ROAD TO CIVIL WAR: SECTIONALISM AND THE CYCLES OF DISTRUST

--Road to War--

I. Sectional Differences:
A. The Breadbasket West:

St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Chicago

Chicago: 1833: 150 houses
1847: 17,000 people
1860: 109,000 people

B. The Urbanizing North
1820: 6.1%
1860: 20%
1860: 110,274 industrial
establishments
(128,300 in entire country)

1860 Northern City Population
1. New York City - 813,669
2. Philadelphia - 565,529
3. Brooklyn - 266,661
4. Baltimore - 212,418
5. Boston - 177,840
6. Cincinnati - 161,044
7. St. Louis - 160,773
8. Chicago - 112,172
9. Buffalo - 81,129
10. Newark - 71,941
(The only Southern city to compare was New Orleans with 168,675 citizens) Source: 1860 U.S. Census

C. The Oligarchic South

--1860: 5.6 million whites
--1700 own around 100 slaves
--46,274 own around 20 slaves
--slave population was 3.84 million
--26,000 free blacks in the South
--36% of families in South own
slaves in 1830
--25% of families in South own
slaves in 1860
--Traveling the 1,460 miles from Baltimore to
New Orleans in 1850 meant riding five different railroads, two stage coaches, and two steamboats.
--By 1850, 20 percent of adult white southerners
could not read or write, compared to a national figure of 8 percent.

DO THESE DIFFERENCES MATTER?

Wilmot Proviso (1846)

II. COMPROMISE OF 1850

1845: 15-13 (Texas and Florida)
1846: 15-14 (Iowa)
1848: 15-15 (Wisconsin)

1. Fugitive Slave Act
2. Abolish slave trade in D.C.
3. Cali in as Free State
4. Popular Sovereignty in new territories
5. Resolved boundary dispute btw. Texas
and New Mexico

III. The Trouble Escalates:
A. Transcontinental Railroad
--Stephen Douglas
B. Kansas-Nebraska Act
C. “Bleeding Kansas”
--New England Emigrant Aid Company
--“Beecher’s Bibles”
--John Brown
--Pottawatomie Creek
D. The Caning of Sumner

IV. Party Politics
A. Decline of the Whigs
B. Rise and Fall of the "Know-Nothings"
C. Rise of the Republicans
--The Election of 1856--
Buchanan vs. Fremont in North
Buchanan vs. Fillmore in South

V. On the Verge of War:
A. Dred Scott
B. Panic of 1857
C. Lincoln-Douglas Debate for Senate
(Rep.) (Dem.)


August 21, 1858 (first debate)
I would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro.
I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the Free States and the Slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall. (Douglas)

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.
There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
A house divided against itself cannot stand…I believe that this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. (Lincoln)

D. John Brown's Raid
E. The Election of Lincoln
Lincoln (Rep.)
Douglas (Dem.) {border and North}
Breckinridge (Dem.) {South}


Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: March 4, 1861
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Fort Sumter, the first official “battle” of the Civil War, would occur a month later (April 12, 1861)