Western Lands and the Coming of the Civil War

Making the Avoidable Seem Inevitable, 1848-1861

What to Do With Lands Acquired From Mexico As a Result of the Mexican War?

Slave or Free?

Who gets to decide?

4 Basic Positions

• Let Congress Decide – Wilmot Proviso (Keep it out)– Divide territory (Missouri compromise

Precedent)

• Territories belong to all the citizens of all the states

• Popular Sovereignty• Let the Supreme Court decide

1848 Election

Lewis Cass—Democrat—Popular Sovereignty

Zachary Taylor—Whig—divide territory/nationalism over sectional issue of slavery

Free Soilers—Martin Van Buren—keep slavery out of the territories

Zachary Taylor

1848 Election Results

• Taylor Won

• Van Burenites hurt Democrats in New York and Whigs in Ohio

• Democrats continued with popular sovereignty.

1848 Election Results

Gold Rush in California sped up process

California Petitioned for Admission as a free state

Forging the Armistice of 1850

• Congress struggled to elect Speaker of House

• Taylor hoped to admit California and New Mexico as states quickly without dealing w/ issue of slavery in Territories.

Clay’s Omnibus Proposal

• California admitted as a free state

• Remainder of Mexican Cession/no restrictions on slavery

• Little Texas• U. S. assumes Tx’s

debt

• No slave trade in D. C.• Slavery in D. C.• Stronger Fugitive

Slave Law• Congress can’t

interfere with interstate slave trade

Henry Clay

Great Debates

• Daniel Webster’s 7th of March Address

• Calhoun’s Valedictory

• Seward’s Higher Law Speech

Valedictory of Great Triumvirate

Making the Armistice

• No Votes for Omnibus bill

• Death of Zachary Taylor/Millard Filmore played more constructive role.

• Stephen Douglas engineered passage of 5 bills containing essence of Omnibus

• No real compromise.

• Fruits of Armistice exacerbated rather than ameliorated sectional tension

Stephen Douglas

Fruits of Armistice

• Fugitive Slave Act of 1850– Furthered belief of

Slavepower conspiracy

– Northern interposition/Personal Liberty Laws

– Mobs rescued alleged runaways

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin– Made abstraction of

slavery personal to Romantic reading public

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Franklin Pierce Administration

• Democratic Dark Horse and “Doughface”– Appointed Southerners to key posts; these folk

appeared to pursue proslavery agenda– Ostend Manifesto

Franklin Pierce/1852 Election

Kansas Nebraska Act

• Stephen Douglas wanted Kansas Organized

• Needed Southern votes

• Agreed to overturn Missouri Compromise

• Popular Sovereignty seemed “democratic”

• Weakened Democrats in North; “Appeal of the Independent Democrats”

• Weakened Whigs in the South

Major Significance of KNA

• Emergence of Republican Party

• “Bleeding Kansas”– Difficult to Organize Territory without added

burden of slavery– New England Emigrant Aid Society/Border

Ruffians– Sack of Lawrence—May 1856– Pottawatomie Creek Massacre—John Brown

John Brown

Impact of Bleeding Kansas

• Confirmed image of Lawless Southern slaveholders in Northern Mind

• Led to Sumner-Brooks Incident

Sumner—Brooks Incident

“Bleeding Sumner”

• Southerners think Sumner got what he deserved

• Northerners see Southerners as brutal barbarians

• Transformation of Northern Politics (Rise of Republican Party)

Abraham Lincoln

Rise of Republican Party

• American or Know Nothing Party was a dominant party in North and 2d to Democrats as National Party through May 1856

• Republicans ran 2d in 1856 Election—Bleeding Sumner made their anti-slavery message appealing

• Research done by William E. Gienapp

1856 Election

• John Charles Fremont (Republican) crusaded against those “twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery”

• James Buchanan—Doughface—popular sovereignty and nonintervention.

1856 Election Map

1857: The Year Everything Went Wrong

• Dred Scott v. Sandford

• Panic of 1857

• Lecompton Constitution

Dred Scott

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Douglas won, but L.’s version of Anti-slavery made him extremely popular

• “In the right to eat the bread earned by the sweat of his brow, he is equal to me, to Judge Douglas, and to everyone else.”

John Brown’s Raid

• A conspiracy to Arm Slaves in Rebellion

• Many Northerners thought Brown “will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”

• Southerners especially fearful: “All northerners are abolitionists, and all abolitionists are John Browns.”

1860 Presidential Election

• Charleston Convention divides Democrats/Federal Slave Code in Territories

• Northern Democrats nominate Douglas; Southern Democrats nominate Breckinridge

• Lincoln wins Republican nomination/no extension of slavery

• John Bell of Tennessee is Constitutional Unionist Candidate

1860 Election Map

• Lincoln—180 Electoral Votes

• Douglas—12 elect. Votes

• Breckinridge—72 Electoral votes

• Bell—39 Electoral Votes

Secession of Lower South

• South Carolina, followed by six other deep South states seceded before L. took office

• Why?– Internal Subversion thesis.

Confederate States of America

• Established in Montgomery, Ala.

• Constitution based on U. S. Constitution

• Jefferson Davis/Alexander Stephens

• Emphasis on Right of Revolution and morality of slavery

Buchanan/Compromise

• Buchanan took no provocative actions: Fort Pickens Truce and Fort Sumter standoff

• Crittenden Compromise failed

• House Committee of 33 proposed 13th amendment failed