Transcript Road to Secession

Road to Secession
Events leading to Civil War
Study Guide Identifications
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Sectionalism
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act 1850
Ostend Manifesto
Kansas Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
Know Nothings
Dred Scott
John Brown
Election of 1860
Study Guide Questions
• What are the major events that led to civil war?
• What debate was renewed with the acquisition of
California Territory and its application for
statehood?
• What major divisions existed in American
Society?
• What is Zinn’s argument concerning the events
that led the United States to wage a civil war?
Political & Economic Context
• Jacksonian Era, 1824 – 1845
– Extension of white male democracy
– Popular religious revolt
– Rise of Jackson’s Democrats (1824-28)
– Jackson appeal
• Indian removal
– Spoils System
Political & Economic Context
• Martin Van Buren’s Presidency
– Rise of radical abolitionist movement in north
revived sectional tensions over slavery.
– In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison of Boston
inaugurated a radical new phase in northern
attacks on slavery, The Liberator.
– Southern Congressmen responded by demanding
that free speech be repressed in the name of
white security.
• 1836-44 gag rule passed and renewed continuously,
• Sharp Economic
Downturn
• Bank Crisis
• Unemployment
Rose (20% by
1843)
• Massive labor
protests in the
east
• Farmers &
Planters lost land
& Slaves
Panic of 1837
– Fled west to avoid
creditors
Rise of Whig party
• Blamed Democrats
for Economic
disaster
• Rise of 2 Party
System
• Competition
between Democrats
& Whigs
• Mass electorization
& Political Rhetoric
Politics of Sectionalism
• To exclude slavery from the western territories
was exclude white southerners from pursuing
their vision of American dream
• North politicians argued that exclusion
preserved equality of all white men and
women to live and work with out competition
from slavery labor or rule by despotic
slaveholders.
International Debate over Slavery
 What economic institutions would prevail in America?
Debates on how to solve the question of nature of economic
expansion:
1. outright exclusion
2. Extension of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific
3. popular sovereignty, allowing the residents of a territory to
decide the issue
4. protection of the property of slaveholders (meaning their
right to own slaves) even if few lived in the territory
The Compromise of 1850
• Admission to Union – upset balance of free/slave states
and senators, I.e. veto power of south against federal
laws against slavery
• Compromise of 1850 Issues:
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Admission of California as a Free State
Fugitive Slave Act
NM & UT popular sovereignty
Importation of Slaves into District of Columbia
• Measures to discourage settlement of “people of color”
• State Laws banned testimony in legal proceedings infringed on civil
rights and treated inferior
Overwhelming support for free state
admission
• Miners against blacks in
gold fields
– Mass Meetings
• “No Negro should work
claims”
• Leave district
• William E. Shannon
• “Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude,
unless punishment of
crimes, shall ever be
tolerated in this state”
• M. M. McCarver
– Proposal to exclude all
free blacks
• Presence of free blacks an
“evil greater than that of
slavery itself”
• Not passed for fear of
rejection of statehood
Fugitive Slave Act
• Reinforced their right to seize and return to
bondage slaves who had fled to free territory
Fugitive Slave Act, 1850
– Response to the fugitive slave act
• Slave catches and planters enslaved free blacks, polarized
north and south further
• Galvanized popular opinion against slavery further
Expansion & slave/free state question
• Whigs dissolved as a party
• Franklin Pierce – Expansionist Policy
• Ostend Manifesto:
– Claimed Cuba belonged “naturally to the great
family of the states of which the union is
providential nursery”
– if Spain does not sell it we will take it
– “General” William Walker - Nicaragua
Ostend Manifesto
American minister to England James Buchanan, minister to Spain Pierre
Soule, and John Y. Mason, minister to France,
Kansas – Nebraska Act
• Transcontinental Rail Road – Indian Territory
– Question of free/slave state
– Split = Kansas (slave) & Nebraska (free)
• Decide through popular sovereignty
“Bleeding Kansas”
• Competition of anti and pro slavery
immigration –Beginning of civil war
– Further polarized north and south
Titus and pro-slavery forces on their way to attack Lawrence
This 1854 map
shows slave
states (grey),
free states
(red), and US
territories
(green) with
Kansas in center
(white).
Know Nothings
• Political Realignment
– Know Nothings:
• Mostly former Whigs
• Anti –immigrant
– Extend naturalization from 1 to 21 years
• Anti- Catholic
– Legislation barring them from public office
• Nativist
– New Republican Party
• Anti-slavery conscious Whigs & Democrats
• Most Important political force
– Democrats
• Pro-slavery, southern sectional party
Dred Scott Case
• Scott sued for Freedom
– Illinois & Wisconsin Territory
• Chief Justice Taney & 9 justices - 2 days
• black people, not citizens, could not sue
• framers of the constitution never intended citizenship for
slaves
• slaves being of an inferior order….so far inferior that they
had not rights which the white man was bound to respect
• Republicans argued a small group of slave
holders was holding no n slaveholding white
people hostage to the institution of slavery
Road to Disunion
• The Compromise of 1850
• Aggression in the Caribbean & Latin American
(American Imperialism)
• Bleeding Kansas
• Dred Scott Vs. Sandford
– Convinced north that south was conspiring with
the federal government to restrict economic and
political liberties
John Brown
• 1859 – Raid against federal arsenal
• Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
– Trained his rebels & took the arsenal
– Hoped to spark a slave revolt
– Captures and Hung for treason
John Brown
• I believe that to have interfered as I have don…in
behalf of despised poor is no wrong, but right. Now if
it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for
the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my
blood further with the blood of my children and with
the blood of millions in this slave country whose
rights are disregarded by country whose rights are
disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments I
say let it be done.”
Election
of 1860
• Democratic Party Split
– Nominated Stephen Douglas
• Former Whigs – Constitutional Union Party
– Nominated John Bell
• Republicans
– nominated Lincoln
Secession
• South Carolina legislature called on states citizens to
elect delegates to a convention to consider secession
– TX, LA, MS, Al, GA, FL and SC voted to leave the union and
met to form a separate country.
– The Confederate States of America
– Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president. AK, TN, NC & VA
followed.
• As a result of the Brown’s raid and Lincolns election
in 1860 states began to secede from the union.