Ch.14

1. Free Soil Party—1848

 Northern antislavery forces were unhappy with the choices of Cass and popular

sovereignty or Whig Zachary Taylor, a slaveholder. They formed the Free Soil Party,

favoring the Wilmot Proviso and a homestead act that would give small farms to those

who wished to settle on public lands.

 Components of the party included antislavery Northern Democrats, Conscience Whigs,

members of the Liberty Party, and eastern workers who wanted a homestead act.

 The Free Soilers argued that slavery undermined the dignity of labor and limited social

mobility. Viewing slavery as an economically inefficient, obsolete institution, they

believed that slavery should be contained, and that if contained, it would ultimately

disappear.

2. Conscience Whigs

 These were Whigs who condemned slavery on moral grounds. They were based in New

England; most later joined the new Republican Party.

3. Cotton Whigs

 These were Whigs who favored slavery and who eventually joined the Democrats.

4. The Compromise of 1850

 The Compromise of 1850 was the work of Henry Clay. He was supported by Stephen

Douglas and Daniel Webster.

 California had petitioned for admission as a free state; this would upset the sectional

balance in the Senate. Southern states threatened secession. The nation faced a real

possibility of war.

 The Compromise called for admitting California as a free state, organizing Utah and New

Mexico as territories on the basis of popular sovereignty, adjusting the Texas/New

Mexico border (which created a larger area likely to be free soil), transferring

responsibility for Texas’ public debt to the national government, abolishing the slave

trade (not slavery) in the District of Columbia, establishing a tougher fugitive slave law,

and Congress passing a resolution denying its jurisdiction over interstate slave trade.

5. Daniel Webster’s 7th of March Speech

 In a famous speech, Webster pleaded with the North to accept the Compromise. Webster

argued that it was not necessary to restrict slavery from the Mexican Cession because the

area, he believed, was geographically unsuited to cotton farming and slavery.

 Although abolitionists branded Webster a traitor, his speech helped the Compromise win

acceptance.

6. The Death of Taylor/President Millard Fillmore

 Taylor would have vetoed any compromise. His death allowed Vice President Millard

Fillmore to become president; Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850.

7. Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (the Bloodhound Bill)

 This was one of the provisions of the Compromise of 1850. It decreed that fleeing slaves

could not testify on their own behalf and that they were denied a trial by jury. The federal

commissioners who handled the cases received $5 if a slave was declared free and $10 if

the slave was found to be a runaway. Northerners who aided the slaves in their escape

were subject to heavy fines and jail sentences. Further, this law allowed slave catchers to

capture slaves who had reached the North decades earlier.

 Though this law was no better enforced than its predecessors, it helped to unite the North

against slavery.

8. The Underground Railroad

 The Underground Railroad was an organized group of abolitionists who used their homes

as “stations” and helped to guide slaves from the South to freedom.

 By 1850 1,000 slaves (out of four million) were running away each year. However, more

gained their freedom by self-purchase or voluntary emancipation than by escape.

9. Harriet Tubman

 A runaway slave and so-called conductor on the Underground Railroad, in nineteen trips

to the South she rescued over 300 slaves.

10. Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

 This melodramatic novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe helped to solidify Northern

opposition to slavery and bring on the Civil War. Many Northerners who read it vowed

not to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. The book also aroused public opinion in England and

France in support of the North.

11. Personal Liberty Laws

 Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law aroused passions in the North. The capture of one

escaped slave in Boston led to a protest by 50,000.

 Nine Northern states passed personal liberty laws to block state officials from enforcing

the Fugitive Slave Law.

12. How did the Compromise of 1850 help win the coming Civil War for the North?

 The Compromise did not prevent the Civil War; it merely delayed it for a decade.

However, that decade helped to unify the North and gave the North time to increase its

advantages in population, manufacturing, and transportation. Had the war begun in 1850,

the South might have seceded successfully.

13. The Election of 1852

 Democrats endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and popular sovereignty, and won the

election with dark horse Franklin Pierce, a pro-South Northerner.

 The Whigs nominated Winfield Scott. Northern Whigs accepted Scott but abhorred his

platform, which endorsed the Fugitive Slave Law. Southern Whigs accepted the platform

but rejected Scott whom they mistrusted on slavery issues.

 This election marked the end of the Whigs as an effective political force. It also marked

the decline of national political parties and the rise of sectional parties. Pierce was the

last presidential candidate for eighty years to win both the popular and electoral vote in

both the North and South.

14. The Gadsden Purchase – 1853 (NOT IN OPENSTAX)

 Five years after the Mexican Cession, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for a

small strip of land in Southern Arizona and New Mexico. This land provided a favorable

southern railroad route into California. Many Americans felt that the large sum paid for

this territory was just “conscience money.”

15. Stephen A. Douglas & Kansas-Nebraska Act—1854

 Douglas hoped to have a transcontinental railroad built, not on the southern route through

the Gadsden Purchase (see below!), but from Chicago to the West Coast. (He owned

considerable Chicago real estate.) Opponents of this route objected that it would have to

cross unorganized territories. Douglas also hoped to win Southern support for his

presidential bid, so he proposed repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which,

Douglas argued, was outdated as a result of the Compromise of 1850).

 The bill proposed to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the basis of

popular sovereignty.

 In consequence, both pro- and antislavery forces rushed to Kansas, hoping to influence

any vote on slavery. As a result, a small-scale civil war known as “Bleeding Kansas”

erupted.

16. Republican Party—1854

 The North protested the Kansas-Nebraska Act vehemently. The Republican Party was

organized to oppose expansion of slavery. The party was composed of Free Soilers, anti-

Douglas Democrats, and Conscience Whigs. It was purely a sectional party with no

support in the South. Its appeal was so powerful that after only two years it almost

elected a president and it completely displaced the Whigs, who disappeared by 1856.

17. Lecompton Constitution

 In 1857 the pro-slavery forces in Kansas applied for statehood and drew up the

Lecompton Constitution. This document would protect the rights of slaveholders already

in Kansas, allowing them to retain their slave property.

 The referendum on the Lecompton Constitution permitted two choices: a pro-slavery

constitution permitting the importation of more slaves or a pro-slavery constitution that

banned the import of more slaves. Free-Soilers boycotted this election.

 President Buchanan endorsed the Lecompton Constitution, but Senator Douglas opposed

it. Another vote was taken, this one allowing Kansans to choose between accepting the

Lecompton Constitution and slavery or rejecting it (and delaying statehood). The voters

overwhelmingly rejected the Lecompton Constitution.

18. Emigrant Aid Societies

 Abolitionist groups such as the New England Emigrant Aid Society sent to Kansas

settlers armed with Sharps rifles (Beecher’s Bibles—named for abolitionist preacher

Henry Ward Beecher who said that guns would do more than Bibles to enforce morality

in Kansas).

 The movement encouraged 2600 people to move to Kansas.

19. John Brown at Pottawatomie Creek

 Brown was one of the abolitionists who had moved to Kansas to influence the vote. In

response to a border ruffian raid on Lawrence, Kansas, (the raid destroyed two Free-Soil

printing presses but killed no one), Brown led a band of his followers to Pottawatomie

Creek in May of 1856. There they hacked to pieces five pro-slavery men. This act

brought vicious retaliation from those in favor of slavery, and the violence of Bleeding

Kansas was ignited.

20. Bleeding Kansas

 Popular sovereignty was to determine the status of slavery in Kansas. It did not work well

since both abolitionists and pro-slavery men (those from Missouri were known as border

ruffians) poured into the state to influence the vote. Each side established a government

of questionable legality.

 Both sides used violence in their attempts to determine the outcome. Over 200 people

were killed in a miniature civil war that lasted until it was overtaken by the national

conflict in 1861.

21. Sumner/Brooks Affair—1856

 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a leading abolitionist, gave a speech in which

he referred insultingly to South Carolina and her Senator Butler. Representative Preston

Brooks, also from South Carolina, resented the insults to his state and his senator. Brooks

attacked Sumner at his Senate desk and proceeded to beat Sumner with a cane. Sumner

fell to the floor unconscious and bleeding. Sumner’s injuries were serious, and he was

forced to leave his Senate seat for three years. Brooks became a hero in the South;

supporters sent him new canes.

22. Election of 1856

 The Democratic Party, seeking to evade the slavery issue, nominated James Buchanan, a

Northerner with Southern sympathies (a doughface), and endorsed popular sovereignty in

their platform. The Republicans nominated John C. Frémont, an opponent of slavery, and

wrote a platform opposing the extension of slavery into the territories. The American or

Know-Nothing Party nominated ex-president Fillmore. The Whig Party had disintegrated

at this point. Frémont carried eleven Northern states, but Buchanan won five other

Northern states as well as the South, seizing the White House.

 At this point, Democrats were attempting to placate slave states, but Southern leaders

were talking openly of secession should a “Black Republican” win the election.

23. The American or Know-Nothing Party

 The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner was formed in 1849 to oppose the influence of

Catholic immigrants from Ireland and, in smaller numbers, Germany. By 1850 Roman

Catholics became the country’s largest religious denomination. The concern was that

Catholic immigrants would outbreed and outvote native Protestants.

 The OSSB soon developed into the American or Know-Nothing Party. The Know-

Nothings pressed for restrictions on immigration and naturalization and for the

deportation of alien paupers.

 Another focus of the Know-Nothing Party was the elimination of parochial (religious)

schools. Irish Catholic immigrants objected to what they saw as Protestant indoctrination

in the public schools. Rather than allow their tax dollars to support this indoctrination,

they petitioned to have tax dollars support parochial schools or, failing that, to open

privately funded parochial schools. The Know-Nothings countered that this would lead to

control of education by the Pope and would be detrimental to democracy.

 Mob violence against Catholics was not uncommon.

24. James Buchanan/Doughface President

 When the states started to secede, Buchanan said this was illegal but he couldn’t do

anything about it because the Constitution did not allow the federal government to use

force against the states.

 A doughface was a northerner who was sympathetic to southern views. There are several

explanations for the term, the most likely being that such northerners were pliable, like

dough.

25. Dred Scott Case & Roger B. Taney—1857

 Scott, a Missouri slave, sued for his freedom, claiming that his five-year stay in the

northern portion of the Louisiana Territory made free land by the Missouri Compromise

had made him a free man.

 Chief Justice Taney’s decision stated that Scott couldn’t sue in federal court because he

was property; blacks, said Taney, could not be citizens. Further, Taney ruled that the

Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional since it deprived slave owners of the right to

take their property into federal territories in violation of the Fifth Amendment. In

essence, this meant that all territories had to be open to slavery.

26. Lincoln/Douglas Debates—1858

 Douglas, a Democrat, was running for re-election to the Senate from Illinois against

Lincoln, a relatively unknown Republican. They engaged in a series of seven debates, the

most famous being in Freeport, Illinois. Though Douglas won the election, these debates

made Lincoln known throughout the North.

 Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, but he argued against social

and political equality for blacks. He also stated that Congress could not abolish slavery in

the South.

 Douglas also opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, but argued that popular

sovereignty was the best means of accomplishing this without disrupting the Union.

27. Freeport Doctrine—1858

 In Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln asked Douglas to state his view on slavery in the territories.

Douglas replied that the Dred Scott decision made slavery legal in the territories in

theory, but the people of a territory could keep slaves out in practice. They could do this

simply by refusing to enact the laws necessary for slavery to function.

 Douglas was narrowly reelected to the Senate, but his Freeport Doctrine cost him

Southern support for the presidency in 1860.

28. John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia—1859

 Hoping to spark a slave rebellion, Brown and a small group of followers attacked the

federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The attack failed and Brown was hanged for treason.

 Northerners applauded Brown’s devotion to the cause of freedom. Southerners saw the

raid as evidence of the North’s unstinting efforts to abolish slavery.

29. Election of 1860

 Lincoln, nominated by the Republican Party, won the election. The Republicans opposed

the expansion of slavery to the territories but promised not to interfere with slavery in the

states. Their platform also pledged a protective tariff, federal aid for internal

improvements, a transcontinental railroad, and free homestead farms.

 Northern Democrats supported popular sovereignty and nominated Douglas. Southern

Democrats demanded the enforcement of the Dred Scott decision and nominated John

Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union Party (mostly former Whigs and Know-

Nothings) nominated John Bell, called for support of the Union, and hoped for

compromise.

 Lincoln, though he won only 40% of the popular vote and was not on the ballot in the

South, swept the North and won the election. His election convinced the South that it was

time to act.

U.S. Happenings in the World during the 1850s

30. Clayton-Bulwer Treaty—1850

 Britain feared the US would monopolize trade routes across Central America and so

established itself at Greytown on the eastern end of a possible Nicaraguan canal route.

This was a challenge to the Monroe Doctrine.

 The potential conflict was averted by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which provided that

neither America nor Britain would fortify or secure exclusive control of any isthmian

waterway.

31. Commodore Matthew C. Perry/Japan—1853–1854

 Perry arrived in Japan, which had been closed to outsiders for nearly two hundred years,

and, using a combination of force and tact, persuaded the Japanese to sign a treaty in

1854 that allowed America to get a commercial foot in the door.