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The Breakdown of the Political System

The Breakdown of the Political System. Gold!. The 1848 discovery of gold in California “transformed what had been a quiet ranching paradise into a teeming and tumultuous community in search of wealth.” ( OM , p. 478) San Francisco grew from 1,000 people in 1848 to 35,000 in 1850.

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The Breakdown of the Political System

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  1. The Breakdown of the Political System

  2. Gold! • The 1848 discovery of gold in California “transformed what had been a quiet ranching paradise into a teeming and tumultuous community in search of wealth.” (OM, p. 478) • San Francisco grew from 1,000 people in 1848 to 35,000 in 1850. • The white population of California jumped from 11,000 to more than 100,000 by 1852.

  3. The Compromise of 1850 • Admitted California as a free state; • Allowed residents of the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide whether they would be free or slave (popular sovereignty); • Ended the slave trade (but not slavery) in Washington D.C.; • Passed a new fugitive slave law.

  4. Reaction to the Compromise? • “The Union is saved!” (OM, p. 499) • The Philadelphia Pennsylvanian was confident that “peace and tranquility” had been ensured. • The Louisville Journal said that a weight seemed to have been lifted from the heart of America. • Salmon P. Chase, former Liberty Party spokesman and now senator from Ohio: “The question of slavery in the territories has been avoided. It has not been settled.”

  5. Compromise of 1850

  6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Published in 1851 by H.B. Stowe. • http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/exhibit-highlights/stowe/essay2.html • Sold 300,000 copies in the first year, and over two million copies within ten years (becoming the all-time American best-seller in proportion to the population). • Lincoln to Stowe in 1863: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” (OM, p. 496)

  7. http://www.270towin.com/1852_Election/

  8. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) • Introduced by Stephen Douglas, it proposed to create the territories, but use popular sovereignty to decide if they would be free or slave. • Douglas thought Southerners would support popular sovereignty, and hoped Northerners would support the bill because it would support a northern route for the transcontinental railroad. • The political fallout: “by allowing the possibility of slavery in the new territories, his bill in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.” (OM, p. 505)

  9. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

  10. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) • Worse political fallout: “In the congressional elections of 1854, northern Democrats lost two-thirds of their seats (from 91 to 25).” • The worst political fallout: “Southern Whigs voted with Southern Democrats in favor of the measure, northern Whigs rejected it absolutely, creating an irreconcilable split that left Whigs unable to field a presidential candidate in 1856.” • Thus, “Douglas had committed one of the greatest miscalculations in American political history.”

  11. Congressional Election of 1854

  12. “Bleeding Kansas” • So why this phrase? • “Kansas soon became a bloody battleground as the two factions struggled to secure the mandate of ‘popular sovereignty.’” (OM, p. 507) • The summer of 1856 “exploded into open warfare,” including acts of violence by people like John Brown. • http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CONTEXTS/Kansas/jbrown.html • http://www.kshs.org/portraits/brown_john.htm • http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/peopleevents/pande01.html

  13. “Bleeding Kansas”

  14. Tragic Prelude (1938-40) by John Steuart Curry

  15. “The Crime Against Kansas” • Name of the speech given by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, which blamed the South and pro-slavery forces for the turn of events in Kansas, and which included insults that specifically targeted Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina.

  16. The response of Preston Brooks (left) to Charles Sumner’s speech, floor of the U.S. Senate, 1856.

  17. Nativism and the Know-Nothings • One beneficiary of the destruction of the Whig Party (and the political vacuum that followed) was the American Party. • The American Party was a reaction to the ability of the Democratic Party to attract mostly Catholic foreign-born voters (anti-Whig and anti-black). • Blamed immigration for increasing crime, and the growing costs of helping the poor in increasingly crowded cities.

  18. Immigration to the United States, 1820-1860

  19. The Republican Party • A coalition of: • Former northern Whigs, totally opposed to slavery. • Free-Soil supporters who could tolerate slavery in the South. • Northern reformers “concerned about temperance and Catholicism.” • “Old Whigs” who wanted a strong national government to enact tariffs, transportation improvements, and provide cheap land for western farmers.

  20. http://www.270towin.com/1856_Election/

  21. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) • Decided two days after James Buchanan was sworn in. • Chief Justice Taney’s majority decision (which took him four hours to read) declared: • The Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because slaves were property. • Dismissed the case because only citizens could bring lawsuits and black people – slave or free – were not citizens. • http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/scott/scott.asp • http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/main/index.php?q=node/414

  22. Panic of 1857 • Senator James Hammond (SC): “When the abuse of credit had destroyed credit and annihilated confidence; when thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming down…when you came to a deadlock, and revolutions were threatened, what brought you up?…We have poured in upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton just at the moment to save you from destruction…We have sold it for $65,000,000, and saved you.” (OM, p. 513) • http://www.mcny.org/museum-collections/painting-new-york/maincatalogue.htm

  23. John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid • This ill-fated attempt at revolution was launched on October 16th, 1859. • Although intended to spark a larger slave uprising in Virginia, someone forgot to tell the slaves: stopped in less than a day, Brown would be executed on December 2nd. • Brown at sentencing: “Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the end 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 wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.” (OM, p. 514)

  24. Reaction to John Brown • Many northern communities (but not every individual) mourned John Brown’s death. • R.W. Emerson said that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” • H.D. Thoreau called him “an angel of light.”

  25. Reaction to John Brown • Southerners were shocked by northern support for John Brown and/or mourning of his death. • The Richmond Enquirer: “The Harpers Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of disunion more than any other event that has happened since the formation of (the) government.” • Senator Robert Toombs (GA) warned the South would “never permit this Federal government to pass into the traitorous hands of the Black Republican party.” (OM, p. 515)

  26. Last moments of John Brown (1887) by Thomas Hovenden

  27. The Election of 1860 • The Democrats were almost hopelessly divided; after more than 59 ballots, two weeks, two southern walkouts, and two different meeting places, they decided on two candidates: Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckinridge (Buchanan’s vice president from Kentucky) • To further guarantee the outcome, some southern Whigs and border-state nativists formed the Constitutional Union Party.

  28. The Election of 1860 • Republicans nominated a relative unknown: Abraham Lincoln! • The Republican platform: • Free western lands (and exclusion of slavery therein), transcontinental railroad, higher tariff, condemnation of John Brown’s raid, denied that they favored the social equality of black people, and “affirmed that they sought to preserve the Union.” (OM, p. 516)

  29. http://www.270towin.com/1860_Election/

  30. Secession • A Georgia newspaper ten days after the election said that “African slavery, though panoplied by the Federal Constitution, is doomed to a war of extermination. All the powers of a Government which has so long sheltered it will be turned to its destruction. The only hope for its preservation, therefore, is out of the Union.” (OM, p. 517) • On December 20th, 1860, a South Carolina state convention voted unanimously to secede. Within weeks, TX, LA, MS, AL, GA, FL followed suit. • President Buchanan did nothing, and President-elect Lincoln made it clear that he would not compromise on the extension of slavery, and that he would preserve the Union.

  31. Secession (similar slides from The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Fifth Edition, Chapter 14)

  32. Establishment of the CSA • Established in Montgomery, Alabama in February 1861. • They copied the Constitution, adding provisions that strongly supported states’ rights, and which made the abolition of slavery practically impossible. • Jefferson Davis was the first (and only) president; his Inaugural Address quoted the Declaration of Independence.

  33. Lincoln’s Inauguration • “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” (OM, p. 522)

  34. Resources • http://americancivilwar.com/pictures/compromise_1850.html • http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/wwww/us/compromiseof1850def.htm • http://www.wfu.edu/~zulick/340/compromise.html • http://www.worldmapsonline.com/mexicanwar.htm • http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun05.html • http://www.impawards.com/1927/uncle_toms_cabin.html • http://www.civilwar.si.edu/slavery_stowe4.html# • http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/90245 • http://www.pbase.com/rpdoody/image/94542459 • http://www.hithimagain.com/origins/ • http://americanhistory.si.edu/petersprints/lithograph.cfm?id=325684&Keywords=john&Results_Per=10&search_all=false • http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=4907 • http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/peopleevents/pande10.html • http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTRIALS/johnbrown/brownlinks.html • http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/picamer/paBrown.html

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