Chapter 15

A Divided Nation: The Debate Over Slavery Trouble in Kansas Political Divisions A Nation Divides

Slavery Debate
Political power belongs to the people
Popular sovereignty
The people should decide on banning or allowing slavery

Wilmot Proviso
Document stating that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of the territory. South did not pass this This spurred Sectionalism
Favoring the interest of one section/region over the interests of the entire country

Free-Soil Party
Antislavery northerners Supported the Wilmot-Proviso Took votes away from Democrat candidate
Whig candidate Zachary Taylor won by a narrow margin.

California
Page 477 California applied to join the Union as a state. Many Californians opposed slavery
Would upset the balance of free and slave states

Do you think the North or the South supported admitting California into the Union?

Compromise of 1850
California would enter the Union as a free state The rest of the Mexican Cession would be federal land. Popular sovereignty would decide on slavery

Texas would give up land east of the upper Rio Grande. Government would then pay Texass debts
Slave trade NOT SLAVERY would end in the nations capital More effective fugitive slave law would be passed

Compromise of 1850
Opposition (SOUTH)
Would destroy the nations balance. Asked that the slave states be allowed to secede from the Union
Formally withdraw

Passing of Compromise of 1850

Achieved majority of the principles that were outlined

Fugitive Slave Act

Crime to help runaway slaves and allowed officials to arrest those slaves in free areas Caught hiding/helping slaves
6-months in jail $1,000 fine

Commissioners who rejected slaveholders earned $5, while commissioners who returned slaves to slaveholders earned $10. Fair? Biased?

Fugitive Slave Act

343 fugitive slave cases were reviewed
Only 11 times were the slaves declared free.

Northerners
Upset with the power of the Commissioners Anthony Burns
Fugitive slave arrested in Boston Abolitionists used force to rescue from jail Burns was ordered back to Virginia Persuaded many to join the abolitionist movement

Antislavery Literature
Uncle Toms Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Spoke out powerfully against slavery Slave husband taken from his wife and sold in Louisiana. Became a slave to Simon Legree
In rage, Legree has the husband beaten to death

Electrified the nation and sparked outrage in the South

Trouble in Kansas
Election of 1852
Franklin Pierce (Democrat)
Promised to honor the Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Act

Winfield Scott (Whig)

Southerners did not trust him as he did not fully support the Compromise of 1850

Pierce won

Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas
Supported the idea of building a railroad to the Pacific Ocean Southerners only supported this if area west of Missouri opened to Slavery

Kansas-Nebraska Act
Plan that would divide the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase into two territories Kansas & Nebraska and allow the people in each territory to decide on the question of slavery. North disapproved, but the Act passed.

Kansas Divided
Almost 5,000 pro-slavery voters crossed the border from Missouri, voted in Kansas, and then returned home
Huge pro-slavery majority

Passed strict laws that made it a crime to question slaveholders rights

Those found helping slaves could be put to death

Bleeding Kansas
Attack on Lawrence
Pro-slavery settlers owned guns, and anti-slavery settlers received weapon shipments from friends Set fires, looted buildings and destroyed presses used to print antislavery newspapers

John Browns Response

Abolitionist Killed 5 pro-slavery men in Kansas
Pottawatomie Massacre

Kansas collapsed into civil war, and about 200 people were killed.

Political Divisions
Republican Party
Political party united against the spread of slavery in the West Nominated John C. Fremont (Against spread of slavery)

Democrats nominated James Buchanan for presidency (not a supporter of Kansas-Nebraska Act) Democrats won. (Buchanan)

Dred Scott Decision

2 days after Buchanan became president, the Supreme Court issued a historic ruling about slavery Dred Scott
Slave of Dr. John Emerson Sued for freedom (moved to a free state)

Ruling
African Americans had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.
Not citizens (No right to file lawsuit)

Missouri Compromise unconstitutional

Dred Scott
Most white southerners pleased Northerners upset Illinois lawmaker Abraham Lincoln
Republican nominated for US Senate

Stephen Douglas
Democrat US Senate

Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Lincoln stressed the central issue of the campaign was the spread of slavery in the West
African Americans entitled to all the natural rights listed in the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln was NOT victorious, but emerged as a strong leader for the Republicans.

The Nation Divides

John Browns Raid
Wanted slaves to ambush white southerners Captured
Hung

Lincoln
Brown agreed with us in thinking slavery was wrong. However, that cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason.

Put fear into many white southerners

Election of 1860
Democrats couldnt agree on candidate
Stephen Douglas (Northern) John Breckinridge (Southern)

Constitutional Union Party

Recognized no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enactment of the laws. John Bell
Slave holder. Opposed Kansas-Nebraska Act

Republicans
Abraham Lincoln

Results
Lincoln
Promised not to abolish slavery where it already existed. Won the electoral college

Angered Southerners
Lincoln didnt carry a single southern state
But he became the next president.

Map page 495

South Secedes
Lincoln said that slavery would not change in the South, however, slavery could not expand
Eventually will die out

South Carolina seceded after Lincoln rejected amendments to allow compromises Confederate Sates of America
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina Jefferson Davis - President

Lincoln Takes Office

Opposed the idea that southern states could leave the Union because they were unhappy He would keep all government property in the seceding states. Tried to convince southerners that his government would not provoke a war.

He hoped with time that the southern states would return to the Union.