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15. The Coming Crisis the 1850s. The Coming Crisis the 1850s. America in 1850 Cracks in National Unity The Crisis of the National Party System The Differences Deepen The South Secedes Conclusion. Grand procession of Wide-Awakes at New York on the evening of October 3, 1860.
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15 The Coming Crisis the 1850s
The Coming Crisisthe 1850s • America in 1850 • Cracks in National Unity • The Crisis of the National Party System • The Differences Deepen • The South Secedes • Conclusion
Grand procession of Wide-Awakes at New York on the evening of October 3, 1860.
Chapter Focus Questions • Why did people in the North and the South tend to see the issue of slavery so differently? • Why were the politicians of the 1850s unable to find a lasting political compromise on the issue of slavery? • What was the intent of the Compromise of 1850?
Chapter Focus Questions (cont’d) • What explains the end of the Second American Party System and the rise of the Republican Party? • Why did the South secede following the Republican Party victory in the election of 1860?
Illinois Communities Debate Slavery • Illinois voters gathered in 1858 to hear Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln debate slavery and the future of the Union. • Douglas accused Lincoln of favoring social equality of whites and blacks. • Lincoln denied this and accused Douglas of supporting the spread of slavery.
Illinois Communities Debate Slavery (cont'd) • Although Douglas won the senatorial election, the debates established both Lincoln and the Republican Party as contenders for national power. • The debates demonstrated that the slavery question had divided American communities, but that Americans strongly valued their democratic institutions.
Expansion and Growth • America had grown rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century. • Population tripled and national wealth doubled between 1800 and 1850. • The nation had experienced great but unequal growth of wealth, industry, and urbanization.
Expansion and Growth (cont'd) • Southern economic influence was waning, undermining the South’s role in national politics.
Politics, Culture, and National Identity Pride in democracy was one unifying theme in a growing sense of national identity and new middle-class values, institutions, and culture that supported it.
Politics, Culture, and National Identity • An American Renaissance produced writers who focused on social criticism, including: • Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson who experimented with poetic form • Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville who wrote about the darker side of human nature
Politics, Culture, and National Identity (cont'd) • Frederick Douglass’s autobiography and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin condemn slavery
Political crisis brought on by the application of California for statehood
The Compromise of 1850 • The Compromise of 1850 was actually five separate bills • California came in as a free state. • Other southwest territories were to be settled by popular sovereignty. • A stronger fugitive slave law was enacted. • The slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C.
The Compromise of 1850 (cont'd) • The Texas–New Mexico border dispute was settled.
Political Parties Split over Slavery • The national party system had forced Whigs and Democrats to forge intersectional coalitions. • By 1848 sectional interests were eroding these coalitions. • Sectional divisions in religious and other organizations had begun to divide the country.
Political Parties Split over Slavery (cont'd) • Increasingly, slavery and freedom had become the dividing line in politics and society, forcing uncompromising choices.
Congressional Divisions • Millard Fillmore became president (weak, indecisive) • John C. Calhoun had laid out the states’ rights defense by claiming that: • territories common property of each of the states, and • Congress could not discriminate against slave owners.
Congressional Divisions (cont'd) • Northerners grew increasingly concerned over what they saw as a southern conspiracy to control the government: the “slave power.”
Two Communities, Two Perspectives • Both North and South: • were committed to expansion, but each viewed manifest destiny in its own terms; and • shared a commitment to basic rights and liberties but saw the other as infringing on them.
Two Communities, Two Perspectives (cont’d) • Two perspectives: • Northerners viewed their region as a dynamic society that offered opportunity to the common man, in contrast to the stagnant slave owning aristocracy of the South. • Southerners viewed their section as promoting equality for whites by keeping blacks in a perpetual state of bondage.
Two Communities, Two Perspectives (cont'd) • The chances for national reconciliation were slim.
The Fugitive Slave Law • The nation divided • The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850—U.S. support of slave catchers • Mobs of northerners unsuccessfully tried to prevent the law from being carried out. • Boston especially emerged as a center of resistance to slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law.
The Fugitive Slave Law (cont'd) • Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs • described their experiences as slaves, helping to raise Northerners’ consciousness.
The Election of 1852 • The growing polarization of opinion strained the party system. • Democrats struggled to nominate Franklin Pierce, while Whigs settled on war hero Winfield Scott. • General apathy characterized the election: turnout fell below 70%. • Franklin Pierce easily won with strong immigrant and Free Soiler support.
“Young America”:The Politics of Expansion • Between 1845 and 1848, the United States became a continental nation. • The “Young America” movement pushed for expansion into Latin America. • After a failed offer to buy Cuba from Spain, the Ostend Manifesto revealed Southern ambitions to gain more slave territory.
“Young America”:The Politics of Expansion (cont'd) • The Compromise of 1850 showed the dangers of reopening territorial issues.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act • Stephen Douglas pushed through a bill to open the Kansas territory. • To win southern support Douglas’ bill declared that the territory would be organized on the principle of popular sovereignty, even though slavery in that territory had been banned under the Missouri Compromise.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act (cont’d) • The Kansas-Nebraska Act proved to: • destroy the Whig Party • nearly destroy the northern wing of the Democratic Party • negate treaties with Indians removed to Kansas in the 1830s.
“Bleeding Kansas” • Kansas a battleground of sectional politics • Election day: Proslavery Missourians crossed over the border and took control of the territorial legislature. • Northerners founded free-soil communities. • By the summer of 1856 open warfare erupted.
“Bleeding Kansas” (cont'd) • Pro-slaver’s sack of the town of Lawrence was answered by abolitionist John Brown’s murder of five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek.
The Politics of Nativism • An outburst of anti-immigrant feeling: Reformers were appalled by the influx of Irish into American cities. • Former Whigs formed the “Know-Nothing” or American Party to prevent what they saw as a takeover by the immigrants. • After success in 1854, the Know-Nothings succumbed to sectional divisions.
The Politics of Nativism (cont'd) • In response an expansionist, free soil Republican Party emerged.
Nighttime meeting of supporters of the Know-Nothing Party in New York City
The Republican Party and the Election of 1856 • The Republican Party linked many Free-Soil supporters and former Whigs, nominating John C. Frémont. • In 1856, Democrats nominated Pennsylvanian James Buchanan as a compromise candidate. • Know-Nothings ran Millard Fillmore.
The Republican Party and the Election of 1856 (cont’d) • While Frémont ran strongly in the North, Buchanan carried nearly the entire South and won. • Republican leaders realized that, in 1860, they could win with only two more Northern states and no Southern support.
