CHAPTER 14

THE GATHERING STORM

1848-1860
 I– Slavery in Territories
I-1 The Wilmot Proviso
 The Mexican War was less than three months old
when the seeds of new conflict began to spread.
 David Wilmot, a Democrat congressman from
Pennsylvania, discussed President James K. Polk’s
(US 11th president (1845-1849)) request to support
the war against Mexico.
 On August 8, 1846 he endorsed the annexation of
Texas as a slave State whereas he was against
slavery.
 He declared: “God forbid that we should be the
means of planting this institution [slavery] upon it.”
• Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina defended slavery
He asserted his pride in being a slaveholding cotton planter.
 Congress had no right to prevent any citizen from taking
slaves.
→ Senator John C. Calhoun took the Bill of Rights as a
guarantee of slavery.
 Slavery thus played the crucial role in the series of events
dividing the nation and prompting secession and civil war.
 I-2 popular sovereignty
 Popular sovereignty or “squatter sovereignty” was Lewis
Cass (senator) of Michigan's idea.
 It promised to open the territories to no slaveholding farmers
 Senator Stephen A. Douglass of Illinois and other prominent
democrats endorsed it.
I- 3 The Free-soil Coalition
 Its slogan or motto was : free soil, free speech free labor,
and free men”.
 Free soil in the new territories rather than abolition in the
South.
 David Wilmot had raised a standard to which a broad
coalition could rally. Ex. William Lloyd Garrison and his
abolitionist movement.
 In 1848 hey created the Free-Soil Party at a convention at
Buffalo, New York.
 II- The Compromise of 1850
 Divisions over slavery in territories

II-1 The Great Debate

 In January 1850 Henry Clay (Secretary of State)
presented a package of eight resolutions
designed to solve all the disputed issues.
 Congress debated the contentious issues.
 Clay's Compromise was set forth for a vote, it did
not receive a majority.
 II-2 Toward A Compromise
 Henry Clay himself had to leave in sickness.
 His successor, Millard Fillmore, was much more interested in
compromise.
 By September, Clay's Compromise became law.
 It consisted of laws.
 (1) admitting California as a free state.
 (2) creating Utah and new Mexico territories with the question of
slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty.
 (3) settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s
favor……
 (4) ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C.,
 (5) making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves.
• II-3 The Fugitive Slave Act
 The Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial of the
compromise of 1850.
 It required northerners to return runaway slaves to their
owners under penalty of law.

• II-4 Uncle Tom’s Cabin

 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stow
depicts slavery.
III-The Kansas-Nebraska Crisis
 In January 1854, Stephen Douglas introduced a bill to set up a
government in the Nebraska Territory.
 Douglas knew southern whites did not wish to add another free
state to the Union.
 He proposed that the Nebraska Territory be divided into two
territories; Kansas & Nebraska.
 The settlers living in each territory would be able to decide the
issue of slavery by popular sovereignty.
 Douglas's bill was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
 Southern leaders supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
 Kansas-Nebraska Act would set off a series of events that many
argued led to the Civil War.
III-1 "Bleeding Kansas"
 In 1856, proslavery men raided the town of Lawrence,
Kansas which was an antislavery stronghold.
 Attackers smashed the press of a Free-Soil newspaper
and destroyed homes.
 Abolitionist John Brown, son of fervent Ohio Calvinists
who believed that life was a crusade against sin.
 He believed that slavery was the most wicked of sins.
 He moved to Kansas to make it a free state and he rode
with his sons to the town of Pottawatomie Creek. Brown
and his four sons dragged five proslavery settlers from
their beds and murdered them.
• The killings at Pottawatomie Creek led to more violence,
marked by guerrilla warfare.
 By 1856, over 200 people had been killed in Kansas.
 Newspapers began to call the area “Bleeding Kansas.”
III-2 Violence in the Senate
 The violence in Kansas over slavery spilled over into
Congress.
 On May 22, 1856 a sudden flash of violence on the
Senate floor electrified the whole country.
 Senator Charles Summer of Massachusetts delivered an
inflammatory speech on “The Crime against Kansas.”
 His brutal beating drove more northerners into the
Republican party.
 IV-Deepening Sectional Crisis
The Dred Scott Case
 The Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott.
 First, the Court ruled that an enslaved person
could not file a lawsuit because he was not a
citizen.
 Court's written decision clearly stated that slaves
were considered property.
 According to the Court, Congress did not have the
power to outlaw slavery in any territory.
V- The Center Comes Part
V-1 The Democrats Divided
 The union’s crisis intensified as the democratic party
fragmented along sectional lines and the republicans
gained support in the north and the Midwest.
V-2 Lincoln Election
 Abraham Lincoln was the only Republican leader to
emerge whose policies and temper may have saved the
union.
V-3 Response in the South
 Lincoln election convinced many white southerners that
their only choice was secession, which would likely lead
to war.
THANK YOU

Dr. ETTIEN