Road to Secession Events leading to Civil War

Study Guide Identifications• Sectionalism• Compromise of 1850• Fugitive Slave Act 1850• Ostend Manifesto• Kansas Nebraska Act• Bleeding Kansas• Know Nothings• Dred Scott• John Brown• Election of 1860

Study Guide Questions

• What are the major events that led to civil war?• What debate was renewed with the acquisition

of California Territory and its application for statehood?

• What major divisions existed in American Society?

• What is Zinn’s argument concerning the events that led the United States to wage a civil war?

Political & Economic Context

• Jacksonian Era, 1824 – 1845– Extension of white male democracy– Popular religious revolt– Rise of Jackson’s Democrats (1824-28)– Jackson appeal • Indian removal

– Spoils System

Political & Economic Context

• Martin Van Buren’s Presidency– Rise of radical abolitionist movement in north

revived sectional tensions over slavery. – In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison of Boston

inaugurated a radical new phase in northern attacks on slavery, The Liberator.

– Southern Congressmen responded by demanding that free speech be repressed in the name of white security.• 1836-44 gag rule passed and renewed continuously,

Panic of 1837• Sharp Economic

Downturn• Bank Crisis• Unemployment

Rose (20% by 1843)

• Massive labor protests in the east

• Farmers & Planters lost land & Slaves– Fled west to avoid

creditors

Rise of Whig party

• Blamed Democrats for Economic disaster

• Rise of 2 Party System

• Competition between Democrats & Whigs

• Mass electorization & Political Rhetoric

Politics of Sectionalism

• To exclude slavery from the western territories was exclude white southerners from pursuing their vision of American dream

• North politicians argued that exclusion preserved equality of all white men and women to live and work with out competition from slavery labor or rule by despotic slaveholders.

International Debate over Slavery

What economic institutions would prevail in America? Debates on how to solve the question of nature of economic expansion:

1. outright exclusion

2. Extension of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific

3. popular sovereignty, allowing the residents of a territory to decide the issue

4. protection of the property of slaveholders (meaning their right to own slaves) even if few lived in the territory

The Compromise of 1850• Admission to Union – upset balance of free/slave states

and senators, I.e. veto power of south against federal laws against slavery

• Compromise of 1850 Issues:– Admission of California as a Free State– Fugitive Slave Act– NM & UT popular sovereignty– Importation of Slaves into District of Columbia

• Measures to discourage settlement of “people of color”• State Laws banned testimony in legal proceedings infringed on civil

rights and treated inferior

Overwhelming support for free state admission

• Miners against blacks in gold fields– Mass Meetings

• “No Negro should work claims”

• Leave district

• William E. Shannon• “Neither slavery nor

involuntary servitude, unless punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this state”

• M. M. McCarver– Proposal to exclude all

free blacks • Presence of free blacks an

“evil greater than that of slavery itself”

• Not passed for fear of rejection of statehood

Fugitive Slave Act

• Reinforced their right to seize and return to bondage slaves who had fled to free territory

Fugitive Slave Act, 1850– Response to the fugitive slave act• Slave catches and planters enslaved free blacks, polarized

north and south further• Galvanized popular opinion against slavery further

Expansion & slave/free state question

• Whigs dissolved as a party• Franklin Pierce – Expansionist Policy• Ostend Manifesto: – Claimed Cuba belonged “naturally to the great

family of the states of which the union is providential nursery”

– if Spain does not sell it we will take it– “General” William Walker - Nicaragua

Ostend Manifesto

American minister to England James Buchanan, minister to Spain Pierre Soule, and John Y. Mason, minister to France,

Kansas – Nebraska Act

• Transcontinental Rail Road – Indian Territory– Question of free/slave state– Split = Kansas (slave) & Nebraska (free)• Decide through popular sovereignty

“Bleeding Kansas”• Competition of anti and pro slavery

immigration –Beginning of civil war– Further polarized north and south

Titus and pro-slavery forces on their way to attack Lawrence

This 1854 map shows slave

states (grey), free states

(red), and US territories

(green) with Kansas in center

(white).

Know Nothings• Political Realignment

– Know Nothings: • Mostly former Whigs• Anti –immigrant

– Extend naturalization from 1 to 21 years

• Anti- Catholic– Legislation barring them from public office

• Nativist

– New Republican Party• Anti-slavery conscious Whigs & Democrats• Most Important political force

– Democrats• Pro-slavery, southern sectional party

Dred Scott Case

• Scott sued for Freedom– Illinois & Wisconsin Territory

• Chief Justice Taney & 9 justices - 2 days • black people, not citizens, could not sue• framers of the constitution never intended citizenship for

slaves• slaves being of an inferior order….so far inferior that they

had not rights which the white man was bound to respect

• Republicans argued a small group of slave holders was holding no n slaveholding white people hostage to the institution of slavery

Road to Disunion

• The Compromise of 1850• Aggression in the Caribbean & Latin American

(American Imperialism)• Bleeding Kansas• Dred Scott Vs. Sandford– Convinced north that south was conspiring with

the federal government to restrict economic and political liberties

John Brown

• 1859 – Raid against federal arsenal • Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.– Trained his rebels & took the arsenal– Hoped to spark a slave revolt– Captures and Hung for treason

John Brown

• I believe that to have interfered as I have don…in behalf of despised poor is no 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 country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments I say let it be done.”

Election of 1860

• Democratic Party Split – Nominated Stephen Douglas

• Former Whigs – Constitutional Union Party– Nominated John Bell

• Republicans – nominated Lincoln

Secession

• South Carolina legislature called on states citizens to elect delegates to a convention to consider secession– TX, LA, MS, Al, GA, FL and SC voted to leave the union and

met to form a separate country. – The Confederate States of America– Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president. AK, TN, NC & VA

followed. • As a result of the Brown’s raid and Lincolns election

in 1860 states began to secede from the union.