LECTURE ON ANTEBELLUM POLITICS, INCLUDING COMPROMISES OF 1820 AND 1850, ELECTION OF 1860, SOUTH AS MINORITY SECTION, SECESSION

THE MISSOURI CRISIS OF 1819

Please recall that in 1787 the liberals and conservatives had compromised over the issue of slavery. They papered over their differences, for the time being. In 1819 the issue came back to haunt the nation. This was in the form of the Missouri Crisis. In 1819 Missouri applied for admission to the Union as a state. This is called applying for statehood. A bill to admit Missouri as a state was introduced in the House of Representatives. There, representative James Tallmadge of NY amended the bill to prohibit the further introduction of slaves to Missouri, and to require that all slaves born after Missouri received statehood should be given their freedom at age 25 (Garraty, p. 208). This would be gradual emancipation over 25 years. Also, most of the people in Missouri had moved there from the South, and favored slavery. They favored allowing people the choice to have slaves if they wanted to. In 1819 there were 11 free states in the Union, which did not allow slavery, and 11 slave states, which did permit it. The admission of Missouri as a slave state would make for 12 slave states. It would also give Missouri two seats in the Senate, and give the slave states a two-vote edge in the Senate. The North had more population, so it had more seats in the H of R. The House of Representatives passed the Missouri Enabling Act, with the Tallmadge amendment in it. The Senate, where the slave states had equal power, rejected it. Congress adjourned and went home, with this stalemate or impasse between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Statehood for Missouri was now held hostage, and postponed.

E. THE COMPROMISE OF 1820

In 1820 the Senate offered a compromise. It is called the Compromise of 1820. It consists of three parts. First, pro-slavery politicians wanted to preserve an equal balance of power in the Senate between slave states and free states. Therefore, the deal was to admit Missouri as a slave state. Missouri would be balanced by the separation of Maine from Mass. and the admission of Maine as a free state. This would mean 12 slave states and 12 free states, an equal number, in balance. And Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois proposed that the rest of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase be divided. An imaginary line would be drawn through it, at parallel 36*30'. The area north of the line would become free states and not have slavery, and the territory south of the line would be permitted to have slavery and could become slave states. In this way the slavery issue was defused. It was papered over. The issue was not resolved.

EFFORT TO MAINTAIN EQUAL NUMBER OF FREE AND SLAVE STATES, ESPECIALLY 1816-1850 (DATES REFER TO ADMISSION TO UNION)

FREE STATES SLAVE STATES

1. Vermont Virginia

2. Pennsylvania Maryland

3. Massachusetts Delaware

4. New Hampshire North Carolina

5. Connecticut South Carolina

6. Rhode Island Georgia

7. New York Kentucky (1792)

8. New Jersey Tennessee (1796)

9. Ohio (1803) Louisiana (1812)

10. Indiana (1816) Mississippi (1817)

11. Illinois (1818) Alabama (1819) (11-11)

12. Maine (1820) Missouri (1821) (12-12)

13. Michigan (1837) Arkansas (1836)

14. Iowa (1846) Florida (March 1845)

15. Wisconsin (1848) Texas (Dec. 1845) (15-15)

16. California (1850) balance of power tipped in favor North

17. Minnesota (1858)

18. Oregon (1859)

Outbreak of Civil War

19. Kansas (1861)

20. West Virginia (1863)

THE US-MEXICAN WAR

In 1846 the US. and Mexico went to war, in part over a border dispute. The US annexed Texas in December 1845, but there was a disagreement as to whether the border between Texas and Mexico was at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande River. Both countries sent armies to the disputed region, and they clashed at Matamoros, a town on the Rio Grande River. The US won the war decisively, and Mexico was forced to relinquish California and the Southwest (current day Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Colorado). Next, in 1849, gold was discovered in California, and thousands of Americans flocked into California. Overnight, CA had 100,000 people and could apply for admission to the Union as a state.

THE CALIFORNIA CRISIS

The white people of California adopted a constitution that prohibited slavery. Whites feared that slaveholders would arrive in Ca with hundreds of slaves, who could be used for "free" to compete with white workers panning for gold in the rivers. California sought admission to the Union as a free state (a state that did not permit slavery). However there was no territory with nearly that many people that could be admitted to the Union as a slave state. The admission of CA as a free state threatened to upset the balance of political power in the Senate. It would give the free states a 2 vote advantage in the Senate. South Carolina threatened to SECEDE (withdraw from) the Union if CA was admitted. The admission of CA was now held hostage to sectional politics. South Carolina invited the other slave states to a conference (convention) at Nashville, Tennessee in 1850 to discuss a joint, collective secession in the event that CA was admitted to the Union.

COMPROMISE OF 1850

To avert the possible secession of South Carolina and perhaps other slave states, Congress sought a compromise. Ultimately, several pieces of legislation were passed, referred to collectively as the Compromise of 1850.

1. California admitted to union as a free state (favors the North).

2. Slave TRADE (buying and selling of slaves) but not slavery itself abolished in the District of Columbia (something for the North).

3. New Mexico Territory will be divided in two, (New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory), thereby increasing the possibility that some slave states might be created there in the future.(something for the South).

4. Federal Government will pay off the pre-annexation debts of Texas (buys off Texas, wins their votes).

5. Harsh new Fugitive Slave Act. Northern states may no longer give accused runaways a jury trial. A magistrate appointed by President (federal government) will hear and decide the case. Accused runaways may not testify on their own behalf. (Meant to appease the South).

Southerners in Congress voted for items 3,4, and 5 (in this arbitrary list), Northerners voted against. Moderates from the Border States provided the margin of victory. Northerners in congress voted for items 1 and 2, while Southerners voted against. Moderates from Border States supplied the votes to pass it. There was no genuine agreement between North and South. The Border State moderates joined first with the North to pass some items, and then with the South to pass other items. The Compromise of 1850 basically bought time-10 years until South Carolina seceded.

THE BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

By 1854 the Republican party was born. It began as a Northern party. The Republicans argued that slavery was not just bad for the slaves. It was also bad for the average white person, which was o say the white middle class and white farmers and workers. They argued that if Southern slaveholders came to the West, and brought their slaves with them, the slaveholders would monopolize the land and establish plantations. How could white men who needed land for family farms get land if the slaveholders bought it all up or caused the prices of land to rise? How could white men who worked in the industrial sector get jobs If employers could get slaves to do the work for nothing? What employer would pay a white man or an immigrant any decent wage, if the employer could get slaves to work for "free" (no wages). It was argued that slavery dragged down the wages of white workers and threatened the job opportunities of white workers. The problem was not the slaves themselves, but the slave owners who used them to the detriment of the economic interests of the white middle class and white farmers and workers. How could a white man on a family farm compete with a plantation where a rich slave-owner had 100 slaves to do the work? The Republican Party appealed to the economic self interest of whites. Slavery was bad for them too, not just for the slaves. Whites in the West wanted to keep the West "white." Slave-owners bringing slaves into the West threatened to bring about a situation where the neighborhoods (rural counties) would no longer be white. This was not the fault of the slaves, but the slaveholding whites who brought the slaves there from the South. The Republican Party (represented by men such as Abraham Lincoln of Illinois) was absolutely opposed to the SPREAD of slavery into the West. Slave holders felt they should be able to take their slave into the territories of the West (such as Kansas and Nebraska).

The South was traumatized by John Brown's raid. John Brown was white man who tried to give guns to the slaves and start a slave revolt, in which the slaves would rise up and kill the white slaveholders of the South and mount a guerilla war. When John Brown was hanged, church bells rang in the North, and the abolitionists mourned him as a hero. For the south, the fear was that there would be more John browns in the future. And what if the next one succeeded? What if the next one met up with a Nat Turner? John Brown was like a man with a cigarette standing next to the home of a man with tons of dynamite in his basement. One can understand why the latter felt menaced.

THE ELECTION OF 1860

By 1860 the United States of America stood at a fateful crossroad. The nation was polarized into two camps, and the Union hung by a few threads. 1860 was a presidential election year. What I will do first is tell you what happened. Then we will discuss the question of why.

The Democratic party split apart over the question of whether the people of a territory had the right to exclude slavery from a territory before it became a state. Stephen Douglas and Northerners who supported popular sovereignty believed that the people of a territory ought to have this right. Southerners believed that only a state had the power to decide about slavery: territories and the people of a territory did not. Territories did not rate or rank as highly as states, and under the states rights doctrine of John C. Calhoun only a state could abolish slavery or enact emancipation, except that the federal government has jurisdiction over the District of Columbia.

I repeat again, the quarrel between the northern Democrats and Southern Democrats was over the expansion of slavery into the territories of the west: it was not a fight about slavery in the South. And more generally, the quarrel between North and South was over the EXPANSION of slavery into the West. It was NOT a quarrel about slavery in the South.

It was also a question of how willing whites-who-did-not-own-slaves were to tolerate the presence, in their midst, of whites who did own slaves: and how willing non-slaveholding whites were of the slaves themselves. Many non-slaveholding whites did not want to have to live alongside blacks. They didn't want any blacks in their states or counties or neighborhoods, and that were mad at slaveholding whites for bringing blacks into all-white regions in the west.

When the Democratic convention met at Baltimore, in June (Garraty, p. 379), the two sides could not agree. The Southern Democrats demanded that northern Democrats agree that neither the Federal Government nor any territorial government can prevent citizens from settling "with their property" in any territory. Northern Democrats would not agree to this, because it meant surrendering the principle of popular sovereignty. The Democrats could not agree and therefore, next, they split up and met separately. The Northern wing of the party nominated Stephen Douglas of Illinois, champion of the principle of popular sovereignty. The Southern wing nominated John C. Breckinridge, and the southern wing adopted a platform that stated explicitly that they believed that neither the federal government nor a territorial government has the right to exclude slaveholders from settling in a territory. But please understand, Northerners migrating to the West did not want slavemasters bringing black slaves into the heretofore white West and settling next door to them and competing with them economically. How can the family farm compete with the plantation. And why is anybody going to pay a decent wage to do a job when he can get slaves to do it for free. Slavery was not just bad for the African American slaves. Many white people who did not own slaves began to feel that the spread of slavery to the West was bad for the average white person too, economically. Completely apart from any moral question, there was the matter of money and economic interests.

THE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTION

In the end, four candidates ran. They were:

PARTY CANDIDATE POPULAR ELECTORAL.

VOTE VOTE

Republican Abraham Lincoln 1,866,000 180

Dem. (Northern) Stephen Douglas 1,383,000 12

Dem. (Southern) John Breckinridge 848,000 72

Constitutional John Bell 593,000 39

Union

The country split apart in how it voted (see map on p. 380 of Garraty). Lincoln carried almost every state in the North, except that New Jersey split its 7 electoral votes: 4 to Lincoln, 3 to Douglas. Lincoln also won in California and Oregon.

Breckinridge carried all of the deep South, including NC, SC, GA, Florida, Ala, Miss, LA, Ark and Texas. Bell carried the Border States of Delaware, MD, VA, KY and TN. Please recall that in 1860 Delaware was still a slave state.

Stephen Douglas carried only Missouri, and the three electoral votes from New Jersey.

If one combines the votes of Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell together, the contrast in electoral votes would be

Lincoln 1,866,000 180

Others 2,824,000 123

If we look at the popular vote, we might say that Lincoln and the Republicans won because the Democrats divided.

When a person wins a majority of the popular vote in a state, they win all of the electoral votes for that state. This is the "winner take all" system.

THE NORTH HAD NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY

However, what the election of 1860 really revealed was that the Northern and Western states, or the free states, alone, by themselves, had enough population and enough electoral votes to control and determine the presidency. Lincoln was not even on the ballot in 10 Southern states. It didn't make any difference to the outcome. If the free states of the North and West were unified, and voted as a bloc, they could elect a president even if all of the South disagreed--because the North and West had more people than the South and had numerical superiority over the South (repeat).

North and West approx. 17 million

South approx. 12.6 million

However, this 12.6 million included 3.5 million African American slaves.

If we are comparing the white population, it would be a contrast of 17 million for the free states to 9.1 million for the slave states. In other words, almost a 2-1 margin in favor of the free states.

THE SOUTH AS A POLITICAL MINORITY SECTION

Politically, the South said that it had become a [political] "minority section." The South did not mean it had a large racial minority population (although that was true). The real problem was not Lincoln. The real problem was the unequal balance of power. The South felt that it had become a political minority, in the sense that it no longer "counted." The North and West together could disregard the South politically. The South did not count as much with respect to POLITICAL POWER. In this sense, it was in the "minority" and was a "minority section."

Politically, the South said that it had become a "minority section." The real problem was not Lincoln. The real problem was the unequal balance of power.

Lincoln was abhorrent to slaveholders. He was not an abolitionist. But he was absolutely opposed to the spread of slavery into the West. He was on record as having said that a house divided cannot stand, and the Union cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. He had said publicly that eventually, slavery should be placed in the course of ultimate extinction. He had said that if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.

But fundamentally, the South was losing the struggle for power. Initially, back in 1787, SC and GA had said they would vote to adopt the Constitution and ratify it and form the new federal government only if slavery was safe. Now it seemed that slavery might not be safe. In 1878 the South had been a equal partner in the nation. By 1860 it had been demoted.
 
 

1790 (first Census) 1860

Population 50 % in North 61% (19 million)

50% in South 39% (12 million)

House of R. 35 Northern votes 163 votes

30 Southern votes 85 votes

Senate 5 Free States 18 Free States

8 Slave States 15 Slave States

Electoral 183 Northern voters

College 120 Southern votes

In 1820 the South was already lagging behind the North in political power in the House of Representatives. In 1850 the admission of California as a free state tipped the balance of political power in the Senate in favor of the free states of the North and West. The North, joined by the West, could now, theoretically, dominate both houses of Congress. In 1860, it became apparent that the free states of the North and West had enough electoral votes, by themselves, to determine the president. The Democrats still controlled the H. of R. and the Supreme Court, but in the long run the population of the North was growing much more quickly than the population of the South. This, together with John Brown's raid at Harper's ferry, created panic and hysteria in the South. The South was afraid that its way of life would be lost. It was afraid that over time the Republicans would win control of the House, and Republican presidents would appoint abolitionists to the Supreme Court, and there might be an amendment to the Constitution to abolish slavery. Southern leaders BELIEVED THAT LINCOLN AND THE REPUBLICANS AND THE NORTH INTENDED, BY ONE MEANS OR ANTHER, TO USE FEDERAL POWER EVENTUALLY TO ABOLISH SLAVERY. The leaders of the South saw a noose closing around their necks. They decided not to just sit there and wait for it to close. They jumped.

In December 1860 the S. Carolina state legislature ordered an election to elect delegates to a state convention. On December 20, the convention voted to secede from the Union. S. Carolina proclaimed itself an independent country, no longer part of the United States--politically.

Between January 1 and February 1, 1861, GA, Fla, Ala, Mississippi, LA and Texas voted to secede. The Union was coming apart. In Feb. 1861 these states met at Montgomery, Alabama and formed a new country called the Confederate States of America, or CSA. They adopted a constitution and formed a new government, with Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president.

North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas did not secede at first. But they said that if the Federal Government of the USA used force against the CSA, this would provoke them to secede too. Meanwhile, Lincoln would not be inaugurated until around March 21st.

In December 1860, after SC adopted an ordinance of secession, at the eleventh hour, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky offered a new compromise. He proposed an amendment to the Constitution to extend 36'30 to the Pacific Ocean, and recognize slavery as existing in all territory below that line. Lincoln rejected this, and the Republicans in the Senate defeated it by a vote of 25-23. Those voting for the compromise were Democrats. Lincoln thought SC was bluffing. By March, he realized that the South was not bluffing.

The US Federal Government still had forts and arsenals in the South. Southerners occupied most of these, but two naval sites were still in Union hands. One of these was at Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbor, in South Carolina. South Carolina claimed the fort as part of its territory. (The other site was Fort Pickens. near Pensacola, Florida). The US said that the fort was part of US territory. The fort was low on food and supplies. The Federal Government faced a decision. It could re-supply the fort by ships, which would provoke SC. Or it could withdraw its men and relinquish the fort. Lincoln decided to send a naval expedition to supply food. Before the relief ships arrived, S.C. opened fire on the fort, on April 12, 1861. It surrendered 34 hours later. Northerners were indignant, and Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Virginia, NC, Arkansas and Tennessee saw this as needless provocation, and they seceded. The governor of Maryland, who favored secession, ordered a meeting so that Maryland could secede. Lincoln sent the army to prevent them from doing so.

The Confederates moved their capital to Richmond, VA. Lincoln insisted that the Union formed in 17897 was perpetual. Moreover, the Articles of Confederation had said explicitly that the United States were perpetual. Lincoln took the view that once the states entered the Union it was forever, and a state could not come into the Union and then change its mind. The decision was irrevocable. Lincoln said that secession was illegal and violated the Constitution. He said that the Southern states were suffering from domestic insurrection or disturbance. There was no secession because legally there could be no secession. He said that the Southern states had not left the Union, rather they were still in the Union. These states simply did not have a proper government. Lincoln felt that slaveholders had hi-jacked the governments of the Southern states. In any event, the US Army attacked the Confederate Army at Manassas, 20 miles south of Washington, on July 21, 1861, and it turned into a fiasco for the US.

Southerners asked to be allowed to go their own way, in peace. They said they wanted a peaceful secession, like a divorce. But most Northerners believed that no state has the right to secede. Northerners saw this as a betrayal of the American Revolution. An election had been held. Southerners had voted like everybody else. The North said that you can't withdraw from the country just because you disagree with the majority. Democracy means that the majority rules. The South was unwilling to accept the outcome of the election--and seceded. Northerners said no one can secede, and if a state does so this is a violation of the Constitution and the Federal Government will use force if necessary to stop it. The North as a whole--and not just Lincoln as an individual--refused to allow the South to go in peace. The US fought a war to stop secession, or, in the phrase of the time, "to save the Union." That is what the war initially was over: it was over whether or not a state can secede: it was over the question of SECESSION. The North was trying to force the South to remain a part of the US and accept the will of a national majority whether it wanted to or not. And when men can't agree ort resolve their differences, they resort to fighting and to violence. The history of the world and the history of the human species, sadly, is the history of fighting and violence.