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Chapter 11. Sectional Conflict Increases. Section 1 An Uneasy Balance. The gag rule prohibited : all petitions, memorials, and papers, relating to the abolition of slavery or the slave trade: from being debated, printed, read or even mention in Congress.
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Chapter 11 Sectional Conflict Increases
The gag rule prohibited : all petitions, memorials, and papers, relating to the abolition of slavery or the slave trade: from being debated, printed, read or even mention in Congress. • The Republic of Texas petitioned for annexation, this addition, which permitted slavery, would tip the balance in the Senate toward the slave states. • In 1845 Congress admitted Texas as a slave state, it also extended westward the dividing line that had been set by the Missouri Compromise.
Popular Sovereignty was created to quiet the slavery debate, it would allow the citizens of each new territory to vote on whether to permit slavery there. • Representative David Wilmot introduced the Wilmot Proviso, which banned slavery in all lands that would be acquired from Mexico. • Southern states threatened to secede if it became a law, and eventually it was cut from the final bill.
The Democrats chose Lewis Cass of Michigan, who favored popular sovereignty and had publicly denounced the Wilmot Proviso. • The Whigs nominated Mexican War hero General Zachary Taylor. • Angered by the reluctance of either party to address the slavery issue, antislavery Whigs and Democrats formed the Free-Soil Party. • In the end the Whig candidate, Taylor, won the election by a slim margin.
Congress was divided over California and New Mexico – the territories of the Mexican Cession. • Texas became a source of conflict again, as it claimed that its boundary expanded westward. • Antislavery members of Congress responded by declaring their intentions of limiting the slaveholding state’s size.
Clay proposed admitting California as a free state. • Clay also suggested that the New Mexico Territory be divided into two territories – New Mexico and Utah. • He also added that Congress should pass a tougher fugitive slave law.
Northerners who supported the breakup of the Union were called abolitionists. • The Southerners who did so were known as fire-eaters. • Angry calls from both Northern and Southern lawmakers supported the end of the Union.
Many Northern members objected to Clay’s proposal, arguing that compromise on slavery was wrong. • President Taylor died suddenly in July 1850 and was succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore, who favored Clay’s proposal. • By September 20, Congress had passed Clay’s measures, known as the Compromise of 1850.
Although the compromise of 1850 did not satisfy all Americans, most were hopeful that it had settled the slavery question. • At their 1852 convention the Democrats united behind Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a strong supporter of the Compromise of 1850. • The Whigs turned to another Mexican War hero, General Winfield Scott. • Pierce won the election by a landslide.
The Compromise of 1850 began to fall apart even before Pierce’s election, largely because of the inclusion of the Fugitive Slave Act. • The law made it a federal crime to assist runaway slaves. • It also authorized the arrest of escaped slaves even in states where slavery was illegal.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged “forcible resistance.” • Even supporters of the Compromise of 1850 were shocked by the government’s enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. • Angry mobs freed runaway slaves who had been taken into custody and helped them get to Canada.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the early 1850’s. • Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed how slavery broke up African American families and made a mockery of pro-slavery arguments. • The book sold quickly in the North, but was banned in many parts of the South. • Authors quickly wrote other novels that attempted to defend slavery.
Illinois Senator Stephan Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which organized the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the basis of popular sovereignty. • The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise. • Passage of the Act in May 1854 renewed southern hopes of expanding slavery.
As Kansas settlers prepared to elect their first territorial legislature, some 5,000 pro-slavery Missouri residents crossed into the territory. • The illegal votes cast by the Missouri residents helped elect a pro-slavery legislature in Kansas. • Antislavery settlers formed the Free State Party, as a result, Kansas had two territorial governments competing for control.
Pro-slavery raiders form Missouri attacked antislavery Kansas settlers. • In revenge, a group led by abolitionist John Brown dragged five men from their bed and murdered them in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. • This attack enraged southerners, shocked northerners, and sparked more violence.
To carry their message to the nation, antislavery voters flocked to a new party gaining power in the North. • Reviving the name of Thomas Jefferson’s party, they called themselves the Republican Party.
The Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont. • The Democrats nominated James Buchanan and adopted a platform that supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act. • Buchanan won, and the election signaled the end of both the Whigs and American Party.
The LeCompton Constitution gave the voters of Kansas only the right to decide whether more slaves could enter the territory. • Senator Stephan Douglas attacked the Constitution, denouncing it as a fraud because it reflected only pr-slavery views. • Despite the eventual admission of Kansas as a free state in 1861 Douglas’s principle of popular sovereignty had been largely discredited.
In 1856 the Dred Scott case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. • Scott was a slave who accompanied his master to Missouri, after his master died, Scott sued for freedom. • Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared Scott was not a citizen and therefore could not bring suit against the U.S.
The Dred Scott Decision outraged abolitionists and other opponents of the expansion of slavery. • After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case, there seemed no way to keep slavery from spreading into the territories.
Abraham Lincoln was drawn back into politics over the slavery conflict. • In 1858 he ran against Senator Stephan Douglas, who was seeking a third term in the Senate. • Douglas strongly supported the policy of popular sovereignty.
Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven debates between August and October 1858. • During the debates, Lincoln attacked the Dred Scott decision, which seemed to grant broad constitutional protection to slavery. • Although he was willing to tolerate slavery in the south, he firmly opposed its expansion into the territory.
In a heated debate at Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln challenged Douglas to explain how popular sovereignty was still workable. • Douglas replied that the people of a territory could still keep slavery out simply by refusing to pass the local laws necessary to make a slave system work. • This argument, which came to be called the Freeport Doctrine, helped Douglas narrowly defeat Lincoln in the U.S. Senate race.
On October 16, 1859, John Brown’s small force seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. • In mid-October federal troops assaulted Brown’s position, killing half his men, and capturing the rest. • Brown was convicted of “murder, criminal conspiracy, and treason,” and was hung on December 2, 1859.
Reactions to Brown • Well known abolitionists viewed Brown as a great moral figure. • Many southern whites viewed Brown as a bloodthirsty fanatic who deserved his punishment.
Southern moderated formed the Constitutional Union Party, nominating John Bell of Tennessee. • After two Democratic conventions Stephen Douglas won the Democratic nomination for President. • Southern democratic’s instead nominated Vice President John Breckinridge.
The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln. • The Republicans had little hope for success in the South and in the end didn’t even campaign in most southern states. • Although Lincoln received only about 40 percent of the popular vote, his electoral victory was a landslide.
Within days of the election, the South Carolina legislature called a convention and unanimously voted to leave the Union. • Early in 1861, delegates from six of the seven seceding states met and drafted a constitution for the Confederate States of America. • The new constitution guaranteed the right to own slaves and it stressed that each state was “sovereign and independent.”
The delegates chose Mississippi planter and former U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis as provisional president of the Confederacy. • The southern secessionists asserted since individual states had come together to form the Union, a state had the right to withdraw from the Union. • President Lincoln spoke in a special session of Congress and argued that the south must accept the election results.
