)It showed that most Southerners did not actually support the existence of slavery. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. 4 Why did a sectional crisis over slavery emerge during the era of good feelings? The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the size of the United States. Passed over fierce opposition in Congress and signed into law in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and gave each the right to decide whether or not to. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. it showed that slavery had to be either allowed everywhere or nowhere. Later in the month, the states of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana also all left the Union. He received new canes emblazoned with the words Hit him again!27. Legislators battled for weeks over whether the Constitutional framers intended slaverys expansion or not, and these contests left deep scars. The Missouri Compromise marked a major turning point in Americas sectional crisis because it exposed to the public just how divisive the slavery issue had grown. Fighting spread even farther against Native Americans in the Far West and against Mormons in Utah. Saint Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful slave owners, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. $ 57.47 $ 40.49 3 items. In Utah, Mormons were also making claims to an independent state they called Deseret. Other formerly enslaved people, including Sojourner Truth, joined Douglass in rousing support for antislavery, as did free Black Americans like Maria Stewart, James McCune Smith, Martin Delaney, and numerous others.15 But Black activists did more than deliver speeches. For southerners, the package offered a tough new fugitive slave law that empowered the federal government to deputize regular citizens in arresting runaways. In conclusion, the Nullification Crisis was both a good and bad thing. In the United States, France, and Haiti, revolutionaries began the work of splintering the old order. The Kansas-Nebraska debate, the organization of the Republican Party, and the 1856 presidential campaign all energized a new generation of political leaders, including Abraham Lincoln. Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the Constitution, but reaffirmed Missouris ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. Borderland negotiations and accommodations along the Ohio River fostered a distinctive kind of white supremacy, as laws tried to keep Black people out of the West entirely. The New Mexico Territory and the Utah Territory would be allowed to determine their own fates as slave or free states based on popular sovereignty. The Constitution also stipulated that Congress could not interfere with the slave trade before 1808, and enabled Congress to draft fugitive slave laws. Harriet Beecher Stowe,Uncle Toms Cabin, 1852. The lessons seemed clear enough. Enslaved workers also helped give rise to revolutionary new ideals that in time became the ideological foundations of the sectional crisis. In the majority opinion, excerpted here, Supreme Court justice Joseph Story decided that the national fugitive slave act overruled Pennsylvanias law. The passages shed light on family separation, the financial costs of the journey to freedom, and the logistics of the Underground Railroad. They rejected the long-standing idea that slavery was a condition that naturally suited some people. Enslaved people were referred to as persons held in service, perhaps referring to English common law precedents that questioned the legitimacy of property in man. Antislavery activists also pointed out that while Congress could not pass a law limiting the slave trade before 1808, the framers had also recognized the flip side of the debate and had thus opened the door to legislating the slave trades end once the deadline arrived. In the meantime, the uneasy consensus forged by the Missouri debate managed to bring a measure of calm. Brooks responded by beating Sumner with a cane, a thrashing that southerners celebrated as a manly defense of gentlemanly honor and their way of life. NavigueWeb. But as the secession crisis revealed, the South could not tolerate a federal government working against the interests of slaverys expansion and decided to take a gamble on war with the United States. a. https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/14-introduction. As they did so, however, the sectional crisis again deepened. Those would come in the coming decades. Security B. Beginning with his speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln carved out a message that encapsulated better than anyone else the main ideas and visions of the Republican Party.28 Lincoln himself was slow to join the coalition, yet by the summer of 1856, Lincoln had fully committed to the Frmont campaign. Wikimedia. Available from the Library of Congress. The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. Language in the Tenth Amendment, they claimed, also said slavery could be banned in the territories. In exchange, Missouri would come into the Union as a slave state. Southern states responded with unanimous outrage, and the nation shuddered at an undeniable sectional controversy. Whig leaders stressed Protestant culture and federal-sponsored internal improvements and courted the support of a variety of reform movements, including temperance, nativism, and even antislavery, though few Whigs believed in racial equality. Among other accusations, Sumner accused Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, Brookss cousin, of defending slavery so he could have sexual access to Black women.25 Brooks felt that he had to defend his relatives honor and nearly killed Sumner as a result. 3 Why did the sectional crisis occur in the 1850s? This mural, created over eighty years after John Browns death, captures the violence and religious fervorof the man and his era. English colonies north and south relied on enslaved workers who grew tobacco, harvested indigo and sugar, and worked in ports. Sectional differences tied to the expansion of plantation slavery in the West were especially important after 1803. Functions what the systems do C. Flexibility D. Disaster recovery 8. Under its provisions, local authorities in the North could not interfere with the capture of fugitives. Because of this motley coalition, the party struggled to bring a cohesive message to voters in the 1830s. Since the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the state of Virginia had wielded more influence on the federal government than any other state. P. F. Rothermel (artist), c. 1855. The newly acquired territory lay beyond the Louisiana Purchase and therefore was not part of the . answer the question why was the sectional crisis important, which will help you get the most accurate answer. The episode highlights the violent clash between pro- and antislavery factions in the 1850s, a conflict that would eventually lead to the traumatic unraveling of American democracy and civil war. 6 What was the. Library of Congress. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River.4 Many took it to mean that the founders intended for slavery to die out, as why else would they prohibit its spread across such a huge swath of territory? The admission of California as the newest free state in the Union cheered many northerners, but even the admission of a vast new state full of resources and rich agricultural lands was not enough. And Anthony Burns was only one of hundreds of highly publicized episodes of the federal government imposing the Fugitive Slave Law on rebellious northern populations. Eager to cordon off slavery and confine it to where it already existed, the Republicans won the presidential election of 1860 and threw the nation on the path to war. He felt uniting the colonies for independence was more important at that time, than causing the Continental Congress to debate the issue of slavery. Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state. This piece of Republican propaganda from the 1856 election makes clear distinctions between free states, slave states, and territories. Kentucky and Tennessee emerged as slave states, while free states Ohio, Indiana (1816), and Illinois (1818) gained admission along the rivers northern banks. The upheavals of 1848 came to a quick end. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published her bestselling antislavery novel,Uncle Toms Cabin. Events in Texas would shatter the balance. The 1840s opened with a number of disturbing developments for antislavery leaders. African Americans and the Rhetoric of Revolution, 20. Born into slavery in 1818 at Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass grew up, like many enslaved people, barely having known his own mother or date of birth. Having certain mental health conditions can raise this risk. The nations religious leaders also expressed a rising discontent with the new status quo.9 The Second Great Awakening further sharpened political differences by promoting schisms within the major Protestant churches, schisms that also became increasingly sectional in nature. Polk cited the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Territory as campaign cornerstones.12 Yet as Polk championed the acquisition of these vast new lands, northern Democrats grew annoyed by their southern colleagues, especially when it came to Texas. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. Southerners were not yet advancing arguments that said slavery was a positive good, but they did insist during the Missouri Debate that the framers supported slavery and wanted to see it expand. It is interesting to note that he was more defiant and clear about his stance on slavery than anything else during his presidency. A vibrant red sets off the free states. Sectional differences tied to the expansion of plantation slavery in the West were especially important after 1803. In January, for example, Delaware rejected secession. Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important. That wealth and luxury fostered seemingly limitless opportunities, and inspired seemingly boundless imaginations. But the anti-immigrant movement simply could not capture the nations attention in ways the antislavery movement already had.24. Despite the furor, the Missouri Crisis did not yet inspire hardened defenses of either slave or free labor as positive good. Questions over the expansion of slavery remained open, but nearly all Americans concluded that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed. Led by figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, women with deep ties to the abolitionist cause, it represented the first of such meetings ever held in U.S. history.18 Frederick Douglass also appeared at the convention and took part in the proceedings, where participants debated the Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and Resolutions.19 By August 1848, it seemed plausible that the Free Soil Movement might tap into these reforms and build a broader coalition. Questions immediately arose as to whether these lands would be made slave or free. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River. 7. In 1817, eager to put questions of whether this territory would be slave or free to rest, Congress opened its debate over Missouris admission to the Union. Are they trying to escape or not? The Nullification Crisis was the first time in which the sectional interests of the North and the South had truly came into conflict . French visionaries issued the Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen by 1789. A rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 threatened lives and property throughout the Carolinas. Military service on behalf of both the English and the American army freed thousands of enslaved people. Wikimedia. The highest percentages lie along the Mississippi River, in the Black Belt of Alabama, and coastal South Carolina, all of which were centers of agricultural production (cotton and rice) in the United States. William Still was an African-American abolitionist who frequently risked his life to help freedom-seekers escape slavery. By early February, Texas had also joined the newly seceded states. The first and most ominous sign of a coming sectional storm occurred over debates surrounding the admission of the state of Missouri in 1821. It fell to young Stephen Douglas, then, to shepherd the bills through Congress, which he in fact did. New pressures challenging the delicate balance again arose in the West. Independent Texas soon gained recognition from a supportive Andrew Jackson administration in 1837. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln challenged the greatly influential Democrat Stephen Douglas. Photograph of Dred Scott, 1857. In February, southerners drafted a constitution protecting slavery and named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi their president. Looking at the Missouri Compromise as the act that began to split . Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation.8 The bruising Missouri debates ultimately transcended arguments about the Constitution. This chapter was edited by Jesse Gant, with content contributions by Jeffrey Bain-Conkin, Matthew A. Byron, Christopher Childers, Jesse Gant, Christopher Null, Ryan Poe, Michael Robinson, Nicholas Wood, Michael Woods, and Ben Wright. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 contest on November 6, gaining just 40 percent of the popular vote and not a single southern vote in the Electoral College. The Sectional Crisis Sectionalism in the Early Republic Slavery's history stretched back to antiquity. Even seemingly simple and straightforward phrases like All Men Are Created Equal were hotly contested all over again. The 1860 Republican Party convention in Chicago created a platform that clearly opposed the expansion of slavery in the West and the reopening of the slave trade. On all sides of the slavery issue, politics became increasingly militarized. Their strongest support came from places like Ohios Western Reserve, the rural and Protestant-dominated areas of Michigan, and similar parts of Protestant and small-town Illinois, particularly the fast-growing towns and cities of the states northern half.11. After the 1858 elections, all eyes turned to 1860. The Road to the Civil War The sectional crisis began in the early 1850s. The year 1846 signaled new reversals to the antislavery cause and the beginnings of a dark new era in American politics. A resurgent anti-immigrant movement briefly took advantage of the Whig collapse and nearly stole the energy of the anti-administration forces by channeling its frustrations into fights against the large number of mostly Catholic German and Irish immigrants in American cities. Voters had returned them to office in 1852 following the bitter fights over the Compromise of 1850. Brooks resigned his seat anyway, only to be reelected by his constituents later in the year. Sectionalism in the Early Republic This map, published by the US Coast Guard, shows the percentage of slaves in the population in each county of the slave-holding states in 1860. Democrats by 1853 were badly splintered along sectional lines over slavery, but they also had reasons to act with confidence. The sectional crisis had at last become a national crisis. 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