COLLAPSE OF COMPROMISE

SECTIONAL STRUGGLEOVER SLAVERY IN THE

TERRITORIES• The greatest danger to the survival of American

liberty and Union was the sectional conflictbetween North and South over the future ofslavery.

• Slavery was a national problem that affected bothsections of the country.

• Peoples’ perception of reality determined theactions of people from North and South.

• Southerners and northerners believed that slavesociety would have to expand or perish.

WILMOT PROVISO• President Polk asked Congress for $2 million to

negotiate a peace with Mexico so that he couldacquire California.

• Representative David Wilmot (PA) proposedadding an amendment to the appropriations billbarring slavery in all lands acquired from Mexico.– Passes in House twice– Rejected by Senate

• Outraged southerners responded with threats ofdisunion.

• Wilmot argued that “slavery has within itself theseeds of its own destruction.”

THE EDGE

• Henry Clay pleaded withhis countrymen onFebruary 5, 1850: “Iimplore gentlemen …whether from the South orthe North … to pause atthe edge of the precipice,before the fearful anddangerous leap be takeninto the yawning abyssbelow, from which nonewho ever take it shallreturn in safety.”

COMPROMISE OF 1850

• California admitted as a free state• Slave trade in District of Columbia abolished• Texas received $10 million in exchange for claim

to New Mexico territory• New Mexico territory organized into two

territories—New Mexico and Utah—on the basisof popular sovereignty

• Congress to pass a tougher fugitive slave law• Pushed through by Stephen Douglas

MIDCENTURY

BREAKDOWN• Further agitation of the slavery question in the territories led

to the breakdown of the Compromise of 1850.• In 1850 Frederick Douglass wisely recognized that

compromise over slavery was virtually impossible. “Thefact is the more the question has been settled, the more ithas needed settling.”

• Under Constitution, federal government could do little toappease deeply troubled southerners– Slave states lagging behind free states in wealth and numbers– South lost control over House; lost majority in Senate– No southerner could realistically become president

• Northerners deeply troubled by moral, economic, andpolitical consequences of slavery realized the Constitutiongave the federal government no power over the “peculiarinstitution” within the states.

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT• Made assistance of runaway

slaves a federal crime (aidingand embedding $1000 fine, 6months imprisonment)

• Authorized the arrest of escapedslaves even in states whereslavery was illegal

• Most blacks in danger• Bounty system used by slave-

catchers• Trial by jury ignored• Judges given incentive to

convict• Personal liberty laws

OPPOSING STEREOTYPES• Federal government did possess the authority to restrict

slavery from the territories.• Some northerners vowed to resist the further extension of

slavery into the territories• When northerners criticized slavery, they were condemning

the Southern way of life– Backward; “Slave Power”– Slavery barrier to achievement of the American ideals of

democratic equality—the values of individualism, democracy,equality of opportunity

• Free soil, free labor, and free men; slavery must collapse• Southern stereotypes of northerners

– Fanatical abolitionists hell bent on destroying Southern society– Imperial North; containment meant abolition

UNLIMITED EXTENSION• Jefferson Davis: “We of the South are

an agricultural people, and we requirean extended territory. Slave labor is awasteful labor, and it thereforerequires a still more extended territorythan would the same pursuits if theycould be prosecuted by the moreeconomical labor of white men….[Restriction of slave territory would]crowd upon our soil an overgrownblack population, until there will notbe room in the country for whites andblacks to subsist in, and in this way [itwould] destroy the institution [ofslavery] and reduce the whites to thedegraded position of the Africanrace.”

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’snovel aroused antislaverysentiments in the Northmore than any otherliterary event

• “Tom on a cross”• Upon meeting Stowe in

1862, Lincoln is said tohave remarked, “So you’rethe little woman whowrote the book that madethis great war.”

PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY

• Historian David Herbert Donald contends: “Theserival sectional stereotypes, with their sharedconclusion about the importance of the expansionof slavery, are what made the politicalcontroversies of the 1850s such intense strugglesover what appears to be a very narrow issue. Inevery instance the pattern was the same: apowerful and growing majority based in the Northopposed an entrenched and increasingly unifiedminority in the South. The consequence of thesuccessive clashes was to weaken, one afteranother, the traditional bonds of Union.”

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT• Introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act

(1854) organized Kansas and Nebraska into territories on the basis ofpopular sovereignty. The act proved to be a monumental fiasco thatreopened the divisive issue of slavery in the territories and inflamedsectional tensions worse than ever. The measure nullified theMissouri Compromise line. Despite the outrage felt by northerners,southerners could freely extend slavery there until such time as theresidents voted to outlaw it.

• Southerners on Capitol Hill maneuvered Douglas into the repeal of theMissouri Compromise line because they feared that slavery would dieout if it could not expand into new territory. Southern spokesmen.

• Kansas became a battleground for the sectional struggle over theterritories and future states as well as which section would control theUnion. Hostility between antislavery and proslavery forces escalated,leading to a brutal civil war within the Kansas Territory, whichbecame known as “Bleeding Kansas.” When Americans began killingAmericans over the future of slavery, it developed into a dressrehearsal for the Civil War.

THE RUB• Abraham Lincoln, at the time a lawyer

and congressman from Illinois,acknowledged the legal right to holdslaves in existing slave states whilesupporting the idea of gradualemancipation and the containment ofslavery. He attacked the Kansas-Nebraska Act as an enemy to democracy.

• Lincoln wrote to a southerner: “Youthink slavery is right and ought to beextended; while we think it is wrong andought to be restricted. That I suppose isthe rub.”

• Lincoln said: “I hate [slavery] because itdeprives our republican example of itsjust influence in the world—enables theenemies of free institutions to taunt us ashypocrites.”

DISINTEGRATION• The successive clashes set in

motion by the Kansas-NebraskaAct eroded “the traditionalbonds of Union”—nationalpolitical parties, a faith in theConstitution, and nationalisticoratory—and sent the nationhurtling toward civil war.Expansion was no longer ameans of compromise.

• The Republican party organizedin 1854 to oppose the extensionof slavery.

• A fanatical abolitionist, JohnBrown led bloody raids againstproslavery forces in Kansas.

ASSAULT IN THE SENATE• Senator Charles Sumner (MA) delivered his famous oration “The

Crime Against Kansas,” claiming that Bleeding Kansas served asevidence of the desperate attempt of southerners to rape that “virginterritory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery. Sumnerassailed Douglas and made personal references to the elderly SenatorAndrew Butler (SC). Sumner charged Butler with having “chosen amistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly toothers, is always lovely to him, though polluted in the sight of theworld, is chaste in his sight … the harlot, Slavery.”

• On May 22, 1856 Representative Preston Brooks (SC) savagelymaimed Sumner with a cane in retaliation for the offensive speech.

• Southerners viewed Brooks as a hero who defended the honor of aslaveholder against abolitionist slander. To abolitionists Sumnerbecame a martyr to the cause of freedom.

• Violence over the slavery issue was fast becoming all toocommonplace.

YANKEE BEATERS

1857: YEAR OF DECISION• In the infamous Dred Scott decision, a pro-southern

Supreme Court held that neither Congress nor the territories(as creatures of Congress) could outlaw slavery, on theground that this would violate the property rights clause ofthe Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The decision alsoruled that blacks could not be United States citizens.

• Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roger B. Taneyruled that blacks possessed “no rights which the white manwas bound to respect.”

• President Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney miscalculatedin thinking the Court could resolve the slavery questiononce and for all. The intrusion of the Supreme Courtcreated an unprecedented political dilemma—a ruling thatstated the Constitution sanctioned slavery.

FIASCO• Northerners lost faith in the

Constitution and the Court’sability to render justice withoutbias. A simple case was madeinto a political, mostlyproslavery cause.

• Although the decision wassupposed to solve the slaveryissue, it actually unleashedirreconcilable passions thatmerged with those alreadybuilding toward Civil War.

• Lincoln attacked Taney’s claimthat the Declaration ofIndependence and theConstitution did not apply toblacks.

LINCOLN-DOUGLASDEBATES

• Most famous nationallypublicized political debatesuntil the Kennedy-Nixondebates (1960)

• In a senatorial race, StephenDouglas and Abraham Lincolndebated the future of slaveryand freedom in America.

• Virtually every politician agreedthat slavery had to grow orwither away. Douglaschampioned popularsovereignty, whereas Lincolndefended the free soil andcontainment arguments.

‘A HOUSE DIVIDED’

DECLINE OFNATIONALISTIC ORATORY

• Douglas, as a “statesman ofcompromise” sought to preservethe coexistence of proslaveryand antislavery forces as well asstates.

• Douglas argued for popularsovereignty, states’ rights, andadherence to the Constitution.

• He blamed the sectional crisison blundering politicians andirresponsible agitators: “I amopposed to that whole system ofsectional agitation, which canproduce nothing but strife,hostility, discord, and finallydisunion.”

RISING STAR OFREPUBLICAN PARTY

• Lincoln argued for the preservation of the Union,containment, and strong federal government to bolster theeconomy.

• Lincoln contended that slavery threatened the ideals of thenation and “free labor”: “I believe this government cannotendure, permanently half slave and half free.”

• Douglas won reelection, but Lincoln emerged the real victorin the sense that antislavery men of the North nowperceived the issues in terms of the stark contrasts Lincolnpresented in his campaign.

• Lincoln won national acclaim as a rising star in theRepublican party. When he won the presidential election of1860, the states of the Deep South seceded from the Union.

DISUNION• Historian David Herbert Donald argues that the slavery question

divided the nation: “The great forces that had once helped cementunity—the Constitution, the political parties, the public oratory—nowserved to divide the people. The United States, it now appeared, wasnot, and never really had been, a nation; it was merely a looseassemblage of diverse and conflicting groups, interests, and peoples.By the late 1850s these had polarized into two groups, a majority inthe North, and a minority in the South. Neither majority nor minoritywas willing to yield on what both regarded as the vital issue of theexpansion of slavery.”

• Historian Kenneth Stampp asserts that slavery was the most pervasivesectional issue that caused civil war because it was involved in everyantebellum political crisis. He explains eloquently that those whoargue that the war was brought on deliberately and needlessly byblundering politicians and irresponsible agitators make a flawedassumption—that there were national issues of greater importancethan slavery. As much as men such as Douglas attempted to keepslavery out of national politics they failed repeatedly and miserably.

“AND THE WAR CAME”

• Lincoln understood that slaverysomehow caused the Civil War.In his Second InauguralAddress, he stated: “One eighthof the whole population werecolored slaves, not distributedover the whole Union, butlocalized in the Southern part ofit. These slaves constituted apeculiar and powerful interest.All knew this interest was,somehow, the cause of the war.”

BIBLIOGRAPHYAbraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War: Selected Writings and

Speeches. Edited by Michael P. Johnson. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2001.

The Causes of the Civil War. Third Revised Edition. Edited by KennethM. Stampp. New York: Touchstone, 1991.

Donald, David Herbert. Liberty and Union. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1978.Ehrlich, Walter. They Have No Rights: Dred Scott’s Struggle for

Freedom. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979.Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the

Republican Party Before the Civil War. With a New Introduction bythe Author. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 (1970).

McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War andReconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.

Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1990.