Road to Secession

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Road to Secession

• Events leading to Civil War

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Study Guide Identifications

• Sectionalism
• Compromise of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Act 1850
• Ostend Manifesto
• Kansas Nebraska Act
• Bleeding Kansas
• Know Nothings
• Dred Scott
• John Brown
• Election of 1860

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Study Guide Questions

• What are the major events that led to civil war?
• What debate was renewed with the acquisition of
  California Territory and its application for
  statehood?
• What major divisions existed in American Society?
• What is Zinns argument concerning the events
  that led the United States to wage a civil war?

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Political Economic Context

• Jacksonian Era, 1824 1845
• Extension of white male democracy
• Popular religious revolt
• Rise of Jacksons Democrats (1824-28)
• Jackson appeal
• Indian removal
• Spoils System

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Political Economic Context

• Martin Van Burens Presidency
• Rise of radical abolitionist movement in north
  revived sectional tensions over slavery.
• In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison of Boston
  inaugurated a radical new phase in northern
  attacks on slavery, The Liberator.
• Southern Congressmen responded by demanding that
  free speech be repressed in the name of white
  security.
• 1836-44 gag rule passed and renewed continuously,
  

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Panic of 1837

• Sharp Economic Downturn
• Bank Crisis
• Unemployment Rose (20 by 1843)
• Massive labor protests in the east
• Farmers Planters lost land Slaves
• Fled west to avoid creditors

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Rise of Whig party

• Blamed Democrats for Economic disaster
• Rise of 2 Party System
• Competition between Democrats Whigs
• Mass electorization Political Rhetoric

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Politics of Sectionalism

• To exclude slavery from the western territories
  was exclude white southerners from pursuing their
  vision of American dream
• North politicians argued that exclusion preserved
  equality of all white men and women to live and
  work with out competition from slavery labor or
  rule by despotic slaveholders.

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International Debate over Slavery

• What economic institutions would prevail in
  America? Debates on how to solve the question of
  nature of economic expansion 
• outright exclusion
• Extension of the Missouri compromise line to the
  Pacific
• popular sovereignty, allowing the residents of a
  territory to decide the issue
• protection of the property of slaveholders
  (meaning their right to own slaves) even if few
  lived in the territory
•  

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The Compromise of 1850

• Admission to Union upset balance of free/slave
  states and senators, I.e. veto power of south
  against federal laws against slavery
• Compromise of 1850 Issues
• Admission of California as a Free State
• Fugitive Slave Act
• NM UT popular sovereignty
• Importation of Slaves into District of Columbia
• Measures to discourage settlement of people of
  color
• State Laws banned testimony in legal proceedings
  infringed on civil rights and treated inferior

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Overwhelming support for free state admission

• Miners against blacks in gold fields
• Mass Meetings
• No Negro should work claims
• Leave district
• William E. Shannon
• Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
  unless punishment of crimes, shall ever be
  tolerated in this state

• M. M. McCarver
• Proposal to exclude all free blacks
• Presence of free blacks an evil greater than
  that of slavery itself
• Not passed for fear of rejection of statehood

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Fugitive Slave Act

• Reinforced their right to seize and return to
  bondage slaves who had fled to free territory

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Fugitive Slave Act, 1850

• Response to the fugitive slave act
• Slave catches and planters enslaved free blacks,
  polarized north and south further
• Galvanized popular opinion against slavery
  further

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Expansion slave/free state question

• Whigs dissolved as a party
• Franklin Pierce Expansionist Policy
• Ostend Manifesto
• Claimed Cuba belonged naturally to the great
  family of the states of which the union is
  providential nursery
• if Spain does not sell it we will take it
• General William Walker - Nicaragua

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Ostend Manifesto
American minister to England James Buchanan,
minister to Spain Pierre Soule, and John Y.
Mason, minister to France,
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Kansas Nebraska Act

• Transcontinental Rail Road Indian Territory
• Question of free/slave state
• Split Kansas (slave) Nebraska (free)
• Decide through popular sovereignty

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Bleeding Kansas

• Competition of anti and pro slavery immigration
  Beginning of civil war
• Further polarized north and south

Titus and pro-slavery forces on their way to
attack Lawrence
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This 1854 map shows slave states (grey), free
states (red), and US territories (green) with
Kansas in center (white).
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Know Nothings

• Political Realignment
• Know Nothings
• Mostly former Whigs
• Anti immigrant
• Extend naturalization from 1 to 21 years
• Anti- Catholic
• Legislation barring them from public office
• Nativist
• New Republican Party
• Anti-slavery conscious Whigs Democrats
• Most Important political force
• Democrats
• Pro-slavery, southern sectional party

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Dred Scott Case

• Scott sued for Freedom
• Illinois Wisconsin Territory
• Chief Justice Taney 9 justices - 2 days
• black people, not citizens, could not sue
• framers of the constitution never intended
  citizenship for slaves
• slaves being of an inferior order.so far
  inferior that they had not rights which the white
  man was bound to respect

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• Republicans argued a small group of slave holders
  was holding no n slaveholding white people
  hostage to the institution of slavery

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Road to Disunion

• The Compromise of 1850
• Aggression in the Caribbean Latin American
  (American Imperialism)
• Bleeding Kansas
• Dred Scott Vs. Sandford
• Convinced north that south was conspiring with
  the federal government to restrict economic and
  political liberties

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John Brown

• 1859 Raid against federal arsenal
• Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
• Trained his rebels took the arsenal
• Hoped to spark a slave revolt
• Captures and Hung for treason

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John Brown

• I believe that to have interfered as I have
  donin behalf of despised poor is no wrong, but
  right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I
  should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the
  ends of justice and mingle my blood further with
  the blood of my children and with the blood of
  millions in this slave country whose rights are
  disregarded by country whose rights are
  disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust
  enactments I say let it be done.

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Election of 1860

• Democratic Party Split
• Nominated Stephen Douglas
• Former Whigs Constitutional Union Party
• Nominated John Bell
• Republicans
• nominated Lincoln

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Secession

• South Carolina legislature called on states
  citizens to elect delegates to a convention to
  consider secession
• TX, LA, MS, Al, GA, FL and SC voted to leave the
  union and met to form a separate country.
• The Confederate States of America
• Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president. AK,
  TN, NC VA followed.
• As a result of the Browns raid and Lincolns
  election in 1860 states began to secede from the
  union.

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