The Politics of Slavery

The Union in Crisis
Slavery, States’ Rights, and
Western Expansion
Wilmot Proviso (1846)
stated that all lands acquired from Mexico
would be free territories
It was defeated, but it brought the slavery issue
into public debate.
Keeping a balance between free and slave states
became the focus of Congress.
Ideological and Political Divisions
Pro-Slavery South
• Slavery good institution
–Protected blacks
–Christian institution
–Profited whites
• White male political
patriarchy
• States rights to protect
slavery
• Western expansion of
slavery
Free Soil North
• Northern states and
territories stronger w/o
slavery
• Slavery morally and
economically corrupt
• Free Soil = land of free
white laborers
• Against western
expansion of slavery
Slavery and the North
• Few people had slaves
and slavery ended by
1860
• Early in the 1800s, some
northerners began to
work for the abolition of
slavery
• Many northern states
limited the rights and
migration of free African
Americans, so many
white northerners had
little contact with them
Slavery and the South
• Slavery was an integral
part of life with over 4
million enslaved African
Americans
• Many believed God
intended blacks to
provide labor for whites
• Southerners claimed
that enslaved people
were healthier and
happier than northern
wage earners
Issues Threatening Union
through Southern Eyes
UT
NM
CA
Southern Land Grab—
Ostend Manifesto
• "Our past history forbids that we should
acquire the island of Cuba without the
consent of Spain unless justified by the
great law of self-preservation… After we
shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba,
far beyond its present value, it will be time
to consider the question; 'Does Cuba in the
possession of Spain seriously endanger
peace and our cherished Union?' Should
this question be answered in the affirmative,
then by every law, human and divine, we
shall be justified in wresting it from
Spain…"
Southern Land Grab—
Ostend Manifesto
• Pierre Soule, John Mason
and James Buchanan -U.S. ambassadors to Spain,
France and Great Britain
• Claim the U.S. right to
Cuba (by force if Spain
refused to sell)
• U.S. Southern cotton
growers and sugar
planters embraced the
concept
Southern Land Grab—
Ostend Manifesto
Access the following site:
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003656587/
Explain the purpose of the cartoon in
ridiculing the Ostend Manifesto.
Southern Land Grab—
Ostend Manifesto
• Pierre Soule, James Mason
and James Buchanan -U.S. ambassadors to
France, Spain and Great
Britain
• Claim the U.S. right to
Cuba (by force if Spain
refused to sell)
• U.S. Southern cotton
growers and sugar
planters embraced the
concept
The Impending Crisis of the South:
How to Meet It
Access the following site:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/helper/helper.html
Skim parts of the document.
What is the title of the document?
By whom is this document written?
Is he proslavery or antislavery? How do you
know?
The Impending Crisis of the South:
How to Meet It
• Hinton Rowan Helper
• Possibly a more significant role in starting
Civil War than Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Republican party
– used book as a campaign document in 1860
election
– Incorporated message into platform
• Called for abolition of slavery and
modernization of the South
The Impending Crisis of the South:
How to Meet It
• Slavery biggest obstacle to Southern
economic growth
• Slavery made the South’s population poor,
ignorant, and superstitious
• Encouraged nonslaveholding whites to look
out for their interests
• Slaveowners had duped nonslaveholding
whites into believing that the peculiar
institution benefited them
The Impending Crisis of the South:
How to Meet It
• In a century or two after slavery’s abolition,
Helper predicted that the South would emerge
as one of the greatest, cosmopolitan
civilizations “that ha[d] ever lived.”
• “Whence their ancestors may come, whether
from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, from
Oceania, from North or South America, or
from the islands of the sea, or whatever
honorable vocation they may now be engaged
in, matters nothing at all.”
Issues Threatening Union
through Southern Eyes
UT
NM
CA
The Texas Problem
California Brings Slavery Issue to
Forefront
Slave
States
Free
States
Compromise of 1850
1. Admitting California as a free state.
2. Organizing the Mexican Cession Territory without any
restriction as to slavery (the Utah and New Mexico
territories).
3. Denying the Texas claim to extend its boundary to where
the Rio Grande River begins.
4. Compensating Texas for #3 (above) by having the federal
government assume the $10 million Texas state debt.
5. Ending the practice of requiring all traded/sold slaves to
pass through the District of Columbia but,
6. Keeping slavery legal in D.C. even though it is not a state.
7. Rewriting the Fugitive Slave Act, placing it under the
jurisdiction of Federal U.S. Marshals.
8. Denying Congress any future authority to regulate slavery
(no more Missouri Compromise-type 36o; 30' provisions).
Compromise of 1850
Access the following website:
http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_comprom
ise1850.htm
Identify the final major bills passed that comprise the
Compromise of 1850.
Compromise of 1850
• Pop FACT
• Popular sovereignty in Mexican Cession: New
Mexico and Utah territories
• More stringent Fugitive Slave Law (than 1793)
• Abolition of the slave trade in District of
Columbia
• California admitted as a free state
• Texas received $10 million from federal
government for surrendering claim to disputed
territory in New Mexico
The Compromise of 1850
Legislative Item
• California admitted to
Union as free state
• Popular sovereignty to
determine slavery issue in
Utah and New Mexico
territories
• Texas Border dispute
resolved
• Texas receives $10 million
• Slave trade, not slavery,
abolished in DC
• Strong federal enforcement
of new Fugitive Slave Act
Victory for?
• Clear victory for the North
• Moderate victory for both
sides
• Moderate Southern victories
• Moderate Northern victory
• Clear victory for South
Fugitive Slave Law 1850
Access the following site:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugiti
ve.asp
Identify provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law
of 1850
Fugitive Slave Law 1850
“The World Tuned
Upside Down??”
South -- strong of Federal Government
North -- states’ rights (personal liberty laws)
Fugitive Slave Law 1850
• Federal crime to assist runaway slaves
• Created a force of federal commissioners
empowered to pursue fugitive slaves in any
state and return them to their owners
• No statute of limitations applied, so that
even those slaves who had been free for
many years could be (and were) returned
• Authorized arrest of slaves even in states
where slavery illegal
Fugitive Slave Law 1850
• Fleeing slaves couldn’t testify on their own
behalf—denied trial by jury
• Federal commissioner who handled the case got $5
if the slave was released and $10 if not
• People ordered to help catch slaves had to do so,
even if they didn’t want to.
• Citizens who hindered slave catchers were liable
to fines up to $1000 and a jail sentence of up to 6
months
Reaction in the North
• Many moderates driven into the ranks of
abolitionists
• Underground railroad stepped up activity
• Personal liberty laws
– guaranteed legal assistance to captured runaway slaves
– denied use of jails
• Massachusetts—penal offense for any state official
to enforce law
• New York and Massachusetts’ mobs free captured
runaway slaves
Personal Liberty Laws
Laws passed by U.S. states in the North to counter
the Fugitive Slave Acts.
Such states as Indiana (1824) and Connecticut
(1828) enacted laws giving escaped slaves the right
to jury trials on appeal
Vermont and New York (1840) assured fugitives
the right of jury trial and provided them with
attorneys
Other states forbade state authorities to capture
and return fugitives
Personal Liberty
Laws--Pennsylvania
Passed a law in 1847 forbidding state officials from
enforcing the 1793 federal fugitive slave law
Slaveholders were denied the right to transport their
slaves through the state
Any slaves brought into the state by their holders
would be considered free
By 1860, professional slave-catchers could be fined
as much as $1,000 and subject to a prison sentence up
to three months
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
– Changed the Northern perception of Slavery
– Southerners tried to have it banned
– Considered one of the causes of the Civil War
Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Underground Railroad
• Route to free slaves from the South
• Included Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave
• Conductors and slaves had songs with codes.
Political Parties—FreeSoil Party
Mr. Whig
The Territories
NO SLAVERY ALLOWED
I’m not watering my
garden. I’m siphoning
Democrats from their
party.
A “Fourth View???”
• William H. Seward ("Higher Law" Seward) a
younger northern radical was opposed to
granting concessions to the South
– Christian legislators must obey God’s moral law as
well as man’s law
– Slavery shouldn't be allowed in western territories
due to a "higher law" than the Constitution