Chapter 13: Sectional Conflict and Shattered Union, 1850-1861

1. New Political Choices
   1. The Politics of Compromise
      1. California’s application for statehood revived tensions between North and South.
         1. California wished to bar slavery.
         2. What to do about slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories divided the two sides.
      2. The Compromise of 1850 sought to resolve all issues as follows:
         1. California to be a free state.
         2. Popular sovereignty to determine whether or not the Utah and New Mexico territories would have slavery.
         3. Fugitive-slave law to placate southerners.
         4. Slave trade in Washington, D.C., to end.
      3. The Whig party fell apart during the election of 1852.
         1. Conscience Whigs (antislavery) and Cotton Whigs (proslavery) divided.
         2. Animosity between Catholics (immigrants) and Protestants (native-born Americans) also hurt the party.
   2. A Changing Political Economy
      1. Industrialization increased during the 1850s.
         1. Steam power, advanced interchangeable parts, assembly lines, and mass production contributed to the expansion of factory industry.
      2. The railroad moved to center place in the economy.
         1. Railroad mileage more than tripled.
         2. Agriculture, mining, and manufacturing expanded because of more rail transport.
         3. Government at all levels helped finance railroad development.
      3. The West’s economic and political power increased.
         1. World grain prices rose during the 1850s.
         2. New farming equipment made greater production possible.
      4. The labor force expanded thanks to immigration.
         1. Irish immigration climbed because of the potato blight.
         2. German immigration increased because of crop failures and political chaos.
      5. Regionally different economies contributed to sectional division.
         1. Slavery seemed to loom behind every issue and debate.
   3. Decline of the Whigs
      1. The Whig party weakened because of the foregoing economic changes.
         1. Efforts to attract immigrants angered American Indian artisans and evangelical Protestants.
      2. The American party (Know-Nothings) attracted anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic support.
      3. Differences over slavery further split the Whigs.
         1. Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave new impetus to antislavery sentiment.
         2. Some Northerners began to assist slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad.
      4. Temperance reformers also left the Whig party.
   4. Increasing Tension Under Pierce
      1. Choice of a transcontinental railroad route inflamed sectional opinion.
         1. Southerners wanted a southern route, to encourage the development of more slave states.
         2. Northern Free-Soilers, evangelicals, and manufacturers wanted a northern route.
      2. The Gadsden Purchase angered antislavery forces.
         1. It facilitated development of a southern transcontinental railroad route.
      3. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois maneuvered to obtain a northern route.
         1. He sought a route based in Chicago.
         2. His Kansas-Nebraska Act (to organize the territories through which a northern route must pass) allowed for popular sovereignty on the slavery question.
2. Toward a House Divided
   1. A Shattered Compromise
      1. The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated northern opinion.
         1. Northern coalitions to defeat it were unsuccessful, but gradually coalesced to form the Republican party.
      2. Northerners found even more evidence of a slave power conspiracy in:
         1. Filibustering by southerners in the Caribbean and Central America.
         2. The Ostend Manifesto.
   2. Bleeding Kansas
      1. Both sides began to send armed settlers to Kansas.
      2. Kansas erupted in violence.
         1. Proslavery forces entered Kansas from Missouri and voted illegally in elections to organize the territory.
         2. They attacked the antislavery town of Lawrence when antislavery forces organized their own government.
         3. John Brown then seized and murdered five proslavery men.
      3. The Kansas issue also led to violence in Congress.
         1. Southerners praised the assault on Senator Sumner by Representative Brooks.
      4. The Republican party did well in the presidential election of 1856.
         1. Its relatively narrow defeat underscored the new party’s appeal in the North.
         2. The American party split apart over the issue of slavery; many northern members joined the Republicans.
   3. Bringing Slavery Home to the North
      1. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision further angered the North.
         1. It decreed that Congress could not limit slavery in the territories.
      2. In Kansas, the proslavery LeCompton constitution kept tensions high.
         1. Congress did not approve it, because nonresidents had participated in the ratification vote.
         2. In a second vote on it, it was defeated because, this time, Free-Soilers in Kansas voted.
      3. In Illinois, Abraham Lincoln ran for the Senate against Douglas.
         1. The two engaged in a series of debates about the expansion of slavery.
         2. In the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas said that, despite the Dred Scott decision, a territory could exclude slavery by making it uncomfortable for slave owners.
   4. Radical Responses to Abolitionism and Slavery
      1. Southerners defended slavery’s expansion as vital to their economic and political well-being.
      2. They defended slavery itself by:
         1. Offering religious reasons and biblical examples.
         2. Arguing that it made whites in the South freer and more cultivated than in the North.
         3. Suggesting that slave labor was more humane than the wage slavery of northern laborers.
      3. John Brown attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
         1. His goal was a mass slave insurrection.
         2. The attack frightened the South, pushing many to consider secession.
      4. Hinton Rowan Helpers’s The Impending Crisis of the South pushed more southerners to consider secession.
         1. Northerners distributed it widely for, though written by a southern racist, it assailed slavery.
3. The Divided Nation
   1. The Dominance of Regionalism
      1. The Democratic party split again over the issue of slavery in the territories in 1860.
         1. Northern Democrats nominated Douglas for president on a platform of popular sovereignty in the territories.
         2. Southern Democrats nominated Breckenridge on a platform demanding federal protection of slavery in the territories.
      2. The Constitutional Union party nominated Bell.
         1. It hoped to force the election into the House of Representatives.
      3. The Republicans nominated Lincoln.
         1. Their platform opposed the extension of slavery and supported higher tariffs, internal improvements, and land legislation for the West.
   2. The Election of 1860
      1. The Republicans emphasized the slavery issue and also played on Democratic party corruption.
      2. Douglas attempted to save the Union by uniting moderate Democrats and Constitutional Unionistsbut failed.
      3. Southerners panicked at the prospect of a Republican victory.
         1. Rumors of slave uprisings swept the South.
      4. The Republican victory was the first time a president was elected by a single region.
         1. Lincoln won in all northern states (plus California and Oregon).
   3. The First Wave of Secession
      1. Sentiment for secession mushroomed in the Deep South because of the Republican victory.
      2. Crittenden’s compromise proposal in the Senate went down to defeat.
         1. Republicans refused to extend the Missouri Compromise line and agree to the extension of slavery south of it.
      3. The first wave of secession was in the Deep South.
         1. South Carolina led the way in December 1860.
         2. Five more states seceded in January 1861.
         3. The six established the Confederacy, complete with a constitution.
         4. Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy.
   4. Responses to Disunion
      1. Some in the South still favored compromise.
         1. Their peace conference in February 1861 accomplished nothing.
      2. The secessionists chose Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.
      3. Outgoing President Buchanan did nothing to calm the situation.
      4. Lincoln included all the major figures in the Republican party in his cabinet, in order to forge unity.
4. The Nation Dissolved
   1. Lincoln, Sumter, and War
      1. In his inaugural speech, Lincoln rejected secession and slavery’s extension, but promised not to interfere with slavery in the South.
         1. Secessionists characterized it as a declaration of war.
      2. In South Carolina, all federal troops in Charleston were moved to Fort Sumter.
         1. Confederate troops fired on the fort when Lincoln sent supply ships; it surrendered.
      3. The North coalesced behind the Union cause after the attack on Fort Sumter.
         1. Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 militiamen to mobilize.
   2. Choosing Sides in the Upper South
      1. Lincoln’s militia call-up provoked a second round of secession; Virginia led the way.
         1. Unionists in western Virginia resisted secession, withdrew from the state, and later applied for statehood.
         2. Robert E. Lee resigned from the U.S. Army and returned to Virginia to lead its forces.
      2. Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee followed Virginia’s lead.
         1. In eastern Tennessee, Unionists were prevented from copying what happened in western Virginia.
   3. Trouble in the Border States
      1. The border slave states remained in the Union, though not without bloodshed (except in Delaware).
         1. In Maryland, Lincoln used the army to suppress secessionists.
         2. In Kentucky, the legislature voted to stay neutral, but fighting broke out between secessionists and Unionists.
         3. In Missouri, fighting and rioting occurred, but Unionists managed to hold the line.