Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Ethnocultural politics in the United States wikipedia , lookup
Solid South wikipedia , lookup
Second Party System wikipedia , lookup
Third Party System wikipedia , lookup
Origins of the American Civil War wikipedia , lookup
United States presidential election, 1856 wikipedia , lookup
Wilmot Proviso wikipedia , lookup
Compromise of 1850 wikipedia , lookup
United States presidential election, 1860 wikipedia , lookup
Chapter Fifteen The Coming Crisis, the 1850s Part One: Introduction Chapter Focus Questions Why did the Whigs and Democrats fail to find a lasting political compromise on the issue of slavery? What caused the end of the Second American Party System and the rise of the Republican Party? Why did the secession of the southern states follow the Republican Party victory in the election of 1860? Part Two: Illinois Communities Debate Slavery This poster advertises Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the bestselling novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This poignant story of long-suffering African American slaves had an immense impact on Northern popular opinion, swaying it decisively against slavery. In that respect, the poster’s boast, “the greatest book of the age” was correct. SOURCE:©Bettmann/CORBIS (BE001033). Illinois Communities Debate Slavery Illinois voters gathered in 1858 Lincoln and Douglas. Douglas accused Lincoln of favoring social equality of whites and blacks. Lincoln denied this and accused Douglas of supporting the spread of slavery. Douglas won the senatorial election Debates established both Lincoln and the Republican Party. Slavery question had divided American communities Americans strongly valued their democratic institutions. Part Three: America in 1850 Expansion and Growth Map: U. S. Population and Settlement, 1850 America grew rapidly in the first half of the 19th century. Nation experienced great growth of: Wealth Industry Urbanization. Equally important, southern economic influence was waning. MAP 15.1 U.S. Population and Settlement, 1850 By 1850, the United States was a continental nation. Its people, whom Thomas Jefferson had once thought would not reach the Mississippi River for forty generations, had not only passed the river, but leapfrogged to the west coast. In comparison to the America of 1800 (see Map 9.1 on p. 238), the growth was astounding. Expansion and Growth Southern economic influence was waning. Politics, Culture, and National Identity Pride in democracy was one unifying theme New middle-class values supported by institutions and culture. Politics, Culture, and National Identity An American Renaissance produced writers: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson who experimented with poetic form Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville who wrote about the darker side of human nature Frederick Douglass’s autobiography and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin condemn slavery Part Four The Compromise of 1850 MAP 15.2 The Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850, messier and more awkward than the Missouri Compromise of 1820, reflected heightened sectional tensions. California was admitted as a free state, the borders of Texas were settled, and the status of the rest of the former Mexican territory was left to be decided later by popular sovereignty. No consistent majority voted for the five separate bills that made up the compromise. In 1850, the three men who had long represented America’s three major regions attempted to resolve the political crisis brought on by the applications of California and Utah for statehood. Henry Clay is speaking; John C. Calhoun stands third from right; and Daniel Webster is seated at the left, with his head in his hand. Both Clay and Webster were ill, and Calhoun died before the Compromise of 1850 was arranged by a younger group of politicians led by Stephen A. Douglas. SOURCE:Library of Congress. Political Parties and Slavery Prior to the 1840s, compromises had eased the divisions. Whigs and Democrats forged inter-sectional coalitions. By 1848 sectional interests were eroding these coalitions. Sectional divisions in religious and other organizations divided the country. Congressional Debate John C. Calhoun laid out the states’ rights defense: Territories were the common property of each of the states Congress could not discriminate against slave owners. Northerners grew increasingly concerned over “slave power.” Webster, Clay, and Calhoun—attempted to resolve the issues of 1850. Two Communities, Two Perspectives Both North and South: were committed to expansion shared a commitment to basic rights and liberties saw the other as infringing on them. Two Communities, Two Perspectives Two communities with two perspectives had emerged. Northerners viewed their region as a dynamic society offered opportunity to the common man Contrast to the stagnant slave owning aristocracy of the South. Southerners viewed their section as promoting equality for whites by keeping blacks in a perpetual state of bondage. Two Communities, Two Perspectives The chances for national reconciliation were slim. Compromises Map: The Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 was actually five separate bills California came in as a free state. Other southwest territories were to be settled by popular sovereignty. A stronger fugitive slave law was enacted. The slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C. The Texas–New Mexico border dispute was settled. This handbill warning free African Americans of danger circulated in Boston following the first of the in famous recaptures under the Fugitive Slave Law, that of Thomas Sims in 1851. SOURCE:Library of Congress. The Fugitive Slave Act Runaway slave issue further divided the nation. Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 federal government behind slave catchers. States previously passed acts against aiding catchers. Northerners unsuccessfully tried to prevent the law. Black fugitives’ experiences raised Northerners’ consciousness. Escaped slave Anthony Burns, shown here surrounded by scenes of his capture in 1854, was the cause of Boston’s greatest protest against the Fugitive Slave Law. The injustice of his trial and shipment back to the South converted many Bostonians to the antislavery cause. SOURCE:Getty Images,Inc. The Election of 1852 Polarization of opinion strained the party system. Democrats won election of 1852 by avoiding sectional issues. President Franklin Pierce supported independent efforts to seize territory. “Young America”: The Politics of Expansion Between 1845 and 1848, the United States became a continental nation. Swift victory over Mexico reinforced American pride. Europe revolts reinforced Americans’ ideals of democracy and manifest destiny. Expansionist Democrats pushed for further expansion in Mexico, Cuba. The Japanese painting shows Commodore Matthew Perry landing in Japan in 1853. The commercial treaty Perry signed with the Japanese government, which opened a formerly closed country to American trade, was viewed in the United States as another fruit of manifest destiny. SOURCE:The Landing of Commodore Perry in Japan in 1853.Perry ’s ship and procession (Ukiyo-e School).Bigelow Collection,The Museum of Fine Arts Boston (11.6054). Part Five: The Crisis of the National Party System The Kansas-Nebraska Act Maps: The Kansas-Nebraska Act In 1854, Stephen Douglas pushed bill to open Kansas territory. Bill declared territory would be organized on popular sovereignty principle. Slavery had been banned under the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act proved to: destroy the Whig Party nearly destroy the northern wing of the Democratic Party negate Indian treaties removed to Kansas in the 1830s. MAP 15.3 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposed by Steven A. Douglas in 1854, opened the central and northern Great Plains to settlement. The act had two major faults: it robbed Indian peoples of half the territory guaranteed to them by treaty, and, because it repealed the Missouri Compromise line, it opened up the lands to warring proslavery and antislavery factions. “Bleeding Kansas” The territory became a battleground of sectional politics. Proslavery Missourians crossed border and took control of territorial legislature. Northerners quickly responded by founding freesoil communities. By the summer of 1856 open warfare erupted. This lithograph shows the Battle of Hickory Point, 1856 one of the many battles between proslavery fighters and free-soilers that gave the territory its dreadful nickname, Bleeding Kansas. SOURCE:W.Breyman,Battle of Hickory Point ,Courtesy of Anne S.K.Brown Military Collection,Brown University. The Politics of Nativism Concurrent with sectional pressures came an outburst of anti-immigrant feeling. Reformers were appalled by influx of Irish. Former Whigs formed the “Know-Nothing” or American Party. Know-Nothings succumbed to sectional divisions. This night-time meeting of supporters of the Know-Nothing Party in New York City was dramatically spotlighted by a new device borrowed from the theater, an incandescent calcium light, popularly called a limelight. The Republican Party and the Election of 1856 Map: The Election of 1856 Republican Party linked northern nativists and former Whigs. MAP 15.4 The Election of 1856 Because three parties contested the 1856 election, Democrat James Buchanan was a minority president. Although Buchanan alone had national support, Republican John Frémont won most of the free states, and Millard Fillmore of the American Party gained 40 percent of the vote in most of the slave states. The Republican Party and the Election of 1856 In 1856, Democrats nominated James Buchanan as a compromise candidate. Southern Know-Nothings ran Millard Fillmore. Northern Republicans ran John C. Fremont who defeated Buchanan in the North. Buchanan carried nearly the entire South and won. The Republican Party and the Election of 1856 The election signaled the rise of Republican Party Northerners more concerned about slavery than immigration. Part Six: The Differences Deepen The Dred Scott Decision The Dred Scott decision worsened sectional divisions. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories Southerners applauded the decision, Northerners denounced it. These sympathetic portraits of Harriet and Dred Scott and their daughters in 1857 helped to shape the northern reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision that denied the Scotts’ claim to freedom. The infamous Dred Scott decision was intended to resolve the issue of slavery expansion, but instead heightened angry feelings in both North and South. SOURCE:Frank Leslie ’s Illustrated Newspaper ,June 27,1857. Library of Congress. The Lecompton Constitution Conflict continued in Kansas as freesoilers: organized their own territorial government boycotted the proslavery government’s elections for a constitutional convention The Lecompton Constitution Proslavery “Lecompton constitution” was submitted to Congress. Douglas fought against it, alienating his southern supporters. Kansas rejected the constitution, entered Union as free state. Congress continued to divide along sectional lines. The Panic of 1857 Financial panic and sharp depression in 1857 and 1858. The Panic affected northern more than southern exports. Southerners believed the Panic showed the superiority of their system. This painting by Charles C. Rosenberg and James H. Cafferty shows a worried crowd exchanging the latest news on Wall Street during the Panic of 1857. This was the first economic depression in which the telegraph played a part by carrying bad financial news in the West to New York much more rapidly than in the past. SOURCE:Photograph by J.Cafferty &C.Rosenberg.Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York (40.54). John Brown's Raid John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Raised sectional differences. Southern opinion shocked by attempts to make Brown a martyr. The execution by hanging of John Brown, December 2, 1859 is depicted in this popular image in a northern newspaper as a solemn military occasion. Southerners were angered and alarmed by popular northern opinion that regarded Brown as a martyr rather than as a terrorist. SOURCE:Frank Leslie ’s Illustrated Newspaper ,December 10,1859.Library of Congress. Part Seven: The South Secedes The Election of 1860 Map: The Election of 1860 In the election of 1860, four candidates ran for president. Bell, Breckenridge, Douglas, Lincoln MAP 15.6 The South Secedes The southern states that would constitute the Confederacy seceded in two stages. The states of the Lower South seceded before Lincoln took office. Arkansas and three states of the Upper South—Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee—waited until after the South fired on Fort Sumter. And four border slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri—chose not to secede. Every Southern state (except South Carolina) was divided on the issue of secession, generally along upcountry–low-country lines. In Virginia, this division was so extreme, that West Virginia split off to become a separate nonslave state and was admitted to the Union in 1863. The Election of 1860 The Democrats split over proposed slave code for territories. Stephen Douglas won the nomination but Southerners nominated Breckinridge. Southern and border state Whigs created Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell. Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, a moderate. MAP 15.5 The Election of 1860 The election of 1860 was a sectional election. Lincoln won no votes in the South, Breckinridge none in the North. The contest in the North was between Lincoln and Douglas, and although Lincoln swept the electoral vote, Douglas’s popular vote was uncomfortably close. The large number of northern Democratic voters opposed to Lincoln was a source of political trouble for him during the Civil War. The Election of 1860 Breckinridge and Lincoln represented the extreme positions on slavery. Douglas and Bell tried to find a middle ground. Lincoln won the election with 38 percent of vote, virtually sweeping the North. The South Leaves the Union Map: The South Secedes Southerners initiated secession movements. The Lower South seceded, but Upper South remained in Union. The beating of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks on the floor of the U.S. Senate attracted the horrified attention of northerners but won the approval of southerners. The North’s Political Options Various Northerners unsuccessfully tried to find compromise. Some Northerners were willing to let South to go in peace. Lincoln believed free government would be threatened if the South left. Establishment of the Confederacy Southerners established the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis, a moderate, was chosen as its president. Davis tried to portray secession as a legal, peaceful step. Lincoln resolved to keep the nation together. Lincoln’s Inauguration I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - Abraham Lincoln Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861