I. Sectionalism...
A. The Breadbasket West:
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Chicago
B. The Urbanizing North
C. The Oligarchic South
--1860: 5.6 million whites
--1700 own around 100 slaves
--46,274 own around 20 slaves
--slave population was 3.84 million
--26,000 free blacks in the South
--36% of families in South own
slaves in 1830
--25% of families in South own
slaves in 1860
--By 1850, 20 percent of adult white southerners
could not read or write, compared to a national figure of 8 percent.
DO THESE DIFFERENCES MATTER?
Wilmot Proviso (1846)
THE WAR WITH MEXICO:
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
II. COMPROMISE OF 1850
1845: 15-13 (Texas and Florida)
1846: 15-14 (Iowa)
1848: 15-15 (Wisconsin)
- Fugitive Slave Act
- Abolish slave trade in D.C.
- Cali in as Free State
- Popular Sovereignty in new territories
- Resolved boundary dispute btw. Texas and New Mexico
III. The Trouble Escalates:
A. Transcontinental Railroad
--Stephen Douglas
B. Kansas-Nebraska Act
C. “Bleeding Kansas” (1854-1858)
--New England Emigrant Aid Company
--“Beecher’s Bibles”
--John Brown
--Pottawatomie Creek (May 24, 1856)
D. The Caning of Sumner (1856)
SOUTHERN RESPONSE:
And, to add the crowning glory to the good work, the slaves of Columbia have already a handsome subscription, and will present an appropriate token of their regard to him who has made the first practical issue for their preservation and protection in their rights and enjoyments as the happiest laborers on the face of the globe.(source in class)
IV. Party Politics
A. Decline of the Whigs
B. Rise and Fall of the "Know-Nothings"
C. Rise of the Republicans
--The Election of 1856--
Buchanan(Dem.) vs. Fremont(Rep.) in North
Buchanan vs. Fillmore in South
(American/Know-Nothing/Whig)
V. On the Verge of War:
A. Dred Scott
An Excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery.
Washington recounts a conversation with an elderly black man who said he had been born in Virginia and sold into Alabama in 1845. I asked him how many were sold at the same time. He said, “There were five of us: myself and brother and three mules.”
B. Panic of 1857
C. Lincoln-Douglas Debate for Senate
(Rep.) (Dem.)
D. John Brown's Raid…the book discussion
E. The Election of Lincoln
Lincoln (Rep.)
Douglas (Dem.) {border and North}
Breckinridge (Dem.) {South}
Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: March 4, 1861
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Fort Sumter, the first official “battle” of the Civil War, would occur a month later (April 12, 1861)
VI. WAR...The Crucial Year: 1863
Emancipation Proclamation (1/1/63)
Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863)
The Gettysburg Address (11/19/63)
