Lecture S14 -- Victory Leads to Disunion

The Problem of the Conquered Lands

Missouri Compromise and Western Expansion: Oregon clearly fell in the 1820 free state zone. Some (if not all) of the conquered western lands fell in the slavery-allowed zone. But many Northerners were increasingly turning against slavery and wished to prevent a massive expansion of the land theoretically open to slavery.

Wilmot Proviso: The Wilmot Proviso amended an appropriations bill in 1846 for the Mexican war—it stipulated that any conquests would become free territories. This angered many Southerners, especially when he said he wanted to make these lands fit for white settlers; variants of the Proviso passed the House (dominated by men from free states) dozens of times between 1846 and 1850; the Senate, where slave and free states were equal, kept rejecting it.

1848 Election: Both parties wanted to avoid destructive conflict. Lewis Cass of Michigan endorsed Popular Sovereignty—the settlers of each territory decide slavery’s fate. The Whigs nominated successful general Zachary Taylor, avoiding any discussion of slavery at all. Some anti-Slavery Whigs bolted to the Free Soil Party, which opposed extension of slavery to the territories. The Free Soil Party ran a strong campaign, but Taylor triumphed.

California Presses the Issue: The conquered areas were so thinly settled that things might have stayed peaceful for a while. However, in 1849, the Gold Rush began in California. This rapidly pressed California’s population and built pressure for statehood. California applied to be a free state—ie, whites only, no slavery. However, part of California was south of the 1820 line, and it would have tipped the balance of the Senate, as no slave territories were available to balance it yet.

Mormons: Deseret to Utah Territory: The Mormons briefly tried to claim a huge territory, which was reduced to the Utah Territory. But would it be slave or free?

Texas vs. New Mexico: Texas and New Mexico are close to blows over control of what is now eastern New Mexico—the area east of the Rio Grande claimed by Texas. New Mexico wanted to be a free territory.

The Compromise of 1850

Taylor’s Position: Taylor endorsed popular sovereignty to the surprise of many—let Californians decide for themselves. He called for immediate admission of New Mexico and California (basically as free states). Taylor was more interested in expanding national power and forwarding democracy than in protecting slavery. The South opposed this plan as it would give 17 Free and only 15 slave states with no prospects for more slave states and lots for more free ones. .

Clay’s Compromise: HenryClay put forward his last great proposal, a five part compromise:

Admission of California as a Free State

Popular Sovereignty for Utah and New Mexico

End Slave Trade in District of Columbia

Pass a Fugitive Slave Law

Pay Texas 10 million to give up its claims to land in New Mexico.

But Clay’s compromise measure all failed, defeated in the Senate, despite Daniel Webster stepping into the ring to sacrifice his political credit to support it.

The Second Generation is Dying: Calhoun goes home and dies, Taylor dies of intestinal problems after eating cherries and milk in the hot sun. Clay goes home, dies two years later.

Stephen Douglas Takes Command: Stephen A. Douglas, senator from Illinois, stepped in to create separate bills and build a special majority for each one. The result settled the crisis, though it left no one really happy.

The Fugitive Slave Law

Provisions: The Constitution made provision for the creation of laws to extradite those who owed forced service in a state. The Fugitive Slave Law required state authorities to cooperate with federal attempts to capture and return escaped slaves; it was wildly unpopular in the North. It also created a force of federal commissioners to hunt down slaves; there was no statute of limitations and those who failed to cooperate could be fined and jailed; cases were tried in special courts with a financial incentive to convict.

Black Associations: The 400,000 free Blacks in the North feared for their lives and freedom and formed associations to resist any attempt to re-enslave them. Some fled to Canada. (Maybe as many as 20,000).

Boston: In February of 1851, when Frederick Minikins, a black waiter, was taken by slave-catchers, Boston blacks stormed the courthouse, freed him, and sent him to Canada. In April of 1854, Federal troops had to be sent to Boston to prevent local blacks and abolitionists from storming the court where fugitive Anthony Burns was being tried in the fugitive slave courts, then escorted by over 1500 men to the port to be sent back to his master. This was ludicrously expensive compared to Burns' value as a slave and his master promptly sold him to someone who then sold him to the Boston Abolitionists once he got home.

States Rights: Those who opposed the Fugitive Slave Act in the North called on ideas of states’ rights, arguing that the Fugitive Slave Act overrode the ability of free states to declare themselves free of slavery. Another example of how States Rights tends to be used to try to defy actions of the Federal government which people in a locality don’t like but can’t override directly. It also shows such ideas held credence in the North and the South.

Results: Most blacks in the North remained free, but many recent escapees were hauled back to the South. It produced a massive anti-slavery backlash in the North, heightening fear of ‘The Slave Power’.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe: The daughter of Boston Unitarian minister and abolitionist Henry Beecher, Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851, which became the signature book of Abolition. Stowe asserted the book was inspired by reading about an escaped slave who became a minister in Canada, the Reverend Josiah Henson. Stowe’s story is a stirring melodrama of slave families torn apart by slavery and of an old slave, Uncle Tom’s attempts to protect the younger slaves from the harsher aspects of slavery. It includes a dramatic slave escape in the middle of winter of a young mother and her child, a fair range of masters from the kind to the hideously cruel, and Stowe’s own advocacy of what might be called ‘Christian passive resistance’ to slavery. She did not endorse violent slave uprisings, but called on slaves to resist any evil commands as best they could without violence. Stowe depicted a variety of white southerners from benevolent masters to the cruel slave master Simon Legree who eventually beats Uncle Tom to death because Tom won't beat other slaves for him.

The Firestorm: Northerners loved the book and bought it in droves; Southerners went crazy. It sold 10,000 copies in its first week, 300,000 in the first year, and 3 million copies in America by 1861. (It cost 37.5 cents or $2.50-5.00 if you wanted the engraved fancy version with pictures.) In Britain, the first edition of it came out in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. Only the Bible sold more copies. Various stage plays were based on it; there was no effective copyright law at the time, so Stowe never saw any of the profits. Despite the sympathetic portrayal of most masters as three-dimensional men of both conscience and cruelty, Southerners hated it. Some produced their own whitewashed works about slavery.

The Election of 1852

Whigs: Many Northern Whigs were angry over the Compromise of 1850; they rejected Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded Taylor and helped to put it through. They nominated General Winfield Scott on the assumption that a war hero would win the election. However, he gave an anti-slavery speech, causing many Southern Whigs, who were major slave owners, to bail out of the Whig party.

Democrats: The Democrats needed a national candidate who could draw votes in both halves of the country. Franklin Pierce was a “Doughface”, a Northerner from New Hampshire who was nevertheless friendly to slavery and supported Southern interests in that area. Further, he was a 'Dark Horse', previously unknown nationally, no one hated him and everyone in the party could agree to support him and could basically assume he would do what they wanted.

Results: Pierce wins, 1.6 million to 1.3 million popular, 254 EV to 42 EV. The Whigs were crushed and now collapsed as a party; the Democrats emerged victorious, but there were now internal conflicts over the problem of the extension of slavery. This marks the end of the second party system.

The Pierce Administration

Slavery: The political conflicts of the 1850s largely revolved around slavery; the questions which had driven Whig/Democrat conflict were overshadowed now by the problems inherent in slavery and by the rise of a sectional party dedicated to its destruction.

Franklin Pierce and Nationalism: Focusing on national expansion seemed a logical way to counteract the growing specter of sectional conflict. It had worked for James K. Polk, the last Democratic president. Pierce sought to find new lands for slavery to expand to, so as to maintain a sectional balance and alleviate Southern fears of isolation.

Young America: Young America was a Democratic Party movement of the children of the Jacksonian generation, the grand-children of the Founding Fathers, who wanted to push national expansion as a policy. They supported the growth of commerce and industry and wanted new territories for markets and new land for agriculture. They also supported national improvements, such as a Transcontinental Railroad, unlike their parents' generation of Democrats. Franklin Pierce was part of this movement. (Some Democrats, like Andrew Johnson, fiercely resisted the acceptance of industry and commerce by Democrats, sticking to traditional Jacksonianism. Especially in the South.) Cuba and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) were especial targets.

The Gadsden Purchase (1853): Many Southerners proposed a transcontinental railroad to run through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. James Gadsden was a friend of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Pierce's Secretary of War. Gadsden was made Ambassador to Mexico, and bought the lands of the Gadsden Purchase along a planned route; 45,000 square miles for 10 million dollars.

(Next Slide!)

Cuba: Spanish Cuba was already home to slavery, and Pierce wanted to buy it. Unfortunately, overly fiery Pierre Soule, already kicked out of France, was chosen as US Ambassador to Spain. Shortly after his arrival, he ended up challenging the French ambassador, Turgot, to a duel after a guest at a party thrown by Turgot was rude to Soule's wife, insulting her low-cut dress. He lamed Turgot for life. Soule met with James Buchanan (ambassador to Britain) and John Y. Mason (minister to France) in Ostend, Belgium, to lay plans for approaching Spain about buying Cuba (with possibly up to 120 million dollars.) They issued the Ostend Manifesto, which declared first peaceful negotiations should be tried, but if that failed—TIME FOR VIOLENCE. They claimed that “by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power, and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home. Under such circumstances we ought neither to count the cost nor regard the odds which Spain might enlist against us.” (Bailey, Diplomatic History, p. 295.) (Spain had begun emancipating slaves in Cuba in 1854; many Americans feared it would be trouble for slavery at home. This is the 'fire' they referred to.) It was supposed to be secret but soon went public and caused huge outrage internationally. This scuttled any hope of acquiring Cuba; too many Americans opposed a war to grab it to go that way.

Foreign Adventurers: Some Americans (and others) known as “Filibusterers” tried to seize various parts of Latin America for the United States (or for themselves).

Narciso Lopez: Under Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce, Venezuelan adventurer Narciso Lopez attempted expeditions to Cuba in 1850 and 1851, both of which ended badly. The last one ended with him and fifty followers being executed and over a hundred being put on a chain gang. This led to anti-Spanish riots across the US. (Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the United States, pp. 288-9). Some in Spain called for war. Ultimately, the survivors were pardoned and the US paid $25,000 in compensation for damage done by rioters to Spanish property in the USA.

William Walker: A patriotic Southerner who wanted to gain more land for Southern style slavery. He was a doctor, lawyer, and newspaperman who was imbued with the revolutionary spirit from living through the 1848 revolutions in Europe. In 1853-4, he mounted an expedition to seize Baja California and Sonora Province, for fear French filibusterers would seize it before he could. He had some initial success, seizing Baja California with 200 men and proclaiming the Republic of Sonora. However, his skills were not up to the task and his force fell apart and he had to flee. In 1855, one of the factions in a civil war in Nicaragua asked for his help and he came with a group of followers, crushed the other faction and took over the country. His legalization of slavery and revocation of the Vanderbilt Steamship Company's monopoly on boat transit led Cornelius Vanderbilt to ally with rebels against him and to convince Costa Rica to invade. He fled in 1857. Attempts to return later in 1857 and in 1860 were failures and in 1860, he was executed. .

The Problem of Kansas:

Douglas and the Transcontinental Railroad: Douglas wished to run a railroad from Chicago to the Pacific. This required the organization of the Kansas-Nebraska territories and the clearing out of the Indians. This required settling if they would be free or slave territories.

The Kansas Nebraska Act: 1854. It provided that Popular Sovereignty would be applied at the time of state formation; it assumed Kansas would go slave and Nebraska go free. It thus repealed the Missouri Compromise and touched off a firestorm.

Bleeding Kansas: Both sides recruited settlers to go to Kansas and fight for control of it. “Beecher’s Bibles” were rifles purchased by funds raised by Congregationalist minister Henry Beecher.

Fraudulent Election of 1855: A March 1855 election was rigged by people coming over from Missouri to vote; it returned a pro-slavery legislature. Free states assembled in Topeka; pro-slavery in Lecompton.

Civil War: Fighting now erupted from the fall of 1855 to the spring of 1856.

“Sack of Lawrence”: May 21, 1856: Pro-slavery forces attack Lawrence, Kansas, damaging the town and looting. No one actually dies. Three days later, John Brown goes on a killing spree in revenge.

Beating of Sumner: Senator Charles Sumner is mugged on the Senate floor on May 22, 1856, by SC Representative Preston Brooks for his insults towards SC senator Andrew Butler during a speech on the Kansas fighting.

The Coming of Secession

The Rise of the Republican Party

Immigration: A great tide of immigrants flooded in from Germany and Ireland between 1848 and 1860; this kicked off a new reaction of nativism, which gained new force as the Whigs collapsed.

Nativism: These immigrants were often Catholic, triggering anti-immigration sentiments in the protestant communities which had been the core of the Whigs in the north and they tended to support the democrats. This helped to lead some Whigs into joining the rising nativist movements.

Know-Nothing Party: A nativist organization founded in New York in 1843; it proclaimed great secrecy, but was known to be anti-immigrant. They were also strongly anti-Catholic and many of the Irish and German immigrants of the 1840s-50s were Catholic. In 1845, they became the Native American Party; in 1855, the American Party. They made a strong showing in the 1854 election, trying hard to avoid entanglement in the slavery question. This led them to organize more formally into a full-blown national party, the American Party. Know-Nothings swept Maine in 1854 and held power in Indiana, California, Maine, and Pennsylvania. At their height, they claimed a million members across the country. However, the problem of slavery eventually split the party on regional lines; most of the northern branch defected to the Republicans after 1856.

The Republican Party: Founded by anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats in 1854; it endorsed strong government action to promote social reforms while avoiding the ethnic and religious hatreds of the Know-Nothings, who were soon absorbed by it.

Sectional Party: The Republicans were predominantly Northern.

Economic Development: The Republicans supported the old Whig agenda of economic development, seeing the South as having stymied it.

Election of 1856: The Republicans ran in their first big national election, up against what remained of the Know-Nothings and the Democrats. The Democrats were torn by the problem of slavery. The Republicans ran John C. Fremont; the Democrats chose James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian favorable to slavery. The Know-Nothings split—The ‘north Americans’ nominated Fremont reluctantly; the ‘South Americans’ nominated Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won because he was seen as the only really national candidate.