Causes of the Civil War (Dec. 2007 Version)

Causes of the Civil War (Dec. 2007 version)

Intro: Franklin Pierce was elected in 1852. He lacked a sweeping plan to heal the nation, instead offering a pragmatic, day to day approach to running the country. During this time the Whig party dissolved between the Southern “Cotton Whigs” and the Northern “Conscience Whigs”. During the election the Whigs had supported General Winfield Scott, the southern Whigs had supported Daniel Webster, but he died two weeks prior to the election. The Free Soil party ran John P. Hale.

By the 1840s the south lost control of the HOR. By 1850 with the admission of California and Wisconsin, the Senate was also controlled by free states.

Adding fuel to the fire, demographers believed that the slave population would reach 10 million by 1890. Therefore if slavery was allowed to expand geographically it would eventually outnumber the white population in the South creating a ruling white minority. This was viewed as too risky.

I. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill- Stephen Douglas introduced the Bill in Jan. 1854 for the organization of the Nebraska Territory. Part of his motivation for moving the issue forward was his desire to establish Chicago as the eastern terminus of the yet to be built transcontinental railroad (he needed Southern support, therefore he needed to appease them in issues of expansion). Douglas wanted a San Francisco/St. Louis/Chicago line.

A. Jefferson Davis was the primary advocate of a Southern route.

B. Kansas was technically supposed to be free soil according to the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

C. Opponents of Slavery did not accept a popular sovereignty vote in the territories and Douglas underestimated the effect that slavery had gained as a moral issue in the 1850s.

1. For example, a 250 ft petition was presented on the floor of the Senate which contained the signatures of over 3,000 New England clergymen stating their opposition to the Kansas Nebraska bill.

D. Douglas once stated that he regarded the Missouri Compromise as a “sacred thing, which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb.

1. Douglas would be that hand. He violated the pseudo constitutional nature of the Missouri Compromise.

2. Douglas believed that he was delegating the sensitive slavery issue to the states, and therefore taking it out of the national debate.

E. Why did it pass? Douglas demonstrated very powerful parliamentary skills to get it passed and President Franklin Pierce was eager to sign the bill into law.

II. A New Political Party- On March 3, 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Two weeks later, President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a group of Northern Democrats and anti-Nebraska Whigs met in Jackson, MI and adopted the name “Republican.” The party claimed to oppose the expansion of slavery, and believed in the dignity of free labor. The Republican party adopted the slogan: “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.”

The Republicans opposed the spread of slavery, but they were opposed for different reasons. The timing of the creation of the Republican party was not a coincidence. The Republican party’s creation was furthered by the passage of the Kansas Nebraska bill.

A. The Democrats also faced opposition from the American Party, aka, the “Know-Nothings”. The American Party was opposed to Catholics and foreign born citizens. Irish were targets of American Party aggression. Members of the American party feared the dogma of Catholicism, as well as disagreeing over major tenets of Christian ideology.

Kansas

III. Bleeding Kansas- “One grim free soiler made himself the agent of ravage retribution, John Brown. Brown led a small band of his sons and followers in a midnight attack on the sleeping community at Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five settlers with broadswords that Brown had specifically sharpened for the task. The Missourians took revenge by burning the Free Soil town of Osawatamie and killed one of Brown’s sons.

The following quote is an example of Brown’s religious fanaticism:

“Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by the wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.”

A. Missouri’s Senator Atchinson- “There are eleven hundred coming over from Platte Country to vote, and if that ain’t enough we can send five thousand, enough to kill every God-Damned Abolitionist in the territory.”

A. The Caning of Sumner- Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner gave a two-day denunciation of the Crime Against Kansas. Sumner charged that Senator Andrew Butler (SC) had taken “slavery as his mistress.” (as well as a slave woman). Sumner further chastised Butler for his garbled speech that was partially due to a previous stroke. As Sumner delivered his speech Stephen Douglas is claimed to have said, “that damned fool is going to get himself killed by some other damn fool.”

1. A few days later Congressman Preston Brooks (Cousin of Andrew Butler) walked into the Senate and caned Sumner into unconsciousness.

Brooks returned to South Carolina, was reelected, and sent hundreds of canes from admirers throughout the South.

2. Sumner was reelected by the people of Massachusetts and his desk in the Senate would remain empty for three years in protest until he was well enough to return.

B. Lecompton v. Topeka- A new Governor named Robert Walker called for a state convention to create a legitimate state. Free soilers refused to participate claiming that proslave officials divided the voting districts unfairly. The Lecompton constitution was thoroughly unsatisfactory to Free Soilers because it had a clause allowing slavery in the territory.

1. Gov. Walker continued to work for unifying the territory and reaching out to the Free Soilers.

2. The “Lecompton Constitution” was pushed into Congress by President Buchanan. The Senate ratified the Constitution For Kansas, against the struggles of Stephen A. Douglas. On the other hand, the HOR rejected Kansas’ application for statehood.

3. Kansas would not achieve statehood until most of the South seceded from the Union.

IV. 1856 Election- Republicans ran a presidential candidate for office. Republicans denounced the Ostend Manifesto (Southern attempt to invade Cuba if Spain would sell Cuba. Cuba could then enter as slave territory.

A. Democrats ran James Buchanan, one of the original authors of the Ostend Manifesto. The Republicans chose John C. Fremont. By this time the republicans had brought in more Whigs by coming out in favor of funding for a transcontinental railroad.

A republican congressman was so incensed by his belief that Buchanan was a slave sympathizer that he stated: "I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man ... shall assert his freedom and wage a war of extermination against his master."

V. The Dred Scott decision-

A. Dred Scott was formerly the property of John Emerson, an army doctor. Emerson bought Scott as a slave in Missouri and then took him to Illinois, a free state. After Emerson died, Scott sued in Missouri state court on the grounds that he was free due to the fact that he lived in a free state. He won his case, but the decision was reversed in an appeal.

B. The Supreme Court faced two central questions in the Dred Scott decision

1. Did Dred Scott have th right as a Negro to file suit in the federal courts

2. Did Dred Scott’s sojourn into free territory qualify him as a free man?

C. Decision The Court ruled six to three that Dred was not free and that as a negro could sue in court or have the same rights as a United States citizen.

1. Chief Justice Taney ruled that slaves were protected as property under fifth amendment, which stated that property could not be taken from a citizen without due process of law.

D. Scott was manumitted by his owner four months after the Supreme Court’s decision.

VI. The Freeport Doctrine-

A. Lincoln- contain slavery, do not abolish the institution. Lincoln brought the Dred Scott decision into this debate. He asked Douglas, “Suppose, the people of a territory should vote slavery down? The Supreme Court declared that they could not. Who would prevail, the Court or the people?”

B. Douglas-(his answer became known as the Freeport Doctrine) Slavery needed “slave codes” to help sustain the institution. If you do not allow slave codes in the territories, then slavery cannot continue to exist. This idea infuriated southern Democrats with Douglas.

1. Douglas conducted a large scale smear campaign to paint Lincoln as a rabid abolitionist areas were blacks were feared and hated.

C. Lincoln’s campaign speech (1858):

“A house divided against itself cannot stand

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved

I do not expect the house to fall- but I do expect it will cease to be divided

It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

VII. John Brown: Murderer or Martyr?

A. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, VA. October 1859. Brown seized the federal arsenal with 20 men, killing seven people. The attack was quickly put down by Virginia Militia troops under the command of Robert E. Lee. Brown was quickly tried and put to death. Three of his son’s died in the attack. One was already dead from the attack in Kansas.

B. While northerners had mixed feelings concerning John Brown, the South perceived him as everything they feared about abolitionism in the north. The south firmly believed the north was filled with radical abolitionists planning on threatening the Southern social order.

C. John Brown said on December 2, 1859, the day he died, “the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away; but with blood.”