APUSH Chapter 19: Drifting Towards Disunion (Antebellum)

Key Concepts

• How debates over slavery and other economic, cultural and political issues were intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions and led the nation into civil war.
• How abolitionists mounted a highly visible campaign against slavery and adopted strategies that ranged from fierce arguments against the institution to a willingness to use violence to achieve their goals
• How the Supreme Court attempted to resolve the issue of slavery in the territories with the Dred Scott decision but ultimately failed to reduce sectional conflict
• How Lincoln's election on a free-soil platform in the election of 1860 led various southern leaders to conclude that their states must secede from the Union and precipitated civil war.

Kansas and Nebraska

• Because slavery would be decided based on popular sovereignty, groups from both sides of the issue came to the area to persuade the population to vote in their favor.
• New England Emigrant Aid Company: free soil group that sent abolitionists to Kansas to ensure the people chose no slavery
  • South is upset because the implication of popular sovereignty was that Kansas was Supposed to be a slave state and Nebraska was supposed to be free, but the North was trying to 'abolitionize' both.
• Border ruffians: proslavery people from Missouri who came into Kansas just as they were about to elect members for the territorial legislature
  • ruffians vote and secure their own puppet govt in Lecompton. Free soilers respond with their own govt in Topeka, so both govts are illegitimate.
• At this point, Kansas had a big enough population that they could apply for statehood-Lecompton Constitution (1857) is drafted by proslavery forces, and said that people could vote either for or against slavery, however, what they didn't know was that if they did vote antislavery one of the provisions of the Constitution would protect slave owners.
• President Buchanan (who replaced Pierce) supported it, but Stephen Douglas condemned it's violations of democratic principles of fair play. A compromise put the Constitution up for popular vote, and with many free soilers at the polls, Kansas remains a territory.
• President Buchanan split the Democratic Party by antagonizing Northern Democrats, which meant the only national party (Whigs are dead, Republicans are sectional to the North) are divided

Sectional Tensions

• Bleeding Kansas (1856): civil war in Kansas that was fought intermittently until 1861, eventually merging with the Civil War.

• Caning of Charles Sumner: Senator Charles Sumner of MA is beaten with a cane by Senator Preston Brooks after insulting another Southern senator and condemning the behavior of proslavery forces in Kansas shows how there's no longer polite discourse, passionate opinions are controlling people's actions.

• Election of 1856: Republicans run their first candidate ever, John Fremont, and Democrats choose James Buchanan because he has no relation to the Kansas Nebraska Act = no enemies → he wins. Some Southerners threaten to secede if Fremont (Republican) is elected, which is also why he lost.

• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852): written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, it portrayed slaves as humans, not property, It presented the moral arqument against slavery, and people were able to empathize with slaves, which pushed the North to wholeheartedly fight for abolition and resist the Fugitive Slave Act.

• Impending Crisis of the South (1857): written by a poor, nonslaveholding white farmer named Hinton Helper, it tried to prove that nonslaveholding farmers suffered the most because of slavery

  • Southern planter elite fear their slaveholding power is being threatened (poor whites could betray them).

• John Brown: well known for Pottawatomie Creek, where he and his supporters attacked pro-slavery forces

  • leads to a smaller civil war in Kansas (1856) that will later merge with the Civil War. Also, as Harper's Ferry he seized a federal arsenal in the hopes of started a slave revolt, but is caught and executed, making him a martyr for the abolitionist cause.

• Dred Scott Case (1857): Supreme Court case where a slave named Dred Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that since he's living in the free territory of Wisconsin, he should be free. Justice Robert Taney, a Southern Democrat, says:

  1. African Americans weren't citizens, so they couldn't sue
  2. Since slaves are property, it's unconstitutional to take them away from their owners without due process of law
  3. Slavery could not be banned by Congress said that Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional to begin with

• Northerners/ Republicans are infuriated, but Southerners are more so because they see it as Northerners refuse to comply with the decisions of the Supreme Court and other laws

• Panic of 1857: new CA gold inflated the value of currency, and over speculation of land and railroads worsened this. Although Northern manufacturing was badly hit, Southern cotton continued to prosper

  • Southerners are more willing to secede knowing that foreign countries will support them because of their reliance on 'King Cotton

• Tariff of 1857: made for the South, it reduced fees on many goods

  • Northerners will look for solutions to the low tariff and revenue in the Election of 1860.

• Lincoln Douglas Debates (1858): Abe Lincoln [R) and Stephen Douglas [D) were competing for the llinois Senate seat; had public debates.

• Lincoln asks Douglas about the Dred Scott decision: could slavery be prevented in territories?

  • Douglas responds with Freeport Doctrine, saying people in the territories could vote out slavery and overrule the Supreme Court's decision
  • rejecting Dred Scott decision and saving popular sovereignty is more powerful than the law

• Douglas wins the Senate Seat, but Lincoln remains a national figure and a good candidate for the Republican Party's nomination in the Election of 1860

Election of 1860

Democrats are divided between the North and South

Republicans choose Abraham Lincoln

• no extension of slavery (good for free soilers)
• protective tariff (good for northern manufacturers)
• Pacific transcontinental railroad (good for Northwest)
• Free homestead land (for homes)

Constitutional Union Party: hastily made as a last attempt at a compromise party, it was made up of former Whigs and nativists from the abandoned Know Nothing Party → has no definitive platform other than to uphold the Union

• Lincoln is elected as the first sectional president-Southerners meet at Charleston and make plans to secede

Crittenden Compromise (1860): said slavery would be allowed in the land south of the 36 30 line and prohibited in the North → South would be guaranteed slavery regardless of the wishes of popular majority. Lincoln rejects this compromise, no choice but war.

Confederate States of America: under Jefferson Davis, seven Southern states secede even before Lincoln takes office. Others join them later, bringing the total to 11 states → President Buchanan does nothing to stop this.