the crisis of union

The Crisis of Union

Chapter 16

The Crisis of Union

“The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic…Mexico will poison us.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I. The Wilmot Proviso

Calhoun Responds…

II. Popular Sovereignty

Lewis Cass

III. Election of 1848

Lewis Cass Zachary Taylor Martin Van Buren

IV. California Gold Rush

V. California Statehood

VI. Compromise of 1850

Henry Clay John C. Calhoun Daniel Webster

Unexpected Power Shift

Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore

VII. The Fugitive Slave Act

VIII. Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

IX. Election of 1852

Franklin Pierce John P. Hale Winfield Scott

X. Foreign Adventures pp. 626-627

XI. Kansas-Nebraska Crisis

Stephen Douglas

XII. Bleeding Kansas

John Brown

XIII. Bleeding Sumner

Charles Sumner Andrew Butler Preston Brooks

XIV. Election of 1856

Millard Fillmore John C. Fremont James Buchanan

XV. Dred Scott Case

Roger Taney

St. Louis

VXI. Lecompton Constitution

Buchanan Douglas

XVII. Panic of 1857

XVIII. Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Stephen Douglas, in a debate with Abraham Lincoln (1857):

“Mr. Lincoln tried to avoid the main issue by attacking the truth of my proposition, that Our fathers made this government divided into free and slave states, recognizing theright of each to decide all its local questions for itself. Did they not thus make it? It istrue they did not establish slavery in any of the States, or abolish it in any of the territories, but finding thirteen States, twelve of which were slave and one free, they agreed to form a government uniting them together, as they stood divided into free andslave states, and to guarantee forever to each State the right to do as it pleased on the slavery question…He says he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business – not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the Negroesin Christendom.

Lincoln:

“I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to those rights as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects – certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

Douglas:

“If you, Black Republicans, think the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so.”

Lincoln:

“Because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone.”

Lincoln:

“When…you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro; when you have put him down and made it forever impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out in the darkness like that which broods over the spirits of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?”

XIX. John Brown’s Raid

Harper’s Ferry, 1859

John Brown’s Fort

John Brown at his sentencing:

“Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“That new saint will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”

Cadets Who Witnessed Execution

Last Moments of John BrownBy Thomas Hovenden

John Brown’s Grave in New York

XX. Election of 1860

Breckinridge

Douglas

Constitutional Union Party

John Bell

XXI. Secession of the Deep South

Jefferson Davis

Virginia State HouseConfederate Capitol Building