Crises of the late 1840s and 1850s

Missouri Compromise, 1820

Abolitionists

William Lloyd Garrison Frederick DouglassHarriet Tubman

Theodore Weld

Sarah and Angelina Grimke

Abolitionists and the “The Slave Power” in the 1830s-1840s

• Abolitionists brought the issue of slavery to the attention of the nation and made it a moral issue.

• They also raised the specter of a Slave Power that would stop at nothing to extend and protect slavery, including violating the rights of whites.

• They were never a majority and often the object of violence, insults, opprobrium. And yet, when many northerners saw abolitionists beaten and mobbed, and their mail confiscated by the federal government and their petitions to the House of representatives automatically tabled without discussion (“gagged”)

• The mobbing, beatings, killings of abolitionists and the confiscation and destruction of their mailings to the South, and the automatic tabling of their petitions to Congress (Gag Rule, 1836) suggested to many that the abolitionists might be right the existence of a “Slave Power.”

Mexican War and Cession, 1846-1849

--Alamo and Texas Independence, 1836

--Disputed border: Nueces-Rio Grande Rivers

--War

--Mexican Cession

Wilmot Proviso, 1846• Polk wrote in his diary:

“Late in the evening of Saturday, the 8th, I learned that after an exciting debate in the House of Representatives a bill passed that body, but with a mischievous and foolish amendment to the effect that no territory which might be acquired by treaty from Mexico should ever be a slave holding country.”

Compromise of 1850

1. California admitted as a

free state.2. Utah and New

Mexico Territories:Popular sovereignty

3. Slave trade abolished in

D.C.4. Fugitive Slave

Law

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854• Results:• Nullified the Mo.

Compromise line.

• Popular Sovereignty in both territories.

• Break-up of the Whig Party.

• Creation of the Republican Party.

• Lincoln returns to politics.

• Mini-Civil War in Kansas– Sack of Lawrence, 1856– John Brown at

Potawatomie– Caning of Sumter by

Brooks on the Senate floor.

Dred Scott decision:• Dred Scott was a

slave and had no right to sue in court.

• Blacks were not, had never been, and could not be citizens.

• Because of the Constitution’s protection of property, Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in the territories.

• The implication was that states and the people of territories could not ban slavery.

Lincoln Douglas Debates, 1858

John Brown’s Raid, 1859• Brown sought to

inspire a slave revolt and failing that hoped to provoke a sectional crisis.

• Republicans condemned the raid, but southerners claimed it was the natural result of Republican anti-slavery doctrine.

• Evidence of abolitionist support for John brown’s raid and the sympathetic reaction in parts of the North to his execution, maddened the South.

• Many southerners feared that a Republican president would not send troops to suppress future raids.

While in jail, Brown transformed his image from that of “avenging angel” to sorrowful Moses.

Election of 1860

John C. Breckenridge

John Bell

Election of 1860

• The Crittenden Compromise proposed extending the 36,30 line across to the Pacific with slavery allowed south of the line and banned north of the line.

• Lincoln rejected it because he would not accept the extension of slavery.

Secession

Civil War, 1861-1865

• You cannot receive a passing mark for the exam unless you get these dates correct!!

• Seriously!!

• Most European observers and experts believed that, despite the North’s many advantages, the South was simply too vast for the North to defeat and occupy.