Topic 12

Sectional Conflict: The Union Breaks Up

A. Trouble Begins during the War

1. Question of slavery in the territories of the West came up in August 1846 when Polk asked Congress to pass a bill giving him $2 million to be used to conduct talks with Mexico (Two Million Bill).

2. David Wilmot and The Wilmot Proviso – August 1846 – Slavery would not be permitted in any of the new territories acquired from Mexico. Touched off a bitter debate in Congress!

3. Polk’s Response – Extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific coast

4. Election of 1848 – Polk exhausted and did not seek reelection.

– Lewis Cass – Democrats

– Zachery Taylor – Whigs

– Martin Van Buren – Free-Soil Party: free land to western settlers and no slavery in the West.

– The Ralph Nader of his day! – He drew enough votes away from the Democrats in his home state of NY to allow the Whigs to win.

– Taylor 163, Cass 127 (NY: 36 electoral votes)

B. Zachery Taylor Takes Over

1. The George Bush of his day, and he did not care what happened to slavery

2. Taylor’s proposal:

– Organize new state governments (not territorial governments) in California and NM.

– Let the people there decide if they want slavery – “popular sovereignty”

– Americans in California quickly wrote a state constitution prohibiting slavery.

– Looked like NM would do the same!

3. The Southern response – No!

4. Henry Clay steps forward and tries to find a compromise:

– Admission of California as a free state

– Territorial governments in the rest – popular sovereignty

– Slave trade abolished in D.C.

– New Federal Fugitive Slave Act to help southern slave owners capture runaway slaves

5. Zachery Taylor opposed but fate intervened

6. Millard Fillmore becomes the new president

7. Compromise:

– California admitted as a free state

– NM and Utah organized on basis of popular sovereignty

– Slave trade abolished in D.C.

– Federal Fugitive Act – State and local officials were to work with federal courts in recapturing runaway slaves.

C. Election of 1852

1. The Candidates

– Franklin Pierce – Supported

– Winfield Scott – ????

2. Outcome indicated for the time being most supported the compromise: Pierce won, 252-42

D. The Pierce Presidency – Briefly, in the eye of the storm

1. A metaphor: If slavery controversy that led to war can be compared to a hurricane, Pierce came to the White House in the eye of the storm.

But things happened that destroyed the eye, and the storm grew worse and led us to war in just a few years.

2. Controversy over the Fugitive Slave Act

– A number of states passed Personal Liberty Laws – nullification!

– Infuriated southerners! This was all they had gotten out of the Compromise!

3. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin – March 1852

– Runaway best seller – 300,000 copies in a year (3 million today!)

– Soon presented as a stage play, and many who never read the book were exposed to it in this way.

– Told the story of the slave woman Eliza who was trying to escape from slavery across the frozen Ohio River from Kentucky to Ohio, and she is pursued by the cruel slave overseer Simon Legree.

– The book and the play inflamed public opinion North and South

• In the North it increased anti-slavery sentiment and the determination of Northerners to keep slavery out of the West.

• Southerners considered it to be a false and distorted picture of slavery. Said the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger: “I would have the review as hot as hellfire, blasting and searing the reputation of the vile wretch in petticoats who could write such a volume.”

• Said Lincoln in 1862: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”

4. Stephen A. Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska controversy

– Grew out of the question of building a transcontinental railroad line. The great question was, where would the line be located?

§ South favored a southern route – Gadsden Purchase Treaty signed with Mexico.

§ Northerners wanted a northern route. Main argument against is that it would run through a lot of uninhabited territory.

– Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois –

§ Wanted a northern line that ended in Chicago

§ His idea: pass legislation that would organize a new territory – people would move in and there would be business for the railroad.

§ Then you could argue that it made sense to build a line that followed a northern route.

§ Jan 1854 – called for organization of territory of Nebraska

§ Southerners objected: north of 36-30 and Nebraska would be a free territory/state.

– Rewrote his bill: Two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska – popular sovereignty

– Strongly opposed in the North but Pierce supported and passed – May 1854

5. Consequence: Bleeding Kansas (and the bleeding not confined to Kansas)

6. The (modern) Republican Party and the election of 1856

– Meetings held in many places in the North to protest the Kansas-Nebraska Act and out of these meetings came the new Republican Party

– John C. Fremont vs. James Buchanan

– Outcome tells us that the Republican Party was a sectional party; it had NO membership in the South

– Meanwhile, the Whig Party was falling apart

E. The Buchanan Presidency

1. The Dred Scott Decision – March 6, 1857

– Dred Scott, a slave, was suing for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived outside the South with his owner, John Emerson, an Army surgeon.

– Written by Roger B. Taney –

• Slaves are not citizens and cannot sue in either federal or state courts. Could have stopped there, but did not.

• Residence in Minnesota did not entitle him to his freedom, because the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

• Pointed to Fifth Amendment – Congress cannot deprive any person of their property “without due process of law.”

• Missouri Compromise interferes with the ownership of property and violates Fifth Amendment; therefore it is unconstitutional.

– To sum up: blacks are not citizens, and the part of the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery north of 36-30 is, and always has been, unconstitutional.

– The reaction North and South

2. The Illinois Senate Race of 1858: Stephen A. Douglas vs. Abraham Lincoln

– Lincoln lost, but …

– In loosing, he became one of the rising stars in the new Republican Party.

3. John Brown’s raid, October 16, 1859 – Had much the same effect as Uncle Tom’s Cabin

F. The Election of 1860 and Secession

1. Democrats hopelessly divided:

– Northern – Still supported popular sovereignty

– Southern – Wanted laws passed protecting slavery everywhere in the West

– Stephen A. Douglas – Northern Democrats

– John C. Breckinridge – Southern Democrats

2. Constitutional Union Party – John Bell

3. Republican Party – Lincoln – He was a free-soiler, not an abolitionist! To Southerners, no difference!

4. The outcome: with 42% of the popular vote and 180 Lincoln won enough states to defeat all his opponents, but he got no votes in the South.

5. Secession

– After Lincoln’s election and before his inauguration, 7 states voted to leave the union:

– SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, and TX

– AR, TN, NC, and VA did not secede at this time but warned they would oppose attempts to force a state to return to the union.

6. February 1861 – Delegates from the 7 southern states met in Montgomery, AL and organized the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis of MS chosen president.

7. Buchanan – Did nothing!

– Secession impossible

– Could do nothing to force the states to return to the Union.

8. So, the next move was up to Mr. Lincoln

Topic 12 Review

• What was the Wilmot Proviso?
• How did Martin Van Buren and the Free-Soil Party influence the outcome of the election of 1848?
• What do we mean when we say the name “Free-Soil Party” had a double meaning?
• What was Zachary Taylor’s view on slavery and how did he try to settle the slavery/territorial question that grew out of the Mexican War?
• Why did southerners not like his proposal?
• What were the terms of the Compromise of 1850?
• Who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and what was its effect in both the North and the South?

• Who was the Senator who was responsible for passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
• What was the importance of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and how did this lead to the organization of the modern Republican Party? What happened to the Whig Party?
• What was the importance of “bleeding Kansas”?
• When was the modern-day Republican Party organized?

• What did Chief Justice Taney say in the Dred Scott decision?
• What was the importance of the Illinois Senate race of 1858?
• Who were the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in the election of 1860?
• What happened in the lower southern states after Lincoln’s election?
• What was Buchanan’s view about the secession of the southern states?
• What did Buchanan do about the secession of the southern states?