Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act organised Kansas and Nebraska into territories and allowed each to have popular sovereignty, to decide whether they should have slavery or not. This repealed the Missouri Compromise because both territories were above the 36o30 line and within the Louisiana Purchase territory. Whilst the Missouri Compromise said they should not have slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act said that the territories could, should the inhabitants of each territory vote in favour of having slavery.
Few shared Douglas’ view, that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would withdraw "the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, committing it to the arbitration of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for, its consequences”. The far more common response was one of outrage, interpreting Douglas's actions as part of “an atrocious plot”.Especially for northerners, the Act was evidence of a ‘slave power conspiracy’, because the federal government was allowing a situation whereby slavery could expand into the north. Southerners were originally apathetic to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it soon because a symbol of southern honour. By February 1854, anti-slavery proponents began discussing the formation of a new, anti-slavery party. One such of these "anti-Nebraska" local meetings on March 20, 1854, at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin is generally considered the founding meeting of the Republican Party.
Failure of the Whigs
The Whig party was a national political party, which had been active since the middle of the 19th Century. Most Whigs welcomed the changes brought about by industrialisation, but advocated strong government policies that would guide growth and development within the country's existing boundaries. They feared (correctly) that expansion raised a contentious issue the extension of slavery to the territories. Zachary Taylor (nominated in 1848), had been firmly against the 1850 Compromise. But on July 9, 1850, Taylor died and Vice President Millard Fillmore, a long-time Whig, became President. Fillmore helped push the Compromise through Congress in the hopes of ending the controversies over slavery and its five separate bills became law in September 1850.
After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their Southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The north-eastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market, but cared little about slavery one way or another. However, many Whig voters in the North thought that slavery was incompatible with a free labour, free market economy and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which did not pass Congress, but would have stopped the expansion of slavery. No one found a compromise that would keep the party united.
When new issues of nativism, prohibition and anti-slavery burst on the scene in the mid-1850s, few looked to the quickly disintegrating Whig Party for answers. The election of 1852 marked the beginning of the end for the Whigs. The deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that year severely weakened the party. The 1850 Compromise had fractured the Whigs along pro- and anti-slavery lines, with the anti-slavery faction having enough power to deny Fillmore the party's nomination in 1852. The Whig Party's 1852 convention in New York City saw the historic meeting between Alyan E. Bovay and the New York Daily Tribune’s Horace Greenley, a meeting that led to correspondence between the men as the early Republican Party meetings in 1854 began to take place. Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats' Pierce. Whig Representative Lewis Campell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming: "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!".
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread Northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants. In the South, the Whig Party vanished.
Failure of the Know Nothings
The anti-immigration lobby, or ‘Know Nothings’, began as secret societies. Know Nothings produced publications denouncing immigrants for their impious and dirty habits; immigrants were at the root of crime, drunkenness but above all, corruption. They attracted a large number of Protestant voters agitated by a deep-seated fear of Catholicism. Anti-Catholicism then became associated with the reform programme of Protestant social activists campaigning for the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of alcohol.
Between 1853 and 1855, the Know Nothings replaced the Whigs as the nation's second largest party. Using the name American Party, the Know Nothings swept to political victory in Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Kentucky. This in part was down to their ability to exploit anti-slavery and nativist issues. American party tickets also ran strong races in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. By 1854, nativism seemed on the verge of carrying the entire country. In the south they served essentially as the Whigs under a new name.
However, the Know Nothings proved unable to enact their legislative program, with critics claiming that the movement not only knew nothing, but did nothing! But this was not the only issue. A decline of immigration in the mid-1850’s led to a decline in nativism, which was central to their party’s beliefs. Furthermore, Nathaniel Banks left the party and joined the Republican party. He soon became speaker of the House, which helped weld the Republicans into a more coherent party. In a desperate measure to retain sectional unity the Know Nothings supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This alienated northern anti-slavery elements who moved to support the Republicans.Despite its political success in 1854 and 1855, the national Know Nothing Party could not survive the anti-slavery controversy.
Beating of Sumner
The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the beating of Sumer, occurred on May 22, 1856. The event occurred in the United States Senate, when Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, with a walking cane. The attack was in retaliation to a speech given by Sumner two days earlier. In the speech, Sumner denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act; attacked the authors of the Act Douglas and Butler of South Carolina (Brook’s cousin) and mocked Butler’s speaking ability (he had recently had a stroke…). The cane Brooks used was broken into several pieces, which he left on the blood-soaked floor of the Senate chamber.
The episode revealed the polarization in America, as Sumner became a martyr in the North and Brooks a hero in the South. Northerners were outraged. New York Evening Post, asked, "Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters?... Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?". Thousands attended rallies in support of Sumner in Boston, Albany, Cleveland, Detroit, New Haven, New York, and Providence. More than a million copies of Sumner's speech were distributed.
Conversely, Brooks was praised by Southern newspapers. The Richmond Enquirer editorialized that Sumner should be caned "every morning" and denounced "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate" who "have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission." Southerners sent Brooks hundreds of new canes in endorsement of his assault. One was inscribed "Hit him again."
Historian William Gienapp has concluded that Brooks' "assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force."
Dred Scott
Dred Scott was an African American slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott vs. Sanford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott Decision".
Scott claimed that he and his wife should be granted their freedom because they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship of the U.S., and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri (in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory) did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, which the court ruled unconstitutional as it would "improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property".
The decision placed the anti-slavery Republicans in a very difficult situation. They had the choice of either (a) agreeing to honour the decision, implying an acceptance of slavery, or (b) refusing to respect it, which would go against the Constitution's definition of Supreme Court's decisions as the "law of the land." Not surprisingly, Republicans a way around this… They said that after Taney, speaking for the Court's majority, had decided that Scott was not a citizen and therefore did not have the right to be in a federal court, anything else he said was obiter dictum(not legally binding) and therefore not law. Although this conceded the Democrats a small victory (it acknowledged that Scott was not a citizen), this argument threw out the Court's ruling that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, a major victory for the Republicans.
The judges who dissented (disagreed with the ruling), read their dissenting opinions. They immediately released the text of their decisions for publication in print. But Taney (Supreme Court justice who supported the Dred Scott case) withheld his for revising the final decision until late May. This gave the Republicans a decided advantage over the Democrats in the "war of words" because the Republicans had the full text of the two pro-Scott dissents, while the Democrats had to rely on simply a paragraph not even written by one of the Court's justices. The "Republican assault" began as early as March 7. The New York Tribune pronounced that "The decision, we need hardly say, is entitled to just as much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room."
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate fromIllinois, and incumbent SenatorStephen Douglas, the Democratic party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois General Assembly.
Lincoln and Douglas decided to hold one debate in each of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. Because both had already spoken in two districts—Springfield and Chicago—they decided that their "joint appearances" would be held in the remaining seven districts.
- Ottawa on August 21
- Freeport on August 27
- Jonesboro on September 15
- Charleston on September 18
- Galesburg on October 7
- Quincy on October 13
- Alton (not Towers…) on October 15
The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of people from neighbouring states, as the issue of slavery was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation. Newspaper coverages of the debates were intense. Major papers from Chicago sent stenographers (transcriber) to create complete texts of each debate, which newspapers across the United States reprinted in full, with some partisan edits. Newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, pro-Lincoln papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported.
The main theme of the Lincoln–Douglas debates was slavery, particularly the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. It was Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise’s ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalise and perpetuate slavery.
After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book.The widespread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago. Lincoln emerged as spokesman on a national stage.