Chapter 18 1848–1854 Sectional Struggle, Renewing the

Chapter 18

Renewing the Sectional Struggle,

1848–1854

77 slides

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CH 18 - RENEWING THE SECTIONAL STRUGGLE, 1848–1854

FOCUS QUESTIONS

1. HOW DID THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH RESULT IN INFLAMING STRONG SECTIONAL DISPUTES?

2. WHO SUPPORTED AND WHO OPPOSED THE COMPROMISE OF 1850, WHAT WERE ITS MAIN PROVISIONS, AND

HOW DID IT PASS?

3. WHAT SECTION BENEFITED THE MOST FROM THE COMPROMISE OF 1850? WHY?

4. WHAT FOREIGN POLICY AGREEMENTS WERE MADE WITH REGARD TO LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA?

5. WHAT WERE THE EXPLICIT PROVISIONS AND IMPLICIT UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT AND

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF ITS PASSAGE?

CHAPTER THEMES

THEME: THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT OVER THE EXPANSION OF SLAVERY THAT ERUPTED AFTER THE MEXICAN WAR WAS

TEMPORARILY QUIETED BY THE COMPROMISE OF 1850, BUT DOUGLAS’S KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854 EXPLODED

IT AGAIN.

THEME: IN THE 1850S, AMERICAN EXPANSIONISM IN THE WEST AND THE CARIBBEAN WAS EXTREMELY

CONTROVERSIAL BECAUSE IT WAS TIED TO THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

THEME: COMMERCIAL INTERESTS GUIDED AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN ASIA AND CONTRIBUTED TO SECTIONAL

TENSION WITHIN THE UNITED STATES, AS REGIONS TRIED TO SECURE THE TERMINUS TO A TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD.

Ch 18 - Big Take AwaysBig Ideas

● The acquisition of new territory in the West and the U.S. victory

in the Mexican

○ American War were accompanied by a heated

controversy over allowing or forbidding slavery in newly

acquired territories.

● Repeated attempts at political compromise failed to calm tensions

over slavery and often made sectional tensions worse.

Free Soil Movement

● Following the Mexican American War issue of slavery in the

territories becomes the key cause of sectional tension

● Free Soil Party formed in 1848: “free soil, free labor, and free

men”

○ Wanted no slavery in new land to the west

○ Keep West an opportunity for whites only

○ Not against slavery in the south

● Many southerners saw any attempt to restrict the expansion of

slavery as a violation of their constitutional rights.

Election of 1848

● Whigs took no position on slavery in the election :

○ Candidate: Z. Taylor (W)

● Democrats support popular sovereignty:

○ People in the territory should decide whether or not to

allow slavery

○ Candidate: L. Cass (D)

● Free Soil Party opposed extension of slavery in the territories

(Wilmot proviso position)

○ Candidate: M. Van Buren (FS)

Sectional Tensions

● California Gold Rush, 1849

● Sectional tension between the north and south

● California creates a constitution banning slavery and ask

Congress for admission as free a state

Crisis over Mexican Cession

● Until California tried to become a free state, equal balance of power in

the Senate

○ 15 free states

○ 15 slave state Crisis over Mexican Cession

● Southerners increasingly defensive over the institution of slavery

○ Tallmadge Amendment (1819)

○ Wilmot Proviso (1846)

○ Underground Railroad

Threats of Secession . . . . and then a Compromise

● Radical southerners “Fire-eaters”talk openly of secession

● Could there be another compromise?

○ Missouri Compromise (1820)

○ Nullification crisis (1828-1833)

● Force Bill and Compromise Tariff of 1833

● Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas favor compromise

Compromise of 1850

● California admitted as free state

● Mexican Cession land Utah and New Mexico setup as territories

○ Slavery determined by Popular sovereignty

● Ban slave trade in Washington D.C.

● New Fugitive Slave Law for the South

● Settled border dispute between New Mexico and Texas in NM’s favor

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

● Huge increase in sectional tension in the 1850s as a result of the Fugitive

Slave Act

● Fugitive Slave Act turned the north into a hunting ground for fugitive

slaves

● Northerners who assisted runaways could be arrested

● Slaves could not testify in court, denied a jury trial

know your economic ‘panics’!

REALLY?

#11

WARCHART!Northern Resistance

● Moderate northerners are suddenly sympathetic to the abolitionist

movement

○ Growth in the abolitionist movement

● Underground Railroad: helped escaped slaves reach the north or to

Canada

● Personal Liberty laws:

○ Did not allow use of local jails for housing fugitive slave

● Vigilance Committees: goal to protect fugitive slaves from the slave

catchers

● Anthony Burns: 1853 escaped from slavery

* * * 1850’s witnessed the nation becoming more polarized

National Expansion Challenged

● Debate over slavery slowed any attempts at national expansion

(Manifest Destiny)

● Free Soil supporters had suspicion of any expansion attempts under

President Pierce

● Ostend Manifesto: plan for the U.S. to buy Cuba from Spain

○ Free Soilers denounced this plan

● Northerners increasingly fear that the south was attempting to

create a slave empire or “slaveocracy”

Gasden Purchase

● Although most attempts at expansion fail under President Pierce, the

U.S. does agree to purchase a strip of land for $10 million dollars

from Mexico in 1853

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

● Stephen Douglas wants to secure a RR route and encourage western

settlement

● To win southern approval: Set up two territories 1) Kansas 2)

Nebraska

● Slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty

● Repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820

○ Slavery can go north of 36°30′● Huge opposition in the north –

○ Republican party formed

○ Gave south an opportunity to expand slavery

○Ch 18 - Big Take Aways

I. The Popular Sovereignty Panacea

• Democrats in 1848:– Polk pledged himself to a single term

– The Democratic National Convention turned to aging leader General Lewis Cass

– Their platform was silent on the burning issue of slavery

– Cass’s views were well known because he was the reputed father of popular sovereignty

I. The Popular Sovereignty Panacea (cont.)

• Popular sovereignty—• the doctrine that stated the sovereign people of a

territory, under the general principle of the Constitution, should themselves determine the status of slavery.

– It had a persuasive appeal:• Public liked it because it accorded with the

democratic tradition of self-determination

I. Popular Sovereignty Panacea (cont.)

• Politicians liked it because it seemed a comfortable compromise between:

– The free-soilers’ bid for a ban on slavery in the territories

– Southern demands that Congress protect slavery in the territories.

• Popular sovereignty tossed the slavery problem into the laps of the people in the various territories

• Advocates of the principle hoped to dissolve it from a national issue to a series of local issues.

• Yet, popular sovereignty had one fatal defect:– It might serve to spread the blight of slavery.

II. Political Triumphs for General Taylor

• The Whigs– They nominated Zachary Taylor, the “Hero of

Buena Vista”

– Their platform:• They dodged all troublesome issues

• Extolled the virtues of their candidate

• He would not commit himself on the issue of slavery extension.

II. Political Triumphs for GeneralTaylor (cont.)

• The Free Soil party:– Organized by ardent antislavery Northerners

• Came out for the Wilmot Proviso and against slavery in the territories

• Boarded their appeal by advocating:– federal aid for internal improvement

– free government homesteads for settlers

• They attracted industrialists opposed to Polk’s reduction of protective tariffs


• Appealed to Democrats resentful of Polk’s settling:– Part of Oregon

– While insisting on all of Texas

• Harbored many northerners:– Whose hatred was not directed at slavery as much as at

blacks

– Who gagged at the prospect of sharing the newly acquired western territories with African Americans

• Contained an element of “Conscience Whigs”:– Who condemned slavery on moral grounds

• The free soilers chose Van Buren


• Free-Soilers’ party platform:• They condemned slavery not so much for enslaving

blacks but for destroying the chances of free white workers to rise up from wage-earning dependence to the esteemed status of self-employment

• They argued that only with free soil in the West could a traditional American commitment to upward mobility continue to flourish

• First widely inclusive party organized around the issue of slavery and confined to a single section, they foreshadowed the emergence of the Republicans.


• Taylor’s wartime popularity:– 1,360,967 popular and 163 electoral votes

• Cass:– 1,222,342 popular and 127 electoral votes

• Van Buren– 291,263 ballots and apparently diverted enough

Democratic strength from Cass in the critical state of New York.

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Map 18-1 p380

III. “Californy Gold”

• The discovery of gold on the American River near Sutter’s Mill, California, early in 1848, (see Map 18.1):– The most reliable profits made by those who

mined the miners:• By charging outrageous rates for laundry

• And other personal services

– The “forty-niners” chasing their dream of gold, most notably Australia in 1851.

III. “Californy Gold”(cont.)

• The California gold rush:– Attracted tens of thousands of people

– A high proportion of the newcomers were lawless men, accompanied or followed by virtueless women

– An outburst of crime inevitably resulted

– Robbery, claim jumping, and murder most commonplace

III. “Californy Gold”(cont.)

• Majority of Californians were decent and law-abiding citizens, needed protection:– Grappled earnestly to erect an adequate state

government.• Encouraged by President Taylor, they drafted a

constitution in 1849 that excluded slavery

• Then appealed to Congress for admission, bypassing the usual territorial stage

– Would California prove to be the golden straw that broke the back of the Union?

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IV. Sectional Balance and the Underground Railroad

• The South of 1850 was relatively well-off:• Nation’s leadership: Zachary Taylor in the White

House

• Boasted a majority in the cabinet and on the Supreme Court

• Its cotton fields were expanding, cotton prices were profitably high

• Few believed that slavery was seriously threatened

IV. Sectional Balance and the Underground Railroad (cont.)

• The South was deeply worried by the ever-tipping political balance:

• 15 slave states and 15 free states

• Admission of California would destroy the delicate equilibrium in the Senate

• Potential slave territory under the American flag was running short

• Agitation in the territories of New Mexico and Utah for admission as nonslave states

• California might establish a precedent.

IV. Sectional Balance and theUnderground Railroad (cont.)

• Texas had additional grievances:– Huge area east of the Rio Grande and north of

forty-second parallel

– Embracing half the territory of present-day New Mexico (see Map 18.2)

– The federal government was proposing to detach Texas

– Hot-blooded Texans threatening Santa Fe taking what they regarded as rightfully theirs.


• Southerners:• Angered by the nagging agitation in the North for the

abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia

• Looked with alarm on the prospect of a ten-mile oasis of free soil between slaveholding Maryland and slaveholding Virginia

• More disagreeable to the South was the loss of runaway slaves:

– Assisted by the Underground Railroad—freedom train

– Amazing conductor: Harriet Tubman.


• 1850 southerners demanded new and more stringent fugitive-slave law:– Old one proved inadequate to cope with

runaways

– The abolitionists who ran the Underground Railroad did not gain personally from their lawlessness

– Slave owners were the losers.

– Estimates of losing 1000 runaways a year out of some 4 million slaves.

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Map 18-2 p382

V. Twilight of the Senatorial Giants

• Congressional catastrophe in 1850:– Free-soil California wanted admission

– “Fire-eaters” in the South threatened secession

– Planed to meet in Nashville, Tenn. to withdraw from the Union

– The “immortal trio”—Clay, Calhoun, and Webster—met in Congress for the last time

V. Twilight of the Senatorial Giants(cont.)

• Henry Clay-73 years old:– Played a critical role

– The “Great Compromiser”—to reprise the role he played in Missouri and nullification

– He urged that the North and South both make concessions

– And that the North partially yield by enacting a more feasible fugitive-slave law.


• Senator John C. Calhoun-88 years old and dying of tuberculosis– The “Great Nullifier”—

• Approved Clay’s proposed concessions

• But rejected them as not providing adequate safe-guards for southern rights

– His impassioned plea was to leave slavery alone, return runaway slaves, give the South its rights as a minority, and restore the political balance.

– He wanted to elect two presidents; one from the North and one from the South, each wielding a veto.


• Daniel Webster-86 years old:– Upheld Clay’s compromise measures

– He urged all reasonable concessions to the South, including a new fugitive-slave law with teeth

– As for slavery in the territories, he asked, why legislate on the Subject?

• His conclusion: that compromise, concession, and sweet reasonableness would provide the only solutions.


• Webster’s famed Seventh of March speech (1850) was his final:– His tremendous effort visibly strengthened

Union sentiment

– Pleasing to the banking and commercial centers of the North—stood to lose millions by secession

• The Free-Soilers and abolitionists upbraided him as a traitor, worthy of bracketing with Benedict Arnold.

– These reproaches were most unfair. Webster had long regarded slavery as evil but disunion as worse.

VI. Deadlock and Danger on Capitol Hill

• The stormy congressional debate (1850) was not finished:– The Young Guard from the North was coming

• William H. Seward:– A strong antislaveryite, came out unequivocally

against concession

– Argued that Christian legislators must obey God’s moral law as well as man’s mundane law

Deadlock and Danger on Capitol Hill (cont.)

– He appealed to exclude slavery in the territories with reference to an even “higher law” than the Constitution

– This term may have cost him the presidential nomination and the presidency in 1860.

• President Taylor seemed bent on vetoing any compromise passed by Congress

• His military ire was aroused by the threats of Texas to seize Santa Fe.

VII. Breaking the Congressional Logjam

• President Taylor unknowingly helped the cause of concession by dying suddenly:– Vice-President Millard Fillmore took the reins

• As presiding officer of the Senate—was impressed with the arguments for conciliation

• He gladly signed the series of compromise measures

• The balancing of interests in the Compromise of 1850 was delicate in the extreme (see Table 18.1).

VII. Breaking the CongressionalLogjam (cont.)

• Heat in the Congress:– Northern states, “Union savers”—Clay, Webster,

Douglas—orated on behalf of the compromise

– Southern “fire-eaters” were violently opposed to concession

– In June 1850, southern extremists met in Nashville:

• Took a strong position in favor of slavery but condemned the compromise measure

VII. Breaking the CongressionalLogjam (cont.)

– The second Era of Good Feelings dawned:• Disquieting talk of secession subsided

• Peace-loving people, both North and South, were determined that compromises should be a “finality”

• And the explosive issue of slavery should be buried.

Table 18-1 p384

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VIII. Balancing the Compromise Scales

• Who got the better deal of the 1850 Compromise?

• North (see Map 18.3):– California, a free state, tipped the balance

permanently against the South

– Territories of New Mexico and Utah were open to slavery—basis of popular sovereignty

– The iron law of nature—the “highest law”—in favor of the free soil.

VIII. Balancing the Compromise Scales (cont.)

• South:– Urgently needed more slave territory to restore

the “sacred balance”

– If not from the recent conquests from Mexico, then the Caribbean was one answer

– The South had halted the drive toward abolition in the District of Columbia

– Most alarming of all, the new Fugitive Slave Law (1850)—”the Bloodhound Bill.”

VIII. Balancing the Compromise Scales (cont.)

• Fugitive Slave Law (1850):– Stirred up a storm of opposition in the North

– Fleeing slaves:• Could not testify on their own

• Were denied a jury trial

• Federal commissioner who handled the case of a fugitive:

– If the runaway were freed, five dollars

– And ten if not

VIII. Balancing the CompromiseScales (cont.)

– Freedom-loving northerners who aided a slave to escape were liable to heavy fines and jail sentences

– This “Man-Stealing” Law was abhorrent• It touched off an explosive chain reaction in the

North

• The Underground Railroad stepped up its timetable

• Mass. made it a penal offense for any state official to enforce the new federal statute

• Other states passed “personal liberty laws”

VIII. Balancing the CompromiseScales (cont.)

• Abolitionists protested against the man-stealing laws

• Beyond question, the Fugitive Slave Law was a blunder on the part of the South

• Slave catchers redoubled their efforts

• With delay of enforcement:– The South was forging ahead in population and wealth—in

crops, factories, foundries, ships, and railroads

– Delay added immensely to the moral strength of the North

– 1850s did much to bolster the Yankee will to resist secession, whatever the cost

• Thus the Compromise of 1850 won the Civil War for the Union (see Map 18.4)

Map 18-3 p386

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IX. Defeat and Doom for the Whigs

• 1852 Democratic nominating convention met in Baltimore:– It nominated the second “dark horse”—Franklin

Pierce, from New Hampshire• Weak and indecisive figure

• War injuries caused him to be known as “Fainting General”

• Enemyless because he was inconspicuous

• Prosouthern northerner, he was acceptable to the slavery wing of the Democratic Party.

IX. Defeat and Doom for the Whigs (cont.)

• His platform revived the Democrats’ commitment to territorial expansion as pursued by President Polk

• He emphatically endorsed the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law and all.

– The Whigs convened in Baltimore; missed a splendid opportunity to capitalize on their record in statecraft:

• Having won in the past with war heroes, they turned to “Old Fuss and Feathers” Winfield Scott

– The ablest American general of his generation.


– The Whig platform praised the Compromise of 1850 as a lasting arrangement.

– The political campaign degenerated into a dull attack on personalities.

– The Whig party was hopelessly split:– Antislavery Whigs of the North took Scott as their nominee

but deplored his platform—which endorsed the hated Fugitive Slave Law

– Southern Whigs doubted Scott’s loyalty to the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, accepted his platform but spat on the candidate

IX. Defeat and Doom for theWhigs (cont.)

– General Scott, victorious on the battlefield, met defeat at the ballot box.

– John P. Hale took northern Whigs vote from Scott

– Hale took 5% of the popular vote

• Pierce won in a landslide 254 electoral vote to 42; the popular count was closer: 1,601,117 to 1,385,453.

• The election of 1852’s frightening significance:– It marked the effective end of the disorganized

Whig party.


• Whigs’ complete death:• They augured the eclipse of national party and the

rise of purely sectional political alignments

• Governed at times by the crassest opportunism

• Won two presidential elections (1840, 1848) in their colorful career, war heroes

– Greatest contribution was to help uphold the ideal of the Union through their electoral strength in the South and through the eloquence of their leaders: Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

Map 18-4 p388

X. Expansionist Stirrings South of the Border

• The spirit of Manifest Destiny was revived:• A continuous Atlantic-to-Pacific transportation route

that would effectively sever the two Americas (see Map 18.5)

• British encroachment in this area drove the governments of both the United States and New Granada to conclude treaty in 1848

– It guaranteed the American right of transit across the isthmus in return for Washington’s pledge to maintain “perfect neutrality” on the route—the “free transit of traffic might not be interrupted.”

X. Expansionist Stirrings South of the Border (cont.)

• The agreement led to:• Theodore Roosevelt’s assertion of American control

of the Panama Canal in 1903

• Led to the construction of the first “transcontinental” railroad

– Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) stipulated that neither America nor Britain would fortify or seek executive control over any future isthmian waterway (later rescinded by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1910; see p. 628).


• Southern “slavocrats” looked southward:– Because of boundary limits the South looked

toward Nicaragua• American adventurer, William Walker, tried

repeatedly to grab control of this Central American country

• Installed himself president in July 1856 and promptly legalized slavery

– A coalition of Central American nations formed an alliance to overthrow him.

– President Pierce withdrew diplomatic recognition and he died before a Honduran firing squad in 1860.


• Sugar-rich Cuba:• Enticing prospect for annexation

• They already had a large population of enslaved blacks

• It might be carved into several states, restoring the political balance in the Senate

• President Polk offered $100 million to Spain for Cuba

• They refused

• Adventurers undertook to shake the tree of Manifest Destiny


• The secret Ostend Manifesto quickly leaked out

• Northern free-soilers rose up in wrath against the “manifesto of brigands”

• The red-faced Pierce administration hurriedly dropped its reckless schemes for Cuba.

– The slavery issue thus checked territorial expansion in the 1850s.


• Spanish officials in Cuba seized the American steamer Black Warrior

• Now was the time for the President to provoke a war with Spain and seize Cuba

• The secretary of state instructed the American ministers in Spain, England, and France to prepare recommendations for the acquisition of Cuba

• The three, meeting in Ostend, Belgium, drew up a top-secret dispatch:

• Ostend Manifesto—it urged the administration to offer $120 million for Cuba.

Map 18-5 p389

XI. The Allure of Asia

• How could Americans tap more deeply the supposedly rich markets of Asia?– Opium War—fought by Britain to have the right

to peddle opium in the Celestial Kingdom:• Britain gained free access to five so-called treaty

ports

• Control of the island of Hong Kong

• President Tyler dispatched Caleb Cushing to secure comparable concession for the United States

• Cushing arrived at Macao in early 1844.

XI. The Allure of Asia(cont.)

• Treaty of Wanghia: the first formal diplomatic agreement between U.S. and China on July 3, 1844:– Cushing secured some vital commercial rights

and privileges from the Chinese

– “Most favorable rights” were granted to the U.S.

– “Extraterritoriality”—provided trying Americans accused of crimes in China before American officials, not in Chinese courts.


– American trade flourished in China

– The treaty opened American missionaries; thousands came

– China success prompted American goals for Japan:

• Japan had earlier withdrawn into an airtight cocoon of isolationism for over 200 years

• The warrior dynasty of Tokugawa Shogunate was very protective of Japan’s insularity

• By 1853 Japan was ready to emerge from its self-imposed quarantine.


• President Fillmore dispatched Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1852 for Japan

• His four smoke-belching “black ships” steamed into Edo (later Tokyo Bay) on July 8, 1853

• Once on shore, Perry requested free trade and friendly relations then left promising to return the next year to receive the Japanese reply

• Perry returned in February 1854 and persuaded the Japanese to sign the landmark Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854


– Perry had cracked Japan’s two-century shell of isolation wide-open

– Less than a decade later the “Meiji Restoration” would end the Shogunate and propel the Land of the Rising Sun:

• Headlong into the modern world

• Eventually into epochal military crash with the United States.

XII. Pacific Railroad Promoters and the Gadsden Purchase

• Acute transportation problems was another legacy of the Mexican War– California and Oregon were 8000 miles west of

the nation’s capital

– The sea routes were too long

– Covered wagon travel was slow and dangerous

– Feasible land transportation was imperative

– A transcontinental railroad was the only real solution.

XII. Pacific Railroad Promoters and the Gadsden Purchase (cont.)

• Where to build the railroad?• James Gadsden, minister to Mexico

• Santa Anna was still in power and needed money

• Gadsden negotiated a treaty in 1853:– Which ceded to the United States the Gadsden Purchase

for $10 million.

– Best route for the southern railroad

– Northerners wanted Nebraska to be organized

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Map 18-6 p392

XIII. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Scheme

– In 1854 Senator Stephen A. Douglas delivered a counterstroke to offset the Gadsden southern expansion westward

• He longed to break the deadlock of North-South westward expansion

• He had invested heavily in Chicago real estate and railway stock

• He desired for the Windy City to be the eastern terminus for the proposed Pacific railroad

• He was trying to get the South to support his scheme.

XIII. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Scheme (cont.)

• The proposed Territory of Nebraska would be sliced into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska (see Map 18.7)

– Slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty

– Kansas, west of slaveholding Missouri, presumably would choose to become a slave state

– Nebraska, west of free-soil Iowa, presumably would become a free state.

– Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska scheme flatly contradicted the Missouri Compromise of 1820:

» Which forbid slavery in the proposed Nebraska Territory north of the sacred 36-30’ line.

XIII. Douglas’s Kansas-NebraskaScheme (cont.)

– The only way to open the region to popular sovereignty was to repeal the ancient compact outright

– To southerners here was the chance for another slave state

– President Pierce threw his weight behind the Kansas-Nebraska Bill

– But the Missouri Compromise could not be brushed aside

– Douglas rammed the bill through Congress, with strong support from many southerners

– The truth is that Douglas acted somewhat impulsively and recklessly

– He predicted a storm, but grossly underestimated it

– In the end, he enjoyed a high degree of popularity.

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Map 18-7 p393

XIV. Congress Legislates a Civil War

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act:– Was one of the most momentous measures to

pass Congress

– It greased the slippery slope to Civil War:• Antislavery northerners were angered and future

compromise with the South would be immeasurably more difficult

• The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a dead letter

• The Act wrecked two compromises—those of 1820 and 1850

XIV. Congress Legislates a Civil War (cont.)

• Northern abolitionists and southern “fire-eaters” saw less and less they could live with

• The growing legion of antislaveryites gained numerous recruits

• The proud Democratic Party was shattered by the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Undoubtedly the most durable offspring of the Kansas-Nebraska blunder was the new Republican Party.

– The Republican Party:• Sprang up in the Middle West-Wisconsin and

Michigan

XIV. Congress Legislates a Civil War (cont.)

• It gathered dissatisfied elements, including Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, and other foes of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• It also included Abraham Lincoln

• It never was a third party but:– It would not be allowed South of the Mason-Dixon line.

• The Union was in dire peril.

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Documents

Chapter 18 1848–1854 Sectional Struggle, Renewing the