Photograph of Dred Scott, 1857. Map of the Mexican Cession, 2008. As all of this played out, the House failed to expel Brooks. "Bleeding Kansas" was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis. this mississippi declaration of secession includes the major southern arguments for secession, defends slavery, and enumerates grievances against the federal government that dated back to the constitution.the election of abraham lincoln as president in 1860 capped a decade of escalating political conflict over whether to allow slavery in the Why learn about the sectional crisis? Complicating matters further was the rapid expansion of plantation slavery fueled by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The Missouri Compromise marked a major turning point in America's sectional crisis because it exposed to the public just how divisive the slavery issue had grown. A rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 threatened lives and property throughout the Carolinas. Michigan gained admission through provisions established in the Northwest Ordinance, while Arkansas came in under the Missouri Compromise. The Fugitive Slave Act created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal power, including an alarming increase in the nations policing powers. But knowing that the Liberty Party was also not likely to provide a home to many moderate voters, leaders fostered a new and more competitive party, which they called the Free Soil Party. The Missouri debate had also deeply troubled the nations African Americans and Native Americans. Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important. Americans by 1820 had endured a broad challenge, not only to their cherished ideals but also more fundamentally to their conceptions of self. They generated tremendous wealth for the British crown. Congress reached a compromise on Missouris admission, largely through the work of Kentuckian Henry Clay. Child responded, and the exchange of letters was published by the American Antislavery Society. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. The story of voter fraud in Kansas had begun years before in 1854, when nearby Missourians first started crossing the border to tamper with the Kansas elections. Within days, southern states were organizing secession conventions. The admission of Wisconsin as a free state in May 1848 helped cool tensions after the Texas and Florida admissions. As the Republicans gained power the Democrats continued to fracture along sectional lines, which only increased with the crisis over the Lecompton Constitution. Sectional Crisis Leading to the civil war there were a plethora of things that impacted the unity of the nation as a whole. Uncle Toms Cabin intensified an already hot debate over slavery throughout the United States. Yet even with the booming cotton economy, many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that slavery was a temporary institution and would soon die out. Antislavery participants in the Missouri debate argued that the framers never intended slavery to survive the Revolution and in fact hoped it would disappear through peaceful means. The Antebellum Period in American history is generally considered to be the period before the Civil War and after the War of 1812, although some historians expand it to all the years from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the beginning of the Civil War. Polk cited the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Territory as campaign cornerstones.12 Yet as Polk championed the acquisition of these vast new lands, northern Democrats grew annoyed by their southern colleagues, especially when it came to Texas. Consider discussing people such as: During the 1850s, Americans witnessed a decade of sectional crises that threatened the very existence of the Union. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. Few Americans voted for the party. Many northerners were also troubled by the way the bill undermined local and state laws. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. Two major events that contributed to this were the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas Nebraska Act. It helped splinter the Atlantic basin into clear zones of freedom and un-freedom, shattering the longstanding assumption that African-descended slaves could not also be rulers. The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. Fighting spread even farther against Native Americans in the Far West and against Mormons in Utah. In abolitionist and especially Black American circles, Frmonts defeat was more than a disappointment. But the Liberty Party also shunned womens participation in the movement and distanced themselves from visions of true racial egalitarianism. Douglass efforts to amend and introduce the bill in 1854 opened dynamics that would break the Democratic Party in two and, in the process, rip the country apart. Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the U.S. Constitution but reaffirmed Missouris ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. From Sectional Crisis to National Crisis, 46. Calling themselves Know-Nothings, on account of their tendency to pretend ignorance when asked about their activities, the Know-Nothing or American Party made impressive gains in 1854 and 1855, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic. Sectionalism in the Early Republic This map, published by the US Coast Guard, shows the percentage of slaves in the population in each county of the slave-holding states in 1860. It was Kansas that at last proved to many northerners that the sectional crisis would not go away unless slavery also went away. Anthony Burns, the fugitive slave, appears in a portrait at the center of this 1855 print. P. F. Rothermel (artist), c. 1855. Sectional differences tied to the expansion of plantation slavery in the West were especially important after 1803. The Republican platform made the partys antislavery commitments clear, also making wide promises to its white constituents, particularly westerners, with the promise of new land, transcontinental railroads, and broad support of public schools.31 Abraham Lincoln, a candidate few outside Illinois truly expected to win, nonetheless proved far less polarizing than the other names on the ballot. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018). The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. News reached Washington, and the federal government sent soldiers. African American History and Culture by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Salmon P. Chase drafted a response in northern newspapers that exposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a measure to overturn the Missouri Compromise and open western lands for slavery. Bracey, Christopher Alan, Paul Finkelman, and David Thomas Konig, eds. North of it, encompassing what in 1820 was still unorganized territory, there would be no slavery.7. Wikimedia. Margaretta Mason of Virginia wrote a searing letter to Child attacking her for supporting a murder. Whites discontented with the direction of the country used the slur and other critiques to help chip away at Democratic Party majorities. Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, c. 1882-1884. Writer, activist, and teacher Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1837 to a well-to-do African American family. that the administration was abusing its powers. While the Missouri Compromise effectively settled the question of slavery from 1820 to 1854, its repeal began the sectional conflict that eventually brought the nation into the Civil War. Effects and Significance of the Compromise of 1850. By 1845, Douglass put the finishing touches on his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.14 The book launched his lifelong career as an advocate for the enslaved and helped further raise the visibility of Black politics. The Republicans, meanwhile, held their boisterous convention in Chicago. That debate, however, came quickly. By October 18, a command under Robert E. Lee had crushed the revolt. It declared that the federal Tariff of 1828 and of 1832 were unconstitutional and South Carolina just weren't going to follow them! Northwest Ordinance, July 13, 1787; Charles C. Tansill, ed.. Conference committee report on the Missouri Compromise, March 1, 1820; Joint Committee of Conference on the Missouri Bill, 03/01/1820-03/06/1820; Record Group 128l; Records of Joint Committees of Congress, 1789-1989; National Archives. None of the individual measures in the Compromise of 1850 proved more troubling to antislavery Americans than the Fugitive Slave Act. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River.4 Many took it to mean that the founders intended for slavery to die out, as why else would they prohibit its spread across such a huge swath of territory? Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation.8 The bruising Missouri debates ultimately transcended arguments about the Constitution. Calhoun's pamphlet sparked a national debate over the doctrine of nullification and its constitutionality. The Haitian Revolution marked an early origin of the sectional crisis. Between 1820 and 1846, sectionalism drew on new political parties, new religious organizations, and new reform movements. a. New pressures challenging the delicate balance again arose in the West. On May 24, 1854, twenty-year-old Burns, a preacher who worked in a Boston clothing shop, was clubbed and dragged to jail. Through sustained debates and arguments, white Americans agreed that the Constitution could do little about slavery where it already existed and that slavery, with the State of Missouri as the key exception, would never expand north of the 3630 line. War broke out in Kansas between pro-slavery sympathizers and abolitionists, earning it the nickname "bleeding Kansas.". The execution of John Brown made him a martyr in abolitionist circles and a confirmed traitor in southern crowds. The Caning of Charles Sumner, 1856. English colonies north and south relied on enslaved workers who grew tobacco, harvested indigo and sugar, and worked in ports. A man whose aim and intention was to incite the horrors of a servile warto condemn women of your own race, ere death closed there eyes on their sufferings from violence and outrage, to see their husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of their babes. 3 Why did the sectional crisis occur in the 1850s? The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. 4 Why did a sectional crisis over slavery emerge during the era of good feelings? Brooks responded by beating Sumner with a cane, a thrashing that southerners celebrated as a manly defense of gentlemanly honor and their way of life. Far more important than the Utah invasion, however, was the ongoing . Brooks resigned his seat anyway, only to be reelected by his constituents later in the year. The Ohio River Valley became an early fault line in the coming sectional struggle. French visionaries issued the Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen by 1789. In this post-Missouri context, leaders arose to push the countrys new expansionist desires in aggressive new directions. Sales for Uncle Toms Cabin were astronomical, eclipsed only by sales of the Bible.21 The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. Marshal to death. 3. The conclusion of the Mexican War led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The highest percentages lie along the Mississippi River, in the Black Belt of Alabama, and coastal South Carolina, all of which were centers of agricultural production (cotton and rice) in the United States. Many others simply used the turmoil of war to make their escape. This piece of Republican propaganda from the 1856 election makes clear distinctions between free states, slave states, and territories. As politics grew more democratic, leaders attacked old inequalities of wealth and power, but in doing so many pandered to a unity under white supremacy. What was the main cause of sectional tension? Legislators sought to prevent future conflicts by making Missouris southern border at 3630 the new dividing line between slavery and freedom in the Louisiana Purchase lands. Despite the furor, the Missouri Crisis did not yet inspire hardened defenses of either slave or free labor as positive good. With the Compromise of 1850 and plenty of new lands, peaceful consensus seemed to be on the horizon. The lessons seemed clear enough. Brown approached Frederick Douglass, though Douglass refused to join. Language in the Tenth Amendment, they claimed, also said slavery could be banned in the territories. proposed a stronger Fugitive Slave Act Fugitive Slave Act - criminalized any Northerners helping slaves escape - added stronger provisions to return escaped slaves to the South - denied an escaped slave a jury trial or the ability to testify on their own behalf the compromise of 1850 led to this new occupation the slave catcher He would use the weapons to lead a revolt of enslaved people. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, American politics was shifting toward "sectional" conflict among the states of the North, South, and West. But the most startling development came in 1803 in Haiti. In 1853, the Nebraska Territory was huge, extending from the northern end of Texas to the Canadian border. Once again westward expansion challenged this consensus, and this time the results proved even more damaging. Missouris admission to the Union in 1821 exposed deep fault lines in American society. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right in predicting that the Mexican Cession would reignite the explosive issue of slavery expansion. Sophia - US History II - Milestone 3 (3 Complete Latest versions) Final (questions & answers) Fall 2020. At the time, debates were occurring over where the transcontinental railroad . The Impact of the Revolution on Slavery, 35. But an antislavery coalition arose in the middle 1850s calling itself the Republican Party. By the time of the Missouri Compromise debate, both groups saw that whites never intended them to be citizens of the United States. They became an all-encompassing referendum on the American past, present,andfuture. The heated sectional controversy between the North and the South reached new levels of intensity in the 1850s. The state of Mississippi seceded. Amos A. Lawrence to Giles Richards, June 1, 1854, quoted in Jane J. Pease and William H. Pease, eds., Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854, in. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Gold had been discovered in California, and as thousands continued to pour onto the West Coast and through the trans-Mississippi West, the admission of new states loomed. Charlotte Forten complains of racism in the North, 1855. Events in Texas would shatter the balance. One year earlier, Burns had escaped slavery in Virginia, and a group of slave catchers had come to return him to Richmond. Yet northern Democrats in crucial swing states remained unmoved by the Republican Partys appeals. Recommended citation: Jeffrey Bain-Conkin et al., The Sectional Crisis, Jesse Gant, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Southern states responded with unanimous outrage, and the nation shuddered at an undeniable sectional controversy.6, Congress reached a compromise on Missouris admission, largely through the work of Kentuckian Henry Clay. Burns arrest and trial, possible because of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, became a rallying cry. South of that line, running east from Missouri to the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase lands (near the present-day Texas panhandle) slavery could expand. 10. Douglas proposed a bold plan in 1854 to cut off a large southern chunk of Nebraska and create it separately as the Kansas Territory. Clay eventually left Washington disheartened by affairs. The heated sectional controversy between the North and the South reached new levels of intensity in the 1850s. Kansas-Nebraska protests emerged in 1854 throughout the North, with key meetings in Wisconsin and Michigan. Figure 1. Controversies over slavery suffuse the platform, but maybe even more noticeable is the importance of the West to the Republican Party. Legislators battled for weeks over whether the Constitutional framers intended slaverys expansion, and these contests left deep scars. Leonhardt (engraver), Map Showing the Distribution of the Slave Population of the Southern States of the United States Compiled from the Census of 1860, c. 1861. Many Northern Whigs believed in something called the Slave Power Conspiracy, a conspiracy theory in which slaveowners (the Slave Power) dominated the country's political system even though they were a minority group, which was accomplished through a coalition with "dough-faced Democrats," Northern Democrats who supported and protected slavery. However, nothing in the document claimed that the government had the power to eliminate slavery where it already existed. The accusation that northern Democrats were lapdogs for southern enslavers had real power.10, The Whigs offered an organized major-party challenge to the Democrats. By 1850, California wanted admission as a free state. For those still in slavery or hoping to see loved ones freed, the news was of course much harder to take. English political theorists, in particular, began to rethink natural-law justifications for slavery. St. Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful slave owners, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. Revolutionaries seized onto these ideas to stunning effect in the late eighteenth century. Are they trying to escape or not? While people can experience . In the majority opinion, excerpted here, Supreme Court justice Joseph Story decided that the national fugitive slave act overruled Pennsylvanias law. it showed that a president could win the Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the Constitution, but reaffirmed Missouris ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. The Sectional Crisis Sectionalism in the Early Republic Slavery's history stretched back to antiquity. The Caning of Sumner in May 1856 followed upon a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he condemned slavery in no uncertain terms, declaring: [Admitting Kansas as a slave state] is the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave state, the hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the national government. Sumner criticized proslavery legislators, particularly attacking a fellow senator and relative of Preston Brooks. Sales forUncle Toms Cabinwere astronomical, eclipsed only by sales of the Bible. Demanding an alternative to the pro-slavery status quo, Free Soil leaders assembled so-called Conscience Whigs, the remnants of the Liberty Party, and antislavery Democrats. She also expressed frequent frustration over the racism she encountered in Boston. By 1820, preserving the balance of free states and slave states would be seen as an issue of national security. Which Europeans Trafficked in Slaves? Both of these events changed the relationship of the nation in many ways. Black Soldiers and Union War Victories (18641865). Full-page illustration by Hammatt Billings for Uncle Toms Cabin, 1852. Lincoln won the nomination, and with the Democrats in disarray, Republicans knew their candidate Lincoln had a good chance of winning. The upheavals of 1848 came to a quick end. As a result, free Black communities emergedcommunities that would continually reignite the antislavery struggle. The framers of the Constitution did a little, but not much, to help resolve these early questions. In this climate, the parties opened their contest for the 1860 presidential election. A resurgent anti-immigrant movement briefly took advantage of the Whig collapse and nearly stole the energy of the anti-administration forces by channeling its frustrations into fights against the large number of mostly Catholic German and Irish immigrants in American cities. The framers of the Constitution never used the word slave. Others began to explore the option of more radical and direct action against the Slave Power. Conflicts between the power of the federal government and states rights strained American politics throughout the antebellum era. Nicholas Wood, A Sacrifice on the Altar of Slavery: Doughface Politics and Black Disenfranchisement in Pennsylvania, 18371838,. 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