

The Peace Convention

Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861. In his inaugural address, he quoted the provisions of the Constitution that protected slavery and offered assurances that he would not interfere with the institution of slavery in the South.

Lincoln’s Inauguration