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U.S. History Chapter 6
A Decade of Crisis:
- California became a state
- Gold discovered in 1848 by James Marshall on the property of Johann Sutter
- International rush toward California in 1849
- Population grew enormously over night
- State Constitution drawn up
- Southern states objected to granting California statehood
- Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850
- Omnibus bill
- California admitted as a free state
- Utah separated from New Mexico and both allowed to decide slavery issue themselves
- Disputed area between Texas and New Mexico given to New Mexico
- U.S. pay debts that Texas incurred before annexation
- Slavery not to be abolished in DC without the consent of its residents and the surrounding state of Maryland and then only if the owners were paid
- Slave trading banned in DC
- Stricter fugitive slave law
- John C. Calhoun spoke against it
- Daniel Webster spoke for it
- Zachary Taylor against it
- Taylor died and Millard Fillmore became president
- Fillmore for it
- Stephen Douglas
- Calhoun died during crisis and within two years Clay and Webster were dead
- Sectional crisis averted temporarily
- The Fugitive Slave Law:
- Slave owners or their agents could seize runaway slaves in any state
- Could demand assistance of federal marshals
- Any black person could be grabbed as a slave
- Judge decided whether truly a slave
- Northerners saw as unjust
- Highlighted cruelties of slavery
- Uncle Tom's Cabin:
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Highlighted cruelties of slavery and the fugitive slave law
- Increased northern desire to abolish law
- Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 - Library of Congress
- Presidential Election of 1852:
- The Kansas-Nebraska Act:
- Popular Sovereignty
- Stephen Douglas
- Repealed Missouri Compromise and left slavery issue up to the voters in those territories
- Douglas wanted to run railroad through territory but needed support of southern senators
- Caused outrage in North
- Mini Civil War in Kansas
- Senator Charles Sumner (Mass.) was beaten by Rep. Preston Brooks (SC) because of anti slavery comments
- New parties developed:
- Whigs gone
- Know-Nothing Party
- Anti immigrant party
- Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner
- Secretive - "Know Nothing"
- Responding to massive wave of immigration between 1845 and 1853 from Scandinavia, Germany, and mostly Ireland
- Became known as the American Party in 1856 and nominated Millard Fillmore
- Republicans - 1854
- Whigs, Free Soilers, and anti slavery Democrats
- Northern
- Bar slavery from all territories
- Higher wages for labor
- Transcontinental railroad
- High tariff
- Presidential Election of 1856:
- Dred Scott v. Sanford - 1857
- Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
- Blacks were not citizens
- A slave was still a slave even if taken into a free state
- Angered the North, pleased the South
- Panic of 1857
- Hurt the North more than the South
- South blamed the North for causing it
- North resented the South having slaves to help them through it
- The Lincoln/Douglas Debates - 1858
- Senator from Illinois
- Spread of slavery to the territories was the main issue
- Abraham Lincoln - against it
- Stephen Douglas - for Popular Sovereignty
- Freeport Doctrine
- Lincoln forced Douglas to admit that slavery could not exist in areas that did not have laws to support it no matter what the Supreme Court said
- Popular Sovereignty was inconsistent with the Dred Scott decision
- Douglas won the election but lost the support of the South
- Lincoln was thrust onto the national scene
- John Brown's Raid - 1859
- Captured federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry
- Hoped to start a massive slave revolt
- Colonel Robert E. Lee led the federal troops that captured Brown and his men after two days
- Brown was tried and hanged
- Divided the nation even more
- Presidential Election of 1860:
- John C. Breckinridge
- Southern Democrat - (18.1% of the popular vote)
- Vice President
- Dred Scott decision
- Stephen Douglas
- Northern Democrat - (29.5% of the popular vote)
- Popular Sovereignty
- Abraham Lincoln
- Republican
- No slavery in the territories
- Wide Awakes
- Lincoln won the election with 39.8% of the popular vote
- John Bell
- Constitutional Union Party - (12.6% of the popular vote)
- This election set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in the territories. In 1860 this issue finally came to a head, fracturing the formerly dominant Democratic Party into Southern and Northern factions and bringing Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to power without the support of a single Southern State.
- The Confederate States of America - 1861 to 1865
- Six weeks after Lincoln's election South Carolina seceded - (December 20, 1860)
- Mississippi - (January 9, 1861)
- Florida (January 10, 1861)
- Alabama - (January 11, 1861)
- Georgia - (January 19, 1861)
- "Secession":
Alexander H. Stephens, one month before being elected Vice-President of the Confederate States, delivered this speech to the Secession Convention of Georgia on January 31, 1861.
- Louisiana (January 26, 1861)
- Texas (February 1, 1861)
- The Confederate Congress met in February 1861 to form the Confederate States of America
- The secessions were rejected as illegal by the current President, James Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln.
- Confederates began occupying federal buildings in the South
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