Stowe and Helper:  Literary Incendiaries

• Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 as an attempt to show North the horrors of slavery

  • Helped start the Civil War

• Hinton R. Helper wrote the Impending Crisis of the South in 1857

• Helper hated blacks and slavery and he attempted to use statistics to prove that the non-slaveholding whites were the ones who suffered the most from slavery

The North-South Contest for Kansas

• Most people that came to Kansas were just westward moving pioneers

• New England Emigrant Aid Company was a group of abolitionists that paid people to move to Kansas to make it a free state

• Abolitionists set up their own government in Topeka, giving Kansas territory two governments

• Civil War in Kansas (1856) started when a group of pro-slavery riders burned down part of the abolitionist town of Lawrence

Kansas in Convulsion

• John Brown was a fanatical abolitionist who hacked 5 presumed pro-slavery men to death at Pottawatomie Creek as a response to the pro-slavery events in Lawrence

• Civil War started up in Kansas in 1856 until it merged with the nation’s Civil War from 1861 to 1865

• In 1867 Kansas had enough people to apply for statehood with Kansas ended up remaining a territory until 1861, when the southern states seceded from the Union

"Bully" Brooks and His Bludgeon

• Abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a provoking speech that condemned pro-slavery men

  • He personally insulted Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina during this speech

• Two days after Butler was insulted, Butler’s nephew beat Sumner to unconsciousness with a cane

• Sumner’s speech was applauded in the North, and angered people in the South

"Old Buck" Versus "The Pathfinder"

• Democrats met in Cincinnati and chose James Buchanan as their candidate for presidency in the election of 1856 due to him not being involved with the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act

• The Democratic platform campaigned for popular sovereignty

  • Republicans chose Captain John C. Fremont due to him also not being influenced by the Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • The Republican platform campaigned against extension of slavery

• American Party (Know-Nothing Party) was formed by Protestants who were alarmed by increasing number of immigrants from Ireland and Germany

  • The American Party chose Millard Fillmore as their candidate

The Electoral Fruits of 1856

• James Buchanan won the election of 1856

• It was good that Republican party didn’t win the election because some southerners said if Republicans won the election, they would secede

The Dred Scott Bombshell

• Dred Scott was a slave that had lived with his master in Illionois and the Wisconsin Territory for 5 years

  • Scott sued for his freedom on the basis of his long term residence on free soil

• Supreme Court ruled that Scott couldn’t sue in Federal courts and also ruled that he could be taken into any territory and legally held there in slavery

• Fifth Amendment forbade Congress from depriving people of their property without the due process of law

• Court stated that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and Congress didn’t have power to ban slavery from the territories, no matter what the territorial legislatures wanted

The Financial Crash of 1857

• Panic of 1857 was caused by overspeculation in the West and currency inflation due to the inrush of Californian gold

• North was hit hard while South continued to thrive

  • Northerners came up with the idea of the government giving 160 acre plots of farming land to pioneers for free with this idea being opposed by Eastern industrialists

• Tariff of 1857 lowered import taxes to about 20% with the North blaming it for causing the panic

  • The Tariff of 1857 gave Republicans two economic issues for the election of 1860

An Illinois Rail-Splitter Emerges

• Republicans chose Abraham Lincoln to run against Stephen Douglas (Democrat) in election of 1858

• Lincoln served in the Illinois legislature as a Whig politician and served one term in Congress

The Great Debate:  Lincoln versus Douglas

• Lincoln challenge Douglas to a series of 7 debates with the most famous debate being in Freeport, Illinois

• Douglas won the senatorial election but Lincoln won the popular vote

John Brown:  Murderer or Martyr?

• Abolitionist John Brown developed a plan to secretly invade the South, call upon slaves to rise, give them weapons, and establish a black free state

  • Brown seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry but was caught and sent to death by hanging because many of his supporters failed to show up

  • Brown lived on as a martyr to the abolitionist cause

The Disruption of the Democrats

• Democrats choose Douglas as their candidate

• Southern Democrats met in Baltimore and chose John C. Breckenridge as their presidential candidate

• Democratic platform favored extension of slavery into the territories and the annexation of slave-populated Cuba

• Constitutional Union Party was formed by former Whigs and Know-Nothings

  • The Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell as their candidate

A Rail-Splitter Splits the Union

• Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate

• The Republican platform appealed to almost every part of the nation

• Southerners said that if Lincoln was elected as the President, the Union would split, meaning that they would secede

The Electoral Upheaval of 1860

• Lincoln won the election of 1860, but didn’t win the popular vote

• 60% of the nation voted for another candidate

  • 10 southern states didn’t even allow Lincoln to be on the ballot

  • South Carolina was happy with the outcome of the election as it now had a reason to secede

• Even though the Republicans won the presidential election, they weren’t in control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the Supreme Court

The Secessionist Exodus

• South Carolina’s legislature met in Charleston and voted unanimously to secede in December of 1860

  • 6 other states joined South Carolina: Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas

  • 7 seceding states met in Alabama in February of 1861 and created the government of the Confederate States of America and chose Jefferson Davis as president

The Collapse of Compromise

• Crittenden Amendments were designed to appease the South with them prohibiting slavery in territories north of the 360 30’ line but permitted slavery in the territories south of the line

  • Future states north and south of the 360 30’ line would get to vote on thh issue of slavery

  • Lincoln rejected the Crittenden Amendments

Farewell to the Union

• Southern states seceded, fearing that the Republican party would threaten their right to own slaves

  • Many southerners felt that their secession wouldn’t be opposed by the North

• Southern states assumed that the northern manufacturers and bankers, which were dependent on southern cotton and markets, wouldn’t cut off the South