CHAPTER 13 – THE

UNION IN PERIL,
1848-1861
APUSH
STAHLBERG
 Free Soil Movement
■ When the Wilmot Proviso was rejected in the Senate people started to
think the South was leading a “Slave Power” conspiracy to dominate the
national life
■ The Free Soil Movement and later the Free Soil Party aimed to thwart
this conspiracy
– They depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism and to the Jeffersonian
ideal of a freeholder society
– They believed slavery threatened the equal distribution of land to white
family farmers
Slavery and Politics
■ Democrats split between:
a. Those who saw slaveholding as a constitutional right
that should expand without restriction
b. Those who supported popular sovereignty; the
decision about slavery left in the hands of the voters
in the specific territories
■ Whigs could not find a middle ground on slavery
and disappeared after the 1852 election
Compromise of 1850
■ 1849 – California bids for statehood
– South opposed the admission of another free state and feared the
exclusion of slavery from all of the Mexican Cession
■ Henry Clay proposed a compromise
1. California enters the union as a free state
2. End of slave trade in District of Columbia [Washington, D.C.]
3. Stronger fugitive slave law
4. Popular sovereignty for remaining territories of the Mexican
Cession
■ Stephen Douglas got the compromise through Congress
 Fugitive Slave Act
■ This law was part of the compromise of 1850.
– It was a law that REQUIRED citizens to catch
runaway slaves.
– If a person did not comply, they could be fined up
to $1000 or put in jail for SIX months.
– Judges received $10 if they returned a slave and
$5 if they freed them.
– MANY blacks who were free were captured and
sent back into slavery.
■ Northerners HATED this law because it forced them
to become a part of the system of slavery.
Kansas-Nebraska Act [1854]
■ Introduced by Stephen Douglas
– Divided the Nebraska Territory into two territories [Kansas
and Nebraska]
– Called for a vote among the settlers to decide the future
slavery there [popular sovereignty]
– Repealed the Missouri Compromise [1820]
■ Created a firestorm of protest
– Republican Party forms to combat the growing influence of
the “slave power”
 Republican Party
■ The Kansas-Nebraska Act ended the Whig Party
■ Ex-Whigs, northern Democrats, Free Soilers and abolitionists
will form the Republican Party in 1854
– They opposed slavery because it drove down the wages of free
workers and degraded the dignity of manual labor
– They envisioned a society of independent farmers, artisans, and
proprietors [business owners]
– Their values consisted of religious commitment, respectability
and capitalist enterprise
 Bleeding Kansas
■ After Kansas opens for settlement in 1856,
antislavery and pro-slavery forces fought to gain
political control
– Violence culminated with the burning of Lawrence,
Kansas and John Brown’s murder of five pro-
slavery settlers @ Pottawatomie Creek
■ The Lecompton Constitution emerged out of the
lawlessness
■ Kansas sought to enter the union as a slave state
– President Buchanan supported the proposed state
constitution, but western Democrats, led by Stephen
Douglas, defeated it in Congress
■ Postposed Kansas statehood and caused further
damage to the Democrat party
 Stowe and Helper:Literary Incendiaries
■ Harriet Beecher Stowe
– White woman, never lived in South
– Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852 in response to
Fug. Slave Law
– Awakened the North to horrors of slavery;
(Simon Legree)
– “Little woman who wrote the
book that made this great war”
■ Hinton R. Helper
– Impending Crisis of the South 1857
Says non-slaveholding whites suffered most
from slavery
■ Both books were banned/burned in South
 Election of 1856
■ The violence in Kansas dominated the election of 1856
■ America Know-Nothing Party: Millard Fillmore
– Platform: mobilize native-born Protestants against the Irish and
German Catholics, prohibit further immigration, and institute
literacy tests for voting
■ Democrat: James Buchanan
– Platform: popular sovereignty
■ Republican: John C. Freemont
– Platform: prohibited slavery in all of the territories and called for
federal subsidies for transcontinental railroads
 Dred Scott v. Sanford
■ Scott had lived in the Wisconsin Territory and
Illinois, both free areas
– Appealed for his freedom upon moving to Missouri
■ The Supreme Court’s decision:
– effectively denied citizenship to all blacks
– protected slavery’s expansion into the territories
– voided the Missouri Compromise [1820]
■ Ruling inflamed the Republican Party which
had narrowly lost the presidency in 1856
– They were now unified and energized for future
political battles
Tempers Flare in the Capitol
■ On May 19, 1856, Sumner gave a speech
attacking slavery. In that speech he insulted
Brooks’ uncle Senator Andrew Butler (SC).
– In response, on May 22 Brooks entered the
Senate chamber and beat Sumner with his
walking stick until it broke.

VS.
Preston Brooks Charles Sumner
Representative from S.C. Senator from Massachusetts
Lincoln Douglas Debates
■ Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas
engaged in a series of debates throughout
Illinois, designed to let the voters know
where they stood on the issues of the day.
– “A house divided against itself cannot
stand
– Did the Dred Scott decision deny the
people of a territory the right to ban
slavery through popular sovereignty?
■ Stephen Douglas ends up winning the
election
■ Exposed the nation Lincoln and his politics
■ John Brown again roiled the
nation with violence
– With 18 antislavery zealots, he
Raid at Harpers
planned to incite a slave rebellion Ferry [1859]
by seizing weapons at Harpers
Ferry, Virginia
■ The plan failed and Brown was
executed
■ His association with prominent
abolitionists convinced the South it
could only remain safely in the
Union by controlling the White
House
 Election of 1860
■ Northern and Western Democrats nominated: Stephen Douglas
■ Southern Democrats nominated: John C. Breckinridge
■ Republican: Abraham Lincoln
– The division in the Democrat Party helped Lincoln win the
election
■ He received less than 1% of the popular vote in the South and
only 40% of the popular vote, he won every northern and western
state except New Jersey
Election of 1860
■ Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but his stand on
slavery and its spread convinced the South that he
threatened its way of life

– December 1860 – South Carolina seceded from the

Union
Election of 1860 Video
 Secession of Southern States

■ Election of Abraham Lincoln led to the secession of:

– South Carolina – Dec. 20, 1860
– Mississippi – Jan. 9, 1861
– Florida – Jan. 10, 1861
– Alabama – Jan. 11, 1861
– Georgia – Jan. 19, 1861
– Louisiana – Jan. 20, 1861
– Texas – Feb. 1, 1861
The confederate States of America

■ Formed out of the 7 states that had seceded the Union

■ Jefferson Davis was president
■ Seized U.S. government property throughout the South
President Buchanan

■ He declared secession illegal, but claimed the federal

government lacked authority to restore the Union by force
– His apprehensiveness prompted South Carolina to
demand the surrender of Fort Sumter [a federal garrison
in Charleston Harbor] and to cut off its supplies
■ Buchanan backed down
Crittenden compromise

■ Buchanan urged for a compromise

– Crittenden Compromise consisted of two parts:
1. Called for a constitutional amendment to protect slavery from
federal interference in any state where slavery already existed
[this part Congress approved]
2. Called for the westward extension of the Missouri Compromise
line [36º30’ north latitude] to the California border
■ This provision would ban slavery north of the line and allow
bound labor to the south, including any territories “hereafter
acquired”