1. The Sectional Crisis
The Road to the Civil War
1850-1861

2. The Compromise of 1850
Known as the “Great Compromiser,” Henry
Clay formulated the Compromise of 1850
as one of his last significant political works.
It provided for the admission of California
as a free state; it established the western
border of Texas in exchange for federal
assumption of Texas’s pre-annexation debts;
it established popular sovereignty as the
method for allowing or banning slavery in
the territories gained in the Mexican War; it
ended the slave trade in the nation’s capital;
and it strengthened the federal Fugitive
Slave Act. As a whole, the Compromise
could not have passed. Skillfully, the young
senator Stephen Douglas successfully
maneuvered the individual elements of the
compromise through Congress.

3. Slave Catchers
The Fugitive Slave Act, reinvigorated by the
Compromise of 1850, enabled Southern slave
owners to deputize northern citizens as they
tried to recover runaway “property.” Captured
slaves had a moment in court (though they could
not speak on their own behalf); by law, judges
earned $5 for hearing the case and another $5
for sending the defendant back into slavery. The
system brought the injustices of slavery home to
the North like nothing else could. In Boston, local
citizens successfully protected a few African
Americans from being returned to slavery. A mob
tried but failed to rescue Anthony Burns in 1854;
supporters ultimately purchased his freedom and
returned him to Boston the following year. Such
incidents made abolitionists of countless
Northerners.

4. UncleTom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe brought
slavery home to Northerners in
another way with the 1852
publication of her novel Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. The story provided a heart-
rending, if not altogether accurate,
introduction to slave life. First as a
book, then as a play, Uncle Tom’s
story forced Americans to ponder
the morality of slavery. When
President Lincoln first met Stowe at
the White House in 1862, he greeted
her saying,“So you are the little
woman who made this great war.”

5. The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Political conflicts of interest often result in
scandal. In 1854 the result, instead, was a giant
step toward civil war. Senator Stephen
Douglas, a rising star in the Democratic Party,
proposed in 1854 to organize the territories of
Kansas and Nebraska in preparation for their
ultimate statehood. To secure the votes of
Southerners, Douglas proposed that popular
sovereignty prevail in these territories, contrary
to the terms of the Missouri Compromise. The
conflict of interest? Douglas was a director of
the Illinois Central Railroad; territorial
organization would permit advancement of a
transcontinental railroad, ideally (for Douglas)
with a terminus in Chicago. The Act passed—
with deadly repercussions.

6. The Shake-up of Political
Parties
The overwhelming election of Democratic candidate
Franklin Pierce in 1852 signaled the demise of the
Whig Party. The “Cotton Whigs” of the South found
refuge in the Democratic Party. In the North, party
politics grew complicated. The American Party (the
Know-Nothings)—with some presence in the South—
emerged as a nativist, anti-immigrant party; the
Republicans—a purely Northern party—attracted
Free Soilers, former Whigs, and disenchanted
Democrats with a firm stand against any policy that
would permit slavery in U.S. territories.The 1856
election would pit Democratic Candidate James
Buchanan (see his “ticket,” adjacent) against Republican
John Fremont and American Party candidate Millard
Fillmore. Buchanan triumphed, but Fremont’s showing
gave Republicans hope for the future.

7. Conflict in Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska Act made a
battleground of Kansas, where pro-
slavery and anti-slavery advocates
gathered to win their respective
causes. Agents for both sides
canvassed the country to enlist
supporters to move to Kansas and
take a stand. The broadside to the
right is a plea to the people of the
North to attend a meeting and
support the side of freedom.

8. John Brown and
“Bleeding Kansas”
John Brown grew up in
my hometown of
Hudson, Ohio. While
debates continue over his
sanity, there is no
questioning his
commitment to the anti-
slavery cause. Brown first
hit the news when he and
six accomplices murdered
five pro-slavery men at
Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas. Kansas had already grown contentious, with
two questionable governments vying for control of the territory. The
Pottawatomie Massacre simply raised the ante.

9. Brooks Attacks Sumner
The famous orator
Charles Sumner, speaking
in the Senate about the
atrocities in Kansas, used
the occasion to defame
his fellow senator
Andrew Butler of South
Carolina. Butler was
absent and unable to
defend his name. Butler’s
nephew, Congressman
Preston Brooks, took it
upon himself to avenge Sumner’s improprieties—by beating Sumner on the
Senate floor with a heavy cane! Northerners made Sumner a martyr;
Southerners praised Brooks by sending him canes with which to beat other
impudent Northerners.

10. The Dred Scott Case
The Dred Scott case gave the Supreme
Court the opportunity to join the debate
over the place of slavery in the
territories. As a slave, Dred Scott had
traveled with his master, a physician from
Missouri, through the free state of Illinois
and the free territory of Wisconsin. Well
after his return to Missouri, Scott filed a
suit for his freedom on the grounds of his
residence in these free lands. Andrew
Jackson’s old friend Roger Taney now sat
as chief justice of the Supreme Court, and
he rejected Scott’s argument with a
decision full of disturbing implications.

11. Taney’s Decision
Taney first declared that Scott had no standing
to file suit in federal court since, as a black
man, he was not a citizen. Taney might have
stopped there, but he argued further that, since
he filed his suit in Missouri, Scott had no
recourse to Illinois law. Additionally, and most
provocatively,Taney argued that the 5th
amendment protection of property meant that
an owner could not be deprived of his property
“without due process.” Taney there invalidated
the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional,
with this admonition to Congress: not only was
Congress powerless to exclude slavery from
any territory, but it had a constitutional duty to
protect slavery in any territory.

12. The Lecompton Constitution
Not long after Taney’s decision, controversy in Kansas arose yet again.
Proslavery forces in Kansas applied for statehood, basing their proposed
“Lecompton Constitution” on an election boycotted by anti-slavery residents.
President Buchanan rejected the advice of his governor in Kansas and pushed
for the territory’s admission to the union as a slave state. Stephen Douglas
successfully led the fight in Congress to defeat the measure.

13. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The 1858 senate race between incumbent
Stephen Douglas and Republican candidate
Abraham Lincoln revolved significantly
around Kansas, Dred Scott, and slavery in the
territories. Despite the Dred Scott decision,
Lincoln argued against the expansion of
slavery into the territories. Lincoln
challenged Douglas to explain how,
considering the Dred Scott decision, his
theory of popular sovereignty could any
longer keep slavery out of these territories.
Douglas answered,“The people have the lawful means to introduce it or
exclude it as they please, for…slavery cannot exist…unless it is supported by
local police regulations.” The statement, which became known as the “Freeport
Doctrine,” salvaged Douglas’s standing in Illinois, but it sank him among
Southern Democrats.

14. Harper’s Ferry
John Brown returned to the national
scene in the fall of 1859 with a daring, ill-
advised plan to raid the federal arsenal at
Harper’s Ferry,Virginia. With some secret
support from prominent abolitionists,
Brown planned to distribute captured
weapons and initiate an uprising among
local slaves. The plan went badly from the
start. Trapped within the arsenal
(ironically by Marines commanded by
Robert E. Lee), most of Brown’s men were
killed or captured within 36 hours. Tried
and convicted of treason, Brown was
hanged on December 2, 1859, a new
martyr among some in the North, a villain
and a traitor to most in the South.

15. The Election of 1860
All of these various threads were woven together in the election of 1860.
Stephen Douglas, having lost the support of Southerners as a result of his
Freeport Doctrine, ran with the backing of Northern Democrats. Vice
President John Breckinridge gained
the nomination of Southern
Democrats. Douglas’s old foe
Abraham Lincoln took the
Republican nomination from more
experienced opponents. John Bell
ran a dark horse campaign under
the banner of a newly formed
Constitutional Union Party. To the
great dismay of Southerners,
Lincoln took the election without
a single electoral vote south of the
Mason-Dixon line.

16. SecessionAlmost immediately, South Carolina “fire-eaters”
campaigned for secession, and they traveled
throughout the South urging support from other
southern states. The up-and-coming artist
Winslow Homer made this drawing of South
Carolina’s congressional delegation as they
resigned their positions in December 1860.
Fearful that a Republican victory meant an end to
their control of the issue of slavery at the federal
level, secessionists gambled that by embarking on
a “pre-emptive counter-revolution,” they could
preserve slavery permanently. Lincoln took the
oath of office with South Carolina and other
deep South states already having declared
secession. Lincoln’s challenge, which would
consume his presidency, was how to restore the
union.