History 101: Week 13 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

History 101: Week 13 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

[The notes for the lecture of Monday, April 24, 1995 are not available.]

April 26, 1995: Politics, Free Soil and Slavery in the 1850s

I. Slave Power Idea: A. Gag Rule, 1836 B. Slave extension to territories. 1. deprived free white settlers of opportunity. C. Suppression of constitutional rights in the south. D. Fugitive slave laws deprived northerners of constitutional protections and self-determination.

II. The Question of the Territories: A. With the acquisition of Texas and the South West, as well as the territory of Oregon, the political battle over slavery in the territories was renewed. Three political options in the 1840s: 1. Wilmot Proviso - slavery banned from all territories acquired from Mexico. 2. Extension of Miss. Comp. line to the Pacific. 3. Popular Soveriegnty. 4. Calhoun's constitutional interpretation of the incompetance of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories.

B. Wilmot Proviso battle in 1846 overcame party loyalty and led to a clear sectional division of voting and splits within both parties. (But the Proviso was defeated.)

III. Election of 1848

1. NY Democrats split into "Barnburners" (led by Van Buren and favoring Wilmot Proviso) and "Hunkers" (willing to do anything to conciliate the south and maintain their control of the juicy patronage awarded to them by the national party.) a. Democrats end up nominating Lewis Cass proposed to allow settlers the "right" to determine for themselves the legality of slavery in the territories. (This was a brilliant ploy to cement the northern and southern halves of the party - southerners assuming that settlers would vote slavery and northerners assuming the opposite.)

2. Whigs nominate Zachery Taylor, a man without a political past, a man who boasted of even never voting in his life! (so as to conciliate its divided factions). a. Massachusetts Whigs split between "Cotton" and "Conscience" factions.

3. In August of 1848, the Free Soil Party born in Buffalo of a coalition of old Liberty party men, Conscience Whigs, and Barnburner democrats. a. compromise candidate of Martin Van Buren agreed upon (with abolitionist Charles Francis Adams to balance the ticket). Slogan, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, Free Men."

A. In the end, Taylor won.

IV. Crisis of 1850. A. Pres. Taylor, a man whose 40 years of army service had breed an identification with federalism and whose closest advisor was William H. Seward, (NY's antislavery Senator) encouraged California and New Mexico to apply for statehood as a free territory. This provoked representatives from 9 southern states to assemble in a protest convention and demand the "right" to extend slavery whereever they wished.

1. Some southern radicals ("Fire-eaters") began to call for secession. This backlash against Taylor weakened the Whig party in the South.

V. The New Question of Western Territories - provoked such passions in Congress that fistfights broke out and Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on another Senator on the Senate floor.

A. Henry Clay engineered a series of compromises that defused the crisis: 1. California admitted as free state. 2. Texan boundary fixed far east of Rio Grande (in exchange for a 10 million payment to the state of Texas.) 3. All other SW territories granted popular sovereignty. 4. Fugitive slave law strengthened: a. U.S. Commissioners authorized to issue warrents of arrest and return of fugitives (paid $10 for return/$5 for release). b. mere affidavit sufficient evidence of ownership c. accused slaves prohibited from testifying. d. commissioners authorized to deputize anyone and anyone who refused was subject to fines and imprisonment. (Thus white citizens to be denied their civil rights to refuse to participate in upholding the slave system).

5. Federal govt. prohibited from regulating or abolishing the interstate slave trade. 6. Slave trade abolished in D.C., though federal interference in slavery there prohibited.

VI. Fugitive Slave Law and Personal Liberty Laws.

A. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, outraged at the Fugitive Slave Law, published Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book that sold a million copies in its first year. B. After passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, no free black person in the North was safe. C. The first man seized under the new law was liberated by free blacks in Boston. D.Lewis Hayden, a conductor of the Underground RR in Boston placed two kegs of dynamite in his basement vowing to blow it up rather than allow slave catchers to enter. E. John Brown noted that the Fugitive Slave Law "(had made) more abolitionists than all the lectures we have had for years." F. 1851, the Philadelphia Negro Vigilence Committee killed two members of a slave-catcher posse. G. 1854 a Boston mob of such size attacked the courthouse to free Anthony Burns, a black man being processed by a US slave commissioner, that it took 22 military companies to drive them back. One US Marshal was killed. This event galvanized abolitionism in much of the north. Even Amos A. Lawrence, leader of the Cotton Whigs, wrote of the affair, "we went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & woke up stark mad Abolitionists." Burns, though reenslaved was purchased by abolitionist and moved to Canada where he became a minister. 1. In the wake of Burn's reenslavement, 9 northern states pass Personal Liberty Laws. H. Margaret Garner escaped with her four children in Jan. 1856. Pursued by her owner a US marshal and his posse arrived at her house and in her desperation she attempted to kill her children and kill herself, though she was stopped soon after slitting her daughters throat. The owner who had pursued her had already sold her to a New Orleans broker and on the trip down the river a steamboat explosion took the life of her youngest son. She and her remaining sons were placed on the auction block in New Orleans.

VII. Collapse of the Whig Party A. Both Whig Presidents died early in office: 1. Harrison after a month. 2. Taylor after a year.

B. 1852, a Presidential election year saw the party lose its two most prominent and able politicians: Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Polk, the most pro-slavery, pro-southern candidate in the Democratic convention won the nomination and the election.

VIII. Kansas-Nebraska Act created political crisis agin in 1854: A. Illinois Dem. Stephen Douglas, pandering to Chicago commercial interests, introduces bill to organize Kansas-Nebraska territories as a step towards building a transcontinental RR that would pass through his home state. 1. KN-NB act allowed for popular determination of legality of slavery in these territories. (Thus it implicitly repealled the Missouri Compromise).

B. As a result of the new controversy, Democrats lost the northern wing of their party - in the election of 1854 Dems lost 66 of their 91 free state congressional seats.

IX. The new Republican party organized in 1854, picking up the pieces of the antislavery northern democrats, free-soilers, antislavery Whigs, and abolitionists. In the election of 1854, Republicans captured a majority of Congressional seats in the north. 1. Republicans won on the basis of tying together voters who demanded: a. protective tariffs b. internal improvements c. free homesteads and free territories d. temperance and nativism

A. In the south, the dissolution of the Whigs sent a sizable bloc of voters into the Democrats camp (southern Whigs had been primarily urban and commercial, and extremely wealthy planter aristocrats - and southern democrats the voice of small planters and slaveless yeoman.) The Democrats glued these diverse class interests together by appeal to race hatred.

B. Thus after the election of 1854, the political system was for the first time clearly polarized between the sections. Whereas the Democrats had carried all but two northern states in congressional elections of 1852, they lost all but two in the election of 1854.

X. Bleeding Kansas A. New England Emmigrant Aid Society formed in 1854. B. Territorial election held in 1855. Thousands of pro- slave Missourians flooded across the border and illegally swung the election for proslave legislature. This legislature not only legalized slavery, but made it a felony to question the legality of slavery, restricted officeholding to slave-owners, and instituted the death penalty for those aiding slaves to escape. C. Free-soilers call a rump convention to repudiate the election and the legislature, formed a parallel government. D. Pro-slavery forces sent a posse to arrest the leaders of the free-soil government and sack the town of Lawrence E. May, 1856, Charles Sumner denounced the President, the South, and the Senator from S.Carolina. Congressman Preston Brooks, nephew of the defamed Senator, canes Sumner in the Senate chamber. Sumner so seriously injured he takes three years to recuperate and during this time his constituents elect him anyway so his empty Senate chair could stand as monument to the viscious attack. The Senate could not break a solid southern block to vote to condemn Brooks, he resigned and won a unanimous election. F. John Brown murders five proslave settlers in retaliation, guerilla warfare results. 200 die in the fighting before the year is out.

XI. Election of 1856: A. Republicans, with no hope of carrying a single southern district, adopt a solid Free Soil Platform: 1. Free Kansas 2. Denounce Southern attempts to annex Cuba 3. Called for Congress to prohibit slavery and polygamy in the territories 4. government aid for construction of internal improvements (especially transcontinental RR)

B. John C. Fremont nominated, military hero of Mexican War.

C. Democrats passed over their sitting President, Pierce and their most able politician, Douglass, because both were too tainted with engineering the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 1. States Rights platform 2. reaffirmed Fugitive Slave Law 3. Popular Soveriegnty for the territories 4. Branded Republicans abolitionists in disguise.

D. Democrats carried the election by winning over the lower north states with 1. fears of an influx of emancipated blacks. "The Black Republicans (will) turn loose...millions of negroes, to elbow you in the workshops, and compete with you in the fields of honest labor." 2. fears of some northerners that a Republican victory would provoke secession. (Maine voted first then, and after it returned a 65% majority for Fremont, Virginia's governer shrewdly called up the states militia and vowed "if Fremont is elected there will be revolution."

XII. 2 days before Buchanan's inauguration in March of 1857, Dred Scott Case confirms the Slave Power Thesis for northerners.

XIII. John Brown and Harper's Ferry A. 20 men, five blacks (and Harriet Tubman, though she fell ill at the last moment.)

Apr. 28, 1995: Lincoln and Secession

I. 1857 Dred Scott case

II. Feb. 1857 proslavery legislature of Kansas, knowing that it was losing the population race, pushed ahead with a jerrymandered election for a Constitutional convention (which free-soilers boycotted), drafted a Constitution and presented a fraudelent referendum to the voters (no option of rejecting the constitution outright). Free-soilers in the meantime gained control of the territorial legislature and submitted the constition to a true referendum where it was defeated. A. Nevertheless, southern congressmen introduced the rejected proslavery Lecompton constitution as the basis for Kansas statehood in 1857. B. In Feb. 1858, an all-night debate on the Lecompton constitution resulted in an all out fistfight including some 30 Senators on the Senate floor. C. Despite the vigorous lobbying of Pres. Buchanan, the threats of southern fire-eaters to "rather than have Kansas refused admission under the Lecompton constitution let [the Union] perish in blood and fire.", Northern Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the Kansas bill in April of 1858. D. Stephen Douglass, the father of "popular soveriegnty" had oppossed the Lecompton constitution because it was clearly not the will of the people of Kansas - but in so doing he alienated the southern wing of his party.

III. 1858, Abraham Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglass for his Illinois seat in the Senate. Both candidates stumped and debated around the state and in the end, Douglass managed to maintain a Democratic majority in the state legislature and thereby keep his Senate seat. But the campaign highlighted the issues and differences between Democrats and Republicans and foreshadowed the election of 1860.

A. At one debate at Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln flung a clever question at Douglass, a question that bound him in a straitjacket of his own competing political committments. Lincoln asked him, "Could the people of a territory lawfully exclude slavery before achieving statehood?" (i.e., did Dred Scott render the idea of popular sovereingty unworkable) 1. If Douglass said "no" he would alienate the northern wing of his party and lose his Senate seat in Illinois. 2. If Douglass said "yes" he would alienate the southerners in his party and lose his party's nomination for President in 1860. Douglass said that yes, residents of territory could exclude slavery by refusing to pass the raft of protective laws that the institution of slavery requires. This became known as the Freeport Doctrine and controversy over it split the Democratic party north and south.

IV. Southerners now came to demand a federal slave code to protect slavery in the territories where settlers themselves would not protect it. In Feb. of 1859 Senator Albert Brown of Mississippi said in the Senate that if Congress did not pass such laws, his state would secede.

V. Meanwhile, Pres. Buchanan was working feverishly to acquire Cuba from Spain. Buchanan attempted to purchase it for $100 million. A bill to make a $30 million downpayment was killed by Republican footdragging. A. At the same time, southern congressmen killed the Republicans homestead bill.

VI. In 1859, a southern movement to repeal the Federal ban on the slave trade of 1807 grew and became a serious power. Why: A. rapid rise of slave prices - nearly doubling from $1000 to $1700 in ten years. B. rising prices restricted slaveholding to fewer and fewer people, thereby eroding the political base of support for the planter elite in the south. C. The gov. of S.C. wrote: "Our true purpose is to diffuse the slave population as much as possible and thus secure in the whole community the motives of self-interest for its support." D. Finally, it was one way for the south to move from a defensive posture to the north, to an aggressive one and thereby possibly win concessions on other fronts.

VII. When Congress convened in Dec. of 1859, the House was so split that the first order of business, the selection of a Speaker, dragged out in deadlock for eight weeks. (Three parties, roughly divided between North (Rep), border states (Am) and South (Dem), none of whom had an absolute majority). Tempers flared and most Congressmen began coming to sessions armed. One observer said at the time: "the only persons who do not have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers." On the 44th ballot the completely politically nondescript cipher of a politician, William Pennington of NJ was elected speaker.

VIII. John Brown Raids Harper's Ferry, Oct. 16, 1859. A. Brown's abolitionist supporters had grown frustrated at seeing the forces of slavery win virtually every political battle of the previous five years: 1. Kan-Neb Act 2. Election of Buchanan; Election of Douglass 3. Dred Scott B. 17 white and 5 black recruits in Brown's force. C. Complete military failure.

IX. But the significance of Browns raid lay in the way it further divided the sections: Northern communities displayed sympathy for Brown and alarmed the south spreading secessionist sentiment further than it had ever gone before.

X. Election of 1860: A. Democratic Party divides: 1. Southern delegates demand a plank in the platform calling for a federal slave code. (This would effectively throw Douglass off the ticket, as it would demolish his popular soveriegnty theme). a. Southerners controlled the party as they had placed in the Dem party rules a 2/3rds requirement for nomination in 1836. 2. When the Douglass platform won on a sectional vote (only a majority required for that), most southern delegates walked out. 3. Later that summer, the remaining northern Democrats nominated Douglass and the southern bolters held a convention of their own and nominated John C. Brekinridge (Buchanan's VP).

B. Republicans nominate Lincoln. Why? To win the Republicans had to carry their traditional stronghold of the north plus Pennsylvania and either Indiana or Illinois. (They realized they would not carry any southern or border states). Lincoln, more than any other politician, fit the bill.

C. As the summer wore on it became clear that Lincoln would emerge victorious and a "Great Fear" fastened itself upon the South. 1. The threats of disunion were never so loud, but northerners had seen the tactics of shouting disunion that prevailed in 1850, 1856, and in the speakership battle of 1859 and had heard the boy shout wolf too many times.

XI. By Feb. 1861, seven states had declared secession from the nation and formed the Confederate States of America.

XII. The Congress entertained compromises that would bring the South back into the fold:

A. Crittendon Compromise: Constitutional Amendments extending the Missiouri Compromise line to the Pacific and guarenteeing Federal protection of slavery in the territories to the south; and prohibiting the Federal government from abolishing slavery in DC or any federal facility in slave areas; guarenteeing the interstate slave trade; federal compensation for slave-owners who could not recover their escaped slaves due to local opposition. [Republicans defeated it]

B. Sec. of State proposed starting a war with Spain or France over the Monroe Doctrine to reunite the country.

XIII. Apr. 12, 1865, Confederate batteries in Charleston open fire on Fort Sumter.

A. Within a week four more states seceded to the Confederacy. B. The next day Lincoln called up 75,000 state militia to serve a period of 90 days. The war that Lincoln then hoped would last only a few months would rage for four years and cost 620,000 lives.

ID: NOTES-101.13.

Generated by goweb.build, 12-22-1999 17:1:12