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Download Ch.18, Sec.1- The Debate Over Slavery
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Ch.18, Sec.1- The Debate Over Slavery The Expansion of Slavery • Victory in the Mexican War in 1848 added more than 500,000 square miles to the United States and renewed the debate over the expansion of slavery. Slavery was not allowed north of Missouri’s southern border. President Polk and others wanted to run the line to the Pacific Coast, dividing the Mexican Cession into free and slave territory. Some northerners wanted to prohibit slavery in all parts of the Mexican Cession. During the war, Representative David Wilmot had proposed a plan known as the Wilmot Proviso. It stated that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of the territory.” The House of Representatives, which had a northern majority, passed the proviso, but it died in the Senate where the South had more power. This plan showed the growing sectionalism of the country, which is when people favor interests of one region over the interests of the country as a whole. The Expansion of Slavery cont. • Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan hoped to solve the conflict by pushing for popular sovereignty, which would allow voters in a territory to decide whether they wanted to ban or allow slavery. • In the presidential election of 1848, neither Democrats nor Whigs took a clear position on slavery in the West. For this reason, thousands of antislavery northerners formed a new political party called the Free-Soil Party. They supported the Wilmot Proviso and chose Martin Van Buren as their candidate. The party won 10% of the vote, which helped the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, win over Lewis Cass. • The California Gold Rush caused a population boom that allowed California to apply for admission as a state in the Union. Most Californians wanted to enter as a free state, but this would throw off the balance of free and slave states. The Compromise of 1850 • Henry Clay settled the Missouri crisis and the nullification crisis of 1832-33. Clay, nicknamed “The Great Compromiser”, now came up with another plan. It had five main parts: 1. He urged Congress to let California enter the Union as a free state. 2. He called for the rest of the Mexican Cession to be organized as a federal territory. In this territory, called New Mexico, popular sovereignty would decide the status of slavery. 3. He addressed a border dispute between Texas and New Mexico. He called on Texas to give up its claim to all land east of the Upper Rio Grande. In exchange, the federal government would pay Texas’s old debts from when it was an independent republic. 4. He called for an end to the slave trade, but not slavery, in the country’s capital. 5. He called for a new, more effective fugitive slave law. The Compromise of 1850 cont. • The Compromise of 1850 became law in September of 1850. It accomplished most of what Clay wanted. California entered the Union as a free state. The rest of the Mexican Cession was divided into 2 territories, Utah and New Mexico, where slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty. The Fugitive Slave Act • The Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal crime to help runaway slaves. It also allowed officials to arrest runaways in areas where slavery was illegal. Under the law, slaveholders and their agents could take suspected fugitive slaves before U.S. commissioners. They then tried to prove ownership through documents or white witnesses. The accused fugitives could not testify in their own defense. People who returned a suspected fugitive to the slaveholder in the South received $10. If you hid or helped a runaway slave faced 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine. In the 10 years after Congress passed this law, 343 fugitive slave cases came under review in the North, which only 11 were declared free. This led to thousands of African Americans going to Canada. Antislavery Literature • Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an antislavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She met with fugitive slaves in Ohio and learned about the cruelty of slavery. She was angered by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, so she decided she was going to write a book on what slavery was really like. The book was published in 1852. The main character in the book is Tom, who is separated from his wife and sold, where he becomes the slave of a cruel cotton planter in Louisiana. This novel made people in the South outraged and people in the North praising it. The book sold 2 million copies in the U.S. within a year. Sec.2- Trouble in Kansas The Kansas-Nebraska Act • In January 1854 Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This plan would divide the rest of the Louisiana Purchase into two territories- Kansas and Nebraska. In each territory, popular sovereignty would decide the question of slavery. This plan would remove the restrictions on slavery north of Missouri’s southern border. Antislavery northerners were outraged. The president signed it into law on May 30, 1854. Bleeding Kansas • To make sure Kansas would be pro-slavery, several men crossed over the state line from Missouri and voted in favor of slavery and returned home. Therefore, slavery was voted for in Kansas, and immediately a series of pro-slavery laws were passed. One law made it a crime to question someone’s right to hold slaves, and another stated that anyone caught helping a fugitive slave could be punished by death. By early 1856, Kansas had 2 governments, pro and anti-slavery. Many of the proslavery settlers had guns, and the anti-slavery settlers asked for shipments of weapons from their friends in the East. This led to violence. In May 1856, a pro-slavery grand jury charged leaders of the antislavery government with treason. 700 men rode to Lawrence and destroyed buildings and printing presses. John Brown decided he would punish the pro-slavery forces for the “Sack Of Lawrence”. Bleeding Kansas cont. • On the night of May 24, 1856, John Brown led a group of 7 men along the Pottawatomie Creek in eastern Kansas. They killed 5 pro-slavery men in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Kansas went into a state of Civil War. About 200 people were killed in the next few months, leading to the title Bleeding Kansas. • Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a speech called “The Crime Against Kansas”. In it, he criticized proslavery efforts and insulted Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina. Representative Preston Brooks, a relative of Butler, was upset, so on May 22, 1856, Brooks approached Sumner in the Senate chamber and beat him unconscious with a walking cane. Several southerners sent Brooks new canes. Sec.3- Political Divisions New Divisions • The Republican Party formed in 1854, which opposed the spread of slavery in the West. The Know-Nothings chose Millard Fillmore as their representative, the Democrats chose James Buchanan, and the Republicans chose John C. Fremont. White southerners immediately began saying if Fremont were elected they would secede. However, Buchanan won the election. The Dred Scott Decision • In 1846, Dred Scott sued for his freedom after traveling with his owner to free territories in Illinois and part of the Louisiana Purchase. When he returned to Missouri, he argued he should be free since he lived in free territory. The case reached the Supreme Court in 1856. The Court had to decide 3 things: 1. was Scott a citizen of the U.S. 2. to decide if the time he spent on free soil made him free. 3. whether the ban on slavery in parts of the Louisiana Purchase was Constitutional. The Chief Justice over the case was Roger B. Taney, who came from a slaveholding family in Maryland. He concluded that were not citizens under the U.S. Constitution, so Scott did not have the right to file suit in federal court. He also said living on free soil had not made him free. He also said the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it went against the 5th Amendment of the right to property. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates • Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas to a series of debates called the LincolnDouglas Debates. In each of the 7 debates, Lincoln stressed that the central issue in the campaign involved slavery and its future in the West. Some voters asked Lincoln about his views on racial equality, in which he responded that African Americans were not necessarily the political or social equals of whites. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates cont. • The second debate was held in Freeport, Illinois. Douglas was asked to explain how Congress could allow the citizens of a federal territory to ban slavery if Congress itself could not ban it. Douglas responded by saying It matters not what the Supreme Court decides about slavery. This response became known as the Freeport Doctrine. This statement would put control of the slavery question back in the hands of the American citizens. The doctrine helped Douglas win the Senate seat, but Lincoln made a strong showing. Sec.4- Secession The Raid on Harpers Ferry • In 1858, John Brown wanted to start a slave uprising. He wanted to attack the federal arsenal in Virginia and take the weapons there. He then wanted to arm the slaves and kill or take hostage any white person who stood in the way. However, after 2 years of planning, he only had about 20 men, including 3 of his sons and himself. John Brown’s Raid began on October 16, 1859 in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He first took over the federal arsenal, and then he sent several of his men to get slaves to come to Harpers Ferry. None of the slaves joined him, fearing they would be severely punished or killed if they were caught. Instead, white southerners from Harpers Ferry armed themselves and attacked Brown. 8 of his men and 3 local men were killed in the gunfire, and Brown and some of his followers retreated to a firehouse. The Raid on Harpers Ferry cont. • Federal troops arrived on October 17, and Colonel Robert E. Lee ordered a squad of marines to storm the firehouse. In a matter of seconds, they killed 2 more of his men and captured the rest, including Brown. Judging John Brown • Brown was quickly charged and convicted of treason, murder, and conspiracy to stir up a rebellion. Some of the men who took part in this received death sentences. John Brown was ordered to be hanged, and it was carried out on December 2, 1859. The Election of 1860 • The northern and southern democrats could not agree on a candidate, so the party split in two. Northern Democrats chose Stephen Douglas and Southern Democrats chose John C. Breckinridge. • A new political party formed called the Constitutional Union Party. It recognized “ no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws.” They chose John Bell as their candidate. The Election of 1860 cont. • The Republicans leading candidate was William Seward, but they worried his strong antislavery views would make him a poor choice. So they chose Abraham Lincoln as their candidate. Lincoln promised he would not try to abolish slavery where it already existed. Lincoln won the race, despite getting less than 40% of the popular vote. The southerners were very angry because he didn’t win a single southern state, but he was still elected president. Breaking With the Union • Southerners believed Lincoln would move to abolish slavery and destroy the South’s economy and society. Lincoln insisted he wouldn’t, but he did say that slavery did have to end at some point in the future. This concerned the southerners. On December 17, 1860, delegates met to consider secession, or withdrawing from the Union. After 3 days of speeches, all the delegates voted to secede. Breaking With the Union cont. • Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a series of Constitutional amendments to satisfy the South. One would extend the line created by the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific coast. It would allow slavery in all territories south of the line. Another would use federal money to pay slaveholders who could not recover their fugitive slaves in the North. Lincoln did not agree with this plan, and he asked Congress to vote against Crittenden’s plan. Every Republican on the committee rejected it. The Confederate States of America • Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected president of the Confederate States of America. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia was the vice president. Davis opposed secession up to 1860, but he did believe the states had the right to secede. His loyalty to the South outweighed his hopes for peace. With his military background, Davis hoped to be appointed general in command of Mississippi’s troops. He did not seek the presidency of the Confederacy.