The Crisis of the Union

1. The Crisis of the Union -- Pro-and anti-slavery arguments and conflicts - Compromise of 1850 and popular sovereignty - The Kansas Nebraska Act and the emergence of the Republican Party - Abraham Lincoln, the election of 1860, and secession

2. Introduction • If slavery was an implicit subtext in the lead-up to the Mexican War, its conclusion made the issue of slavery’s extension explicitly to every political action for the next dozen years- until the Civil War settled the issue once and for all. • By the 1850s, the meticulously controlled political balance between slave and free states had begun to unravel. This “balance” between the sections had been enshrined in constitutional compromises, and furthered by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. • But storms over the future of slavery were brewing on multiple fronts in the late 1840s. Firstly, the Mexican Cession re-opened the caustic question of slavery’s extension. Secondly, northern agitation on the issue of abolition increased dramatically through the 1850s. New political parties trumpeted “free soil” and in response, the South began to openly debate disunion. • One event after another raised the stakes through the 1850s, and the willingness of each side to compromise withered away, leaving little option but war.

3. -- Pro-and anti-slavery arguments and conflicts • From the 1830s onward, the anti-slavery movement slowly but steadily gained traction in the north. Northern leaders had long lamented what they saw as the South’s disproportionate influence in national politics, but by-in-large had been indifferent to the actual issue of slavery. In fact a great number of wealthy New England shippers and industrialists owed their fortunes to slave- labor cotton. • A small number of abolitionists began to openly agitate for the complete end of slavery, but they were initially seen as radical quacks. Their argument that slavery should be eradicated, did gain adherents through the 1850s. But even on the very eve of the Civil War, most northerners were opposed not to slavery itself, but to the extension of slavery, and the threat it represented to free white labor. • On the part of Southerners, they increasingly rejected any attempt to limit slavery as an attack on their way of life. Aside from the obvious economic implications of the pro-slavery arguments, southern planters also cited states’ rights, biblical justifications, and the “positive good” theory- the highly paternalistic idea that southern slaves were better off than if they had been left in the pagan forests of Africa.

4. Compromise of 1850 and popular sovereignty • The issue of the extension of slavery was torn wide open by the admission of California, as a free state, in 1850. The carefully crafted senatorial balance would be upset, so the South was appeased with a bundle of compromises: Popular sovereignty would determine the issue of slavery in the remainder of the Mexican cession An agreement to the Texas/New Mexico border issue A ban on the slave trade, but not slavery itself, in Washington D.C. Strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act- which attempted to compel citizens to act to return escaped slaves to their owners. • The idea of “popular sovereignty” – allowing voters to decide the issue of allowing slavery, or not, at the territorial level- was especially appealing to many because it took pressure off of the national politicians to take a stand one way or the other. But as they would soon find out, popular sovereignty would only enflame the situation further, as each side entrenched.

5. The Kansas Nebraska Act and the emergence of the Republican Party • In 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, maneuvered a bill through Congress that organized the Nebraska territory, the present states of Kansas and Nebraska. Douglas wanted to organize the territory so that he could spearhead the effort to secure a northern route for the transcontinental railroad. • In order to gain support from the South, Douglas agreed to rescind the Missouri Compromise and again rely on popular sovereignty to settle the matter of slavery in the Nebraska territory. Reason followed that Kansas, on the border of slave state, Missouri, would likely become a slave state, and Nebraska, bordering free Iowa, would become a free state. • Although this arrangement outraged many northerners, Douglas was able to push the bill through. In 1855 and 1856, “Bleeding” Kansas endured a territorial civil war as pro and anti slavery factions literally battled for control of the territorial government. Popular sovereignty failed miserably, and the question of Kansas’ statehood was postponed indefinitely. • Around the same time as Stephen Douglas was attempting to patch up the slavery issue with the ill-fated Kansas-Nebraska Act, a new northern political party was beginning to take shape. Drawing from the remnants of the Whigs (more or less defunct after 1852), and incorporating a few other minor party movements, the Republican Party was important mainly because it was a sectional party, (almost exclusively northern) and because it embraced “free soil”- the idea that slavery should not be allowed to expand beyond its existent limits. • Republicans successfully elected congressional candidates in 1856, added to that number in 1858, and by 1860, had found a nationally viable candidate (in the North) with the plainspoken Abraham Lincoln.

6. Abraham Lincoln, the election of 1860, and secession • Lincoln was attractive as a candidate in part because he had a short political record, and had thus had made fewer enemies along the way. He had made a name for himself as a prominent Republican figure in the 1858 Senate race for Illinois, against the “Little Giant,” Stephen Douglas. Their series of debates highlighted the growing impasse over the extension of slavery and garnered national attention. • Lincoln lost to Douglas, but they would face off again in the presidential election of 1860. Douglas was a Democrat, but his party had split over slavery, and the resulting election was really two separate, sectional elections. The southern Democrats nominated a moderate supporter of slavery, John Breckinridge, while a group from the upper south put forth a compromise candidate from the hastily formed Constitutional Union Party, John Bell. • With the Democratic vote split, Lincoln was able to take all of the most populous northern states. Although he took less than 40% of the popular vote as a whole, he secured a majority of the electoral college. • The election of Lincoln, with his promised opposition to the extension of slavery, was just the pretext the southern states were seeking to declare their secession from the United States, which some had been threatening since 1850. Four days after the election, South Carolina made the first move, followed by six others within six weeks. These seven seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama in February of 1861 to organize the Confederate States of America- what they believed was a new nation. Four other states joined them in the ensuing months.