Chapter 13

The Impending Crisis (Notes adapted)

Manifest Destiny & Slavery

Reflected the burgeoning pride characterizing American nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century

Idealistic vision of social perfection fueled by the reform energy

Advocates of expansion insisted it was an altruistic attempt to spread liberty, not a selfish desire for more land.

John L. OSullivan, an influential Democratic columnist and editor, gave the movement its name in 1845

A belief that Divine Providence had determined that the continent of North America should be dominated by the people (white, Protestant Christians) of the United States

Not everyone embraced the idea of manifest destiny.

Henry Clay and other prominent politicians feared territorial expansion would reopen the controversy of slavery and threaten the stability of the Union.

This manifest destiny would spell doom for the native Americans as well as push the question of free versus slave states.

The Compromise of 1820 had supposedly settled the issue, however, when the issue of what to do with new territory arose, evasion and containment were no longer options.

The first issue came with the annexation of Texas, which provoked a war with Mexico in 1848.

Many northerners considered this war just an ugly excuse to expand slavery.

The Westering Impulse

Horace Greeley, an eastern newspaper editor, coined the phrase Go west, young man encouraging settlement of the new territories.

After the (Depression) Panic of 1837, easterners turned west as factory jobs disappeared and land prices were too high for the average farmer.

Reports from fur traders, explorers and missionaries described the abundant resources and mild climates of California and the Pacific Northwest.

Richard Henry Danas Two Years Before the Mast (1840) told his story of sailing to the west coast and described the boundless prospects for those who ventured west.

Americans in Texas

Three-fourths of Mexicans who had settled north of the Rio Grande River lived in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico

Spaniards had earlier introduced cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World. These animals became the mainstay of Southwestern Hispanic society.

Spanish words still describe the tools of the trade and the land itself: bronco, mustang, lasso, rodeo, stampede, arroyo, canyon and mesa

However, large amounts of Mexican claimed territory north of the Rio Grande River was sparsely populated, with a few scattered presidios (forts) and missions.

By the 1830s many residents of this territory were more interested in inviting Americans in than keeping them out.

The Santa Fe Trail brought American goods from Independence, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and points south from there.

New England ships carried American goods around the horn of South America to San Francisco in exchange for tallow & hides produced by the californio ranchers.

The Oregon & California Trails

1842-43 Oregon fever swept the Mississippi Valley. Thousands of farm families from the Northwest packed up and bought covered wagons with supplies to last five or six months and headed west.

Few emigrants thought of settling anywhere along the Oregon Trail, especially in the Great Plains area then known as the Great American Desert.

During the next 25 years, more than half a million men, women & children would cross half a continent.

1847 Next was the exodus of Mormons, travelling to the basin of the Great Salt Lake.

1849 The discovery of gold lured more Americans west in the hopes of striking it rich.

Some did, some did not, but most stayed and helped to build new communities in the west.

The Republic of Texas

The new Republic of Mexico wanted to develop its northern borderlands in Texas, encouraging the immigration of American settlers.

Stephen F. Austin

Born in Virginia, later moved to Missouri, the businessman secured a large land grant from Mexico to settle 300 families from the U.S.

Despite their pledge to become Roman Catholics and Mexican citizens, the immigrants remained both Protestants and American at heart. Many also brought their slaves with them, in defiance of the Mexican ban on slavery.

The Mexican government tried to ban any further immigration, but by 1835, Americans outnumbered Mexicans living in the territory 6 to 1.

A new conservative Mexican government came to power and wanted to consolidate its authority over its northern territories.

In response, Anglo-American settlers and tejanos (Mexicans living in the Texas territory) forged a political alliance to protest the loss of autonomy in their province.

When the Mexican government responded to their defiance with military force, many Texans, both Anglo and Mexican, fought back.

1836 Delegates from across Texas met and declared Texas an independent republic and adopted a constitution based on the U.S. model.

March 6, 1836 -Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led the Mexican army who captured the Alamo, killing all of its defenders, including the legendary Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, creator of the famous Bowie knife, and Col. William Travis, the twenty-six year old commander of the fort.

March 19, 1836 - Mexican general Santa Anna slaughtered another settler force of 300 men after they had surrendered at Goliad.

Sam Houston rallied his men to the cry, Remember the Alamo! and aided by volunteer forces from southern U.S. states, routed a larger Mexican force on the San Jacinto River (near present-day Houston)

Under duress, Gen. Santa Anna signed a treaty granting Texas their independence. (Bayonet Treaty)

The Mexican Congress later renounced the treaty but could not gather enough strength to reestablish authority north of the Nueces River.

The victorious Texans elected Sam Houston as president of their new republic and petitioned for annexation to the United States.

The Annexation Controversy

President Andrew Jackson, not wanting to provoking war with Mexico or quarrels with anti-slavery northerners, had rebuffed the idea of the annexation of Texas during his presidency.

Martin Van Buren did the same during his term as President.

Soon after Vice-President John Tyler became president in 1841, he broke with the Whig Party that had elected him. Tyler was in favor of the annexation of Texas in hopes that it would rally the South to support him in the next presidential election.

At this point, the Southern press ran scare stories about a British plot to use Texas as a beachhead for an assault on slavery.

Tyler named John C. Calhoun as Secretary of State to negotiate a treaty of annexation. However, Calhoun made a fatal mistake when he released a letter to the press that he had written to the British minister, informing him that together with other reasons, the U.S. wanted to annex Texas in order to protect slavery.

When this news reached the north, it seemed to confirm abolitionist fears that annexation was a pro-slavery plot. Northern senators defeated the annexation treaty in June 1844. Statehood for Texas would have to wait.

Whig presidential candidate Henry Clay came out against annexation, as had Martin Van Buren. However, while the Whigs applauded Clays position, Democrats were angry over Van Burens.

Democrats blocked Van Burens nomination for the presidency and instead chose dark horse James K. Polk of Tennessee.

Often referred to as the first "dark horse" President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War.

Polk was pro-annexation of Texas.

Polk ran on a platform not only of the annexation of Texas but also the acquisition of all of Oregon up to 54/40 parallel , the Alaskan border. His campaign slogan was Fifty-four forty or fight!

Polk also wanted California and New Mexico as well.

During the presidential election of 1844, Texas fever swept the South, causing Clay to waffle on the issue of annexation of Texas.

Outraged Whigs changed their votes to the Liberty Partys nominee, James Birney, who opposed any more slave territory being added to the nation.

Birney took away just enough votes from the Whigs to ensure that Democratic nominee Polk won the election.

President Tyler wanted to leave office with at least something to his credit, so as a lame-duck president, he submitted to Congress a joint resolution of annexation.

March 1845 Congress passes the resolution, Texas bypasses the territorial stage, and came into the union in December of 1845 as a slave state.

Texas, now backed by the U.S. government, claims the Rio Grande River, instead of the Nueces River, as the new border between them and Mexico. This boundary change nearly tripled the area Mexico had defined as Texas.

The stage was set for five years of bitter controversy, ultimately ending with a shooting war between the U.S. and Mexico.

Polk was unable to push the northwestern boundaries of the Oregon territory to 54/40 and signed a compromise treaty with Britain setting the official boundary at the 49th parallel.

The Mexican War

Pres. Polk provoked a war with Mexico to gain California and New Mexico.

1845- Polk sends an envoy to Mexico City w/an offer to buy the territory for $30M.

To encourage the Mexicans to take the deal, Polk sent federal troops to the disputed border as well as a naval squadron off the Gulf Coast of Mexico. This enraged the Mexican govt.

Polk waited for an excuse to declare war. When he received news of a border skirmish in which 11 U.S. soldiers were killed he had his reason as asked Congress for a declaration of war which passed.

Whigs opposed the declaration and labeled the war Mr. Polks War.

Mexican soldiers outnumber U.S. troops, but U.S. troops had better leadership, better weapons, and higher morale.

The U.S. won every battle and the war, thus humiliating the proud Mexicans and leaving a legacy of national hostility and border violence.

The Mexican War became a rehearsal for the larger conflict that would take place 15 years later (Civil War)

Military Campaigns of 1846/1847

Zachary Taylor Old Rough & Ready pursued retreating Mexicans to the city of Monterrey, and took the city after four days of fighting in September, 1846, earning him a reputation as a war hero.

Gen. Stephen Watts Kearney bluffed and intimidated the New Mexico governor who fled south. Kearneys army occupied Santa Fe August 18 without ever firing a shot.

Captain John C. Fremont led a contingent across deserts & mountains to California. June 1848 Fremont captured Sonoma and raised the flag of an independent California, the silhouette of a grizzly bear. This bear-flag revolt paved the way for the conquest of California by the americanos.

Pres. Polk replaces Zachary Taylor with Gen. Scott, mostly for political reasons.

Gen. Winfield Scott, Old Fuss & Feathers. Scott leads a combined army-navy force to take Veracruz in March 1847. Five months later he and his forces march inland and take Mexico City.

The Wilmot Proviso

The slavery issue overshadowed all others in the debate over the Mexican War.

August 8, 1846 -

Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman David Wilmot offered an amendment to an army appropriations bill. The bill stated that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory.

This proviso would block all new territory ceded from Mexico from ever allowing slavery.

The House passed the amendment with nearly all northern Democrats joining Northern Whigs voting in favor..

while Southern Democrats and Southern Whigs voting almost unanimously against it.

The Wilmot Proviso failed to pass in the Senate. In spite of not being passed, the Wilmot Proviso framed the national debate over slavery for the next 15 years, and the debate was falling along regional, not party lines

Pres. Polk sent diplomat Nicolas Trist to negotiate the terms of Mexicos surrender. Trist was authorized to pay Mexico $15M for California, New Mexico, and a Texas border on the Rio Grande.

Trist made the deal, and when Polk succumbed to the all Mexico clamor he tried to recall Trist and send someone else to renegotiate.

Trist ignored him and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo anyway on Feb. 2, 1848.

The Election of 1848

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo did not try to solve the question of slavery in the new territory. Americans believed the issue would be solved in the upcoming election.

Four positions emerged, each identified with a candidate for the presidential nomination. (See below)

Democratic Party Sen. Lewis Cass Missouri, popular sovereignty

Liberty Party Sen. John P. Hale, NH,

anti-slavery

Free Soil Party Martin Van Buren, NY no more slave states and no more slave territories

Whig Party Zachary Taylor, LA expansionist record, military hero, last President to own slaves while holding office. *Taylor is elected.

The Gold Rush & California Statehood

August 1848 - Workers building a sawmill on the American River near Sacramento California discovered flecks of gold in the riverbed

Sutters Mill, California

Spring 1849 Word of the discovery had reached the east and nearly 100,000 gold-seekers were ready to head west.

With that many people going to California, political organization could not be postponed.

Lame-duck Pres. Polk recommended the Missouri Compromise line of 36/30 be extended to the Pacific.

The Whig-controlled House defied him, reaffirmed the Wilmot Proviso, and drafted a bill to organize California as a free territory.

Fistfights flared in Congress; Calhouns draft to threaten secession fizzled. Most were looking forward to better times under incoming President Taylor.

Although a Southerner, Taylor took a nationalist view on the slavery matter.

Sen. William H. Seward became a close advisor.

Taylor proposed admitting California and New Mexico immediately as states, skipping the territorial stage.

As most 49ers were Free Soil Party members in sentiment, they were anti-slavery

Admitting both California & New Mexico as free states would tip the balance of power in the Senate to the North.

Oct. 1849 With President Taylors support, Californians held a convention, drew up a constitution excluding slavery and applied to Congress for admission as a state. New Mexico would remain a territory. (1912*)

The Compromise of 1850

With rising sectional tensions, moderates & unionists spent the winter of 1848-49 trying to frame a great compromise.

Henry Clay took all the issues and combined them into a single piece of legislation in Jan. 1850:

a. admission of California as a free state

b. formation of territorial govt. in other lands acquired from Mexico without restrictions on slavery

c. abolition of the slave trade, but not slavery itself in the District of

Columbia

d. a new and more effective fugitive slave law.

These resolutions launched debates in two phases nationwide

Phase 1: Older members of Congress, who still remembered Jefferson, Adams, and other founders, argued for or against the compromise on the basis of broad ideals, appealing to shared sentiments of nationalism; after six months of debate, Congress rejected the Clay proposal

Phase 2: Younger group of members take up the debate:

William H. Seward, NY, believed the ideals of Union less important than eliminating slavery

Jefferson Davis, MS. Represented the new, Cotton South he believed the slavery issue was less about principles & ideal than it was about economic self-interest

Stephen A. Douglas, Democratic Senator IL. A Westerner from a rapidly growing state, an open spokesman for the economic needs of his region, especially construction of railroads

Compromise of 1850 Phase (continued)

Pres. Taylor died suddenly. He was an obstacle as he wanted California & New Mexico to be admitted before any talk of compromise can be considered

1st step- dismantle the Omnibus bill (Clays proposal)

Introduce a series of separate measures to be voted one by one

1. Fugitive Slave Act was amended. Penalties increased for non-compliance: Marshals who failed to enforce the law were to be fined $1,000 , and if the slave was not returned, they were responsible for the value of the fugitive slave

2. The slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished.

3. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state

4. A territorial government was created in Utah.

5. Also, an act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government

The Fugitive Slave Law

The Constitution required that a slave who escaped into a free state must be returned to his or her owner but failed to specify how.

If a slave owner could produce evidence of ownership that could take their recaptured property.

As the anti-slavery movement grew in the 1830s, some free state officials proved uncooperative in enforcing the law.

Professional slave-catchers sometimes went too far, kidnapping free blacks, falsifying documents of ownership and selling them into slavery in the south.

In Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) the U.S. Supreme Court declared Pennsylvanias anti-kidnapping law unconstitutional.

The Underground Railroad took on legendary status. Although less than 1,000 out of approximately 3 million slaves actually escaped to freedom, to southerners the return of these slaves was a matter of honor and rights.

Southerners regarded Northern obedience to the Fugitive Slave law as a test of the Norths good faith in carrying out the compromise.

The Fugitive Slave Law created federal commissioners to issue warrants for arrests of fugitive slaves.

Abolitionists declared the FSL draconian, immoral, and unconstitutional. They vowed to resist it.

The Slave-Catchers

Unable to protect their freedom through legal means, many blacks, with the support of white allies resorted to flight and resistance.

Thousands of northern blacks fled to Canada.

Continued escapes and rescues keep the issue at fever pitch for the rest of the 1850s.

Spring , 1854 Federal marshals in Boston arrested a Virginia fugitive, Anthony Burns

Angry abolitionists poured into Boston to save him. The federal courthouse was attacked and a federal deputy was killed.

The new president, Franklin Pierce, was determined not to back down. incur any expense he wired the district attorney in Boston, to enforce the law.

After every legal move to free Burns was exhausted, Pierce sent a U.S. revenue cutter to carry Burns back to Virginia.

Thousands of angry Yankees lined the streets under American flags hanging upside down to signify the loss of liberty in the cradle of the Revolution.

In another famous case, slave Margaret Garner escaped from Kentucky to Ohio with her husband and their four children.

When federal marshals and deputies caught up with them, Margaret seized a knife and tried to kill her children and herself rather than return to slavery. She managed to cut her three-year-old daughters throat before she was overpowered.

The family was returned to Kentucky, and was promptly sold down river to Arkansas. In a steamboat accident along the way, one of Margarets sons drowned in the Mississippi River.

Such events had an enormous impact on public emotions. One Northerner wrote, after witnessing the Anthony Burns affair, We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.

Uncle Toms Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

She was outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law. An accomplished writer already, her sister-in-law suggested she write something that will make this nation feel what accursed thing slavery is.

Uncle Toms Cabin became a runaway bestseller when it was published in the Spring of 1852.

Although banned in parts of the South, it found a wide but hostile readership there.

The book helped shape a whole generations view of slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 Pt. III

Stephen Douglas, through complicated backroom deals linking the compromise to unrelated matters such as the sale of government bonds and construction of railroads managed to get all components of the bill passed

Douglas also was instrumental in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Compromise of 1850, unlike the Missouri Compromise thirty years earlier, was not a product of widespread agreement on common national ideals. It was a victory of bargaining and self-interest.

Sept. 1850 Pres. Millard Fillmore signed it into law. (President Taylor had died after eating contaminated ice cream and cherries at a 4th of July celebration. Fillmore was his VP)

Young America

Filibustering

As prospects of slavery diminished in New Mexico, southerners looked to a closer region where slavery already existed- Cuba.

This Spanish colony, only 90 miles off the coast of Florida, had over 400,000 slaves.

Pres. Polk, with his appetite to add more territory to the United States, offered Spain $100 million for Cuba in 1848.

The Spanish declined the offer.

Polk was undeterred. If money didnt work, perhaps revolution would.

Narciso Lopez, a Venezuelan-born Cuban soldier of fortune plotted with American expansionists to create an uprising on the island.

Lopez recruited several hundred American adventurers for the first filibustero, in Spanish, pirate, expedition against Cuba.

Pres. Taylor learned of the plan and ordered the navy to prevent Lopezs ships from leaving New York.

May, 1850 - Lopez tried again, leaving from the port of New Orleans. When they landed, Spanish troops drove the filibusters into the sea.

Lopez escaped, returned to a heros welcome in the South, and raised more money and men for a third try.

On the third try, the invasion ended in tragedy. The Spanish killed 200 of the invaders and captured the rest.

Lopez was garroted in the public square, and 50 American prisoners, including William Crittenden of KY, nephew of the U.S. attorney general, were lined up and executed by firing squad.

In 1852, Democrats nominate Franklin Pierce, a doughface, a Northern man with Southern principles, for president.

Although from New Hampshire, Pierces nomination delighted the South. Pierce also gave his support to annexing Cuba.

Pierce tried to buy Cuba, offering Spain $130 million. His American minister, Pierre Soule managed to alienate most Spaniards by his clumsy intriguing.

October 1854, Soule met in Ostend, Belgium with ministers to Britain and France. He persuaded them to sign what came to be known as the Ostend Manifesto.

The manifesto stated, Cuba is as necessary to the North American republic as any present.family of states. If Spain persisted in refusing to sell, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain.

The Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny

William Walker Medical degree from the Univ. of Pennsylvania, studied and practiced law in New Orleans, joined the Gold Rush in 1849.

Weighing less than 120 pounds, Walker seemed an unlikely fighter or leader of men.

Walker found his true calling in filibustering, first in Mexico and later in Nicaragua.

After several unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, he finally gained control of the country and declared himself president in 1856.

The Pierce administration extended diplomatic recognition to Walkers regime. However, other Central American republics formed an alliance to overthrow Walker.

To win greater support, Walker issued a decree in September 1856 re-instituting slavery in the nation. Backers in the South sent boatloads of recruits to Nicaragua both most succumbed to either disease or Central American armies.

Walker escaped to New Orleans, retuning to a heros welcome. After three failed attempts to return, Walker finally embarked on his last journey to Nicaragua.

He was stopped in Honduras, where on Sept. 12, 1860, the gray-eyed man met his destiny before a firing squad

Efforts to add the Kingdom of Hawaii and Canada failed due to the insistence of Southerners that slavery be allowed in both countries

Slavery, Railroads & the West

Interest in settlement of the West raised two divisive issues: railroads & slavery

There was broad support for building a trans-continental railroad; the problem was which route would be chosen

Northerners favored Chicago; Southerners favored St. Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans

Pres. Pierces Secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, sent James Gadsden to Mexico to purchase a strip of land, now part of Arizona & New Mexico for $10M to make a southern railroad route possible.

This purchase only further fueled sectional rivalry.

The Kansas-Nebraska Controversy

Blame it on Stephen A. Douglas!

Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act to strengthen his position to have the transcontinental railroad run along a northern route.

Douglas wanted the railroad for his own city, Chicago.

Douglas also realized that a northern route meant most of the railroad line would run through unorganized Indian territory. If he could organize land left from the Louisiana Purchase into a huge new territory it could sweeten the deal for him.

Also vying for a transcontinental railroad route was Jefferson Davis, of Missouri and currently serving as Secretary of War. However, this route would cross the lower half of the United States, connecting the slave South with California.

Stephen Douglas would not cooperate unless the railroad went through Illinois. The Southern politicians -- people like Jefferson Davis -- wanted it to start in Georgia and move across. There was just no way that they could come to any kind of decision.

Jan. 1854 Douglas introduced a bill to organize a huge new territory, known as Nebraska.

He knew the South would oppose the bill b/c it would prepare the way for another free state.

In an effort to calm Southern fears, Douglas inserted a popular sovereignty provision. Those who settled the new territory would vote to decide whether it would be free or slave. Most settlers into the Kansas territory were from the North and opposed to slavery. Next-door neighbors in Missouri would use fear, intimidation, fraud, and murder to make sure Kansas came into the Union as a slave state.

Southern Democrats demanded more; Douglas agreed to an additional clause repealing the Missouri Compromise.

He also agreed to divide the territory into two, Nebraska & Kansas, instead of just one.

Kansas was thought more likely to become a slave state.

Pres. Pierce supported the bill in its final form

May 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed with unanimous Southern support and partial Northern support, and signed into law by Pres. Pierce

Possibly no other single piece of legislation in American history has so many immediate, sweeping, and ominous consequences.

It divided and destroyed the Whig Party, it divided Northern Democrats who were appalled at the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and it spurred the creation of a new political party that was purely sectional in composition and creed.

People in BOTH major parties who opposed Douglass bill called themselves Anti-Nebraska Democrats and Anti-Nebraska Whigs

They formed a new organization and named it the Republican Party. It instantly became a major force in American politics.

In their first election cycle, the Republicans allied with the Know-Nothings and gained control of the House of Representatives.

Bleeding Kansas

White settlers from both the North and the South began moving into the Kansas Territory.

Spring, 1855 elections were held for a territorial legislature; only about 1,500 legal voters, but illegal voters from Missouri added several thousand more votes, resulting in a win for pro-slavery forces.

Outraged free-staters elected their own delegates to a constitutional convention and chose their own governor and legislature and promptly applied for statehood.

Pres. Pierce denounced the free-staters as traitors and threw his full support behind the pro-slavery government.

A few months later, a pro-slavery federal marshal assembled a large posse to arrest the free-state leaders who had set up headquarters in Lawrence, KS.

The pro-slavery group set up their headquarters in Lecompton, KS.

The posse sacked Lawrence, burned the governors house and destroyed several printing presses.

Retribution came swiftly after in the form of John Brown, a fiercely committed foe of slavery. Brown and his sons had moved to Kansas so they could help in the fight to make it a free state.

After the events in Lawrence, he gathered his sons and two others and in one night murdered five pro-slavery settlers and mutilated their bodies to discourage other pro-slavery supporters.

This was known as the Pottawatomie Massacre and led to even more civil strife. Kansas was an undeclared war zone with armed men on both sides

One more incident occurred reflecting the impact of bleeding Kansas on the nation.

In May, 1856 an incident that happened on the floor of the U.S. Senate showed just how volatile the situation had become.

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called "The Crime Against Kansas." He blasted the "murderous robbers from Missouri," calling them "hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization."

Part of this oratory was a bitter, personal tirade against South Carolina's Senator Andrew Butler. Sumner declared Butler an imbecile and said, "Senator Butler has chosen a mistress. I mean the harlot, slavery." During the speech, Stephen Douglas leaned over to a colleague and said, "that damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool." The speech went on for two days.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina thought Sumner went too far. Southerners in the nineteenth century were raised to live by an unwritten code of honor. Defending the reputation of one's family was at the top of the list.

A cousin of Senator Butler, Brooks decided to teach Charles Sumner a lesson. Two days after the end of Sumner's speech, Brooks entered the Senate chamber where Sumner was working at his desk. He flatly told Sumner, "You've libeled my state and slandered my relative, Senator Butler, and I've come to punish you for it."

Brooks proceeded to strike Sumner over the head repeatedly with a gold-tipped cane. The cane shattered as Brooks rained blow after blow on the hapless Sumner, but Brooks could not be stopped. Only after being physically restrained by others did Brooks end the pummeling.

Charles Sumner spent years recovering from the attack.

Northerners were incensed. The House voted to expel Brooks, but it could not amass the votes to do so. Brooks was levied a $300 fine for the assault. He resigned and returned home to South Carolina, seeking the approval of his actions there.

South Carolina held events in his honor and reelected him to his House seat. Replacement canes were sent to Brooks from all over the south. This response outraged northern moderates even more than the caning itself.

The Free-Soil Ideology

The Northern point of view: free-soil and free-labor; most were not so concerned about abolition, but believed it threatened the right of all citizens to own property, to control their own labor, and to have access to opportunities for advancement.

Northerners considered the South a closed, static society which preserved an aristocratic planter class and where common whites had no opportunity to improve themselves. They also believed there was a conspiracy to extend slavery throughout the nation, destroying northern capitalism and replacing it with the closed system of the South.

The prospect of dismemberment of the new nation and with it the reduction of Americas size and power was unthinkable.

Pro-Slavery Argument

The Nat Turner rebellion terrified whites and made them even more determined to make slavery secure; the extension of the cotton economy, and the growth of the abolitionist movement in the North, the effects of Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin were all evidence of the Norths intentions to ruin the Southern way of life

Professor Thomas Dew, of the College of William & Mary, began a new intellectual defense of slavery.

Twenty years later, an anthology entitled The Pro-Slavery Argument summarized those views.

Southerners should stop apologizing for slavery as a necessary evil and defend it as a positive good.

Southerners saw the North as greedy, corrupt, and unstable. They pointed to the conditions factory workers faced.

The defense of slavery also rested on elaborate arguments about the biological inferiority of slaves who were unfit to care for themselves.

Both sides pointed to biblical references to support their positions.

Buchanan and the Depression

The Election of 1856

Democrats chose James Buchanan (D-PA) as their presidential candidate.

Franklin Pierce would not be asked to run again as he had been identified much too closely with the Bleeding Kansas issue.

Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, an explorer of the Far West (California) with a national reputation and no political record.

The Know-Nothings (aka the Native American Party) were beginning to break apart, but nominated Millard Fillmore

Buchanan won a narrow victory over Fremont and Fillmore.

Of significance was the fact that Fremont received virtually no votes from the South while outpolling all other candidates in the North

Buchanan, at sixty-five, was one of the oldest presidents to take office. He was physically infirm and indecisive, characteristics that made him a weak president at a crucial time in the nations history.

When Buchanan took office in 1857 a financial panic struck the nation, followed by a depression that lasted several years.

The Panic of 1857

August, 1857 A U.S vessel carrying 400 passengers and a huge shipment of gold sailed from California encountered a violent hurricane en route to the East coast. U.S. banks needed that gold to avert a crisis.

The banks had invested in businesses that were failing, causing the American people to panic. Investors were losing heavily in the stock market and railroads were unable to pay their debts. Land speculators who had counted on the construction of new railroad routes were losing money. People feared financial ruin. They ran to the banks to withdraw their money, but the banks did not deal in paper money. They used silver and gold.

Adding to the trouble of the banks, the ship full of gold lost its battle with the hurricane and sank. With their failed investments, it was now impossible for the banks to gather all the gold their customers demanded.

On August 24, 1857, the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company failed, triggering a domino effect. Soon all across the nation, banks began to collapse.

The Panic of 1857 led to a severe economic depression in the United States that lasted three years.

Run on the Seamans Savings Bank

The Dred Scott Decision

March 6, 1857 The Supreme Court handed down a decision in the

Dred Scott v. Sandford (sic)case

Dred Scott, a Missouri slave, sued for his freedom after the army surgeon who owned him died

The original suit, filed in Missouri, granted Scott his freedom. However, the decision was appealed and the state court overturned the decision claiming Scott could not sue because he was considered property with no rights.

The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, wrote that Scott was also ineligible to file suit as he was not a citizen.

Taney concluded that Congress had no authority to pass a law depriving persons of their slave property in the territories.

The Missouri Compromise, therefore, had always been unconstitutional!

The ruling did nothing to challenge the right of an individual state to prohibit slavery but the statement that the federal government was powerless to act was a drastic and startling one.

Few judicial opinions have ever created as much controversy as this one.

Southern whites were elated

Northerners were filled with fury and dismay

Republicans threatened that when they won control of the national government, they would reverse the decision by packing the court with new members.

The Deadlock over Kansas

President Buchanan timidly endorsed the Dred Scott decision.

He tried to resolve the controversy over Kansas by supporting its admission to the Union as a slave state.

The pro-slavery forces called an election for delegates for a constitutional convention.

The free-state residents refused to participate, resulting in a win for the pro-slavery side.

The pro-slavery group met at Lecompton, Kansas, framed a constitution legalizing slavery, and refused to give voters a chance to reject it.

When an election for a new territorial legislature was called, anti-slavery groups turned out to vote and won a majority.

The new legislature promptly submitted the Lecompton constitution to the voters who rejected it by more than 10,000 votes

It was clear that the majority of the people of Kansas opposed slavery.

President Buchanan pressured Congress to admit Kansas as a state under the (now legally rejected) Lecompton constitution.

Stephen A. Douglas and other western Democrats refused to support the presidents proposal.

The constitution remained in political limbo.

April, 1858 The Lecompton constitution would be submitted to the voters of Kansas again!

If approved, Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave state, if rejected, statehood would be postponed.

Again, Kansas voters soundly rejected the Lecompton constitution.

Kansas would have to wait until 1861, during the final months of Buchanans administration be admitted, as a free state.

By this time, several southern states had already seceded from the Union.

The Emergence of Lincoln

1858 race for the Illinois Senate seat Stephen A. Douglas v. Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln had stated his position on slavery while accepting the Republican nomination on June 16 in Springfield.

Douglas had no moral position on the issue: One of the reserved rights of the states was the right to regulate the relations between master and servantI am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form I believe this government was made for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.

Lincoln believed slavery was morally wrong, but he was not an abolitionist A house divided against itself cannot stand, he declared. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolvedI do not expect the house to fallbut I do expect it will cease to be divided.

pgs. 369-370

John Browns Raid

Please read pg. 370

The Election of Lincoln

Please read pgs. 370-371