Coming Apart: Political Crises in the 1850s

I. Background to the Compromise of 1850: Debate over Missouri

  • Missouri was part of the LA Purchase; first settled first by slaveowners
  • Applied for statehood in 1819
    • North balked
    • Felt the Northwest Ordinance had set a precedent blocking expansion of slavery
    • Worried over upsetting balance of power in the Senate
  • South argued the Constitution didn’t allow prohibition of slavery in new areas
  • Compromise of 1820
    • Maine admitted as a free state, Missouri as a slave states
    • No slavery North of 36’ 30 line
    • Wake up call for southerners
      • Thomas Jefferson on MO Compromise:

“I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. the cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

II. Compromise of 1850

  • CA admitted as a free state
    • Tips the balance: now 16 free states; 15 slave states
  • All other lands acquired in the war with Mexico would be organized as territories
    • “Popular sovereignty” would determine whether they were admitted as slave or free states
    • Overturned the Compromise of 1820
  • The slave trade (but not slavery itself) is outlawed in Washington, DC
  • Stronger fugitive slave law (1850)
  • Ends up simply forestalling the main issue

III. Fugitive Slave Law

  • Increased the power of slave owners to recapture slaves; full authority of the federal government now behind these efforts
  • Law imposed stiff federal penalties on citizens who protected or assisted fugitives, or who refused to cooperate in their return.
    • $1,000 fine (average yearly wage was about ½ this amount)
    • Could faced 6 months in jail
    • Established a separate judicial system to process accused slaves
      • Cases heard by a federal commissioner
      • Slaves not allowed to testify
      • Financial incentive for commissioners to judge the captive to be an escaped slave
  • Threat to free blacks community (the people most likely to be assisting fugitive slaves)
    • Illegal enslavement
      • Had been a problem for decades
      • Case of Solomon Northrop (Twelve Years a Slave)
    • Publicity surrounding cases of illegal enslavement had led some northern states to pass “personal liberty laws”
    • Fugitive Slave Law threatened to invalidate these state laws
      • In response, northern states enact even more such laws
    • Thousands of free blacks flee to Canada

IV. Widely publicized cases

  • Fugitive slave law made slavery a national issue in a new way
  • Case of Shadrach Minions
    • Escaped in 1850; captured in Boston in 1851
    • Abolitionists seized him from courthouse and helped him escape to Canada
    • Nine abolitionists were indicted, but the jury refused to convict them
    • South furious
  • Case of Thomas Sims
    • 1851: Federal troops returned him to slavery
  • Case of Anthony Burns
    • 1852: Marines, cavalry, artillery stop attempts to rescue him
    • Pres. blocked his purchase with money raised by abolitionists
    • Marched back into slavery with all of Boston watching
  • Supreme Court case: Ableman v. Booth (1859)
    • Sherman Booth, abolitionist editor arrested for violating Fugitive Slaw Act
    • Wisconsin judge orders him released
    • Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the decision and ruled that the federal law was unconstitutional
    • US Supreme Court overturns the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling
      • Argued that Wisconsin did not have the power to nullify the judgment of the federal court or to hold the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional

Justice Taney: If the interpretation of the Constitution and federal statutes were left to the states, then “conflicting decisions would unavoidably take place. . . . The Constitution and laws and treaties of the United States, and the powers granted to the Federal Government, would soon receive different interpretations in different States, and the Government of the United States would soon become one thing in one State and another thing in another. It was essential, therefore, to its very existence as a Government that it should have the power of establishing courts of justice, altogether independent of State power, to carry into effect its own laws, and that a tribunal should be established in which all cases which might arise under the Constitution and laws and treaties of the United States, whether in a State court or a court of the United States, should be finally and conclusively decided.”

V. Kansas Nebraska Act

  • Again, issue of slavery in the territories is put back on the table over the fate of the Nebraska Territory
    • Issue that brings Lincoln to national attention
  • Sen. Stephen Douglas (Democrat, IL)
    • Wanted to get a railroad through Illinois; proposes organizing territories
    • Wanted to keep southern support for presidential run
  • Bill split the territory in two—KS and NB—both of which would be organized according to popular sovereignty
    • Explicitly repealed the MO Compromise of 1820
    • Splitting the territory in two was an attempt at compromise
      • Assumption: KS would be a slave state, NB a free state
  • Hugely controversial, but passed in 1854

VI. Upshot of Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • Killed second party system
    • Basically destroyed the Whig Party
  • Spilt the Democrats into regional factions, N & S
    • Badly damaged Northern Democrats
  • Many wealthy Northern merchants, bankers, and manufacturers turned against the South
    • Reinforced the idea of “Slave Power”
  • Paved the way for the Republican Party
    • “No slavery in the territories, and no more slave states”
    • Southerners called them the “Black Republicans”

VII. “Bloody Kansas”

  • Can be seen as the first act of the Civil War
  • Election in the territory was set for March 1855; area flooded with settlers from both the N. and S.
    • Abolitionists provided financial support for settlers
  • Proslavery partisans from MO cast phony ballots and fraudulently win
    • LeCompton Constitution
      • Crime to even question slavery; capital crime to protect fugitive slaves!
    • Free soilers cried foul play, established their own government in Lawrence, KS
    • Violent raids—more than 200 people die
      • Proslavery men attack Lawrence
      • John Brown organizes retaliatory raids; kills proslavery settlers

VIII. “Crime Against Kansas” speech

  • Sen. Charles Sumner, abolitionist, delivered a speech in the Senate on May 19 and 20, 1856. Singled out Senator Andrew Butler, a Democrat, for special rebuke:

“The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator.”

IX. Caning of Senator Charles Sumner (from state of MA)

  • Two days later, Rep. Preston Brooks beat him severely on the Senate floor with a cane
    • Significant that he did not challenge him to a duel
      • Would have recognized him as a social equal
    • Afterwards, Brooks was wholly unrepentant
      • He resigned his seat but was immediately re-elected
  • Episode horrified Northerners
    • Confirmed their stereotype of hot-headed, intemperate Southerners
    • Led to big gains for the Republican Party
  • 1856 election: Democrat James Buchanan elected
    • “Doughface”

X. Dred Scott case

  • In 1830s, Scott’s owner had taken him to Illinois and Wisconsin Territory for a total of about four years.
  • 1846: Scott sued for his freedom
    • Claimed residence in free state and territory made him free
  • 1854: Loses and appeals to the Supreme Court
    • Court must decide:
      • Was Scott a citizen of the U.S., so that his suit had standing
      • Did residence in a free state make one free?
      • Did laws banning slavery trump slaveowners property rights?
      • Court also chooses to take on an additional question:
        • Did Congress have the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?
  • Decision, articulated by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (Democrat, MD): NO on all counts
    • Since before the republic had been founded, he reasoned, blacks had “been regarded as beings of an inferior order…so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Note that he’s not just talking about slaves here; he’s talking about black people in general—both slave and free.
  • Rewriting history
    • Patently untrue; free blacks had enjoyed many of the rights of citizenship
      • Held property, entered into contracts, brought suits in court, and vigorously exercised their rights of speech, press, and assembly.

XI.  John Brown’s Raid

  • Brown and 18 followers launched a raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1858.
  • They were quickly arrested. But their raid cast a pall over the presidential elections in 1859.
  • The Northern celebration of Brown shocked many southern communities.
  • He was hung on Dec. 2, 1859, right after Lincoln’s election.