Williams Lecture Discussion: The Road To War

4.13.20

The Road to War: Expansion and Sectional

Crisis

• Expansion • Sectionalism • Compromise / Discord

Politics and American Democracy ❖ Between 1820 and 1840, white/male Americans gained

more participation opportunity in politics: from 30% voting to 80% in 1840.

❖ Property qualifications for voting gradually ended / Voting rights expanded, *except for Women, African Americans, and Native Americans

❖ Elites were increasingly criticized / Professional politicians emerged and used support of the public and ‘common man’ to gain votes

Election of 1824

Issues: • Adams favored a version Henry Clay’s ‘American

System’ -> federal power for internal improvements

• Andrew Jackson receives larger share of popular and electoral vote, but not enough to determine the Presidency

• House of Representatives decides the election: Henry Clay supports Adams; Adams becomes President

• Adams appoints Henry Clay Secretary of State • Jackson furious over outcome and declares a

‘corrupt bargain’ By Original - Unknown; Copy - Mathew Brady [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

John Quincy Adams - Son of John Adams; current Sec. of State; former professor; American

diplomat; Devised the Monroe Doctrine -> Europe should stay out of the Western

Hemisphere and refrain from interfering with American and Latin American countries

American Democracy

Election of 1828 Seeking to defeat Adams, Andrew Jackson uses direct appeals to the common-voting man and / southern and western people. Elevated the ideal of Democracy - “voice of the (white) people”

• Democratic party organizes a campaign around Jackson as a war hero and uses the nickname ‘Old Hickory’

• Adams (Republicans) don’t do as much direct campaigning, but used ads

• “the killer vs. the aristocratic elitist” • Jackson wins the Presidency with 56% of the

popular vote and 68% of the electoral vote Thomas Sully [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.50970

Jackson Presidency ❖ Eaton Affair - Sec. of War John Eaton

accused of having affair with scandalous woman before he married her (Peggy Eaton). This tarnished the first few months of the Presidency and strained Jackson’s relationship with his Vice President, John C. Calhoun.

❖ Issues: Federal Tariffs of 1828 and States’ Rights; the Power of the Federal Government (and limiting that power); Development of Political Parties: Democrats and Whigs. Democrats -> “In this country, liberty (freedom) is understood to be the absence of government from private affairs.” Whereas, Whigs -> government should “promote the welfare of the people.” (as quoted in Give Me Liberty, 390)

Tariff of 1828 and States’ Rights

Tariff to protect American manufactures, by raising the taxes on imported goods,

including British textiles

South Carolina objected, feeling that it hurt the southern economy. They called it the

Tariff of Abominations.

South Carolina also wanted to take a stand against their view of an increasingly

powerful federal government, and to create a defense for slavery

Jackson and Nullification ❖ John C. Calhoun, from South Carolina, and Vice

President, developed the theory of Nullification: arguing, states that disagreed with federal law could then reject, or nullify, that law.

❖ Daniel Webster (Massachusetts) argued forcefully against States’ Right to nullify Federal law: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.” (as quoted in Visions of America: A History of the United States, 231)

❖ Jackson also rejects Calhoun’s states’ rights argument / Calhoun resigns the Vice Presidency, becomes the Senator from South Carolina, and most vocal defender of states’ rights / South Carolina attempted to Nullify the Tariff in 1832, but Jackson rejected this move again with a Force Bill (using military if needed) - temporary fix but tensions mounted…

Mathew Brady [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Indian Removal

After War of 1812: many Native groups in the southern states began

adopting American customs (Christianity and Farming) to decrease tensions and survive where they lived -> “Five Civilized Tribes,” Cherokee,

Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, Chickasaw

Issues: “Extending the area of slavery [required]

converting Indian soil into slave soil.” Thomas Hart Benton (Missouri) (Foner, 393)

“Surrounded as they are, and pressed as they will be on every side by the white population, it will be difficult if not impossible for them, with their kind

of government, to sustain order among themselves. “ President James Monroe, 1824 (as quoted in

Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830, 320)

“We wish to remain on the land of our fathers. We have a perfect and original right to remain

without interruption or molestation.” Cherokee Nation to United States (as quoted in Visions of America, 236)

Indian Removal

❖ Cherokee created a constitution and declared an independent republic in Georgia / State of Georgia refused to allow another ‘country’ within its borders

❖ 1828: Gold was discovered on Indian lands in Georgia / Georgia sought control of these lands and used local militia to gain access / Cherokee petitioned the US Government for protection

❖ Andrew Jackson - Indian Removal Act of 1830

❖ Jackson offered an Exchange of Indian lands in the South for new lands across Mississippi River (Oklahoma)

❖ Cherokee Cases: Supreme Court (1830, 1832)

❖ Status of Indian Tribes within US / State Territories

❖ Supreme Court (John Marshall) declared state law in Georgia could not override Cherokee lands

❖ Jackson ignored this ruling, supported Georgia, and sought the removal of Indian groups from the South -> he claimed for their own protection

By User:Nikater [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“The trail where they cried” US Military forcibly removed

Indian men, women, and children to the West

Southern Leadership ❖ Why did the South develop a defensive posture towards the North?

❖ What did Southern Leadership use in its defense of the South?

❖ Nullification Crisis: 1830’s, Tariff, power of the federal government compared to state power/rights -> Slavery as backdrop

❖ Westward Expansion: Missouri Compromise, Mexican-American War -> Slavery as backdrop

❖ Southern ‘Way of Life’ increasingly tied with slavery as the focal point for politics, economy, society, religion, culture

❖ South Carolina Slaveholders: “They were, above all, the guardians of an idiosyncratic aristocratic-republican mixture, based on slavery, that they feared was about to be destroyed by Yankee exploiters, with the aid of spineless southerners.” (Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 376)

The South: Environment, Culture ❖ The pull of a generally warm, humid,

fertile climate attracted plantation agriculture and the types of crops that sustained it: cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar

❖ Native-born Inhabitants: black and white

❖ Little European migration to the south before the Civil War

❖ European shipping routes and immigrants to Northern ports

❖ Slavery deterred immigrant labor and competition

❖ “Southern banks… loaned money for the purchase of land and slaves, not manufacturing development.” (Foner, Give Me Liberty, 409)

http://courses.missouristate.edu/bobmiller/data/Slavery/Crops_South.JPG

Post-Missouri Compromise ❖ Slavery becomes even more of a cultural/

political issue: British demand for cotton ❖ Southern leaders more defensive against

other parts of the country / Begin to argue and believe in the superiority of the South compared to the North

❖ Lower South / Deep South as strongest protectors of the slave economy and system

❖ Question of slavery’s expansion into the new Western territories

❖ Slavery increasingly viewed as part of the southern way of life that was under threat

❖ Population and demographics different from Northern development

online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=278103&itemid=WE52&iid=58135

Slavery as focal point of debate

Southern Demographics ❖ Planter Elite

❖ Slave-owning minority shaped public policy, economics, decision-making, culture

❖ Often first generation elites

❖ Paternalistic control / upholding pro- slavery ————————————>

❖ Slave-owning families had enough money and time to educate their children / non-slaveholders in the South often didn’t

❖ “… great Excitement in Congress. Northern states medling with slavery - first they com’ced by petition - now by openly speaking of the sin of Slavery in the southern states - on the floor of congress - must eventually cause a separation of the Union.” Bennet Barrow (planter from Louisiana), from Diary entry, January 14, 1838 (as quoted in Major Problems in the History of the American South, Volume 1: The Old South, 248)

❖ John C. Calhoun responded, calling slavery “a great political institution, essential to the peace and existence of one- half this Union.” (as quoted in: Lacy Ford, “Reconfiguring the Old South: ‘Solving’ the Problem of Slavery, 11787-1838.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 95, No.1 (Jun., 2008(, pp. 95-122)

Managing Slavery ❖ Paternalism and Capitalism: the

idea that it was good economic policy to treat enslaved people well. What did this mean? Well fed, well clothed?

❖ Planters often used what they called ‘good treatment’ to increase their profits and productivity

❖ They also used physical punishment to prevent inefficiency, increase profits, and maintain control

Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Southern/Planter Paternalism ❖ Paternalism: Unique social trait based

around slave system

❖ Male planter as Father figure for the plantation (and southern society)

❖ The concept of “Our People” tied to a sense of ownership, control -> white male dominance based on ‘honor’

❖ Positioned enslaved people at the bottom of the social order: viewed as children in need of white supervision, guidance, control: “[Slavery] defined [planters] privileges and shaped their culture, their religion, and even their personalities.” (Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South, 17)

❖ Using racial attitudes to view enslaved people as not fully human, and subordinates to whites -> supported by the success of the cotton economy -> profits = justifications for slavery. “You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king.” James Henry Hammond, South Carolina. (as quoted in America: The Essential Learning Edition, 363)

Southern Classes Small Farmer / Poor and Middle Classes

❖ small family farmers / often did not own land

❖ hill country: raised hogs, chickens, corn, some cotton / local trade networks: self-sufficiency

❖ most did not own slaves / did not want to compete with enslaved laborers or free blacks for land and jobs

❖ indebted to plantation system: socially, politically, economically/ independent- minded, skeptical of centralized authority

❖ often did not have access to public education / higher illiteracy rates than many northern communities

Yeoman / Small Farmer Landowner

❖ Backcountry: hill regions that were not suited to large-scale crop (cotton) agriculture

❖ “Cotton Snobs” “Rich Planters” -> Small farmers felt equal with Planters and above Enslaved People. They often felt a strong sense of independence

❖ Small farmers also made up local militia’s who’s job was often to hunt and return fugitive slaves

❖ Talking about non-slaveholding whites, Jefferson Davis said in 1860 “…by the existence of negro slavery, the white man is raised to the

dignity of a freeman and an equal.” (Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie, 25)

Planter Paternalism January 23, 1838: White Frost

pleasant day - during my stay at Mr Joors last week my House servants

Jane Lavenia & E. jim broke into my store room - and helped themselves

very liberally to every thing - Center - Anica - & Peter had some of the

good drink ‘as they say’ - I Whiped [whipped] the three first worse than I ever Whiped any one before. Bennet Barrow (planter from Louisiana), from Diary entry, January 14, 1838 (as quoted in Major Problems in the History of the American South, Volume 1: The Old

South, 248) https://catalog.archives.gov/id/533232

National Archives

Peter

Limits to Paternalistic Control ❖ Large Plantations: Owner did not always deal

directly with all of his slaves, nor of the slave cultures. Used Overseers to manage and attempt to control the enslaved people.

❖ Planters / Overseers relied upon the principle of dominance and often of fear: whipping, public torture, threats of family separation; as well as some degree of compromise

❖ Enslaved Resistance always undermined and questioned the real power of the master / and the slave South, and so did aggressive Northern antislavery: “whatever was done or attempted with a view to the support and security of slavery only served as fuel to the fire, and heated the furnace of agitation to a higher degree than any before attained.” Frederick Douglass as quoted in Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie, 33)

National Portrait Gallery [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

African American Culture

John Antrobus [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Living and Resisting Slavery • Family - enslaved people

used extended families to maintain community and survive

• Religion - mixed African, Caribbean, and Christian practices -> the Ring Shout

• Music - preservation of African culture/rhythm; Spirituals; music for work, communication, resistance -> drums outlawed by some masters

• Fighting Back - slow work; fake illness; running away; breaking tools. Or, Insurrection -> Nat Turner (1831)

Burial scene at night. Enslaved people gather to bury, listen to the Preacher, and perform

community

African American Anti-Slavery ❖ Fredrick Douglass (personal account of

slavery), Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman. ❖ Black Activism to promote an end to slavery. ❖ David Walker, An Appeal to the Coloured

Citizens of the World (1829). Free black writer who advocated an end to slavery and a black revolution against white rule. “Tell us no more about colonization, for America is as much our country as it is yours.” (Foner, 453)

❖ Underground Railroad: secret system to move enslaved people to Northern safe- havens.

❖ Many Northerner’s profited from slavery/ cotton and some also reacted strongly and violently against Abolitionism

Benjamin F. Powelson [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Sectional Differences ❖ Increased ‘abolitionist’ agitation by William

Lloyd Garrison, Northern American Anti- Slavery Society (1833). Used the media and newspapers, The Liberator, to call for immediate abolition (freeing) of enslaved people

❖ Abolitionists were a small, but influential group largely in the North that redefined the idea of who could be Americans, and felt African Americans deserved equality and freedom

❖ Frederick Douglass and Garrison were allies, and promoted antislavery

❖ *Most white Northerners, however, shared a deep sense of racism, even if they also felt a strong anti-slavery sentiment

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Road to War

American Anti- Slavery

Theodore Weld (Connecticut, 1803-1895) • wrote American Slavery As it Is: Testimony of A

Thousand Witnesses (1839), along with his wife Angelina Grimke and her sister, Sarah -> Grimke sisters would later connect abolitionism to women’s rights

• published by the American Anti-Slavery Society • used primary sources (1st person accounts) of the

realities of slavery • called slavery a sin and wanted immediate end • example of influential use of media to shape public

opinion (and cause southern defense) of slavery

Southern Reaction Increasingly militant language used by

southern leaders to defend the ‘southern way of life.’

“We of the South will not, cannot surrender our institutions. Be it good or bad it [Slavery] has grown up with our

society and institutions, and is so interwoven with them, that to destroy it would be to destroy us as a people. I hold [Slavery] to be a good, as it has thus far

proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition…If we do not defend ourselves

none will defend us…” (Major Problems.. South, 424, 427) Mathew Brady [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Women Activists - Feminism ❖ Abolition movement attracted many Women ❖ Increasingly tied Abolition, Women’s Rights,

Freedom, together -> earlier, women organized against Indian Removal

❖ World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) ❖ Women not allowed in the convention ❖ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,

and Lucretia Mott ❖ 1848: Seneca Falls Convention in New York ❖ Declaration of Sentiments: “the history of

mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her…. All men and women are created equal.” -> called for women’s right to vote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElizabethCadyStanton-1848-Daniel-Henry.jpg

Lucretia Mott

Manifest Destiny

• Freedom connected to new western lands

• “our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment in liberty.” (John O’Sullivan, as quoted in Give Me Liberty, 348)

Emanuel Leutze [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Emanuel Leutze [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Mexican-American War ❖ Issue: New Land and the Expansion of Slavery.

Republic of Texas (with many American slave-owners) annexed by US in 1845 as a slave state (Calhoun as Sect. of State completed the annexation), then US (Polk) attempted to purchase California and set boundary with Mexico ————————>

❖ Free-Soil and Pro-Slavery as concepts developing during the Mexican-American War

❖ Wilmot Proviso (1846), David Wilmot (Penn.) proposed to ban slavery in any new territory gained from Mexico.

❖ Provide free-open land for Northern white settlement: “If slave plantations were to occupy the fertile lands of the West, northern migration would be effectively blocked.” (Foner, 492)

❖ Halt the power of southern slave states / protect free-white labor

❖ North (largely Free-Soil) in favor; South (largely Pro-Slavery) against. “What does the past teach us.. that slavery lives by expansion.” as quoted in Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 599)

❖ Measure stopped in the Senate / but the debate entered the Presidential Election of 1848 - Zachary Taylor

By Kaidor [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1821

Compromise of 1850

Western Expansion: Slavery Vs. Free Soil/Free Labor

Issue: What to do about slavery in the newly acquired Western territories after the

Mexican War?

John C. Calhoun, ill, issued a Southern plea: Slave owners should be able to take slaves (property) into new territories; called for federal protection of a fugitive slave law; wanted equality between sections. Henry Clay, and then Stephen A. Douglas (Ill.)

offered a Compromise and President Fillmore signed into law.

1. California admitted as a Free State (gold was discovered in 1848, thus positioning California as an important new territory)

2. To compromise: Slavery in the other new territories (New Mexico and Utah) would be decided by the voting white people of those areas - “popular sovereignty”

3. New Fugitive Slave Law: Easier to recapture runaway slaves, or kidnap free blacks, as many Northerners argued. Allowed federal agents or southerners to pursue runaway slaves in Northern states without jury trial

4. To compromise: Slave Trade in Washington DC outlawed / but slavery was intact

Compromise of 1850

Fugitive Slave Law ❖ Required citizens to help catch runaways

❖ Forced northerners to help southern slave owners

❖ Further angered Northern abolitionists and increasing numbers of other northerners

❖ Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe) is published in 1852 during the Fugitive Slave Act:

❖ Very popular book depicting the horrors of slavery, sale of family members, and the fugitive slave law

❖ Helped convince many Northerners that slavery’s spread should be prevented, or contained in the South

❖ Strong Southern resistance to this book: “Stowe’s frank depiction of slaveholders’ hypocrisy, the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and the cruelty inherent in the system aroused violent opposition in the South, where book burnings and mass protests greed the novel.” (Schaller, American Horizons, 459) By Hammatt Billings [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Kanas-Nebraska Act, 1854 ❖ Issue: Transcontinental Railroad

❖ Southerners wanted a southern route

❖ Stephen Douglas (northerner) favored a route through the upper Louisiana Purchase (Nebraska), but knew that clear territories with governments had to be created first.

❖ Douglas proposed creating two new territories (Kansas and Nebraska) using the concept of popular sovereignty to decide on slavery in these regions - thus threatening to end the Missouri Compromise

❖ Southerners liked it, but many Northerners did not. Two Congressmen (abolitionists including Charles Sumner) published an Appeal in response: this plan was an “atrocious plot” to turn the new lands into “a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” (Foner, 497)

Kansas-Nebraska Act Passes, 1854 ❖ Repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed the

possibility of slavery North of the Missouri border: 36/30 parallel

❖ Divided the Louisiana Territory in two: Nebraska and Kansas Territories (popular sovereignty to decide slavery)

❖ Northern Backlash: accused Douglas of promoting a Southern/Slave conspiracy

❖ North felt weakened by this measure

❖ Increasing numbers speak out against the Fugitive Slave Act in response

❖ **This event led to the establishment of a solid South united by the Democratic Party, and a North united by a Republican Party that opposed expansion of slavery -> the rise of Abraham Lincoln, who strongly opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act: “there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another…” as quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 128) https://wwnorton.com/college/history/america-essential-learning/maps_units/chapter_13/ch13map05/

Bleeding Kansas ❖ Popular Sovereignty in Kansas-

Nebraska

❖ A race to populate Kansas with either Free-Soil Northerners or pro- slavery Missourians and southerners

❖ Missouri pro-slavery people crossed into Kansas to vote illegally. People also from free states entered Kansas

❖ Free-Soilers in Kansas call a Constitutional Convention to attempt to outlaw slavery

❖ Two state governments in Kansas

❖ 1856: Lawrence - armed violence between the two groups

❖ Pro-slavery advocates destroyed newspapers, burned ‘free-state’ governors home and hotel

❖ Republican newspapers called this the ‘sack of Lawrence’

Congressional Violence ❖ 1856: Senator Charles Sumner (Mass.)

made a speech saying that Kansas was the “rape of virgin territory” and said it was due to the South’s “depraved longing for a new slave state.” (America: A Narrative History, 458)

❖ Also called South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler a liar whose “mistress was Slavery”

❖ South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks retaliated by caning Sumner on the Senate floor until he was unconscious in an act of honor

❖ North outraged / South rejoiced -> “These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate… must be lashed into submission.” Richmond Newspaper (459)

By John L. Magee (c.1820–c.1870) (Lithograph reproduced here) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

John Brown, 1856 ❖ Upon hearing of the ‘sack of Lawrence’ and the

Sumner beating, John Brown and his family vowed to fight for an end to slavery and to punish pro-slavery people in Kansas

❖ Went to the Pro-Slavery town and killed 5 people ❖ Son was killed ❖ Brown vowed “I have only a short time to live …

only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause.” (America: A Narrative History, 458)

❖ Later, in 1859, Brown would attempt to overthrow slavery by seizing weapons at Harpers Ferry. He was captured and executed. But he became a martyr for the North and a symbol to many African Americans as a fighter to end slavery.

❖ Jefferson Davis said: “They [the North] have declared war on us…” (Shi, America: A Narrative History, 567)

By attributed to Southworth & Hawes (The Massachusetts Historical Society) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Escalating Crisis ❖ Backdrop: “Bleeding Kansas,” “Bleeding Sumner,” “Bully

Brooks,” John Brown as hero/villain

❖ Election of 1856 - Democrat (Buchanan wins on popular sovereignty platform), *but the Republican candidate (Fremont) gains popular votes in North on the message of stopping the expansion of slavery.

❖ Dred Scott Decision, 1857

❖ Supreme Court Case Dred Scott Vs. Sandford

❖ Issue: Dred Scott, enslaved person from Virginia; enslaved in Florence, Alabama, then taken to St. Louis and Illinois, and then Wisconsin where slavery did not exist. 1846: Dred Scott filed a legal suit declaring he should be free since he lived and married in a free state.

❖ Supreme Court Decision —> Roger B. Taney —> Scott was still a slave because he said no African American could be a legal citizen, and that Congress had no right to ban slavery in the new territories. Most of the justices were southerners. Republicans now declared a “Slave South” conspiracy

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/DredScott.jpg

Abraham Lincoln ❖ 1858 Illinois Senate Campaign

❖ Abraham Lincoln Vs. Stephan A. Douglas Debates ❖ Lincoln: Pro-Union and stopping the

expansion of slavery

❖ Douglas: popular sovereignty, letting states and locales decide on slavery

❖ Douglas won, but the Lincoln-Douglas debates shaped public opinion and the future Presidential election: ❖ Lincoln gained a national

reputation as a Republican -“I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Abraham_Lincoln_O-55%2C_1861-crop.jpg

Election of 1860 ❖ Lincoln (Republican) Vs.

Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) and Douglas (Northern Democrat)

❖ Republican Platform

1. Internal Improvements

2. Opposed expansion of slavery

3. Government support for homesteads in the West, tariff, transcontinental railroad

The Road to War

After Lincoln’s Victory in 1860

• South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded from the Union.

• Created the Confederate States of America: Jefferson Davis as President (Mississippi) and Alexander Stephens (Georgia) as Vice President.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with slavery - the

greatest material interest in the world.”

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp