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Unit Four: The Crisis of Union
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Chapter 11: Sectional Conflict Intensifies
Chapter 11.3: The Crisis Deepens
The controversy over slavery awakened the breakdown of the major political parties and the formation of new ones, including the party of future president Abraham Lincoln.  Friction intensified until the North and South became unable to compromise any further.

By the 1850s, feelings were running high among Northerners and Southerners over
whether slavery should be allowed in new territories.  These strong feelings also tore old political parties apart and created new ones.  Soon after Lincoln was defeated in his race for senator from Illinois, he wrote to a Springfield friend:

“I think I am a Whig; but others say there are not Whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. ...  I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery.  I am not a Know-Nothing. ...  How could I be?  How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? ...  As a nation, we began by declaring ‘all men are created equal.’  We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia for instance. ...”
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—quoted in Abraham Lincoln
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Birth of the Republican Party

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, it enraged many people who opposed the extension of slavery.  A few of these people resorted to violence, but the effect was just as dramatic on political parties—both the Whigs and the Democrats were split.  In the Whig Party, pro-slavery Southern Whigs and antislavery Northern Whigs had long battled for control of their party.  With passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, disaster was complete.  Every Northern Whig in Congress had voted against the bill, while most Southern Whigs had supported it.  “We Whigs of the North,” wrote one member from Connecticut, “are unalterably determined never to have even the slightest political correspondence or connexion” with the Southern Whigs.

Anger over the Kansas-Nebraska Act convinced former Whigs, members of the Free-Soil Party, and a few antislavery Democrats to work together during the congressional elections of 1854.  These coalitions took many different names, including the Anti-Nebraska Party, the Fusion Party, the People’s Party, and the Independent Party.  The most popular name for the new coalition was the Republican Party.

Republicans Organize

At a convention in Michigan in July 1854, the Republican Party was officially organized.  In choosing the same name as Jefferson’s original party, the Republicans declared their intention to revive the spirit of the American Revolution.  Just as Jefferson had chosen the name because he wanted to prevent the United States from becoming a monarchy, the new Republicans chose their name because they feared that the Southern planters were becoming an aristocracy that controlled the federal government.

Republicans did not agree on whether slavery should be abolished in the Southern states, but they did agree that it had to be kept out of the territories.  A large majority of Northern voters seemed to agree, enabling the Republicans and the other antislavery parties to make great strides in the elections of 1854.

The Know-Nothings

At the same time, public anger against the Northern Democrats also enabled the American Party—better known as the Know-Nothings—to make great gains as well, particularly in the Northeast.  The American Party was an anti-Catholic and nativist party.  It opposed immigration, particularly Catholic immigration, into the United States.  Prejudice and fear that immigrants would take away jobs enabled the Know-Nothings to win many seats in Congress and the state legislatures in 1854.

Soon after the election, the Know-Nothings suffered the same fate as the Whigs.  Many Know-Nothings had been elected from the Upper South, particularly Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky.  They quickly split with Know-Nothings from the North over their support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Furthermore, the violence in Kansas and the beating of Charles Sumner made slavery a far more important issue to most Americans than immigration.  Eventually, the Republican Party absorbed the Northern Know-Nothings.

Examining
What events led to the founding of the Republican Party?
 

The Election of 1856

To gain the widest possible support in the 1856 campaign, the Republicans nominated John C.  Frémont, a famous Western explorer nicknamed “The Pathfinder.” Frémont had spoken in favor of Kansas becoming a free state.  He had little political experience but also no embarrassing record to defend.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan.  Buchanan had served in Congress for 20 years and had been the American ambassador to Russia and then to Great Britain.  He had been in Great Britain during the debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and had not taken a stand on the issue, but his record in Congress showed that he believed the best way to save the Union was to make concessions to the South.  The American Party tried to reunite its Northern and Southern members at its convention, but most of the Northern delegates walked out when the party refused to call for the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  The rest of the convention then chose former president Millard Fillmore to represent the American Party, hoping to attract the vote of former Whigs.

The campaign was really two separate contests: Buchanan against Frémont in the North, and Buchanan against Fillmore in the South.  Buchanan had solid support in the South and only needed his home state of Pennsylvania and one other to win the presidency.  Democrats campaigned on the idea that only Buchanan could save the Union and that the election of Frémont would cause the South to secede.  When the votes were counted, Buchanan had won.

Identifying
What political party and candidate won the presidency in 1856?
 

Sectional Divisions Grow

Despite Buchanan’s determination to adopt policies that would calm the growing sectional strife in the country, a series of events helped drive Americans in the North and South even further apart.

The Dred Scott Decision

In his March 1857 inaugural address, James Buchanan suggested that the nation let the Supreme Court decide the question of slavery in the territories.  Most people who listened to the address did not know that Buchanan had contacted members of the Supreme Court and therefore knew that a decision was imminent.

Many Southern members of Congress had quietly pressured the Supreme Court justices to issue a ruling on slavery in the territories.  They expected the Southern majority on the court to rule in favor of the South.  They were not disappointed.  Two days after the inauguration, the Court released its opinion in the case of Dred Scott v.  Sandford.

Dred Scott was an enslaved man whose Missouri slaveholder had taken him to live in free territory before returning to Missouri.  Assisted by abolitionists, Scott sued to end his slavery, arguing that the time he had spent in free territory meant he was free.  The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B.  Taney delivered the majority opinion in the case.  Taney ruled against Scott because, he claimed, African Americans were not citizens and therefore could not sue in the courts.  Taney then addressed the Missouri Compromise’s ban on slavery in territory north of Missouri’s southern border:
 

“It is the opinion of the court that the Act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning [enslaved persons] in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Constitution and is therefore void.”
—from Dred Scott v.  Sandford
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Instead of removing the issue of slavery in the territories from politics, the Dred Scott decision itself became a political issue that further intensified the sectional conflict.  The Supreme Court had said that the federal government could not prohibit slavery in the territories.  Free soil, one of the basic ideas uniting Republicans, was unconstitutional.

Democrats cheered the decision, but Republicans condemned it and claimed it was not binding.  Instead they argued that it was an obiter dictum, an incidental opinion not called for by the circumstances of the case.  Southerners, on the other hand, called on Northerners to obey the decision if they wanted the South to remain in the Union.

Many African Americans, among them Philadelphia activist Robert Purvis, publicly declared contempt for any government that could produce such an edict:
 

“Mr.  Chairman, look at the facts—here, in a country with a sublimity of impudence that knows no parallel, setting itself up before the world as a free country, a land of liberty!, ‘the land of the free, and the home of the brave, ‘ the ‘freest country in all the world’ ... and yet here are millions of men and women ... bought and sold, whipped, manacled, killed all the day long.”
—quoted in Witness for Freedom
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Kansas’s Lecompton Constitution

Frustration with the government also fueled the conflict between antislavery and pro-slavery forces in “Bleeding Kansas.” Hoping to end the troubles there, President Buchanan urged the territory to apply for statehood.  The pro-slavery legislature scheduled an election for delegates to a constitutional convention, but anti-slavery Kansans boycotted it, claiming it was rigged.

The resulting constitution, drafted in the town of Lecompton in 1857, legalized slavery in the territory.  Each side then held its own referendum, or popular vote, on the constitution.  Antislavery forces voted down the constitution; pro-slavery forces approved it.

Buchanan accepted the pro-slavery vote and asked Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state.  The Senate quickly voted to accept the Lecompton constitution, but the House of Representatives blocked it.  Many members of Congress became so angry during the debates that fist-fights broke out.  Southern leaders were stunned when even Stephen Douglas of Illinois refused to support them.  Many had hoped that Douglas, a Northern leader and possible future president, understood the South’s concerns and would make the compromise necessary to keep the South in the Union.

Finally, to get the votes they needed, President Buchanan and Southern leaders in Congress agreed to allow another referendum in Kansas on the constitution.  Southern leaders expected to win this referendum.  If the settlers in Kansas rejected the Lecompton constitution, they would delay statehood for Kansas for at least two more years.

Despite these conditions, the settlers in Kansas voted overwhelmingly in 1858 to reject the Lecompton constitution.  They did not want slavery in their state.  As a result, Kansas did not become a state until 1861.

Summarizing
Why did Dred Scott sue the slaveholder who held him?
 

Lincoln and Douglas

In 1858 Illinois Republicans chose a relative unknown named Abraham Lincoln to run for the Senate against the Democratic incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas.  Lincoln launched his campaign in June with a memorable speech, in which he declared:
 

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”
—quoted in The Civil War: An Illustrated History
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The nationally prominent Douglas, a short, stocky man nicknamed “The Little Giant,” regularly drew large crowds on the campaign trail.  Seeking to overcome Douglas’s fame, Lincoln proposed a series of debates between the candidates, which would expose him to larger audiences than he could attract on his own.  Douglas confidently accepted.

Born on the Kentucky frontier and raised in Indiana, Lincoln had experienced little more than small-town life.  A storekeeper, mill hand, and rail-splitter during his youth, he went on to study and practice law.  Later he served in the Illinois state legislature and, for a single term, in the U.S.  House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party.  Despite this modest background, Lincoln proved himself a gifted debater.

Both witty and logical, he regularly illuminated his points with quotations from scripture or appealing homespun stories from everyday life.

Although not an abolitionist, Lincoln believed slavery to be morally wrong and opposed its spread into western territories.  Douglas, by contrast, supported popular sovereignty.  During a debate in Freeport, Lincoln asked Douglas if the people of a territory could legally exclude slavery before achieving statehood?  If Douglas said yes, he would appear to be supporting popular sovereignty and opposing the Dred Scott ruling, which would cost him Southern support.  If he said no, it would make it seem as if he had abandoned popular sovereignty, the principle on which he had built his national following.

Douglas tried to avoid the dilemma, formulating an answer that became known as the Freeport Doctrine.

He replied that he accepted the Dred Scott ruling, but he argued that people could still keep slavery out by refusing to pass the laws needed to regulate and enforce it.  “Slavery cannot exist ...  anywhere,” said Douglas, “unless it is supported by local police regulations.” Douglas’s response pleased Illinois voters but angered Southerners.

Lincoln also attacked Douglas’s claim that he “cared not” whether Kansans voted for or against slavery.  Denouncing “the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom,” Lincoln called on voters to elect Republicans, “whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result”:
 

“Has any thing ever threatened the existence of this Union save and except this very institution of slavery?  What is it that we hold most dear amongst us?  Our own liberty and prosperity.  What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of slavery?  If this is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by enlarging slavery—by spreading it out and making it bigger?  You may have a wen [sore] or cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way to cure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body.  That is no proper way of treating what you regard a wrong.”
—quoted in The Civil War: Opposing Viewpoints
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Douglas won the election, but Lincoln did not come away empty-handed.  He had seized the opportunity in the debates to make clear the principles of the Republican Party.  He had also established a national reputation for himself as a man of clear, insightful thinking who could argue with force and eloquence.  Within a year, however, national attention shifted to another figure, a man who opposed slavery not with well-crafted phrases, but with a gun.

Examining
What were the positions of Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln on slavery?
 

John Brown’s Raid

John Brown was a fervent abolitionist who believed, as one minister who knew him in Kansas said, “that God had raised him up on purpose to break the jaws of the wicked.” In 1859, he developed a plan to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today in West Virginia), free and arm the enslaved people of the neighborhood, and begin an insurrection, or rebellion, against slaveholders.

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and 18 followers seized the arsenal.  To the terrified night watchman, he announced, “I have possession now of the United States armory, and if the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have blood.”

Soon, however, Brown was facing a contingent of U.S.  Marines, rushed to Harpers Ferry from Washington, D.C., under the command of Colonel Robert E.  Lee.  Just 36 hours after it had begun, Brown’s attempt to start a slave insurrection ended with his capture.  A Virginia court tried and convicted him and sentenced him to death.  In his last words to the court, Brown, repenting nothing, declared:
 

“I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of [God’s] despised poor, I did no wrong, but right.  Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood ... 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!”
—quoted in John Brown, 1800–1859
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On December 2, the day of his execution, Brown handed one of his jailers a prophetic note: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.  I had as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

Many Northerners viewed Brown as a martyr in a noble cause.  The execution, Henry David Thoreau predicted, would strengthen abolitionist feeling in the North.  “He is not old Brown any longer,” Thoreau declared, “he is an angel of light.”

For most Southerners, however, Brown’s raid offered all the proof they needed that Northerners were actively plotting the murder of slaveholders.  “Defend yourselves!” cried Georgia senator Robert Toombs.  “The enemy is at your door!”
 
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John Brown
1800–1859

John Brown, who believed he was acting with God’s approval, helped to bring about the Civil War.  A dedicated abolitionist, Brown initially worked with the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.

When conflict between proslavery and free-soil settlers in Kansas became violent, Brown moved to Kansas to help six of his sons and other free-soil settlers in their struggle against slavery.

After pro-slavery forces from Missouri sacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas, on May 21, 1856, Brown vowed revenge.  The following day, he learned of the caning of Charles Sumner in the Senate and, in the words of one witness, he “went crazy—crazy.” Two days later, he abducted and murdered five pro-slavery settlers living near Pottawatomie Creek.

Later he said of the deaths, “I believe that I did God service in having them killed.”

Brown was never arrested for the Pottawatomie Massacre, and for some Northern abolitionists he became a hero for his willingness to fight back.  Three years later, he launched his raid on Harpers Ferry.

Although the raid ended in disaster and Brown himself was hanged, his desperate act terrified Southerners and brought the nation another step closer to disunion and civil war.

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Evaluate:
In what ways might a Northerner and a Southerner view John Brown’s action differently?
 

Text adapted from: Glencoe's The American Vision
History
US History and Geography
Unit Four: The Crisis of Union
Chapter 11: Sectional Conflict Intensifies
Chapter 11.1: Slavery & Western Expansion
Chapter 11.2: Mounting Violence
Chapter 11.3: The Crisis Deepens
Standards, Objectives, and Vocabulary
 
Unit One: Colonizing America
Unit Two: Creating a Nation
Unit Three:  The Young Republic
Unit Four: The Crisis of Union
Unit Five: Frontier America
Unit Six: Empire and Progress
Unit Seven: Boom and Bust
Unit Eight: Wars of Fire and Ice
Unit Nine: American Upheaval
Unit Ten: A Changing America
Cool History Videos
Go Back
Chapter 11.3:
The Crisis Deepens
Please Continue...
Chapter 11.2:
Mounting Violence
Once you cover the basics, here are some videos that will deepen your understanding.
On YouTube
Concurrent World History
Crash Course World History #24:
The Atlantic Slave Trade
In which John Green teaches you about one of the least funny subjects in history: slavery. John investigates when and where slavery originated, how it changed over the centuries, and how Europeans and colonists in the Americas arrived at the idea that people could own other people based on skin color. 

Slavery has existed as long as humans have had civilization, but the Atlantic Slave Trade was the height, or depth, of dehumanizing, brutal, chattel slavery. American slavery ended less than 150 years ago. In some parts of the world, it is still going on. So how do we reconcile that with modern life? In a desperate attempt at comic relief, Boba Fett makes an appearance.

Crash Course World History #25:
The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation
In which John Green explores how Spain went from being a middling European power to one of the most powerful empires on Earth, thanks to their plunder of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries. Learn how Spain managed to destroy the two biggest pre-Columbian civilizations, mine a mountain made of silver, mishandle their economy, and lose it all by the mid-1700s. Come along for the roller coaster ride with Charles I (he was also Charles V), Philip II, Atahualpa, Moctezuma, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro as Spain rises and falls, and takes two empires and China down with them.
Crash Course European History #7:
Reformation and Consequences
The Protestant Reformation didn't exactly begin with Martin Luther, and it didn't end with him either. Reformers and monarchs changed the ways that religious and state power were organized throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries. Jean Calvin in France and Switzerland, the Tudors in England, and the Hugenots in France also made major contributions to the Reformation.
Crash Course European History #8:
Commerce, Agriculture, and Slavery
We've been talking a lot about kings, and queens, and wars, and religious upheaval for most of this series, but let's take a moment to zoom out, and look at the ways that individuals' lives were changing in the time span we've covered so far. Some people's lives were improving, thanks to innovations in agriculture and commerce, and the technologies that drove those fields. Lots of people's lives were also getting worse during this time, thanks to the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. And these two shifts were definitely intertwined.
Goals & Objectives
of the Crash Course videos:

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

*Identify and explain historical developments and processes
*Analyze the context of historical events, developments, and processes and explain how they are situated within a broader historical context
*Explain the importance of point of view, historical situation, and audience of a source
*Analyze patterns and connections among historical developments and processes, both laterally and chronologically through history
*Be a more informed citizen of the world 

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