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Motives for Expansion
and Western Settlement
Chapter 6
Section 3
Stephan A Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas was the senator
from Illinois who encouraged southern
hopes by proposing that settlers in
Kansas and Nebraska decide for
themselves whether or not to allow
slavery in their territories in which
Congress ended up voting in favor for.
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)


The terms of the Missouri
Compromise no longer applied to
Kansas and Nebraska.
Instead, the people of these territories
would exercise popular sovereignty
by voting on whether or not to allow
slavery.
Violent Outcome
 In
Kansas, after the passage of Senator
Douglas’s bill, fighting broke out
between southern, proslavery settlers,
and northern, antislavery settlers.
 Armed clashes between northerners
and southerners in “Bleeding Kansas”
warned of the nationwide civil war that
would soon follow.
Disintegration of the Whig Party



From the early to mid-1800s, the Whig
party was one of the two major parties
of the United States.
The Whig part supported High Tariffs
to protect business, a national bank to
control the currency, and internal
improvements on roads and canals.
With supporters in both the North and
the South , the Whig party at first took
no stand on the issue of slavery.
Rise of the Republican Party



The Republican Party would replace the
Whigs as they declined in popularity.
Founded in 1854, the Republican Party
drew all its support from the North and
the West.
The Republican Party was looked upon
with suspicion and hostility as an
antislavery, anti-southern party from the
South’s point of view.

1.
2.
3.
As stated in the Republican platforms of
1856 and 1860, the new party stood for:
Keeping slavery out of the western
territories. (The abolition of slavery in the
south was a goal of only a minority of
Republicans; it was not an official goal of
the party)
Enacting a high protective tariff to
encourage northern industries
Building a transcontinental, or nationwide,
railroad stretching from the Atlantic coast
all the way to the Pacific.
Election of 1856

In the election of 1856, Republican
candidate for president, John C. Fremont,
came in second in the national voting and
first in the North. Was an election that
proved that the Republican Party was now
one of the two major parties in the nation.
Abraham Lincoln and the
Secession Crisis
 Abraham
Lincoln, the man who would
become the 16th president, began his life
on a small homestead in Kentucky.
 When he was three years old, his father
moved the family to Indiana where Abe
grew up on the family farm teaching
himself to read and write.
 Although he had some primary school
instruction, Lincoln was largely self-taught.
 Lincoln
began his career as a
lawyer and legislator.
 His political beliefs included
opposition to the expansion of
slavery, internal improvements,
and a high tariff.
 On a personal and moral level,
Lincoln opposed slavery.
 Lincoln launched his political
career as a Whig and when the
Whig party began to
disintegrate, Lincoln joined the
newly formed Republican Party.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The person holding the Senate seat and running for
reelection was the famed Democratic leader in the
Senate, Stephan Douglas.
 In various towns in Illinois, Lincoln, the tall Republican,
debated the much shorter Democrat (the “Little Giant,”
as Douglas was called) on the slavery issue.
 Douglas defended his position on popular sovereignty;
Lincoln attacked it.
 Said Lincoln in one debate: “The Republican party
looks upon slavery as a moral, social, and political
wrong. They insist that it should be treated as wrong;
and one of the methods of treating it as wrong is to
make sure that it should grow no longer.”
Lincoln-Douglas Debates

It was during this race for the Senate that
Lincoln gave his famous “house divided”
speech.
 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
believe this government cannot endure
permanently half slave, and half free….I do not
expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing,
or all the other.
 Lincoln lost the Senate election to Douglas but
the debates won Lincoln national attention.
Election of 1860
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Angry feelings between northerners and
southerners dominated politics in 1860 as
Republicans and Democrats met in national
conventions to choose their candidates for
president.
The four candidates for president in the
election of 1860 were Abraham Lincoln (Rep),
Stephen Douglas (No. Dem), John
Breckinridge (So. Dem), and John Bell (Const.
Union).
 In
this four-way race,
Lincoln emerged as the
winner although he won
only 40 percent of the
popular vote.
 However, he won the
heavily populated states
throughout the North,
thereby winning the
electoral vote.
 From the South’s point of
view, it was the worst
possible outcome.
Southern Secession
 Only
one month after Lincoln’s election,
South Carolina announced its decision to
secede from the Union.
 Other southern states followed South
Carolina’s example.
 By March 1861, northern states and
southern states were acting as two
separate nations.
 The Union had come apart.
Southern Secession

Many factors led to the Civil War.
 The invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney
insured that slavery would increase and spread and
would never go away.
 Among its underlying causes were cultural and
economic differences, regional loyalties,
southerners’ belief in easy victory, slavery as a
moral issue, and a series of inflammatory events in
the 1850s.
 The South believed that it had to secede in order to
preserve slavery, which it viewed as inseparable
from southern culture.
 The
industrial North and the cottondominated South also had differing
economic interests, which led to political
disputes such as the tariff question.

Sectionalism in the South was stronger than
nationalism.
 Southerners were also strong believers in states’
rights rather than in federal authority.
 The South also believed that the North did not
have the stomach to use armed force.
 Many southerners also thought that English
manufacture’s dependence on their cotton would
oblige Britain to support them if war did come.

Strong presidential leadership was lacking in
the 1850s, and the two leading proponents of
nationalism in the Senate, Henry Clay and
Daniel Webster, both passed away early in
the decade.
 By the 1850s more and more people began to
view slavery as morally wrong and
incompatible with democracy.
 In addition, a series of inflammatory events
acted to polarize and divide the nation in the
1850s.
 Among these events were the Fugitive Slave
Act, the publication of “Bleeding Kansas,”
the Dred Scott decision, John Brown’s raid
on Harpers Ferry, and the election of
Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860.