Final Chapter 13

Chapter 13: A House Divided (1840-1861)

Focus Questions

• What were the major factors contributing to U.S. territorial expansion in the 1840s?
• Why did the expansion of slavery become the most divisive political issue in the 1840s and 1850s?
• What combination of issues and events fueled the creation of the Republican Party in the 1850s?
• What enabled Lincoln to emerge as president from the divisive party politics of the 1850s?
• What were the final steps on the road to secession?

Chronology

• 1820: Moses Austin receives Mexican land grant.
• 1836: Texas independence from Mexico.
• 1845: Inauguration of James Polk; United States annexes Texas.
• 1846: Wilmot Proviso.
• 1846-1848: Mexican War.
• 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Gold discovered in California; Free Soil Party organized.
• 1849: Inauguration of Zachary Taylor.
• 1850: Compromise of 1850; Fugitive Slave Act.
• 1853: Inauguration of Franklin Pierce.
• 1854: Kansas-Nebraska Act; Know-Nothing Party established; Ostend Manifesto; Republican Party organized.
• 1856: Bleeding Kansas.
• 1857: Inauguration of James Buchanan; Dred Scott decision.
• 1858: Lincoln-Douglas debates.
• 1859: John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
• 1860: South Carolina secedes.
• 1861: Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln; Fort Sumter fired upon.

Fruits of Manifest Destiny

Continental Expansion

• By 1840, with Indian removal complete, most land east of the Mississippi River was in white hands leading to territorial expansion.
• The depression of 1837 spurred westward migration to Oregon for its fertile Willamette Valley.
• Between 1840 and 1845, approximately 5,000 emigrants traveled to Oregon from Missouri River banks.
• By 1860, nearly 300,000 people had journeyed to Oregon and California, facing disease, starvation, and Indian attacks.
• During the 1840s, the U.S. and Great Britain jointly administered Oregon, and Utah was part of Mexico.
• The 1840s saw an intensification of "manifest destiny," the belief that the U.S. should reach the Pacific Ocean.

The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and California

• Oregon settlement didn't directly raise the slavery issue, but acquiring part of Mexico did.
• In 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain, possessing a large territory with a population two-thirds the size of the U.S.
• Mexico's northern provinces (California, New Mexico, and Texas) were isolated and sparsely settled.
• New Mexico in 1821 had around 30,000 Spanish origin persons, 10,000 Pueblo Indians, and nomadic Indian tribes.
• The 1821 opening of the Santa Fe Trail linked New Mexico to Independence, Missouri, incorporating it into the U.S. sphere of influence.
• California in 1821 had about 3,200 missionaries, soldiers, and settlers vastly outnumbered by 20,000 Native Americans working on mission lands and 150,000 unsubdued Native Americans inland.
• In 1834, the Mexican government dissolved mission landholdings and emancipated Indians, with most land ending up with Californios (Mexican cattle ranchers).
• Californios saw themselves as gente de razón (people capable of reason) compared to Indians, whom they viewed as gente sin razón (people without reason).
• Indians were required to keep working for the new landholders for the "common good."
• By 1840, California had commercial links with the U.S., with New England ships trading in the region.
• In 1846, Alfred Robinson wondered why California shouldn't be annexed to extend the "area of freedom."

The Texas Revolt

• Texas was the first part of Mexico settled by significant numbers of Americans.
• The Spanish government accepted Moses Austin's offer to colonize Texas with Americans; in 1820, he received a land grant.
• Stephen Austin continued the plan in independent Mexico, selling land to American settlers at twelve cents per acre; settlers had to become Mexican citizens.
• By 1830, there were around 7,000 Americans in Texas, exceeding the number of Tejanos (Spanish-origin Texans).
• The Mexican government, alarmed, annulled land contracts and barred U.S. emigration in 1830.
• American settlers, led by Stephen Austin, demanded greater autonomy within Mexico, joined by some Tejano elites.
• Slavery became an issue, as Mexico had abolished it, but American settlers brought slaves.
• In 1835, General Antonio López de Santa Anna sent an army to impose central authority, leading to a local committee protesting that he sought to free slaves and enslave the settlers.
• Santa Anna's army sparked the Texas revolt.
• The rebels formed a provisional government that called for Texan independence.
• On March 6, 1836, Santa Anna's army stormed the Alamo in San Antonio, killing 187 American and Tejano defenders; "Remember the Alamo" became the rallying cry.
• In April, forces under Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna's army at the Battle of San Jacinto, forcing him to recognize Texan independence.
• Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas.
• In 1837, the Texas Congress called for union with the U.S., but President Martin Van Buren shelved the question over concerns about adding another slave state.
• Settlers, including slaveowners, poured into Texas, taking up fertile cotton land.
• By 1845, the population of Texas reached almost 150,000.

The Election of 1844

• Texas annexation was revived by President John Tyler in 1844 to rescue his administration and gain southern support.
• A leaked letter by John C. Calhoun linked Texas annexation to strengthening slavery.
• Some southern leaders wanted to divide Texas into multiple states.
• Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren opposed immediate annexation to avoid war with Mexico.
• They tried to keep the slavery issue out of national politics.

Liberty and Expansion

• Expansion raised questions about freedom, race, and citizenship in new territories.
• Texas constitution excluded Indians and Africans from citizenship.
• A Texas law in 1840 prohibited free African-Americans from entering the state.
• "Spanish" Mexicans in Texas were considered white, but New Mexicans were deemed "too Mexican" for self-government; New Mexico wasn't allowed to become a state until 1912 due to lagging white migration.

Gold-Rush California

• California had fewer than 15,000 non-Indian residents when the Mexican War ended.
• In January 1848, gold was discovered at Johann A. Sutter's sawmill in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sparking the gold rush.
• The non-Indian population rose to 200,000 by 1852 and over 360,000 by 1860.
• California's gold-rush population was diverse, including miners from Mexico and South America, Americans from the East, and immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Australia.
• Nearly 25,000 Chinese immigrants arrived between 1849 and 1852 as laborers.
• San Francisco grew from 1,000 residents in 1848 to 30,000 by 1850, becoming racially and ethnically diverse.
• Most gold-rush migrants were young men, but women ran restaurants, boardinghouses, and worked as laundresses, cooks, and prostitutes.
• In 1860, California's male population outnumbered females by nearly three to one.

California and the Boundaries of Freedom

• Early surface mines quickly exhausted, giving way to underground mining requiring large capital investments.
• Economic development worsened racial and ethnic conflicts.
• Gold-rush California's law was fragile; "committees of vigilance" took control in San Francisco in 1851 and 1856, bypassing courts to try and execute those accused of crimes.
• White miners expelled "foreign miners" (Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, French, American Indians) from gold areas.
• The state legislature imposed a $20 per month tax on foreign miners, driving many out.
• California retained an image as a place for newcomers to start anew, but its freedom was limited.
• The 1850 state constitution restricted voting and court testimony to whites, excluding Indians, Asians, and most Blacks.
• Landowners of Spanish descent or those intermarried with American settlers were deemed white, but land titles from Mexican days were easily challenged.
• Chinese people faced prejudice; Governor John Bigler called them "coolies" who undercut free white labor.
• Chinese women were described as prostitutes.
• California's Indian population was decimated by the gold rush; miners, ranchers, and vigilantes murdered thousands.
• State officials paid bounties to militias that attacked Indians; thousands of Indian children were sold as slaves.
• By 1860, California's Indigenous population decreased from nearly 150,000 to around 30,000.

Opening Japan

• The Mexican War gave the U.S. possession of harbors like San Diego and San Francisco for trade with the Far East.
• Between 1848 and 1860, American trade with China tripled.
• In the 1850s, the U.S. led in opening Japan, which had been closed to foreign contact for over two centuries.
• In 1853 and 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor and demanded a trade treaty.
• Japanese leaders, alarmed by European intrusions into China and impressed by Perry's armaments, opened two ports to American shipping in 1854.
• In 1856, Townsend Harris became the first American consul and persuaded the Japanese to allow American ships into additional ports and establish full diplomatic relations.
• Japan soon launched a process of modernization.

A Dose of Arsenic

• Victory over Mexico added a vast territory, raising the issue of slavery's expansion.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted, "Mexico will poison us", which meant the issue of slavery would divide the nation.
• The Methodists and Baptists split into northern and southern branches in 1844 and 1845.
• The slavery issue dissolved the two-party system, a strong force for national unity.

The Wilmot Proviso

• Before 1846, the status of slavery had been settled by state law or the Missouri Compromise.
• Acquiring new land reopened the question of slavery's expansion; in 1846, Congressman David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso, prohibiting slavery in territory acquired from Mexico.
• Party lines crumbled, with northerners supporting the Proviso and southerners opposing it.
• The measure passed the House but failed in the Senate.
• In 1848, opponents of slavery's expansion formed the Free Soil Party, nominating Martin Van Buren for president.
• Democrats nominated Lewis Cass, who proposed popular sovereignty (settlers decide on slavery).
• Van Buren's campaign appealed to northerners against slavery's expansion, polling 300,000 votes.
• The Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, won in 1848.
• Senator William H. Seward commented, "Antislavery is at length a respectable element in politics."

The Free Soil Appeal

• The Free Soil position appealed to northerners beyond abolitionists.
• Congress had precedents for keeping territories free from slavery (Northwest Ordinance, Missouri Compromise).
• Many northerners resented southern domination of the federal government.
• Preventing new slave states appealed to those favoring protective tariffs and government aid to internal improvements.
• The labor movement promoted access to western land to combat unemployment in the East.
• George Henry Evans declared "Freedom of the soil" as an alternative to economic dependence.
• The term "free soil" had a double meaning calling for barring slavery from western territories and for the federal government to provide free homesteads to settlers in the new territories.
• The "free soil" idea also appealed to northern racism; Wilmot aimed to advance "the cause and rights of the free white man," by preventing competition with "Black labor."
• To white southerners, barring slavery from new territory violated their rights.
• Southerners fought and died to win these territories and should share the victory.
• Southern leaders believed slavery must expand or die.
• Southern interests would not be secure in a Union dominated by non-slaveholding states.

Crisis and Compromise

• The year 1848 was remembered as a time of democratic uprisings in Europe.
• Established party leaders moved to resolve sectional differences.
• In 1850, California requested admission to the Union as a free state, alarming southerners.
• Senator Henry Clay proposed the Compromise of 1850 with four main provisions:
  • California would enter as a free state.
  • The slave trade (but not slavery) would be abolished in the nation's capital.
  • A stringent new law would help southerners reclaim runaway slaves.
  • The status of slavery in remaining territories from Mexico would be decided by local white inhabitants.
  • The United States would agree to pay off Texas's debt.

The Great Debate

• In the Senate debate on the Compromise, leaders spoke for and against it.
• Daniel Webster was willing to accept a new fugitive slave law for sectional peace.
• John C. Calhoun rejected the very idea of compromise and said slavery must be protected and extended, and the North must yield.
• William H. Seward opposed compromise, stating that a "higher law" than the Constitution condemned slavery.
• President Zachary Taylor opposed compromise and insisted to admit California to the Union.
• Millard Fillmore supported and helped to secure the Compromise of 1850 after President Taylor's death.

The Fugitive Slave Issue

• The new Fugitive Slave Act made further controversy inevitable allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial.
• The Act prohibited local authorities from interfering with the capture of fugitives and required individual citizens to assist in such capture when called upon by federal agents.
• Southern leaders supported a measure that brought federal agents into communities throughout the North.
• The law widened sectional divisions and reinvigorated the Underground Railroad.
• Fugitives and abolitionist allies violently resisted recapture; a large crowd rescued the escaped slave Jerry from jail in Syracuse, New York, and spirited him off to Canada.
• Margaret Garner killed her daughter rather than see her returned to slavery.
• The Underground Railroad redoubled its efforts to assist fugitives, placed on trains to Canada.
• Hundreds of fugitives and freeborn Blacks fled to Canada for safety.
• The sight of refugees seeking liberty in a foreign land challenged the image of the U.S. as an asylum for freedom.

Douglas and Popular Sovereignty

• The Compromise of 1850 temporarily restored sectional peace.
• In the 1852 presidential election, Franklin Pierce won due to he recognized the Compromise as a final settlement of the slavery controversy.
• In 1854, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to provide territorial governments for Kansas and Nebraska, located within the Louisiana Purchase.
• Douglas hoped that a transcontinental railroad could be constructed through Kansas or Nebraska.
• Douglas hoped to satisfy the Southerners by applying the principle of popular sovereignty.
• Douglas believed that popular sovereignty embodied the idea of local self-government and offered a middle ground between the extremes of North and South and enable capturing the presidential nomination in 1856.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Kansas and Nebraska in the nation's heartland.
• Slavery was prohibited there under the terms of the Missouri Compromise, which Douglas's bill would repeal.
• A group of antislavery congressmen issued the Appeal of the Independent Democrats.
• The Appeal proved to be one of the most effective pieces of political persuasion calling Douglas's bill a "gross violation of a sacred pledge" and aiming at nothing less than extending their peculiar institution throughout the West.
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law and shattered the Democratic Party's unity.
• The Whig Party unable to develop a unified response to the political crisis, collapsed.
• The South became solidly Democratic.
• Most northern Whigs joined a new organization, the Republican Party, dedicated to preventing the further expansion of slavery.

The Rise of the Republican Party

The Northern Economy

• The rise of the Republican Party reflected economic and social changes, notably the completion of the market revolution and mass immigration from Europe.
• From 1843 to 1857, there was explosive economic growth (especially in the North).
• Railroad network completion boosted the economy greatly.
• From 5,000 miles in 1848, railroad track mileage grew to 30,000 by 1860 mainly in Ohio, Illinois, and the Old Northwest.
• Four great trunk railroads now linked eastern cities with western farming and commercial centers.
• Railroads completed the reorientation of the Northwest's trade from the South to the East.
• The economic integration of the Northwest and Northeast created the groundwork for their political unification in the Republican Party.
• By 1860, the North had an integrated economy, with eastern industrialists marketing goods to western farmers, and city residents consuming western food.
• Northern society was in transition; most people lived in small towns, and economic independence was within reach, but most of the northern workforce no longer labored in agriculture.
• Two industrial production areas arose: one along the Atlantic coast (Boston to Philadelphia), and one near the Great Lakes (Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago).
• Coal mining and iron manufacturing grew rapidly, driven by railroad expansion.
• Chicago became a major rail center and manufacturing center with reapers, barbed wire, windmills, and prefabricated houses.
• New York City became the nation's financial, commercial, and manufacturing center.
• The South did not share in these broad economic changes, although cotton production did bring more wealth to slaveholders.

The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings

• In 1854, nativism emerged with the American, or Know-Nothing, Party, which focused on anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment.
• The Know-Nothing Party emerged dedication to reserving political office for native-born Americans and resisting the "aggressions" of the Catholic Church.
• The Know-Nothings won state elections in Massachusetts in 1854 electing the governor, all of the state's congressmen, and nearly every member of the state legislature and captured the mayor's office in cities.
• In the North, the Know-Nothings' appeal combined anti-Catholic and antislavery sentiment and opposition to the sale of liquor.

Important Note: All European immigrants benefited from being white.
During the 1850s, free Blacks found immigrants pushing them out of jobs.
Immigrants after white male suffrage had become the norm and automatically received the right to vote.

The Free Labor Ideology

• By 1856, the Republican Party, including former Democrats, Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Know-Nothings, was the major alternative to the Democratic Party in the North.
• Republicans convinced northerners that the Slave Power posed a greater threat to their liberties.
• The party's appeal rested on the idea of "free labor".
• Republicans idealized the North, saying northern society offered each laborer the opportunity to become a landowning farmer or independent craftsman.
• Slavery produced degraded slaves, poor whites, and idle aristocrats and that if slavery spread to the West, it would diminish chances for social advancement.
• Republicans insisted that slavery must be kept out of the territories so that free labor could flourish.
• They called for "freedom national" (ending federal government support of slavery), which meant not abolition, but ending the federal government's support of slavery.
• Republicans were not abolitionists and they attacking slavery where it existed.
• Senator William H. Seward said that the nation's division into free and slave societies was an "irrepressible conflict" that eventually would have to be resolved.
• Seward said that market revolution heightened the tension between freedom and slavery.
• The United States, he predicted, "must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation."

Bleeding Kansas and the Election of 1856

• In 1854 and 1855, hundreds of proslavery Missourians crossed the border to cast fraudulent ballots when Kansas held elections.
• President Franklin Pierce recognized the legitimacy of the resulting proslavery legislature.
• Settlers from free states established a rival government while the civil war broke out in Kansas.
• In May 1856, a proslavery mob attacked the free-soil stronghold of Lawrence, burning public buildings and pillaging private homes.
• South Carolina representative Preston Brooks beat antislavery senator Charles Sumner unconscious in Congress.
• In the election of 1856, the Republican Party chose John C. Frémont as its candidate, opposing slavery's further expansion.
• Democratic nominated James Buchanan.
• The Democratic platform endorsed popular sovereignty.
• The Know-Nothings presented Millard Fillmore as their candidate.
• Buchanan won the entire South and the key northern states, with Fillmore carrying only Maryland.
• The 1856 election made clear that parties had reoriented themselves along sectional lines.

The Emergence of Lincoln

The Dred Scott Decision

• James Buchanan wanted to diminish inflamed sectional emotions.
• Buchanan knew of an impending Supreme Court decision that might settle the slavery controversy.
• This was the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, regarding Dred Scott who accompanied his owner to Illinois (where slavery was prohibited) and Wisconsin Territory (barred by the Missouri Compromise).
• After returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom, claiming residence on free soil had made him free.
• The Court addressed three questions:
  • Could a Black person be a citizen and sue in federal court?
  • Did residence in a free state make Scott free?
  • Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?
• The Court divided 6-3 decision; Chief Justice Roger B. Taney made clear his conviction that only white persons were eligible to be part of the American body politic.
  Taney declared that only white persons could be citizens of the United States
  *Taney insisted that the nation's founders believed that Blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
• Taney said citizenship meant freedom from legal discrimination.
• Scott remained a slave; Illinois law had no effect after returning to Missouri.
• Congress had no power under the Constitution to bar slavery from a territory.
• The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and so was any measure interfering with southerners' right to bring slaves into territories.
  The decision declared unconstitutional the Republican platform opposing slavery's expansion

The Decision's Aftermath

• A new owner emancipated Scott and his family; Scott died in 1858.
• The Dred Scott decision caused a furor in the North and put the question of Black citizenship on the national political agenda.
• James McCune Smith demonstrated that all free persons born in the United States, Black as well as white, "must be citizens."
• Justice John McLean insisted that regardless of race, "birth on the soil of a country both creates the duties and confers the rights of citizenship."
• President Buchanan announced slavery existed in all territories by virtue of the Constitution.
• In 1858, administration tried to admit Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution.
• Douglas allied with congressional Republicans blocked the attempt.
• Southern Democrats no support Douglas.

Lincoln and Slavery

• The depth of division over slavery was evident in the 1858 election campaign.
• Douglas faced strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.
• Born in Kentucky in 1809, Lincoln had moved to frontier Indiana and then Illinois.
• He served four terms in the state legislature and one in Congress.
• Lincoln reentered politics in 1854 due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• Lincoln wanted to stop the expansion of slavery.
• Lincoln's speeches combined moral fervor of abolitionists with respect for order and the Constitution.
• His own life was an example that he wanted every man to have the chance and that Blacks might not be the equal of whites, but in their "natural right" to the fruits of their labor, they were "my equal and the equal of all others."

The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign

• The campaign against Douglas created Lincoln's reputation accepting is parties nomination in June 1858.
• "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free."
• Lincoln insisted that Americans must choose between favoring and opposing slavery.

The Impending Crisis

The Secession Movement

In the eyes of white southerners, Lincoln's victory threatened their values and interests.

• Those advocating secession didn't believe Lincoln would immediately act against slavery in the states.
• At stake was an entire way of life
  In the months after Lincoln's election, seven states (South Carolina to Texas) seceded.

South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession focused on the issue of slavery

The Secession Crisis

• President Buchanan denied states could secede, but believed the federal government had no right to use force against it.
• Senator John J. Crittenden offered the most widely supported compromise, which would have guaranteed slavery and extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean.
• Seceding states rejected the compromise; it foundered on Lincoln's opposition.
• Lincoln stood against slavery expansion and feared that Crittenden's reference to land "hereafter acquired" offered the South to demand the acquisition of Cuba, Mexico, and other territory suited to slavery.
• The seceding states formed the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as president who adopted a constitution.
• The Confederate constitution: guaranteeing slave property.

And the War Came

• When Lincoln became president, eight slave states of the Upper South remained in the Union.
• In his inaugural address, Lincoln rejected the right of secession, but did promise to "hold" remaining federal property in the seceding states.
• Lincoln avoided any action that might drive more states from the Union.
• On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter, leading to the surrender of the fort.
• Lincoln proclaimed an insurrection in the South and called for 75,000 troops to suppress it.
• Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy.
  *
  In 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's warning came to pass with the struggle to rebuild bring a new birth of American freedom.

Review Questions

1. Explain the justifications for the doctrine of manifest destiny, including material and idealistic motivations.
2. Why did many Americans criticize the Mexican War? How did they see expansion as a threat to American liberties?
3. How did the concept of "race" develop by the mid-nineteenth century, and how did it enter into the manifest destiny debate?
4. How did western expansion affect the sectional tensions between the North and South?
5. How did the market revolution contribute to the rise of the Republican Party? How did those economic and political factors serve to unite groups in the Northeast and in the Northwest, and why was that unity significant?
6. What was the "Slave Power," and why did many northerners feel threatened by it?
7. How did the Dred Scott decision spark new debates over citizenship for African Americans?
8. Based on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, how did the two differ on the expansion of slavery, equal rights, and the role of the national government? Use examples of their words to illustrate your points.
9. Why did Stephen Douglas, among others, believe that "popular sovereignty" could resolve sectional divisions of the 1850s? Why did the idea not work out?
10. Explain how sectional voting patterns in the 1860 presidential election allowed southern "fire-eaters" to justify secession.
11. What do the California gold rush and the opening of Japan reveal about the United States' involvement in a global economic system?

Key Terms

• Tejanos (p. 480)
• Antonio López de Santa Anna (p. 481)
• Texas revolt (p. 482)
• Mexican War (p. 484)
• Gadsden Purchase (p. 485)
• Gold rush (p. 488)
• Commodore Matthew Perry (p. 490)
• Wilmot Proviso (p. 491)
• Free Soil Party (p. 491)
• Compromise of 1850 (p. 494)
• Fugitive Slave Act (p. 494)
• Popular sovereignty (p. 497)
• Kansas-Nebraska Act (p. 497)
• Know-Nothing Party (p. 499)
• The Slave Power (p. 501)
• "Bleeding Kansas" (p. 502)
• Dred Scott v. Sandford (p. 503)
• Lincoln-Douglas debates (p. 508)
• Harpers Ferry, Virginia (p. 508)
• Fort Sumter (p. 517)