History Unit 11 - Division and Secession

The Failure of the Compromise of 1850

The 1850 Compromise failed to bring an end to the rancor that divided North and South. The Fugitive Slave Law fueled the abolitionist movement. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin made many in the North who were ambivalent about slavery aware of the human costs of slavery.

The Changing North

The 1850s saw a rush of immigrants from Ireland and Germany, such as the United States had not yet seen. Both peoples were victims of agricultural modernization in their own countries.

The Democratic Party Splits

The Democrats met in the shadow of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Martin's Ferry, Virginia. When the Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina in April 1860, northerners put forth Stephen Douglas as the nominee. They saw him as a compromise candidate.

The Election of 1860

The Election of 1860 brought the division that had been brewing between north and south to a climax. Before the election, it was unclear in the North that Lincoln's victory would assure the secession of Southern states. Yet the North seemed to ignore this and voted for Lincoln anyway. What was it about Lincoln that so alarmed the South?

Fewer people were needed to grow the crops and raise the sheep on land where they tended their subsistence plots.

The Irish tide was accelerated by the terrible famine of 1848. German emigration was heightened by political unrest in that country.

Bleeding Kansas

The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company announced plans to raise $5 million to aid and encourage settlement in Kansas to ensure that it became a free state. The abolitionist press claimed that 20,000 antislavery emigrants were moving to Kansas. What this did was raise the stakes. Pro-slavery advocates in Missouri flooded into Kansas to vote for the extension of slavery.

These dense living quarters resulted in unsanitary conditions where typhoid fever flourished in 1850.

The Merrimack River here was overflowing with sewage dumped into the river upstream at Lowell. The abundance of cheap labor created new industrialism in Boston itself. Native born workers were resentful as they saw their wages undercut by the newcomers.

While he could not promise to support the right of slaveholders to take their slaves into the new territories, as the southerners demanded, he seemed to be the most viable candidate the north could offer without compromising northern votes.

The convention was deadlocked and reconvened in Baltimore a few weeks later. When Douglas was again nominated, Southerners walked out and nominated as the "purified" Democrat, John Breckenridge.

In Washington Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina hit the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane causing an injury that incapacitated Sumner for over two years.

The level of civility in the United States Congress was unraveling to the point where even a flimsy compromise such as the one adopted in 1850 was impossible.

The Decline of Traditional New England Agriculture

The market economy forced changes on New England farming. Western states were able to produce grain, and later meat, much more cheaply than New England could, even taking into consideration transportation costs. Accordingly, marginal upland farms began to be abandoned. The children of these farms poured into the larger towns, big cities and on to western farms. The reforestation of New England was underway.

Secession

The radicals in the South, even if they were in the minority, were the most vocal segment of public opinion. They began agitating for secession immediately after Lincoln's election. By December 20, a special session of the legislature sat as a constitutional convention and repealed South Carolina's ratification of the Constitution.

Douglas realized that most Kansans were anti-slavery, but they would be forced to accept a constitution that accepted slavery.

The voters themselves rejected the constitution in 1858. Kansas' admission to the Union was delayed and southern public opinion was inflamed.

Antislavery forces in New England and New York sent rifles to Kansas to arm the antislavery forces. In May 1856 a group of slave-state supporters marched into Lawrence, Kansas to apprehend free soilers.

They destroyed printing presses and burned the Free State Hotel to the ground. The free soil man John Brown and his sons and son-in-law, in revenge for the burning of the hotel, split open the skulls of five pro-slavery men. (Ayers, 364) John Brown would in 1859 lead a raid on the Harper's Ferry Virginia federal arsenal. He was tried and hanged and became a martyr for the abolitionist cause.

The Election of 1860 in Massachusetts

This election spelled the end of King Cotton's influence in Massachusetts politics. The Republican party became solidified, picking up the Know Nothings and Free Soilers.

On February 18, the convention inaugurated a provisional president, Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. Davis had been a U.S. senator and secretary of war.

Though he was a strong states rights' advocate, he was not a fervent secessionist. His image of moderation helped to attract Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee into the Confederacy

Fort Sumter: The End of Compromise

Throughout the South, in early 1861 states were taking over Federal facilities. Major Anderson's withdrawal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina harbor in December was cheered as being a sensible decision.

In Massachusetts, in elections in 1854, they did not announce the names of their candidates. Voters simply wrote them in.

Thus they won all almost all of the seats in the Legislature, the governorship and the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation. The Know Nothings were a grass roots movement which drove the Whigs, who had dominated urban politics, out of the political arena

The petitions of Nebraska and Kansas to become states provided the opportunity to buy Southern support.

Douglas' proposal, introduced in 1854, provided that the settlers would decide for themselves whether the state was to allow slavery or not. This provision for "popular sovereignty" nullified the Missouri Compromise and parts of the 1850 Compromise. Not surprisingly the plan ignited a storm of controversy. Abolitionists already inflamed by the Fugitive Slave Law Uncle Tom's Cabin led the opposition and found many northerners ready to follow.

The nativist component of the Republican party continued to push the new immigrants into the urban Democratic party. This occurred in New York and other large cities as well as in Boston.

the anti-slavery stance of the Republicans was not meaningful to the immigrants. Large numbers of freed slaves would only drive down their wages. The new party alignment laid the foundation of an awkward post-Civil War alliance of Northern big city politicians with large immigrant constituencies and white Southern agrarian conservatives.

Abolitionists became more intransigent

Frederick Douglass said, "If the Union can only be maintained by new concessions to the slaveholders, then . . . .let the Union perish." Abolitionists in the North were attacked on grounds that they were promoting the dissolution of the Union.

Amos Lawrence, still a Whig, though an anti-slavery Whig experienced defeat for the Governor's office by John Andrew, a Free Soiler. Republican John Goodwin of Lowell became speaker of the House of Representatives.

Goodwin epitomized this break: was a representative of the textile city openly rejecting slavery? (Eno, 130) It may be that he was embracing the Republican platform that favored protective tariffs.

By March Anderson reported that he was short of food. Lincoln sent food, but no military supplies.

He would hold the fort but not use coercion unless attacked first. He sent a note to South Carolina's governor notifying him of the Federal Government's intention.

Immigrants in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts Irish immigrants flocked to the new mill towns such as Lawrence. The term "shanty Irish" was coined here, referring to the wooden huts the immigrants built for themselves along the Merrimack River.

Nativism and the End of the Whig Party

In Massachusetts the Democrats appealed to the newcomers for votes. The native-born Protestants were mostly Whigs, but on a national level their party was splintered over the slavery issue. Those opposed to the immigrants formed the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a secret society from which the "Know Nothing" Party followed. Members were sworn to secrecy about their activities, thus could reveal nothing of their program.

Inauguration of President Lincoln

Lincoln's inaugural address extended one last olive branch. He spoke of continuing to allow slavery where it already existed. He would not fill offices with men who were repugnant to local sensibilities. However, he would fulfill his duty to defend the Union and protect the integrity of the Federal government. This included holding on to federal property in the southern states.

The Evaporation of Compromise

Many schemes were put forward to placate the South. However, none of them had official status. President Buchanan and the Congress were lame ducks. Some urged the passage of a constitutional amendment to permit slavery. Others urged the purchase of Cuba, as a place of allow the expansion of slavery. The possibility of war with another country was mentioned as a way to unify the country.

Second Thoughts

Many southerners opposed secession, believing it treasonous or suicidal. Many thought the threat would be useful in forcing the North to grant concessions. Virginia and other border states were concerned that war would affect them the most. Thus in March, 1861 a secession vote in the state legislature lost by a two-to-one margin. Nevertheless, advocates for the Confederacy accelerated their public relations efforts. They cited the threat to property rights, the possibility of slave insurrections and the specter of miscegenation

The Changing New England Economy

By 1850 the New England economy had become firmly tied to the global economy. First, it was the primary processing area of the country's cotton. New England also turned wool, silk and leather into manufactured wearing apparel. Virtually anything that money could buy was manufactured in Massachusetts. By 1850 railroads connected all parts of New England with neighboring states and world markets.

Depopulation

By the mid-twentieth century more land in southern New England was forested than had been the case in the eighteenth century. Towns like Royalston and Gill, Massachusetts, Fitzwilliam and Richmond, New Hampshire, are less populated today than they were in 1850. Towns in Vermont and New Hampshire north of Concord saw massive depopulation. Berkshire farmers converted to sheep farming, which requires far fewer people than farming. After the Civil War the sheep would give way to forests.

Yet, the Mexican War and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 roused the consciences of some of the younger Whigs, even in the Merrimack Valley

Amos A. Lawrence of the Boston Associates sent financial support to free settlers in Kansas. Whigs had not protested slavery in the South, but most began to oppose its extension to the West, to the non-cotton growing areas. (

Political Party Realignment

As the Whigs disintegrated they joined with the Know Nothings and members of the Free Soil party which was dominant in the West, to form the Republican Party. The Republicans fielded their first presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, in 1856.

in November of 1857 the pro-slavery Kansas legislature proposed a constitution that would allow the voters to decide the status of slavery, but would permit slaveholders already in Kansas to keep their slaves.

Even Douglas could not accept this Lecompton Constitution. President Buchanan, understanding that his reelection in 1860 would depend on southern electoral votes, urged the adoption of the Lecompton constitution.

Stephen Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate warned that Lincoln's election would bring civil war and secession. Northerners had become steeled to such rhetoric. Southerners took it seriously.

Except in California, Lincoln carried not a single county south of the Pennsylvania southern border and the Ohio River. John Breckenridge, the Southern Democratic nominee carried no county north of that line.

The Confederate government decided to attack first. It was risky because it would undercut the position of those in the North who favored moderation. The Confederate Secretary of State warned President Davis that the attack would "lose us every us every friend at the North" and "wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."

Nevertheless, on April 12, 1861 at 4:30 a.m. the commander P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire. After 33 hours of bombardment Anderson surrendered. Lincoln responded with a call for 75,000 volunteers and Southerners came to the aid of South Carolina. Fort Sumter, after capture by Confederate forces

Stephen Douglas and John Bell, the Constitutional Union party nominee obtained more than half of the popular vote in the South, demonstrating that some Southerners valued the Union more than Southern interests

Nevertheless, the Republicans frightened the South. Lincoln had branded slavery a "moral, social, and political evil." He claimed that the Declaration of Independence applied to blacks and whites. To the South, the Republican pledge not to interfere with slavery in any of the states where it existed was meaningless.

King Cotton and the North

Northern textile industries were inextricably tied to slavery. Thus, influential people in the north, whose fortunes were in many ways tied to the textile industry had little enthusiasm for abolition. Cotton cast a wide a net. Not only did northern mills use the cotton, companies owned by northerners transported the cotton. Most of the manufactured goods in the South originated in the North. Northern companies loaned money to southern plantations and insured their crops and their assets, including their slaves.

The Establishment of the Confederacy

On February 4, 1861, a month before Lincoln took office, delegates from seven states met in Montgomery, Alabama and created a provisional constitution. It was similar to that of the United States except that it explicitly guaranteed slavery and states' rights.

Within six weeks, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, the important cotton growing states, followed South Carolina. The argument for secession was based on the belief that the original compact among the states allowed the states to retain "reserved powers."

One of the powers was to withdraw from the compact. The South believed that the election had placed the federal government in the hands of avowed enemies of reserved powers.

Southern Fears

Republicans, at their convention in Chicago in 1860, declared that they believed in the right of each state to decide for itself whether it would have slavery, yet slavery should be excluded from the new territories. Republicans, appealing to the industrial North and the West also called for high protective tariffs, federal aid for internal improvements and free homesteads for western settlers

The Kansas-Nebraska Debacle

Stephen Douglas' plan to have the transcontinental railroad begin in his home state of Illinois re-ignited the discussion of where slavery was to be allowed. Douglas needed Southern support to appropriate subsidies for this railroad. Many in the South, naturally, wanted the railroad to have a southern terminal. Douglas was willing to see the territory where slavery was permissible extended into areas north of the Missouri Compromise Line of 36°30' of 1820 for the benefit of his home state.

The split in the Democratic party had destroyed one of the last national organizations that could embrace both northerners and southerners. Religious and even professional organizations had already begun to split into northern and southern wings.

When political organizations failed to hold together the mutual suspicion grew. The Republicans had begun as a party that appealed to the North and West and had little to offer the South. The Democrats had constructed a grand coalition, which in 1860 fell apart.

New Markets

While upland farms were abandoned, farms near to the cities found markets for dairy products, fruit, vegetables and poultry. There were other specialty crops that enjoyed because of the railroad, national and global markets: tobacco for cigar wrappers in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut, apples in the hills of southern New Hampshire and central Massachusetts, cranberries in southeastern Massachusetts and potatoes in many places in New England.