Crisis in the Extended Republic

U.S. History to 1877

America expands again

u Manifest Destiny

u Annexation of Texas

u Texas Revolution (1836)

u 1840: Democrat Van Buren vs. Whig William H. Harrison

u “Tippecanoe & Tyler too”

u Tyler takes Texas

America expands again

u 1844: Democrat James K. Polk vs. Whig Henry Clay

u “54°40' or Fight”

u Polk negotiates extension of 49° boundary with Canada

War with Mexico (1846-48)

u Zachary Taylor

u From Texas

u John C. Frémont

u In California

u Winfield Scott

u To Mexico City

u Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

Slavery & Manifest Destiny

u The Wilmot Proviso

u No slavery in any territory gained from Mexico

u Senate blocks; lesson for the South

u Election of 1848

u Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan

u “Squatter sovereignty”

u Whigs: General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana

u War hero, slaveowner

Slavery & Manifest Destiny

u Gold discovered in California, 1848

u Hundreds of thousands of “Forty-Niners”

u Congressional deadlock over California

Compromise of 1850

u California: free state

u New Mexico and Utah territories: no mention of slavery

u Slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia

u Fugitive Slave Law

Politics and Outrage

u Something to please and outrage everyone

u Clay proposes, Calhoun opposes, Webster supports

u Congress fails to pass the Compromise

u Stephen Douglas gets it through

u Zachary Taylor’s surprise opposition

u Millard Fillmore saves the Union

Political chaos

u Political antislavery

u Liberty Party, 1840 and 1844

u Free Soil Party, 1848

u The “Slave Power” theory

u Undermining the Compromise of 1850

u Personal liberty laws

The Second Party System Collapses

u Election of 1852

u Whig General Winfield Scott

u Democrat Franklin Pierce

u Proslavery Northerner

u Whigs disintegrate over Compromise of 1850

National institutions all divide

u Slavery splits biggest Protestant churches

u Methodist Episcopal Church, South secedes in 1844

u Southern Baptist Convention organizes in 1845

Phenomenal Catholic Growth

u Huge wave of immigration

u Irish Catholics

u German Catholics and Protestants

u Number of Catholic churches up 885% 1820-50

u Largest denomination by 1860

u Huge ethnic diversity and tensions

u Discrimination strengthens Catholic identity

u Tension between Germans & Irish & others

American or “Know-Nothing” Party

u Anti-immigrant feeling rises

u Threat to American values and democracy?

u Religion, alcohol, and the vote

u Would Know-Nothings replace Whigs?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

u Stephen Douglas & “popular sovereignty”

u Missouri Compromise line repealed

“Bleeding Kansas”

u 1855: Lecompton & Topeka constitutions

u Attack on Lawrence, Kansas

u Blood in the Senate

u Preston Brooks attacks Senator Charles Sumner

u John Brown’s massacre at Pottawatomie

Election of 1856

u Political antislavery finds a party

u “Know Nothings” disintegrate over Kansas-Nebraska Act

u Organization of the “Republican” Party, 1854-56

u Democrat James Buchanan

u Republican John C. Frémont

u New, sectional party’s stunning power

The Dred Scott decision, 1857

u Chief Justice Roger B. Taney

u Territories can’t prohibit slavery

u Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional

u Blacks have “no rights that the white man is bound to respect”

A House Divided

u Lecompton constitution, 1857-58

u Buchanan submits slave constitution to Congress

u Douglas furious; Congress rejects

u Lincoln-Douglas debates, 1858

u Douglas: Freeport Doctrine

u Lincoln: The “house divided” speech

Harpers Ferry, 1859

u John Brown

u The South’s worst fears of abolitionists confirmed

Election of 1860

u Constitutional Union Party: John C. Bell

u Democrats: Stephen Douglas

u Republicans: Lincoln

u Southern Democrats: John C. Breckinridge