the civil war. the cause southern slavery “slavery is our king. slavery is our truth, slavery is...

THE CIVIL WAR

THE CAUSE

SOUTHERN SLAVERY SLAVERY IS OUR KING. SLAVERY IS OUR TRUTH, SLAVERY IS OUR DIVINE RIGHT. A South Carolina politician in 1860

MANIFEST DESTINY

With the end of the Mexican War, the USA absorbed a half a million square miles of Mexicos territory 1/3 of that nations total area. An estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Spanish speaking Mexicans and over 150,000 Indians inhabited the Mexican Cession.

MANIFEST DESTINY The spirit of Manifest Destiny gave a new stridency to ideas about racial superiority. 1840s: Territorial expansion came to be seen as proof of the innate superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. To adherents of Manifest Destiny race was the key to the history of nations and the rise and fall of empires. Race was an amorphous notion involving color, culture, class and religion.

WILMOT PROVISO

THE WILMOT PROVISO The acquisition of the Mexican Cession raised the fatal issue that would disrupt the political system and plunge the nation into civil war: SHOULD SLAVERY BE ALLOWED TO EXPAND IN THE WEST?

THE WILMOT PROVISO Events soon confirmed Ralph Waldo Emersons prediction that if the USA gobbled up part of Mexico, it will be as the man who swallows arsenic Mexico will poison us.

THE WILMOT PROVISO Before 1846, the status of slavery in all parts of the US had been settled, either by state law or in the Missouri Compromise. But the acquisition of new lands reopened the questions of slaverys expansion not its abolition.

THE WILMOT PROVISO The divisiveness of the issue became clear when Cong. David Wilmot (PA) proposed a resolution prohibiting slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico.

THE WILMOT PROVISO The Wilmot Proviso passed the HofR, where the more populous North possessed a majority, but failed in the Senate, with its even balance of free and slave states.

THE ELECTION OF 1848

In the Election of 1848, opponents of slaverys expansion not abolition organized the Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams as his running mate. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass who proposed that the decision to allow slavery should be left to the settlers in the new territories popular sovereignty

THE ELECTION OF 1848 Van Burens campaign struck a chord with Northerners opposed to the expansion of slavery and he polled some 300,000 votes, 14% of the Northern total. But the victory belonged to Zachary Taylor, the Whig Party nominee, hero of the Mexican War and a LA sugar planter.

THE FREE SOIL APPEAL

The fact that Van Buren and Adams abandoned their party to run on a Free Soil platform showed that anti-expanionist sentiment had spread far beyond abolitionist ranks. Being antislavery became an acceptable political position. The free soil message found an audience in the North but it was not an abolitionist position. It was more like a containment policy. The free soil idea also appealed to the racism widespread in Northern society.

THE FREE SOIL APPEAL Wilmot insisted that his controversial Proviso was motivated not by morbid sympathy for slaves but to advance the cause and rights of free white men, in part by preventing him to compete with black labor.

THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION To Southerners, the idea of barring slavery from the Mexican Cession seemed a violation of their equal rights as members of the Union. They had fought for these lands, surely they had a right to share in the fruits of victory.

THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION To single out slavery as the one form of property barred from the West would be an affront to the Southern way of life. Southern leaders became convinced that slavery must expand or die.

THE FREE SOIL APPEAL: THE SOUTHERN REACTION Also, the admission of new free states would overturn the political balance between sections and make the South a permanent minority. Southern interests would not be secure in a Union dominated by non-slaveholding states.

COMPROMISE OF 1850

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 The question of the expansion of slavery came to California in 1849. Gold was discovered in CA. This led to an explosion of gold seekers moving into CA. Some came with their slaves.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 With the slavery issue appearing more and more ominous, established party leaders moved to resolve differences between the sections. Some disputes were long standing, but the immediate source of controversy arose from the acquisition of new lands from Mexico.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 1850: CA., asked to be admitted as a free state. Some Southerners opposed the measure, fearing it would upset the sectional balance in Congress. 1850: The balance was 15 free states and 15 slave states.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Sen. Henry Clay (KY) offered a plan with 4 main provisions: CA would be a free state The slave trade would be abolished in DC A stringent new fugitive slave law would enacted. Popular sovereignty.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 In the Senate debate on Clays plan, the divergent sectional positions received eloquent expression. Sen. Daniel Webster (MA) announced his willingness to abandon the Wilmot Proviso and accept a new fugitive slave act if this were the price of sectional peace.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Sen. John C. Calhoun (SC), too ill to speak. A colleague read his remarks rejecting the compromise. Slavery, he insisted, must be protected by the federal govt., and extended into all the new territories.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Sen. William Seward (NY), opposed the compromise. Seward appealed to a higher law than the Const., the law of morality. He represented the voice of abolitionism in the Senate.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Pres. Zachary Taylor, was a strong nationalist. He was alarmed over the talk of disunion. He accused the South of holding CA., hostage to their own legislative aims. He insisted that Congress that Congress admit CA., as a free state.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 Taylor died of an intestinal infection on July 9, 1850. VP Millard Fillmore succeeded him. Fillmore threw his support behind Clays plan and helped to break the impasse in Congress and secure adoption of the Compromise of 1850.

PROVISIONS California admitted as a free state. The slave trade, but not slavery, would be abolished in Washington, D.C. A new stringent fugitive slave law would allow southerners to reclaim runaway slaves. The status of slavery in the remaining territories left to the decision of the local white inhabitants = popular sovereignty

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT The most controversial aspect of the Compromise of 1850. The law allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without the benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Southern leaders, usually strong defenders of states rights and local autonomy, supported a measure that brought federal agents into Northern communities, armed with the power to override local law enforcement and judicial procedures to secure the return of runaway slaves.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT 1850s: Federal tribunals heard over 300 cases and ordered 157 fugitives returned to the South, many at the govts expense. But the law further widened sectional differences.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Throughout the North, fugitives, with the aid of abolitionists, violently resisted capture. In the North, several thousands fugitives and free blacks fearing capture fled to Canada. This challenged the familiar image of the US as an asylum for freedom.

THE STORY OF ANTHONY BURNS The trial and arrest of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. Burns plight became a rallying cry for opponents of slavery.

UNCLE TOMS CABIN

1852: Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was the most influential novel of its time. It was a novel about a slave named Tom and his struggles against his owner Simon Legree It moved a generation of Northerners and Europeans to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhuman. Southerners condemned the untruths in the novel. They saw the novel as proof of the Norths incurable prejudice against the South.

THE MEETING

THE ELECTION OF 1852 At least temporarily, the Comp., of 1850 seemed to have restored sectional peace and party unity. In the Election of 1852 Democrat Franklin Pierce won a sweeping victory over Whig Winfield Scott. The Democratic Platform recognized the Comp. of 1850 as a final settlement of the slavery controversy. Pierce received a broad popular mandate.

But the Pierce Presidency turned out to be one of the most disastrous in American history. It witnessed the collapse of the party system inherited from the Age of Jackson, an increase in sectional tensions, and the first blood shed of the Civil War. Again the question of the expansion of slavery into new territories reared it ugly head.

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT 1854: The old political order finally succumbed to the disruptive pressures of slavery. Sen. Stephen Douglas (Ill) introduced a bill to provide for govts., for Kansas and Nebraska within the Louisiana Purchase. Douglas saw himself as the new leader of the Senate.

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT A strong believer in western development, Douglas hoped that a transcontinental railroad could be constructed through Kansas and Nebraska. But he feared that this could not be accomplished unless formal govts., were established in the these territories.

THE PROVISIONS The Nebraska Territory would be split into Nebraska and Kansas. The issue of slavery would be determined through popular sovereignty to Douglas popular sovereignty embodied the idea of local self-government and offered a middle ground between the extremes of the North and South. Due to Douglas leadership the bill became law in 1854

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT In response to the K-N Act, a group of antislavery Congressmen issued The Appeal of the Independent Democrats. It proved to be one of the most effective pieces of political persuasion in American history. It arraigned the Act as a gross violation of a sacred privilege, part and parcel of an atrocious plot to convert free territory into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves. It helped to convince Northerners of a slave power conspiracy.

THE IMPACT Effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and Compromise of 1850. Split the Democratic Party. Whig Party unable to develop a unified response to the crisis. Emergence of the Republican Party (Lincoln) The North: refused to honor the Fugitive Slave Act and would be unwilling to compromise in the future. Anti-slavery movement grew significantly.

FREE LABOR v. SLAVE POWER

1856: It became clear that the Republican Party would become the alternative to the Democratic Party in the North. Republicans managed to convince most Northerners that the Slave Power posed a more immediate threat to their liberties and aspirations than popery and immigration. The Partys appeal rested on the idea of free labor.

FREE LABOR v. SLAVE POWER In Republican hands, the free labor versus slave labor debate coalesced into a worldview that glorified the North as the home of progress, opportunity and freedom. The defining quality of Northern society was the opportunity for economic independence essential for freedom. Slavery by contrast spawned a social order consisting of degraded slaves, poor whites with no hope of advancement, and idle aristocrats.

FREE LABOR v. SLAVE POWER The struggle over the territories was a contest about which of the two antagonistic labor systems would dominate the West, and by implication, the nations future. Slavery must be kept out of the territories so that free labor could flourish. To Southern claims that slavery was the foundation of liberty, Republicans responded with the rallying cry freedom national meaning not abolition but ending the federal govts., support for slavery.

FREE LABOR v. SLAVE POWER Republicans were not abolitionists. They focused on preventing the spread of slavery, not attacking where it existed. Yet, many party leaders viewed the nations division into free and slave societies as an irrepressible conflict. The two systems were incompatible within a single nation.

FREE LABOR v. SLAVE POWER William Seward of NY: The United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave nation, or entirely a free nation.

BLEEDING KANSAS

Dramatic events in 1855 and 1856 fueled the Republican Partys growth. When Kansas held elections in 1854 and 1855, hundreds of proslavery Missourians crossed the border to cast fraudulent ballots. Pres. Pierce recognized the legitimacy of the resulting proslavery legislature, and replaced the territorial governor when he dissented. Settlers from the free states soon established a rival government and a sporadic civil war broke out, in which 200 persons lost their lives.

BLEEDING KANSAS May 1856: A proslavery mob attacked the free-soil stronghold of Lawrence, KS, burning public bldgs and pillaging private homes. Bleeding Kansas seemed to discredit Stephen Douglas policy of popular sovereignty thus aiding the Republicans.

BROOKS v. SUMNER The Party also drew strength from an unprecedented incident in the halls of Congress. Cong. Preston Brooks (SC) wielding a gold- tipped cane beat antislavery Sen. Charles Sumner (MA) unconscious after Sumner delivered a denunciation of Bleeding Kansas.

The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont and drafted a platform that strongly opposed the further expansion of slavery. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan. Their platform endorsed popular sovereignty as the only viable solution to the slavery controversy. The Know-Nothing Party nominated ex- president Millard Fillmore.

THE ELECTION OF 1856 Fremont outpolled Buchanan in the North, carrying 11 of the 16 states. A remarkable achievement for an organization that had existed for only 2 years.

THE ELECTION OF 1856 Fillmore carried only MD. But he ran well among former Whig voters of the Upper South and more conservative areas of the North, who were reluctant to join the Democrats but feared a Republican victory might threaten the Union.

THE ELECTION OF 1856 Buchanan won the entire South and the key Northern states of Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania. This was enough to ensure his victory making him the 15 th President of the USA.

DRED SCOTT

Even before his inauguration, Buchanan became aware of a pending Supreme Court decision that held out the hope of settling the slavery controversy once and for all. This was the Dred Scott v. Sanford case (1857)

DRED SCOTT 1830s: Scott had accompanied his owner to Illinois, where slavery had been prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and by state law. He also traveled to the Wisconsin territory, where slavery has been barred by the Missouri Compromise (1820)

DRED SCOTT After returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom, claiming that residence on free soil made him free. March 1857: The Court returned its ruling 2 days after Buchanans inauguration.

THE CASE The Dred Scott case is one of the most famous or infamous rulings in Supreme Court history. The Justices addressed three questions: Could a black person be a citizen and sue in federal court? Did residence in a free state make Scott free? Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?

THE DECISION 6-3 decision. Court ruled that only white persons could be citizens of the United States. Chief Justice Taney insisted that the nations founders believed that blacks had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. Descended from different ancestors and lacking a history of freedom, blacks, he continued could never be part of the nations political family. Scott remained a slave. Congress had no power under the Constitution to bar slavery from a territory.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SCOTT The Court was declaring that any measure interfering with southerners right to bring slaves into the western territories was unconstitutional. In effect the Court ruled unconstitutional the Republicans platform of restricting slaverys expansion. It undermined Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty for if Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in a territory, how could a territorial legislature created by Congress do so? President Buchanan announced that, henceforth, slavery existed in the territories by virtue of the Constitution.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SCOTT Perhaps the persons most directly affected by the Courts decision was Scott and his wife Harriet. A new master immediately freed them. Both died on the eve of the Civil War, having enjoyed their freedom for only a few years.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SCOTT Among the decisions casualties was the reputation of the Court itself, which in the North, sank to the lowest level in all of American history. Rather than abandoning their opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Republicans now viewed the Court as controlled by the Slave Power.

Lecompton Constitution

LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION 1858: The Buchanan Admin., tried to admit Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution. It had been drafted by a pro-southern convention and never submitted to a popular vote. Outraged by this violation of popular sovereignty, Stephen Douglas formed an unlikely alliance with Congressional Republicans to block the attempt. Kansas remained a territory; it would join the Union as a free state on the eve of the Civil War.

LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION The Lecompton battle convinced Southern Democrats that they could not trust their party most popular northern leader. This would hurt Douglas presidential election bid in 1860.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY

The depths of Americas divisions over slavery were brought into sharp focus in 1858 in one of the most storied elections in the nations history. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (Ill) was up for reelection. He encountered an unexpectedly strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY Although Lincoln had began running for office at the age of 23, until the mid 1850s his career hardly seemed destined for greatness. He served 4 terms as a Whig in the Ill state legislature and one in Congress from 1847- 1849. While in Congress, his criticism of the Mexican War was so unpopular that he did not seek reelection. (Spot Resolution = Spotty Lincoln)

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY Lincoln was swept into politics by the Kansas- Nebraska Act. He once said that he hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. Unlike abolitionists, he was willing to compromise with the South to preserve the Union. He once said: I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down but I bite my lip and keep silent. But on one question he was inflexible stopping the expansion of slavery.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY He crafted a critique of slavery and its expansion that gave voice to the central values of the emerging Republican Party and the millions of Northerners whose loyalty it commanded. He speeches combined the moral fervor of the abolitionists with a strong respect for order and the Constitution.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY If slavery were allowed to expand, he warned, the love of liberty would be extinguished and with it Americas special mission to be a symbol of democracy for the entire world.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY Lincolns America was the world of the small producer. In a sense, his own life personified the free labor ideology and the opportunities Northern society offered to laboring men.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY He was fascinated and disturbed by the writings of proslavery ideologues and he rose to the defense of Northern society: I want every man to have a chance and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY For Lincoln, blacks might not be the equal of whites in all respects, but in their natural right to the fruits of their labor, they were my equal and the equal of all others.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATAES

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES The campaign against Douglas created Lincolns national reputation. These debates remain classics of American history. In total 7 debates were held. The debates were attended by tens of thousands of listeners.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES Clashing definitions of freedom lay at the heart of the debates. To Lincoln, freedom meant opposition to slavery. The nation needed to rekindle the spirit of the Founding Fathers, who, he claimed, had tried to place slavery on the path to ultimate extinction. Douglas argued that the essence of freedom lay in local self-government and individual self- determination. A large and diverse nation could only survive by respecting the right of each locality to determine its own institutions.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE In the Freeport debate, responding to questions from Lincoln, Douglas insisted that popular sovereignty was not incompatible with the Dred Scott decision.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES Although territorial governments could no longer exclude slavery directly, Douglas insisted, if the people wished to keep slaveholders out all they needed to do was refrain from giving the institution legal protection.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES Douglas insisted that politicians had no right to impose their own moral standards on society as a whole. When he talked of the people, he meant white people only.

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES Douglas spent most of the time in the debates trying to portray Lincoln as a dangerous radical whose positions threatened to degrade white Americans by reducing them to equality with blacks. In the end, Douglas won the election. But Lincoln had positioned himself as a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president in 1860.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPERS FERRY

JOHN BROWN AT HARPERS FERRY An armed assault by the fanatical abolitionist John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, VA, further heightened sectional tensions. Brown had a long career in antislavery activities. 1830s-1840s: He befriended fugitive slaves, and although chronically in debt, helped finance antislavery publications. He was a deeply religious man. But his God was not a forgiving God.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPERS FERRY May 1856: After the attack on Lawrence, KS, Brown traveled to the territory. There he and a few followers murdered 5 proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. For the next two years, he traveled through the North and Canada raising funds and enlisting followers for a war against slavery.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPERS FERRY Oct. 16, 1859: With 21 men, 7 of them black, Brown seized Harpers Ferry. Militarily the plan made no sense. The hoped for slave uprising did not materialize.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPERS FERRY Brown and his men were soon surrounded by US troops led by Robert E. Lee. Brown was placed on trial for treason against the state of VA.

JOHN BROWN AND HARPERS FERRY At the trial, Brown conducted himself with dignity and courage, winning the admiration from millions of northerners who disapproved of his violent deeds. When Gov. Henry A. Wise (VA) spurned pleas for clemency and ordered Brown executed, he turned Brown into a martyr to much of the North. To the South, the failure of Browns raid seemed less significant than the adulation he seemed to arouse in the North.

BROWN: MARTYR OR TERRORIST?

With his reelection in 1858, Douglas seemed prime to become the next president. But when the Democratic convention met in 4/1860, Douglas commanded a majority but not the 2/3 required for the nomination.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 Because of his fight against the LeCompton Constitution and his refusal to support congressional laws imposing slavery on all territories, Douglas had become unacceptable to political leaders of the Deep South.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 The leaders of the Deep South were determined to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state. When the party platform adopted a plank reaffirming popular sovereignty, delegates from 7 slave states of the Lower South walked out and the convention recessed in confusion.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 6 weeks later, the convention reconvened, replaced the bolters with Douglas supporters and nominated him for president. In response, Southern Democrats placed their own ticket in the field and nominated John C. Breckinridge of KY. He insisted that slavery be allowed in the territories.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 The hastily organized Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell of TN. Its platform consisted of a single phrase to preserve the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 The Republicans gathered in Chicago and nominated Lincoln. Lincolns devotion to the Union appealed to moderate Republicans.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 Lincolns emphasis on the moral dimension of the sectional controversy made him acceptable to Republicans from abolitionist backgrounds. Coming from Ill, he could carry the pivotal doubtful states essential for a Republican victory.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 The Republican platform: Denied the validity of the Dred Scott decision Reaffirmed the Partys opposition to the expansion of slavery Free homesteads in the West A protective tariff Government aid in building a transcontinental railroad.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 The most striking thing about the election returns was their sectional character. Lincoln carried the entire North, receiving 54% of the regions vote, 40% of the national vote and 180 electoral votes. Breckinridge carried most of the slave states, although Bell carried 3 Upper South states, and about 40% of the Southern vote as a whole.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 Douglas was the only candidate with significant support in all parts of the country, a vindication, in a sense, of his long effort to transcend sectional divisions. But his failure to carry either section suggested that a traditional political career based on devotion to the Union was no longer possible.

THE ELECTION OF 1860 Lincoln failed to secure a majority of the popular vote. But because of the Norths superiority in population, he would have still carried the electoral college and thus been elected even if the vote of his 3 opponents had all been cast for a single candidate.

THE SECESSION CRISIS

In the eyes of many Southern whites, Lincolns victory placed their future at the mercy of a party avowedly hostile to their regions values and interest. They feared Republican efforts to extend their party into the South by appealing to nonslaveholders. They boldly struck for their regions independence. At stake was an entire way of life.

THE SECESSION CRISIS In the months that followed Lincolns election, 7 states seceded from the Union. These were states of the Cotton Kingdom, where slaves represented a larger part of the total population than in the Upper South.

THE SECESSION CRISIS The first state to secede was SC. 12/20/1860: The SC legislature unanimously voted to leave the Union. Its Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession placed the issue of slavery squarely at the center of the crisis. The North had assumed the right of deciding upon the property of our domestic institutions.

THE SECESSION CRISIS They also argued that Lincoln was a man whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. Experience had proved that slaveholding states cannot be safe in subjection to nonslaveholding states. Secessionists equated their movement with the struggle for American independence.

THE SECESSION CRISIS Proslavery ideologue George Fitzhugh, however, later claimed that the Southern secession was even more significant than the commonplace affair of 1776. The South rebelled not merely against a particular govt., but against the erroneous modern idea of freedom based on human equality and natural liberty.

THE SECESSION CRISIS As the Union unraveled, President Buchanan seemed paralyzed. He denied that a state could secede, but he also insisted that the fed govt had no right to use force against it. There was one last attempt to resolve the crisis.

CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE

Sen. John J. Crittenden (KY) offered the most widely supported compromise plan of the secession winter. The Crittenden Compromise would have guaranteed the future of slavery in the states where it existed, and extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, dividing between slavery and free soil all territories now held, or hereafter acquired.

CRITTEDNDEN COMPROMISE The seceding states rejected the compromise as too little, too late. But many in the Upper South and North saw it as a way to settle sectional differences and prevent civil war.

CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE The plan foundered in the opposition of Lincoln. Willing to conciliate the South on issues like the return of fugitive slaves, he took an unyielding stand against the extension of slavery.

CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE Lincoln feared that Crittendens reference to land hereafter acquired offered the South the thinly veiled invitation to demand the acquisition of Cuba, Mexico, and other territory suited to slavery.

THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

Before Lincoln assumed office on March 4, 1861, the 7 seceding states formed the Confederate States of America. They adopted a constitution. The CSA Constitution was modeled on the USA Constitution but it explicitly guaranteed slave property both in the states and any territories the new nation acquired.

THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA The CSA chose as their president Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.

The CSA chose as their VP, Alexander H. Stephens of GA. He once said: The cornerstone of the Confederacy was the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA

LINCOLNS INAUGURAL

Even after rejecting the Crittenden Compromise, Lincoln did not believe war was inevitable. When he became president, 8 slave states of the Upper South remained in the Union. In these states, slaves and slaveholders made up a considerably lower proportion of the population. Large parts of the white population did not believe Lincolns election justified dissolving the Union.

LINCOLNS INAUGURAL Even within the CSA, whites had divided over secession, with considerable numbers of nonslaveholding farmers in opposition. In time, Lincoln believed, secession might collapse from within.

LINCOLNS INAUGURAL In his inaugural address, Lincoln tried to be conciliatory. He rejected the right of secession but denied any intention of interfering with slavery in the states.

LINCOLNS INAUGURAL He said nothing of retaking the forts, arsenals, and customs houses the CSA had seized, although he did promise to hold remaining federal property in the seceding states.

LINCOLNS INAUGURAL Lincoln also issued a veiled warning: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

THE ROAD TO WAR In his first months as president, Lincoln walked a tightrope. He avoided any action that might drive more states from the Union. He encouraged Southern Unionists to assert themselves in the CSA. He sought to quiet a growing clamor in the North for forceful action against secession.

THE ROAD TO WAR Knowing that the risk of war existed, Lincoln strove to ensure that if hostilities did break out, the South, not the Union, would fire the first shot. And that is precisely what happened.

FORT SUMTER

THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER

Fort Sumter was an enclave on Union control in the harbor of Charleston, SC. Lincoln had notified the SC governor that he intended to replenish the garrisons dwindling food supplies.

THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER Viewing Fort Sumters presence as an affront to southern nationhood, and perhaps hoping to force the wavering Upper South to join the CSA, Jefferson Davis ordered batteries to fire on Fort Sumter.

THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER On April 14 th, Fort Sumter surrendered. April 15 th : Lincoln proclaimed that an insurrection existed in the South and called for 75,000 troops to suppress it. The Civil War had begun. Within weeks, VA, NC, TN, and AK joined the CSA.

AND THE WAR CAME Lincoln: Both sides deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would rather accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

the civil war. the cause southern slavery “slavery is our king. slavery is our truth, slavery is...

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