Transcript for:
Causes of the American Civil War

welcome back and we've been looking uh at the origins of the american civil war uh actually you know from from the start and we're gonna continue uh that certainly in this particular presentation we've sent sectionalism already previously even at the the constitutional convention uh during uh the jacksonian period with the nullification crisis etc but the thing that was the most profound in terms of bringing about differences between the north and the south had to do with the possible extension and expansion of slavery right western expansion in fact was a given uh to americans i mean that whole concept of manifest destiny uh was such a was such a profound thing uh stephen a douglas of illinois uh basically described the nation as being like a 12 year old boy bound by a metal hoop either the the hoop must die or the or the or either the boy must die or the hoop must break right expansion was something that had to happen uh as far as many americans were concerned and and they assumed uh westward expansion also the northwest ordinance had basically held uh that uh that ex that that expansion would basically take the form of areas being integrated directly into the polity as equal states so ohio was part of the northwest ordinance right and so the idea was when ohio had the population of the least populous state in the union rhode island that it could apply for statehood and that it would be admitted as just as much a state as massachusetts or virginia or georgia right so the united states would not hold colonies of contiguous territory in fact the united states did not hold colonies until the 1890s right uh but of contiguous territories they would make those areas states equal states uh in the union and so the debate in terms of tariffs or what have you uh would be impacted in congress and in the senate in particular by the states coming into the union so if a new state entered the union if it is a free state that's two free state senators sitting in the united states senate if it's a slave state that's two slave state senators sitting in the united states senate and so the admission of every state was an important deal important issue and those northwest ordinance areas were going to be entering into the union as free states as free states so the expansion of the country was crucial so if you look at this map you can see it's it's it's actually an animated map uh you know how how that expansion is impacted in terms of slave as a as opposed to free right so in the red you have slave states uh in in blue are the free states right so once we get down here to 1860 uh then it then will go back uh to the origins of the republic right so here's how things stand at the eve of the civil war but it should roll back to 1789 you see some of the northern states actually still had slavery but that the northwest territory would be free and so you're having the addition of states now missouri again coming in which i think i've mentioned before missouri coming in as a as a slave state was part of a compromise right and the compromise is called the missouri compromise of 1820 and i have a pretty good map here that really shows this in a better way and so if you look at this map you see missouri was going to be admitted as a slave state maine would be admitted as a free state and that was again somewhat of a no-brainer maine just does not have anywhere near the type of climate that would be conducive for a plantation economy but you drew a line right the 3630 line or the missouri compromise line uh from uh from the uh from the border of the southeastern border uh of missouri over to the uh you know the what would be the northern panhandle of texas right uh and that's the 3630 line of missouri compromise line the idea is there would be no more slave states admitted into the union uh from the area of the louisiana purchase north of that line so that unorganized territory north of that line no no slave states carved out as part of the conference part of the deal that meant that southerners had to look elsewhere if they wanted to see the expansion of the institutional slavery right now again uh jefferson reacted you know somewhat negatively to this i mean he's in the last years of his life and the missouri compromise uh was something that concerned him and he said and i quote but this momentous question like a fire bell in the night like a fire bell in the night used to be like you know when uh when i was a kid the telephone rang at two o'clock in the morning something must be wrong somewhere right so a fireball tonight means there's a fire somewhere everybody needs to get out and help put out the fire uh and so like a fire bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror this is something that filled me with terror i considered it at once as the nail of the union the death kneel of the union it is hushed indeed for the moment but this is a reprieve only not a final sentence a geographical line coinciding with the marked principle moral and political once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will never be obliterated and every new irritation will market deeper and deeper so jefferson was and by no means convinced uh that the missouri compromise uh ended the issue you have to also remember that uh with the establishment of the texas republic right texans were americans uh you know who americans who settled in texas eventually started a revolution against mexico part of the reason for that was in the late 1820s president gutierrez of mexico abolished slavery and so that was part of their motivation well they created a republic and they pressed eventually though for admission into the union southerners wanted to see texas admitted into the union andrew jackson wanted to see texas admitted into the union even though there would be a dispute in terms of the southwestern boundary of texas with mexico right but jackson wanted texas entered into the union it would come in as a slave state he delayed any action on that because he thought it would impact martin van buren's election in 1836 and so uh and actually van buren took a position in opposition once president to the admission of texas to the union texas does come in 1845. there was some debate about whether texas should come into the union as one state which texans preferred but many southerners were hoping that maybe you could divide texas in two or three states so that you would have four to six you know if you had two states you'd have four you've had three if you had three states you have six uh slave state senators sitting in the united states senate uh but texas's admission uh into the union uh it was design was on the part of the south you know attempt to maintain enough power in the united states senate to block anything that they thought was contrary to their interests or that certainly would prove to be an assault on slavery itself right and so but americans again had that conception of manifest destiny right and that that conception of you know we are going to expand right for example if you look at this painting this is actually it's post civil war it's uh gas painting american progress from 1872 but it does kind of capture the the spirit of the age uh and you know the concept of manifest destiny manifest destiny is a notion of an almost religious notion that god had had basically ordained that the united states would would stretch from sea to sea right that american civilization would continue to expand let's look at this painting a little closer in fact i've got a better maybe a little better image of it for us uh and uh you know there are several things in here that are interesting uh portraying the nation as a woman you certainly see that france does france did that quite a bit but certainly she's civilization she's a nation uh she's got a llama kind of a classical type of dress with the robe uh you know and the idea is you know she is she represents progress so over on the side that she is moving toward there's darkness and notice the indians you know fleeing before her right there's darkness and the idea is you have settlers moving in and behind them you have you know railroads agriculture railroads uh you know stagecoaches and then back in the east you have maritime trade and things like that this kind of almost kind of represents that that whole notion that was so prominent uh that the united states would clearly expand uh you know from c to c uh and so uh you know expansion though with it uh brought more and more debate over the institution of slavery because it of the political aspect of it right uh you know the political and economic byproducts of slavery in that sense uh you know again who's going to the power in the in the united states senate the hou the south had no hope of keeping up with the north in terms of the house of representatives immigration to america largely came to the north and into what we think of as the american midwest you know you didn't come to america to compete with slave labor right in fact one of the reasons why many people in the north and in midwestern st what we think is the midwest why they opposed slavery was they saw it as a threat to a free system of labor and they saw it as something that it would inhibit their economic growth if they had it right uh and so their argument was not all the argument was not always moral is the point i mean there are people who are going to oppose slavery on the basis of morality that it is wrong for one person to own another person as property william lloyd garrison abolitionist people like that will argue that is wrong it is sinful that it will bring about the judgment of god but much of the debate especially in terms of the public debate in congress has to do with the political and the economic aspects of the issue okay it's a it's a multi-faceted issue to say the least the missouri compromise did not put the whole matter to rest right texas obviously would come in as a slave state because of its geographic location it's not part of the louisiana purchase and therefore the 3630 line was completely inapplicable any territory acquired from mexico in fact that would be the case the 3630 line would not be applicable because the 3630 line was only applicable to that territory that had been purchased from france and louisiana purchase right and so if we expand further at the expense of mexico which we will do uh then it raises the issue again in a whole new light right uh in fact we see that during the presidency presidency of james k polk and polk was a southerner from tennessee uh and polka was the last uh i guess we might say uh political protege of andrew jackson uh andrew jackson whose nickname again was you know old hickory uh poke's nickname was little hickory and it had that reflected uh polk's you know small stature but it also reflected the idea that you know he of the influence of jackson but polk had been a an advocate a very strong advocate for the annexation of texas right which is something that had garnered quite a bit of support from jackson for polk and jackson's you know last few years right and so polk was elected president right uh and and polk came into office uh and uh polk is most known uh for the mexican-american war right uh that just there's a dispute between texas and mexico in terms of boundary i think i have a map that kind of help us here right uh here's the map and you can see uh the disputed area right and so texas claims to be much bigger than than mexico will concede and what polk did is he sent he sent troops into the disputed area near the rio grande and this provoked a clash with mexican troops in which some american soldiers in fact were killed 16 u.s soldiers were killed in a skirmish as a result and so polk who had wanted to purchase you know terror more territory from uh from mexico uh polk uh asked congress for a declaration of war right he sends an already prepared uh message for a declaration of war to congress uh claiming that american blood had been spilled on american soil and a young congressman from illinois abraham lincoln would rise to speak on the floor of the house and would ask where on american soil has american blood uh been shed right uh wig a whig congressman lincoln uh questioned this right question this uh you know heavily right but generally speaking in a fervor of righteous indignation you know the country rose up and you see war with mexico that's the mexican-american war southerners played a very important role in terms of the military leadership of the war i mean zachary taylor is a southerner he he's uh and uh from tennessee uh and he is one of the major commanders the other was winfield uh winfield scott of virginia and so uh in fact the mexican-american war has a big impact on the civil war in a sense that many of the commanders both north and south of the civil war learn much about actual warfare in fact the the bulk of their experience about actual warfare uh comes into mexican-american war i mean um you know they learn things grant learns things about you know how to motivate troops right stonewall jackson learns thomas jonathan jackson learns the value of artillery you know actually in the field during the mexican-american war robert e lee learns the importance of reconnaissance and information conducting reconnaissance as a staff officer for winfield scott during the mexican-american war and so their experience in mexico would influence them quite a bit in terms of the civil war itself right uh so for them that that's very important uh there is some opposition to the war in the country i mean i mentioned uh lincoln's opposition uh earlier uh but there there was considerable opposition especially in the north uh to the war uh but the war uh turns out to be militarily successful pretty quickly right uh september 24 1846 taylor captures monterey and defeated a force a number of about 15 000 in buna vista in early 1847. another army under general winfield scott again of virginians overcame considerable resistance at veracruz and and eventually marched on mexico city and took mexico city september 14th uh for 1847. uh and uh also american forces under uh colonel stephen kearney captured santa fe and pushed into california so american forces were were generally successful uh in the mexican-american war uh the the forces of the of the mexican president general santa anna are largely defeated you know in the war and so the outcome will be a considerable acquisition of territory now here is i think i think this is interesting as a source this is the richard catton woodville painting war news 1848 and if we look at that for a moment the idea is you know they're receiving news about the war and you've got different elements of society i think it's interesting that uh you know on the the porch are essentially all white men right of different ages uh many of whom are you know they're dressed in different different styles showing different uh elements of society i guess you would say uh you have you know you have blacks you have slaves you know like sitting in one of the man is sitting on the on the step and you have a woman who's also not on the porch looking and so you know various elements of society hearing about the news but you can see the excitement and the agitation especially for those who are on the porch and one guy with his hat way up in the air another older gentleman trying to tell the one very old man exactly what's happening so it kind of it shows that kind of the different elements of society and how they may have reacted to much of this news about mexico the the outcome is going to be the acquisition of quite a bit of territory right and we can see that in fact in this slide right and this slide uh you see erratory acquire territory acquired from mexico actually uh that's a mexican session that's the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo right the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo obviously texas is going to get a favorable boundary there much of the territory had claimed and we see arizona utah nevada california basically will come to the united states as a result of the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo there's a kind of a dark kind of charcoal gray section that's the gatson purchase of 1853 that's the pierce administration purchasing that territory for 10 million dollars and for the possibility of a southern route for a transcontinental railroad i will point out that in the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo the polk administration pays a sum of 13 million dollars for all the territory that acquired now go back and look at that map right so the kind of the lighter dark gray i guess you might say it contrasts with the darker gray they pay 13 million dollars for that and then pierce's administration in 1853 pays 10 million for the gadsden purchase now you paid money to mexico so basically uh polk could claim that we had not conquered that territory from mexico right so that's that's the idea you purchase and of course the next time we come knocking next time the united states comes knocking wanting to buy land mexico sales right mexico sells the gasoline purchase you know about 54 000 because they're thinking about a it's a purchase about 54 000 miles along the southern new mexico border there arizona border you're thinking about again about a possible southern route for a transcontinental railroad now this brings back to the forefront though all of the uh i guess you might say discussion uh in terms of uh of expansion right because what you're doing uh is you're you're you're you're you're acquiring territory not covered by the missouri compromise and so the debate is how do we apply the situation in those areas i mean if you look at this map here right you can see the missouri compromise line the spanish possessions would not be a part of that the unorganized territory was territory obviously from the louisiana purchase and so the question was if you make states of that territory that's acquired from mexico would they come in as free states or as slave states obviously the conflict is in the united states senate right because you're talking about two free states or two slave state senators at every single point and so there was going to be content considerable tension uh and debate over that in fact it was even clearly true uh before the war was over i mean in 1847 the philosopher ralph waldo emerson the transcendental philosopher wrote in his journal he had just heard about american troops storming mexico city and he and he wrote a very interesting statement in fact i here's emerson and i have a quote from him here right he says the united states will conquer mexico but it will be as the man who swallows the arsenic which brings him down in turn mexico will poison us mexico will poison us and the symptoms of that poisoning were beginning to appear even as the war began that was the case right i mean in august 1846 david wilmot a congressman from pennsylvania and there's an image of willmott put forward a an amendment to the war appropriations bill in the house of representatives and this turned out to be a very important amendment and i have the amendment so let's go ahead and look at the quotation from the amendment here it is right uh and this is called the willmott proviso okay proviso is when you're basically placing a condition upon something right and so wilmot i was able to get this approved in the house as part of the appropriations bill right and so it said provided that an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the republic of mexico by the united states by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them and to the use by the executive of the monies hearing appropriated neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory except for crime wherefore the party shall first be dually convicted so slavery was to be prohibited from territory acquired from mexico now one thing that it kind of lends some strength to this uh is again the fact that mexico had abolished slavery right uh president gutierrez had done that in the late 1820s in mexico and so slavery was not legal in mexico and so that territory that's acquired from mexico slavery did not exist there is the idea uh so if in order to make slave states at a territory acquired from mexico what you would have to do was introduce slavery right you'd have to introduce slavery in order to make that feasible right that would have to have to be uh put in place in order slavery would have to get a chance to grow uh in order to uh in order to basically be able to prosper uh in any of those any of those areas uh and so obviously that was the intent of some southerners right uh you know they they what they hoped for was the possibility that you get slavery going and therefore make slave states uh out of the out of that territory uh you know for the south things look pretty ominous because when you think about states that were going to enter the union you know around this time iowa and wisconsin are coming into the union minnesota was also soon to apply for statehood oregon was even getting ready to enter the union none of those states were going to be slave states they were all going to be free states right so for the south this looked ominous since each of those free states again would obtain two free state senators who would sit in the uh in the south in the senate and would prevent the southmeal to block legislation right so southern slave interests needed the possibility of slave states to balance the growing power of the free north right so the expansion this expansion brought about debate over slavery and its extension okay and the north and south had developed in different ways here along separate paths and this is one of the things that advocates of the i guess you might say uh irrepressible conflict school of the civil war uh really kind of point to the notion that uh you know the the the two sections were so different therefore uh the war was almost inevitable because of those differences uh as the north moved more and more toward the market economy the industrial revolution the south became especially the deep south became the cotton kingdom producing most of the world's supply of cotton in the decades before the civil war in fact by 1850 about 68 of the world's cotton was produced in the american south and there's the impact of eli whitney's cotton gin right to say the least right and that's that's why i don't buy the argument that slavery was on the path to ultimate extinction there was too much profit in it is slavery the most i guess you might say um was it the most efficient form of labor no by no means absolutely not right and i think that you know many people who made economic arguments against slavery uh like you know uh henry ruffner in in virginia and you know who was the president of washington college in the 1840s he argued that virginia's being held back by the institution of slavery it's an economic argument uh it's not the most efficient form of labor it's not a plantation economy is not the most efficient form of economy but one thing i think is absolutely undeniable is that planners did make money right planters did gain economic benefits uh from uh that system right and so you know approximately 3.2 million slaves by the eve of the civil war work these plantations and represented an investment of 1.5 billion dollars there was more capital invested in slaves in southern states on the eve of the civil war then there was actual banking capital uh so you know there's no reason i believe uh to uh think in any way shape and form that slavery was on the ultimate path toward extinction and would die in and of itself uh because you know and the south's continued growth in terms of commitment to the system uh i think demonstrates that right uh you know there had been a shift i mean whereas thomas jefferson and the founding generation even those who own slaves had a generally a tendency to portray slavery as a necessary evil i mean jefferson talked about it as being like holding a wolf by the ear i mean you don't want to you don't want to hold on but you don't want to let go let go right uh so for jefferson it is a necessary evil we see slavery more and more being portrayed as a positive good right and slavery was an issue uh that you know provoked considerable emotion on both sides there's very few issues like slavery uh there's been very few if any they've been like slavery in american history but there's definitely a shift right you know you have abolition in the north who would use an image of this nature to show the barbaric nature of slavery right uh and you know certainly certainly and rightfully so right and then you of course had southerners who had kind of a paternalistic view of slavery right there's that shift again in fact avery craven the great story in avery craven wrote two uh two excellent books edited documents for those books you know one was called slavery attacked and the other called slavery defended so he looked at how abolitionists in the north attacked slavery and he looked at how advocates of slavery in the south defended slavery right well there's a shift again from the idea of slavery as a necessary evil toward the idea of slavery as a positive good and we can see that for example here with john c calhoun so let's look at this quote this is john c calhoun in 1837 right and uh he's uh you know he's he's talking about you know the institution of slavery and he says i believe when two races come together which have different origins colors and physical and intellectual characteristics that slavery instead of an evil a good a positive good right i must freely upon the subject for the honor and interest of those i represent are involved i maintain then that a wealthy and civilized society has never existed which one part of the community did not in fact live on the labor of others and this is something that you find quite a few of these types of advocates of slavery saying back in the 1830s 1840s and 1850s pointing back very often to uh to ancient greece and especially the roman empire the roman empire was a world of slavery right i think you can certainly understand that that was the case right broad in general as this association is history supports it he says it would be easy to trace the various ways by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been divided unequally it would also be easy to show how a small share has been alive to those by whose labor it was produced and a large share given to the non-producing classes right so he argues that this is is an historical thing it's always been the case and their slavery is a good thing right slavery is a good thing in his view i have another quote from him here right and so calhoun again in 1837 here i fearlessly assert that the existing relationship between the two races in the south against which these blind fanatics and abolitionists are waging war forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to build free and stable political institutions the fact cannot be disguised that there is always always has been and an advanced stage of wealth and civilization a conflict between labor and capital slavery exempts southern society from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict this explains why the political condition of the slave-holding states has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the north there's also an aspect very often to these advocates in which they contrast i guess you might say uh the system of southern slavery uh with the free labor system of the north and they they talk about you know conflict you know labor capital strife strikes things of that nature uh you know between uh workers in the north and the owners of factories and businesses you know in other words very often many of these southern advocates of of slavery would contend that slavery is a superior system because well let's say if you work in a factory in the north right and you're injured and you no longer work well you know you're out of a job you're put out uh advocates of slavery contended that you know once a slave became old and could no longer work or something happened they were physically incapable of working uh you know you put them in a situation where you know you know you in a paternalistic way uh you continue to feed and clothe them uh you continue to let them live on on the on the plantation uh you know and of course you know it's it's again a very a paternalistic uh approach uh but yeah that's a contrast they make with with uh the idea of free labor in the north right uh to say the least i mean uh slavery's power in the south uh mainly had to deal with the fact that the people who govern in the south are usually significant slave owners now here's a map that i think is interesting and this is the southern states uh in 1860 and you can see concentrations of slaves and you can see where slavery was most concentrated obviously in the deep south you had you know considerable amount of concentration south carolina you know had the largest percentage of slavery of slaves in terms of its population though in terms of absolute numbers of slaves virginia which would be current day virginia and west virginia actually had the largest number in terms of absolute numbers okay but you can also see since i mentioned west virginia that in western virginia eastern kentucky eastern tennessee north georgia there are many places especially mountainous regions going down through the appalachians you can definitely see that on that map in which you know slavery was much less prominent right in western virginia if you owned 30 or 40 slaves you were very very significant slave owner whereas further over to the coast or if you lived in if you were a slave owner in south carolina i mean wade hampton who eventually would be a confederate cavalry commander owned nearly 2 000 slaves right so it means slavery was less prominent in mountainous regions and in fact 75 percent of white southerners did not own slaves at all right 75 percent did not own slaves at all uh but you know and i think most historians of the south contend this most people in the south did not own slaves but they were supporters of the institution right and i'll give you a quote here from charles p rowland i don't have a slide for it i have the quote in my notes charles p rowland uh and he wrote this in an american iliad and i gave i used this quote for a reason i've actually met uh charles rowland who at the taping of this lecture uh in fact was still alive and i think he has to be near a hundred years old i mean he when i met him it was 20 some years ago and he was not a young man then right and it's interesting where i met him i met him uh in lexington virginia uh at uh washington and lee university and i didn't show up there to see him i just happened to show up there and was looking around the place at the same time that he was there and he was there with some other people and he was showing them around i mean he he was professor in various places the point is roland is an historian that's often associated with lost cause kind of thinking right he's an historian who who leans south uh in many ways uh and i certainly got that that day when i was talking to him okay when i met him i i certainly uh acquired that from uh you know from from meeting him there in lexington and lexington is a place uh my i had a grandmother live there later uh and uh as a place that you know that i i really really love the place but roland was there you know at the tomb literally at the tomb of robert e lee right and he was showing people around he was talking about lee and he wrote this in his history right he said and i quote now this is written many many years ago although three-fourths of the southern white population own no slaves the whites generally supported slavery this attitude sprang in part out of an ambition to become planners and slave owners but it grew mainly from the pervasive conviction of white racial superiority accompanied by the fear that emancipation would bring violence and social degradation that is being written by someone who is generally seen as very favorable toward the south okay and so the idea is that you know even if you did not own slaves you were not an opponent of the institution because you aspired to be a slave owner at one point right something he doesn't mention but i think is also kind of important is you have you maybe have relatives there may be elements of your family that are slave owners right uh and so you know that connection uh turns out to be in part important and i think that what roland is saying uh is ideas about racial you know superiority were definitely important in terms of why generally speaking white southerners supported slavery right uh and so i mean i'm not saying that there were not people in the south who opposed slavery there were i mean i mentioned ruffner a couple of times right uh and there are others like him uh who you know who are generally critical of slavery but often in the south that's usually because they see slavery as a as something that's a hindrance to what the south could become economically they have a very different vision about what you know various southern states should be and so they see it as something that's holding holding them back right and it's an economic argument usually more than a moral argument right uh even though i will say that there will be people who will serve the confederacy uh who are who did not you know advocate slavery who maybe even were opponents of slavery i mean uh confederate general ap hill never owned a slave neither did confederate general joseph e johnston and hill in fact was uh really very critical of slavery right and so you know they must therefore they had other reasons uh for doing what they did right and many white southerners who served the confederacy had other reasons for serving the confederacy many of them were just simply defending their states defending their homes right but generally speaking they do support the institution of slavery that was true in the army in northern virginia i tell you a great book on that is by joseph glathar his history of the army of northern virginia and he talks about and he brings forth quite a bit of evidence about that in that book right so in the south there is a general support uh for for the institution of slavery that was by the way even true in western virginia uh western virginians generally don't own slaves but if you know anything about the history of west virginia in the stated process of west virginia you know that west virginia attempted to enter the union initially during the civil war as a slave state their initial constitution did not abolish slavery and those folks who were opposed in the united states senate did not want to see another slave state enter the union and so this was a complication to that process you know west virginia was required to come up with some kind of program of abolition as a prerequisite essentially for entry into the union right uh but initially uh you know that's one that's not something that the initial constitutional framers who are unionists right uh that's not something that the initial constitutional framers of the state of west virginia thought was important enough that they actually would include it in the constitution of the new state right uh so uh you know i think that there's a tendency in in west virginia uh you know which which is has an interesting heritage in terms of the civil war anyway and recent studies have more and more shown that the division in west virginia was nearly even especially a lot of the work coming out of the center for civil war studies at shepherd university the notion being that you had about as many people serve and one army has served in the other army in what is now west virginia and of course obviously you know concordia at concord universities in mercer county mercer county was overwhelmingly secessionist right uh you know the first president of concord uh was you know a confederate officer right uh you know vermillion streets named after a confederate soldier so uh you know that heritage is definitely a heritage as a mixed heritage uh in terms of the civil war in west virginia so but there is a tendency on the part of many west virginians today to say well we didn't want to leave the union well it's funny many of those counties actually in fact more counties that are in west virginia actually did ratify the succession ordinance than did not right but you know many people today say well we didn't want to leave union we didn't support slavery any textbooks will say that western virginia didn't support the institution of slavery uh that is absolutely not true right they were not as favorable towards slavery i'm sure right they were not as committed certainly not but to say that they were opponents uh is certainly not the case that's not what's motivating them in any way shape and form and i would definitely argue with that viewpoint okay but what we find here is there are pockets of the south in which slavery is not as prominent and in those pockets there's going to be unionism if you go back to that map right there's going to be unionism in western virginia so much so that eventually uh virginia will be disrupted uh there's definitely uh unionism in eastern kentucky right uh east tennessee uh that was the case and there would be people in all of those areas especially mountainous areas who will serve the union calls militarily in fact the only uh the only state in the confederacy uh that doesn't have uh you know at least a regiment or something of that nature in union armies is south carolina right so uh you know generally speaking there is a support for slavery but there's also areas in which that is not uh the most prominent aspect of the economy right and that map i think does kind of help to show us that in the north slavery had long distance disappeared for a variety reasons the northern population generally opposed the peculiar institution some opposed it on moral grounds and that abolitionists oppose it on moral grounds they saw it as a sin they saw it as a as an evil uh that was present in the country right someone like william lloyd garrison for example and there's a image of garrison who's famous uh for uh starting uh his famous abolitionist newspaper the liberator in 1831 uh garrison uh you know denounced uh slavery right denounced slavery emphatically emphatically and in fact as a result he even denounced the constitution if you look at this quote from garrison he said and i quote the compact which exists between the north and the south is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell right and there were occasions in which he would burn copies of the constitution in public something that you know even in the north was not very popular to do right and so you know there were people like garrison who were adamant opponents of slavery just like they were people like calhoun who are adamant uh you know supporters of the institution right uh and so uh you had generally speaking though in the north and opposition it wasn't always like the abolitionists sometimes it was an economic argument right some opposed slavery in the north uh for economic reasons they saw slavery as representing competition with white workers right and slavery as something that degraded work itself right uh some people in the north opposed slavery just as in the south the the justification of slavery was based on racism right this idea of racial supremacy white supremacy in the north sometimes the opposition to slavery was based on on racism you know they don't like slavery because they don't want the they want they don't want the presence of blacks right many northern states tried to keep free states who are entering the union and the years before the decades before the civil war tried to keep free blacks out of their state right uh so we never need to we never need to buy into this idea uh that racism is a southern thing right uh racism is something that it's a human thing right it's a problem among human beings right among human beings of all walks of life etc and so you had it in the north too and it even manifested itself in anti-slavery so slavery was a powerful potent issue and how to deal with it in terms of expansion was a powerful potent problem now some in the south and i think jefferson davis of mississippi was one of these examples they argued that you should take the missouri compromise line and just draw it out to the pacific ocean right and that should resolve the issue however most southern slave owners saw the southwest the american southwest as not conducive to slavery right and they took a little a different line of argument their contention was that southerners uh you know had fought for this territory as much as northerners and therefore they should have equal access to it right uh and and that along with that contention came the argument made often by southerners southern planters in particular that congress did not have the authority to determine whether or not slavery should exist in a terror and territory obtained by the united states the constitution they would contend protected property and therefore they argued congress should not lawfully prohibit citizens from carrying private property slaves into new lands whether they passed the missouri compromise line or not right so their their contention was that you you shouldn't restrict the property rights of americans northerners especially in congress disagreed with that they contended that congress had had regulated commerce in the territories and regulated even slavery in the territories obviously going back to the confederation period with the northwest ordinance that was an example of that they also cited the missouri compromise of 1820 as well to basically uh bolster that position so in their view there was more than adequate precedent for congress to have the authority to prohibit slavery in territories acquired by the united states now there was another position a kind of a compromise position this is in a position associated initially with lewis cass of michigan and also especially later with stephen a douglas of illinois right and this was the idea of popular sovereignty so cast people like cass and douglas contended uh that the people themselves should determine rather uh their territory uh or this kind of phrases in an interesting way whether where they lived had slavery or not now the question is can a territory do that or state you know the southern the southern argument is always going to be only a state already admitted having entry to the union being a free and equal state in and of itself has the authority to to abolish slavery right a territory their contention would be cannot do that a territory cannot abolish slavery uh because a territory belongs equally to the united states to all the states of the united states and so they would say they we can't be excluded from territory that we helped fight for right because it belongs just as much to us as it belongs to states in the north okay uh but the popular sovereignty view uh held that essentially uh only people themselves right could could make that decision now the question again is going to be can they do that as a territory or not do they have to be a state before they can do that and this is going to be something that is actually really going to provoke quite a bit of violence later in kansas as we see it applied in the kansas nebraska act both parties in 1848 by the way which is election year both the major parties avoided the issue of extension expansion of slavery like it was the plague and in fact polk who had committed himself to a single term and fulfills that campaign promise would not run in 1848 the democrats met in baltimore and they nominated lewis cass right of michigan as their presidential candidate based uh on a platform that does not even mention slavery right and so i have an image of cass but i also have an image of cass and his running mate right and here's that image you can see it on the slide and that's william butler of kentucky and that's kind of interesting here so you have a westerner you know michigan and you have you have someone from a free state and someone from a slave state on your ticket you balanced your ticket in terms of sectional you know tension right so you have a northerner and a southerner is the idea and cass again runs on a platform that does not even mention slavery the whigs took a similar line and and one problem with the wig party is the wig party had been born out of opposition to andrew jackson right andrew jackson and jackson's hand-picked successor martin van buren but you know with andrew jackson gone uh that that's something that you know it was an unusual coalition of different elements but they had one thing in common they didn't like jackson right uh but the whig party is going to have uh you know difficulties maintaining its unity but in 1848 they they took the old tried and true route and they nominated uh you know a a successful general of course butler obviously the vice presidential candidate for the democrats you know was a was a military officer uh but zachary taylor was the whig candidate in 1848 oh rough and ready that was his uh his nickname just as andrew jackson was old hickory zachary taylor was old rough and ready right and zachary taylor was the candidate for the wigs for the whigs and taylor was you know going to run also on a platform that did not include any statement whatsoever about the institution of slavery right and the expansion of slavery that whole debate would be non-existent as far as taylor was concerned and here's kind of a similar image to the other one of the whig candidates right in 1848 and so you have zachary taylor who is from tennessee and you have william you have millard fillmore his vice presidential candidate a northerner from new york and so again you're balancing north and south right you have a northerner and a southerner on your ticket right so you're balancing the ticket in that way now elements of both the democrats and the whigs who opposed the extension and expansion of slavery actually formed their own party in august of 1848 and that was the free soil party the free soil party and i have an image for the free soil party in 1848 as well if we look at it uh real quick uh quick here you have uh you know the free soil party and above the eagle they don't know how well you can can read that you have uh free soil free labor free speech and sometimes they use the the slogan free soil free speech free labor free men and the candidates uh for the free soil party were martin van buren and remember uh van van buren had opposed uh the uh annexation of texas uh in eight uh during uh previously and that in fact had been one thing that and they and alienated him uh from uh uh from andrew jackson is the fact that he had opposed uh the annexation uh of texas right uh and so we see uh that that van buren uh you know was running at this point as the as the uh free soil candidate at this particular point right uh and they have no balance on on their ticket i mean the other two tickets you know you had a northerner and southerner you know i i think i said that taylor was a was a tennessean but i know he was born in virginia right but i think he did own property in tennessee i don't know which one he he hailed out of when he ran for president right but in any event you have two northerners here you have martin van buren as a presidential candidate and charles francis adams uh as the as the vice presidential candidate in 1848 right and adams was the great was the son of john quincy adams and the grandson of john adams and and charles francis adams would uh would have a career in politics i know he'd served in congress and later on he would be during the civil war he would be the united states minister to great britain and would do great service in fact as minister to great britain during the war now obviously they don't have a national machinery uh you know so the free soil party uh will will not do incredibly well in terms of the the national election in fact here is the electoral map for the 1848 election and you can see uh that that taylor wins you know more popular votes and taylor of course wins in the electoral college which is what he can't what it counts but one thing i think you got to look closely at this map and you can see is that both the whigs and the democrats win states in each section i mean the democrats so they lose the election won some southern states they won virginia right they won south carolina they won alabama they won mississippi uh and the whigs you know win some northern states new york pennsylvania and so both parties both the whigs and the democrats remained in 1848 national parties okay the map shows us that they were national parties the free soil party is a sectional party it is only in the north it won it won about 10 percent of the popular vote right only 10 percent no electoral votes but i will say something about the free soul party that is important they elected nine congressmen right so there were nine congressmen sitting in congress sitting in the house of representatives uh who had been elected uh you know out of the north by the free soil party and and as one historian basically put it i think it's james mcpherson this demonstrated the political strength the potential strength of a purely sectional party as long as that map and go back to that map again look at that map as long as that map uh you know remains true in other words the democrats and the whigs each have each or a national party you know they're that that that means that the party structure was finding a way to in essence manage the conflict what we're going to see is that changes right you know the next few maps will not be quite the same okay and the one in 1860 will definitely not be the same okay so the wigs elect taylor taylor becomes president as a result and takes office in 1849 at and at the same time by the way uh that you start to have the discovery of gold in california so you have the california gold rush the 49ers right in 1849 and so california found itself pretty quickly with a heavily male raucous population of over a hundred thousand which put it in a position to apply for statehood right congress was deeply divided i mean slavery had not existed in california because it had been a mexican authority uh and with a very limited population and under mexican law slavery was not legal had not been legal for some time so congress was deeply divided taylor recommended that california new mexico and utah draw up constitutions and decide without congressional infant other popular sovereignty whether they would accept slavery or not congress however and we're here we're talking about the power of opponents of the extension of slavery especially in the house of representatives intervened and essentially all three of those areas adopted territorial constitutions that attempted to ban slavery southern elements in the congress therefore start to take a hard line on all sectional issues right uh the sale of slaves in the district of columbia many many northerners wanted to to see that abolish right i mean you sold slaves within sight of the capitol building right uh tightening of the 1793 law on fugitive slaves southerners wanted to there's there's a section of the constitution that talks about uh you know fugitives that basically what it's dealing with is the idea that free states have uh have an obligation to return escaped slaves to the south right uh southerners want that wanted that strengthened okay uh the slave state of texas rather it's it had a boundary dispute with free new mexico right and so the southerners were favoring texas over new mexico uh in terms of that discussion that debate right uh we even began to see southerners talking at this point certainly about leaving the union right and i think that was that something new i mean i don't think so i mean when we looked at the quote from from john berrien you know the the senator for uh for georgia during the you know the 1820s uh you know he's talking about how slaveholders love slavery more than they love the union so i mean to say that i mean he's definitely inferring back in the 1820s that maybe you know they should think about leaving the union so it really you know wasn't something new uh taylor wanted congress to avoid what he described in a quote as exciting topics of sectional character one thing was clear the south was not going to easily allow california to become a free state without some serious concessions now at this point you still had members of of the senate in particular who had basically built their careers on trying to work out compromises between the sections no one would that be more the case than henry clay of kentucky right henry clay of kentucky and kentucky of course was a slave state right and clay who's nearing the end of his career he formed you know a kind of a alliance so to speak with senator daniel webster of massachusetts right now i've got a a slide there's a slight there's clay and here's an image of webster right and clay and webster uh we're trying to basically put together a compromise and in fact clay famously uh gave a very impassioned speech on the floor of the senate in which he presented eight measures of possible compromise right uh and she's trying to come up with a compromise and so on the senate floor clay spoke passionately you know for a series of measures that would give some things to one section and some things to another section he argued that california should be admitted as a free state he argued for two separate separate territorial governments in utah and new mexico that would decide their in for their territories rather to permit or ban slavery he argued the disputed land between texas and new mexico should be given to new mexico right but that the united states should pay all the debts of the republic of texas right texas had been a nation for a short period of time after the texas revolution before texas annexation to the united states and it therefore had a national debt uh and clay was saying yes they should give that disputed territory to new mexico but texas should in compensation have their national debt paid by the united states slavery in the district of columbia would not be abolished clay argued unless you had the consent of the residents of maryland the idea is that you know slave owners in maryland were not interested in having they have to deal with a border with free states anyway and then you're going to have an area to the south that would be free as well so to them that was a problem and so they the idea here is you're not going to get rid of slavery in dc unless maryland somehow through plebiscite or something of that nature endorses that nor would you do it without compensating the slave owners in the district of columbia the slave trade though would be banned he thinks it should be banned let's have a measure with the slave trade is banned in the district of columbia so you can no longer sell slaves within sight of the capitol building congress would adopt a much more strenuous stricter fugitive slave law to ensure that northern states helped southern states to recover runaway slaves but congress would also make a declaration announcing its own lack of jurisdiction over the domestic interstate slave trade in other words congress would say in a firm statement we have no authority to regulate or interfere with the slave trade between virginia and north carolina between georgia and alabama okay between kentucky and tennessee and clay put all these things together actually in an omnibus bill right in an omnibus bill one great big bill and the problem was that that had a hard time gaining enough support and stephen douglas in fact plays the major role in terms of of working this compromise out he breaks it up in the in the smaller measures and gets many of these compromise measures through by breaking it up into smaller bills and otherwise if you put it all together in one big bill you know there's enough people who don't like one particular part of it so much they'll vote they'll vote against the whole bill but you you broke it up uh that made it easier to pass many of these elements right but clay and webster you know are advocating for uh you know compromise right it's time to compromise the north has to give something to the south the south has to give something to the north right uh and uh webster in fact uh make some uh interesting and controversial statements on the senate floor here's a quote from from webster right so let's look at this quote uh if i got it right here okay uh he said uh but i will allude to other complaints of the south and especially to one which has in my opinion just foundation so he said you know the south's uh you know making a lot of arguments uh they're upset about a lot of things uh but you know there are some things that you know uh that they're saying that they got a point and here's one thing where they have a point uh he says uh that there's no there has been found in at the north among individuals among legislators a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into free states that's article 4 section 2 of the united states constitution in that respect the south in my judgment he says is right and the north is wrong in other words what they're saying is in the constitution we have an obligation in the north by the constitution to help them recover escaped slaves right so he's conceding that he's saying they're right when it comes to that every member of every northern legislature is bound by oath like every other officer in the country to support the constitution of the united states and the article of the constitution which says to these states that they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding and honor and conscious as any other article no man fulfills his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses excuses evasions escapes from this constitutional obligation i have always thought that the constitution addressed itself to the legislatures of the states or to the states themselves and so we've not lived up to our constant our constitutional obligations uh daniel webster is saying right uh and we need to do we need to do that right uh we need to live up uh to to our obligations uh and so he argued that that we should uh enforce the the fugitive uh slave clause of the constitution uh he said he makes another statement i really want to address here as well okay he says and i quote mr president should i should much prefer to to have heard from every uh member on this floor declarations of opinion that this union could never be dissolved than the declaration of opinion by anybody that in any case under the pressure of any circumstances such a dissolution was possible you know i think that you know he thinks that the union cannot be dissolved right so he's he's arguing against compact theory you know a state cannot leave the union and revoke or retract its ratification of the constitution and so i'd like to have heard that i'd like to heard southerners say that you cannot violate the union let's go back to the quote uh he says that under the pressure being such as a dissolution was possible i hear with distress and anguish the word secession especially when it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic and known to the country and known to all the world for their political services secession peaceable secession sir your eyes and mind are never destined to see that miracle the dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface who is so foolish i beg everybody's pardon as to expect to see any such thing the reason why compromise was so vital and so important is he believed that if we do not compromise and we have secession the result would not be peaceful the result would be war and to think that it wouldn't be would be absurd one last quote from webster here from daniel webster who by most accounts was generally seen to be a very gifted and powerful orator okay and so webster says another last quote from webster there can be no such thing as peaceable secession peaceable secession is an utter impossibility is the great constitution under which we live covering this whole country is to be thawed and melded away by secession as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of vernal sun disappear almost unobserved and run run off no sir no sir i will not state what might produce the disruption of the union but sir i see us plainly as i see the sun in heaven what the disruption itself must produce i see that it must produce war and such a war as i will not describe so webster contended that peaceable secession was not possible so compromise was necessary and he was willing to support a stronger fugitive slave measure in order to bring about that compromise and you know he believed that in so doing that he was helping to save the union right now in the north many people reacted negatively to this even in his home state of massachusetts in fact you can see that in ichabod ichabod is a poem written written around this time in fact i have a slide here for it john greenleaf whittier wrote the poem ichabod um ichabod is a name uh that's drawn from the old testament right from the the book of the book of first samuel right and the idea is you know eli you know the last judge and priest eli whose sons carry the ark of the ark of the covenant into battle before before the the army of israel against the philistines uh that you know those the two sons hopkins and hopny and finney phineas and hofne they're they're slain in battle by the philistines and the philistines uh you know capture the ark of the covenant right uh and when uh people inform eli he's he falls off the back of his chair breaks his neck and dies right your sons are dead and the ark of the covenant has been captured well one of the sons has a wife who's having a baby at that time and it's all in the in the book of verse samuel and she knows that you know that their husband has been captured in the ark of the covenant which represents god's presence right god's presence with israel has been captured and she's dying as she delivers gives birth to the child and names the child ichabod which means the glory has departed because the idea is that the glory had departed from israel with the capture of the uh of the ark of the covenant and so you know 19th century americans you know are well versed in their bible and so you know they there's more of a tendency for them to understand you know the use of the term ichabod in other words in other words uh webster was seen as one time being a great man and now his willingness to compromise with the south especially on the fugitive slave issue the glory has departed from him and so ichabod is a poem that in essence is a is critical lamenting you know webster's decision to support that compromise right so let's look at the poem just for a moment right so whittier wrote this ichabod so fallen so lost he writes the light with the light withdrawn which once he wore the glory from his gray hair is gone forever right the glory has departed again right revile him not the tempter hath the snare for all and pitying tears not scorning wrath to fit his fall he's fallen you know he's fallen to the tempter oh dumb be passion stormy rage when he who might have lighted up and led his age falls back in night scorn with the angels laugh to mark a bright soul-driven fiend-goaded down the endless dark from hope in heaven right he goes on to say let not the land once proud of him insult him now nor brand with deeper shame his dim dishonored brow but let his humbled sons instead from sea to lake a long lament as for the dead in sadness make of all we loved and honored not say power remains a fallen angel's pride of thought still strong in chains all else is gone from those great eyes the soul has fled when faithless lost when honor dies the man is dead his honor has died his honor is gone right because he's engaged in this compromise with the slave power in the south right then pay the reverence of old days to the dead fame walk backward and with averted gaze and hide the shame right uh so there was a definitely a backlash uh and a uh a disappointment on the part of many uh because uh webster had consented and to support a fugitive slave measure in exchange for the compromise that he thought would save the union so again clay and webster uh had a real fight on their hands right and this is i think an image of clay speaking before the senate southern secessionists such as jefferson davis of mississippi barn roll rhett louis t wiggfall of texas spoke openly of their contempt for compromise and in fact they were led uh by uh the elder statesman of of southern senators south carolina's john c calhoun who we've already met in another context and here he is later in his life right calhoun who's near death right makes uh writes a speech against the compromise which is one of your documents right calhoun believes that the south can no longer compromise right the south is compromised too much the problem is the equilibrium between the two sections has been broken uh the north is gaining too much power at the expense of the south one thing that both sides have going on is the north seas a conspiracy a slave power conspiracy uh in which uh those who support the extension expansion of the institution of slavery would like to place slavery everywhere throughout the united states and have a conspiracy to try to control the federal government whereas southerners see in the north a conspiracy to try to destroy slavery which people like calhoun their entire political and economic power is built upon and so calhoun argued that the south can no longer compromise and i have a quote from that document and you have that document that document is one as part of your readings right uh but calhoun said and i have to point out that calhoun did not make the speech calhoun was ill and he sat there wrapped in flannels and james mason of virginia read the speech right james mason of senator mason of virginia read the speech for john c calhoun okay but these are calhoun's words so calhoun wrote okay and i quote the north has only to will it to accomplish it to do justice by conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory right so you know the south has should have equal access to territory acquired from mexico and to do her duty by causing the stipulation stipulations relative to the fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled and then he also argues to cease the agitation of the slave question right i mean that's something that the southerners always are complaining about abolitionists right and their agitation uh you know that's why the states would pass laws in the south you know where you could not send through the mail in the south or possess newspapers publications like a liberator right so they need to ste stop agitating calhoun would argue about slavery right so let's go back to the document and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the constitution by an amendment so he wants a constitutional amendment which will restore to the south in substance the power she possessed to protecting herself before the equilibrium between the two sec between the sections was destroyed by the action of this government there will be no difficulty in devising such a provision one that will protect the south and which at the same time will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and weakening it he's arguing that what the north has done is they've added all these free states and they've destroyed the equilibrium right and so you know especially in the house of representatives that's the case and so he wants a measure that will ensure the equilibrium and it's the responsibility of the north to compromise not the responsibility of the south and you'll see there's more to it if you haven't read the document already but that basically is the heart of his contention arguing against that and also arguing against compromise where some northerners let's say like william h seward senator from new york he argued that you we can't compromise anymore either uh he can in fact he in response to calhoun argued that you know equilibrium when the union was first you know created remember that map we looked at the animated map when the union began there were more slave states than free states there was no equilibrium in the beginning and seward was saying you know this is these are the this is a natural outgrowth of the expansion of the country the way things have become and stewart in fact argues that there's a higher law than the constitution right if the if the constitution uh provides for the uh for the restoration of fugitive slaves seward says there's a higher law right in fact uh here's a quote uh from his speech uh so william h stewart said but there is a higher law than the constitution which regulates our authority over the domain and devotes it to the same noble purposes now webster had contended uh that um god had prevented slavery from being a possibility in much of the southwest just just the very climate itself uh was working against the institution of slavery and so you know uh not you know there was no need to try to to act to prevent slavery from becoming prominent there uh that nature itself uh prohibited that to be the case uh but stewart's saying there's a higher law than the constitution right and what he is making a reference to there by the way more than anything else though uh is the fugitive slave clause of the constitution one that in our quote one of our quotes from webster webster had made reference to and here it is article 4 section 2 right of the united states constitution and it says no person held to service or labor that's that's slaves right in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another state another shall inconsequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due and the purpose of that in the constitution was to obviously placate the concerns of slave owners that free states would be a place that that slaves would flee to and they would be unable to recover those slaves and i think it's fascinating right it really is especially if you consider the the arguments made by those who contend that slavery is a positive good many of them will argue that slavery is a benevolent institution and that slaves are content under that institution happy and content well if that's the case why would slaves attempt to flee right and why does the section that uh you know favors the authority of states want to use the power of the federal government in this instance to thwart any measures that may be passed by states right and so you know i think it's a very telling thing uh that you know there was a demand for a more strenuous fugitive slave clause refugee slave law to reinforce article 4 section 2 right and so what we find is again attempting to get this passed as an omnibus bill fails but douglas senator from illinois uh breaks it up and is able to get much of the compromise through let's see the results of the debate and here they are right this is the results of the debate on this slide right uh and so we see that california would be admitted as a free state right the slave trade was abolished that's a sale of slaves not the institutional slavery in dc the territory of new mexico including present-day arizona and the territory of utah were organized under the rule of popular sovereignty and the fugitive slave act was passed requiring all u.s citizens to assist in return of runaway slaves texas gave up much of the western land which it had claimed but received in compensation 10 million dollars to pay off its national debt so both sides get some things now obviously the thing that made uh you know it most appealing probably the southerners uh was the the fugitive slave measure right so you have a compromise now there also helped in a sense that zachary taylor dies right president taylor had been opposed to the compromise but president taylor died and millard fillmore who was not opposed to the compromise became president and so the death of taylor and the movement of fillmore into the executive mansion was something that helped the compromise right taylor had attended i think a fourth of july celebration in 1850 uh had consumed a large amount of milk iced milk and and cherries i believe and diet presumably was some gastrointestinal issue there was an historian back in the early 90s who contended that he was poisoned he was killed he's murdered and was able even to get taylor's descendants to agree to the exclamation of the president and i remember when this happened right in 1991 uh they they actually took taylor out of his tomb and they took the body out and they did tests because any kind of poison like an arsenic or something you know will actually stay in the hair of the corpse in fact that's how we know that napoleon for example died of arsenic poisoning because the traces were still found uh in the roots of his hair right so uh clara rising was the historian contended that that taylor had been murdered and the test proved uh you know conclusively that's not the case right uh so fans of miller fillmore were were certainly uh certainly pleased uh that their hero uh you know was not uh was not guilty in any way of murdering president taylor right uh so the compromise does go through go through right uh the compromise does go through and then in 1852 you have another election right the whigs attempt to do what they had done before in fact they had twice elected a president who was a successful general i mean william henry harrison who had died a month in office and then they had had a little more luck with zachary taylor who had lived a couple of years but in 1852 they uh nominated winfield scott of virginia as their candidate right winfield scott and scott had been an officer in the war of 1812. here's an image a photograph of scott he had been an officer in the war of 1812 he had been a general in the mexican-american war in fact he had led uh the effort from veracruz toward mexico city uh his his nickname was old fussing feathers right uh you know zachary taylor was all rough and ready when phil scott was old fussing feathers right uh and so winfield scott is running on again another a platform that really tries to ignore uh the whole debate over the institution of slavery and its expansion the democrats also selected someone with a military background but he had been senator from new hampshire and that was uh franklin pierce right franklin pierce and franklin pierce is a great example of a doe face what is called a doe face a doe face was a northern man who held southern views and who often supported southern positions and i think that you know that really really is uh pierce right that really is pierce uh if we look at the electoral map and you remember how i said you know we looked at 1848 both the democrats and the republi and the and the whigs i should say you know we're both national parties you can see looking at this map that we've had some change i mean yes the whigs do win uh you know states in north and south but very few right they went kentucky and tennessee and they win vermont and massachusetts uh you know the wigs get mauled at the polls right so the whigs are less and less going to be a factor here i mean uh the the debate over the extension and expansion of slavery destroys the whig party destroys it and what we'll see is that eventually it's going to divide the democrats right uh and and again the whigs the whigs the origin of the whig party had been you know those in opposition andrew jackson uh and so you know that's not it's not a basis uh to build a lasting party right to say the least for franklin pierce who took office in march of 1853 the presidency was a nightmare in fact it was even before it began mrs pierce had been opposed to him running for president anyway but on the train trip to washington they were involved in a train accident in which the pierce's only child their 11 year old son was killed and this is something that the p neither of the pierce has ever really recovered from i mean mrs pierce was completely dejected and depressed obviously and pierce himself uh often took solace in the bottle right so he seems to have been become a very heavy drinker from that point on uh his vice president was william marty king but the strong figure in the pierce cabinet was the secretary of war and that was jefferson davis of mississippi and if you read davis's letters and davis's documents from the 1850s he often says positive things about pierce because pierce again usually takes viewpoints uh that are uh that are southern right and that southerners tend to agree with right and pierce has almost faced a mission immediately uh with this whole issue of of the fugitive slave act right i mean the fugitive slave act is going to be uh you know a highly volatile aspect of this for one i mean it presented the potential of even free blacks being basically kidnapped and sent south into slavery and so abolitionists of course were you know the eminent opponents of it for example frederick douglass and one of the i think the very last document in the uh that uh you know actually a document i use many courses is douglas's contention during reconstruction about equal suffrage uh but douglas as a as an abolitionist you know a former slave you know who had become educated and spoke out against slavery and wrote extensory extents extensively about his experience in slavery and whose autobiography is narrative uh is in many ways a must read uh in which he talks about you know what it was like right uh and he even you know one of the most vivid sections of that narrative in which he he talks about an aunt uh that uh resisted the sexual advances of of of the master uh and was whipped and uh and he goes out in the morning he sees his aunt's blood all over the gate uh you know things like that i mean douglas you know portrayed things so passionately douglas advocated as many abolitionists did you know the violent opposition to the enforcement of the fugitive slave act in fact let me give you a quote here from douglas right he says this reproach must be wiped out and nothing short of resistance on the part of the colored man can wipe it out every slave hunter hunter who meets his bloody death in this infernal business is an argument in the favor of the manhood of our race we must resist right we must resist and even violently must resist uh because again there was a potential uh that that and here is a broadside published to warn uh free blacks uh that they could be kidnapped right uh that they could be basically forced into slavery even though they were not slaves because if you look at the law right and by the way this caused many uh blacks in northern states to migrate to canada right but if you look at the law any slave owner or their agent they were empowered to seize a suspected runaway and had the right to demand the assistance of federal marshals in the process then the issue was brought before a judge a nearest federal judge and the judge would receive ten dollars if he ruled that the black was a slave and five dollars if he ruled the black was a free black right was not a slave and the difference in the price was justified by additional paperwork and such that was needed to return a fugitive slave back into slavery right the law also provided a one thousand dollar fine and six months in jail for anyone who can who was convicted of assisting a fugitive slave these provisions outraged abolitionists yes right no doubt about that it outraged frederick douglass it outraged william lloyd garrison but i think more importantly it angered many people in the north who had not really thought much about the institution of slavery right hadn't really been dedicated to the abolitionist cause in fact in hoping to use the federal government's power to re to reinforce slavery and recover uh you know uh escape slaves the the south actually brought the issue home slavery was no longer from the point of view of the north something that happened in the south right something that was down there slavery was now something that happened was happening here you see someone dragged through the streets in chains and taken back into slavery you see it you witness it you're right there uh you see slavery it's no longer something you read about it's no longer something that someone talks about it's something that you see right and if all these dramatic incidents that i'm going to talk about you know really kind of bring that home so in essence you know the fugitive slave law uh you know the southwer covers like 300 slaves but very few things probably did more for the cause of abolitionists in the north than the fugitive slave law right it really again brought the issue home so you have a series of incidents for example in ohio students from oberlin college rescued a fugitive slave by force from a slave catcher under the fugitive slave act several of the students were convicted of a felony right the law have for a thousand dollar fine and six months in jail right however state courts ordered the arrest of the slave catcher and the federal officials involved in prosecuting the students for you know i think it was disturbance of the peace a compromise has eventually worked out but it was clear the north is not going to be willing to really enforce this in fact several northern states uh passed uh basically what we call personal liberty laws to basically and this is interesting to try and nullify the fugitive slave act you you've had a kind of a shift here have you not a switch in which the you know the section that favors states rights and state authority when it comes to this issue they want to use the federal power the power of the federal government uh the state the the section that tends to prefer the federal government central government is willing to use states rights or state authority to thwart this effort right so you know sometimes uh it depends on on what the issue is right uh in terms of which authority you may well prefer right a group of free blacks in boston freed a captured waiter who is in the process of being arrested to be returned to slavery and again this really fits in with what frederick douglass was saying right we must resist we must resist violently one of the more stirring incidents took place when a maryland owner attempted to recapture a slave in christiana pennsylvania uh the owner was killed and his son was injured in a gun battle that resulted several blacks and whites were prosecuted uh under you know for for this for this gun fight but local juries acquitted them uh the case of the slave anthony burns in boston and there is an image of burns right uh the cl the case of burns was especially interesting he had escaped slavery in virginia and was arrested by federal marshals in boston and as marshals and federal troops escorted burns from the courthouse to a ship they were going to take him to virginia by ship and so i mean the federal government sends a naval vessel to it it costs over a hundred thousand dollars to send anthony burns back into slavery i mean one of the things that you know some opponents of the fugitive slave act uh you know one of the things that they often talked about was the price right the price tag here the cost of it but the crowd you know the crowds in boston uh you know were protesting this and and there was there was intense anger over what was taking place again you have brought slavery home to the north what were they seeing in boston that day they were seeing a man dragged through the streets in chains right he was going to that ship and he was going to be returned to a life of slavery and they and they saw it up close and in person that did more than any issue of the liberator i would probably contend right that did more than any speeches made even by even by frederick douglass as great an orator as he was uh you know this had to be something that for many northerners would turn them even more against the peculiar institution because they saw it up close in person uh in this particular instance right and so you know the fugitive slave law turned out i think from the southern point of view to be a public relations disaster right abolitionists also scored a public relations success i guess you might say for their calls around the same time with the publication of uncle tom's cabin in 1852. uh uncle tom's cabin was written by harriet beecher stowe and there i have a a slide with a picture of harriet beecher stowe in fact like many uh 19th century books it was initially uh released as in a serial form in a magazine right so it was published a little bit at a time in matt that was true of a lot of books uh in the 19th century even into the early 20th century you know a book like edgar rice burroughs as tarzan or even you know princess of mars or many of his other works were they were serialized before they were actually published in novel or book form but it was initially published as a book in the spring of 1852 uh the first printing of uncle tom's cabin uh 5 000 first printing of 5 000 sold out in two days right within another week another 10 thousand were sold and three hundred thousand were sold before the year was ended in the south stowe's book was lambasted as being inaccurate and they argue stone knew nothing about slavery she actually had been to kentucky and had seen some things uh but i mean what what she has is a very and by our standards incredibly melodramatic right there's no doubt about that uh but what she painted was a picture in which slavery was an evil even when well-meaning people were involved in it right it was something that disrupted families and what what stowe did is she traced the ill-fated life of the christian the devoutly christian slave uncle tom and presented slavery as something that destroyed families black and white right as an evil right she and for northerners it's like she lifted the veil and showed and showed the evil the sin that is slavery for southerners they didn't think it was an accurate portrayal and there were southern writers who tried to write novels that portrayed slavery as a benevolent paternalistic institution none of which were nearly as successful as uncle tom's cabin right in fact queen victoria in england even read uncle tom's cabin and wept many years later when abraham lincoln during the war met harriet beecher stowe he said to her something like so this is the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war so uncle tom's cabin uh certainly was something that uh you know was a highly very much a part of the sectional conflict and tension between the north and the south but still the main thing the main thing was expansion right expansion and expansion was something that was assumed it was assumed and that was and that and that was true also by the way of even uh even possible expansion outside of the context of of the contiguous expansion in north america for example here's a quote from jefferson davis right who was pierce's uh secretary of war and would later he'd already been senator from mississippi once before and he'd be senator of mississippi again and he of course would be president of the confederacy right and so davis said and i quote cuba must be ours to increase the number of slave holding constituencies let's read that one more time cuba must be ours to increase the number of slave holding constituencies we should have cuba and why should we have cuba we should have cuba because it will increase the number of slave holding anyway it wouldn't create we'll be able to cut but we if we can get cubed we can carve it up into two or three states and that's going to be four to six slave state senators sitting in the united states senate right uh you know that's a pretty straightforward statement right we want cuba and here's why we want it because of the cause of slavery the expansion of slavery uh so you know if you read davis's uh rise and fall of confederate government which he publishes thinking about in the early 1880s there there was a copy of it i think it's in the special collection in the library because the one that used to be it used to be on the stacks many years ago the copy of davis's rise and fall of confederate government was the first edition and by think that they have since put that in the special collection where it belongs because you know that's that's a book of great value since it's the first edition right uh a book of great value for that reason but let me tell you something it it's interesting you know davis is not a boring person davis is a fascinating character but the rise and fall of confederate government is one of the most boring books you're ever going to try to read right it's basically a treatise on why session it's constitutional and it i don't know it drones on and on and on it's not exactly exciting reading i put it up there with karl marx capital volume one uh as essentially uh you know the cures for insomnia right uh you know if you i've always said if you you want to sleep you can't sleep read a little bit of mark's capital volume one him droning on for you know 20 30 40 50 pages about what the nature of currency is and you'll you'll nod off well jefferson dave's rise and fall of confederate government is not not not far behind that okay but my point is uh in terms of that lost cause mythology what they write and what they say in the years before the war and even during the war is not the same thing as what they write and say after the war right and here's an example this you don't find any of this in davis's post-war writings but you certainly find it here right we want cuba and why do we want cuba so we can expand slavery right that's why we want it uh the pierce administration uh had forwarded a plan to purchase cuba from spain cuba was one of spain's few remaining colonies in the new world but the pierce administration had forwarded a plan to purchase cuba from spain for 120 million dollars and spain had been uninclined to sell at this point uh the american minister to spain pierre soulet uh kind of intervened he's from louisiana he intervened and tried to come up with a plan to seize cuba what he did is he he made common calls in october of 1854 with james buchanan who was a minister to britain and john mason who was minister to france he met both of these american diplomats in austin belgium and they agreed to the austin manifesto right the austin manifesto and the austin manifesto is a document that states and i quote cuba is a necessary is as necessary to the north american republic as any of its present family of states by every law human and divine we shall be justified in wrestling it from spain unquote now the reckless soulay also allowed the european press to get wind of this and was published for example in the london times and other other newspapers and so when word got back to the united states northern interests saw this as part of this slave power conspiracy right look at they're conspiring to try to gain cuba so they can cut it up into various states because slavery exists in cuba slavery's there so if they if they can make it states and enter the union those states will come and then multiple states not just one those states will come in as slave states and so uh northerners northerners in the house of representatives subpoenaed the diplomatic correspondence and published them right soleil was forced to resign and you know it was a little bit of a scandal uh but clearly you know there were those in the south who felt that it was in their interest uh to try to seize you know some some territory outside of the contiguous area of north america right you also saw this in what is called filibustering and in this sense filibustering is not getting up in the senate and making a speech and trying to use up time filibustering in this sense means privately led privately funded military campaigns right and here are two examples of filibusterers you have narcisco lopez and william walker and what they did is they led privately funded kind of quasi-military expeditions to try to seize territory that they hoped would be annexed by the united states and it would be made into slave states right lopez i'll start with him you look at the slide there you can see lopez uh he is actually from venezuela and eventually came to cuba as a as a planner and he and he was trying to provoke an uprising against the spanish in cuba uh in order to you know basically uh gain cuban independence and maybe gain acquisition or annexation i should say into the united states in other words what he wanted cuba to do was to do what texas had done right let's gain independence and then we'll petition the united states for annexation right uh he recruited several uh you know southern americans several hundred americans in 1849 as part of one of his expeditions president taylor ordered uh you know him to stop the expedition and try to prevent uh you know one of one of his ships from leaving new york and another one from leaving orleans and that expedition failed he escaped however and made a second attempt was eventually captured by the spanish and executed uh in 1851 he was garretted uh by the spanish in in cuba in 1851 which is a way of choking someone you put a rope around their throat and then try to stick and you just continue to twist on twist on and it tightens up until you choke them to death it was that was a method of execution and so lopez you know had advocated that for cuba william walker is a is a definitely a fascinating case uh he was small man less than 120 pounds he was described by uh one individual as that grey-eyed man of destiny he was tennessee born but he had a medical degree from the university of pennsylvania he was a physician right and i have a quote from him here right so this is a quote from william wankers look at this quote walker says the hearts of southern youth to answer the call of honor the true field for the expansion of slavery is in tropical america unquote now again why are we doing this i mean what what does what do southerners need to do in order to fulfill the call of honor they need to expand slavery right and you know the true field to expand slavery he argued was in tropical america and so uh walker uh for example in 1853 uh led a privately funded expedition into the baja peninsula of california to try to seize it from from mexico in order to create a slave-owning republic right later he led an expedition to nicaragua that temporarily seized some territory in nicaragua he had about 2 000 volunteers and he declared himself president of this new republic in nicaragua in 1856 and issued a constitution that of course legalized slavery right a decree that legalized slavery in a constitution thereof an alliance of central american states actually drove him out of nicaragua he returned to the south in the united states as to a hero's welcome and in a third attempt he would actually be slain so you know these people are serious enough about about this to risk their lives right and they're trying to acquire territory and there was support for them in the american south right that being said uh you know it is contiguous territory that produced the most debate right and in the 1850s the debate is really going to come uh become very very uh vehement with the kansas nebraska act right and here on this this map you can see the kansas nebraska act of 1854 what it did is it applied the principle of popular sovereignty to the louisiana purchase right and it was the policy of senator douglas stephen a douglas the little giant right of illinois who had long been an advocate of expansion in fact as a congressman a freshman congressman in 1844 he had moved to try to break many indian treaties in the in the territory of nebraska and in fact many of his policies are designed to create a particular route for a transcontinental railroad that actually go through property that douglas himself owns right so he was interested in that uh the problem is southerners were not going to vote monies for a a a route and for the the the building of a railroad that they themselves are not going to be able to use uh in fact senator senator atchison david atchison uh of missouri uh who was in in some ways uh one of the key southern leaders in the senate after the death of calhoun he said that he would rather than a vascular country and i quote sink into hell unquote then become a free state so southern interests were not going to vote to spend money on any railroad route that passed from illinois into territory closed to slavery uh so douglas you know had some personal motives here uh and forwarding this bill this kansas nebraska bill which he brought to the uh to the floor of the senate on january 4th 1854 basically applied again the concept of popular sovereignty to the louisiana purchase in essence nullified the old missouri compromise line you're basically and he even conceded that this would uh cause the missouri compromise to be and i quote in operative and void in operative and void uh he proposed uh under pressure from iowa i will point out to go back to the map right we go back to the map iowa right above missouri right right next door to illinois was concerned right it didn't want to necessarily be neighbored to any more slave states and so as part of a kind of concession of them douglas's bill divided the the nebraska territory or the louisiana perches into two basically large territories of nebraska and kansas and southerners immediately uh you know saw kansas as their area to expand into right they marked kansas for the extension of slavery the northern press of course lombasted douglas douglas was even criticized in his own state sometimes even menaced by crowds in his own state because of this policy right and resistance to this policy within the democratic party and especially uh remember people have been in the whig party uh the whig party is almost dead right uh resistance to this is what really kind of produces the republican party i mean lincoln said that you know the kansas nebraska act agitated him like nothing else before and so we see people like seward uh lincoln and others they they form the republican party in response to this measure right salmon p chase for example of ohio charles sumner of massachusetts all of these folks you know basically reform this is the birth pangs of the republican party because they're opposing this and so once you get this passed and you're applying you know popular sovereignty that meant that you know slave owners in missouri and throughout the south in fact had a chance to basically get slavery going in kansas and they and they try to do that right so both sides are trying to put as many people into kansas as possible right i mean uh you know southerners are uh trying to to get people to move uh to kansas so that they can basically make kansas you know a southern slave state uh meanwhile abolitionists especially in the northeast new england were were trying to put free state settlers into kansas uh in order to to go in the other direction in fact there were northern associations for example like the new england immigrant aid company that were doing that they were also arming uh you know these these immigrants they're arming these settlers uh you know uh henry ward beecher uh you know the abolitionist clergyman uh argued that uh you know that the guns will be as important as bibles in the conflict and so they they'd ship large shipments of guns but sometimes they would have you know the boxes the wooden boxes would be labeled bibles right these are beecher's bibles so guns were going to be necessary so it's clear that both sides are going to be there and both sides are going to be armed right on election day in march 1855 over 6 000 people cast votes in a place where only 2 000 kansans were registered to vote a lot of people came over from missouri and cast votes now some evidence would indicate that they didn't have to do that that in essence that pro-slave forces because of the relative closeness of kansas really had an advantage anyway and would have won the election but they made sure right so they made sure and so you know the initial territorial government the idea is that it was going to be pro-slave the territorial governor who had been appointed by the president attempted to disqualify eight of the 31 members who had been irregularly elected to the territorial legislature president pierce refused to back him and eventually called for his removal and appointed someone else uh free state advocates tried to create their own territorial government a rival territorial government and so you had a slave state government in lecompton and you had a free state government in topeka and so both sides are there both sides are armed and what happened is you end up with violence almost address rehearsal for the civil war and so you know in january 1856 free state advocates you know at topeka adopted their own territorial government so he had two rival territorial governments pierce proved completely ineffective in dealing with the situation violence broke out soon for example pro-slavery forces in kansas you know attacked lawrence kansas and sacked lawrence right they they burned the hotel they destroyed houses they smashed the free soil printing press uh you know and and this was exaggerated uh to be even more violent than it even was uh obviously in the free soil press right uh and there was responses i mean for example john brown who kind of comes onto the scene here in a real profound way uh he's from oswatami uh he went to padua tom potawatomi creek and uh killed five pro-slavery men literally dragged them out of their cabins in the middle of the night and hacked them into pieces with swords right uh you know so and he's convinced that he's acting under the authority of god right and this produces a guerrilla war in kansas that quickly took the life of of two or three hundred people right violence even spilled over into the floor uh of the united states senate uh first let me look at this cartoon right look at a couple cartoons here and here forcing slavery down the throat of a free solar the idea is you know you're they're they're they're forcing slavery you know slave pro-slave forces are forcing slavery upon uh upon free soilers in kansas and that this is part of the democratic platform notice cuba is also mentioned on the platform there right so you know this is an anti uh democratic uh you know party uh uh cartoon uh here you got uh you know the two uh the american twins north and south and they're struggling uh and the idea is kansas and will the union maintain right with the union maintained but violence again even spread uh to the uh to the floor of the senate uh charles sumner who's an abolitionist a senator from the state of massachusetts railed against the pro-slavery forces in a speech given on may 19th and the 20th in 1856 right uh and he aimed many of his criticisms his sharpest criticisms as senator andrew p butler of south carolina uh and and butler uh had a speech impediment and one of the things that sumner did is he he made fun of how butler talked he did an imitation of how butler talked and he made fun of him and he and he said so many critical things about butler uh in fact uh he uh speaking of butler uh he says and i quote here's a quote from the speech of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows and who though ugly to others is always lovely to him though polluted in the sight of the world is chaste in his sight i mean the harlot slavery right and those are very strong words in fact stephen a douglas uh says uh to uh to one of his colleagues at this point hearing uh you know sumner speak he says and i quote this damn fool is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool unquote i mean this is you know he's really pushing the limit here right uh he's really pushing uh the envelope the result's not going to be good right uh and so it wasn't in fact congressman preston brooks who was a relative of senator butler uh you know took personal offense to the things that sumner had said and he was determined to do something about it right he was determined to act on the situation and so what he did uh first he conferred with lawrence kite who was also k-e-i-t uh k-e-i-t-t sorry uh he he referred to he he basically consulted with kite and consulted with henry edmondson who was a congressman from virginia what should i do and he determined what he was going to do is he was going to attack sumner right i mean he he thought about challenging sumner to a duel and we talked a little bit about dueling when you know uh when we went you know in a different context perhaps here but when you challenge someone to a duel uh there is a concession that you're making you are conceding in that culture that that individual is an equal and brooks did not want to concede that sumner was an equal so you challenge an equal to a duel but someone who is your inferior you cane them and so what he does and he has kite and edmondson involved in this too they're going to try to defend him while he's doing it right from anyone who wants to interfere what he does is he he walks up to sumner in the senate chamber and sumner sitting there at his desk writing and he attacks him james mcpherson described it this way in his history of the civil war era battle cry of freedom which is probably the best single volume history of the american civil war he said unquote brooks walked into a nearly empty senate chamber after adjournment and approached the desk where sumner was writing letters your speech he told the senator is a liable on south carolina and mr butler who's a relative of mine as sumner started to rise the frenzied butler beat him over the head 30 times or more with a gold-headed cane as sumner his legs trapped under the bolted down desk finally wrenched it loose from the floor and collapsed with his head covered by blood sumner would be an invalid for quite some time right reaction to the event was very sharp even yankees who did not sympathize with sumner's abolitionism were outraged at what had happened the south declared the cincinnati gazette and i quote in an editorial the south cannot tolerate free speech anywhere and would stifle in washington with the bludgeon and the bowie knife as they are now trying to stifled in kansas by massacre rape and murder unquote william cullen bryant uh who was a writer for the new york evening post he's also famous as the author for the of the poem thana thompson's right i don't know if any of you when i was a kid you had to memorize uh you know thanatopsis and recite it's one of those poems that they had you memorize and he talks about it's about death uh when he talks about you know the you know the narrow house you know all that all all that breathe shall shall share the same destiny but colin bryant writing about this in this issue in the new york evening post said and i quote has it come to this that we must speak with baited breath in the presence of our southern masters are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves are we two slaves slaves for life a target for their brutal blows when we do not concord ourselves to please them unquote so there's a strong reaction in the north against what has happened an outrage in the south brooks is praised right for example brooks writes to a friend he says every southern man sustains me the fragments of the stick are begged for as sacred relics you know uh for example the the the debating club at the university of virginia sends him a new cane right uh you know and honors him uh as being a hero right uh south carolina newspapers lionized brooks in particular but even in virginia the richmond inquirer declared and i quote the act good in conception better in execution best of all in consequence the vulgar abolitionists in the senate are getting above themselves they must be lashed into submission interesting choice of language and i don't think accidental choice of language in any way shape or form brooks has sent canes from throughout the south not just the university of virginia debating society some of them have inscriptions on them such as hit him again use knock-down arguments and so southerners generally react positive especially planners react positively this is a book that was published in 2016 by earl j hess braxton bragg the most hated man in the confederacy it's about general braxton bragg but i found something interesting here hess has a quote from bragg before the war right uh bragg had left the army at one point he had been in the united states army and he had left the army and was a successful sugar planter uh in louisiana and bragg uh you know had a reaction uh to brooks's actions as well so this is this is braxton bragg's remark on the caning of sumner he said and i quote old sumner was severely chastised for his impertinence you can reach the sensibilities of such dogs only through their heads and a big stick the place was probably injudiciously chosen but the balance was well and where i in the house i should certainly propose a vote to thank uh to to vote to thanks to thank mr brooks right so so bragg you know was you know thrilled he said well maybe it wouldn't it might not have been the best to conduct this in the hall in the in the senate itself but this was this was a good thing it's the only way to get through to these people right so those lines that that were drawn are even more firmly drawn after the the caning of sumner brooks received only a 300 fine uh which many many many of his colleagues his southern colleagues in congress actually voted to pay for him well they actually pitched in and vote they pitched in and personally paid his fine you know so this intensified things even more right there before the election of 1856 right so here's an image of uh of brooks uh caning sumner and you can see also in the imminent the image a kite back there and the idea is him and edmondson are protecting brooks as he attacks sumner that's not a very accurate image by the way sumner was a very large man and brooks was a fairly small man uh here is a is a cartoon i think it's a good one you know southern chivalry argument versus clubs so this is obviously uh you know something that's criticizing brooks but you see the different reactions again you have kite protecting you know to protect but you see some who are upset and some who are laughing so there are different views of this particular event but one thing is for sure is that it incited more opposition than ever before and more sectionalism than ever before in the election of 1856 the whig party was in shambles uh there was the emergence of the american party sometimes known as a know-nothing party but that party had basically been created it's built on the idea of xenophobia they were opposing especially catholic immigration into america and so the democrats who are really the only national party uh nominated james buchanan who had been minister to great britain and i think it's largely because uh he had no record right he had no baggage uh he had been out of the country right and so that helps them in terms of dealing with him here's the electoral map right if you look at the electoral map you see the republican party now is in existence they ran john c fremont and you had the the know nothing party american nothing wig no they're called no nothings because they uh the idea is that when they were asked about their proceedings uh they would say they know nothing right uh but they ran miller fillmore in 1856 and buchanan wins overwhelmingly because only the democratic party at that point has a national machinery right uh and so we see uh that the that that from the map that that's the case but you can also see you know again a sectional party and how difficult that might be because clearly you know the uh the democrats i mean the republicans did win several states right and that was something that was concerning the southerners because this republican party you know basically is built upon this idea of of stopping the expansion of slavery preventing the expansion of slavery buchanan took office at a time of crisis and buchanan is an incredibly weak figure in many ways he lends himself to that blundering to the blundering generation view of the the causes of the american civil war that it wasn't an irrepressible conflict in which you know both sides are so different than the conflict's inevitable that the main problem is you have poor leadership at the time and that's why you don't have uh that's why you have a civil war right uh he's uh president you know when the dred scott decision comes down dred scott versus sanford the dred scott case and there's an image with dred scott scott was a slave whose master was an army officer and he had been taken into taken from missouri into illinois in the 1830s and it stayed there for several years and the idea is he's suing for his freedom because he had been a resident in free state uh much often is made in textbooks about roger tawny chief justice tawney who is a maryland slave owner his contention uh in his opinion that that blacks are not citizens and therefore could not bring suit but the most important thing about the dred scott decision is that the majority found that congress had no right to keep slavery out of the territories and so from for people in the north who are concerned about about this issue anyway this is more evidence that there is a slave power conspiracy and you definitely see that in the writings and thinking of lincoln that there's a conspiracy here to open everything up to slavery right so the dred scott case took the the southern view on the territories and thus ends up being a major part of the debate uh in terms of the lincoln douglas debates in 1858 that's that's an image of tawny i think i'll move on here lincoln of course would be the republican candidate for the united states senate seat in illinois in 1858 and very famously uh he makes his house divided speech that's that's one of your documents a house the house divided speech and here's a quote from the house divided the house divided speech is obviously drawn from uh biblical imagery to say the least and he says a house divided against itself cannot stand that's right out of the gospels right i believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free i do not expect the union to be dissolved i do not expect the house to fall but i do expect it will cease to be divided it will become all one thing or all the other either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become lawful in all the states old as well as new north as well as south this is a crucial moment lincoln is saying and by the way you look at the declaration of the causes of secession for the deep southern states some of them even quote even quote the house divided speech they're very much aware of what lincoln says here that lincoln says that we can't remain you know part free part slave he takes on lincoln takes on douglas in the campaign for senate in 1858 now who votes uh you know who elects senators well obviously in the 19th century uh you know uh you know it's before the constitutional amendment providing for uh the popular election of senators senators are elected by state legislatures so only members of state legislatures vote however lincoln and douglas engage in debates throughout the state that are highly attended right uh and c-span many years ago uh you know covered a series of reenactments and really interesting reenactments of those debates uh and they use various various transcripts and various accounts of what was said to do that uh but you know it's kind of interesting as you look at the debates and this is a map of illinois and you find that you know both candidates say different things in different parts of the state right uh i mean it's it's it's a lot harder to be harsher against slavery in the southern part of the state than it is in the northern part of the state right so sometimes they say different things in different places right the the documents are fascinating very interesting the accounts of these debates one of the crucial moments has to be when lincoln asked douglas douglas is a champion of popular sovereignty uh in essence he asked douglas how do you square popular sovereignty with the dred scott case i mean douglas is on record as supporting the dred scott decision how mr douglas can you can you square those two and douglas's response and i have a quote here uh a couple quotes from him with his response to that right so douglas says the next question propounded propounded to me by mr lincoln is can the people of a territory in any lawful way against the wishes of any citizen of the united states exclude savory slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution i answer emphatically as mr lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in illinois then in my opinion the people of the territo of a territory can by lawful means exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution mr lincoln knew that i had answered that question over and over again he heard me argue the nebraska bill on the principle all over the state in 1854 in 1855 and in 1856 and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question it matters not what way the supreme court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question uh you know as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the constitution the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please for the reasons that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations he goes on to say those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will be un who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their miss if on the contrary they are for their legislation will favor its extension hence no matter what the decision of the supreme court may be on that abstract question still the right of the people to make slave territory or free territory is perfect and complete under the nebraska bill i hope mr lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point this is called the freeport doctrine right the freeport doctrine argues that the police powers and the the police powers can be implemented by the people of the territory and supple in such a way as to prevent slavery from actually being introduced now that's something that's contrary to the southern view and in a sense i mean you know douglas is going to win the election in the illinois state legislature lincoln does not become senator uh and so in a sense he wins the battle but loses the war he's alienated the south with this statement right so he's gonna find when he runs for president he's not gonna get their support right uh and so the lincoln douglas debates uh you know a really interesting window uh into you know just how volatile and important the issue of the extension expansion of slavery was uh things uh he heat up even more in 1859 when the radical abolitionist john brown attacks harper ferries virginia harpers ferry virginia which is now obviously in west virginia uh and where the arsenal and the hall rifle works we're at and brown's purpose what brown was trying to do is he was trying to he was trying to create a massive slave uprising i mean the thing that is the most frightening to southerners right a massive slave uprising he wanted to arm slaves uh and create basically uh almost a situation like the haitian revolution right uh brown though his military planning does not meet his fervor uh and in fact uh uh in the process of the raid uh we do see that uh you know there's going to be some bloodshed right uh before it's all all said and done four townsmen uh one marine and ten of browns men were killed word gets out about what's going on at harpers ferry and a detachment of marines has sent under colonel robert e lee and lee is able to take brown uh and the rest of the uh the rest of his party uh in the uh in the engine in the fire engine house at harper's ferry and brown in fact is tried for treason against the state of virginia uh even though he was wounded in the fire fight it has to be nursed back to health but he's tried uh you know for treason against the state of virginia and uses the trial as a as a way to speak out against slavery right you know he says if i have to mix and mingle my blood more with the blood of my children uh here in this slave land you know so be it and he's executed he's hanged right in fact he's hang you know he does the raid in october and a couple months later he's executed right in 1859 but here you've had a radical abolitionist attack a southern town uh and in the south that's when you start to see uh you know an intense preparation in terms of militia units and things like that many of which will later be confederate military units i mean former president john tyler says and i quote virginia is arming to the teeth right there is an image of harper's ferry right uh the senator from georgia robert tombs who will later be confederate secretary of state uh and will also be a a general in the confederate army he said this after brown's raid he said i quote defend yourselves the enemy is at your door meet him at the door sill and drive him from the temple of liberty or pull down his pillars and involve him in a common ruin it's time to prepare for violence now what actually brings about the secession crisis is the election of lincoln and the republicans and the republican as a republican president in 1860. so lincoln uh he was somewhat of a compromise candidate uh for the republicans seward actually believed that he was going to be the candidate uh and as much much of his chagrin uh maneuvering ends up putting lincoln uh into that position uh and lincoln and here's where in a sense lincoln you know who had lost the election uh in illinois to douglas uh the debates uh had made him well known right the house divided speech in the debates had made him well known and so if we look at the electoral map right we see that the republican party is still only a sectional party but the democrats had split right northern democrats had went with douglas but southern democrats had bolded the party and had nominated john c breckenridge who had been buchanan's vice president uh and he was from kentucky and breckenridge would later uh be a confederate general and also serve in the confederate cabinet there was a compromise southern candidate very popular popular in mountainous regions in the south especially in this part of the of the of the country in particular and that was john bell the constitutional union uh party candidate in fact he wins virginia kentucky and tennessee but you know the opposition is split and the republicans win the election right with the election of lincoln and here's a cartoon uh where you can kind of see you know that the country being torn apart uh by the election but with the election of lincoln what happens is the deep southern states secede from the union they leave the union and here's a map that kind of shows how that happens okay so if you look at this map though south carolina being the first state surprise surprise but the the dark maroon uh those are the deep southern states who initially leave the union in late 1860 early 1861 and they formed the confederacy the confront confederate states of america those that light red those light red states are the states that will leave the union later after after the confederate firing on fort sumter lincoln will call for volunteers to put down the rebellion so the military aspect of the war will begin and virginia in particular but north carolina tennessee uh you know they they leave the union at that point arkansas they leave the union at that point uh after the firing on fort sumter so they're not initially in the confederacy but in 1861 they will join the confederacy uh the yellow states are slave states that never leave the union maryland kentucky even though i point out kentucky and missouri do uh do have do have representation there are people who claim to represent kentucky and missouri in the confederate congress okay uh but they do not leave the union right so the initial confederacy founded in montgomery alabama they draft a constitution and it's an interesting constitution i think i mentioned before that in terms of in terms of that constitution and large sections of it are purely copied from the united states constitution there's no general welfare clause i think that's interesting they enhance state power in every instance except for slavery right you cannot be in the confederacy and not be a slave state no slave no state in the confederacy can abolish slavery uh and so you know the importance of slavery is evident in the confederate constitution you no longer use euphemisms you use the word slave you use the word slavery in the confederate constitution right uh so i mean there there's no bones about you know what's what this is about right uh you know the the leaders the founders the framers of the confederacy are southern planners who have a certain set of interests and in particular uh slavery that they want to preserve uh because it's part and parcel of their power both economic and political right uh one thing that's fascinating about the confederate constitution is and they debated about this there is no measure there is no firm statement in the confederate constitution that says that a confederate state can secede from the confederacy so in essence in a sense they would deny to to their own states what they were doing to the united states i mean they debated about it but should we actually have that on it's kind of interesting that there's no need to have a firm statement about secession but there certainly is a need to have a firm statement or several certain statements about slavery right uh the confederacy uh the confederate constitutional convention uh you know they adapt this constitution uh the temp the i guess you might say the uh you know the the the provisional confederate government elects as their president jefferson davis of mississippi and there's there's jefferson davis and that made sense i mean davis uh was well respected right uh davis uh you know had he's a west point graduate he had a military background he had led mississippi troops uh in the mexican-american war uh he had been senator from mississippi he had been secretary of war uh you know he had considerable experience his wife arena says you know writes later that when he receives the telegram they're at home in mississippi when mississippi seceded from the union davis got up in the united states senate gave a speech and tendered his resignation to the senate in fact shelby foote's three-volume history of the civil war begins with that speech right but davis returned to mississippi and when he received the telegram informing him that he had been elected provisional president varina davis says that he looked at it like a man reading his death warrant right davis really did not want to be president davis wanted to command confederate troops and so to some degree he will always be kind of a frustrated individual because he wanted to be a commander he wanted to be a general that's one of the reasons he will interfere so much with his generals okay but he is the president of the confederacy and it was understandable that they would select davis as president of the confederacy let's look at some of these declaration of causes of success of secession real quick uh and these are kind of again i think kind of inform us quite a bit about what is motivating the framers of the confederacy the georgia declaration of the causes of secession says for the last 10 years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave holding confederate states meaning confederate innocence meaning states within a confederation or the union right with reference to the subject of african slavery so all of our debate with the north has been in reference to african slavery uh so you know it's kind of hard to say that you know those who seceded from georgia uh did so purely on constitutional principle or or something of that nature and slavery wasn't important they mention it right here this is the reason they're telling us why they seceded from the union right he says they have endeavored to weaken our security disturb our domestic peace and tranquility and persistently refuse to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property that's the fugitive slave clause is the idea and by their use of the power of federal government have striven to deprive deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common territories of the republic right so the fear is that with the republicans having the executive branch that they would be able to exclude slavery that they would be able to prevent slavery from expanding and that that would be detrimental to slavery right uh this is from the mississippi declaration of the causes of secession let's look at this quote our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery the greatest material interests of the world it's labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth so they're praising slavery right uh later on the documents say that blow has been longed aimed at the institution right they have been they've been attacking the institution of slavery in the north has and was at the point of reaching its consummation they're about ready to abolish slavery right and we don't need we don't want that to happen there was no choice left to us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the union whose principles have been subverted to work out our ruin right and so what i'm really kind of stressing here is how the founding documents of the confederacy do show us that the confederacy was founded on the purpose of preserving the institution of slavery right and i think their documents do tell us that uh if you look at the south carolina declaration here this is from the south carolina declaration uh you know they say something very similar uh you know they're talking about what the north has done these are modeled after the grievances against the king in many ways uh in the declaration of independence right uh you know uh the government was instituted has been defeated and the government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slave-holding states those states have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions right and denied the right of property established in in the 15 of the states recognized by the constitution they have denounced that sinful the institution of slavery say they're complaining about abolitionists right they have permitted open establishment among them of societies whose avowed object is to disturb the peace uh and anoint the property of the citizens of the united states they have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes and those who remain have been incited by emissaries books and pictures to serve out insurrection they tried to promote servile insurrection within the southern states for 25 years this agitation has been steadily increasing until until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common government observing the forms of the constitution a sectional party the republicans right has found within that article establishing the executive department the means of subverting the constitution itself right they've elected you know an individual uh they've elected a party uh that threatens the institution of slavery and they even quote right they have elected election of a man to the high office of the president of the united states whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery he is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because he has declared that and they quote what the house divided speech government cannot endure permanently half slave half free and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is on the course of ultimate extinction right uh and so they they were listening when it came to the house divided speech and they and so the declarations the causes of succession show us that the deep southern states certainly uh were motivated by the preservation of the institution of slavery why that should be surprising i don't i don't understand uh you know those states are governed by the planner class right uh that's certainly the case they're the people who are in charge uh they're the people who sit in the senate and sit in the congress they're the people who are governors of those states but it's not just going to be you know in the deep southern states even though here's a quote from the texas declaration of the cause of secession right it says and finally by the combined sectional vote of 17 non-slave holding states they have elected as president and vice president the whole confederate old government two men whose chief claims and such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation that schemes for the ruin of the slave holding states right so texas also you know that's that's the reason we are leaving the union here's another quote from the declaration of cause of secession of texas that in the free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil political rights the emphasis is in the original right that the servitude of the african race as existing in these states is mutually beneficial to those both bond and free and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind and revealed of the will of the almighty creators recognizing all christian nations while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races as advocated by sectional enemies would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the 15 slave-holding states this is why we're leaving the union lincoln and the republicans are out to destroy slavery now whether that's true or not is not really important here what is true is that's what these people believed was true and that's why they're acting they're telling us here in 1860 1861 why they do what they want to do this is not what they say in 1880 1881 but this is what they say in the heat of the moment right they're not going to say that's not what they're going to say in retrospect but this is what they say while they're doing it okay and so here's the virginia ordinance of succession because sometimes people say well those are just the deep southern states that's why they did what they want to do what about those upper southern states who leave later look closely at the virginia secession of ordinance the virginia the virginia ordinance of secession right um initially the virginia secession convention rejected secession but then after fort sumper sumpter they will vote and after lincoln calls for volunteers to put down the rebellion and federal troops are going to march through virginia then there's a vote for secession but it's it's not you know overwhelming right there are those who oppose many of them from western virginia who oppose the session but this is what the ordinance that is approved by the secession convention and is submitted to the voters of virginia who will vote may 23 1861 to ratify this this is what it says okay so look at it closely the people of virginia in their ratification of the constitution of the united states of america adopted by them the convention and it talks about when they did that uh you know that they declared that the powers granted them under said constitution were derived from the people of the united states might be resumed whenever when sovereign the same should be perverted to their injury or oppression here we go and the federal government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of virginia but to the oppression of the southern slave holding states the southern slave holding states virginia even in its ordinance of secession identifies itself with the southern slave holding states right that's the issue uh and in fact confederate leaders are well aware of this early on right in a very famous or infamous speech in savannah georgia march 1861 alexander stevenson alexander stevens stevens alexander stevens the vice president of the confederacy makes this statement right he says he's talking about the confederate constitution and he says our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea the problem with the old government is it's founded on the idea of equality our new government he says is founded on exactly the opposite idea its foundations are laid its cornerstone rests upon 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 this is our new government it is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical philosophical and moral truth and so stephen's openly and they'll talk about the vice president of the confederacy here openly sees slavery as the cornerstone of the confederacy and you have to remember that when the deep southern states leave the union they send diplomats they sent envoys to the other slave states to encourage them to leave the union and and i have uh you know some quotes from some from some of their documents some of their addresses uh to the other uh slave state legislatures or or messages to governors i mean for example this is william harris uh who is a mississippi commissioner uh you know and he was trying to encourage georgia to leave the union before uh before georgia had done so right uh and so he's talking about uh you know the election uh and he says you know they were there were three candidates presented to the north by southern men all of whom represented the last degree of conservatism and concession uh which their respective parties were willing to yield to appease the fanaticism of the north some of them were scarcely deemed sound in the south on sled on the slavery question none of them suited our ultramen and yet the north rejected them all and their united force before both before and since the overwhelming triumph in the election has been more defiant and more intolerant than ever before they have demanded and now demand equality between the white and negro races which is certainly not really true of them it's not really true of lincoln's position but that is the perception here right under our constitution equality and representation equality and the right of suffix suffrage or voting equality in the honors and immigrants of office equality and social circle equality and rights of matrimony so you're he's bringing up the uh you know the specter of the intermarriage between the races right uh the cry has been and now is that slavery must cease or american liberty must perish that the success of the black republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery a a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out today our government stands totally revolutionized in its main features and our constitution broken and overturned the new administration which has affected this revolution only awaits the fourth of march for the inauguration of the new government the new principles and the new policy upon the success of which they have proclaimed freedom to the slave but eternal degradation to you meaning citizens of georgia and for us the citizens of mississippi harris also went on to say and this is addressed to the georgia state legislature in december 1860. whatever may be the result of your deliberations whether you decide to succeed or not we know that they do i beg to assure her from her my my intimate knowledge of the spirit and affections of our people that no enemy to her constitutional rights may consider his victory won while a mississippian lives to prolong the contest sink swim live or die survive or perish the part of mississippi is chosen she will never submit to the principles and policy of the black republican administration she had rather see the last of her race men women and children emulated in a co in one common funeral prior than to see them subjected to the degradation of civil political and social equality with the negro race that's that's pretty you know firm and pretty you know blatant statements uh telling what is motivating people like harris what motivating advocates of secession in mississippi at the time this is stephen hale who's an alabama commissioner and this is his letter to the governor of kentucky right and he says if the policy of the republicans is carried out according to the program indicated by the leaders of the party and the south submits degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the southern states the slaveholder and the non-slave holder must ultimately share the same fate all be degraded to the position of equality with free negroes stand side by side with him at the polls fraternized in all social relations of life life or else there will be eternal war of races desolating the land with blood and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country right and so he he presents presents the idea of the we either have to uh equal be equal or there's going to be a race war he says right uh and he says uh later on in the end of the document but in the south where in many places the african race largely predominates and as consequences two races would be continually pressing together amalgamation or extermination of the one or the other would be inevitable can southern men submit to such degradation and ruin god forbid that they should right uh you know you can find a there's a book about this written by charles dew which is called apostles of this union uh published by the university of virginia press and he goes through all these documents and and really brings out how these commissioners so blatantly and openly uh are you know arguing that you must secede from the union to states who've yet to do it because the institution of slavery is at stake right white supremacy is at stake right was the contention so henry benning who the georgia secession commissioner to the virginia convention right so he's talking to the virginians and he says it is true that the north hates slavery my next proposition that in the past the north has invariably exerted against slavery all the power which it had at the time the question merely was what was the amount of power it had to exert against it they abolished slavery in the magnificent empire which you presented to the north they abolished slavery in every northern state one after another they abolished slavery in all the territory above the line 3630 which compet comprised about one million square miles they have endeavored to put the wilmot proviso upon all the other territories of the union and they succeeded in putting it upon the territories of oregon and washington here they're referring back to the wilmot proviso remember the wilmot proviso tried to exclude slavery from areas that were of course uh taken from mexico always pass the house but i will i'm going to say i'm i don't know if i said before never passed the senate so the wilmot proviso was never law but they always tried to use the wilmot proviso is what benning is saying right later he says they have taken from slavery all the conquest of the mexican war and appropriated it all to the anti-slavery purposes and if one of our fugitives escapes into their territory they do all they can to make a free man of him they maltreat his pursuers and sometimes murder them so we're talking about the violence that came after the uh after you know after the fugitive slave law right and so he again like the others is saying you know he says later my next proposition is that we have a right to argue from the past to the future and to say that if in the past the north has done this in the future it shall acquire the power to abolish slavery it will do it it will do it and so you know he is saying benning is saying to the virginia convention slavery is at stake so it shouldn't be surprising that you know the convention adopts an ordinance of secession that identifies for virginia with its fellow southern slave-owning states right uh so uh the documents of the confederacy the founding of the confederacy itself demonstrate to us i think uh decisively demonstrate to us uh the importance the central nation nature of slavery to those who are putting the confederacy together those who are framers of the confederacy but having created a government and eventually having fired on fort sumter one thing was absolutely clear is that the statements made uh you know uh by webster in the united states senate uh back in uh back in 1849 1850 uh turned out to be true uh peaceable succession turned out not to be possible war was certainly going to be the result