at mid-century political storm clouds were already forming in the United States over a host of issues stemming from the institution of slavery the United States had proven that it was a powerful nation in its war against Mexico but as Henry Clay famously said the United States was a quote unhappy country torn by the Uproar confusion and Menace caused by the deepening divisions over slavery the United States had over the course of the Antebellum era developed two distinct societies one in the north the other in the South and these two sections increasingly disagreed over the future direction of the Republic in 1833 President Andrew Jackson had predicted that Southerners quote intend to blow up a storm on the slave question and added that the pro-slavery fire Brands such as John C Calhoun would quote do any act to destroy this Union and form a southern Confederacy by 1848 National events would bring Jackson's prediction close to reality in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War the United States experienced a sectional crisis the likes of which dwarfed the threats posed by the Missouri controversy and the South Carolina Nullification Crisis long-standing disagreements between North and South coupled with brand new ones poised the nation on the brink of Civil War by the end of the decade and in many ways the sectional crisis of the 1840s was simply a dress rehearsal for the secession crisis of 1860 1861. that crisis of course produced the American Civil War the sectional crisis of the 1840 centered on four principal disagreements between the North and South slavery in the territories of the United States slavery and the nation's capital fugitive slaves and the admission of California and New Mexico to the Union as States all of these issues stemmed from slavery's presence in the United States the existence of the institution of slavery uh was going to be the driving force behind this sectional crisis just as it had been in the National emergencies before and this sectional crisis of the 1840s represented a Coleman Nation really of simmering disagreements that had plagued the Annie bellamara of American history when it came to slavery in the territories the question that divided North and South centered on the newly acquired territory of the Mexican session now President James K Polk had naively assumed that the expansion of the Amer of American territory to the Pacific Ocean would strengthen quote the bonds of union between Americans but instead the acquisition of the Mexican session simply reignited a long-standing disagreement between north and south and that disagreement is what would lead ultimately to secession and Civil War in 1860 1861. the war with Mexico it was less than three months old when it had actually sparked this renewed debate over slavery's expansion on August 8 1846 and a relatively obscure Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot delivered a speech to the U.S House of Representatives in which he proposed that any Mexican territory should be acquired as a result of this War slavery was going to be prohibited there the Wilmot Proviso as his proposal became name became called had the effect of rekindling the national debate over slavery's expansion Westward that had been lurking since the days of the Missouri controversy in 1820. now if you remember the Missouri Compromise had provided a temporary Solution by assuring slavery where it already existed but restricting it in the territories of the Louisiana Purchase that resided north of the 3630 parallel now with the Mexican session taken from Mexico the political dispute over slavery was poised to explode once again now the House of Representatives approved the Wilmot Proviso but the U.S Senate refused to go along with it and President Polk himself dismissed the Proviso as quote mischievous and foolish but he privately worried that quote the slavery question is assuming a fearful aspect that might ultimately threaten the union itself and the reason for this is that if slavery was restricted from the Mexican session as David wilmot's Proviso intended than all the new States created from that territory were going to be free states and that would put the future of slavery at risk everywhere as political power would be shifting even more in favor of the free states now Polk was able to convince David Wilmot to withhold his Amendment for many Bill dealing with the annexation of Mexican territory but the principle involved with it that slavery should be prohibited from new territories this was picked up by a great many Northern congressman and became essentially the de facto position of the north regarding the issue of slavery's expansion and that position was its expansion was done slavery was not to expand anymore meanwhile Senator John C Calhoun who we've seen repeatedly already countered wilmot's Proviso and the growing chorus of anti-slavery Northern congressmen when in February of 1847 he introduced a series of Senate resolutions that insisted that wilmot's efforts to exclude slaves from new territories of the United States was a violation of the U.S Constitution these resolutions uh were so important to the development of the Southern uh political understanding of the sectional crisis that I think it's worth going through some of these resolutions in these resolutions Calhoun called the territories of the United States the common property of all of the states and he went forward saying that uh the U.S Congress had no right to impose a law that would discriminate between the states and the individuals of the states access to any of these territories he then famously said in his in his last resolution that if such a law was imposed that it would be depriving the citizens of Southern States from immigrating with all of their property to any territory of the United States and that this would be a violation of the U.S Constitution and of course what he meant was the fifth amendment the Fifth Amendment of the U.S Constitution protects the property of all Americans and he argued in these resolutions that enslaved people were property and were recognized as such by the three-fist Clause of the Constitution and what he had done then in this in these resolutions is that with a clever stroke of logic John C Calhoun has now turned the Bill of Rights into a guarantee of slavery and this guarantee of slavery and any attempt to restrict its expansion as a violation of the Bill of Rights became a fundamental principle for white Southerners and is very similar to how the Wilmot Proviso became the de facto position of the North Senate the John C Calhoun Senate resolutions became the the facto position of white Southerners with regard to the expansion of slavery and that position was that slavery must be allowed to expand to the territories of the United States in any attempt by Congress to prevent it was unconstitutional now in the end Wilmot and Calhoun's assertions here uh they were really just creating a pair of scissors neither one blade could cut very well but when you put them together well these two positions they could sever the Union in half because both of these positions except no room for compromise and so nationalists in Congress you know they tried to deflect the Brewing conflict over slavery in the territories by trying to propose a whole bunch of possible remedies to find some type of Middle Ground between the arguments of Calhoun and the arguments of David Wilmot for example one Senator proposed simply extending the Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific Ocean and allowing slavery's expansion south of it but not north of it um another Senator Lewis Cass of the great state of Michigan proposed that the citizens of these new territories could quote regulate their own internal concerns with their own way just like the citizens of a state now such a proposal as casses uh had the attractive option of taking these issue of slavery's expansion to the territories out of the halls of Congress where it was a national hot potato and isolating that question in the territories of the United States to be decided by those that would be more directly affected by it and thus was born a concept known as popular sovereignty as Cass called it and this idea of popular sovereignty right of letting the settlers of these territories determine for themselves whether or not the territory would allow or prohibit slavery uh this appealed to a lot of people eager to calm the situation it also appealed to American sense of democracy right an American sense of this was a government for the People by the people and thus the idea of popular sovereignty is the idea that the people were Sovereign thus the people just like the people in a state how people in a Southern state can determine whether or not it allows slavery and just like people in a Northern State can determine whether or not that state prohibits slavery the idea is let's apply these concepts of democracy uh to the territories themselves and so this idea of popular sovereignty represented kind of a middle ground approach here and it was popular and appealed to many people as I mentioned that were eager to calm the city situation but it also appealed that those who were eager to protect states rights so it kind of straddles the middle ground here now when the Mexican war ended in 1848 the issue of slavery's expansion to these new territories that would be acquired had not been settled for the most part Northerners were in support of prohibiting it for the most part Southerners were in favor of expanding it and then of course you had nationalist in Congress that were in favor of things like popular sovereignty now the issue of slavery's expansion there in this new territory only festered as both sides began to adopt these rigid positions regarding the issue as I mentioned the South was adamant that slavery must be allowed to expand that Congress had no say in the matter and the north was now adamant that slavery should be restricted now the expansion of slavery was perhaps the single biggest driving force behind the sectional crisis here in the 1840s and so it's one that really uh is given then a lot of focus uh in this lecture now we're going to come back to this because a lot of the other issues will stem from this question of slavery's expansion before we get into some of the other issues there was a very consequential presidential election that took place right in the middle of this growing crisis between the North and South and that is the election of 1848 that I briefly want to cover uh because it sets the stage for uh events coming later in this lecture um President James K Polk who had won the 1844 presidential election and became the 11th president in American history had promised to serve only one term in office and after accomplishing his expansionist goals of securing The Oregon Territory of uh securing Texas as well as uh expanding the borders of the United States through a war with Mexico uh he refused to accept his party's nomination in 1848 and that's the Democratic party now as a result the Democrats ended up nominating uh the gentleman I mentioned earlier Lewis Cass of Michigan uh but the Democratic party who was really dominated by Southerners refused to adopt his idea of popular sovereignty into the party platform instead the party uh adopted a resolution that states this Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States now this resolution that was adopted into the Democratic party platform in 1848 meant that Congress that this party was committed to the idea that Congress could not interfere with slavery in the States but also in the territories of the United States now what about the wigs well as they had done in 1840 the wigs again passed over their party leader Henry Clay and ended up nominating the war hero of the Mexican-American War Zachary Taylor um now Taylor was a uh slave owner from Louisiana he owned the large Plantation with over 145 slaves but Taylor was actually opposed to slavery's expansion into new western territories now he was a reluctant candidate with no political experience who had never really claimed any party affiliation before he he'd actually never even voted in a presidential election but he agreed to run in 1848 for the Whig party out of a sense of Duty out of a sense of the Whig party shared his principles especially in terms of slavery's expansion uh but it was not out of a want of power not out of an inclination for power that Taylor agreed to run it was more out of a sense of Duty uh than anything else now uh in the 1848 election we also had an important third party that emerged that I briefly want to talk about and it was known as the Free Soil Party but let me explain but by 1848 a great deal of Americans a great a great number of Americans uh did not support the abolition of slavery but they did support the Banning of slavery from western territories and Free Soil then became kind of the rallying cry for a lot of Americans who ended up forming a new political organization that focused solely on preventing the spread of slavery not the abolition of slavery right and so the Free Soil Party as it was called it attracted a lot of Northerners a lot of Northern Democrats it also attracted a lot of anti-slavery Whigs and it even attracted members of the Abolitionist Movement who saw the Free Soil Party as an opportunity to at least do something about slavery uh and in 1848 the free Soldier party nominated uh a former president of the United States Martin Van Buren to be their candidate in the 1848 presidential election adopting the campaign slogan of Free Soil Free Speech free labor and free men now Martin Van Buren had served only one term in office uh he had won in 1836 presidential election but of course was ousted in 1840 but he was recruited by the Free Soil Party uh and by all indications was a an avid believer in its uh principal message of restricting slavery from the territories now how did this election go well in this election the free sport the Free Soil Party actually split the Democratic vote enough to cost Lewis Cass the state of New York uh and they even split the Whig vote enough to cost Zachary Taylor the state of Ohio uh nationally however Van Buren lagged far far behind Taylor and Cass uh the former of which Zachary Taylor he ultimately prevailed in the contest by 163 electoral votes to 127. but this election is important for a couple of reasons number one it's going to result in the election of Zachary Taylor as president of the United States and Taylor's position regarding the expansion of slavery is that it should not expand and a lot of people believed he was a traitor to his section of the country a lot of Southerners believed he was a backstabber because he was from Louisiana he was a slave owner yet here he was adopting a more of a Henry Clay nationalist perspective in terms of wanting to prevent any type of divisive issue the other reason the 40 and and as we'll see this is going to play a critical role in helping to drive this sectional crisis uh meaning Zachary Taylor plays a role in all of this the other reason the 48 election I think is important is that we see this emergence of the Free Soil Party now the Free Soil Party is going to be the precursor or the harbinger of another political party called the Republican party which will emerge in the 1850s but we'll cover that in another lecture uh so that's the 1848 presidential election now let's get back into some of the other issues besides slavery's expansion to the territories other issues that helped to create the sectional crisis of the 1840s and another one of these issues uh was the issue of there's Zachary Taylor sorry uh 12th President of the United States uh I like this picture is that he looks very tired and worn out okay the other issue I wanted to get to now was the issue of slavery in the uh United States capital of Washington DC uh Washington DC is a territory of the United States uh technically very similar right Domingo has territorial status so the issue of slavery in the territories was also going to extend then to the United States capital in Washington D.C now abolitionists had long called for the abolishment of the institution of slavery in our nation's capital on the grounds that it was a city uh it was the you know the capital city and it was supposed to be uh it's supposed to project not only across the country but across the world the ideas of Liberty right and freedom and yet visitors to our nation's capital were subjected to the American irony of pledging that we were a nation dedicated to the idea that all men were created equal yet we were accepting the ownership of human beings this raised the uncomfortable issue then for a lot of Northerners that how could the United States project these ideals yet not practice it at home uh to say nothing of allowing it to exist in our nation's capital and of course what they were referring to is the horrific nature of slavery uh the shackles right the corporal punishment and Mori and more uh specifically the buying and selling of slaves which is resulting in the ripping apart of marriages and families uh and all of this was too much right for Americans uh slave markets occurred monthly in our nation's capital and it is in these slave markets where the buying and selling of people took place and these were probably you know the the the slave auction of the slave market is is generally regarded as one of the more horrific scenes of slavery because people were parade human beings paraded onto a stage uh and sold to the highest bidder and oftentimes you would have husbands and wives ripped apart never to see each other ever again children sold to a different Master than their mother and never seeing their mother again and all of this was taking place in our nation's capital in fact the largest slave market held every month here in the United States uh took place just right across the street from the White House and what is today known as Lafayette Park uh and it was scenes like this that caused a lot of Northerners abolitionists free soilers uh to begin calling for the prohibition of the institution of slavery uh in our nation's capital um on the grounds that if we're going to ban it from the territories of the West we then can ban it from our nation's capital what you see here is actually a broadside against slavery in in Washington DC that was produced and disseminated by the American anti-slavery Society in the 1830s and what it did is it it it it starts off by by showing you kind of um the irony of you know biblical references the Declaration of Independence the Constitution the Constitutions of states and and juxtapositioning the verbiage and the rhetoric of these things against the institution of slavery and then kind of urging its readers to to be in favor of wanting to ban it in our nation's capital uh so this was another issue that created a wedge between North and South here by uh by mid-century but slavery in DC and slavery in the territories these weren't the only issues uh involving the morality of slavery uh there was also a long-standing disagreement between North and South concerning uh fugitive slaves now a fugitive slave uh was an enslaved person who had run away from their owner in an attempt to gain freedom uh and the United States Constitution contains a clause known as the Fugitive Slave Clause uh which meant that any person you know bound to service or labor that escaped to another state uh were to be caught and delivered back uh to the party to whom such service or labor may be due um now the United States Constitution then allows for the re or not allows but calls for the recapture and return of fugitive slaves um now laws don't enforce themselves so the way the United States enforced this Clause of the U.S Constitution began in 1793 with what was known as The Fugitive Slave Act which became law in February of 1793 it was signed into the law by President George Washington now the Fugitive Slave Act required the individual states uh to engage in capturing and returning slaves that had run away from their masters and it required the states to be involved with this process which then required the citizens of these states to be involved with this process and so going all the way back to the founding of the Republic there had always been a fugitive slave law that required every state to cooperate right in the recapture of Runaways um but by the time we hit the 1820s 1830s and and even on into the 1840s during the antebellum era these this fugitive slave law was regarded by Northerners as a reprehensible uh any moral law that made them an agent of Injustice towards fellow human beings and I'm going to give an example this is Frederick Douglass uh who in 1840 famously said in a letter to William Lloyd Garrison that Boston had become the hunting ground of merciless men hunters and man Stealers henceforth we need not portray to the imagination of Northern people the flying slave making his way through thick and dark woods of the South with white fanged Bloodhounds yelping at his bloodstains track all we have to do is refer to the streets of Boston made dark and dense by crowds of professed Christians what Douglas was talking about here is that the institution of slavery and this Fugitive Slave Law forced people of the north who wanted nothing to do with slavery it forced them to partake in the immorality of slavery it made them complicit in this institution that many Northerners have now regarded as abhor and and nefarious uh and as a result of this growing sentiment against the Fugitive Slave Law uh the Supreme Court issued a very impactful decision in March of 1842 in a famous case called prig vs Pennsylvania now this case is complicated but it involved a slave catcher who was arrested and prevented from recapturing a slave and returning them to their Master now he ultimately won his case uh against the state of Pennsylvania the slave catcher's name was prig but in this decision the Supreme Court said that uh well it said two things number one that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was constitutional uh we're not going to worry about that one but the other thing this case said was that since the Fugitive Slave Act is a federal law it then falls through the federal government to enforce it and not the states which uh the states had been charged with enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act since its Inception in 1793. now the reason this matters is that when this case of prig versus Pennsylvania was decided it essentially allowed the states to no longer have to enforce this law and it forced then the federal government to do it and as a result of that a lot of southern states began passing what were law or sorry a lot of northern states began passing what were known as non-cooperation laws or personal Liberty laws in fact we have eight of them that'll be passed immediately after this decision between 1842 and 1850. now what these personal Liberty laws do is they they essentially allow the northern people and the individuals of the states um to engage in the Fugitive Slave Act or not it allows them to follow their own conscience and basically what it allows these uh Northerners to do is simply ignore federal law these personal Liberty laws really angered Southern slaveholders who saw them as nothing more than Northerners refusing to obey a federal law they disagreed with which of course if you remember was something the state of South Carolina had done In 1832 and was almost taken to the brink of War so these personal Liberty laws over fugitive slaves created a lot of animosity between North and South during this time period but it was nothing compared to the animosity created over the existence of the Underground Railroad Because by the 1830s abolitionists had organized a series of safe houses and shelters in what were known as the border states the border states were the states along the border of the North and South so States like Missouri Kentucky Virginia Maryland right um and this Underground Railroad the way it worked is abolitionist uh would infiltrate Southern States and these abolitionists were known as conductors the most famous of them is depicted in this painting here by Paul Collins from 1979 that's uh Harriet Tubman and the way it worked is they would deploy the the Underground Railroad would deploy conductors these conductors were sometimes abolitionists sometimes they were former slaves like Harriet was sometimes they were Native Americans but they were people that could blend in right and they would Infiltrate The Southern States along the border with the north they'd organize parties of slaves uh to help them escape and then they would start to move them across the border from the south into the north into this system of safe houses and shelters uh and it would be a you know take a while but the ultimate goal was to get them through the South through the north because you still had the Fugitive Slave Act and the ultimate goal was to then get them to Canada right uh and southerners regarded the Underground Railroad as even more nefarious than personal Liberty laws right because this was the act of knowingly aiding and abetting the theft of slaveholders property uh and this sentiment is probably best summed up by John Mason's comment John Mason was a wealthy Virginia planter he owned a large Plantation and many slaves when he famously wrote that the loss of property is felt but that the loss of honor is still more um so as a result of the Underground Railroad and as a result of these personal Liberty laws a lot of Southerners began demanding a new Fugitive Slave Law right a stronger fugitive slave law that would make it easier for slave catchers to recapture runaway slaves and also make the punishment for Sheltering runaway slaves more severe so in addition to slavery in the territories and slavery in our nation's capital there was also a disagreement between North and South in the 1840s over fugitive slaves that helped produce this sectional crisis now a few more in addition to this concern the issue of California actually became uh also figured prominently in this growing crisis so let me explain California now California and this map is this it says they're Alta California but we're talking really about the furthest Western portions of that area uh in early 1848 before even the end of the Mexican-American War uh gold was discovered along the American river in the United States occupied province of Alta California and news of the Gold Strike spread like wildfire to the point that within a year nearly 100 000 Americans uh had set off for California by 1854 the number topped 300 000 making it one of the greatest migrations mass migrations in American history up to that point now the California Gold Rush had consequences far beyond the vast amounts of gold that was mined in the region with so many Americans pouring into that region on a seemingly daily basis that area of the Mexican session was very quickly ready for Statehood in fact in 1849 the territory formed a constitutional convention and even produced the governing document that uh created a free state of California meaning slavery would not be allowed here uh and on December 4th 1849 uh it applied for Statehood uh into the Union uh and President Taylor immediately endorsed uh uh statehood for California and urged Congress to avoid injecting slavery into the issue now in addition to California uh New Mexico also figured prominently into this sectional crisis so let me explain now the area of New Mexico is kind of sandwiched between that the two blue areas on the map there right Texas uh in the East and then the other Blue Area was technically New Mexico but the problem here was going to Center on that area between them that that white strip between Texas and then that other Blue Area um so let me explain uh in the end once the Mexican-American war was over some soldiers and some settlers in this area of the Mexican session gathered in Santa Fe uh and in 1849 similar to what happened in California they created a territorial government and they wrote a constitution for the government and in that Constitution they uh did not allow for slavery now the reason this was controversial was that when they formed their territorial legislature they outlined their boundaries and their boundaries included that area between Texas and that other Blue Area essentially this new Terror this new territory which was going to apply for Statehood called New Mexico was essentially claiming territory that Texas had claimed going back to its revolution against Mexico and that area is shown on this map in that kind of light pink area this was area that Texas claimed um as its territory uh and yet what happened here in 1849 is this small provisional government in Santa Fe to create the state of New Mexico simply absorbed it into their new State's borders and this sparked an uproar in the United States especially in the South for example the governor of Texas uh you know he he started arming the militia caught or calling up the militia of Texas and he fully intended to uh to fight to hang on to this territory and matters were made even worse when Taylor in addition to immediately wanting statehood for California also thought well why not just bring in New Mexico as well and this will just shut off any uh access point for southerners to expand slavery Westward and so he he uh immediately endorses statehood for California and for New Mexico uh at the expense of Texas and the new Congress however you know and then he tells Congress don't don't inject slavery in this issue just let's get this done and move on as a country but the new Congress well they were in no mood for Simple Solutions and as a result Southerners actually mobilized against President Taylor's actions here uh for example Alexander H Stevens who was a representative from Georgia and who would later by the way become the Vice President of the Confederate States of America uh he famously said that Freeman from Delaware to Rio Grande were going to Rally to the rescue of Texas and that if the Rubicon is passed meaning if New Mexico and if California are entered into the Union as free states then he famously said than the days of the Republic will be numbered um now the problem here is that they're mobilizing against Taylor's plan because these two new free states of California and New Mexico were going to have the effect of tipping the political balance against slavery where you would now see 17 free states and only 15 slave states uh and the slaveholding states then would become a permanent minority because this would eat up the rest of the territory open to the possible spread of slavery which was something southern congressmen simply could not allow uh and this of course caused irate Southerners to begin threatening not only Wars such as Alexander H Stevens began threatening but even uh threatening secession this is Robert Toombs he was a representative from Georgia as well he said that I vowed before this house and Country and in the presence of the Living God that if by your legislation talking about Taylor you seek to drive us from the territory of California to Mexico into abolish slavery in the District of Columbia I am for this Union right so you've got a just a powder keg that has developed here in the late 1840s over a whole host of issues Chief among them is of course the expansion of Slavery to the Mexican session but also slavery in the nation's capital uh the Fugitive Slave Law and the Underground Railroad uh the entrance of California to the union is a free state and then you even have this boundary dispute between Texas and this seemingly uh new territory of New Mexico which is driving this sectional crisis and this sectional crisis is very real it's very dangerous even Northerners had to admit as William a Richardson famously said that there is a bad state of things and there's little and as little as it is thought about I fear this Union is in danger um and even Southerners such as John C Calhoun you know they had to admit that a lot of these southern congressmen uh were more determined than Bolder than ever uh if Calhoun famously said that many of Val themselves disunionist until a greater number admit that there is little hope of any remedy short of it by the time we reached 1850 this country was on the brink of total dissolution over a whole number of issues all stemming from the expansion of slavery and while most people feared the worst they say that in the darkest hour sometimes there's always light perhaps just like the last two times perhaps we could get a compromise