--Road to War--
I.
Sectional Differences:
A.
The Breadbasket
West:
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee,
Indianapolis, Chicago
Chicago: 1833: 150 houses
1847: 17,000 people
1860: 109,000 people
B.
The Urbanizing
North
1820: 6.1%
1860: 20%
1860:
110,274 industrial
establishments
(128,300 in
entire country)
1860 Northern City Population
1.
New York City - 813,669
2.
Philadelphia - 565,529
3.
Brooklyn - 266,661
4.
Baltimore - 212,418
5.
Boston - 177,840
6.
Cincinnati - 161,044
7.
St. Louis - 160,773
8.
Chicago - 112,172
9.
Buffalo - 81,129
10.
Newark - 71,941
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
--Traveling the
1,460 miles from Baltimore to
New Orleans in 1850 meant riding five
different railroads, two stage coaches, and two steamboats.
--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)
II. COMPROMISE OF 1850
1845: 15-13 (Texas and Florida)
1846: 15-14 (Iowa)
1848: 15-15 (Wisconsin)
1.
Fugitive Slave Act
2.
Abolish slave trade in D.C.
3.
Cali in as Free State
4.
Popular Sovereignty in new
territories
5.
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:
Louisville,
Kentucky, Journal (28 May 1856)
The assault of Brooks upon Sumner in the
Senate Chamber has created a prodigious excitement throughout the North. The
assault is deeply to be regretted, because in the first place it was a very
great outrage in itself, and because in the second place it will, especially if
not promptly and properly punished at Washington, greatly strengthen the
anti-slavery and anti- Southern feeling in the Northern States and thus help
the Black Republican party.
Columbia,
South Carolina, South Carolinian (27 May 1856)
We were not mistaken in asserting, on
Saturday last, that the Hon. Preston S. Brooks had not only the approval, but
the hearty congratulations of the people of South Carolina for his summary
chastisement of the abolitionist Sumner.
Immediately upon the reception of the
news on Saturday last, a most enthusiastic meeting was convened in the town of
Newberry…The meeting voted him a handsome gold-headed cane, which we saw
yesterday, on its way to Washington, entrusted to the care of Hon. B. Simpson.
Here in Columbia, a handsome sum, headed
by the Governor of the State, has been subscribed, for the purpose of
presenting Mr. Brooks with a splendid silver pitcher, goblet and stick, which
will be conveyed to him in a few days by the hands of gentlemen delegated for
that purpose. In Charleston similar testimonials have been ordered by the
friends of Mr. Brooks.
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.
IV. 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.)
August 21, 1858 (first debate)
I would never consent to confer the right
of voting and of citizenship upon a negro.
I believe that this new doctrine preached by
Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are
trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to
excite a sectional war between the Free States and the Slave States, in order
that the one or the other may be driven to the wall. (Douglas)
I will say here, while upon this subject, that I
have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce
political and social equality between the white and the black races.
There is a physical difference between the two,
which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon
the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that
there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the
race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said
anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no
reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights
enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.
A house divided against itself cannot stand…I
believe that this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
(Lincoln)
D.
John Brown's Raid
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)
…and what’s the point of talking about all of this?
628,000
Americans died in the Civil War (670,000)
…exceeds the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution
through the present.
We don’t declare
wars anymore…and that is dangerous.
William Tecumseh Sherman
“My aim was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride,
follow them to their innermost recesses and make them fear and dread us. War is
cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner
it’ll all be over…War is all Hell.”
