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Chapter 14
The Nation Divided
CHAPTER 14 – THE NATION DIVIDED
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
Section 2: Compromises Fail
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
 Slavery and the Mexican – American War
 Maintaining the balance
 Between 1820 and 1848 – 8 new states were admitted
 4 slave and 4 free
 Totals of 15 slave and 15 free states
 Remember the Missouri Compromise?
 It did not apply to the lands claimed after the MexicanAmerican War
 Wilmot Proviso
 David Wilmot of PA proposed this law
 Congress ban slavery in all territory that might become
part of the U.S. as a result of the M-A War.

It passed in the house (population) and failed in the senate
(equal)
 Wilmot Proviso never became law, but it was viewed as
an attack on slavery by southerners
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
 An Anti-Slavery Party
 Free Soil Party
 Formed on the basis of the Wilmot Proviso – they wanted to stop the
spread of slavery – especially in the newly acquired territory from
Mexico
 3 candidates run in the election of 1848
 Democrats – Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan
 Whigs – General Zachary Taylor (hero of the M-A War)
 Free Soil – former president Martin Van Buren
 Democrat votes are split between Van Buren and Cass
 This allows Taylor to win
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
 A Bitter Debate
 California’s Gold Rush
 With the inflow if gold seekers – California had enough people to
become a state
 Both sides realized that the admission of California would upset
the balance between free and slave states
 Northerners
 Argued that CA become a free state because most of the land there
was north of the Missouri Compromise line
 Southerners
 Knew that another free state would upset the balance in the senate
 They would be unable to block laws like the Wilmot Proviso
 Began threatening to secede from the union
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
 Other issues dividing the North and South
 Northerners
 Wanted the slave trade abolished in Washington D.C.
 Southerners
 Wanted fugitive slave laws

Would force the return of runaway slaves to their owners
 Henry Clay
 Presents a series of proposals to deal with the issue
 This sparks one of the greatest debates in American history
 John C. Calhoun
 Argues against the compromise
 The admission of CA as a free state leaves only 2 solutions for the South

1 – an amendment protecting states rights must be passed OR…

2 – The South would leave the Union
Section 1: Growing Tensions Over Slavery
 Daniel Webster
 Argues in support of the compromise
 He calls for an end to the sectionalism that divides the country

Argues for Clay’s proposal in order to preserve the union
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 The Compromise of 1850
 In September 1850 Congress passes 5 bills based on Clay’s
Proposals
 Zachary Taylor had opposed the compromise, but he died in 1850
 Millard Fillmore took over the presidency and signed the bills into law
 To Please the North
 CA would be admitted as a free state
 Slave trade would be banned in Washington D.C.
 To Please the South
 Popular sovereignty would decide slave issues in other new states
from the Mexican Cession
 Southerners got a tough new Fugitive Slave Law
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850




Allowed government officials
to arrest ANYONE accused
of being a runaway slave
The accused had no right to a
trial – no way to defend
themselves
All that was required was a
witness to swear that the
individual “was a slave”
Law also required northern
citizens to help capture
accused runaways if
authorities requested
assistance
 Outrage in the North
 Northerners were upset to see
people accused of being
fugitives lose their freedom


Many African Americans fled
to Canada to escape being
accused
Many Northerners resisted
the laws
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 Calhoun had hoped that the law would force northerners to
admit that slave owners had rights to their property

Calhoun was wrong – it convinced more northerners that slavery
was evil
 Uncle Tom’s Cabin
 Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe
 Daughter of an abolitionist minister
 Book was written to show the nation what a horrible thing
slavery was
 Focused on a fictional tale of Uncle Tom – a kind slave who
suffers cruelty from his owner Simon Legree
 Book was a best-seller in the North
 Southerners called it Propaganda

False or misleading information to spread or further a cause
 They claimed it did not give an accurate portrayal of the lives
of slaves
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act
 Nation moved closer to war after Congress passes the
KS-NE Act in 1854
 Proposed by Stephen Douglas

Wanted to form two new territories – Kansas and
Nebraska
 Southerners objected


The two new territories were in areas closed to slavery
When they became states they would be free
 To win southern support, Douglas proposed popular
sovereignty in the territories
 Because of this proposal, the act passed in Congress
 It was signed into law by Franklin Pierce, (D – 1852)

According to Pierce ‘the question of slavery would be
forever banished from the halls of Congress’
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 Bleeding Kansas
 Both pro and anti slavery settlers flooded into the new territory of
Kansas
 Each side was determined to hold a majority when it was time to
vote
 Thousands of MO residents entered Kansas on election day
 KS only had 3,000 residents but 8,000 votes were cast to elect a
legislature

In that legislature, 36 of the 39 elected were pro-slavery
 Anti-Slavery settlers refused to accept the results
 They held a second election
 KS now had 2 governments each claiming a right to impose their
government on the territory
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 Growing Violence
 In April 1855 a pro-slavery sheriff was shot when he tried to arrest
some anti-slavery settlers in Lawrence
 A month later he returned with 800 men and attacked the town
 Three days after the attack on Lawrence more violence occurred
 John Brown led 7 men to a pro-slavery settlement near Pottawatomie
Creek and murdered 5 men and children
 These incidents set off widespread violence throughout the territory
Section 2: Compromises Fail
 Bloodshed in the Senate
 Charles Sumner – Abolitionist senator from MA
 Denounced the proslavery legislature in Kansas

Then went on to attack southerners singling out Andrew Butler from SC
 Butler’s nephew – a congressman, Preston Brooks marched into the
senate chamber and beat Sumner with a cane – Sumner never fully
recovered

Many southerners felt he got what he deserved and sent canes to Brooks to
show their support
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 A New Anti-Slavery Party
 In 1854 the Whig party split apart
 Many northern Whigs joined the Republican Party
 Main goal was to stop the spread of slavery in the western territories
 Republican Victories
 In the 1854 elections, republicans won 105 of the available 245 seats in
congress
 They also gained control of most free state legislatures
 First Republican presidential candidate
 John C. Fremont (leader of revolution in California)

He won 11 of the nations 16 free states
 Defeated by James Buchanan
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 Dred Scott Decision
 Decision was made by the U.S. Supreme Court
 Facts of the Case
 Dred Scott was a slave owned by a U.S. Army Doctor. The doctor and
Scott lived in Illinois and later in Wisconsin, both were places where
slavery was illegal. Later the Doctor and Scott settled in Missouri.
 Scott, with the help of abolitionist lawyers sued for his freedom
claiming that since he lived where slavery was banned, that he should be
free.
 The Court Decides
 Opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
 Scott was not a free man for 2 reasons

First, he had no right to sue in federal court because he was not a citizen

Second, merely living in a free territory did not make a slave free, slaves
were property, and property rights were protected by the Constitution.
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 Taney’s decision went further….
 Taney said that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in
any territory

This meant that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional
 Reaction
 Supporters of slavery rejoiced.
 Decision meant that slavery was legal everywhere
 Northerners were stunned
 The decision brought out many abolitionists because of outrage
 One key player was an attorney from Illinois
 Abraham Lincoln

Said that the idea that African Americans could not be citizens was based on
a false view of American History
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 The Lincoln Douglas Debates
 Lincoln had a brief beginning in politics
 Served one term as a representative for IL
 Then returned to his law practice
 Lincoln was a long time rival of Stephen Douglas
 Both politically and personally
 Both men had courted Mary Todd, who married Lincoln
 A House Divided
 In 1858 the Republican party chose Lincoln to run against Douglas
for the Senate
 In his nomination acceptance speech, Lincoln claimed that a nation
divided by issues such as slavery cannot continue to stand
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 Debating Slavery

Douglas held firm to his position on Popular Sovereignty


States had a right to decide what was and was not legal within
their borders
Lincoln claimed that ‘if slavery is not wrong, nothing is
wrong’
 Douglas won the election, but the 2 would face off again

Both ran for the presidency later
 John Brown’s Raid
 Brown had a plan
 Lead abolitionists on a raid at Harpers Ferry


Goal was to acquire guns the military had stored there
Blacks would join in his uprising, and he would form an
army to lead the enslaved to freedom
 Brown’s plan fell short

While he took over Harpers Ferry, he and his men were soon
surrounded by Col. Robert E. Lee
Section 3: The Crisis Deepens
 John Brown’s Trial
 Brown sat quietly as he was convicted of treason at his trial
 He received a death sentence and was hung in Virginia
 December 2, 1859
 That day, church bells across the North rang out
 Many considered him a hero
 Southerners were stunned
 How could the north support a man convicted of treason
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
 The Nation Divides
 Election of 1860
 Republicans nominate Abraham Lincoln
 The Democratic party splits
 Southern Democrats nominate Vice President John Breckenridge
 Northern Democrats nominate Stephen Douglas
 A third party was formed by Southerners hoping to heal the split
between North and South, they form the Constitutional Union and
nominate John Bell
 Douglas felt that Lincoln would win and pleaded with southern
voters to stay with the Union no matter what happened
 He was pelted with eggs and garbage as a result of his efforts
 The election showed the division of the country
 Look at the map on page 500
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
 Southern States Secede
 Lincoln’s election shocked the south
 They felt that a government would
move to take away their ‘rights’
 On December 20, 1860
 South Carolina passed a declaration
 In that document was stated
 “The union now subsisting between
South Carolina and the other states,
under the name of the United States
of America, is hereby dissolved”
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
 The Confederate States of America
 Six more states followed SC out of the union
 Some moderates in Tennessee and Texas opposed

Sam Houston and Andrew Johnson
 The 7 seceding states met in Montgomery Alabama to form a new
nation
 By the time Lincoln took office, they had written a constitution and
appointed a president – Jefferson Davis of Mississippi
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
 The Civil War Begins
 On March 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln became President
 He had to face the greatest crisis in the short history of the U.S.
 Lincoln tried to give assurance to the seceded states
 He said that:
 I have no intention of interfering with slavery where it exists
 Warned the southern states about continuing on their present course

Read the quote on page 501
 The south rejected Lincoln’s proposal
 They took over forts, post offices, and other federal lands
 Lincoln now had to decide how to respond
Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War
 Fort Sumter
 The commander of Fort Sumter refused to surrender and turn his
post over to the southern states
 The southern states had cut the fort off from supplies since December
 They knew that the men inside would starve and be forced to give up
 Lincoln did not want to give up the fort either
 He announced that the north was sending unarmed supply ships to the
fort
 The southern states did not give them a chance to arrive
 On April 12, 1861 Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter
 This was the beginning of a Civil War

War between opposing groups of citizens of the same country