Chapter 19Drifting Toward

Disunion

Uncle Tom’s Cabin• Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel in response to the Fugitive Slave Law• Highlighted the strain slavery put on family life• Novel sold millions of copes, was translated into several languages, and sparked many theatrical portrayals• No other novel in American history has had the same political influence• Made slavery appear evil to Northerners. Made Southerners furious that they were being portrayed as evil by a woman who had never witnessed slavery first hand in the deep South• The Impending Crisis of the South was written by Hinton R. Helper, a white man from North Carolina• He tried to show how non-slave holding whites were the people who suffered the most from slavery

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), Daguerreotype by Southworth and HawesStowe was a remarkable woman whose pen helped to change the course of history.

“The Book That Made This Great War”Lincoln’s celebrated remark to author Harriet Beecher Stowe reflected the enormous emotional impact of her impassioned novel.

“Bleeding Kansas”• Southerners believed there was an unspoken understanding that Kansas would become a slave state through popular sovereignty• Northern abolitionist groups began to send people to Kansas to sway the territory toward becoming a free state. Southerners also began sending more people into the territory• In 1855 the first territorial legislature elections began. Many flooded from Missouri to vote early and often for the pro-slavery candidates. Pro-slavery won and so the free soilers set up their own government. Kansas now had two governments, both of which were illegal.• Breaking point was in 1856 when a gang of pro-slavery raiders shot up and burned part of the free-soil town of Lawrence• Civil war erupted in Kansas and would last until it merged with the larger Civil War in 1861.• John Brown was a fanatical free-soiler that murdered and hacked up several pro-slavery men. This brought a brutal retaliation by the pro-slavery side• Lecompton Constitution would be voted on by the people. If the anti-slavery version was adopted, slave owners would still be able to own existing slaves in Kansas. It would keep slavery in Kansas no matter what.• President Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution and in doing so caused a split in the Democratic Party

Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1860“Enter every election district in Kansas . . . and vote at the point of a bowie knife or revolver,” one proslavery agitator exhorted a Missouri crowd. Proslavery Missouri senator David Atchison declared that “there are 1,100 men coming over from Platte County to vote, and if that ain’t enough we can send 5,000—enough to kill every Goddamned abolitionist in the Territory.”

John Brown (1800–1859)This daguerreotype of the militant abolitionist Brown tells a tale of two men, the sitter and the photographer. It was taken in 1847 when Brown was running a wool-brokerage house in Springfield, Massachusetts, and working closely with other New Eng land abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass. Brown made his way to the Hartford studio of free black photographer Augustus Washington, who was the son of an Asian woman and a former black slave and well known in abolitionist circles. Six years later, Washington would close his successful studio and take his family to Liberia, convinced that American blacks would do better in their own country in Africa than as free men in the United States (see pp. 383–384).

Preston Brooks Caning Charles Sumner, 1856Cartoonist John Magee of Philadelphia depicted Brooks’s beating of Sumner in the Senate as a display of southern ruthlessness in defending slavery, ironically captioned “southern chivalry.”

A Know-Nothing Party Mob, Baltimore, ca. 1856–1860These armed ruffians were campaigning in Baltimore for their ultranationalistic, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic candidate.

Presidential Election of 1856 (electoral vote by state)The fateful split of 1860 was foreshadowed. The regional polarization in 1856, shown here, was to be even sharper four years later, as illustrated by Maps 19.3 and 19.4 later in this chapter.

Dred Scott Case• Dred Scott v. Sanford was decided on March 6, 1857• It was a simple case of a slave, Dred Scott, who was suing for his freedom based on the fact that he had lived on free soil with his owner for five years• Supreme Court ruled that Scott was a slave not a citizen and had no right to sue in federal courts• Court also said that a slave was private property and could be taken into any territory and legally held there in slavery• Decision was based on the 5th amendment which forbade Congress from depriving citizens of their property• Northerners refused to recognize the decision and Southerners were angry at the Northern defiance• How could the two sides remain in a Union where the Supreme Court no longer had authority (even if they had made the wrong decision)

Dred Scott with His Wife and Daughters, 1857This slave’s long legal battle for his freedom, culminating in the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857, helped to ignite the Civil War. Widespread publicity about the fate of Scott and his family strengthened antislavery sentiment in the North. Articles like this one in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper appealed to the same sentimental regard for the idealized family that Harriet Beecher Stowe so artfully mobilized in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (see “Examining the Evidence: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” p. 439).

Financial Crash of 1857

• Caused by inflation from the California gold rush, overgrowing of grain, and extensive land and railroad speculation• North was hardest hit because the South was enjoying good cotton prices abroad• Homestead Act, which would sell federal land at a low price, was vetoed by President Buchanan• Tariff of 1857 lowered tariffs and caused many Northerners to blame it for the economic downturn• The crisis gave Republicans many economic issues to focus on during the upcoming election

Panic on Wall Street, 1857The panic of 1857 further burdened President Buchanan, already reeling from the armed clashes in Kansas and the controversy over the Dred Scott decision.

Rise of Lincoln• Abraham Lincoln was the Republican candidate for the Illinois senate race in 1858. He would run against Democrat Stephen Douglas.• Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates (brave because Douglas was an excellent debater) from Aug to Oct 1858.• The most famous was in Freeport, Illinois. The Freeport Question and Doctrine were delivered at this debate.• Lincoln asked if the people of a territory voted slavery down would it be legal in light of the Dred Scott decision?• Douglas said yes, if the people voted it down it would stay down no matter what the Supreme Court said.• Douglas had history on his side. If public opinion doesn’t support something, its very difficult to enforce.• Lincoln lost the Senate race because more pro-Douglas members were voted into the state legislature.

Abraham Lincoln, a Most Uncommon Common ManThis daguerreotype of Lincoln was done by Mathew B. Brady, a distinguished photographer of the era.

Lincoln and Douglas Debate, 1858Thousands attended each of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas is shown here sitting to Lincoln’s right in the debate at Charleston, Illinois, in September. On one occasion Lincoln quipped that Douglas’s logic would prove that a horse chestnut was a chestnut horse.

Harper’s Ferry Raid• John Brown had been studying slave rebellions of Nat Turner and Toussaint L’Ouverture.• Wanted to invade the South, rally slaves to an uprising, supply them with weapons, and establish a state as a free black sanctuary.• Oct 1859 he and twenty men, including several blacks, attacked the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry Virginia. Seven innocent people were killed and more injured.• The slaves in the area failed to rise up (they didn’t know the raid was going to happen) and Brown was arrested by Marines led by Robert E. Lee. He was put on trial, found guilty, and hanged for his crime.• He was viewed as a martyr for freedom in the North (many did not know of his murderous past).

Last Moments of John Brown, by Thomas HovendenSentenced to be hanged, John Brown wrote to his brother, “I am quite cheerful in view of my approaching end, being fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose. . . . I count it all joy. ‘I have fought the good fight,’ and have, as I trust, ‘finished my course.’” This painting of Brown going to his execution may have been inspired by the journalist Horace Greeley, who was not present but wrote that “a black woman with a little child stood by the door. He stopped for a moment, and stooping, kissed the child.” That scene never took place, as Brown was escorted from the jail only by a detachment of soldiers. But this painting has become famous as a kind of allegorical expression of the pathos of Brown’s martyrdom for the abolitionist cause.

Election of 1860• Northern Democrats: Stephen Douglas 12 electoral votes• Southern Democrats: John C. Breckinridge 72 electoral votes• Constitutional Union: John Bell 39 electoral votes• Republicans: Abraham Lincoln 180 electoral votes• Sectional election, Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in Southern states.• Southerners thought of Lincoln as a radical abolitionists which was far from the truth. Lincoln disliked slavery but he was a moderate when it came to emancipation.• When Lincoln won, South Carolina was thrilled because they now had an excuse to secede.• South Carolina seceded first in December of 1860 and during the next 6 weeks were followed by Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.• Would be joined later by Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to form the Confederate States of America.

Lincoln Hits a Home Run in 1860Currier & Ives, the producer of popular, inexpensive colored prints, portrayed Lincoln’s victory over (from left to right) John Bell, Stephen Douglas, and John C. Breckinridge as a baseball game. Baseball developed in New York in the 1840s, and by 1860 the National Association of Baseball Players boasted fifty clubs, several playing regular schedules and charging admission. This cartoon is thought to be the first time baseball was used as a metaphor for politics. Note that Lincoln is beardless…

Presidential Election of 1860: Electoral Vote by State (top) and Popular Vote by County (bottom)It is a surprising fact that Lincoln, often rated among the greatest presidents, ranks near the bottom in percentage of popular votes. In all the eleven states that seceded, he received only a scattering of one state’s votes—about 1.5 percent in Virginia. The vote by county for Lincoln was virtually all cast in the North. The northern Democrat, Douglas, was also nearly shut out in the South, which divided its votes between Breckinridge and Bell…

Southern Opposition to Secession, 1860–1861 (showing vote by county)This county vote shows the opposition of the antiplanter, antislavery mountain whites in the Appalachian region. There was also considerable resistance to secession in Texas, where Governor Sam Houston, who led the Unionists, was deposed by secessionists.

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), President of the ConfederacyFaced with grave difficulties, he was probably as able a man for the position as the Confederacy could have chosen. Ironically, Davis and Lincoln had both sprung from the same Kentucky soil. The Davis family had moved south from Kentucky, the Lincoln family north.

The Eagle’s Nest, 1861The American eagle jealously guards her nest of states and bids defiance to the rebels.