Event
Annexation of Texas
Wilmot Proviso
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Kansas-Nebraska Act
“Bleeding Kansas”
Presidential Election of 1856
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Significant Antebellum Events: 1845-1861
Year
Significance
Addition of Texas to the United States adds major slave state to the
1845
Union. In 1845 there are 15 slave states and 13 free states.
Whigs and Democrats sought a different formula on the
territorial/slavery extension issue on which their northern and southern
members could reunite. Until the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was
ratified in March 1848, Whigs rallied behind a demand that no territory
whatsoever be taken from Mexico as a result of the war. Democrats
1846
endorsed a position known as popular sovereignty that would remove
the decision about slavery in the territories from Congress and leave it to
the residents who settled in those territories. To preserve unity in the
presidential campaign of 1848, moreover, neither Democrats nor Whigs
endorsed the Proviso, causing outraged antislavery men in the North to
form the new Free Soil party.
The Mexican Cession also fueled a ferocious sectional dispute about
whether slavery would be allowed to exist in or be prohibited from any
territory to be extracted from Mexico. That dispute began with the
1848
introduction of the Wilmot Proviso into Congress in August 1846,
twenty months before any land was actually acquired, and it would not
be settled until passage of the Compromise of 1850 four years later.
The Compromise never would have passed Congress had not Taylor
died on July 9 and the new Whig President Millard Fillmore thrown the
weight of his administration behind it. However contentious the struggle
1850
in Congress had been, by 1852 both Whigs and Democrats endorsed the
Compromise as a final settlement of all Slave questions, and by then
most Americans believed that the sectional conflict over slavery
extension was a thing of the past.
Published by Harriet Beecher Stowe, it brought the “northern view” of
slavery to a wider audience and supports the abolitionist movement. It
1852
was widely successful selling 300,000 copies its first year. Good,
kindly Blacks are portrayed as the victims of a cruel system.
Arguably the most consequential piece of legislation ever enacted by
Congress. It ignited four years of turmoil between northern and southern
settlers in Kansas. It split the Whig party permanently along
1854
North/South lines; reaction against it launched the Republican party in
1854, an exclusively northern and overtly anti-southern, anti-slaveryextension party.
It ignited four years of turmoil between northern and southern settlers in
Kansas that made "Bleeding Kansas" an issue in the 1856 election and
1855
disrupted the Democratic party during James Buchanan's subsequent
presidential administration.
The ongoing sectional tension shaped the campaign and the election
outcome. Buchanan triumphed on a tide of these sentiments, but the
Republicans showed surprising strength for a new party. Though they
1856
had no presence in the South, Republicans won all but five northern
states, and their vote totals revealed that if they could win over
Pennsylvania and Illinois in 1860 while retaining the states they won in
1856, they would take the presidency.
The Southern and Democratic majority of the Court ruled that the
central platform plank of the Republican party — the demand for
congressional prohibition of slavery from all federal territories — was
unconstitutional. While the decision made no allusion to the power of a
territorial legislature to bar slavery, it immediately raised questions as
well about the Democratic formula of popular sovereignty since men,
1857
and especially Southerners, immediately asked how Congress could
delegate to a territorial legislature a power to prohibit slavery that it
itself did not constitutionally possess. Stephen A. Douglas, Democrats'
chief advocate of popular sovereignty was especially embarrassed by
this question. Thus the Dred Scott decision laid the groundwork for
much of the jousting between Douglas and Lincoln during their famous
1858 debates.
Lecompton Constitution
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
John Brown’s Raid
Election of 1860
Jefferson Davis sworn in as
Confederate President
Fort Sumter
Significant Antebellum Events: 1845-1861
The new Democratic President James Buchanan made readying Kansas
for admission to statehood his top priority during 1857. Free state
settlers boycotted the election for delegates to a convention at
Lecompton to write a new state constitution as well as the initial
referendum on it. Thus the convention wrote a proslavery constitution
which was ratified by some 6000 voters. Yet at another referendum in
which free state residents now participated, over 10,000 votes were cast
1857
against it. Although a clear majority of Kansas residents rejected the
Lecompton Constitution, in December 1857 Buchanan called on
Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state under it. Ultimately this
opposition forced yet another referendum to be held in Kansas on the
Lecompton Constitution in August 1858, when it was decisively
defeated, thereby permanently burying any possibility that Kansas
would become a slave state.
Despite his articulate challenge to the powerful Douglas, Lincoln failed
in his bid for the United States Senate in 1858. The Illinois Legislature
returned Stephen A. Douglas to his seat by a narrow margin. Lincoln
again feared that his political career was over. But Republicans beyond
1858
Illinois had taken notice of his pronouncements in the debates with
Douglas. While he was not one of the party's leading officeholders,
Lincoln became a major Republican intellectual leader and spokesman.
The debates had returned him to the national stage.
Created an even more intense feeling below the Mason-Dixon line that
abolitionist fanaticism posed an immediate danger to social order and
1859
even to human life in the South. Brown was considered a martyr by
most abolitionists, especially in New England.
The presidential election of 1860 featured a four-way race that vividly
illustrated the sectional tensions that were tearing the nation apart, and
its outcome would detonate the consummation of that sectional split.
1860
Lincoln was moderate-minded and would have respected the legal rights
of the South even though he deplored slavery. The South, fearful of
Northern aggression, saw his victory as a signal of imminent danger and
secession was precipitated.
Proponents of Southern rights felt that the South must act before it
slipped into the position of a hopeless minority, at the mercy of men
who had approved of John Brown. Therefore, states’ rights leaders
February 1861
invoked the doctrine that each state had retained it sovereignty when it
joined the federal union and that, in conventions that had ratified the
Constitution, might secede from the Union.
When eight slave states remained in the Union at Lincoln’s inauguration
he knew that this split represented a failure on the part of secessionists
to create a united South. Attempts to supply Fort Sumter were not
April 1861
allowed by South Carolina and bombardment of the fort initiated a four
year war which was the greatest military conflict save the Napoleonic
Wars.