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Impending Crisis
Slavery and the Territories • The Wilmot Proviso
• Proposed no new slave states would be admitted from Mexican Cession
• Competing Plans • Extend Missouri Compromise? • Popular Sovereignty? • Free-Soilers
California Gold Rush • Traces of gold found in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas • “Forty-niners” flocked to California • Non-Indian population increases twenty-fold in four years
Rising Sectional Tensions • California drafted constitution barring slavery • Controversies
• Slavery in the District of Columbia • Personal liberty laws • Upsetting the balance
Compromise of 1850 • Henry Clay
• California admitted as a free state
• Formation of territorial governments in rest of Mexican Cession, without slavery restrictions
• Abolition of slave trade in D.C.
• New and more effective fugitive slave law
• Congress defeated Clay’s proposal
Compromise of 1850 • Stephen A. Douglas
• Broke up Clay’s bill • Passed as separate components
• Temporary compromise
Election of 1852 • Democrats: Franklin Pierce • Whigs: Winfield Scott
Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce will try to avoid divisive issues –
impossible task • Northerners refused to follow fugitive slave laws
• Tried to distract from the problem • Attempts to buy Cuba from Spain
• Ostend Manifesto • Enraged anti-slave Northerners
Slavery, Railroads, and the West • Nation expands westward
• Problem of communication
• Support for a transcontinental railroad • Northerners – Chicago • Southerners – St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans
• Gadsden Purchase
Kansas-Nebraska Controversy • Stephen A. Douglas proposed bill to open Nebraska
territory • Status of slavery would be determined by popular sovereignty • Repealed Missouri Compromise • Divided into two territories: Kansas and Nebraska
• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) • Spurred the creation of the Republican Party - 1854
• Formed by Anti-Nebraska Democrats and Anti-Nebraska Whigs
“Bleeding Kansas” • Northerners and Southerners poured into Kansas
• Hoped to influence “popular sovereignty”
• Two governments formed – pro-slavery and free-state • Violence erupted between both sides • Pro-slavery mob sacked Lawrence, burned “governor’s” house,
destroyed printing presses
• Guerilla warfare
Free-Soil Ideology • “free labor” • Existence of slavery was a threat to whites • South was seen as antithesis of democracy – closed
static society • Republican Party
Pro-Slavery Argument • Slavery was a positive good
• Slaves supposedly enjoyed better conditions than Northern industrial workers
• Slavery was only way two races could coexist • Southern economy was key to prosperity • Basis for the Southern way of life • Biological inferiority of African Americans
Election of 1856 • Democrats: James Buchanon • Republicans: John C. Fremont • Know Nothings: Millard Fillmore
Dred Scott Decision (1857) • Dred Scott v. Sandford • Slaves were property, not citizens, even when taken into
free states • U.S. government could not prohibit spread of slavery into
the territories
Lincoln • Senate election of Illinois • Lincoln-Douglas Debates • Believed slavery was morally wrong – wasn’t an
abolitionist • Couldn’t envision alternative
• Lost Senate election – became national figure
John Brown • Pottawatomie Massacre – Kansas
• Planned to seize arsenal at Harper’s Ferry – lead slave rebellion
• Insurrection never formed – captured
• Convinced many southerners they could not live safely in the Union
Election of 1860 • Democrats: Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckinridge • Republicans: Abraham Lincoln
• Lincoln won majority of electoral votes, only 2/5 of popular vote
• Election led directly to secession crisis