Chapter 15

Cooper Union

newly established art and engineering college in New York City,

Martin Van Buren

nominated as the presidential candidate for the Free-Soil party, at the party's convention in Buffalo, New York...

Free-soil Territory

non-slave territory

Henry Clay

"regarded by all, as the man for the crisis", he had earlier fashioned the Missouri Compromise, and those seeking peace between the regions looked to him again. After arriving in Washington, D.C., for the new legislative session, the Senator, suffering from tuberculosis that would take his life two years later, observed that the "feeling for disunion among some intemperate Southern politicians is stronger than I supposed it could be." The nation, he worried, was teetering "at the edge of the precipice." Unless some compromise could be found, he warned, a war "so furious, so bloody, so implacable and so exterminating" would fracture the Union. He was so devoted to the preservation of the Union that he was willing to alienate southern supporters by once again assuming the role of Great Compromiser...

"Doughface"

A northerner with southern sympathies.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

A novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that was smashing commercial success. Within a year, it had sold three hundred thousand copies in the United States and over a million in Great Britain. Anti-slavery forces found their most persuasive appeal in the novel because it made the brutal realities of slavery real to readers. It impact was delayed at the time due to the prosperity caused by the California gold rush.

Willard's Hotel

A peace conference met here in Washington, D.C., in February 1861. Twenty-one states sent delegates. Former president John Tyler presided, but the convention's proposal, substantially the same as the Crittenden Compromise, failed to win the support of either house of Congress. The only proposal that met with any success was a constitutional amendment guaranteeing slavery where it existed.

John C. Calhoun

A strong and stubborn supporter of slavery who claimed that the South simply needed an acceptance of its rights: equality of treatment in the territories, return of fugitive slaves, guarantee of equilibrium between sections. He also saw in the Mexican War the omens of a national disaster.

Calhoun's stance on Wilmot Proviso

Argued that it would violate the Fifth Amendment (which forbids Congress to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law) since slaves were counted as property.

William Yancey

Alabama hothead who informed the northern Democrats that their error had been the failure to defend slavery as a positive good.

Stephen A. Douglas

As a senator from Illinois, he saved Henry Clay's compromise by proposing to break it up into separate measures and mobilize a majority vote for each. He also authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Once passed, the act led to violence in Kansas between pro and antislavery factions and damaged the Whig party. These damages prevented Senator Douglas from being chosen as the presidential candidate of his party and lost support from both the north and the south when he opposed the Lecompton Constitution. Running for senatorial reelection in 1858, he engaged Abraham Lincoln in a series of public debates about slavery in the territories. Even though Douglas won the election, the debates gave Lincoln a national reputation.

Robert J Walker

Assigned as the governor of Kansas by President Buchanan. He put the fate of the Union above the expansion of slavery. In Kansas, he sensed a chance to advance the cause of both the Union and his Democratic party. Under Stephen A. Douglas's principle of "popular sovereignty," fair elections would produce a state that would be both free and Democratic.

Revivals of 1857-1859

Began when Jeremiah Lanphier who started a weekly prayer service on September 23, 1857 that began to grow across NYC and eventually spread across the nation as the number of church participants grew rapidly. Women were encouraged to attend but were rarely allowed to speak during the meetings. The prayer meetings were distinctive in the fact that they were uninterested in social reform and focused on personal spiritual renewal.

Thomas Hart Benton

Both a slaveholder and a nationalist who sought to bypass the slavery conflict and stated that Wilmot and Calhoun together could sever the nation in two.

Reaction to Brown's actions at Harper's ferry

Brown had become a martyr for the anti-slavery cause, and he had set off a panic throughout the slaveholding South. "That new saint," Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ". . . will make the gallows glorious like the cross." Brown wielded more power and influence dead than alive. "Living, he made life beautiful," the writer Louisa May Alcott wrote on the day Brown died. "Dying, [he] made death divine." The nation's leading white abolitionist, the pacifist William Lloyd Garrison, was not as impressed by Brown's effort to wreak justice by the shedding of blood. He dismissed the raid on Harper's Ferry as "misguided, wild, and apparently insane."...

Preston S. Brooks

Butler's cousin and a fiery-tempered South Carolina congressman. For two days, he brooded over the insult to his relative, knowing that Sumner would refuse a challenge to a duel. On May 22, he found Sumner writing at his Senate desk after an adjournment, accused him of slander against South Carolina and Butler, and began beating him about the head with a cane while stunned colleagues looked on. Sumner, struggling to rise, wrenched the desk from the floor and collapsed. He kept beating him until his cane broke.

Dred Scott

By suing for his family's freedom, he sparked a controversy amid the growing tensions over slavery...

Constitutional Union party

Came out of the Whig party, they met in Baltimore a week before the Republicans met in Chicago, they reorganized as this party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president. Their platform centered on a vague statement promoting "the Constitution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws."

Compromise of 1850

Complex compromise mediated by Senator Henry Clay that headed off southern secession over California statehood; to appease the South it included a stronger fugitive slave law and delayed determination of the slave status of the New Mexico and Utah territories; composed of 8 proposals. It included the triumvirate of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, with William H. Seward, Stephen A. Douglas, and Jefferson Davis. It eventually had five measures as a final settlement.

Free-Soil Party

Composed of rebellious northern Democrats, anti-slavery Whigs, and members of the Liberty party, it was formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848, but by 1854, most of the party's members had joined the Republican party.

David Wilmot

Democratic congressman from PA who proposed the Wilmot Proviso and endorsed the annexation of Texas as a slave state but opposed slavery in any other land acquired in the Mexican War.

Republican Party

Consisted of "conscience Whigs," independent Democrats, and Free-Soilers

Franklin Pierce

Democrats chose this man of New Hampshire as their presidential candidate; their platform endorsed the Compromise of 1850. He eagerly promoted western expansion, even if it meant adding more slave states to the Union. But the youngest president to date was unable to unite the warring factions of his party. By the end of his first year in office, the leaders of his own party had decided he was a failure.

San Francisco

During the California gold rush, This city quickly became a cosmopolitan city as the population increased almost fiftyfold in a few months.

Anthony Burns

Free blacks in Boston had taken in this runaway Virginia slave; federal marshals then arrived to arrest and return him. Incensed by what had happened, a crowd of two thousand abolitionists led by a minister stormed the jail in an effort to free Burns. At his trial, held to determine whether he indeed was a fugitive, a compromise was proposed that would have allowed Bostonians to buy his freedom, but the plan was scuttled by President Pierce, who was determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. On June 2, the day that state militia and federal troops marched him through Boston to a ship waiting to return him to Virginia, some fifty thousand people lined the streets. He was the last fugitive slave to be returned from Boston and was soon freed through purchase by the African American community of Boston

Fugitive Slave Act

Gave federal government authority in cases involving runaway slaves; so much more punitive and prejudiced in favor of slaveholders than the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act had been that Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired to write Uncle Tom's Cabin in protest. It denied alleged fugitives the right to a trial; it had tremendous effect on deepening anti-slavery impulse in the North. The new law was the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850, included to appease the South over the admission of California as a free state.

Alexander H Stephens

Georgian VP of Confederate States of America

Abraham Lincoln

He was a former Whig state legislator and one-term congressman. He abhorred slavery but was no abolitionist. He did not believe the two races could coexist as equals, but he did oppose any further extension of slavery into new territories. His participation in the Lincoln-Douglas debates gave him a national reputation and he was nominated as the Republican party candidate for president in 1860. Shortly after he was elected president, southern states began seceding from the Union and in April of 1861 he declared war on the seceding states.

John Brown

He was willing to use violence to further his anti slavery beliefs. In 1856, a proslavery mob sacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas. In response, he went to the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie, Kansas and hacked to death several people, which led to a guerrilla war in the Kansas territory. In 1859, he attempted to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He had hoped to use the stolen weapons to arm slaves, but he was captured and executed. His failed raid instilled panic throughout the South, and his execution turned him into a martyr for his cause.

Popular Sovereignty ("squatter sovereignty")

Idea which allowed settlers in a disputed territory to decide the slavery issue for themselves. It appealed to many Americans and prospered in the Midwest, where Stephen A. Douglas and many other Democrats supported it.

Topeka

In 1855, a constitutional convention, the product of an extralegal election, met in here, drafted a state constitution excluding both slavery and free blacks from Kansas, and applied for admission to the Union. By 1856, a free-state "governor" and "legislature" were functioning in here; thus, there were two illegal governments in the Kansas Territory.

Lawrence, Kansas

In May 1856, a proslavery mob entered the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas, destroyed newspaper presses, set fire to the free-state governor's home, stole property, and demolished the Free-State Hotel...

Pottawatomie Massacre

In retaliation for the "sack of Lawrence," John Brown and his abolitionist cohorts hacked five men to death in the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie, Kansas, on May 24, 1856, triggering a guerrilla war in the Kansas Territory that cost 200 settler lives.

Secession

In the South, the disputes of 1846-1850 had transformed the abstract doctrine of secession into a growing reality fed by "fire-eaters" such as Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, and Edmund Ruffin of Virginia. Shortly after President Abraham Lincoln was elected, southern states began dissolving their ties with the United States because they believed Lincoln and the Republican party were a threat to slavery.

May of 1856

Included Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Sumner, and Bully Brooks which all had set the tone for another presidential election

John J. Crittenden

On December 18, 1860, this Senator of Kentucky had proposed a series of amendments and resolutions that allowed for slavery in the territories south of the 36°30′ parallel and guaranteed the maintenance of slavery where it already existed.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border to decide the slavery issue for themselves; fury over the resulting nullification of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican party. In the end, this act would destroy the Whig party, fragment the Democratic party, and spark a territorial civil war in Kansas.

Ordinance of Secession

Meeting in Charleston on December 20, 1860, the special state convention, most of whose 169 delegates were slave owners, unanimously endorsed an Ordinance of Secession, explaining that a purely sectional (Republican) party had elected to the presidency a man "whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery," who had declared "government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free" and that slavery "is in the course of ultimate extinction."...

Democratic Tariff of 1857

Northern businessmen tended to blame the depression on this tariff , which had cut rates on imports to their lowest level since 1816.

California Gold Rush

One of the greatest mass migrations in American history. It began when gold was found on the property of John Sutter in California, which attracted up to three hundred thousand men from each state by 1854 to migrate to California. The infusion of California gold into the U.S. economy triggered a surge of prosperity that eventually helped finance the Union military effort in the Civil War. New business enterprises also emerged to serve the burgeoning population of miners. It spurred the construction of railroads and telegraph lines, and excited dreams of an eventual American empire based in the Pacific and focused on trade with Asia.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philosopher in Massachusetts who predicted that the conquering of Mexico would lead to more disputes over the expansion of slavery, saying that"The United States will conquer Mexico but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic. . . . Mexico will poison us." He saw in the Mexican War the omens of a national disaster.

Zachary Taylor

Popular general who rose to fame in the Battle of Buena Vista who was nominated by the Whig Party to be a presidential candidate. He was an a political figure and a slaveholder who as president opposed the expansion of slavery and the idea of secession.

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America

Wilmot Proviso

Proposal by David Wilmot to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War, but southern senators, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, defeated the measure in 1846 and 1847. It was also dismissed by President Polk, who deemed it as "mischievous and foolish."

Charles Sumner

Senator of Massachusetts, and an unyielding foe of slavery spoke out against the pro-slavery acts in Kansas and singled out the elderly senator Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina for censure. Preston Brook, Butler's cousin, in turn beat him with his cane until it broke.

Lewis Cass

Senator of Michigan who suggested that the citizens of a territory "regulate their own internal concerns in their own way," like the citizens of the state...

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Series of senatorial campaign debates in 1858 focusing on the issue of slavery in the territories; held in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln, who made a national reputation for himself, and incumbent Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, who managed to hold onto his seat.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

She epitomized the powerful religious underpinnings of the abolitionist movement. She was disgusted with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: "The time has come," she wrote, "when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak."

James H Hammond

South Carolina U.S. Senator who declared that his beloved state did "not wish to create a Republican Nationality for herself independent of her southern sister states. What she desires is a slave holding Confederacy and to exemplify to the world the perfection of our civilization. "

Millard Fillmore

Taylor, a soldier, was replaced by Vice President Millard Fillmore. The son of a poor upstate New York farmer and largely self-educated, he had made his own way in the profession of law and the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics. Experience had taught him caution, which some interpreted as indecision, but he had made up his mind to support Henry Clay's compromise and had so informed Taylor. It was a strange switch: Taylor, the Louisiana slaveholder, had been ready to make war on his native region; Fillmore, who southerners thought opposed slavery, was ready to make peace.

John Bell

Tennessean nominated for president by the Constitutional Union Party

Andrew Pickens Butler

Sumner singled out this elderly senator of South Carolina for censure. Sumner charged, that he had "chosen a mistress ...who... though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery."

John C Breckinridge

The Charleston (democratic) seceders met first in Richmond and then in Baltimore, where they adopted the pro-slavery platform defeated in Charleston; they nominated this VP for the 1856 presidential election

California's Native Americans

The influx of gold seekers quickly reduced the fourteen thousand Hispanic inhabitants of California to a minority, and sporadic conflicts with the Indians of the Sierra Nevada foothills decimated this group of people

Panic of 1857

The third emergency of Buchanan's first half year in office, a national financial crisis, occurred in August 1857. It was brought on by a reduction in foreign demand for American grain, overly aggressive railroad construction, a surge in manufacturing production that outran the growth of market demand, and the continued confusion caused by the state banknote system. The failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company on August 24, 1857, precipitated the panic. Northern businessmen tended to blame the depression on the Democratic Tariff of 1857, which had cut rates on imports to their lowest level since 1816. Agricultural south weathered the crisis better than the north: world markets for cotton recovered quickly, and it led to the notion that agriculture was superior to industry.

Freeport Doctrine

This was senator Stephen Douglas's method to reconcile the Dred Scott court ruling of 1857 with "popular sovereignty," of which he was a champion. Douglas believed that so long as residents of a given territory had the right to pass and uphold local laws, any Supreme Court ruling on slavery would be unenforceable and irrelevant.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that slaves could not sue for freedom and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories, on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate the Fifth Amendment rights of slaveholders. Chief Justice Taney and the rest of the Supreme Court had declared an act of Congress unconstitutional for the first time since Marbury v. Madison (1803). Dred Scott decision now challenged the concept of popular sovereignty. If Congress itself could not exclude slavery from a territory, then presumably neither could a territorial government created by an act of Congress.

William Seward

Whig senator from New York, gave the anti-slavery reply to Webster. He declared that any compromise with slavery was "radically wrong and essentially vicious." There was, he said, "a higher law than the Constitution," and it demanded the abolition of slavery. He refused to endorse any legislation that extended slavery into any of the new western territories...

Jeremiah Lanphier

business executive-turned-lay missionary, grew despondent at the suffering in the city as well as an alarming decline in church membership. God, he later claimed, led him to begin a weekly prayer service in the Wall Street financial district so that executives might commune with God.

Chief Justice Roger B Taney

ardent supporter of the South and slavery, wrote the Court's majority opinion. He ruled that Dred Scott lacked legal standing because he lacked citizenship, as did all former slaves

Mining Camps/Shantytowns

had colorful names—but the male dominated communities were in fact dismal, dirty, disorderly, and often lawless places. Vigilante justice prevailed in camps speckled with saloons and gambling halls. Within six months of arriving in California in 1849, one gold seeker in every five was dead. Suicides were common, and disease was rampant. Cholera and scurvy plagued every camp.

American (Know-nothing party)

had emerged from the Whig Party in response to the surge of mostly Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The anti-Catholic "Know Nothings" embraced nativism (opposition to foreign immigrants) by promoting the denial of citizenship to newcomers. In the early 1850s, Know Nothings won several local elections in Massachusetts and New York.

Levi Strauss

he was an example of how successful businesses could be in the heart of the gold rush with his blue jeans

Forty-niners

included people from every social class and every state and territory, as well as slaves brought by their owners. Most went overland; the rest sailed around South America or to Panama

"border ruffians"

several thousand "border ruffians" crossed the river from Missouri, illegally swept the polls for pro-slavery forces, and vowed to kill every "****ed abolitionist in the Territory."

Robert Toombs

southerners demanded a federal fugitive slave law that would require northern authorities to arrest and return runaways. Irate southerners like this man threatened to leave the Union. He was a Georgia congressman quoted to say "I avow before this House and country, and in the presence of the living God that if by your legislation you seek to drive us [slaveholders] from the territories of California and New Mexico . . . and to abolish slavery in this District [of Columbia] . . . I am for disunion."

Gadsden Purchase

the United States paid Mexico $10 million for land offering a likely route for a transcontinental railroad. The idea of building a railroad linking the far-flung regions of the new continental domain of the United States reignited sectional rivalries and reopened the slavery issue.

Henry David Thoreau

the transcendentalist that delivered a fiery speech in which he charged that the trial of Burns was "really the trial of Massachusetts."

Theodore Parker

transcendentalist minister and militant reformer Theodore Parker denounced the revivalists for ignoring the evils of slavery.