Unit 6: Antebellum America

Sectionalism• Feeling more loyal to a certain part of the

country than to the country as a whole. You identify with that section more.

Background• By 1820, sectionalism has

begun to grow– North—industrial economy,

trade– South—agricultural economy,

slavery

• The North and South had completely different economic outlooks– Affected politics– South—state’s rights (South

Carolina Nullification Crisis, 1828 and 1832)

– North—strong central government

Slavery • Abolished in the North• Never allowed in the Northwest

Territory• Cotton gin, 1793 (Eli Whitney)

• Cotton was previously a side crop, tobacco was the money maker

• More slaves were needed as KING COTTON extended from NC, SC, AL, GA, MS, LA, to TX

• Slavery became an economic necessity for plantation owners

The Cotton Gin

Building up to the Civil War

• Congress– 11 free and 11 slave states– Missouri would petition to enter, this

would upset the balance of power

• The Civil War– Waiting for a time and place to happen– Most important event in US history– The events leading up to the Civil War are

worth studying in detail

Did everyone have slaves in the South?

• Only 25% of the people in the South were actually affected economically by slavery

• Only about 1800 people in the South owned 1000 slaves or more. – More people had 1 or 2 slaves

or none at all

• In all of Claiborne Parish (4 parishes combined), there was only one slave in 1860 census

Southern Social Order• Upper Class

– Plantation owner– 19 or more slaves

• Professionals– Doctors, Lawyers, sometimes Teachers,

Bankers• Small farmer

– Middle class– May have one or two slaves

• Poor White Trash– No slaves– Called “crackers”, “dirt eaters”,

“rednecks”• Slaves

WHERE DID FREE BLACKS FIT?

Missouri Compromise of 1820

• First major controversy over slavery

• Questions that arose:– Would Missouri come in as a slave state or a

free state?– Who determines whether a state is slave or

free?– Is slavery allowed in a territory?– Are slaves property?

The Missouri Compromise

• Senator J.B. Thomas and Henry Clay (The Great Compromiser)

• Maine was petitioning to become a state as well– Missouri would be slave– Maine would be free

• No slavery allowed 36˚30’ latitude line in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase

Henry Clay

The Missouri Compromise

The Abolitionist Movement• Started by Quakers• Slavery was becoming a moral issue• Two types of abolitionists

1. Gradual Emancipation—slowly end slavery in the South• Free 10% of slaves a year until all are freed• Pay Southerners to free slaves because of economic need

2. Immediate Emancipation—get rid of slavery NOW• Saw slavery as a sin; a moral wrong

Abolitionists• William Lloyd Garrison

– The Liberator• Henry Ward Beecher

– Methodist minister– Used a mock slave auction

to inform people about the horrors of slavery

• Frederick Douglass– Free black man– Son of former slave– Son of both black and

white parents

Abolitionists

• Sojourner Truth• Harriet Tubman

– Underground Railroad• Secret

• Used Railroad terms– Conductor, station, etc

• Elijah P. Lovejoy– Printing press

– Murdered by an angry mob

Slave Revolts: Greatest fear of whites in South

• Occurred when slave owners would get lax attitudes

• 3 significant revolts– Gabriel’s insurrection-late

1700s, VA– Denmark Vessey-1822, SC

• Idle slave talk of revolt that scared slave owners

– Nat Turner-1831, VA• Solar eclipse• Freed slaves on a few local

plantations• Most extensive slave revolt

Effects of the Slave Revolts

• Instilled widespread fear in slave owners

• John Brown– Harper’s Ferry, VA– Oct. 16, 1859

• Wilmot Proviso, 1846– During the Mexican War– Any land gained would

prohibit slavery (violated Missouri Compromise)

– Did not pass but continued the argument over slavery

Free Soil Party

• Created in the 1850’s• Anti-extension of

slavery into new territories

• Eventually new members would join the new Republican party

Know-Nothing Party

• Another third party• Founded in 1856• Nativists• Wanted to limit foreigners

from immigrating, particularly Irish

• Split over the issue of slavery just as the Whigs did

• Official name: American Party

Compromise of 1850• 1849, California Gold Rush

– Qualified for statehood

• Controversy– California wanted to enter as a free state

• Opposed by the South• Part of CA was below the Missouri Compromise line

• Debate in Congress– Henry Clay (free)– John C. Calhoun (slave)

• Two questions to answer– Are slaves property?– Should Congress make the decision about slavery?

Webster

Clay

Calhoun

Compromise of 1850

• Henry Clay proposed a compromise to determine whether California would be a free or slave state

• Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun debated for days

Parts of Compromise of 1850• California admitted as a

free state• Popular sovereignty

would settle future debate on how a state would enter the union

• Stricter fugitive slave law

• No slave trade in Washington, D.C.

Franklin Pierce

• Elected President in 1852

• Democrat

• Presided over a nation torn by sectional strife

• Last election in which the Whig party would run– Later split over slavery and

died out

Transcontinental Railroad

• In 1854, controversy began over the route of the transcontinental RR

• North Route– Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas

—”Little Giant”– Illinois to California

• Middle Route– Proposed by Senator Thomas Hart

Benton of MO– Wanted the RR to pass through St.

Louis• Southern Route

– Secretary of War—Jefferson Davis of MS

– New Orleans, Memphis, Gadsden Purchase

Transcontinental Railroad

• All three routes would eventually be completed– Middle route was first;

Central Pacific connected with the Union Pacific on May 10, 1869

• Douglas decided that a central route through IL, KS, and MO would receive the most support– Joined forces with Benton

to get central route approved by Congress

– Not finished until end of war

Completion of railroad atPromontory Point, Utah

Results of the Transcontinental Railroad Route

• Kansas Territory became important because it would ask for statehood before Utah and New Mexico

• Compromise of 1850 did not apply here• Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in

1854 to determine if these territories would have slavery

• Should they have even discussed slavery here? Hint: Missouri Compromise (36º30’ line)

Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Proposed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas (IL)

• Divided Kansas into two new territories, KS and NE

• Popular Sovereignty• Ignored the MO

Compromise of 1820-36’ 30” line

• Favored by the South• Passed after a fierce

debate in CongressStephen A. Douglas

Bleeding Kansas• Free staters and slave owners

moved to Kansas for the vote• Two territorial governments

were set up– Shawnee and Topeka– Both made laws intended

to govern the whole state• May 1856, proslavery

Kansasans launched a raid against Lawrence– Two free staters were

killed• John Brown led counterattack

at Pottawotamie Creek• First major violence over

slavery

Brooks-Sumner Affair• 1856—during Kansas War• Charles Sumner gave speech “Crime Against Kansas”

– Starting insulting people including a man from SC whose nephew, Preston Brooks, worked in the House

• Brooks was told about the family insult and retaliated

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Anti-slavery novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852.

• Banned in the South, stirred up more abolitionists in North

Dred Scott case, 1857• Dred Scott sued his slave

owner for freedom after being taken north of the Missouri Compromise line.

• The Supreme Court rules in Scott v. Sandford that blacks are not U.S. citizens,

• Chief Justice Roger B. Taney says slaveholders have the right to take existing slaves into free areas of the county.– Admits that they are _____.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Senate campaign in 1858• Lincoln lost• Both candidates had to

express their opinions on slavery– Lincoln—anti-extension and

slavery was morally wrong– Stephen A. Douglas—

popular sovereignty and Dred Scott decision

John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia

• 1859• John Brown leads a

group of abolitionists and runaway slaves to take arsenal and then plans to start a new state for former slaves by force.

• U.S. army cadets and soldiers sent in to put down rebellion.

• Brown captured and hanged.

Lincoln Elected President, 1860• Major candidates:

– Republican—Abraham Lincoln

– Northern Democrats—Stephen A. Douglas

– Southern Democrats—John C. Breckenridge

– Constitutional Union Party—John Bell

Bell Douglas Breckenridge

Lincoln

Secession Begins• Crittenden Compromise—last

effort to preserve the Union; would allow slavery to extend south of the Missouri Compromise all the way to the Pacific– Lincoln rejected– South Carolina seceded in

December 1860– Six other Southern states

would soon follow before the first battle were: FL, LA, TX, MS, AL, and GA

– Confederate States of America created

• Jefferson Davis• Richmond, VA-capital

• The other southern states that seceded after the Battle of Fort Sumter were: VA, TN, AR, and NC.

• Border states that were slave states but never seceded: MD, KY, MO, and DE– Why didn’t they

secede?• Writ of habeas corpus

suspended by Lincoln

Confederate States of AmericaJefferson Davis—President

States’ rights and slaverywere main parts of CSA constitution.

The Civil War Begins

• Battle of Fort Sumter– April 12-14, 1861– Confederates took one of the last Union forts

outside of Charleston, South Carolina

Antebellum Reformers

Abolitionists

Education

Women

Religion

Temperance

Antebellum Reformers

• Religious• Women’s rights• Transcendentalists• Prison and asylum reform• Temperance movement• Utopian societies• Education• Abolitionists

Religious Movements• Second Great Awakening

– Timothy Dwight• Deism• Unitarianism

– William Channing• Universalism

– John Murray• Burned Over District

– Western New York– Charles Finney

• Mormons– Joseph Smith

Methodist Revival, 1830’s

Women’s Rights• Changes in gender roles-

– Education– Work– Legal and political rights

• “Cult of domesticity”• Women’s groups formed:

– Charity– Churches– Temperance– Abolitionists

• Seneca Falls Convention,1848, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Transcendentalists

• Connected to Romanticism—focuses on feelings over reason to explain life and the universe (contrast to Enlightenment)

• Affected literature, arts, and thought• Spiritual connections to Puritan New

England—inner light, conscience• 1830s—most influential intellectual and

spiritual movement in America

Transcendentalism

• Ralph Waldo Emerson—greatest impact– Individualism and independence

• Henry David Thoreau—Life in the Woods– Follow your conscience, think for yourself. Find out

who you are.

• Walt Whitman, Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Education Reform• Led by Horace Mann of

Massachusetts• Grade and ability grouping• Six-month school year• Standardized textbooks• Teacher training (normal schools)• Education improves economic

conditions of people and prevents crimes

• Secular colleges formed• Vassar—first academic college

for women

Temperance Movement

• Result of religious revivals• Most widespread reform movement• Reasons for moderation or banning:

– Against Bible– Dangerous to workers, families– Poverty

• American Temperance Union—1833, promoted total abstinence (tee-totalers)

Prison and Asylum Reform

• Led by Dorothea Lynde Dix

• Tied to religious views—take care of others

• Prisons became correctional facilities

• End of debtors’ prisons

• Asylums and hospitals cleaned up and took better care of disabled and mentally ill

Utopian Societies

• Often tied to religion or transcendentalism

• Shakers—Mother Ann Lee (NY)

• Oneida Community—John Humphrey Noyes (VT)

• New Harmony—George Rapp and Robert Owens (IN)

• Brook Farm—George Ripley (MA)