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Four Men Respond to the Union in Peril

C H A P T E R 14The Union in Peril

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The autumn of 1860 was a time of ominous rumors and expectations.The electionwas held on November 6 in an atmosphere of crisis. In Springfield, Illinois, AbrahamLincoln, taking coffee and sandwiches prepared by the “ladies of Springfield,” waited asthe telegraph brought in the returns. By 1 A.M., victory was certain. He reported later,“I went home, but not to get much sleep, for I then felt, as I never had before, the

American Stories

George Caleb Bingham’s Stump Speaking (1856) captures the democratic energy of politics at midcentury. Note the Lincoln-like figure sitting to the right. (Private Collection/Bridgeman ArtLibrary)

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responsibility that was upon me.” Indeed, he and the American people faced the mostserious crisis since the founding of the Republic.

Lincoln won a four-party election with only 39 percent of the popular vote. He ap-pealed almost exclusively to northern voters in a blatantly sectional campaign, defeat-ing his three opponents by carrying every free state except New Jersey. Only Illinoissenator Stephen Douglas campaigned actively in every section of the country. For hisefforts, he received the second-highest number of votes. Douglas’s appeal, especially inthe closing days of the campaign, was “on behalf of the Union,” which he feared—cor-rectly—was in imminent danger of splitting apart.

That fall, other Americans sensed the crisis and faced their own fears and respon-sibilities. A month before the election, South Carolina plantation owner Robert All-ston wrote his oldest son, Benjamin, that “disastrous consequences” would followfrom a Lincoln victory.Although his letter mentioned the possibility of secession, hedealt mostly with plantation concerns: a new horse, the mood of the slaves, orderingsupplies from the city, instructions for making trousers on a sewing machine. AfterLincoln’s election,Allston corresponded with a southern colleague about the need foran “effective military organization” to resist “Northern and Federal aggression.” In hisshift from sewing machines to military ones, Robert Allston prepared for what hecalled the “impending crisis.”

Frederick Douglass greeted the election of 1860 with characteristic optimism.Thiswas an opportunity to “educate . . . the people in their moral and political duties,” hesaid, adding,“slaveholders know that the day of their power is over when a RepublicanPresident is elected.” But no sooner had Lincoln’s victory been determined than Dou-glass’s hopes turned sour. He noted that Republican leaders, who were trying to keepborder states from seceding, sounded more antiabolitionist than antislavery. Theyvowed not to touch slavery in areas where it already existed (including the District ofColumbia), to enforce the hated Fugitive Slave Act, and to put down slave rebellions. Infact, Douglass bitterly contested, slavery would “be as safe, and safer” with Lincolnthan with a Democrat.

Iowa farmer Michael Luark was not so sure. Born in Virginia, he was a typically mo-bile nineteenth-century American. Growing up in Indiana, he followed the miningbooms of the 1850s to Colorado and California, then returned to the Midwest tofarm. Luark sought a good living and resented the furor over slavery. He could not,however, avoid the issue. Writing in his diary on the last day of 1860, Luark lookedahead to 1861 with a deep sense of fear.“Startling” political changes would occur, hepredicted, perhaps even the “Dissolution of the Union and Civil War with all its trainof horrors.” He blamed abolitionist agitators, perhaps reflecting his Virginia origins. OnNew Year’s Day, he expressed his fears that Lincoln would let the “most ultra sectionaland Abolition” men disturb the “vexed Slavery question” even further, as FrederickDouglass wanted. But if this happened, Luark warned, “then farewell to our belovedUnion of States.” Within four months of this diary entry, the guns of the ConfederateStates of America fired on a federal fort in South Carolina.The Civil War had begun.

The firing on Fort Sumter made real Luark’s fears, Douglass’s hopes, and

Lincoln’s and Allston’s preparations for responsibility. America’s shaky

democratic political system faced its worst crisis. The explanation of the peril

and dissolution of the Union forms the theme of this chapter.

Such calamitous events as Civil War had numerous causes, large and small.

The reactions of Allston, Douglass, and Luark to Lincoln’s election suggest some

of them: moral duties, sectional politics, growing apprehensions over emotional

agitators, and a concern for freedom and independence on the part of blacks,

white southerners, and western farmers. But as Douglass understood, by 1860, it

was clear that “slavery is the real issue, the single bone of contention between all

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Slavery in the TerritoriesFree Soil or Constitutional

Protection?Popular Sovereignty and the

Election of 1848The Compromise of 1850Consequences of Compromise

Political DisintegrationWeakened Party Politics in the

Early 1850sThe Kansas–Nebraska ActExpansionist “Young America” in

the Larger WorldNativism, Know-Nothings, and

Republicans

Kansas and the Two CulturesCompeting for Kansas“Bleeding Kansas”Northern Views and VisionsThe Southern Perspective

Polarization and the Road toWarThe Dred Scott CaseConstitutional Crisis in KansasLincoln and the Illinois DebatesJohn Brown’s RaidThe Election of 1860

The Divided House FallsSecession and UncertaintyLincoln and Fort Sumter

Conclusion: The“Irrepressible Conflict”

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458 PART 3 An Expanding People, 1820–1877

parties and sections. It is the one disturbing force, and

explains the confused and irregular motion of our po-

litical machine.”

This chapter analyzes how the momentous issue

of slavery disrupted the political system and eventu-

ally the Union itself. We will look at how four major

developments between 1848 and 1861 contributed to

the Civil War: first, a sectional dispute over the exten-

sion of slavery into the western territories; second,

the breakdown of the political party system; third,

growing cultural differences in the views and

lifestyles of southerners and northerners; and fourth,

intensifying emotional and ideological polarization

between the two regions over losing their way of life

and sacred republican rights at the hands of the

other. A preview of civil war, bringing all four causes

together, occurred in 1855–1856 in Kansas. Eventu-

ally, emotional events, mistrust, and irreconcilable

differences made conflict inevitable. Lincoln’s elec-

tion was the spark that touched off the conflagration

of civil war, with all its “train of horrors.”




SLAVERY IN THETERRITORIESAs Narcissa Whitman sadly discovered with theCayuse Indians in eastern Washington (seeChapter 13), white migration westward was dis-couraging and downright dangerous. It was espe-cially damaging to the freedom, safety, and cul-tural integrity of Native Americans and Mexicans,whose lands stood in the way. Moreover, the west-ward movement imperiled freedom and eventuallythe Union by causing a collision between Yankeesand slaveholders.

The North and the South had mostly containedtheir differences over slavery for 60 years after theConstitutional Convention. Compromise in 1787had resolved questions of the slave trade and howto count slaves for congressional representation. Al-though slavery threatened the uneasy sectional har-mony in 1820 (“like a fire bell in the night,” Jeffersonhad said), the Missouri Compromise had estab-lished a workable balance of free and slave statesand had defined a geographic line (36º30') to deter-mine future decisions. In 1833, compromise haddefused South Carolina’s attempt at nullification,and the gag rule in 1836 had kept abolitionist peti-tions off the floor of Congress.

Each apparent resolution, however, raised thelevel of emotional conflict between North andSouth and postponed ultimate settlement of theslavery question. One reason why these compro-mises temporarily worked was the two-party sys-tem, with Whigs and Democrats in both North andSouth. Party loyalties served as an “antidote,” asVan Buren put it, to sectional allegiance. The par-ties differed over cultural and economic issues, butslavery was largely kept out of political campaignsand congressional debates. This changed in thelate 1840s.

Free Soil or Constitutional Protection?When war with Mexico broke out in 1846, Pennsyl-vania congressman David Wilmot added an amend-ment to an appropriations bill declaring that “nei-ther slavery nor involuntary servitude shall everexist” in any territories acquired from Mexico. Leg-islators debated the Wilmot Proviso not as Whigsand Democrats but as northerners and southerners.

A Boston newspaper prophetically observed thatWilmot’s resolution “brought to a head the greatquestion which is about to divide the Americanpeople.” When the war ended, several solutionswere presented to deal with this question of slaveryin the territories. First was the “free soil” idea of pre-venting any extensions of slavery. Two precedentssuggested that Congress could do this. One was theNorthwest Ordinance, which had barred slaves fromthe Upper Midwest; the other was the MissouriCompromise.

Free soil had mixed motives. For some, slavery wasa moral evil to be destroyed. But for many northernwhite farmers looking westward, the threat of eco-nomic competition with an expanding system oflarge-scale slave labor was even more serious. Nordid they wish to compete for land with free blacks. AsWilmot put it, his proviso was intended to preservethe area for the “sons of toil, of my own race and owncolor.” Other northerners supported the proviso as ameans of restraining the growing political power and“insufferable arrogance” of the “spirit and demandsof the Slave Power.”

Opposed to the free-soil position were the argu-ments of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina,expressed in several resolutions introduced in theSenate in 1847. Congress not only lacked the consti-tutional right to exclude slavery from the territories,he argued, but actually had a duty to protect it.Therefore, the Wilmot Proviso was unconstitutional.

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CHAPTER 14 The Union in Peril 459

So were the Missouri Compromise and other federalacts that prevented slaveholders from taking theirslave property into U.S. territories.

Economic, political, and moral considerationsstood behind Calhoun’s position. Many southernershungered for new cotton lands in the West and South-west, even in Central America and the Caribbean.Southerners feared that northerners wanted to tram-ple on their right to protect their institutions againstabolitionism. Southern leaders saw the Wilmot Pro-viso as a moral issue touching basic republican prin-ciples. One congressman called it “treason to the Con-stitution,” and Senator Robert Toombs of Georgiawarned that if Congress passed the proviso, he wouldfavor disunion rather than “degradation.”

Popular Sovereignty and theElection of 1848With such divisive potential, it was naturalthat many Americans sought a compro-mise solution to keep slavery out of poli-tics. Polk’s secretary of state, JamesBuchanan of Pennsylvania, proposed ex-tending the Missouri Compromise line tothe Pacific Ocean, thereby avoiding thornyquestions about the morality of slavery andthe constitutionality of congressional au-thority. So would “popular sovereignty,” theproposal of Michigan senator Lewis Cass toleave decisions about permitting slavery toterritorial legislatures. The idea appealed tothe American democratic belief in localself-government but left many detailsunanswered. At what point in the progresstoward statehood could a territorial legisla-ture decide about slavery? Cass preferred toleave such questions ambiguous.

Democrats, liking popular sovereigntybecause it could mean all things to all peo-ple, nominated Cass for president in 1848.Cass denounced abolitionists and theWilmot Proviso but otherwise avoided theissue of slavery. The Democrats, however,printed two campaign biographies of Cass,one for the South and one for the North.

The Whigs found an even better way tohold the party together by evading the slav-ery issue. Rejecting Henry Clay, they nomi-nated the Mexican-American War heroGeneral Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana slave-holder. Taylor compared himself withWashington as a “no party” man above pol-itics. Standing for no party was about all hestood for. Southern Whigs supported Taylor

because they thought he might understand the bur-dens of slaveholding, and northern Whigs werepleased that he took no stand on the Wilmot Proviso.

The evasions of the two major parties disap-pointed Calhoun, who tried to create a new, unifiedsouthern party. His “Address to the People of theSouthern States” threatened secession and calledfor a united stand against further attempts to inter-fere with the southern right to extend slavery. Al-though only 48 of 121 southern representativessigned the address, Calhoun’s argument raised thespecter of secession and disunion.

Warnings also came from the North. A New YorkDemocratic faction bolted to support Van Buren forpresident. At first, the split had more to do with

Getting the Latest News This 1848 painting by Richard CatonWoodville, titled War News from Mexico, captures the mood of the period fromthe Mexican-American War through the Civil War; in towns across the country,outside countless “American Hotels,” the American people listened eagerly to thelatest news in an era of steadily worsening political, socioeconomic, and constitu-tional crises. Separate from the men on the porch, but clearly a part of the picture,are a black father and daughter in rags; they await the war news with special inter-est. What would explain their interest in the outcome of the Mexican war?(Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico. The Manoogian Collection, on loanto the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Image © 2005 Board of Trustees, NationalGallery of Art ,Washington, 1848, oil on canvas, .686 x .627 (27 x 243/4)



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The history of ordinary Americans is recovered in let-ters, diaries, folktales, and other nontraditional sources.But in times of political conflict, as in the years beforethe Civil War, historians turn to more conventionalsources such as congressional speeches. Recorded inthe Congressional Globe, these speeches are a revealingmeans of recovering the substance, tone, and drama ofpolitical debate.

The mid-nineteenth century was an era of giants inthe U.S. Senate: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, ThomasHart Benton, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, andStephen Douglas.When Congress debated a major is-sue, such as the tariff, nullification, or the extension ofslavery, large crowds packed the Senate galleries.Thespeeches were quickly printed and widely distributed.These spectacular oratorical encounters providedmass entertainment and political instruction. Suchwas the case with the Senate speeches over theCompromise of 1850.The three principal figures earlyin the debates were Clay (Kentucky), Calhoun (SouthCarolina), and Webster (Massachusetts), each ofwhom delivered memorable speeches to crown bril-liant careers.

Born within five years of each other as the Ameri-can Revolution was ending (1777–1782), each manbegan his political career in the House of Representa-tives in the War of 1812 era. Each served a term assecretary of state; in addition, Clay was speaker of theHouse and Calhoun secretary of war and vice presi-dent. Each served for more than a decade in the Sen-ate (Clay, 13 years; Calhoun, 15 years; Webster, 19years). Clay and Webster were leaders of the Whigparty; Calhoun was a leader of the Democrats. Duringtheir 40 years of public service, they representedstrong nationalistic positions as well as their variousstates and sections. All three were failing candidatesfor president between 1824 and 1844.All three spentmost of their careers in the political shadow of An-drew Jackson, and all three clashed with him.

Forty years of political and ideological conflict witheach other not only sharpened their oratorical skills

but also led to mutual respect. Webster said of Cal-houn that he was “the ablest man in the Senate. Hecould have demolished Newton, Calvin, or even JohnLocke as a logician.” Calhoun said of Clay,“He is a bad man, but by god, I love him.”And “Old Man Eloquent” himself, JohnQuincy Adams, said of Webster that he was“the most consummate orator of moderntimes.”

It was therefore a momentous eventwhen they each prepared speeches andmet for one last encounter early in 1850. Clay wasover 70 years old and in failing health, but he soughtto keep the Union together by defending his compro-mise proposals in a four-hour speech spread over twodays in February.The Senate galleries were so packedthat listeners were pushed into hallways and even intothe rotunda of the Capitol. Copies of hisspeech were in such demand that over100,000 were printed.

A month later, on March 7,Webster roseto join Clay in defending the compromise,three days after a seriously ill Calhoun had“tottered into the Senate” on the arm of afriend to hear James Mason of Virginia readhis rejection of the compromise. Within amonth, Calhoun was dead. Clay and Webster followedhim to the grave two years later, and Senate leader-ship passed on to Seward, Douglas, and others.

REFLECTING ON THE PAST As you read these brief ex-cerpts from each speech, try to imagine yourself sit-ting in the gallery overlooking the Senate floor ab-sorbing the drama.What oratorical devices does eachspeaker use? How do they differ? To what extent doeseach man reflect his region, especially on the fugitiveslave issue? To what extent do they appeal to an indi-visible Union? On whom do you put the burden of re-solving the conflicts? Which passages convey the mostemotional power? Which speaker is most persuasiveto you? Why?

RECOVERING THE PAST

Senate Speeches

Daniel Webster,Speech to theSenate (March

7, 1850)

John C.Calhoun,

Proposal toPreserve the

Union (1850)



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February 5–6, 1850I have seen many periods of great anxiety, of peril, and ofdanger in this country, and I have never before risen toaddress any assemblage so oppressed, so appalled, and so anx-ious; and sir, I hope it will not be out of place to do here, whatagain and again I have done in my private chamber, toimplore of Him who holds the destinies of nations and individ-uals in His hands, to bestow upon our country His blessing, tocalm the violence and rage of party, to still passion, to allowreason once more to resume its empire. . . .

Mr. President, it is passion, passion-party, party, andintemperance—that is all I dread in the adjustment of the greatquestions which unhappily at this time divide our distractedcountry. Sir, at this moment we have in the legislative bodies ofthis Capitol and in the States, twenty old furnaces in full blast,emitting heat, and passion, and intemperance, and diffusing themthroughout the whole extent of this broad land. Two months agoall was calm in comparison to the present moment. All now isuproar, confusion, and menace to the existence of the Union,and to the happiness and safety of this people. . . .

Sir, when I came to consider this subject, there were two orthree general purposes which it seemed to me to be most desir-

able, if possible, to accomplish. The one was, to settle all thecontroverted questions arising out of the subject of slavery. . . .I therefore turned my attention to every subject connected withthis institution of slavery, and out of which controverted ques-tions had sprung, to see if it were possible or practicable toaccommodate and adjust the whole of them. . . .

We are told now, and it is rung throughout this entire country,that the Union is threatened with subversion and destruction.Well, the first question which naturally rises is, supposing theUnion to be dissolved,—having all the causes of grievancewhich are complained of,—How far will a dissolution furnish aremedy for those grievances? If the Union is to be dissolved forany existing causes, it will be dissolved because slavery is inter-dicted or not allowed to be introduced into the ceded territories;because slavery is threatened to be abolished in the District ofColumbia, and because fugitive slaves are not returned, as inmy opinion they ought to be, and restored to their masters. These,I believe, will be the causes; if there be any causes, which canlead to the direful event to which I have referred. . . .

Mr. President, I am directly opposed to any purpose of seces-sion, of separation. I am for staying within the Union, and defy-ing any portion of this Union to expel or drive me out of the Union.

Henry Clay

March 4, 1850Having now, Senators, explained what it is that endangersthe Union, and traced it to its cause, and explained its natureand character, the question again recurs—How can theUnion be saved? To this I answer, there is but one way bywhich it can be—and that is—by adopting such measures aswill satisfy the States belonging to the Southern section, thatthey can remain in the Union consistently with their honor

and their safety. . . .But will the North agree to this? It is for her to answer the

question. But, I will say, she cannot refuse, if she has half thelove of the Union which she professes to have, or without justlyexposing herself to the charge that her love of power andaggrandizement is far greater than her love of the Union. Atall events, the responsibility of saving the Union rests on theNorth, and not on the South. . . .

John C. Calhoun

March 7, 1850Mr. President: I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusettsman, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and amember of the Senate of the United States. . . .

I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. “Hear mefor my cause.” I speak to-day, out of a solicitous and anxiousheart, for the restoration to the country of that quiet and thatharmony which make the blessing of this Union so rich, and sodear to us all. . . . I shall bestow a little attention, Sir, uponthese various grievances existing on the one side and on the other.I begin with complaints of the South . . . and especially to onewhich has in my opinion just foundation; and that is, that therehas been found at the North, among individuals and among leg-islators, a disinclination to perform fully their constitutionalduties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who

have escaped into the free States. In that respect, the South, inmy judgment, is right, and the North is wrong. Every member ofevery Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every otherofficer in the country, to support the Constitution of the UnitedStates; and the article of the Constitution which says to theseStates they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding inhonor and conscience as any other article. . . .

Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede?What is to remain American? What am I to be? AnAmerican no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a localman, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentle-men who sit around me here, or who fill the other house ofCongress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic toremain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, andshrink, and fall to the ground?

Daniel Webster

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state politics than moral principles, but it soon in-volved the question of slavery in the territories. Dis-affected “conscience” Whigs from Massachusettsalso explored a third-party alternative. These groupsmet in Buffalo, New York, to form the Free-Soil partyand nominated Van Buren. The platform of the newparty, an uneasy mixture of ardent abolitionists andopponents of free blacks moving into western lands,pledged to fight for “free soil, free speech, free laborand free men.”

Taylor won easily, largely because defectionsfrom Cass to the Free-Soilers cost the DemocratsNew York and Pennsylvania. Although weakened,the two-party system survived. Purely sectional par-ties had failed. The Free-Soilers took only about 10percent of the popular vote.

The Compromise of 1850Taylor won the election by avoiding slavery questions.But as president, he had to deal with them. When hewas inaugurated in 1849, four issues faced the nation.First, the rush of some 80,000 gold miners to Californiaqualified it for statehood. But California’s entry as afree state would upset the balance between slave andfree states in the Senate that had prevailed since 1820.The unresolved status of the Mexican cession in theSouthwest posed a second problem. The longer thearea remained unorganized, the louder local inhabi-tants called for an application of either the WilmotProviso or the Calhoun doctrine. The Texas–New Mex-ico boundary was also disputed, with Texas claiming

everything east of Santa Fe. Northerners feared thatTexas might split into five or six slave states. A thirdproblem was the existence of slavery and one of thelargest slave markets in North America in the nation’scapital. Fourth, southerners resented the lax federalenforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. Theycalled for a stronger act that would end protection forrunaways fleeing to Canada.

Taylor was a newcomer to politics (he had nevervoted in a presidential election before 1848), and hetackled these problems somewhat evasively. Sidestep-ping the issue of slavery in the territories, he invitedCalifornia and New Mexico to seek statehood imme-diately, presumably as free states. But soon he alien-ated both southern supporters such as Calhoun andmainstream Whig leaders such as Clay and Webster.

Early in 1850, the old compromiser Henry Claysought to regain control of the Whig party by propos-ing solutions to the divisive issues before the nation.With Webster’s support, Clay introduced a series ofresolutions in an omnibus package intended to settlethese issues once and for all. The stormy debates,great speeches, and political maneuvering that fol-lowed made up a crucial and dramatic moment inAmerican history. Yet after 70 speeches onbehalf of the compromise, the Senate de-feated Clay’s Omnibus Bill. Tired and dis-heartened, the 73-year-old Clay left Wash-ington and died two years later. Into thegap stepped Senator Stephen Douglas ofIllinois, who saw that Clay’s resolutionshad a better chance of passing if voted on

AMERICAN VOICESHenry David Thoreau,Essay on “Civil Disobedience,” 1849

Henry David Thoreau, as we saw in Chapter 12, went to jailto protest both slavery and the Mexican War. His essay on“Civil Disobedience”was—and is—a powerful argument forhow one person of principle can stand up against tyrannyand injustice.

When a sixth of the population of a nationwhich has undertaken to be the refuge of libertyare slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrunand conquered by a foreign army, and subjected tomilitary law, I think that it is not too soon for hon-est men to rebel and revolutionize. What makesthis duty the more urgent is the fact that thecountry so overrun is not our own, but ours is theinvading army.

. . . There are thousands who are in opinion opposedto slavery and to the war, and who yet in effect do noth-ing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselveschildren of Washington and Franklin, sit down with theirhands in their pockets, and say that they know not whatto do, and do nothing. . . . Unjust laws exist: shall we becontent to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amendthem, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shallwe transgress them at once?

■ What is the most powerful point in this passage for you?

■ Can you apply Thoreau’s argument to contemporaryevents in American life?

Henry Clay,Speech to theSenate (Jan.29, 1850)





Henry Clay Addressesthe Senate Henry Clayargues for the compromisepackage of 1850 in this paintingby R. Whitechurch, titled TheUnited States Senate, 1850. Claywarned that failure to adopthis bill would lead to “furious”and “bloody” civil war. Was heright? (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-689)

BRITISH CANADA

MEXICO

GEORGIA

SOUTHCAROLINA

NORTH CAROLINA

ALABAMA

MISSISSIPPI

TENNESSEE

VIRGINIA

INDIANAOHIO

MICHIGAN

ILLINOIS

WISCONSIN

LOUISIANA

TEXAS

PENNSYLVANIA

NEWYORK

MAINEVERMONT

RHODE ISLANDCONNECTICUT

NEW JERSEY

MARYLANDDELAWARE

FLORIDA

KENTUCKY

Washington, D.C.(slave tradeabolished butslaveholdingallowed)

MASSACHUSETTS

NEW HAMPSHIRE

ARKANSAS

MISSOURI

IOWA

MINNESOTATERRITORY

1849

UNORGANIZEDTERRITORY

INDIANTERRITORY

Cededby

Texas

NEW MEXICO1850

UTAH TERRITORY1850

CALIFORNIA1850

OREGONTERRITORY

1848

Free statesand territories

Slave states

Territories opento slavery

The Compromise of 1850

“I have seen many periods of great anxiety, of peril, and of danger in this country,” Henry Clay told Congress in February 1850,“and I have never before risen to address any assemblage so oppressed, so appalled, and so anxious.” What followed were the de-bates that led eventually to the passage of the Compromise of 1850. Can you find three of the four major parts of the bill on themap? What was the fourth?




individually. Under Douglas’s leadership, and withthe support of President Millard Fillmore, who suc-ceeded to the presidency upon Taylor’s suddendeath, a series of bills was finally passed.

The Compromise of 1850 put Clay’s resolutions,slightly altered, into law. First, California enteredthe Union as a free state, ending the balance of freeand slave states. Second, territorial governmentswere organized in New Mexico and Utah, letting lo-cal people decide whether to permit slavery. TheTexas–New Mexico border was settled, denyingTexas the disputed area. In return, the federal gov-ernment gave Texas $10 million to pay debts owedto Mexico. Third, the slave trade, but not slavery,was abolished in the District of Columbia.

The fourth and most controversial partof the compromise was the Fugitive SlaveAct, containing many provisions that of-fended northerners. One denied allegedfugitives a jury trial, leaving special cases fordecision by commissioners (who were paid$5 for setting a fugitive free but $10 for re-

turning a fugitive). An especially repugnant provisioncompelled northern citizens to help catch runaways.

Consequences of CompromiseThe Compromise of 1850 was the last attempt tokeep slavery out of politics. Voting on the different

bills followed sectional lines on some issues andparty lines on others. Douglas felt pleased with his“final settlement” of the slavery question.

But the compromise only delayed more serioussectional conflict, and it added two new ingredientsto American politics. First, political realignmentalong sectional lines tightened. Second, althoughrepudiated by most ordinary citizens, the ideas ofsecessionism, disunion, and a “higher law” than theConstitution entered political discussions. Peoplewondered whether the question of slavery in theterritories could be compromised away next time.

Others were immediately upset. The new fugitiveslave law angered many northerners because itbrought the evils of slavery right into their midst.Owners of runaway slaves hired agents (labeled“kidnappers” in the North) to hunt down fugitives.In a few dramatic episodes, notably in Boston, liter-ary and religious intellectuals led mass protests toresist slave hunters. When Senator Webster sup-ported the law, New England abolitionists de-nounced him as “indescribably base and wicked.”Ralph Waldo Emerson said he would not obey the“filthy law.”

Frederick Douglass would not obey it either. As arunaway slave, he faced arrest and return to theSouth until friends overcame his objections andpurchased his freedom. Douglass still risked harmby his strong defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Dangers of Escape As a group of runaways makes its way north in this painting by TheodorKaufmann entitled On to Liberty (1867), the peril of the journey, even if successful, is reflected in this broadsidepublished by Boston abolitionist Theodore Parker, which alerted the city’s black community in 1851 to thedangers posed by the Fugitive Slave Act. (Left: Theodor Kaufmann, On to Liberty, 1867. The Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art, Gift of Erving and Joyce Wolfe, 1982. (1982.443.3) Photograph © 1982 The Metropolitan Museum ofArt; right: Harold Washington Library Center, Special Collections & Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library)

The FugitiveSlave Act(1850)





Arguing the “rightfulness of forcible resistance,” heurged free blacks to arm themselves. “The only wayto make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter,” hesaid in Pittsburgh in 1853, “is to make a half dozenor more dead kidnappers.” Douglass raised moneyfor black fugitives, hid runaways in his home,helped hundreds escape to Canada, and supportedblack organizations such as the League of Freedomin Boston.

Other northerners, white and black, stepped upwork for the Underground Railroad and helped run-away slaves evade capture. Several states passed

“personal liberty laws” that prohibitedusing state officials and institutions in therecovery of fugitive slaves. But mostnortherners complied. Of some 200blacks arrested in the first six years of thelaw, only 15 were rescued, and only 3 ofthese by force. Failed rescues, in fact, hadmore emotional impact than successful

ones. In two cases in the early 1850s (Thomas Simsin 1851 and Anthony Burns in 1854), angry mobs ofabolitionists in Boston failed to prevent the forciblereturn of blacks to the South. These celebrated casesaroused more antislavery emotions among north-erners than the abolitionists had been able to dowith all their tracts and speeches. Amos Lawrence, atextile tycoon in Massachusetts, wrote of the trial ofAnthony Burns that sent him back to the South: “Wewent to bed one night old fashioned, conservativeCompromise Union Whigs and waked up stark madabolitionists.”

Longtime abolitionists escalated their rhetoric,fueling emotions over slavery in the aftermath of

1850. In an Independence Day speech in1852, Frederick Douglass wondered,“What, to the American slave, is your 4thof July?” (See “How Others See Us,” p. 385)It was, he said, the day that revealed tothe slave that American claims of nationalgreatness were vain and empty; the“shouts of liberty and equality” were“fraud, deception, impiety, and

hypocrisy.” Douglass’s speeches, like those of an-other ex-slave, Sojourner Truth, became increas-ingly strident.

At a women’s rights convention in 1851 in Akron,Ohio, Truth made one of the decade’s boldest state-ments for minority rights. Clergymen attending theconvention heckled female speakers. Up stood So-journer Truth to speak in words still debated by his-torians. She pointed to her many years of childbear-ing and hard, backbreaking work as a slave, cryingout a refrain, “And ar’n’t I a woman?” Referring to Je-sus, she said he came “from God and a woman: Man

had nothing to do with Him.” Referring to Eve, sheconcluded, “If the first woman God ever made wasstrong enough to turn the world upside down allalone, these women together ought to be able toturn it back, and get it right side up again! And nowthey is asking to do it, the men better let them.” Shesilenced the hecklers.

As Truth spoke, another American woman, Har-riet Beecher Stowe, was finishing a novel, UncleTom’s Cabin, that would go far toward turning theworld upside down. As politicians were hoping theAmerican people would forget slavery, Stowe’s novelbrought it to the attention of thousands. She gavereaders an absorbing indictment of the horrors ofslavery and its impact on both northerners andsoutherners. Published initially as magazine serials,each month’s chapter ended at a nail-biting dra-matic moment. Readers throughout the Northcheered Eliza’s daring escape across the ice floes onthe Ohio River, cried over Uncle Tom’s humanityand Little Eva’s death, suffered under the lash of Si-mon Legree, and rejoiced in the reuniting of blackfamily members.

Although it outraged the South whenpublished in full in 1852, Uncle Tom’sCabin became one of the all-time best-sellers in American history. In the firstyear, more than 300,000 copies wereprinted, and Stowe’s novel was eventuallypublished in 20 languages. When Presi-dent Lincoln met Stowe in 1863, he is re-ported to have said to her: “So you’re the little womanwho wrote the book that made this great war!”

FrederickDouglass,

IndependenceDay Speech

(1852)

Harriet BeecherStowe, UncleTom’s Cabin

(1852)

Hypocrisy of theFugitive Slave

Act, 1851







POLITICALDISINTEGRATIONThe response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the FugitiveSlave Act indicated that politicians had congratu-lated themselves too soon for saving the Republic in1850. Political developments, not all dealing withslavery, were already weakening the ability of politi-cal parties—and ultimately the nation—to with-stand the passions slavery aroused.

Weakened Party Politics in the Early 1850sAs we see today, political parties seek to persuadevoters that their party stands for moral values andeconomic policies crucially different from those ofthe opposition. In the period between 1850 and1854 these differences were blurred, thereby under-mining party loyalty.




Both parties scrambled to convince voters thatthey had favored the Compromise of 1850. In addi-tion, several states rewrote their constitutions and re-modeled their laws. These changes reduced thenumber of patronage jobs that politicians could dis-pense and regularized the process for securing bank-ing, railroad, and other corporate charters, endingthe role formerly played by the legislature and under-mining the importance of parties in citizens’ lives.For almost a quarter of a century Whigs and Democ-rats had disagreed over the tariff, money and bank-ing, and government-supported internal improve-ments. Now, in better times, party distinctions overeconomic policies seemed less important.

Political battles were fought over social rather thaneconomic issues and locally rather than at the na-tional level. Thus, Georgia voters in 1851 pitted “thejealousies of the poor who owned no slaves, againstthe rich slaveholder.” In Indiana, where CongressmanGeorge Julian observed that people “hate the Negrowith a perfect if not a supreme hatred,” legislators

rewrote the state constitution in 1851, deprivingblacks of the rights to vote, attend white schools, andmake contracts. Those who could not post a $500bond were expelled from the state, and an 1852 lawmade it a crime for blacks to settle in Indiana. InMassachusetts, temperance reform and a law limitingthe working day to 10 hours were hot issues. Fleetingpolitical alliances developed around particular issuesand local personalities. As a Baltimore businessmansaid, “The two old parties are fast melting away.”

The election of 1852 illustrated the lessening sig-nificance of political parties. The Whigs nominatedGeneral Winfield Scott, another Mexican-AmericanWar hero, who they hoped would repeat Taylor’ssuccess four years earlier. With the deaths of Clayand Webster, party leadership passed to SenatorWilliam Seward of New York, who desired a presi-dent he could influence more successfully than thepro-southern Fillmore. Still, it took 52 ballots tonominate Scott over Fillmore, alienating southernWhigs. Democrats had their own problems. After 49ballots, the party turned to a lackluster compromisecandidate, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire.

The two parties offered little choice and down-played issues so as not to widen intraparty divi-sions. Voter interest diminished. “Genl. Apathy isthe strongest candidate out here,” was a typical re-port from Ohio, while the Baltimore Sun remarked,“there is no issue that much interests the people.”Democratic leaders resorted to bribes and drinks tobuy the support of thousands of new Catholic im-migrants from Ireland and Germany, who could benaturalized and were eligible to vote after only threeyears. Pierce won easily, 254 to 42 electoral votes.

The Kansas–Nebraska ActThe Whig party’s final disintegration came on a Feb-ruary day in 1854 when southern Whigs, choosing tobe more southern than Whig, supported StephenDouglas’s Nebraska bill. The Illinois senator hadmany reasons for introducing a bill organizing theNebraska Territory (which included Kansas). As anardent nationalist, he was interested in the continu-ing development of the West. He wanted the easternterminus for a transcontinental railroad in Chicagorather than in rival St. Louis. This meant organizingthe lands west of Iowa and Missouri.

Politics also played a role. Douglas hoped to re-capture the party leadership he had held in passingthe Compromise of 1850 and aspired to the presi-dency. Although he had replaced Cass as the greatadvocate of popular sovereignty, thus winning favoramong northern Democrats, he needed southernDemocratic support. Many southerners, especially

Changing Political Party Systems and Leaders

It is characteristic of American politics that when the twomajor parties fail to respond to the pressing issues of theday, third parties are born and major party realignment oc-curs.This happened in the 1850s over the issue of slaveryand its extension into the territories, which resulted in thecollapse of the Whigs and the emergence of the Republicanparty. Note that the “Republican” party begins in one tradi-tion and ends up in the other. Is political realignment hap-pening again in American politics? What do the two partiesstand for today?

First Party System: 1790s–1820s

Republican FederalistJefferson HamiltonMadison John AdamsMonroe

Transition: 1824 and 1828

Democrat-Republican National RepublicanJackson J. Q.Adams

Second Party System: 1830s–1850s

Democrat WhigJackson ClayVan Buren WebsterCalhoun W. H. HarrisonPolk

Third Party System: 1856–1890s

Democrat RepublicanDouglas LincolnPierce SewardBuchanan Grant




neighboring Missouri slaveholders, opposed orga-nizing the Nebraska Territory unless open to slavery.

But the Nebraska Territory lay north ofthe Missouri Compromise line prohibit-ing slavery.

Douglas’s bill, introduced early in 1854,recommended using popular sovereigntyin organizing the Kansas and Nebraskaterritories. Douglas reasoned that the cli-

mate and soil of the prairies in Kansas and Nebraskawould never support slavery-based agriculture, andthat people would choose to be a free state. There-fore, he could win the votes he needed for the rail-road without also getting slavery. By stating that thestates created out of the Nebraska Territory wouldenter the Union “with or without slavery, as theirconstitution may prescribe at the time of their ad-mission,” his bill in effect cancelled the MissouriCompromise.

Douglas miscalculated. Northerners from hisown party immediately attacked him and his bill asa “criminal betrayal of precious rights” and as part

of a plot promoting his own presidentialambitions by turning free Nebraska overto “slavery despotism.” Whigs and aboli-tionists were even more outraged. Freder-ick Douglass branded the act a “hateful”attempt to extend slavery, the result of the“audacious villainy of the slave power.”

But the more Stephen Douglas was at-tacked, the harder he fought. What began

as a railroad measure ended in reopening the ques-tion of slavery in the territories, which Douglas hadthought finally settled in 1850. What began as a wayof avoiding conflict ended in violence over whetherKansas would enter the Union slave or free. What be-gan as a way of strengthening party lines over issuesended up destroying one party (Whigs), plantingdeep, irreconcilable divisions in another (Democ-rats), and creating two new ones (Know-Nothingsand Republicans).

Expansionist “Young America” in the Larger WorldThe Democratic party was weakened in the early1850s not only by the Kansas–Nebraska Act but alsoby an expansive energy that led Ameri-cans to adventures far beyond Kansas. Asrepublican revolutions erupted in 1848 inEurope (Austria-Hungary, France, Ger-many) and had initial successes, Ameri-cans hailed them as evidence that free re-publican institutions were the wave of thefuture. “Young America” was the label as-sumed by patriots eager to spread Americanismabroad; however, these ardent republican national-ists ironically also abetted the spread of slavery.

Pierce’s platform in 1852 reflected this national-ism, declaring that the war with Mexico had been“just and necessary.” Many Democrats took the over-whelming victory as a mandate to continue adding

Celebrating a Politi-cal Victory In GeorgeCaleb Bingham’s Verdict ofthe People (after 1855), theAmerican flag flies proudlyover a happy throng cele-brating the outcome of de-mocratic politics. How welldid the political processwork in the 1850s? In anearlier version of this samepainting, the women on ahotel balcony in the upperright display a banner an-nouncing (ironically?) “Free-dom for Virtue.” What doyou think that means?(George Caleb Bingham, Ver-dict of the People, No. 2 (af-ter 1855), Courtesy of theR.W. Norton Art Gallery,Shreveport, Louisiana)

Song of theOpen Road—

Calamus

StephenDouglas

TheCompromise of1850 and the

Kansas–Nebraska Act







territory. A Philadelphia newspaper in 1853 de-scribed the United States as a nation bound on the“East by sunrise, West by sunset, North by the ArcticExpedition, and South as far as we darn please.”

Many of Pierce’s diplomatic appointees weresoutherners interested in adding new cotton-grow-ing lands to the Union, especially from Latin Amer-ica where the newly independent nations werewracked by internal disputes over the distributionof land. Pierce’s ambassador to Mexico, for example,South Carolinian James Gadsden, had instructionsto negotiate with Mexican president Santa Anna forthe acquisition of large parts of northern Mexico.Gadsden did not get all he wanted, but he did man-age to purchase a strip of southwestern desert for atranscontinental railroad linking the Deep Southwith the Pacific Coast.

Failure to acquire more territory from Mexicolegally did not discourage expansionist Americans

from pursuing illegal means. During the 1850s, Tex-ans and Californians staged dozens of raids (called“filibusters”) into Mexico. The most daring such ad-venturer was William Walker, a tiny Tennessean witha zest for danger and power. In 1853, he invadedMexican Baja California with fewer than 300 menand declared himself president of the Republic ofSonora. Arrested and tried in the United States, hewas acquitted in eight minutes. Two years later, heinvaded Nicaragua, where he proclaimed himself anelected dictator and legalized slavery. When theNicaraguans, with British help, regained control, theU.S. Navy rescued Walker. After a triumphant tour inthe South, he tried twice more to conquerNicaragua. Walker came to a fitting end in 1860when, invading Honduras this time, he was cap-tured and shot by a firing squad.

Undaunted by failures in the Southwest, thePierce administration looked to the acquisition of

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

COLOMBIA

VENEZUELA

NICARAGUA

HONDURAS

CUBA

JAMAICA

HAITI

PUERTORICO

TRINIDAD

HISPANIOLA

BAHAMAS

TEXAS(1845)

GADSDEN PURCHASE(1853)

CALIFORNIA

Expansionist “Young America” in the 1850s: Attempted Raids into Latin America

Note the flurry of expansionist American raids and forays southward into Mexico and the Caribbean between the mid-1840s andmid-1850s. Reflecting on the Past What major events and motives caused the expansionist interest? Why was Cuba a key tar-get? Are there any similar events today?




Cuba. Many Americans thought this Spanish colonywas destined for U.S. annexation and would be anideal place for expanding the slave-based economy.Some argued that Cuba belonged to the UnitedStates because it was physically connected by allu-vial deposits from the Mississippi River. “What Godhas joined together let no man put asunder,” onesaid. In the 1840s, the Polk administration hadvainly offered Spain $10 million for Cuba. Unsuc-cessful efforts were then made to foment a revolu-tion among Cuban sugar planters, who were ex-pected to request annexation by the United States.Several plans, including one by Secretary of War Jef-ferson Davis of Mississippi, were made to invadeCuba and carve it into several slave states.

Although President Pierce did not support theseillegal efforts, he wanted the island. Secretary ofState William Marcy instructed the minister toSpain, Pierre Soulé, to offer $130 million for Cuba,upping the price. If that failed, Marcy suggestedstronger measures. In 1854, the secretary arrangedfor Soulé and the American ministers to France andEngland to meet in Belgium, where they issued theOstend Manifesto to pressure Spain to sell Cuba tothe United States.

The manifesto argued that Cuba “belongs natu-rally” to the United States and that they were “onepeople with one destiny.” Trade and commerce in

the hemisphere would “never be secure” until Cubawas part of the United States. Moreover, southernslaveholders feared that a slave rebellion would“Africanize” Cuba, like Haiti, suggesting all kinds of“horrors to the white race” in the nearby southernUnited States. American acquisition of Cuba wasnecessary, therefore, to “preserve our rectitude andself-respect.” If Spain refused to sell, the ministers atOstend threatened a Cuban revolution with Ameri-can support. If that failed, “we should be justified inwresting it from Spain.”

Even Marcy was shocked when he received thedocument and he quickly repudiated the manifesto.Like the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Democrats sup-ported the Ostend Manifesto in order to further theexpansion of slavery. The outraged reaction ofnortherners in both cases divided and further weak-ened the Democratic party.

Nativism, Know-Nothings, andRepublicansMeanwhile, increasing immigration also damaged analready enfeebled Whig party and alarmed many na-tive-born Americans. To the average hardworkingProtestant American, the foreigners pouring into thecities and following the railroads westward spoke un-familiar languages, wore funny clothes, drank alcohol

The Prejudices of the Know-Nothings The American(Know-Nothing) party campaign against the immigrants is shown dra-matically in the cartoon (above) of a whiskey-drinking Irishman andbeer-barreled German stealing the ballot box while native-bornAmericans fight at the election poll in the background. The Know-Nothing flag (right) makes starkly clear the origin of the danger. Canyou imagine what Native Americans might have thought of this ban-ner? (Photo: Courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society)



470

freely, and bred crime and pauperism. Moreover, theyseemed content with a lower standard of living byworking for lower wages and thus threatened to takejobs away from American workers.

Worst of all from the Protestant perspective, Irishand German immigrants spearheaded an unprece-dented growth of American Catholicism. By the1850s, there were nearly 3 million Catholics in theUnited States, not only in eastern cities but expand-ing westward into the Ohio valley (Germans inWheeling, Cincinnati, and St. Louis) and along oldFrench-Canadian trade routes through Detroit,Green Bay, and Vincennes. A surprising and, to many,disturbing development was Catholic success in con-verting Protestants. As one Catholic explained, it was“a time when great throngs of Americans began toflock to the Roman Catholic Church despite bitterlyintense propaganda and overt opposition.”

Two notable conversions in 1844 compelledProtestant Americans to take the threat seriously.Orestes Brownson, a Jacksonian Democrat and spir-itual seeker, moved successively through Congrega-tionalism, Presbyterianism, Unitarianism, and Tran-scendentalism until finally converting to aCatholicism he argued was fully compatible withdemocracy. His disciple, the Methodist German im-migrant Isaac Hecker, converted to Catholicism two

months earlier in 1844, joining the Redemptorist or-der. Led by Jesuits and Redemptorists like Hecker,more than 400 parish mission revivals and retreatswere held in the 1850s in an aggressive effort to con-vert urban American Protestants to Roman Catholi-cism. The opening of Catholic schools especially of-fended and threatened Protestants.

Many Protestants charged that Catholic immi-grants corrupted American politics. Indeed, mostCatholics did indeed prefer the Democratic party,which was less inclined than Whigs to interfere withreligion, schooling, drinking, and other aspects ofpersonal behavior and rights. It was mostly formerWhigs, therefore, who in 1854 founded the Americanparty to oppose the new immigrants. Memberswanted a longer period of naturalization to guaran-tee the “vital principles of Republican Government”and pledged never to vote for Irish Catholics, whosehighest loyalty was supposedly to the pope in Rome.They also agreed to keep information about their or-der secret. If asked, they would say, “I know nothing.”Hence, they were dubbed the Know-Nothing party.

The Know-Nothings appealed to the middle andlower classes—to workers worried about their jobsand to farmers and small-town Americans nervousabout change. A New Yorker said in 1854, “RomanCatholicism is feared more than American slavery.”

AMERICAN VOICES

Henry Villard, A German Immigrant Discovers American Politics

Henry Villard, born in Bavaria, emigrated to the UnitedStates in 1853 just in time for the intense politicalupheavals over the extension of slavery into the Kansas andNebraska territories. In his Memoirs (1904), he describedhis first “lesson in practical politics” shortly after he arrived.

The deliberate attempts of the Democrats inthe South, aided by the bulk of their Northernsympathizers, to secure an extension of the terri-tory open to slavery [to Kansas] was the all-ab-sorbing and all-exciting topic. . . . It was made thedividing line in the Chicago municipal election thatspring [1856]. Of course, I had no right to vote,but that did not prevent me from enlisting as a vio-lent partisan on the anti-Democratic side. Thecontest was fought directly over slavery. . . . Onelection day, I acted as a ticket-distributor, and hadthen my first sight of violent scenes and rioting atthe polls.The ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ seemed to be soclearly defined that I could not understand howany intelligent mind could be at all in doubt. That

the ignorant, priest-ridden Irish should supportthe Democratic candidates was comprehensible,but it aroused my disgust and indignation thatthere were Germans on the Democratic ticket, aGerman newspaper and prominent Germans whoactually supported it. I looked upon them as con-temptible apostates. I was confident, too, that theunholy combination would be overwhelmingly de-feated. My unutterable humiliation and grief maybe imagined, therefore, when the Democrats ob-tained a decisive victory. Influenced by the predic-tions of the dire . . . evils that would befall thecountry if the Democrats carried the day, I felt wo-fully depressed in spirit. It seemed to me almost asif the world would come to an end.

■ What was Villard’s lesson in “practical politics”?

■ Have you had a similar lesson in politics, local or national?




It was widely believed that Catholics slavishlyobeyed the orders of their priests, who representeda Church associated with European despotism. TheChurch’s opposition to the European revolutionarymovements of 1848 intensified nativist fears thatCatholicism threatened the democratic order. In the1854 and 1855 elections, the Know-Nothings gaveanti-Catholicism a national, political focus for thefirst time.

To other northerners, however, the “slave power”seemed a more serious threat than the pope. Nosooner had debates over Nebraska ended than thenucleus of another new party appeared: the Republi-can party. Drawn almost entirely from “conscience”Whigs and disaffected Democrats (including Free-Soilers), the Republicans combined four elements.

Moral fervor led the first group, headed by sena-tors Seward (New York), Charles Sumner (Massa-chusetts) and Salmon P. Chase (Ohio), to demandprohibiting slavery in the territories, freeing slavesin the District of Columbia, repealing the FugitiveSlave Act, and banning the internal slave trade.There were, however, limits to most Republicans’idealism. A more moderate and larger group, typi-fied by Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, opposed slaveryin the western territories, but would not interferewith it where it already existed. This group also op-posed equal rights for northern free blacks.

Many Republicans were anti-Catholic as well asantislavery. A third element of the party, true to tra-ditional Whig reformist and revivalist impulses,wanted to cleanse America of intemperance, impi-ety, parochial schooling, and other forms of im-morality—including voting for Democrats, whocatered to the “grog shops, foreign vote, andCatholic brethren” and combined the “forces of Je-suitism and Slavery.”

The fourth element of the Republican party, aWhig legacy from Henry Clay’s American System, in-cluded those who wanted the federal government topromote economic development and the dignity offree labor, believing that both led to progress. At theheart of the new party and the American future, Re-publicans proclaimed, were hardworking, middle-class, mobile, free white laborers—farmers, smallbusinessmen, and independent artisans. Lincoln’shometown paper, the Springfield Republican, said in1856 that Republican strength came from “those whowork with their hands, who live and act indepen-dently, who hold the stakes of home and family, offarm and workshop, of education and freedom.”

These strengths were tested in a three-party racein 1856. The Know-Nothing (American) party nomi-nated Fillmore, who had strong support in the Upper

South. The Republicans chose John C. Frémont, anardent Free-Soiler from Missouri with virtually nopolitical experience but with fame as an explorer ofthe West and a military record against Mexicans inCalifornia. The Democrats nominated PennsylvanianJames Buchanan, a “northern man with southernprinciples.” Frémont carried several free states, whileFillmore took only Maryland. Buchanan, benefitingfrom a divided opposition, won with only 45 percentof the popular vote.

After 1856, the Know-Nothings died out, largelybecause Republican leaders cleverly redirected na-tivist fears—and voters—to their broader program.Moreover, Know-Nothing secrecy, hatred, and occa-sional violent attacks on Catholic voters damagedtheir image. Still, the Know-Nothings represented apowerful current in American politics that would re-turn each time social and economic changes seemedto threaten the nation. It became convenient to labelcertain people “un-American” and try to root themout. The Know-Nothing party disappeared but na-tivist hostility to new immigrants did not.

KANSAS AND THE TWOCULTURESThe slavery issue also would not go away. As De-mocrats sought to expand slavery and other Ameri-can institutions westward across the plains andsouth into Cuba, Republicans wanted to halt the ad-vance of slavery. In 1854, Lincoln worried that slav-ery “deprives our republican example of its just in-fluence in the world.” The specific cause of hisconcern was the likelihood that slavery might be ex-tended into Kansas as a result of the passage thatyear of Stephen Douglas’s Kansas–Nebraska Act.

Competing for KansasDuring the congressional debates over the Nebraskabill, Seward accepted the challenge of slave-state sen-ators to “engage in competition for the virgin soil ofKansas.” Soon after Congress passed the Kansas–Ne-braska Act in 1854, the Massachusetts Emigrant AidSociety was founded to recruit free-soil settlers forKansas. Frederick Douglass called for “companies ofemigrants from the free states . . . to possess thegoodly land.” By the summer of 1855, about 1,200New England colonists had migrated to Kansas.

One migrant was Julia Louisa Lovejoy, a Vermontminister’s wife. As a riverboat carried her into a slavestate for the first time, she wrote of the dilapidatedplantation homes on the monotonous Missouri




shore as the “blighting mildew of slavery.” By the timeshe and her husband arrived in the Kansas Territory,Julia had concluded that the “morals” of the slave-holding Missourians moving into Kansas were of an“undescribably repulsive and undesirable character.”To her, northerners came to bring the “energetic Yan-kee” virtues of morality and economic enterprise todrunken, unclean slaveholders.

Perhaps she had in mind David Atchison, Demo-cratic senator from Missouri. Atchison believed thatCongress must protect slavery in the territories, al-lowing Missouri slaveholders into Kansas. In 1853,he pledged “to extend the institutions of Missouriover the Territory at whatever sacrifice of blood ortreasure.” New England migrants, he said, were “ne-gro thieves” and “abolition tyrants,” and recom-mended that Missourians defend their property andinterests “with the bayonet” and, if need be, “to killevery God-damned abolitionist in the district.”

Under Atchison’s inflammatory leadership, secretsocieties sprang up in the Missouri counties adja-cent to Kansas dedicated to combating the Free-Soilers. One editor exclaimed that northerners cameto Kansas “for the express purpose of stealing, run-ning off and hiding runaway negroes from Missouri[and] taking to their own bed . . . a stinking negrowench.” Not slaveholders, he said, but New Englan-ders were immoral, uncivilized, and hypocritical.Rumors of 20,000 such Massachusetts migrants

spurred Missourians to action. Thousands pouredacross the border late in 1854 to vote on permittingslavery in the territory. Twice as many ballots werecast as the number of registered voters; in onepolling place only 20 of more than 600 voters werelegal residents.

The proslavery forces overreacted. The perma-nent population of Kansas consisted primarily ofmigrants from Missouri and other border states—people more concerned with land titles than slav-ery. They opposed any blacks—slave or free—mov-ing into their state. As one clergyman put it, “I kemto Kansas to live in a free state and I don’t want nig-gers a-trampin’ over my grave.”

In March 1855, a second election was held to selecta territorial legislature. The pattern of border cross-ings, intimidation, and illegal voting was repeated.Atchison himself, drinking “considerable whiskey,”led an armed band across the state line to vote andfrighten away would-be free-soil voters. Not surpris-ingly, swollen numbers of illegal voters elected aproslavery territorial legislature. Free-Soilers, mean-while, held their own convention in Lawrence andcreated a free-soil government at Topeka. It bannedblacks from the state. The proslavery legislature set-tled in Lecompton, giving Kansas two governments.

The struggle shifted to Washington. AlthoughPresident Pierce could have nullified the illegal elec-tion, he did nothing. Congress debated and sent an

The Fight for Kansas Led by Senator David Atchison, thousands of gun-toting Missourians crossedinto Kansas in 1854 and 1855 to vote illegally for a proslavery territorial government. The ensuing bloodshedmade Kansas a preview of the Civil War. Why in Kansas? (Courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago)




investigating committee, further inflaming passions.Throughout 1855, the call to arms grew more stri-dent. One proslavery newspaper invited southernersto bring their weapons and “send the scoundrels”from the North “back to whence they came, or . . . tohell, it matters not which.” In South Carolina, RobertAllston wrote his son Benjamin that he was “raisingmen and money . . . to counteract the effect of theNorthern hordes. . . . We are disposed to fight the bat-tle of our rights . . . on the field of Kansas.”

Both sides saw Kansas as a holy battleground. AnAlabama colonel sold his slaves to raise money tohire an army of 300 men to fight for slavery inKansas, promising free land to his recruits. A Baptistminister blessed their departure from Montgomery,promised them God’s favor, and gave each man aBible. Northern Christians responded in kind. AtYale University, the noted minister Henry WardBeecher presented 25 Bibles and 25 Sharps rifles toyoung men who would go fight for the Lord inKansas. “There are times,” he said, “when self-de-fense is a religious duty. If that duty was ever imper-ative it is now, and in Kansas.” Beecher suggestedthat rifles would be of greater use than Bibles. Mis-sourians dubbed them “Beecher’s Bibles” andvowed, as one newspaper put it, “Blood for Blood!”

“Bleeding Kansas”As civil war threatened in Kansas, Brooklyn poet WaltWhitman heralded American democracy in his epic

poem Leaves of Grass (1855). Whitmanidentified himself as the embodiment ofaverage Americans “of every hue and caste,. . . of every rank and religion.” His poemsembraced urban mechanics, southernwoodcutters, runaway slaves, miningcamp prostitutes, and a long list of othersin his poetic celebration of “the word De-

mocratic, the word En-Masse.” But Whitman’s faith inthe American masses faltered in the mid-1850s. Heworried that a knife plunged into the “breast” of theUnion would bring on the “red blood of civil war.”

Blood indeed flowed in Kansas. In May 1856, sup-ported by a pro-southern federal marshal, a mobentered Lawrence, smashed the offices and pressesof a Free-Soil newspaper, fired several cannonballsinto the Free State Hotel, and destroyed homes andshops. Three nights later, believing he was doingGod’s will, John Brown led a small New Englandband, including four of his sons, to a proslavery set-tlement near Pottawatomie Creek and hacked fivemen to death with swords.

Violence also entered the halls of Congress. Thatsame week, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner

delivered a tirade known as “The Crime AgainstKansas.” He lashed out at the “incredible atrocitiesof the Assassins and . . . Thugs” from the South. Heaccused proslavery Senate leaders, especially An-drew Butler of South Carolina, of cavorting with the“harlot, Slavery.” Two days later, Butler’s nephew,Congressman Preston Brooks, avenged his honor bybeating Sumner senseless with his cane as he sat athis Senate desk.

The sack of Lawrence, the Pottawatomie mas-sacre, and the caning of Sumner set off serious civildisturbances in “Bleeding Kansas” that lastedthroughout the summer. Crops were burned, homeswere destroyed, fights broke out in saloons andstreets, and night raiders tortured and murderedtheir enemies. For Charles Lines, who just wanted tofarm his land in peace, it was impossible to remainneutral. Lines hoped his neighbors near Lawrencewould avoid “involving themselves in trouble.” Butwhen proslavery forces tortured a mild-manneredneighbor to death, Lines joined the battle. “Blood,”he wrote, “must end in the triumph of the right.”

Even before the bleeding of Kansas began, theNew York Tribune warned, “We are two peoples. Weare a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery.Between the two, conflict is inevitable.” As therhetoric and violence in Kansas demonstrated,competing visions of two separate cultures for thefuture destiny of the United States were at stake. De-spite many similarities between the North and theSouth, the gap between the two sides widened withthe hostilities of the mid-1850s.

Northern Views and VisionsAs Julia Lovejoy suggested, the North saw itself as aprosperous land of bustling commerce and expand-ing, independent agriculture. Northern farmers andworkers were self-made free men and women whobelieved in individualism and democracy. The “freelabor system” of the North, as both Seward and Lin-coln often said, offered equality of opportunity andupward mobility. Both generated more wealth. Al-though the North contained many growing cities,northerners revered the values of the small townsthat spread from New England across the UpperMidwest. These values included a respect for therights of the people, tempered by the rule of law; in-dividual enterprise, balanced by a concern for one’sneighbors; and a fierce morality rooted in Protes-tantism. Northerners would regulate morality—bypersuasion if possible but by legislation if neces-sary—to purge irreligion, illiteracy, and intemper-ance from American society. It was no accident thatlaws for universal public education and against the

Walt Whitman,Preface toLeaves of

Grass (1855)





sale and consumption of alcohol both began in NewEngland.

Northerners valued the kind of republican gov-ernment that guaranteed the rights of free men, en-abling them to achieve economic progress. This be-lief supported government action to promote freelabor, industrial growth, immigration, foreign trade(protected by tariffs), and the extension of railroadsand free farm homesteads westward across the con-tinent. Energetic mobility, both westward and up-ward, would dissolve state, regional, and class loyal-ties and increase the sense of nationhood. A strong

Union could achieve national and even interna-tional greatness. These were the conditions befittinga chosen people who would, as Seward put it,spread American institutions around the world and“renovate the condition of mankind.” These werethe principles of the Republican party.

Only free men could achieve economic progressand moral society. In northerners’ eyes, therefore,the worst sin was the loss of one’s freedom. Slaverywas the root of all evil. It was, Seward said, “incom-patible with all . . . the elements of the security, wel-fare, and greatness of nations.” The South was the

A Northern City anda Southern Planta-tion These scenes illustratethe contrasting socioeconomiccultures of the antebellumNorth and South. Chicago(top) was a rapidly growing,bustling northern city in the1850s; situated on the GreatLakes and a developing rail-road hub, Chicago became thedistribution center for indus-trial and agricultural goodsthroughout the Midwest. Thevital unit of southern com-merce was, by contrast, the in-dividual plantation (bottom),with steamboats and flatboatscarrying cotton and sugar toport cities for trade with Eu-rope. Are there examples to-day of two sides portrayingeach other in such starkly con-trasting ways? (Top: Corbis; bot-tom: Library of Congress)




antithesis of everything that northerners saw asgood. Southerners were unfree, backward, econom-ically stagnant, uneducated, lawless, immoral, andin conflict with the values and ideals of the nine-teenth century. Julia Lovejoy’s denunciation ofslaveholding Missourians was mild. Other Yankeemigrants saw southerners as “wild beasts” who guz-zled whiskey, ate dirt, swore, raped slave women,and fought or dueled at the slightest excuse. In theslang of the day, they were “Pukes.”

The Southern PerspectiveSoutherners were a diverse people who, like north-erners, shared certain broad values, generally those ofthe planter class. If in the North the values of eco-nomic enterprise were most important, southernersrevered social values most. They admired the Englishgentry and saw themselves as courteous, refined, hos-pitable, and chivalrous. By contrast, they saw “Yan-kees” as coarse, ill-mannered, aggressive, and materi-alistic. In a society where one person in three was ablack slave, racial distinctions and paternalistic rela-tionships were crucial in maintaining order and whitesupremacy. Fear of slave revolt was ever-present. TheSouth had five times as many military schools as theNorth. Northerners educated the many for economicutility; southerners educated the few for character. Inshort, the white South saw itself as an ordered societyguided by the planters’ genteel code.

Southerners agreed with northerners that sover-eignty in a republic rested in the people, who createda government of laws to protect life, liberty, and prop-erty. But unlike northerners, southerners believedthat the democratic principle of self-government wasbest preserved in local political units such as thestates. They were ready to fight to resist any tyrannicalencroachment on their liberty, as they had in 1776.They saw themselves as true revolutionary patriots.Like northerners, southerners cherished the Union.But they preferred the loose confederacy of the Jeffer-sonian past, not Seward’s centralized nationalism.

To southerners, Yankees were in too much of ahurry—to make money, to reform others’ behavior,to put dreamy theories (such as racial equality) intopractice. Two images dominated the South’s view ofnortherners: either they were stingy, hypocritical,moralizing Puritans, or they were grubby, slum-dwelling, Catholic immigrants. A Georgia papercombined both images in an 1856 editorial: “Freesociety! we sicken at the name. What is it but a con-glomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives,small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists?”These northerners, the paper said, “are devoid of so-ciety fitted for well-bred gentlemen.”

Each side saw the other threatening its freedomand degrading proper republican society. Each sawthe other imposing barriers to its vision for America’sfuture, which included the economic systems de-scribed in Chapters 10 and 11. As hostilities rose, theviews each section had of the other grew steadilymore rigid and conspiratorial. Northerners saw theSouth as a “slave power,” determined to foist theslave system on free labor throughout the land.Southerners saw the North as full of “black Republi-canism,” determined to destroy their way of life.




POLARIZATION AND THEROAD TO WARThe struggle over Kansas solidified the image of theRepublicans as a northern party and seriously weak-ened the Democrats. Further events, mostly over thequestion of slavery in the territories, soon split theDemocratic party irrevocably into sectional halves:the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court (1857),the constitutional crisis in Kansas (1857), the Lin-coln–Douglas debates in Illinois (1858), John Brown’sraid in Virginia (1859), and Lincoln’s election (1860).These incidents further polarized the negative im-ages each culture held of the other and acceleratedthe nation down the road to civil war.

The Dred Scott CaseThe events of 1857 reinforced the arguments of thosewho believed in a slave power conspiracy. Two days af-ter James Buchanan’s inauguration, the Supreme Courtfinally ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford. The case had beenbefore the Court for nearly three years, longer for theScott slave family. Back in 1846, Dred and Harriet Scotthad filed suit in Missouri for their freedom. They ar-gued that their master had taken them into northernterritories where the Missouri Compromise prohibitedslavery, and therefore they should be freed.By the time the case reached the SupremeCourt, the issue of slavery in the territorieswas a hot political issue.

When the Court, with its southern ma-jority, issued a 7–2 decision, it made threerulings. First, because blacks were, as ChiefJustice Roger Taney put it, “beings of an in-ferior order [who] had no rights which white men werebound to respect,” Dred Scott was not a citizen andhad no right to sue in federal courts. Justice PeterDaniel of Virginia was even more indelicate in his con-senting opinion, saying that the “African Negro race”did not belong “to the family of nations” but ratherwas a subject for “commerce or traffic.” The second

Supreme CourtDecision, Dred

Scott v.Sanford (1857)





ruling stated that the Missouri Compromise was un-constitutional because Congress had no power to banslavery in a territory. Third, the court decided that tak-ing the Scotts into free states did not affect their status.

The implications of these decisions went far be-yond the Scotts’ personal freedom. The argumentsabout black citizenship infuriated many northern-ers. Frederick Douglass called the ruling “a mostscandalous and devilish perversion of the Constitu-tion, and a brazen misstatement of the facts of his-tory.” Many citizens worried about the few rights free

blacks still held. Even more troubling, thedecision hinted that slavery might be legalin the free states of the North. People whosuspected a conspiracy were not calmedwhen Buchanan endorsed the Dred Scottdecision as a final settlement of the right

of citizens to take their “property of any kind, includ-ing slaves, into the common Territories . . . and tohave it protected there under the Federal Constitu-tion.” Far from settling the issue of slavery in the ter-ritories, as Buchanan had hoped, Dred Scott threw itback into American politics, opened new questions,and increased sectional hostilities.

Constitutional Crisis in KansasThe Dred Scott decision and Buchanan’s endorsementfed northern suspicions of a slave power conspiracyto impose slavery everywhere. Events in Kansas,which still had two governments, heightened thesefears. In the summer of 1857, Kansas had yet anotherelection, with so many irregularities that only 2,000out of a possible 24,000 votes counted. A proslaveryslate of delegates was elected to a constitutional con-vention meeting at Lecompton as a preparation forstatehood. The convention barred free blacks fromthe state, guaranteed the property rights of the fewslaveholders in Kansas, and asked voters to decide ina referendum whether to permit more slaves.

The proslavery Lecompton constitution, clearlyunrepresentative of the wishes of the majority of thepeople of Kansas, was sent to Congress for approval.Eager to retain southern Democratic support,Buchanan endorsed it. Stephen Douglas challengedthe president’s power and jeopardized his standingwith southern Democrats by opposing it. Facing re-election to the Senate from Illinois in 1858, Douglasneeded to hold the support of the northern wing ofhis party. Congress sent the Lecompton constitutionback to the people of Kansas for another referen-dum. This time they defeated it, which meant thatKansas remained a territory rather than becoming aslave state. While Kansas was left in an uncertainstatus, the larger political effect of the struggle wasto split the Democratic party almost beyond repair.

No sooner had Douglas settled the Lecomptonquestion than he faced re-election in Illinois. Dou-glas’s opposition to the Lecompton constitution hadrestored his prestige in the North as an opponent ofthe slave power. This cut some ground out from un-der the Republican party’s claim that only it couldstop the spread of southern power. Party leaders fromthe West, however, had a candidate who understoodthe importance of distinguishing Republican moraland political views from those of the Democrats.

Lincoln and the Illinois DebatesAlthough relatively unknown nationally and out ofelective office for several years, by 1858 Abraham Lin-coln of Illinois was challenging William Seward forleadership of the Republican party. Lincoln’s charac-ter was shaped on the midwestern frontier, where hehad educated himself, developed mild abolitionistviews, and dreamed of America’s greatness.

Douglas was clearly the leading Democrat, so the1858 election in Illinois gave a preview of the presi-dential election of 1860. The other Douglass, Freder-ick, observed that “the slave power idea was the ide-ological glue of the Republican party.” Lincoln’shandling of this idea would be crucial in distin-guishing him from Stephen Douglas. The Illinoiscampaign featured a series of seven debates be-tween Lincoln and Douglas, which took place in dif-ferent cities. Addressing a national as well as a localaudience, the debaters confronted the heated racialissues before the nation.

Lincoln set a solemn tone when he accepted theRepublican senatorial nomination in Chicago. TheAmerican nation, he said, was in a “crisis” andbuilding toward a worse one. “A House dividedagainst itself cannot stand. I believe this govern-ment cannot endure, permanently half slave andhalf free.” Lincoln said he did not expect the Union“to be dissolved” or “the house to fall,” but ratherthat “it will become all one thing, or allthe other.” Then he rehearsed the historyof the South’s growing influence over na-tional policy since the Kansas–NebraskaAct, which he blamed on Douglas. Lin-coln stated his firm opposition to theDred Scott decision, which he believedpart of a conspiracy involving Pierce,Buchanan, Taney, and Douglas. He and others likehim opposing this conspiracy wished to place slav-ery on a “course of ultimate extinction.”

Debating Douglas, Lincoln reiterated these con-troversial themes. Although far from a radical aboli-tionist, in these debates Lincoln skillfully staked outa moral position on race and slavery not just in ad-vance of Douglas but well ahead of his time.

Dred Scott

Lincoln, “AHouse Divided”

(1858)






Lincoln was also very much a part of his time. Hebelieved in white superiority, opposed granting spe-cific equal civil rights to free blacks, and said thatphysical and moral differences between whites andblacks would “forever forbid the two races from livingtogether on terms of social and political equality.”“Separation” and colonization in Liberia or CentralAmerica was the best solution. But Lincoln differedfrom most contemporaries in his deep commitmentto the equality and dignity of all human beings.

Countering Douglas’s racial slurs, Lincolnsaid that he believed not only that blackswere “entitled to all the natural rights . . . inthe Declaration of Independence” but alsothat they had many specific economicrights as well, such as “the right to put intohis mouth the bread that his own handshave earned.” In these rights, blacks were

“my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and theequal of every living man.”

Unlike Douglas, Lincoln hated slavery. At Gales-burg, he said, “I contemplate slavery as a moral, so-cial, and political evil.” In Quincy, he said that thedifference between a Republican and a Democratwas quite simply whether one thought slaverywrong or right. Douglas was more equivocal anddodged the issue in Freeport,pointing out that slaverywould not exist if favorable lo-cal legislation did not supportit. But Douglas’s moral indif-ference to slavery was clear: hedid not care whether a territo-rial legislature voted it “up ordown.” Republicans did care,Lincoln answered, and saidthat stopping the expansion ofslavery would set the coursetoward “ultimate extinction.”Although barred by the Con-stitution from interfering withslavery where it already ex-isted, Lincoln said that be-cause Republicans believedslavery was wrong, “we pro-pose a course of policy thatshall deal with it as a wrong.”

What Lincoln meant by“policy” was not yet clear, noteven to himself. However, hedid succeed in affirming thatRepublicans were the onlymoral and political force capa-ble of stopping the slave power.It seems ironic now (thoughnot then), that Douglas won

the election. Elsewhere in 1858, however,Democrats did poorly, losing 18 congres-sional seats.

John Brown’s RaidUnlike Lincoln, John Brown was preparedto act decisively against slavery. On October 16, 1859,he and a band of 22 men attacked a federal arsenal atHarpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). He hopedto provoke a general uprising of slaves throughout theUpper South or at least provide the arms for slaves tomake their way to freedom. Although he seized the ar-senal for a time, federal troops soon over-came him. Nearly half his men were killed,including two sons. Brown was captured,tried, and hanged for treason, ending a life-time of failures.

In death, however, Brown was not a fail-ure. His daring if foolhardy raid and his dig-nified behavior during his trial and speedy executionunleashed powerful passions. The North–South gapwidened. Although Brown’s death was widely con-demned, many northerners responded to it with anoutpouring of sympathy at memorial rallies, parades,and prayer meetings. Thoreau compared him to

Lincoln andDouglas,Galesburg

Debate (1858)

Lincoln,Charleston

Debate (1858)

John Brown as an Avenging Hero This modern mural captures both the madnessand passionate larger-than-life commitment of John Brown against a backdrop of flag-coveredwagon trains across the Great Plains, a raging tornado and angry sky (God’s wrath?), strugglingslaves (by his left knee), and a violent confrontation between those for and against slavery. Howdo you respond to these images? (Kansas State Historical Society)

John Brown,ca. 1850







Christ, calling Brown an “angel of light.” AbolitionistWilliam Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist, wished “success to

every slave insurrection” in the South. Min-isters called slave revolt a “divine weapon”and glorified Brown’s treason as “holy.”

Brown’s raid, Frederick Douglasspointed out, showed that slavery was a“system of brute force” that would beended only when “met with its ownweapons.” Southerners were filled with

“dread and terror” over the possibility of a wave ofslave revolts led by hundreds of imaginary JohnBrowns and Nat Turners, and concluded that north-erners would stop at nothing to free the slaves. Thissuspicion further eroded freedom of thought and ex-pression. A North Carolinian described a “spirit of

terror, mobs, arrests, and violence” in hisstate. Twelve families in Berea, Kentucky,were evicted from the state for their mildabolitionist sentiments. A Texas ministerwho criticized the treatment of slaves in asermon got 70 lashes.

With Brown’s raid, southerners alsobecame more convinced, as the governorof South Carolina put it, of a “black Re-publican” plot in the North “arrayedagainst the slaveholders.” In this atmos-phere of mistrust, southern Unionistslost their influence, and power becameconcentrated in the hands of those favor-ing secession. Only one step remained to completethe southern sense of having become a permanentminority within the United States: withdrawal toform a new nation. Senator Robert Toombs ofGeorgia, insistent that northern “enemies” wereplotting the South’s ruin, warned fellow southern-ers late in 1859, “Never permit this Federal govern-ment to pass into the traitorous hands of the blackRepublican party.”

The Election of 1860When the Democratic convention met in Charleston,South Carolina, a secessionist hotbed, it sat for a

Tarring and Feathering of a Southern Sympathizer In the aftermath of John Brown’sraid, passions fed by fear were unleashed throughout the South against northern sympathizers, and vice versa.A year later, the editor of a Massachusetts newspaper who expressed Democratic, southern sympathies foundhimself the victim of the time-honored mob punishment of tarring and feathering. (Picture Collection, The NewYork Public Library, Astor, Lenox & Tilden Foundations)

Battle Hymn ofthe Republic

John Brown,Address Before

Sentencing(Nov. 2, 1859)

William LloydGarrison on

John Brown’sRaid (1859)







UNORGANIZEDTERRITORY

WASHINGTONTERRITORY

OREGON(3)

CALIFORNIA (4)

UTAH TERRITORY

NEW MEXICO TERRITORY

NEBRASKA TERRITORY

KANSAS TERRITORY

INDIANTERRITORY

(UNORGANIZED)

MINNESOTA(4)

WISCONSIN(5)

IOWA(4)

MISSOURI

(8)

ARKANSAS

(4)

LOUISIANA(8)

MISSISSIPPI

(7)ALABAMA

(7)

FLORIDA

(3)

TEXAS(4)

GEORGIA

(10)

SOUTH

CAROLINA

(6)

NORTH CAROLINA

(10)TENNESSEE

(12)

KENTUCKY

(12)

VIRGINIA

(15)

OHIO

(23)

PENNSYLVANIA

(27)INDIANA

(13)ILLINIOS

(11)

MICHIGAN

(8)

NEW YORK

(35)

MAINE

(8)

NEW HAMPSHIRE

(5)

VERMONT

(5)

MASSACHUSETTS

(3)RHODE

ISLAND

(4)

CONNECTICUT

(6)

NEW JERSEY

(4)DELAWARE

(3)

MARYLAND

(8)

Lincoln, Republican

Douglas, Democratic (Northern)

Breckinridge, Democratic (Southern)

Bell, Constitutional Union

Two Maps of the Presidential Election of 1860

This 1860 pre-election car-toon shows Lincoln andDouglas (left) fighting for themidwestern states (and Cali-fornia and Oregon), whileBreckinridge tears off theSouth, and the compromisecandidate Bell, standing onthe chair, tries to hold thenation together with a littleglue. Lincoln won with only40 percent of the popularvote. Note on the map be-low the states Lincoln andBreckinridge won: whatdoes that suggest? Althoughhe was second in manystates, Douglas took onlyone, Missouri, perhaps forboth real and symbolic rea-sons. Why do you think so?How do you explain thethree states Bell won? Whydid Lincoln win the election?(Cartoon: Library of Congress)




record 10 days and went through 59 ballots withoutbeing able to name a candidate. Southern delegateswithdrew twice, forcing adjournments. Reconveningin Baltimore, the Democrats acknowledged their ir-reparable division by choosing two candidates at twoseparate conventions: Douglas for northern Democ-rats and John C. Breckinridge, Buchanan’s vice presi-dent, for the proslavery South. The ConstitutionalUnion party, made up of former southern Whigs andborder-state nativists, claimed the middle ground

and nominated John Bell, a slaveholderfrom Tennessee who favored compromise.

With Democrats split and a new partyin contention, the Republican strategyaimed at keeping the states carried byFrémont in 1856 and adding Pennsylva-nia, Illinois, and Indiana. Seward, theleading candidate, had been tempering

his antislavery views to appear more electable. Sohad Lincoln, who seemed more likely than Sewardto carry those key states. After shrewd maneuversemphasizing his “availability” as a moderate, Lin-coln was nominated.

The Republican platform also exuded modera-tion, opposing only slavery’s extension. Mostly itspoke of tariff protection, subsidized internal im-provements, free labor, and a homestead bill. Re-publicans, like southern Democrats, defended theirview of what republican values meant for America’sfuture. It did not include the equal rights envisionedby Frederick Douglass. An English traveler in 1860observed that in America “we see, in effect, two na-tions—one white and another black—growing uptogether within the same political circle, but nevermingling on a principle of equality.”

The Republican moderate strategy worked asplanned. Lincoln was elected by sweeping the entireNortheast and Midwest. Although he got less than40 percent of the popular vote nationwide, his tri-umph in the North was decisive. Even a united De-mocratic party could not have defeated him. Withvictory assured, Lincoln finished his sandwich andcoffee on election night in Springfield and preparedfor his awesome new responsibilities. They cameeven before his inauguration.

THE DIVIDED HOUSE FALLSThe Republicans overestimated Unionist sentimentin the South. A year earlier, some southern con-gressmen had walked out in protest when theHouse chose an antislavery speaker. A Republicanleader, Carl Schurz, recalling this, said that the

southerners had taken a drink and then come back.Now, Schurz predicted, they would walk out, taketwo drinks, and come back again. He was wrong.

Secession and UncertaintyOn December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded fromthe Union, declaring the “experiment” ofputting people with “different pursuits andinstitutions” under one government a fail-ure. By February 1, the other six DeepSouth states—Mississippi, Florida, Al-abama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—also left. A week later, delegates meeting inMontgomery, Alabama, created the Con-federate States of America and elected JeffersonDavis, a Mississippi senator and cotton planter, itsprovisional president. The divided house had fallen,as Lincoln had predicted. But it was not yet certainwhether the house could be put back together orwhether there would be civil war.

The government in Washington had three options.First was compromise, but the emotions ofthe time ruled that out, as the proposedcompromises were mostly pro-southern.Second, as suggested by New York Tribuneeditor Horace Greeley, was to let the sevenstates “go in peace,” taking care not to losethe border states. Northern businessmen,fearing the loss of profitable economic tieswith the South, were opposed, as werethose who believed in an indissoluble Union. Thethird option was to compel secessionist states to re-turn, which probably meant war.

Republican hopes that southern Unionismwould assert itself and make none of these optionsnecessary seemed possible in February 1861. Nomore states seceded. The nation waited, wonderingwhat Virginia and the border states would do, whatoutgoing President Buchanan would do, and whatCongress would do. Buchanan did nothing. Con-gress made some feeble efforts to pass compromiselegislation, waiting in vain for the support of thepresident-elect. And as Union supporters struggledwith secessionists, Virginia and the border states,like the entire nation, waited for Lincoln.

Frederick Douglass waited, too, without muchhope. He wanted the “complete and universalabolition of the whole slave system,” as well asequal suffrage and other rights for free blacks. Hismomentary expectation during the presidentialcampaign, that Lincoln and the Republicans hadthe will to do this, had been thoroughly dashed. InNovember, the voters of New York State had

South CarolinaDeclaration onthe Causes of

Secession1860

PresidentialElection Banner

(Republican)

Jefferson Davis,Address to the

ProvisionalCongress(1861)







defeated a referendum for black suffrage by morevotes than a similar measure 14 years earlier. More-over, Douglass saw northern politicians and busi-nessmen “granting the most demoralizing conces-sions to the Slave Power.”

In his despair, Douglass began to explore possi-bilities for emigration and colonization in Haiti, anidea he had long opposed. To achieve full freedomand citizenship in the United States for all blacks, hesaid in January 1861, he would “welcome the hard-ships consequent upon a dissolution of the Union.”In February, Douglass said, “Let the conflict come.”He opposed all compromises, hoping that with Lin-

coln’s inauguration in March it would “be decided,and decided forever, which of the two, Freedom orSlavery, shall give law to this Republic.”

Lincoln and Fort SumterAs Douglass penned these thoughts, Lincoln begana long, slow train ride from Springfield, Illinois, toWashington, writing and rewriting his inaugural ad-dress. Lincoln’s quietness in the period between hiselection and his inauguration led many to judgehim weak and indecisive. He was not. Lincoln firmlyopposed secession and any compromises with the

The Causes of the Civil War

Using this chart as a summary, how would you explain the primary cause of the Civil War? Which four or five of the “issues andevents” would you use to support your argument?

Date Issues and Events Deeper, Underlying Causes of Civil War

1600s–1860s Slavery in the South Major underlying pervasive cause1700s–1860s Development of two distinct socioeconomic Further reinforced slavery as fundamental socioeconomic,

systems and cultures cultural, moral issue1787–1860s States’ rights, nullification doctrine Ongoing political issue, less fundamental as cause1820 Missouri Compromise (36°30′) Background for conflict over slavery in territories1828–1833 South Carolina tariff nullification crisis Background for secession leadership in South Carolina1831–1860s Antislavery movements, southern justification Thirty years of emotional preparation for conflict1846–1848 War with Mexico (Wilmot Proviso, Calhoun, Options for issue of slavery in territories

popular sovereignty)

Date Issues and Events Specific Impact on the Road to War

1850 Compromise of 1850 Temporary and unsatisfactory “settlement” of divisive issue1851–1854 Fugitive slaves returned and rescued in North; Heightened northern emotional reactions against

personal liberty laws passed in North; the South and slaveryHarriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1852–1856 Breakdown of Whig party and national Made national politics an arena where sectional and Democratic party; creation of a new party cultural differences over slavery were foughtsystem with sectional basis

1854 Ostend Manifesto and other expansionist Reinforced image of Democratic party as favoring slaveryefforts in Central America

Formation of Republican party Major party identified as opposing the extension of slaveryKansas-Nebraska Act Reopened “settled” issue of slavery in the territories

1856 “Bleeding Kansas”; Senator Sumner physically Foretaste of Civil War (200 killed, $2 million in property lost)attacked in Senate inflamed emotions and polarized North and South

1857 Dred Scott decision; proslavery Lecompton Made North fear a “slave power conspiracy,” supported byconstitution in Kansas President Buchanan and the Supreme Court

1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates in Illinois; Set stage for election of 1860Democrats lose 18 seats in Congress

1859 John Brown’s raid and reactions in Made South fear a “black Republican” plot against slavery;North and South further polarization and irrationality

1860 Democratic party splits in half; Lincoln elected Final breakdown of national parties and election of president; South Carolina secedes from Union “northern” president; no more compromises

1861 Six more southern states secede by February 1; Civil War beginsConfederate Constitution adopted February 4; Lincoln inaugurated March 4;Fort Sumter attacked April 12




principle of stopping the extension of slavery. Hewould neither conciliate secessionist southernstates nor force their return.

Lincoln devoutly believed in his constitutionalresponsibility to uphold the laws of the land. The fo-cus of his attention was a federal fort in the harborof Charleston, South Carolina. Major Robert Ander-son, the commander of Fort Sumter, was runningout of provisions and had requested new suppliesfrom Washington. Lincoln would enforce the lawsand protect federal property at Fort Sumter.

As the new president delivered his inaugural ad-dress on March 4, he faced a tense and divided na-

tion. Lincoln asserted his unequivocal in-tention to enforce the laws of the land,arguing that the Union was constitution-ally “perpetual” and indissoluble. He re-minded the nation that the “only sub-stantial dispute” was that “one section ofour country believes slavery is right, andought to be extended, while the other be-lieves it is wrong, and ought not to be ex-

tended.” Still appealing to Unionist strength amongsouthern moderates, Lincoln said he would makeno attempts to interfere with existing slavery andwould respect the law to return fugitive slaves.Nearing the end of his address, Lincoln put the bur-den of initiating a civil war on the “dissatisfied fel-low-countrymen” who had seceded. As if foreseeingthe horrible events that might follow, he closed hisspeech eloquently:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Wemust not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,it must not break our bonds of affection. The mysticchords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and

patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, allover this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of theUnion, when again touched, as surely they will be, by thebetter angels of our nature.

Frederick Douglass was not impressed with Lin-coln’s “honied phrases” and accused him of “weak-ness, timidity and conciliation.” Also unmoved,Robert Allston wrote his son from Charleston,where he was watching the developing crisis overFort Sumter, that the Confederacy’s “advantage” wasin having a “much better president than they have.”

On April 6, Lincoln notified the governor of SouthCarolina that he was sending “provisions only” toFort Sumter. No effort would be made “to throw inmen, arms, or ammunition” unless the fort was at-tacked. On April 10, Jefferson Davis directed Gen-eral P. G. T. Beauregard to demand the surrender ofFort Sumter. Davis told Beauregard to reduce thefort if Major Anderson refused.

On April 12, as Lincoln’s relief expedition nearedCharleston, Beauregard’s batteries began shellingFort Sumter, and the Civil War began.Frederick Douglass was about to leave forHaiti when he heard the news. He imme-diately changed his plans: “This is notime . . . to leave the country.” He an-nounced his readiness to help end the warby aiding the Union to organize freedslaves “into a liberating army” to “make war upon . . .the savage barbarism of slavery.” The Allstons hadchanged places, and it was Benjamin who describedthe events in Charleston harbor to his father. On April14, Benjamin reported exuberantly the “glorious, andastonishing news that Sumter has fallen.” With it fellAmerica’s divided house.

Fort Sumter—Lithograph

Conclusion

The “Irrepressible Conflict”

Lincoln had been right. The nation could no longerendure half-slave and half-free. The collision be-tween North and South, William Seward said, wasnot an “accidental, unnecessary” event but an “ir-repressible conflict between opposing and endur-ing forces.” Those forces had been at work formany decades, but they developed with increasingintensity after 1848 in the conflict over the exten-sion of slavery into the territories. Although economic, cultural, political, constitutional, and

emotional forces all contributed to the developingopposition between North and South, slavery wasthe fundamental, enduring force that underlay allothers, causing what Walt Whitman called the “redblood of civil war.” Abraham Lincoln, FrederickDouglass, the Allston family, Michael Luark, andthe American people all faced a radically alterednational scene. All wondered whether the Ameri-can democratic system would be able to withstandthis challenge.

Lincoln, FirstInauguralAddress(1861)






The most important novel about slavery during theantebellum era was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s UncleTom’s Cabin (1852). Written in serial form, eachepisode stopped at a nail-biting moment andaroused the conscience of the North. Walt Whit-man’s collection of poems, Leaves of Grass (1855),celebrates not only the poet’s own ego but also thecommon people and democratic American values

in a decade that sorely tested those values. RussellBanks’s Cloudsplitter (1998) is a long but rivetingnovel about John Brown and his activities duringthe 1850s, told through the eyes of one of his sons.The Bondswoman’s Daughter by Hannah Crafts(2002), recently discovered by Henry Louis Gates,Jr., is a captivating story of a runaway slave womanin the 1850s. Toni Morrison’s award-winning novel

1855 Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass

1855–1856 Thousands pour into Kansas, creating months ofturmoil and violence

1856 John Brown’s massacre in KansasSumner–Brooks incident in SenateJames Buchanan elected president

1857 Dred Scott decision legalizes slavery in territoriesLecompton constitution in Kansas

1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates

1859 John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry

1860 Democratic party splitsFour-party campaignAbraham Lincoln elected president

1860–1861 Seven southern states secede

1861 Confederate States of America foundedAttack on Fort Sumter begins Civil War

T I M E L I N E

1832 Nullification crisis

1835–1840 Intensification of abolitionist attacks on slaveryViolent retaliatory attacks on abolitionists

1846 Wilmot Proviso

1848 Free-Soil party foundedZachary Taylor elected president

1850 Compromise of 1850, including Fugitive Slave Act

1850–1854 “Young America” movement

1851 Women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio

1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’sCabin

Franklin Pierce elected president

1854 Ostend ManifestoKansas–Nebraska Act nullifies Missouri

CompromiseRepublican and Know-Nothing parties formed

Recommended ReadingRecommended Readings are posted on the Web site for this textbook. Visit www.ablongman.com/nash

1. What options existed for dealing with slavery in theterritories, and what compromises did Congress pro-pose? How well did they work?

2. How did political party alignments change in the1850s and how did that affect the path to civil war?

3. Examine how southerners and northerners viewedeach other, especially in Kansas. How did culturalstereotypes and emotional attitudes contribute tothe outbreak of civil war?

Questions for Review and Reflection

4. Can you explain four basic, underlying causes of theAmerican Civil War? Which do you think was mostsignificant, and what specific events would you useto support your choice?

5. To what extent was the American democratic politi-cal system flexible enough to handle the issues of the1850s? Could the Civil War have been avoided, or wasit inevitable?

Fiction and Film




Beloved (1988), later made into a feature film, tellsthe story, based on a true event in 1856, of an es-caped slave mother who killed her child as bountyhunters were about to seize her family and returnthem to slavery. Part I of Ken Burns’s PBS film series

The Civil War (1989) sets the slavery and 1850sbackground for his haunting documentary por-trayal of the Civil War. Another fine video is JohnBrown’s Holy War (1999) from the PBS series TheAmerican Experience.

Discovering U.S. History Online

Compromise of 1850www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm043.htmlThis exhibit shows digitized images of compromise docu-ments by John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster’s notes forintroductory remarks.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culturewww.iath.virginia.edu/utc/sitemap.htmlAlong with searchable access to the text of Uncle Tom’sCabin, this site contains an archive of primary material(texts, images, songs, 3-D objects, film clips, and so on),an interactive timeline, and virtual exhibits designed forexploring and understanding the primary material.

Bleeding Kansaswww.ukans.edu/carrie/kancoll/galbks.htmContemporary and later accounts of America’s rehearsalfor the Civil War make up this excellent University ofKansas site, filled with primary documents from the mid-1850s.

Africans in America, Judgment Day, 1831–1865www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/index.htmlA large collection of people and events, historical docu-ments, and modern voices on antebellum slavery, aboli-tionism, slavery in the territories, John Brown’s raid, andthe Civil War.

Secession Era Editorials Projecthttp://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/index.htmThis site presents a Furman University digital collection ofnorthern and southern newspaper editorials on theKansas–Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott case, John Brown’s raid,and other issues form the 1850s. Excellent links and context.

The Dred Scott Casewww.library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/This site presents digital images and transcriptions of 85original documents and a timeline of events surroundingthe case.

John Brown’s Holy Warwww.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brownThis companion Web site to the video contains primarysource and biographical materials, a timeline, profiles ofrelated people and events, information on the song “JohnBrown’s Body,” and a bibliography.

Crisis at Fort Sumterwww.tulane.edu/~latner/CrisisMain.htmlThis site presents “an interactive historical simulation anddecision making program. Using text, images, and sound,it reconstructs the dilemmas of policy formation and de-cision making in the period between Abraham Lincoln’selection in November 1860 and the battle of Fort Sumterin April 1861.”



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