Chapter 19: Drifting Toward Disunion (1854 - 1861)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
- She tried to wake up the North about the issue of slavery and see how bad it was.
- Impression on the North
- Made thousands want to have nothing to do with the Fugitive Slave Law.
- Had a great impression on the youth of the North, eventually to be the "Boys in Blue".
- Impression abroad
Bleeding Kansas
New England Emigrant Aid Company: send free-soilers to Kansas in order to sway the popular sovereignty vote
Two governments created:
Pottawatomie Massacre: John Brown and some men hacked five thought-to-be proslaveryites to death.
Kansas applies for Statehood:
Brooks canes Sumner
- Sumner was a leading abolitionist from Massachusetts.
- Made a speech bad-mouthing a well liked senator.
- Brooks, a congressmen from South Carolina, caned Sumner until his cane broke and Sumner was injured. The blows can be known as the first blows of the Civil War. Southerners admired him and deluged him with canes. Sumner was re-elected even though he was injured.
- Congress couldn't get enough votes to expell Brooks. Although he later resigned, and surprisingly was re-elected!
Election of 1856
- Democratic Party chose James Buchanan of Pennsylvania
- Republican Party chose John C. Fremont
- American Party chose ex-president Millard Fillmore
- Buchanan (174 electoral votes) defeated Fremont (114 electoral votes) to win the 1856 election.
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Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
- Dred Scott sued because he was a slave living on free soil for 5 years in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory.
- Court declared that he wasn't a citizen and couldn't sue in federal courts.
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Went further and declared the Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional because Congress had no power to ban slavery from the territories regardless of what the territorial legislatures themselves might want.
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A slave was private property and could be taken to anywhere because of the Fifth Amendment clearly forbade Congress to deprive people of their property without due process of law.
Financial Crisis of 1857
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California gold caused inflation.
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Demands of grain were overstimulated.
- Bad speculation in land and railroads.
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North was hit hard because of grain, proved once again cotton was king
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Not as bad economically as 1837, but psychologically it was the worst of the century.
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In response Congress passed the Homestead Act which made public lands availbale for 25 cents an acre.
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Created two economic issues for the election of 1860: protection for the unprotected and farms for the farmless.
Illinois Senate Election of 1858
Lincoln-Douglas Debates:
Freeport Doctrine:
John Brown and the Raid on Harper's Ferry - Jonh Brown took a small band of people, including several blacks, and raided the town of Harper's Ferry.
His goal was to get the slaves to rise up and eventually establish a sort of free state to live in.
The Democratic Convention of 1860
- The Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina
- Douglas was the leading candidate of the northern wing of the party
- After a bitter wrangle over the platform, the delegates from most of the cotton states walked out
- When the remainder could not scrape together the necessary two-thirds vote fro Douglas, the entire body dissolved
- The Democrats tried again in Baltimore
The Republican Convention of 1860
Election of 1860
Lincoln (Republican) vs. Douglas (Democrat)
Lincoln won! yay
South was displeased because Lincoln was a Republican and neither of their democratic candidates won.
After Lincoln was elected 7 states seceded from the union.
Crittenden Amendments
They were designed to appease the south
- Slavery was to be prohibited north of the 36 30' line
- South of the line slavery was to be given federal protection
- Future states north or south of the line could come into the Union through popular sovernty
Reasons for Southern Secession
We elected a republican president which to them meant he was an aboltionist of slavery.
They were mad about things that had occured before like the Compromises and Raid on Harpers Ferry and the issue about slavey and they thought that they could secede and the Union would do nothing about it.
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