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THE CIVIL WAR. THE CAUSE. SOUTHERN SLAVERY. “SLAVERY IS OUR KING. SLAVERY IS OUR TRUTH, SLAVERY IS OUR DIVINE RIGHT.” A South Carolina politician in 1860. MANIFEST DESTINY. MANIFEST DESTINY.
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SOUTHERN SLAVERY “SLAVERY IS OUR KING. SLAVERY IS OUR TRUTH, SLAVERY IS OUR DIVINE RIGHT.” A South Carolina politician in 1860
MANIFEST DESTINY With the end of the Mexican War, the USA absorbed a half a million square miles of Mexico’s territory – 1/3 of that nation’s total area. An estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Spanish speaking Mexicans and over 150,000 Indians inhabited the Mexican Cession.
MANIFEST DESTINY The spirit of Manifest Destiny gave a new stridency to ideas about racial superiority. 1840s: Territorial expansion came to be seen as proof of the innate superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. To adherents of Manifest Destiny race was the key to the history of nations and the rise and fall of empires. “Race” was an amorphous notion involving color, culture, class and religion.
THE WILMOT PROVISO The acquisition of the Mexican Cession raised the fatal issue that would disrupt the political system and plunge the nation into civil war: SHOULD SLAVERY BE ALLOWED TO EXPAND IN THE WEST?
THE WILMOT PROVISO Events soon confirmed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s prediction that if the USA gobbled up part of Mexico, “it will be as the man who swallows arsenic … Mexico will poison us.”
THE WILMOT PROVISO Before 1846, the status of slavery in all parts of the US had been settled, either by state law or in the Missouri Compromise. But the acquisition of new lands reopened the questions of slavery’s expansion – not its abolition.
THE WILMOT PROVISO The divisiveness of the issue became clear when Cong. David Wilmot (PA) proposed a resolution prohibiting slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico.
THE WILMOT PROVISO The Wilmot Proviso passed the HofR, where the more populous North possessed a majority, but failed in the Senate, with its even balance of free and slave states.
THE ELECTION OF 1848 In the Election of 1848, opponents of slavery’s expansion – not abolition – organized the Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams as his running mate. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass who proposed that the decision to allow slavery should be left to the settlers in the new territories – popular sovereignty
THE ELECTION OF 1848 Van Buren’s campaign struck a chord with Northerners opposed to the expansion of slavery and he polled some 300,000 votes, 14% of the Northern total. But the victory belonged to Zachary Taylor, the Whig Party nominee, hero of the Mexican War and a LA sugar planter.
THE FREE SOIL APPEAL The fact that Van Buren and Adams abandoned their party to run on a Free Soil platform showed that anti-expanionist sentiment had spread far beyond abolitionist ranks. Being antislavery became an acceptable political position. The free soil message found an audience in the North but it was not an abolitionist position. It was more like a containment policy. The free soil idea also appealed to the racism widespread in Northern society.
THE FREE SOIL APPEAL Wilmot insisted that his controversial Proviso was motivated not by “morbid sympathy for slaves” but to advance “the cause and rights of free white men,” in part by preventing him to compete with black labor.
THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION To Southerners, the idea of barring slavery from the Mexican Cession seemed a violation of their equal rights as members of the Union. They had fought for these lands, surely they had a right to share in the fruits of victory.
THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION To single out slavery as the one form of property barred from the West would be an affront to the Southern way of life. Southern leaders became convinced that slavery must expand or die.
THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION Also, the admission of new free states would overturn the political balance between sections and make the South a permanent minority. Southern interests would not be secure in a Union dominated by non-slaveholding states.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 The question of the expansion of slavery came to California in 1849. Gold was discovered in CA. This led to an explosion of gold seekers moving into CA. Some came with their slaves.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 With the slavery issue appearing more and more ominous, established party leaders moved to resolve differences between the sections. Some disputes were long standing, but the immediate source of controversy arose from the acquisition of new lands from Mexico.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 1850: CA., asked to be admitted as a free state. Some Southerners opposed the measure, fearing it would upset the sectional balance in Congress. 1850: The balance was 15 free states and 15 slave states.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 • Sen. Henry Clay (KY) offered a plan with 4 main provisions: • CA would be a free state • The slave trade would be abolished in DC • A stringent new fugitive slave law would enacted. • Popular sovereignty.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 In the Senate debate on Clay’s plan, the divergent sectional positions received eloquent expression. Sen. Daniel Webster (MA) announced his willingness to abandon the Wilmot Proviso and accept a new fugitive slave act if this were the price of sectional peace.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Sen. John C. Calhoun (SC), too ill to speak. A colleague read his remarks rejecting the compromise. Slavery, he insisted, must be protected by the federal govt., and extended into all the new territories.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Sen. William Seward (NY), opposed the compromise. Seward appealed to a “higher law” than the Const., the law of morality. He represented the voice of abolitionism in the Senate.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Pres. Zachary Taylor, was a strong nationalist. He was alarmed over the talk of disunion. He accused the South of holding CA., hostage to their own legislative aims. He insisted that Congress that Congress admit CA., as a free state.
THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Taylor died of an intestinal infection on July 9, 1850. VP Millard Fillmore succeeded him. Fillmore threw his support behind Clay’s plan and helped to break the impasse in Congress and secure adoption of the Compromise of 1850.
PROVISIONS California admitted as a free state. The slave trade, but not slavery, would be abolished in Washington, D.C. A new stringent fugitive slave law would allow southerners to reclaim runaway slaves. The status of slavery in the remaining territories left to the decision of the local white inhabitants = popular sovereignty
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT The most controversial aspect of the Compromise of 1850. The law allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without the benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Southern leaders, usually strong defenders of states’ rights and local autonomy, supported a measure that brought federal agents into Northern communities, armed with the power to override local law enforcement and judicial procedures to secure the return of runaway slaves.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT 1850s: Federal tribunals heard over 300 cases and ordered 157 fugitives returned to the South, many at the govt’s expense. But the law further widened sectional differences.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Throughout the North, fugitives, with the aid of abolitionists, violently resisted capture. In the North, several thousands fugitives and free blacks fearing capture fled to Canada. This challenged the familiar image of the US as an asylum for freedom.
THE STORY OF ANTHONY BURNS The trial and arrest of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. Burns’ plight became a rallying cry for opponents of slavery.
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN 1852: Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was the most influential novel of its time. It was a novel about a slave named Tom and his struggles against his owner Simon Legree It moved a generation of Northerners and Europeans to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhuman. Southerners condemned the “untruths” in the novel. They saw the novel as proof of the North’s incurable prejudice against the South.
THE ELECTION OF 1852 At least temporarily, the Comp., of 1850 seemed to have restored sectional peace and party unity. In the Election of 1852 Democrat Franklin Pierce won a sweeping victory over Whig Winfield Scott. The Democratic Platform recognized the Comp. of 1850 as a final settlement of the slavery controversy. Pierce received a broad popular mandate.
THE ELECTION OF 1852 But the Pierce Presidency turned out to be one of the most disastrous in American history. It witnessed the collapse of the party system inherited from the Age of Jackson, an increase in sectional tensions, and the first blood shed of the Civil War. Again the question of the expansion of slavery into new territories reared it ugly head.
THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT 1854: The old political order finally succumbed to the disruptive pressures of slavery. Sen. Stephen Douglas (Ill) introduced a bill to provide for govts., for Kansas and Nebraska within the Louisiana Purchase. Douglas saw himself as the new leader of the Senate.
THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT A strong believer in western development, Douglas hoped that a transcontinental railroad could be constructed through Kansas and Nebraska. But he feared that this could not be accomplished unless formal govts., were established in the these territories.
THE PROVISIONS The Nebraska Territory would be split into Nebraska and Kansas. The issue of slavery would be determined through popular sovereignty – to Douglas popular sovereignty embodied the idea of local self-government and offered a middle ground between the extremes of the North and South. Due to Douglas’ leadership the bill became law in 1854
