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Chapter 19
• Drifting Toward Disunion, 1854–1861
I. Stowe and Helper: Literary
Incendiaries
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
– Political force for the North, it presented slavery
as an evil institution.
– It was very big in Europe. The constituents in
London and Paris were in love with this struggle.
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p397
• The Impending Crisis of the South – Hinton R.
Helper
– Helper had no loyalty to slavery or blacks… he hated
both.
– Attempted to prove that indirectly the
nonslaveholding whites were the ones hurt most
from slavery.
– Southern elite banned the book in the South for
fear that the nonslaveholding majority might
abandon them.
II. The North-South Contest for
Kansas
• New England Emigrant Aid Company
– Sent about 2,000 people into Kansas to push
abolitionist ideals.
• Betrayal?? The South had supported the
unspoken understanding that if they
supported Senator Douglas’s scheme, they
believed that Kansas would become slave
and Nebraska free.
• When Kansas’s territorial legislature was being
voted on (1855,) proslavery “border ruffians”
poured in to Kansas from Missouri to vote early
and often… they won the election.
• Upset with this fraud, free-soilers setup their
own government in Topeka. Meaning that
Kansans had two governments within their
borders.
• Breaking point – 1856 a gang of proslavery
raiders shot up and burned the town of
Lawrence.
III. Kansas in Convulsion
• John Brown – obsessed abolitionist
– Became involved in some pretty shady stuff
(including horse stealing.)
– He led a band of followers to Pottawatomie
Creek (May 1856) and killed five proslavery men.
• Civil war in Kansas begins 1856 and basically
continues until it merges with the Civil War
p400
Map 19-1 p399
• Proslavery side created the Lecompton
Constitution.
– People weren’t voting for whether or not they
wanted the constitution, but whether they wanted
it with or without slavery.
– If they voted against slavery however, a provision in
the constitution protected the owners of slaves
already in Kansas.
– Free-soilers boycotted the election and the
constitution was passed with slavery.
– Senator Douglas fought it in the Senate and brought
it to a true popular vote and with free-soil voters at
the polls it was defeated.
IV. “Bully” Brooks and His
Bludgeon
• Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
gave a speech called “The Crime Against
Kansas.”
– During the speech he insulted South Carolina
and old senator Andrew Butler.
– Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South
Carolina was upset by the insults and decided to
beat Sumner within an inch of his life… Southern
Chivalry.
p401
V. “Old Buck” Versus “The Pathfinder”
• Republican platform = no extension of
slavery into the territories
• Democrats = popular sovereignty
VII. The Dred Scott Bombshell
• Dred Scott v. Stanford case – Dred Scott
(black slave) had lived w/master for five
years in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory.
Backed by abolitionists, he sued for his
freedom on the basis of living on free soil for
so long.
– The court could’ve thrown out the case because
Scott was a slave and not a citizen, meaning he
couldn’t sue in federal courts, but they decided
to take on the decision anyway.
• Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland (slave
state) gave the majority decision of the court.
The ruling was that because a slave was private
property, they could be taken into any territory
and legally held there in slavery.
– They cited the 5th amendment which stated that
people cannot be deprived of private property
without due process of law.
• Republicans insisted that the ruling of the court
was only an opinion, not a decision. They were
defiant because they knew the majority of the
Supreme Court members were southerners.
VIII. The Financial Crash of 1857
• Economic hard times hit the North primarily.
– California gold inflated currency
– Over production of grain meant for the Crimean
War in Russia
– Frenzied speculation in land and railroads
• Thousands of businesses fail within the year
and those out of work soon began shouting
“bread or Death”
• During this time the South was enjoying
favorable cotton prices abroad, enabling them
to ride out the panic with ease.
– Which helped drive the overconfident South closer
to a showdown with the North.
IX. An Illinois Rail-Splitter Emerges
• Lincoln was a rustic lawyer that refused to
take a case if it went against his conscience.
• He was born in a Kentucky log cabin to poor
parents.
• He was mainly self-educated.
• He married “above himself” into the
influential Todd family of Kentucky.
• He ran for senator but lost to incumbent
Senator Stephen A. Douglas.
p406
X. The Great Debate: Lincoln Versus
Douglas
• Lincoln-Douglas debates
– Douglas had strong debate skills and was to
destroy Lincoln.
• Lincoln was ugly, awkward in front of a crowd, and
had a high-pitched voice.
– Lincoln posed the Freeport question... Suppose
the people of a territory should vote down
slavery (popular sovereignty.) The Supreme
Court in the Dred Scott decision had decreed
that they could not. Who would prevail, the
Court or the People?
– Douglas’s reply became known as the Freeport
Doctrine… he said that no matter what the Supreme
Court ruled, slavery would stay down if the people
voted it down.
– Douglas’s popular sovereignty stance helped him
win his spot in the Senate, but probably hurt his
chances at a presidential run. Lincoln on the other
had was in good position.
p407
XI. John Brown: Murderer or Martyr?
• John Brown plotted a daring scheme to
secretly invade the south and help the slaves
rise up in rebellion once and for all.
– After securing thousands of dollars from
abolitionists for guns, he led about 20 men into
western Virginia to seize the federal arsenal at
Harpers Ferry.
• In the process, he and his men killed 7 innocent
people (including a free black) and injured 10 others.
• Local slaves hadn’t really heard of the attack and
never rose up.
• The injured Brown and his men were quickly captured by
U.S. Marines under Robert E. Lee.
– Brown has a long line of insane relatives which
probably explains a few things about him.
– Instead of locking him in an insane asylum they
decided to execute him, which portrays him as a
martyr for the cause.
p409
XII. The Disruption of the Democrats
• Democrats met in Charleston, South
Carolina, to meet with Douglas (the leading
presidential candidate in the northern wing
of the party.)
– After Douglas’s stand on the Lecompton
Constitution and the Freeport Doctrine
delegates from the cotton states walked out of
the Democratic National Convention.
• The southern Democrats organized their own
convention in Baltimore.
– There they built a platform around the extension of
slavery into the territories and annexation of slavepopulated Cuba.
XIII. A Rail-Splitter Splits the Union
• Lincoln’s Republican platform heavily favored
the northern groups.
– Free-soilers, nonextension of slavery.
– Manufacturers, a protective tariff.
– Immigrants, no abridgement of rights.
– Northwest, a Pacific railroad
– West, internal improvements at federal expense
– Farmers, free homesteads
• Southern secessionists said that they would
split the Union if the rail-splitter was elected.
p410
XIV. The Electoral Upheaval of
1860
• The election was really like two elections:
one in the North and one in the South.
• With the election of Abraham Lincoln
southern secessionists were given their
excuse to secede.
• Even with Lincoln’s election the South wasn’t
sitting too bad. They still had a 5 to 4
majority on the Supreme Court and
democrats controlled the House and the
Senate.
Table 19-1 p410
Map 19-3 p411
XV. The Secessionist Exodus
Map 19-4 p412
p413
XVI. The Collapse of Compromise
XVII. Farewell to Union
p414
p417