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The Crisis of the 1850s: Outline
I. Framing concerns
II. Three moments
1. The Compromise of 1850
2. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
3. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
III. Take-aways
Resolution of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1844)
“The existing national compact should be instantly dissolved; that
secession from the government is a religious and political duty, that
the motto inscribed on the banner of Freedom should be NO UNION
WITH SLAVEHOLDERS; that it is impractical for tyrants and the
enemies of tyranny to coalesce and legislate together for the
preservations of human rights, or the promotion of the interests of
Liberty.”
Garrison’s resolution before the New England Anti-Slavery
Convention (1855)
“The American Union is the supremacy of the bowie knife, the
revolver, the slave-driver’s lash, and lynch law, over freedom of
speech, of the press, of conscience, of locomotion, in more than one
half of the nation . . . and the degrading vassalage of the entire
North to the accursed Slave Power; . . . that such a Union is to be
resisted, denounced and repudiated by every lover of liberty, until its
utter overthrow shall be consummated; and that, to effect this
glorious object, there should be one united shout of 'No Union with
Slaveholders, religiously or politically!‘”
Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern
Domination, 1780-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Staste University
Press, 2000), 9.
“In the sixty-two years between Washington's election and the
Compromise of 1850, for example, slaveholders controlled the
presidency for fifty years, the Speaker's chair for forty-one years, and
the chairmanship of House Ways and Means for forty-two years. The
only men to be reelected president — Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe, and Jackson — were all slaveholders. The men
who sat in the Speaker's chair the longest — Henry Clay, Andrew
Stevenson, and Nathaniel Macon — were slaveholders.”
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Framing concerns
• How could a viable national political opposition to slavery
emerge?
• Given the innate challenges confronting single-issue third parties
• Given the pervasive racial prejudice of the North
• A series of slavery-related political crises promoted an issue
that the political system had long sought to suppress
• The political system broke around two major issues:
• Slavery’s expansion westward
• Concerns over civil liberties and the “slave power”
• A new party emerged, rooted in a viable antislavery politics,
capable of competing nationally
Source: Scott R. Meinke, “Slavery, Partisanship, and Procedure in the U.S. House: The Gag Rule, 1836-1845,” Legislative Studies
Quarterly 32, no. 1 (February 2007): 33-57.
House vote for Texas annexation (1/25/45)
Party
Region
Democrat
Whig
North
65% (52/80)
0% (0/49)
South
100% (58/58)
31% (8/26)
Source: The Vote on Joint Resolution #46 for Annexing the Republic of
Texas to the United States. House Journal: 28 Cong., 2 Sess. (Serial
462), 264-5.
Senator John M. Niles, on defection of 14 NY
Democrats on the TX annexation vote:
“Do you think the N. York members have no
sagacity, no instinct to discover the public
sentiment in their districts?” he asked. A “strong
infusion of the spirit of abolitionism” was making
it harder and harder for men such as Niles to hold
their seats.
In a “revolution” in 1836, American migrants to the
Mexican state of Texas won their independence,
then immediately began seeking admission into the
Union. Concerns over the westward expansion of
slavery made this politically challenging. In 1845,
Congress annexed Texas through a Joint Resolution.
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The Crisis of the 1850s: Outline
I. Framing concerns
II. Three moments
1. The Compromise of 1850
Compromise of 1850
• For North
• California enters union directly as a free state
• Texas loses disputed western land claims
• Abolition of slave trade in Washington, D.C.
• For South
• Rest of Mexican cession brought in on principle of
“popular sovereignty”
• Texas compensated $10M for lost claims
• New, stronger fugitive slave law
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Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
• Constitution: article 4, section 2
• Fugitive Slave Law of 1793
• “Personal liberty laws” of Northern states
• Four critical provisions
1. New system of federal commissioners to oversee
fugitive slave cases
2. Affidavit sufficient for apprehension; accused no right
to testify on own behalf
3. $10 for returned slaves; $5 for slaves not returned
4. Deputize Northern citizens to help form posses
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Calhoun’s speech on the Clay Compromise Measures (1850)
“How can the Union be preserved?”
“What is it that has endangered the Union?”
“all the great political influences of the section were arrayed against
excitement, and exerted to the utmost to keep the people quiet. The
great mass of the people of the South were divided, as in the other
section, into Whigs and Democrats. The leaders and the presses of
both parties in the South were very solicitous to prevent excitement
and to preserve quiet; because it was seen that the effects of the
former would necessarily tend to weaken, if not destroy, the political
ties which united them with their respective parties in the other
section.
“Those who know the strength of party ties will readily appreciate
the immense force which this cause exerted against agitation and in
favor of preserving quiet. But, great as it was, it was not sufficient to
prevent the widespread discontent which now pervades the section.”
The Crisis of the 1850s: Outline
I. Framing concerns
II. Three moments
1. The Compromise of 1850
2. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
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On May 21, 1856, proslavery forces raided and burned the “free state” capital of
Lawrence.
Charles Sumner,
Republican Senator
from Massachusetts
Preston Brooks,
Congressman
from South
Carolina
In May 1856, Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner denounced South
Carolina Senator Andrew Butler for
having taken “the harlot, slavery” for
his mistress. In retaliation, Butler’s
cousin, Representative Preston
Brooks, delivered a savage beating to
Sumner on the floor of the Senate.
John L. Magee, “Southern Chilvalry – Argument versus Clubs’s (Lithograph, 1856).
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“THE SYMBOL OF THE NORTH IS THE PEN; THE SYMBOL OF THE SOUTH IS THE BLUDGEON.”
ARGUMENTS OF THE CHIVALRY.
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Portion of a political cartoon published by N. Currier, 1856 presidential campaign
FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, FREE PRESS, FREE MEN & FREMONT
Temperance
reformer
Catholic
priest
Female
suffrage
advocate
Free black
Fourier
socialist
Free love
advocate
1856
Republican
Presidential
candidate John
C. Frėmont
The Crisis of the 1850s: Outline
I. Framing concerns
II. Three moments
1. The Compromise of 1850
2. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
3. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
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Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
Dr. John Emerson, US Army surgeon from Missouri, takes Dred
Scott, his property, to Wisconsin territory (where slavery is
prohibited) and then returns him to Missouri. Does this make
Scott free?
Case makes its way from state courts to the U.S. Supreme Court,
gaining attention as a test case of the Missouri Compromise.
Does Congress have the right to prohibit slavery in the territories?
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott
1. Dred Scott has no standing to bring suit in federal court because
black people (slave or free) cannot be citizens of the United
States:
At the time of the founding, “they had for more than a century
before been regarded as being of an inferior order, and altogether
unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political
relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white
man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and
lawfully be reduced to slavery.”
“He [Scott] is not a citizen, and consequently his suit against
Sandford was not a suit between citizens of different States, and the
court had no authority to pass any judgement between the parties.
The suit ought, in this view of it, to have been dismissed by the
Circuit Court, and its judgement in favor of Sandford [i.e., that he has
the right to sue] is erroneous, and must be reversed.”
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott
2. Even had Scott the right to bring suit, he would have lost, for it is
unconstitutional for Congress to prohibit the enjoyment of
property (in slaves) in federal territory:
“The act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and
owning property of this kind in the territory . . . is not warranted by
the Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott
himself, nor any of his family, were made free by being carried into
this territory.”
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Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech (1858)
“We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was
initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of
putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of
that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has
constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a
crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in
the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its
advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful
in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition? “
Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech (1858)
“We can not absolutely know that all these exact adaptations
are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed
timbers, different portions of which we know have been
gotten out at different times and places and by different
workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance - and when we see these timbers joined together, and see
they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the
tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and
proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their
respective places, and not a piece too many or too few -- not
omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we
can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to
yet bring such piece in -- in such a case, we find it impossible
not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James
all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the
first lick was struck.”
Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech (1858)
“In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the
U.S. Constitution, is left an open question. . . .
“Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike
lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such
decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless
the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and
overthrown.
“We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of
Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we
shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has
made Illinois a slave State.
“To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the
work now before all those who would prevent that
consummation.”
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The Crisis of the 1850s: Outline
I. Framing concerns
II. Five moments
1. The Compromise of 1850
2. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
3. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
III. Take-aways
Framing concerns
• How could a viable national political opposition to slavery
emerge?
• Given the innate challenges confronting single-issue third parties
• Given the pervasive racial prejudice of the North
• A series of slavery-related political crises promoted an issue
that the political system had long sought to suppress
• The political system broke around two major issues:
• Slavery’s expansion westward
• Concerns over civil liberties and the “slave power”
• A new party emerged, rooted in a viable antislavery politics,
capable of competing nationally
Wooster Republican (Mass.), February
2, 1859
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Take-aways
1. Issues around slavery (and others) hopelessly split
the Whig Party until it dissolved
• Nativism (we haven’t explored)
• Slavery and western expansion
• Fugitive slaves and civil liberties
2. An antislavery party (Republicans) filled the vacuum
• Moderated antislavery message of radical abolitionists
• Framed it around white interests in western opportunity
(“free soil”) and civil liberties (the “slave power”)
• Broadened the tent to incorporate a range of other issues
3. Democratic split in 1860 made victory possible for a
sectional party
The Presidential
election of 1860
Electoral votes required
for victory: 152
Year
% of national population
considered for apportionment
1790
1850
1864
53%
62%
64%
As Calhoun had observed back in 1850, demographic
trends were moving against the South. Despite the
artificial boost conferred by the three-fifths clause, the
free states controlled an ever-greater share of
representation in Congress.
Alternative scenario:
Even giving a single Democratic
candidate all slaveholding states
and the two western states, a
united North still dominated the
electoral math
Electoral votes required
for victory: 152
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Further questions
• Why did the election of Lincoln mean secession?
• Why did secession mean war?
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