Events to the Civil War

• What to do with the Mexican Territory? Slave state or nah?
  • Options
    • Polk: Polk proposed to extend the 36 30 degree line (Missouri Compromise line) all the way to California.
    • Wilmot: David Wilmot from Pennsylvania wants to make a constitutional amendment (called the Wilmot Proviso) to make all of the Mexican Cession free of slavery.
    • Calhoun: Calhoun is from the South, so he wants it all to be open to slavery.
    • Douglas: popular sovereignty- the states decide for themselves whether they are slave or not. Douglas did not come up with this idea; it goes way way back.
• Election of 1848
  • Democrats
    • nominated Lewis Cass from Michigan
    • Cass supports popular sovereignty
  • Whigs
    • nominated Zachary Taylor: a military general war hero with no experience and no platform
    • chose to ignore or steer a middle road and did not take a stand on the slavery issue
  • Free Soiler
    • wanted no slaves out West
    • nominated Martin Van Buren from Kinderhook, New York
  • Results
    • Lewis Cass 127
    • Zachary Taylor 163
    • MVB 0, but got 300,000 popular votes. This shows a growing trend towards anit slavery veiws
    • Lewis Cass was angry at MVB for stealing some of the Democrat votes, which guaranteed that Taylor would win
• Taylor in Command
  • Taylor views the presidency differently than most presidents. To Taylor, the presidency is a reward for all his military work. Because of this, Taylor wants to put off making a decision about the Mexican Cession land.
  • Because of the Gold Rush, California's population grew to 60,000 faster than Taylor expected.
  • The people who took people to California through the Panama Canal or around Tierra del Fuego were called commodores. Most people just went by wagon.
  • Panning, the Cradle, and Hydraulic Mining were all ways of mining for gold.
  • Over 100,000 Chinese came to California during the gold rush. This is the first real influx of Asians to the United States
  • Taylor suggests that the territories skip the territory step and immediately enter the Union as free states. This makes the Southerners really furious and they end up meeting in Nashville, Tennessee to discuss other slave lands they could pick up, including Cuba.
  • Calhoun proposes the Compromise of 1850, his last compromise. Taylor vetoes it and says I'm the president so shut up and do what I tell you to.
  • Unfortunately (fortunately) Taylor dies by poisoned cherries (not arsenic after reexamination in 1996)
  • Millard Fillmore now took over for Taylor, and since he revered the Triumvirate (Clay, Calhoun, and Webster) he threw every ounce of presidency behind Calhoun's compromise
    • California was a free state, which disrupts the balance of slave and free states
    • Utah and New Mexico were divided into to parts, and each would be under popular sovereignty
    • 7th of March Speech advocated for a strong Fugitive Slave Law
    • Texas looses the Northern Part of its territory, and was supposed to get their 10 million dollars
    • The Compromise passes
• Election of 1852
  • Democrat pary candidate: Franklin Pierce
    • good friends with Jefferson Davis
    • Pierce was a doughface, which means a Yankee that is friend with a Southerner.
    • armed the capitol in case someone attacks. this is ironic because he will end up attacking DC.
    • Pierce supported the Great Compromise of 1850
  • Whig party candidate: Winfield Scott
    • Scott was good friends with William Seward who advocated for a higher law
  • Pierce wins 254-42, say good bye to the Whig party
• Grey Clouds and a Silver Lining
  • Free California permanently tipped the balance of slave and free states in the favor of the free states
  • the huge influx of immigrants was definitely a problem
  • Railroad and factories in the North had resilient attitudes, while the South was "backward," reactionary and resistant to change.
  • The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was written and endorsed by Daniel Webster in his 7th of March Speech
    • Personal Liberty Laws
      • The North absolutely hated these laws, and passed the Personal Liberty Laws in order to help the slaves escape federal law
      • this is a direct violation of the Constitution, which is also kind of ironic because the North was "fussing at South Carolina" for seceding.
      • The North justified the Personal Liberty Laws saying that they appealed to a higher law, coined by William Seward.
    • The Underground Railroad was not threatening based on numbers, but the principle of it really scared the South.
      • Harriet Tubman was the most famous "conductor" of the URR. She rescued about 300 people
      • William Wells Brown was the first African American novelist, and wrote Clotel, a novel about the President's daughter. He was also the second most famous "conductor" on the underground railroad.
  • "The Pen is mightier than the sword"
    • Harriet Beecher Stowe: wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lonely about the life of slaves. The whole book was actually fiction, since she had never hung around slaves except for when she saw them once when she was 6.
    • Hinton Rowan Helper: from Mocksville, NC wrote a book called The Impending Crisis. The book was about how the South was so unwilling to change, innovate, and even grew the same crop every year.
• Transcontinental Railroad 1853
  • The South wanted to build a railroad from Louisiana to Southern California.
    • from an engineering point of view it was easier because it avoided two mountain ranges
    • Jefferson Davis advocated for the railroad
    • went through the Gadsden Purchase area purchased by James Gadsen from South Carolina
  • The North also wanted a railroad from Chicago to Sacramento.
    • Douglas the "little giant" advocated the railroad
    • had engineering problems since it had to go over two mountain ranges
    • had to go through unorganized territory without any government
• The Kansas-Nebraksa Act
  • The Act
    • Douglas decides to organize the territory and rip up the Missouri Compromise. The Territory was split into Nebraska and Kansas and leave popular sovereignty to decide. This is really silly since there shouldn't be a debate at all
    • Douglas has got faith in Geography, and thinks that Kansas will become slave and Nebraska will become free.
    • He also has faith in the American people to vote calmly on the slavery thing
  • Results
    • Split the Northern and Southern Democrats temporarily
    • The Republican Party became solely against the expansion of slavery
    • Bleeding Kansas (1854-1861) lots of groups went to Kansas to influence it to be slave/free
• Sumner Brooks Affair 1856
  • Senator Charles M. Sumner from Massachusetts and a snob. Sumner gives the "Crime against Kansas" speech that blamed the South and Senator Andrew P Butler for what had happened.
  • Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina got mad since Butler wouldn't hurt a fly. Brooks cussed out Sumner and beat him with his walking stick. Sumner's seat remained empty in the Senate, and Brooks got reelected and got sent a bunch walking sticks.
• Election of 1856
  • Republicans elected John C Frémont, the Pathfinder and a military man. Their big plank in the platform was no slavery in the new territories. "Free soil, free labor, free men, Frémont!"
    • South Carolina threatened to secede if Frémont was elected.
  • Democrats elected James Buchanan, who side stepped most of the prominent issues. Buchan created the Ostend Manifesto, which was about buying Cuba. Met in Ostend, Belgium. Also was secretary of state when the Buchanan-Packenham treaty was created.
  • The American- Know nothing- Whig- Party, or the Order of the Star Spangled Banner elected Fillmore, who was president for 2 years after Taylor died. They tried to deflect the issue of slavery over to immigration. Party joined the Republicans after this election.
  • Buchanan wins 174-114-8
• Scott v Sanford, or the Dred Scott Case 1857
  • The North wanted to make a point about how once Dred Scott's feet touched free soil, he was free.
  • Roger B. Taney was part of Jackson's kitchen cabinet, and previously allowed Jackson to disperse all the money from the BUS and distribute it to pet banks.
  • Anyways Taney says that Dred Scott is not allowed to be in court since he is not a citizen. Still, Taney decides to declare the court's view on slavery. Taney says that based on 5th amendment (can't deny life, liberty, and property except by due process of law) slavery is allowed everywhere. Basically in one decision he swept out 50 years of compromises.
• Lincoln-Douglass Debates
  • US Senate Seat in Illinois in 1858 "Freeport Doctrine"
  • Lincoln asked Douglass "Which is more important: popular sovereignty or the court decision?"
  • Lincoln also said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand very long." Basically Lincoln was saying that the country couldn't continue half slave and half free.
  • Even though Douglass got reelected and Lincoln lost, Lincoln got elected to the presidency in 1860. He lost the battle, but won the war.
• John Brown's Raid- Harper's Ferry 1989
  • John Brown took the court's decision very seriously and wanted to create a massive slave uprising and establish a safe home in the Virginia mountains. The Virginians suffocated him as an example and to send a message to the Northerners.
  • John Brown was made famous by the North; however, some people view him as a mentally insane person. Later: songs were written about him, and he was honored as a hero. Nicknamed "the meteor"
• Election of 1860, the most important election in US History
  • Abraham Lincoln, Republican: no expansion of slavery
    • Platform of the Republican Party (didn't promise anything to the South)
      • no extension of slavery
      • protective tarrif
      • no abridgement of rights for immigrants
      • government aid for pacific RR
      • internal improvements for the west at federal expense
      • free homesteads for the public domain
  • Stephan Douglass, Northern Democrat: popular sovereignty
  • John C Breckinridge, Southern Democrat, Buchanan's VP
  • John Bell, Constitutional Union: appealed to people who didn't want to secede, they stood for unity
  • William H. Seward, "irrepressible conflict": got kicked out of the election because of his big mouth
  • Lincoln wins, second most unpopular president in the history of the US presidents
• Saving the Union?
  • The deep south immediately seceded and established the Confederacy
    • First president: Jefferson Davis
    • First VP: Alexandar Stephans
    • First Capital: Montgomery, later moved to Charleston which was a big mistake.
  • Lincoln send supplies to all the forts in the South, which causes the South to seize the forts before the supplies could get there. At the first shot of the War (shot fired in anger), there was no turning back and no room for compromise. First battle of the war was Ft. Sumpter.
  • This first battle caused the other southern states to secede because they didn't want to fight their sister states.
  • Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia (not a state), Maryland, and Delaware
  • Emancipation Proclamation was mostly political, and did not have much wind behind it.
  • Crittenden Compromise was the last attempt at placating the South.