Download Sectional Controversy and the Civil War

Sectional Controversy and the Civil War
The United States developed along sectional lines.
North
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primarily commercial and industrial
and was dominated, both socioeconomically and politically by a
banker-commercial-industrialentrepreneurial class.
economy characterized by commerce
and trade.
South
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primarily an agrarian society
governed by an aristocratic planter
class.
economy based on single-crop
agricultural production.
There existed between North and South sharp differences in terms of social
life/social structure, political ideals, economic pursuits, cultural patterns, and
value systems.
• The sectional differences that developed between the
North and the South had its origins in the Constitutional
Convention.
• Counting the South's slaves toward its population for
purposes of determining apportionment in the House of
Representatives led to the adoption of the three-fifths rule,
a measure that would prove increasingly annoying to the
North.
• The goal of the founders, however, was to mute the
sectional issue as much as possible by creating a balance in
Congress between the North and the South.
• From the beginning, however, there were indications that
the effort was probably futile.
• In 1793, less than six years after the adoption of the
Constitution, Congress was compelled to address Southern
complaints that escaped slaves were able to move freely
throughout the North without fear of capture.
• After much debate, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act
(1793), which empowered federal marshals and
magistrates to return runaway slaves to their owners.
• Many Northern states passed laws almost immediately
trying to block enforcement of the act.
• Less than a decade had elapsed since the adoption of the
Constitution, and already Congress was having difficulty
addressing sectional issues in a way that was satisfactory to
both sides.
The issue of slavery
Historian Joseph Ellis perceived the question of slavery as a “tragic and
perhaps intractable problem that even the revolutionary generation with all
its extraordinary talent, could neither solve nor face.”
James Madison
Convinced that slavery was an explosive topic
that must be removed from the political
agenda of the new nation…
Believed that slavery was taboo because,
more than any other controversy, it possessed
the political potential to destroy the union.
Wanted to take slavery off the national agenda
because he believed that decisive action
would result in the destruction of either the
Virginia planter class or the nation itself.
Benjamin Franklin
Desired to put slavery onto the national
agenda before it was too late to take decisive
action in accord with the principles of the
Revolution.
Wanted to place slavery on the national
agenda because he feared the window of
opportunity for rendering the practice and
institution of slavery extinct in America was
shutting.
Complicating the issue of slavery beyond its mere intense divisiveness was the
apparent constitutional ambiguity surrounding it.
On the one hand, slaves (although the precise term was not used) counted as threefifths of a person for the purpose of apportionment and the slave trade was both
recognized and protected for at least twenty years.
On the other hand, an impost was levied on the importation of slaves in order to
discourage the infernal traffic and it was not indefinitely inviolable.
To further complicate matters, the Declaration, which was no less authoritative than
the Constitution as a founding document, universally declared that “all men are
created equal.” True, one may argue what Jefferson’s notion of equality meant—still,
the practice and institution of slavery seemed to repudiate this fundamental
principle. In this particular case at least, the democratic ideals and principles of liberty,
equality, and justice seemed incongruent with (and thus took a back seat to) union.
• A few decades later, mediating sectional
difficulties returned to the top of Congress'
agenda. President Thomas Jefferson's decision
to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803
added a substantial amount of territory to the
young nation, and both Northerners and
Southerners wanted to claim it as part of their
region.
Allan Nevins
in The Ordeal of the Union, asserted
that the question of slavery was
irrepressible.
According to Nevins, “one section had
to yield its fundamental position.”
Schlesinger challenged those historians who
argued the war was repressible to clarify what
alternatives existed other than war.
Cummins and White wrote:
“[Schlesinger] posed the question: If the war
could have been avoided, what course should
American leaders have followed with respect
to slavery?”
Each of the supposed alternatives Schlesinger
listed he rejected “as either inadequate or
unattainable.”
He noted how southern liberals were unable
to bring slavery to an end in a single southern
State.
According to Schlesinger, the “moral issue of
slavery and the future of the Negro in
America” constituted the major cause of the
war.
He noted that asking northerners to turn a
blind eye to the fact “the South…was a closed
society” was equivalent to claiming “that there
should have been no anti-Nazis during the
1930s.”
According to Schlesinger, the “Civil War” was
an irrepressible conflict insofar as “the moral
issue of slavery was too profound to be solved
by political compromise.”
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Missouri Compromise (1820)
In 1819, the first of the newly organized states from the LA Purchase, Missouri, petitioned the federal government for
entry into the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the balance of power between slave and non-slave
states in the Senate. Representative James Tallmadge offered a bill that would have allowed Missouri into the Union
with the stipulation that slavery be restricted there. Not surprisingly, the bill passed the Northern-controlled House
but not the Senate. Finally, a compromise temporarily postponed the issue. The Missouri Compromise of 1820
admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and stipulated that no slavery would be permitted in the
Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' latitude.
Thomas Jefferson
In a letter to John Holmes dated April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson commented on slavery and the Missouri
question (prior to the passage of the Missouri Compromise).
In it, Jefferson compared efforts to reconcile differences over slavery to having “a wolf by the ear.” One caught
in such a predicament would find it difficult (if not impossible) to either “hold him” or “safely let him go.”
Among those who found it impossible to hold on were abolitionists and evangelicals who perceived it as an
injustice.
Among those who found it impossible to safely let it go were slaveholders, slavers, and planters guided by selfpreservation.
Either option was dangerous….
Although a divisive controversy had been sidestepped, many Americans were shocked by the vehemence of the
debates regarding slavery.
In a letter written the same year as the Missouri Compromise, Jefferson warned that the conflict over the
Missouri Compromise was a “firebell in the night,” heralding a major national crisis.
Sectional compromises
The persistent differences between North-South not only reemerged during times of political stress, but were
exacerbated. In each case certain adjustments (i.e.
concessions/ compromises) were made in order to placate or
appease the other side. The problem was that with each
adjustment, positions synthesized, crystallized, and hardened
and neither side seemed as willing to accommodate the
views, positions, and demands of the other.
The Missouri Compromise was the first of several sectional
compromises, but as time passed, keeping harmony between
Northern and Southern interests became a much more
complicated endeavor.
Cummins and William Gee White wrote:
“Increasingly, Congressional disputes over national policy
pitted representatives from the North against those from the
South. In each case, a sectional adjustment was eventually
arranged and the crisis passed without serious incident. Still,
bitterness grew and gradually diminished the possibility of
further compromise. Despite strong ties….the North and South
moved steadily apart….[and] compromise became more
difficult to achieve than ever before…. no one appeared able
to devise a formula that would preserve peace. “
• The slaveholding South could not live up (in practice) to the principles and
ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and
the Biblical belief that all humans were created equal in the image of God.
• This was the slaveholders’ “dilemma”
• An atypical response was if slavery was inconsistent with American
principles, ideals, and morals, then abolish it.
• A more typical response was that slaveholders could not give up their
slaves because of self interest (i.e. there was a conflict between their
values and their practice).
• It became particularly evident by Calhoun’s time that due to the cotton gin
and the profitability of the enterprise that slavery wasn’t going to die out.
• This, in turn, meant that slavery was going to come under even sharper
attacks by abolitionists.
• While they could not give up their slaves, they still felt real bad about it
(i.e. slavery was a “necessary evil”)..
• Slaveholders both rationalized and justified slavery rather than
subject it (and themselves) to disinterested and honest evaluation.
• Southern slaveholders kept both their mistress and their morals by
convincing themselves that the institution and practice was actually
good for Africans because slaveholders introduced them to
civilization—without slavery, African “savages” would destroy
themselves (this argument became especially salient within the
context of abolitionism).
• Thus, slaveholders were motivated by self-interest; it was in their
self-interest to think this way; their consiousness/rational thought
was stupified by their self interest (i.e. they refused to recognize the
evil in it).
• Abolitionist agitation was one of the main influences on the
extreme form of the sense of white superiority in America and
African inferiority/savageness (and the need to discipline them).
Gag rule on slavery
When the American Anti-Slavery Society formed in 1833, it launched a petition campaign as one means of encouraging opposition to slavery and identifying specific
areas in which Congress could act immediately to bring slavery to an eventual end.
The petitions most frequently called on Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
As the number of antislavery petitions increased, Democrats enacted the first gag rule in 1836.
The gag rule was a series of procedural rules designed to prevent the submission of antislavery petitions and was one of the principal tools employed by the Jacksonian
Democrats to silence abolitionist agitation and maintain a political coalition with slaveholders.
It provided that petitions relating to slavery would be laid on the table without being read or referred to committee.
Supporters of the gag rule argued that the drafters of the Constitution had intended that the subject of slavery should never be discussed or debated in Congress.
In this case, Congress failed to meet one of its important responsibilities—to resolve disputes.
Serving as a Whig representative from Massachusetts, former president John Quincy Adams led the fight against the gag rule.
Over nearly a decade he made opposition to and evasion of the rule a principal part of his legislative activities.
Adams argued that the Democrats, in deference to the sensibilities of their slaveholding supporters, threatened to deny Americans basic civil rights
since the Constitution guaranteed the right of citizens freely to petition their government.
Adams's principled assault on the gag rule attracted new converts to the antislavery cause and his skillful evasions made the rule itself ineffective.
In 1844 Congress lifted the rule and Adams's victory became one of the celebrated events of the abolitionist movement.
Source: Sewell, Richard H. Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Nullification Crisis under Andrew Jackson
At a Jefferson Day celebration, Jackson toasted, "Our Federal Union—it must be
preserved." Calhoun responded, "The Union—next to our liberty most dear."
South Carolina Exposition and Protest
The South Carolina Exposition and Protest was written in 1828 by Vice President John C. Calhoun during the
nullification crisis. The document was a protest against the tariff of 1828. It stated that if the tariff was not
repealed, South Carolina would secede. It also stated Calhoun's Doctrine of nullification. I.e., The idea that a
state has the right to reject federal law. On December 19, 1828, it was presented to the South Carolina State
House of Representatives. It was not formally adopted by the legislature, nor did it affect the tariff, but a
pamphlet of it was published and circulated. Since Calhoun was then Vice President, he was forced to conceal
his authorship. South Carolina did adopt the nullification doctrine, nullifying the tarrifs and voting to build its
own army.
Webster-Hayne debates
After the Tariff of 1828 was blamed for economic difficulties in South Carolina, Vice
President John C. Calhoun presented a theory for states' rights whereby a state could nullify a federal law if the law
was hazardous to the state. The arguments for and against nullification raged in the Senate during 1828-1829 and
were furthered at the end of 1829 by a proposal to restrict the surveying and sale of federal land. In January 1830, in
a series of famous debates lasting two weeks in which Senator Robert Y. Hayne (SC) faced off against Daniel Webster.
The Webster-Hayne debate is generally regarded as one of the greatest congressional debates in history. During an
ongoing argument about the constitutionality of nullification, Webster eloquently defended the Constitution and the
Union and was thereafter regarded as a hero of nationalists. The debates defined the terms of the argument over the
nature of the federal union that would persist for the next 30 years.
Robert Y. Hayne
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Hayne, who strongly endorsed the theory
of states' rights, joined the debate on
January 19, 1830. The doctrine of states’
rights appealed to both Westerners and
Southerners
•
A leading Southern spokesman in the
U.S. Senate during the 1830s for the
right of states to nullify federal laws
they deemed unconstitutional.
elected to the U.S. Senate in 1822 and
reelected to the Senate without
opposition for a second term in 1828.
In the Senate, Hayne focused on
defeating efforts to implement high
protective tariffs, which he deemed
unwise and unconstitutional.
Hayne argued that a broad
interpretation opened the door to
domination of the states by the federal
government and, in the long run, the
end of democracy.
Hayne resigned from the Senate in 1832
to become the governor of South
Carolina.
As governor, he supported Henry Clay's
compromise approach to dealing with
the tariff issue and played a leading role
in calming hostility toward the federal
government in South Carolina (he left
the governor’s chair in 1834).
Daniel Webster
• Webster introduced slavery
into the argument in his
speech on January 20th,
seeking to divide Southern
and Western interests.
• In rebuttals over the course
of the next week or so,
Hayne defended not only
the institution of slavery but
also the doctrines of
intervention and
nullification, while Webster
championed a more
nationalistic view.
Robert Y. Hayne
• With Calhoun presiding
over the Senate, on January
21 and 25, Hayne defended
not only the institution of
slavery but also the
doctrines of intervention
and nullification.
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Webster's response was scheduled for the
next day, and the Senate chamber was
packed to hear the great orator.
In his speech, Webster defended the existing
Constitution against the doctrine of
nullification.
He opposed the theory that the Union had
been created by the states, instead arguing
that it had been created by the people.
His language referring to the "people's
government, made for the people, made by
the people, and answerable to the people"
would later be echoed in Abraham Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address.
Webster also argued that the states could
not be the final judges of the
constitutionality of measures they
disapproved of, but that the U.S. Constitution
was the supreme law of the land and that the
U.S. Supreme Court, and not the states, had
the final right to interpret it.
In the finale to his speech, Webster refused
to imagine the prospect of a divided Union
but with poetry of language and sentiment,
rallied support for the idea of a perpetual
Union.
Webster closed his speech with a call for
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one
and inseparable!"
Daniel Webster's second reply to Robert Y. Hayne (January 26-27, 1830)
• Thousands of copies of Webster's speech were
reproduced and distributed throughout the
nation.
• Ever thereafter, Webster was the acknowledged
spokesman for those who supported a
nationalistic view of the Constitution, but his
arguments, noble as they were, did little to
convince states' rights supporters, who continued
to make their arguments until the outbreak of the
Civil War.
• The Webster-Hayne debates stirred deep
sentiments in both the North and the South.
Compromise of 1850
When gold was discovered in California in
1848, Americans rushed to California by the
tens of thousands.
By late 1849, the population of California
topped 100,000 (enough for California to be
admitted as a state).
It happened so fast that Californians did not
have enough time to organize California as a
territory.
President Zachary Taylor said, however, that
there were enough people there and
California was extremely valuable.
“No matter” he said as he urged Californians
to skip the customary territorial phase and
apply directly for statehood.
The “49ers” held a constitutional convention
during September and October 1849 and
sent the
document to Congress for approval.
California applied for admission to the Union
as a free state and was eventually added as a
state under the Compromise of 1850.
Pro-slavery circles concerned about the
annexation of California were appeased by
the addition of two federal territories (one in
present day Utah and Nevada; one in present
day New Mexico and Arizona) both potential
slave states in the future.
Daniel Webster
“The Constitution and the Union”
speech (1850)
Henry Clay
speech on preserving the Union (1850)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was part of the scheme devised by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois (Chairman of the
Senate Committee on the Territories) in his attempt to win a central route for America’s first transcontinental
railroad.
Such a plan/route would make Chicago Douglas’s home state) the eastern terminus of the line.
In order to make a central route to California feasible, Douglas had to organize federal territories in the unorganized
prairies of the mid-west (only in official territories could the federal government provide the law, order, and
security such a great construction project would require).
Southern congressmen were not likely to support a plan to organize territories so far north, particularly since,
under the Missouri Compromise, slavery would be forbidden in those territories since they were north of 36°30’.
Such a development would have tipped representation in the Senate in the North’s favor jeopardizing southern
interests such as slavery.
Obtaining a central route was more important to Douglas than was keeping slavery out of the territories.
Douglas therefore introduced the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854.
If passed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act would have repealed (that is erased) the Missouri Compromise line, meaning
that slavery would no longer be forbidden north of 36°30’.
Instead, the choice of whether to legalize slavery would be left to the voters who settled the newly organized
Kansas and Nebraska territories.
In other words, popular sovereignty (the will of the people) would resolve the question of slavery
democratically in the territories.
With southern support, the Kansas Nebraska Act became law.
Southerners only supported this bill, however, because of the possibility it created to extend slavery into territory it
was previously banned from (they still supported Jefferson Davis’s sponsorship of the Gadsden Purchase and his
proposed southern route).
Meanwhile, a number of northern anti-slavery politicians detested the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a violation of the
“sacred pledge” of the Missouri Compromise.
As a result, these politicians broke from the party and formed the Republican Party.
Despite northern positions on slavery, most northerners still supported Douglas’s proposal of a central
route.
May 22, 1856
The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner
URL: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm
Lithograph of Preston Brooks’ 1856 attack on Sumner; the artist depicts the
faceless assailant bludgeoning the learned martyr.
“Sir, disguise the fact as you will, there is an enmity between the northern and
southern people that is deep and enduring, and you never can eradicate it - never! Look
at the spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it? There are the Republican northern
Senators upon that side. Here are the southern Senators on this side. How much social
intercourse is there between us? You sit upon your side, silent and gloomy; we sit upon
ours with knit brows and portentous scowls. Yesterday, I observed that there was not a
solitary man on that side of the Chamber came over here even to extend the civilities
and courtesies of life; nor did any of us go over there. Here are two hostile bodies on this
floor; and it is but a type of the feeling that exists between the two sections. We are
enemies as much as if we were hostile States. I believe that the northern people hate the
South worse than ever the English people hated France; and I can tell my brethren over
there that there is no love lost upon the part of the South.”
Utterance of Democratic Senator, Alfred Iverson, during the
Second Session of the Thirty-sixth Congress on December 5,
1860
Comments were made on the eve of the “secession winter” and war and
they revealed the extent of sectional animosity that existed at that time.
nationalism (consolidation)
versus
sectionalism (“states rights”)
• Ultimately, the issues involving interposition,
nullification, and secession would be settled
outside the political arena on the military
battlefield.
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Different views of the Civil War
Northern view:
• “Civil War”
• “The War of the Rebellion”
*Northerners/Unionists/
Abolitionists viewed the
Confederates as the guilty
party or the aggressors/
perpetrators responsible for
starting the war (i.e. their
actions threatened the
perpetuation of the Union).
Southern view:
• “The War of Northern
Aggression”
• “The War Between the
States”
• “The War of Southern
Independence”
*Confederates/Southerners
assigned blame to the North—
southerners were defending
their rights as individuals
and/or states.
Different views of the conflict contd.
Northern view:
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From the northern perspective, war ensued
from a conspiracy of a small group of
slaveholders and secessionists.
These conspirators were bent on either
ruling the nation (e.g. forcing the nation to
protect slavery in the States and Western
territories) or destroy it in the attempt.
Northerners were merely defending the
Union and the U.S. Constitution against
unprovoked southern aggression and
agitation.
According to this perspective, secession was
tantamount to both treason and rebellion.
Southern view:
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Alleged that “Black Republicans,”
abolitionists, and “other northern
extremists” were “determined to provoke
southern slave insurrections and encourage
slaves to escape.”
Claimed to be victims of northern and
Republican aggression—that is, their
attempts enhance their power at the
expense of the South and its institutions.
Chastised the North for its exploitation of
them both politically and economically
through unconstitutional means in the cause
of assuming national control.
Southerners, for their part, were merely
defending their inherited right of selfgovernment.
Identified slavery as only a pretext, occasion,
or excuse propagated by the North to wage
war and crush southern opposition to
northern tyranny.
Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, a former U.S. Senator (1855-1873) and Vice President under
Ulysses S. Grant
“[the] slave power….[has] organized treasonable
conspiracies, raised the standard of revolution, and
plunged the nation into a bloody contest for the
preservation of its threatened life.”
Edward Pollard was vocal
secessionist who became
wartime editor of the Richmond
Examiner newspaper.
• Pollard defended southern
actions for attempting to
preserve (not destroy)
existing institutions.
• The act of secession was
intended as a defense against
northern aggression; it
provided the surest defense,
security, and protection of
southern property and
institutions against “northern
fanaticism.”