THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT, THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT, AND “BLEEDING KANSAS
UNIT #13A & 13B
Background:
The Compromise of 1850 settled none of the key issues dividing the nation. In retrospect we can see that one of its results was the beginning of the end of the Whig Party and the meteoric rise of the Republican Party and an obscure Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln. The issue that brought Lincoln and the Republicans onto the national stage was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and Lincoln’s famous debates with Senator Stephen A, Douglas. In this lecture we will examine three events that increased northern anti-slavery militancy, transformed national politics, and determined the outcome of thepresidential election of 1856: (1) The fugitive slave issue, (2) the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and (3) and the civil war in Kansas.
I. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ISSUE
A. THE PIERCE ADMINISTRATION (DEMOCRAT) ENFORCED THE
FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
B. THE FALLOUT FROM THE ANTHONY BURNS CASE
______
C. THE CASE OF MARGARET GARNER
II. THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854
A. THE ISSUE: ______
______
B. DOUGLAS’S TWO-FOLD SOLUTION:
1. ______
2. ______
C. LINCOLN’S CASE V. DOUGLAS:
1. The founding fathers had opposed slavery. Three points of evidence:
a. Adopted the Declaration of Independence asserting all men were created equal.
b. Enacted Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banning slavery from Northwest Territory.
c. Though owning slaves, they asserted hostility to slavery in principle while tolerating
it temporarily in practice. That was why they did not mention the words “slave” or
“slavery” in the Constitution” but referred only to “persons held in service.”
2. In light of above,two actions required:
#1: ______, which the fathers did with the Northwest
Ordinance, the prohibition of the African slave trade in 1807, and the MC of 1820.
#2: ______
3. Lincoln admitted that the Constitution protected slavery ______
______. But that did not justify allowing slavery to spread into free territories.
4. “The great “moral wrong and injustice” of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was that it
______, thus putting the institution “on the high
road to extension and perpetuity” instead of restricting it in order gradually to end it.
5. Popular sovereignty was “false in principle and pernicious in practice,” said Lincoln:
Itassumed thatthe question of slavery in a territory concerned ______
______. In reality, it affected the future of the whole nation.
6. Lincoln called Douglas’s assertion that natural conditions would prevent bondage from
taking root in Kansasa “LULLIBY argument.” “Climate will not…keep slavery out
of these territories…nothing in nature will.” The only way to stop them was for
Congress to vote slavery out.
7. But such action, Douglas protested, would violate the “sacred right of
self-government.” Nonsense, replied Lincoln. Slavery was contrary to that right.
“When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs
himself, and also governs another man…that is despotism…The Negro is a
man…There can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of
another,” “Let no one be deceived,” concluded Lincoln:
“The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska, are utter antagonisms….Little by
little…we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we
began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we
have run down to the other direction, that for some men to enslave others is a ‘sacred
right of self-government.’ These principles cannot stand together….Our republican
robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it….Let us re-adopt the
Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices and policy, which harmonize
with it….If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so
saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.” [129]
D. THE TWO-FOLD SIGNIFICANCE OF LINCOLN’S SPEECHES:
1. ______
2. ______
E. KANSAS-NEBRASKA FINISHED OFF THE WHIG PARTY
F. THE RISE OF NATIVISM AND A POWERFUL NATIVIST PARTY, 1854-1856
1. The rise of nativism and a powerful nativist party which came to be known as the
______. Their main goal was to ______
______.
The antislavery movement grew from the same cultural soil of evangelical
Protestantism as temperance and nativism.
2. By 1855, Republicans and Know-Nothings had succeeded in breaking down the Whigs
and weakening the Democrats in most parts of the North. In 1854, the Know-Nothings
(the American Party) had elected 50 congressmen to the House of Representatives; the
Republicans 105. But it remained uncertain which of these two parties would emerge
as the principle alterative to the Democrats.
3. Within less than two years, however (by February 1856), the Republicans had surged
to become the North’s majority party. What made possible this remarkable eclipse of
the Know-Nothings? The main reason could be expressed in two words: “______
______.” Events in that far-off territory convinced most northerners that the
Slave Power was a much greater threat to republican liberty than the Pope was.
III. “BLEEDING KANSAS” (THE CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS)
SIGNIFICANCE: THE CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS SHAPED THE CONTEXT FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1856.
A. HAVING LOST THE BATTLEIN CONGRESS FOR A FREE KANSAS,
ANTI-SLAVERY MEN DETERMINED TO WAGE WAR ON THE KANSAS
PRAIRIE.
1. The first act of the newly “elected” legislature at ______was to impose
a fine an imprisonment for expressing opinions against slavery, authorizing the death
penalty for encouraging slave revolts or helping slaves escape, required all voters to
take an oath to uphold these laws, and retroactively legalized the border ruffian ballots
requiring no prior residence in Kansas in order to vote.
2. BUT PRO-SLAVERY SETTLERS HAD NO INTENTION OF OBEYING THESE
LAWS OR OF RECOGNIZING THE “BOGUS LEGISLATURE” THAT HAD
PASSED THEM. Free soil delegates met in ______Topeka in October 1855
and drew up a free-state constitution and called elections for a new legislature and
government.
3. By January 1856, Kansas had two territorial governments: the official one at
Lecompton and an unofficial one at Topeka representing an actual majority of actual
residents.
B. THE NATIONAL DEBATE ON KANSAS
1. Both Republicans and democrats in Congress introduced bills for the admission of
Kansas as a state.
a. Southerners viewed this matter as ______
b. Democratic support of proslavery excesses in Kansas offered a ready-made
opportunity to dramatize yet another slave-power attack on northern rights.
C. BLEEDING SUMNER
1. For North, this attack was viewed as a symbol of ______
2. The South view of the caning of Sumner: ______
D. JOHN BROWN
1. Impact on presidential election of 1856: ______
E. THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1856
1. For mainstream Republicans, ______not Roman Catholicism,
was the real danger that threatened American liberties.
2. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan. The platform endorsed (1) ______
______, (2)______, (3)______,
and (4)______.
3. The key issues were ______, ______, and above all, ______.
4. The threats of secession proved effective. To preserve the Union, enough former
Whigs voted for Buchanan who won the election.
5. The vital struggle took place in the lower-North states of Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Illinois, and New Jersey.
F. THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION DEFEATED
1. Buchanan was determined to resolve the Kansas crisis by submitting the constitution
being drafted at Lecompton to a referendum.
2. With Democratic control of Congress, and southern control of the Democratic Party,
pro-slavery forces decided to send the constitution and petition for statehood to
Congress without a referendum—in defiance of pledges made by President Buchanan
and Governor Walker.
a. The pro-slavery Lecompton constitutional convention declared that “the right of
property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the
owner of a slave…is…an inviolable as the right of owners of any property
whatever.”
b. On February 2, 1858, Buchanan sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress with a
message recommending admission of a sixteenth slave state. It seemed a “done
deal.”
3. But Douglas, leader of the northern Democrats, stunned his southern colleagues by
opposing Lecompton, declaring that he could never vote to “force this constitution
down the throats of the people of Kansas, in opposition to their wishes and in violation
of our pledges.”
4. On April 1, in a dramatic roll call, 22 of 53 northern Democrats joined the Republicans
and a handful of Know Nothings to defeat Lecompton by a vote of 120 to 112. Kansas
finally became a free state in January 1861, joining California, Minnesota, and Oregon,
whose entry since the Mexican War had given the North a four-state edge over the
South.
G. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEFEAT OF LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION
1. It destroyed Douglas’ hope to win the presidency in 1860.
2. ______
3. The whole Kansas affair had strengthened ______
to the point where it was now the dominant party in the North.
Copyrighted 3/23/04: AFR
All rights reserved
Then a development of great significance occurred in 1855. The slavery issue began
to split the Know-Nothings along sectional lines. The logical place for anti-slavery
Know Nothings to go was into the Republican Party. Lincoln was not happy to see
them enter. “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a
nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically
read it ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get
control, it will read ‘all men are created equal except negroes, and foreigners, and
catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where
they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism
can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” [141]
1