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“The majority rules and law rests on numbers, not on intellect or virtue. . . while theoretically holding that no vote of the majority can authorize injustice, we practically consider public opinion the real test of what is true and false; and hence, as a result, the fact which Tocqueville has noticed, that practically our institutions protect, not the interest of the whole community but the interests of the majority.” Abolitionist Wendell Phillips
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852 Rochester, NY
Henry Clay addressing Senate, 1850 -- the CA gold rush pushed the Wilmot Proviso into the spotlight when CA applied for statehood in September of 1849
CA as a free state Territorial governments for Utah and NM Slave trade in D.C. was abolished Strict fugitive slave law Texas land claims settled MA Senator Daniel Webster 1782-1852 who worked with Clay for 8 months on the Compromise of 1850
Millard Fillmore 1800-1874 US President when Zachary Taylor died in July 1850 Taylor had opposed 1850 Compromise while Fillmore supported it
Boston handbill, 1851, warning “colored people” of slave catchers
San Francisco’s Vigilance Committee hangs two men in 1856 – 6,000 vigilantes marched through the city
1852 Cuban sugar estate – many Americans invested in Cuban sugar plantations
President Franklin Pierce elected in 1852, supported 1853 $130 million effort to purchase Cuba – “Ostend Manifesto” threatened US seizure of Cuba
Commodore Matthew Perry 1794-1858 -- brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, sent to open Japan in 1852
1854 Honolulu -- President Pierce’s foreign policy he called “Young America” attempted unsuccessfully to annex Hawaii
NY city torchlight meeting of “Know-Nothings” or American Party, Nov. 1855
A “Know-Nothing” cartoon – they elected governors in NY and MD
“The Hurly-Burly Pot” cartoon – issues that threatened US in 1850s
Stephen A. Douglas 1813-1861 -- “Little Giant” proposed popular sovereignty for both Kansas and Nebraska
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-1896 -- daughter of Lyman Beecher and sister of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Harriet Tubman 1821-1913 -- helped John Brown organize armed raids against slavery from her farm in Canada
Walt Whitman 1819-1892, Leaves of Grass in 1855, anti-slavery
Salmon P. Chase 1808-1873, early leader of Republican Party after “Bleeding Kansas” caused Whigs to leave their party
Ripon, Wisconsin schoolhouse where Republican Party held first meetings
SC Senator Andrew Butler 1796-1857, After Sen. Charles Sumner of MA accused him of a conspiracy of Kansas slaveholders, Sumner was attacked on May 21, 1856
Congressman Preston Brooks of SC 1819-1857, hitting Sumner with cane – Sumner didn’t recover for nearly 3 years
General John C. Fremont 1813-1890 First Republican candidate for president in 1856 An antislavery Southerner who married daughter of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri
James Buchanan 1791-1868, Elected 15th US President in 1856, was Polk’s Secretary of State during Mexican War
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney 1777-1864, Maryland slaveowner who manumitted own slaves, 1857 Dred Scott decision
Dred Scott with wife Harriet. She sued Dred’s former owner who brought him into the Wisconsin Territory where they met. [Both brought back as slaves]
Governor’s mansion in LeCompton, Kansas Territory in 1857 – They held proslavery constitutional convention boycotted by Free Soilers. Douglas broke with Buchanan when asked to admit Kansas as slave state
Bleeding Kansas in 1858 [Pottawatomie Creek massacre by John Brown, May of 1856]
5th Lincoln – Douglas debate at Knox College in Illinois -- October 7, 1858
Lincoln and William Herndon had law office on this street in Springfield, Illinois
Campaign cartoon accusing “Honest Abe” of being two-faced about own ambitions -- Lincoln was chosen over frontrunner William H. Seward of MA
John Brown 1800-1859 daguerreotype from 1856 or 1857
John Brown and 17 others seized the federal arsenal, armory, and a rifle works on October 16, 1859 but he surrendered from this fire station two days later.
Col. Robert E. Lee, led US Marines that captured Brown – 10 of Brown’s men were killed
Chronology 1820 Missouri Compromise 1832 Nullification Crisis 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Zachary Taylor; "free-soilers" 1850 Compromise of 1850; American "know nothing" movement; Millard Fillmore president 1851 Northern reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852 Franklin Pierce elected president 1854 Ostend Manifesto; Kansas-Nebraska Act; treaty renegotiations; Republican Party begins 1855 William Walker’s "filibuster" in Nicaragua 1856 Looting of Lawrence, Kansas; John Brown’s Pottawatomie massacre; Buchanan president 1857 Dred Scott decision; Buchanan accepts proslavery Lecompton constitution; Panic 1858 Congress rejects Lecompton constitution; Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1859 John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry 1860 4 parties run candidates for president; Lincoln’s election; S. Carolina secedes 1861 6 additional "deep South" states secede; Confederate States formed; Lincoln takes office
Bibliography Davis, William C. An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government. [2001 Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. (1978) Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. (1970) Franklin, John Hope. A Southern Odyssey: Travelers ih the Ante-bellum North. (1976) Oates, Stephen. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown. (1970) and With Malice toward None: A life of Abraham Lincoln. (1977) Potter, David. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. (1976) Stampp, Kenneth. America in 1857. (1990) and The Causes of the Civil War. (1974) Takaki, Ronald. A Proslavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade. (1971) Woodward, C. Vann. American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue. (1971)
Chapter Focus Questions • Why did the Whigs and Democrats fail to find a lasting political compromise on the issue of slavery? • What caused the end of the Second American Party System and the rise of the Republican Party? • Why did the secession of the southern states follow the Republican Party victory in the election of 1860?
