Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that

miracle.- Daniel Webster

Chapter 18: Renewing the

Sectional Struggle1848-1854 (pg. 416)

1

The sovereign people of a territory should determine the statutes of slavery.  A good compromise?

1848 Gen. Lewis Cass (D)

War of 1812 veteran,supported slavery

Gen. Zachary Taylor (W) “Old Rough and Ready,”no official slavery stance (but a slave holder)

Free Soil Party: “free soil, free speech, free labor, free men” (feared competition for jobs in the West)

2

Popular Sovereignty: The Solution??

The Free Soil Party's candidate was Martin Van Buren.

Van Buren finished last, receiving just over 10% of the total votes cast.

Voters did elect 16 Free Soilers to the U.S. Congress, including 2 Senators and 14 members of the House of Representatives.

3

Free Soil Results in 1848

The Free Soilers opposed slavery's expansion into any new territories or states.

Believed that the government could not end slavery where it already existed but that it could restrict slavery in new areas.

Feared competition with Southern slaveholders. Northerners who wanted to own land in the West

feared that they would not be able to compete economically with slave labor (the “free labor” part).

The majority were not abolitionists.Some Free Soilers believed that African Americans

were inferior to white people. These Free Soilers had no desire to provide African Americans with equal political, economic, and social rights. 4

Just what is a “free soiler”?

Population of California14,000 in 1848100,000 in 1850250,000 in 1852.

These increases are by immigration alone, for hardly anyone is being born thereIn 1850 just 8% of the population is

female. In the mining towns that figure falls to 2%.

Forty-niners do not arrive with women.

Why do these male/female statistics matter?

Applies for statehood as a FREE state (15 v. 15) in 1850 and Southerners panic

5

The California Gold Rush

Virginia-born, slave holding Louisianan as president

Cabinet and Supreme Court majorityOutnumbered in the House but

equal in the Senate (California as a free state, though?)

Cotton fields expandingCotton profitability rising

6

Why Would the South be Worried in 1850?

Losing potential slave territory while losing numbers in the Sen. and the H. of R.

Wilmot Proviso (Mex. Cession, remember?) and/or Tallmadge Amendment (that was the gradual abolition in Missouri, remember?) set precedents for the rest of the U.S.A.

Abolition in the District of Columbia?

Free Soilers in CongressWhat about Constitutional guarantees?

The Underground Railroad (maybe 1000 runaways per year)

(page 422)

7

THIS is why the South is worried

The “Old Guard” versus The “Fire-Eaters”

Clay (73), Webster (68) and Calhoun (68) battle it out Peaceable secession? Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to be seceded? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground? Why, Sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude.

-Daniel Webster (Seventh of March Speech)

8

To the NorthCalifornia admitted as a FREE stateAbolition of the slave trade (but NOT

slavery) in the District of ColumbiaTo the South

New Mexico and Utah open to popular sovereignty

A more stringent fugitive slave law (aiding escaped slaves could lead to fines and jail)

“We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists!”

9

The California Compromise / Compromise of 1850 by Henry Clay (W…1777-1852 ) with Stephen Douglas’ (D)

help

10

The U.S. after the Compromise of 1850

DemocratsFranklin Pierce (a “doughface” or a

Northerner with Southern sympathies)

WhigsWinfield Scott (“Old Fuss and

Feathers”)Northern Whigs hated the party’s

platform (support for the fugitive slave law and Compromise of 1850) but supported Scott

Southern Whigs supported the party’s platform but hated Scott

11

The Election of 1852

The End of the Whig Party: It splits on slavery (“Conscience” Whigs in the N. versus “Cotton”

Whigs in the S.) 12

The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in Central America

Commodore Matthew Perry and JapanCuba

Polk tried to buy it for $100,000,000.00

Ostend ManifestoOffer $120,000,000If rejected, we will just take the island

since the Spanish presence jeopardizes American interests

Gadsden Purchase (1853) for a southern transcontinental railroad to California … maybe (let’s take a look at the previous slide)

13

The Expansionist Tendencies of President Pierce

How about a NORTHERN route for the transcontinental rr…maybe from Chicago?

Heavy investments in Chicago real estate and railway stock

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)Nebraska split into twoApply the democratic concept of

popular sovereignty (what’s due west of KS? Of NE?)

And the Missouri Compromise?Gives birth to the Republican Party

A coalition of the foes of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

14

What is Stephen Douglas up to as Kansas & Nebraska are ready to join the Union?

15

The Legal Status of Slavery from the

Revolution to the Civil War

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure

permanently half slave and half free.”

-Abraham Lincoln 1858

Chapter 19: Drifting Toward

Disunion1854 – 1861

16

“So you’re the little womanwho wrote the book that made this great war” -A. Lincoln to Stowe in 1862

Fiction Tom and Eliza vs.

Simon LegreeRead worldwide

What support could the South expect now?

17

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

A white Southerner from North Carolina

No moral judgmentsNo crusade against the“peculiar institution”

Condemned a labor systemthat limited opportunities of poor non-slave holding, Southern whites, retardedtheir economic progress and kept them in poverty and “backwardness”

18

The Impending Crisis of the South

by Hinton Helper (1857)

Democrats (Popular Sovereignty)James Buchanan

RepublicansJohn C. FremontA coalition of “conscience”

Whigs, Free Soilers and northern Democrats

Know Nothings (Nat. Union)Millard Fillmore

Nativists = Anti-foreign (“Americans Must Rule America!”)

19

“Old Buck” vs. “The Pathfinder”

20

The Election of 1856

Free Soilers, Northern abolitionists and the New Eng. Emigrant Aid Society faced off against pro-slave forces also streaming into the state

Divided DemocratsDouglas in Cong. (supporting true

popular sovereignty) vs. Buchanan in the W.H. (supporting the hated Lecompton Constitution which supported slavery in Kansas)

John Brown and the Pottawatomie Massacre5 proslavery sympathizers murdered

and dismembered

21

Bleeding Kansas (1854-1860)

22

Senator Charles Sumner (Mass.) assaulted

by Senator Preston Brooks (S. Car.) in 1856

Dred Scott (a slave) sued for his freedom following years spent in a free Illinois and Wisconsin

#1 Scott would not be granted his freedom#2 Scott was a black slave and therefore

not a citizen (the citizenship of the South’s ¼ million free blacks is now in question) so he had no right to sue

#3 Slaves = property, therefore Congress had no power (never did) to ban slavery from the territories regardless of what the territorial legislatures might want

What about popular sovereignty? Missouri Compromise?

23

Dred Scott (March, 1857)

". . . . . . We think they [people of African ancestry] are . . . not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. . . ."

— Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, speaking for the majority (1857)

24

Dred Scott v. Sandford

In the North: Grain growers hard hitIn the South

Steady and favorable cotton prices (does the South really need the North afterall?)

Demands for free homesteadsGreat idea for Northerners (but not all)What about Southerners?

Homestead Act (25 cents/acre)Angers Eastern industrialistsAngers slaveholdersVetoed by Buchanan

A low Southern backed tariff led manufacturers to seek more protection

Republicans have their issues: farms for the farmless, protection for the unprotected

25

Meanwhile…The Financial Crash of 1857

In steps Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas

26

Abraham Lincoln presents Stephen Douglas with this dilemma…What if the people of a territory vote

slavery down?The Supreme Court (Dred Scott) said they

can’tYou (Kansas-Nebraska Act) said they could…

pop. sov.

Stephen Douglas and the Freeport DoctrineIf slavery were voted down, it would stay

downIf the laws were passed to protect slavery,

the people would have to enforce them, and they wouldn’t if they disapproved of slavery

Winning Illinois hurts Douglas in his quest for the presidency

27

The Senate Election of 1858

28

John Brown Returns at Harper’s Ferry!1859

29

The Saint, whose fate yet

hangs in suspense, but whose

martyrdom, if it shall be perfected,

will make the gallows as glorious

as the cross-Emerson

Stephen Douglas – popular with northern Democrats

John Breckenridge was favored by southern Democrats

John Bell forms a compromise position known as the “Constitutional Union Party”

Abraham LincolnNon-extension of slavery (Free Soilers are

happy)Protective tariffs (N. manufacturers are happy)Federal funding of internal improvements

(Westerners are happy)Free homesteads (farmers are happy)

A Deeply Divided Democratic Party Prepares for the Election of 1860 vs. the Republicans

30

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 votes

(only about 1.5% in Virginia)

31

Presidential Election of 1860

CANDIDATE POPULAR VOTE

% OF POPULAR

VOTE

ELECTORAL VOTE

J. BELL 592,906 12.61% 39

J. BRECKENRIDG

E

846,356 18.20% 72

S. DOUGLAS 1,382,713 29.40% 12

A.LINCOLN 1,865,593 39.79% 180

32

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. 33

Election of 1860 (popular vote by county)

Copyright (c) Houghton Mifflin Company. All Rights Reserved.

34

35

This shows the opposition of the anti-planter, anti-slavery mountain whites in the Appalachian region. There was also considerable resistance to secession in Texas.

36

Southern Opposition to Secession, 1860–61 (by county)

State SecessionS.

CarolinaDecember 20,

1860Mississip

pi January 9, 1861

Florida January 10, 1861Alabama January 11, 1861Georgia January 19, 1861

Louisiana January 26, 1861Texas February 1, 1861

Virginia April 17, 1861Arkansas May 6, 1861

N. Carolina May 20, 1861

Tennessee June 8, 1861

37

This northern cartoon expressed the sentiment of many people north of the Mason-Dixon line that secession was a self-defeating move, doomed to failure.

38

Jefferson Davis and Secession

Chicago Historical Society