*

*
* In the War with Mexico, the US

received a huge grant of land.

* This new land presented the
Congress with a huge problem.
* The Louisiana Purchase had
been mostly above the Missouri
Compromise line, so the
territories that became states
would be mostly free states
* The territories of the Mexican
Cession would mostly be slave
states.
* This caused sectional tensions
to increase.

* The Wilmot Proviso, one of the major events leading to the

Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory

acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War known as the
Mexican Cession.
* Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Proviso in the
House of Representatives on August 8, 1846.
* It passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the South
had greater representation
* It was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the
House and failed in the Senate.
* John C. Calhoun argued against the Proviso because he said
that the territories were owned by all the states and that
should be able to enter any state, including slaves. Calhoun
said that the Congress had no right to ban slavery in any of
the territories.
* What it did was to unleash all the passions of the slavery and
anti-slavery supporters.

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

A doctrine under which the status of slavery

in the territories was to be determined by
the settlers themselves.
Although the doctrine won wide support as a
means of avoiding sectional conflict over the
slavery issue, its meaning remained
ambiguous.
First proposed in 1847 by Lewis Cass in his
1848 presidential campaign
the doctrine was incorporated in the
Compromise of 1850 and four years later was
an important feature of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act.
Stephen A. Douglas was principal promoter
of the doctrine.
Stephen Douglas called it "popular
sovereignty," but proslavery Southerners,
who wanted slavery extended into the
territories, contemptuously called it
"squatter sovereignty."

*The conflict over the issue of slavery in the

territories led to the creation of a new

political party, the Free Soil Party.
*Anti-slavery Democrats and northern Whigs
made up most of the party.
*They believed that slavery should not be
allowed in the territories. They did not say
it was morally wrong, but instead said that
it was an economic issue.
*The Free Soilers opposed the use of slaves
on farms because it put free white men out
of a job.

* The California Gold Rush (18481855) began on

January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by

James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, California.
* News of the discovery brought some 300,000
people rushing to California from the rest of the
United States and abroad.
* The early gold-seekers, called "Forty-niners" (as a
reference to 1849) traveled to California by sailing
boat and in covered wagons across the continent
* While most of the newly arrived were Americans,
the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from
Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China.

*
*
*

The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed

on September 4, 1850, it was passed to avoid the sectional conflict
that arose from territorial expansion with the Texas Annexation
(December 29, 1845) and the following Mexican-American War (1846
1848).
It avoided secession or civil war at the time and quieted sectional
conflict for four years until the divisive KansasNebraska Act.
The Provisions of the Compromise of 1850 were:

*
*
*
*
*

Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico

The Wilmot Proviso was thrown out.
the South was promised the possibility of slave states by popular sovereignty
in the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory.
a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in practice outraged Northern public
opinion. The law called for ordinary citizens to turn in runaway slaves or face
imprisonment themselves. The Fugitive slave act probably caused more
damage than good for the south.
the slave trade was banned in Washington D.C.

Senator Henry Clay designed the compromise, which failed to pass in early 1850.
In the next session of Congress, Senator Stephen Douglas and Senator Daniel
Webster narrowly passed a slightly modified package

*
* The Underground Railroad was

an informal network of secret

routes and safe houses used by
19th-century black slaves in
the United States to escape to
free states and Canada with
the aid of abolitionists who
were sympathetic to their
cause.
* Both Harriet Tubman and
Sojourner Truth were important
conductors on the
Underground Railroad.

* Stowes main goal with Uncle Toms Cabin was to

convince her large Northern readership of the

necessity of ending slavery.
* Most immediately, the novel served as a response to
the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which
made it illegal to give aid or assistance to a runaway
slave.
* Stowe created an expos that revealed the horrors of
Southern slavery to people in the North.
* Uncle Toms Cabin was published in episodes in the
National Era in 1851 and 1852, then published in its
entirety on March 20, 1852.
* It sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 by
the end of the year, astronomical numbers for the
mid-nineteenth century.
* Many historians have credited the novel with being a
major factor in the outbreak of the Civil War.

* The KansasNebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas

and Nebraska.
* Repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820
* It allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would
allow slavery within their boundaries.
* The initial purpose of the KansasNebraska Act was to create
opportunities for a Mideastern Transcontinental Railroad. It became
problematic when popular sovereignty was written into the proposal.
The act was designed by Democratic Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois.
* The act established that settlers could vote to decide whether to
allow slavery, in the name of popular sovereignty.
* Opponents of the act denounced it as a concession to the slave power
of the South.
* The new Republican Party, which was created in opposition to the act,
aimed to stop the expansion of slavery and soon emerged as the
dominant force throughout the North.

* Pro-slavery settlers came to Kansas mainly from neighboring Missouri.

* Resident Missourians who crossed into Kansas solely for the purpose
of voting for slavery. They formed groups and were dubbed border
ruffians,
* Abolitionist settlers, known as "Jayhawkers" moved from the East
with express purpose of making Kansas a free state. A clash between
the opposing sides was inevitable.
* Successive territorial governors, usually sympathetic to slavery,
attempted unsuccessfully to maintain the peace. The territorial
capital of Lecompton, Kansas, the target of much agitation, became
such a hostile environment for Free-Staters that they set up their
own unofficial legislature at Topeka.
* John Brown and his sons gained notoriety in the fight against slavery
by brutally murdering five pro-slavery farmers in the Pottawatomie
Massacre with a broadsword. Brown also helped defend a few dozen
Free-State supporters from several hundred angry pro-slavery
supporters at the town of Osawatomie.
* Hostilities between the factions reached a state of low-intensity civil
war, which was damaging to Pres. Pierce. "Bleeding Kansas caused
the formation of the Republican Party. Routine ballot-rigging and
intimidation practiced by both pro- and anti-slavery settlers failed to
deter the immigration of anti-slavery settlers, who won a
demographic victory in the race to populate the state.

* The Know Nothing movement was a nativist

American political movement of the 1840s and

1850s.
* It was created by popular fears that the country
was being overwhelmed by German and Irish
Catholic immigrants
* Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it tried to curb
immigration and naturalization, though
unsuccessfully.
* Membership was limited to Protestant males of
British lineage over the age of twenty-one.
* There were few prominent leaders. They were
mainly middle-class and entirely Protestant. Most
ended up joining the Republican Party

* Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

commonly referred to as The

Dred Scott Decision, was a
decision by the United States
Supreme Court that ruled that
people of African descent
imported into the United States
and held as slaves whether or not
they were slaveswere not
protected by the Constitution
and could never be citizens.
* It also held that the United
States Congress had no authority
to prohibit slavery in federal
territories. This effectively
rendered the Missouri
Compromise unconstitutional.
* Lastly, the Court ruled that
slavesas chattel or private
propertycould not be taken
away from their owners without
due process. The Supreme Court's
decision was written by Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney.

* The Lecompton Constitution was a proposed constitutions for the

state of Kansas
* It was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855
*
*
*
*
*
*

Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state

advocates.
The territorial legislature, consisting mostly of slave-owners, met at
the capital of Lecompton in September 1857.
This new constitution enforced slavery in the Kansas and protected
the rights of slaveholders..
President Buchanan endorsed the Lecompton Constitution before
Congress.
On 4 January 1858, Kansas voters, having the opportunity to reject
the constitution altogether in the referendum, overwhelmingly
rejected the Lecompton proposal
In Washington, the Lecompton constitution was defeated by the
House of Representatives.
Though soundly defeated, debate over the proposed constitution had
ripped apart the Democratic party, paving the way for Abraham
Lincoln's election in 1860.

*
* Lincoln expected to bring about the

eventual extinction of slavery by

stopping its further expansion into any
U.S. territory, and by offering
compensated emancipation
* Lincoln stood by the Republican Party
platform in 1860, which stated that
slavery should not be allowed to
expand into any more territories.
* Most Americans agreed that if all
future states admitted to the Union
were to be free states, that slavery
would eventually be abolished.
* Lincoln believed that the slavery that
existed in the Southern states was
guaranteed constitutionally and could
not be outlawed. But he did say that
the slavery in the South could not be
exported to the West.

*
* John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

was an attempt by white abolitionist

John Brown to start an armed slave
revolt by seizing a United States
Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in
1859.
* Brown's raid was defeated by a
detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col.
Robert E. Lee.
* John Brown had originally asked
Harriet Tubman to join him when he
attacked the armory, but on the night
of the raid she was ill, and therefore
did not show up.
* The raid was seen by most Southerners
as being an attempt to kill them and
saw Brown as a danger.
* Northern abolitionists thought that
Brown was a martyr on the level of
Christ.

* The presidential election of 1860 set the stage for

the American Civil War.

* The nation had been divided throughout most of the
1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in
the territories.
* In 1860 this issue finally came to a head, fracturing
the formerly dominant Democratic Party into
Southern and Northern factions.
* This split the Democratic vote and brought Abraham
Lincoln and the Republican Party to power without
the support of a single Southern state.
* Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's
victory came declarations of secession by South
Carolina and other states

*The Crittenden Compromise (December

18, 1860) was an unsuccessful proposal by

Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden to
resolve the U.S. secession crisis of 1860
1861.
*There were many unpopular features of
the compromise that led to its failure. It
guaranteed the permanent existence of
slavery in the slave states and addressed
Southern demands in regard to fugitive
slaves and slavery in the District of
Columbia. But the heart of the compromise
was the permanent reestablishment of the
Missouri Compromise line

* The Confederate States of America was a

government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven

southern slave states of the United States that
had declared their secession from the U.S.
* Asserting that states had a right to secede,
seven states declared their independence from
the United States before the inauguration of
Abraham Lincoln as President on March 4, 1861
* four more states seceded after the Civil War
began at the Battle of Fort Sumter (April
1861).
* The Union regarded secession as illegal and
refused to recognize the Confederacy.

*
*

Jefferson Davis was elected the first (and

only) president of the Confederacy
The Southern leaders met in Montgomery,
Alabama, to write their constitution. Much of
the Confederate States Constitution
replicated the United States Constitution
verbatim, but it contained several explicit
protections of the institution of slavery,
though it maintained the existing ban on
international slave-trading.
In certain areas, the Confederate
Constitution gave greater powers to the
states than the U.S. Constitution of the time
did, but in other areas, the states actually
lost rights they had under the U.S.
Constitution.
the Confederate version prohibited the
central government from using revenues
collected in one state for funding internal
improvements in another state.

* border states refers to the five slave states of

Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and

West Virginia, which bordered a free state and
were aligned with the Union.
* Though every slave state (except South
Carolina) contributed some white troops to the
Union as well as the Confederate side,the split
was most severe in these border states, with
men from the same family often fighting on
opposite sides.
* Had Maryland also joined the Confederacy,
Washington DC would have been totally
surrounded.