Transcript Part One: - Schoolwires

Chapter Fifteen
The Coming Crisis, the
1850s
Part One:
Introduction
Chapter Focus Questions
Why did the Whigs and Democrats fail to find a
lasting political compromise on the issue of slavery?
What caused the end of the Second American Party
System and the rise of the Republican Party?
Why did the secession of the southern states follow
the Republican Party victory in the election of
1860?
Part Two:
Illinois Communities Debate
Slavery
This poster advertises Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, the bestselling novel by
Harriet Beecher Stowe. This
poignant story of long-suffering
African American slaves had an
immense impact on Northern
popular opinion, swaying it decisively
against slavery. In that respect, the
poster’s boast, “the greatest book of
the age” was correct.
SOURCE:©Bettmann/CORBIS (BE001033).
Illinois Communities Debate Slavery
Illinois voters gathered in 1858 Lincoln and Douglas.
Douglas accused Lincoln of favoring social equality of whites and
blacks.
Lincoln denied this and accused Douglas of supporting the spread
of slavery.
Douglas won the senatorial election
Debates established both Lincoln and the Republican Party.
Slavery question had divided American communities
Americans strongly valued their democratic institutions.
Part Three:
America in 1850
Expansion and Growth
Map: U. S. Population and Settlement, 1850
America grew rapidly in the first half of the
19th century.
Nation experienced great growth of:
Wealth
Industry
Urbanization. Equally important, southern
economic influence was waning.
MAP 15.1 U.S. Population and Settlement, 1850 By 1850, the United States was a continental
nation. Its people, whom Thomas Jefferson had once thought would not reach the Mississippi River
for forty generations, had not only passed the river, but leapfrogged to the west coast. In
comparison to the America of 1800 (see Map 9.1 on p. 238), the growth was astounding.
Expansion and Growth
Southern economic influence was waning.
Politics, Culture, and National Identity
Pride in democracy was one unifying theme
New middle-class values supported by institutions
and culture.
Politics, Culture, and National Identity
An American Renaissance produced writers:
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson who
experimented with poetic form
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville who
wrote about the darker side of human nature
Frederick Douglass’s autobiography and Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin condemn
slavery
Part Four
The Compromise of 1850
MAP 15.2 The Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850, messier and more awkward
than the Missouri Compromise of 1820, reflected heightened sectional tensions. California
was admitted as a free state, the borders of Texas were settled, and the status of the rest of
the former Mexican territory was left to be decided later by popular sovereignty. No consistent
majority voted for the five separate bills that made up the compromise.
In 1850, the three men who had long represented America’s three major regions attempted to
resolve the political crisis brought on by the applications of California and Utah for statehood.
Henry Clay is speaking; John C. Calhoun stands third from right; and Daniel Webster is
seated at the left, with his head in his hand. Both Clay and Webster were ill, and Calhoun
died before the Compromise of 1850 was arranged by a younger group of politicians led by
Stephen A. Douglas. SOURCE:Library of Congress.
Political Parties and Slavery
Prior to the 1840s, compromises had eased
the divisions.
Whigs and Democrats forged inter-sectional
coalitions.
By 1848 sectional interests were eroding
these coalitions.
Sectional divisions in religious and other
organizations divided the country.
Congressional Debate
John C. Calhoun laid out the states’ rights defense:
Territories were the common property of each of the
states
Congress could not discriminate against slave owners.
Northerners grew increasingly concerned over “slave
power.”
Webster, Clay, and Calhoun—attempted to resolve the
issues of 1850.
Two Communities, Two Perspectives
Both North and South:
were committed to expansion
shared a commitment to basic rights and liberties
saw the other as infringing on them.
Two Communities, Two Perspectives
Two communities with two perspectives had emerged.
Northerners viewed their region as a dynamic society
offered opportunity to the common man
Contrast to the stagnant slave owning aristocracy of the
South.
Southerners viewed their section as promoting equality for
whites by keeping blacks in a perpetual state of bondage.
Two Communities, Two Perspectives
The chances for national reconciliation were
slim.
Compromises
Map: The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was actually five separate
bills
California came in as a free state.
Other southwest territories were to be settled by popular
sovereignty.
A stronger fugitive slave law was enacted.
The slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C.
The Texas–New Mexico border dispute was settled.
This handbill warning free African
Americans of danger circulated in Boston
following the first of the in famous
recaptures under the Fugitive Slave Law,
that of Thomas Sims in 1851.
SOURCE:Library of Congress.
The Fugitive Slave Act
Runaway slave issue further divided the nation.
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 federal government behind
slave catchers.
States previously passed acts against aiding catchers.
Northerners unsuccessfully tried to prevent the law.
Black fugitives’ experiences raised Northerners’
consciousness.
Escaped slave Anthony Burns, shown here
surrounded by scenes of his capture in
1854, was the cause of Boston’s greatest
protest against the Fugitive Slave Law. The
injustice of his trial and shipment back to the
South converted many Bostonians to the
antislavery cause.
SOURCE:Getty Images,Inc.
The Election of 1852
Polarization of opinion strained the party
system.
Democrats won election of 1852 by avoiding
sectional issues.
President Franklin Pierce supported
independent efforts to seize territory.
“Young America”: The Politics of
Expansion
Between 1845 and 1848, the United States
became a continental nation.
Swift victory over Mexico reinforced
American pride.
Europe revolts reinforced Americans’ ideals of
democracy and manifest destiny.
Expansionist Democrats pushed for further
expansion in Mexico, Cuba.
The Japanese painting shows Commodore Matthew Perry landing in Japan in 1853. The
commercial treaty Perry signed with the Japanese government, which opened a formerly
closed country to American trade, was viewed in the United States as another fruit of
manifest destiny. SOURCE:The Landing of Commodore Perry in Japan in 1853.Perry ’s ship and procession (Ukiyo-e School).Bigelow Collection,The Museum of Fine Arts Boston (11.6054).
Part Five:
The Crisis of the National
Party System
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Maps: The Kansas-Nebraska Act
In 1854, Stephen Douglas pushed bill to open Kansas
territory.
Bill declared territory would be organized on popular
sovereignty principle.
Slavery had been banned under the Missouri Compromise.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act proved to:
destroy the Whig Party
nearly destroy the northern wing of the Democratic Party
negate Indian treaties removed to Kansas in the 1830s.
MAP 15.3 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposed by Steven A.
Douglas in 1854, opened the central and northern Great Plains to settlement. The act had two
major faults: it robbed Indian peoples of half the territory guaranteed to them by treaty, and,
because it repealed the Missouri Compromise line, it opened up the lands to warring proslavery and
antislavery factions.
“Bleeding Kansas”
The territory became a battleground of sectional
politics.
Proslavery Missourians crossed border and took
control of territorial legislature.
Northerners quickly responded by founding freesoil communities.
By the summer of 1856 open warfare erupted.
This lithograph shows the Battle of Hickory Point, 1856 one of the many battles between
proslavery fighters and free-soilers that gave the territory its dreadful nickname, Bleeding
Kansas. SOURCE:W.Breyman,Battle of Hickory Point ,Courtesy of Anne S.K.Brown Military Collection,Brown University.
The Politics of Nativism
Concurrent with sectional pressures came an
outburst of anti-immigrant feeling.
Reformers were appalled by influx of Irish.
Former Whigs formed the “Know-Nothing”
or American Party.
Know-Nothings succumbed to sectional
divisions.
This night-time meeting of supporters of the Know-Nothing Party in New York City was
dramatically spotlighted by a new device borrowed from the theater, an incandescent calcium
light, popularly called a limelight.
The Republican Party and the
Election of 1856
Map: The Election of 1856
Republican Party linked northern nativists
and former Whigs.
MAP 15.4 The Election of 1856 Because three parties contested the 1856 election,
Democrat James Buchanan was a minority president. Although Buchanan alone had national
support, Republican John Frémont won most of the free states, and Millard Fillmore of the
American Party gained 40 percent of the vote in most of the slave states.
The Republican Party and the
Election of 1856
In 1856, Democrats nominated James Buchanan
as a compromise candidate.
Southern Know-Nothings ran Millard Fillmore.
Northern Republicans ran John C. Fremont who
defeated Buchanan in the North. Buchanan
carried nearly the entire South and won.
The Republican Party and the
Election of 1856
The election signaled the rise of
Republican Party
Northerners more concerned about slavery
than immigration.
Part Six:
The Differences Deepen
The Dred Scott Decision
The Dred Scott decision worsened sectional
divisions.
The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could
not ban slavery in the territories
Southerners applauded the decision,
Northerners denounced it.
These sympathetic portraits of Harriet and
Dred Scott and their daughters in 1857 helped
to shape the northern reaction to the Supreme
Court’s decision that denied the Scotts’ claim
to freedom. The infamous Dred Scott decision
was intended to resolve the issue of slavery
expansion, but instead heightened angry
feelings in both North and South.
SOURCE:Frank Leslie ’s Illustrated Newspaper ,June 27,1857. Library of Congress.
The Lecompton Constitution
Conflict continued in Kansas as freesoilers:
organized their own territorial government
boycotted the proslavery government’s
elections for a constitutional convention
The Lecompton Constitution
Proslavery “Lecompton constitution” was
submitted to Congress.
Douglas fought against it, alienating his
southern supporters.
Kansas rejected the constitution, entered
Union as free state.
Congress continued to divide along
sectional lines.
The Panic of 1857
Financial panic and sharp depression in 1857
and 1858.
The Panic affected northern more than
southern exports.
Southerners believed the Panic showed the
superiority of their system.
This painting by Charles C.
Rosenberg and James H. Cafferty
shows a worried crowd exchanging
the latest news on Wall Street
during the Panic of 1857. This was
the first economic depression in
which the telegraph played a part
by carrying bad financial news in
the West to New York much more
rapidly than in the past.
SOURCE:Photograph by J.Cafferty &C.Rosenberg.Courtesy of the Museum of the
City of New York (40.54).
John Brown's Raid
John Brown raided the federal arsenal at
Harper’s Ferry.
Raised sectional differences.
Southern opinion shocked by attempts to
make Brown a martyr.
The execution by hanging of John Brown, December 2, 1859 is depicted in this popular image in a
northern newspaper as a solemn military occasion. Southerners were angered and alarmed by
popular northern opinion that regarded Brown as a martyr rather than as a terrorist. SOURCE:Frank Leslie ’s Illustrated
Newspaper ,December 10,1859.Library of Congress.
Part Seven:
The South Secedes
The Election of 1860
Map: The Election of 1860
In the election of 1860, four candidates ran
for president.
Bell, Breckenridge, Douglas, Lincoln
MAP 15.6 The South Secedes The southern states that would constitute the Confederacy seceded in two
stages. The states of the Lower South seceded before Lincoln took office. Arkansas and three states of
the Upper South—Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee—waited until after the South fired on Fort
Sumter. And four border slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri—chose not to secede.
Every Southern state (except South Carolina) was divided on the issue of secession, generally along upcountry–low-country lines. In Virginia, this division was so extreme, that West Virginia split off to become a
separate nonslave state and was admitted to the Union in 1863.
The Election of 1860
The Democrats split over proposed slave code
for territories.
Stephen Douglas won the nomination but
Southerners nominated Breckinridge.
Southern and border state Whigs created Constitutional
Union Party and nominated John Bell.
Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, a moderate.
MAP 15.5 The Election of 1860 The election of 1860 was a sectional election. Lincoln won
no votes in the South, Breckinridge none in the North. The contest in the North was between
Lincoln and Douglas, and although Lincoln swept the electoral vote, Douglas’s popular vote
was uncomfortably close. The large number of northern Democratic voters opposed to
Lincoln was a source of political trouble for him during the Civil War.
The Election of 1860
Breckinridge and Lincoln represented the
extreme positions on slavery.
Douglas and Bell tried to find a middle
ground.
Lincoln won the election with 38 percent of
vote, virtually sweeping the North.
The South Leaves the Union
Map: The South Secedes
Southerners initiated secession movements.
The Lower South seceded, but Upper South
remained in Union.
The beating of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks on the floor of the U.S.
Senate attracted the horrified attention of northerners but won the approval of southerners.
The North’s Political Options
Various Northerners unsuccessfully tried to
find compromise.
Some Northerners were willing to let South
to go in peace.
Lincoln believed free government would be
threatened if the South left.
Establishment of the Confederacy
Southerners established the Confederate
States of America.
Jefferson Davis, a moderate, was chosen as
its president.
Davis tried to portray secession as a legal,
peaceful step.
Lincoln resolved to keep the nation together.
Lincoln’s Inauguration
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but
friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion
may have strained, it must not break our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching
from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature.
- Abraham Lincoln
Inaugural Address,
March 4, 1861