The case of Anthony Burns illustrates how the Fugitive Slave Law radicalized many northerners. )It showed that most Southerners did not actually support the existence of slavery. Southerners and northerners grew ever more antagonistic as they debated the expansion of slavery in the West. A man whose aim and intention was to incite the horrors of a servile warto condemn women of your own race, ere death closed there eyes on their sufferings from violence and outrage, to see their husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of their babes. Writer, activist, and teacher Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1837 to a well-to-do African American family. Southern politicians struggled during the crisis to prevent northern abolitionists from weakening constitutional protections for slavery. South of that line, running east from Missouri to the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase lands (near the present-day Texas panhandle), slavery could expand. As he is lead to his execution for attempting to destroy slavery, Brown poignantly leans over a rail to kiss a Black baby. By 1820, preserving the balance of free states and slave states would be seen as an issue of national security. Congress authorized the admission of Vermont (1791) and Kentucky (1792), with Vermont coming into the Union as a free state and Kentucky coming in as a slave state. In Utah, Mormons were also making claims to an independent state they called Deseret. Liberty leaders demanded the end of slavery in the District of Columbia, the end of the interstate slave trade, and the prohibition of slaverys expansion into the West. As westward expansion continued, these fault lines grew even more ominous, particularly as the United States managed to seize even more lands from its war with Mexico. Independent Texas soon gained recognition from a supportive Andrew Jackson administration in 1837. The sectional crisis of the 1850s, in which Georgia played a pivotal role, led to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65). Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state. The admission of Wisconsin as a free state in May 1848 helped cool tensions after the Texas and Florida admissions. Bleeding Kansas was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily be, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis. The Dred Scott decision, Scott v. Sandford, ruled that Black Americans could not be citizens of the United States and therefore could be transported as chattel from any state to another regardless of state law.29 This gave the Buchanan administration and its southern allies a direct repudiation of the Missouri Compromise. Takeaway. Calling themselves Know-Nothings, on account of their tendency to pretend ignorance when asked about their activities, the Know-Nothing or American Party made impressive gains in 1854 and 1855, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic. Given the Republican Partys successes since 1854, it was expected that the 1860 presidential election might produce the nations first antislavery president. Why was the sectional crisis important quizlet? The national breakdown over slavery occurred over a long timeline and across a broad geography. Brooks resigned his seat anyway, only to be reelected by his constituents later in the year. While northerners appealed to their states rights to refuse to capture people escaping slavery, white southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery. Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837) became the newest states admitted to the Union, with Arkansas coming in as a slave state, and Michigan coming in as a free state. Gold had been discovered in California, and as thousands continued to pour onto the West Coast and through the trans-Mississippi West, the admission of new states loomed. English political theorists, in particular, began to rethink natural-law justifications for slavery. Kansas-Nebraska protests emerged in 1854 throughout the North, with key meetings in Wisconsin and Michigan. But the anti-immigrant movement simply could not capture the nations attention in ways the antislavery movement already had.24. Why was the sectional crisis important? This mural, created over eighty years after John Browns death, captures the violence and religious fervorof the man and his era. As they did so, however, the sectional crisis again deepened. English political theorists, in particular, began to re-think natural law justifications for slavery. On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede, and issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes., 8. Singulair has been shown to encourage suicidal ideation in people who are already prone to it. 1. Following an explosive speech before Congress on May 1920, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was violently beaten with a cane by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the floor of the Senate chamber. Born into slavery in 1818 at Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass grew up, like many enslaved people, barely having known his own mother or date of birth. The compromise also allowed territories to submit suits directly to the Supreme Court over the status of freedom-seeking people within their bounds. James K. Polk: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845. Republicans moved forward into a highly charged summer. Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation. The proviso gained widespread northern support and even passed the House with bipartisan support, but it failed in the Senate. The episode highlights the violent clash between pro- and antislavery factions in the 1850s, a conflict that would eventually lead to the traumatic unraveling of American democracy and civil war. Congressional leaders like Henry Clay and newer legislators like Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois were asked to broker a compromise, but this time it was clear no compromise could bridge all the diverging interests at play in the country. The debate filled newspapers, speeches, and congressional records. The New Mexico Territory and the Utah Territory would be allowed to determine their own fates as slave or free states based on popular sovereignty. Wikimedia. The accusation that northern Democrats were lapdogs for southern enslavers had real power.10, The Whigs offered an organized major-party challenge to the Democrats. St. Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful enslavers, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. They rejected the long-standing idea that slavery was a condition that naturally suited some people. With the Compromise of 1850 and plenty of new lands, peaceful consensus seemed to be on the horizon. The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. The 1852 presidential election gave the Whigs their most stunning defeat and effectively ended their existence as a national political party. Eager to cordon off slavery and confine it to where it already existed, the Republicans won the presidential election of 1860 and threw the nation on the path to war. Brown prophesied while in prison that the nations crimes would only be purged with blood. They rejected the longstanding idea that slavery was a condition that naturally suited some people. Where exactly are they? President Polk and his Democratic allies were eager to see western lands brought into the Union and were especially anxious to see the borders of the nation extended to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Yet even with the booming cotton economy, many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that slavery was a temporary institution and would soon die out. Revolutionaries in the United States declared, All men are created equal, in the 1770s. Texas president Sam Houston managed to secure a deal with Polk and gained admission to the Union for Texas in 1845. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln challenged the greatly influential Democrat Stephen Douglas. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the size of the United States. In this post-Missouri context, leaders arose to push the countrys new expansionist desires in aggressive new directions. News reached Washington, and the federal government sent soldiers. Language in the Tenth Amendment, they claimed, also said slavery could be banned in the territories. Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the Constitution, but reaffirmed Missouris ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River. Slaverys history stretched back to antiquity. It helped splinter the Atlantic basin into clear zones of freedom and un-freedom, shattering the longstanding assumption that African-descended slaves could not also be rulers. Texas, which had already come into the Union as a slave state, was asked to give some of its land to New Mexico in return for the federal government absorbing some of the former republics debt. Before he left for Washington, Lincoln told those who had gathered in Springfield to wish him well and that he faced a task greater than Washingtons in the years to come. That debate, however, came quickly. While the major success of Uncle Toms Cabin bolstered the abolitionist cause, the terms outlined by the Compromise of 1850 appeared strong enough to keep the peace. Wikimedia. Leonhardt (engraver), Map Showing the Distribution of the Slave Population of the Southern States of the United States Compiled from the Census of 1860, c. 1861. Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, c. 1882-1884. Both of these images continued to pervade public memory after the Civil War, but in the North especially (where so many soldiers had died to help end slavery) his name was admired. 6 What was the. The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. 1. Recommended citation: Jeffrey Bain-Conkin et al., The Sectional Crisis, Jesse Gant, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Republicans wanted little to do with Brown and instead tried to portray themselves as moderates opposed to both abolitionists and pro-slavery expansionists. In fact, the debates over Missouris admission had offered the first sustained debate on the question of black citizenship, as Missouris State Constitution wanted to impose a hard ban on any future black migrants. The violence in the west would soon spread east. Clay eventually left Washington disheartened by affairs. Revolutionaries seized onto these ideas to stunning effect in the late eighteenth century. The 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that the federal governments Fugitive Slave Act trumped Pennsylvanias personal liberty law.13 Antislavery activists believed that the federal government only served southern enslavers and were trouncing the states rights of the North. The incredible career of Harriet Tubman is one of the more dramatic examples. Saint Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful slave owners, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. As the United States pressed westward, new questions arose as to whether those lands ought to be slave or free. V. From Sectional Crisis to National Crisis, Barbara Jordan On the Impeachment of Richard Nixon (1974), How the Other Half Lived: Photographs of Jacob Riis, http://www.librarycompany.org/blackfounders/, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nworder.asp, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=22&page=transcript, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25814, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html, http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html, https://archive.org/details/lifepublicservic00inroll, http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/interpret/exhibits/winship/winship.html, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/CrimeAgainstKSSpeech.pdf, https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htm, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=29, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29620, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp. By 1845, Douglass put the finishing touches on his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.14 The book launched his lifelong career as an advocate for the enslaved and helped further raise the visibility of Black politics. Indeed, huge numbers of western, southern, and northern workingmen rallied behind Andrew Jackson during the 1828 presidential election. Slavery had long divided the politics of the United States. Revolutionaries in the United States declared, All men are created equal, in the 1770s. Sectional Crisis Leading to the civil war there were a plethora of things that impacted the unity of the nation as a whole. As a symbol of the injustice of the slave system, Burns treatment spurred riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. Throughout American history, tension has existed between several regions, but the competing views of the institution of slavery held by Northerners and Southerners was the preeminent sectional split and the defining political issue in the United States from the founding of the country until the American Civil War. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. In Article 1, Section 2, for example, the Constitution enabled representation in the South to be based on rules defining enslaved people as3/5of a voter, meaning southern white men would be overrepresented in Congress. As Americans embraced calls to pursue their manifest destiny, antislavery voices looked at developments in Florida and Texas as signs that the sectional crisis had taken an ominous and perhaps irredeemable turn. Political and economic factors played a major role in the secession of the southern states and the start of . Throughout this period, the mainstream of the antislavery movement remained committed to a peaceful resolution of the slavery issue through efforts understood to foster the ultimate extinction of slavery in due time. Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important. Michigan gained admission through provisions established in the Northwest Ordinance, while Arkansas came in under the Missouri Compromise. They became an all-encompassing referendum on the American past, present, and future. Though Americans at the time made relatively little of the balancing act suggested by the admission of a slave state and a free state, the pattern became increasingly important. In the 1850s, antislavery leaders increasingly argued that Washington worked on behalf of enslavers while ignoring the interests of white working men. Differences over the fate of slavery remained at the heart of American politics, especially as the United States expanded. After the Compromise of 1850, antislavery critics became increasingly certain that enslavers had co-opted the federal government, and that a southern Slave Power secretly held sway in Washington, where it hoped to make slavery a national institution. Brooks responded by beating Sumner with a cane, a thrashing that southerners celebrated as a manly defense of gentlemanly honor and their way of life. 3. Why was the sectional crisis important quizlet? It is interesting to note that he was more defiant and clear about his stance on slavery than anything else during his presidency. The violence in Washington pales before the many murders occurring in Kansas.26 Pro-slavery raiders attacked Lawrence, Kansas. The Compromise of 1850 Known as the "Great Compromiser," Henry Clay formulated the Compromise of 1850 as one of his last signicant political works. The nations militants anticipated a coming breakdown and worked to exploit it. And yet because of a range of unique privileges afforded him by the circumstances of his upbringing, as well as his own genius and determination, Douglass managed to learn how to read and write. Available from the Library of Congress. Demanding an alternative to the pro-slavery status quo, Free Soil leaders assembled so-called Conscience Whigs, the remnants of the Liberty Party, and antislavery Democrats. African American History and Culture by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Pandering to appeals to white supremacy, Douglas hammered the Republican opposition as a Black Republican party bent on racial equality.30 The Republicans, including Lincoln, fired back with warnings of divisiveness and assertions that all Americans deserved equality of opportunity. By the last half of the decade, slavery was back, and this time it appeared even more threatening. That wealth and luxury fostered seemingly limitless opportunities and inspired seemingly boundless imaginations. Obesity in children and young people: a crisis in public health. But an antislavery coalition arose in the middle 1850s calling itself the Republican Party. The Nullification Crisis was the first time in which the sectional interests of the North and the South had truly came into conflict . A rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 threatened lives and property throughout the Carolinas. On how popular sovereignty seemed like the answer to all our problems, and how it. The conclusion of the Mexican War led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. By 1850, California wanted admission as a free state. Focus on how they contributed to the continual division of the northern and southern states. Tellingly, enslaved southerners were among the first to signal their discontent. 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