Lecture 13b

1. Lecture 13b Hist 110 American Civilization I Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer Upper Iowa University

2. Lecture 13bCompromise of 1850 • Soon after the end of the Mexican War, gold was discovered in California • California, encouraged by President Taylor, applied for statehood as a free state, igniting a political crisis that threatened to rip the Union apart • Positions • John C. Calhoun: open all the Mexican cession to slavery • James Buchanan: extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific • Stephen Douglas: Popular Sovereignty – let the settlers in the West decide • Free Soil: close the West to slavery • Henry Clay proposed a grand compromise that was later adopted • California admitted as a free state • Slavery possible in Utah and New Mexico territories • Stronger fugitive slave law • Slave trade ended in Washington, D.C. • New Mexico-Texas border dispute settled in New Mexico’s favor (Texas compensated) It was Stephen Douglass clever parliamentarian maneuvering that ultimately got Henry Clay’s Omnibus bill passed as a number of separate bills

3. Lecture 13bAftermath of the Compromise of 1850 • Personal Liberty Laws • The most controversial part of the Compromise was the new Fugitive Slave Law that promised slaveholders they would be able to recover escaped slaves from the free states • Northern state legislatures passed laws to make it difficult to enforce • It would take the Pierce administration $1 million to return one fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, from Massachusetts • Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Many white Southerners felt betrayed by the realization that the new Fugitive Slave Law was essentially unenforceable • They were further antagonized in 1852 by the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe • The book’s serialization in northern newspapers and widespread dramatization brought a sympathetic portrayal of the plight of slaves to northern audiences who had not been conscious before of the issue “The Rendition of Anthony Burns” Harriet Beecher Stowe & her book

4. Lecture 13bRise of the Republican Party • As the 1850s progressed, slavery increasingly split apart both Whig and Democratic parties • Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) • Ostensibly a law to organize Kansas and Nebraska for territorial government, it ultimately tore apart the Whigs and led to the rise of the Republican Party • Stephen Douglas, the bill’s sponsor, wanted to make Kansas a testing ground for popular sovereignty • Southerners demanded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise line as the price for their support, which led Northern Whigs to leave the party en mass and form the new Republican Party, committed to the principle of free soil • Bleeding Kansas • Kansas literally became a battleground as pro- and anti-slavery zealots competed over whether it would have slavery • Most settlers were free soil, but pro-slave Missourians crossed the border and fraudulently elected a pro-slavery territorial government after which open civil warfare broke out in the territory Political cartoon critical of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

5. Lecture 13bBuchanan’s Failed Presidency • Democrat James Buchanan won the 1856 Presidential election with only a plurality of the popular vote • He is widely derided by historians for his inaction and incompetency in trying to prevent the outbreak of the Civil War • Dred Scott decision (1857) • Buchanan’s first blunder was to encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to try to settle the issue of slavery in the territories • A southern majority court led by Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled in the case of slave Dred Scott that Scott had no claim to freedom because Congress had no authority over slavery in the territories • This decision seemingly opened to entire West to slavery, antagonizing the North • John Brown’s raid (1859) • In 1859, abolitionist zealot John Brown raided the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in a failed attempt to start a general slave revolt across the South • The raid convinced many white Southerners they were no longer safe in the Union James Buchanan John Brown

6. Lecture 13bThe Election of 1860 • Rise of Abraham Lincoln • A one-term Congressman in the late 1840s, Lincoln’s political career fizzled until he was tapped by the Republicans to challenge Stephen Douglas in the 1858 U.S. Senate race in Illinois • He lost to Douglas, but gained a national profile leading to his nomination in 1860 as the Republican candidate for president • Lincoln faced three opponent: Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckenridge, representing respectively the northern and southern wings of the sectionally-divided Democratic Party, and John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party made up of Border State Whigs • Lincoln, who supported free soil, managed to win the election essentially with northern votes alone, which convinced the states of the Deep South to secede Abraham Lincoln as he appeared in 1860 Stephen Douglas John C. Breckenridge John Bell