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The Crisis of Union 1848–1877 hy It Matters The growing sectional crisis in the 1800s led to W the Civil War, the most wrenching war in American history. The peace that was forged after four years of internal conflict reunited the nation and ended slavery. It did not, however, end the problems of racial inequality. Understanding the war and the Reconstruction period that followed will help you understand the challenges of a multicultural society that our nation still faces today. The following resources offer more information about this period in American history. Cap of a Confederate soldier Primary Sources Library See pages 1050–1051 for primary source readings to accompany Unit 4. Use the American History Primary Source Document Library CD-ROM to find additional primary sources about the Civil War. Union flag flown at Fort Sumter before surrender to the Confederates 316 “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” —Abraham Lincoln, 1862 Sectional Conflict Intensifies 1848–1860 Why It Matters When the nation gained new territory, the slavery controversy intensified. Would new states be slave or free? Who would decide? States that allowed slavery were determined to prevent free states from gaining a majority in the Senate. Political compromise broke down by 1860, and when Lincoln was elected president, many Southern states decided to secede. The Impact Today The political and social debates of this period continue to have influence. • Older sectional loyalties still define some regions of the country. • The modern Republican Party grew in part from opposition to slavery. The American Vision Video The Chapter 10 video, “Tales From the Underground Railroad,” features a dramatization of enslaved African Americans using the Underground Railroad to reach freedom. 1850 • Compromise of 1850 adopted in an attempt to ease sectional tensions 1854 1849 • Republican Party • California Gold founded Rush begins ▲ ▲ Polk Taylor Fillmore Pierce 1845–1849 1849–1850 1850–1853 1853–1857 ▲ 1846 1850 1854 ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ 1847 1848 1852 1853 • Working hours • Serfdom abolished • Livingstone • Crimean War limited in Britain in Austrian Empire explores Africa’s pitting Russia Zambezi River against Great Britain and Turkey begins 318 View of Harpers Ferry by Ferdinand Richardt, 1858, depicts the peaceful town 1858 a year before a raid on the federal arsenal there triggered a crisis for the Union. • Lincoln-Douglas 1861 debates take place 1859 • John Brown raids the federal • Fort Sumter bombarded during the Illinois arsenal at Harpers Ferry, by Confederate forces; the Senate campaign Virginia Civil War begins 1856 1860 • Conflict between pro-slavery • South Carolina and antislavery forces causes secedes from the Union riots in Lawrence, Kansas HISTORYHISTORY ▲ ▲ Buchanan Lincoln President ▲ 1857–1861 ▲▲ ▲ ▲ 1861–1865 19##–19## ChapterChapter Overview Overview VisitVisit the the American American Vision VisionWeb 19##1858 19## 1862 siteWeb at tav.glencoe.comsite at tav.glencoe.comand clickand on click Chapter on Chapter Overviews— ▼▼▼ ChapterOverviews—Chapter ## to preview chapter 10 to information.preview chapter information. 1859 • Darwin’s Origin of Species published 319319 Slavery and Western Expansion Main Idea Reading Strategy Reading Objectives The question of whether to admit new Categorizing As you read about the • Explain how the government dealt with states to the Union led to new tensions political aftermath of the war with slavery in the territories acquired after between the North and South over slavery. Mexico, complete a graphic organizer like the war with Mexico. the one below by pairing the presidential • List the major features of the Key Terms and Names candidates of 1848 with their positions on Compromise of 1850. Wilmot Proviso, Lewis Cass, popular slavery in the West. sovereignty, Conscience Whigs, Cotton Section Theme Whigs, Free-Soil Party, “Forty-Niners,” Candidate Position Geography and History The acquisition secession of new lands heightened sectional ten- sions over slavery. ✦1847 ✦1848 ✦1849 ✦1850 August 1846 March 1848 August 1848 1849 September 1850 Wilmot Proviso Treaty of Guadalupe Free-Soil Party California Gold Compromise of 1850 presented Hidalgo signed formed Rush begins adopted Early one cold morning in January 1847, Mrs. Crosswait woke to the sound of pistol shots. Without a word she rushed to her sleeping children, while her husband ran downstairs to bolt the door. The Crosswaits knew instantly the danger they were facing. Kidnappers had come to snatch them from their Michigan home and drag them back to Kentucky—and slavery. The family had fled north after learning, to their horror, that the man who held them in slavery planned to sell them away from each other. They ended up in Marshall, Michigan. Home to a strong community of Quakers, Marshall welcomed them warmly. Now, clutching her children, Mrs. Crosswait peeked fearfully from an upper window as three strangers fired bullet after bullet into their front door and demanded that the family sur- render. She heard her husband pushing furniture against the door. Then over the din came the voice of a neighbor, urging people to aid the family. Soon, friends came running. Shouting threats at the intruders, the townspeople intimidated them Notice of escaped into leaving, thereby saving the family. enslaved person’s capture —adapted from Black Pioneers: An Untold Story The Impact of the War With Mexico The Crosswaits’ struggle with kidnappers was not unique. Although many people escaped from slavery and headed north into free territory, they were not safe. Southerners believed that Article 4, Section 2, of the Constitution gave them the right to 320 CHAPTER 10 Sectional Conflict Intensifies retrieve an enslaved person who fled across state During the debate, Senator John C. Calhoun of lines. Some Northerners, however, held strong beliefs South Carolina, although weak from tuberculosis, to the contrary and acted on those beliefs by shelter- prepared a series of resolutions to counter the Wilmot ing runaways and helping them escape. Proviso. The Calhoun Resolutions never came to a The Mexican War only heightened these oppos- vote—moderates in the Senate were unwilling to ing viewpoints and led to increasingly divisive sec- consider them—but they demonstrated the growing tional tensions. The war opened vast new lands to anger of many Southerners. American settlers. This territorial expansion once In the resolutions, Calhoun argued that the states again raised the divisive issue of whether slavery owned the territories of the United States in common, should be allowed to spread westward. As part of and that Congress had no right to ban slavery in the the debate over the new western territories, territories. Calhoun warned somberly that “political Southerners also demanded new laws to help them revolution, anarchy, [and] civil war” would surely retrieve African Americans who escaped to free erupt if the North failed to heed Southern concerns. territory. Popular Sovereignty The Wilmot Proviso had President Polk Sees Trouble Ahead James K. stirred passions on both sides in Congress. The issue Polk, a Southern Democrat and a slaveholder, of slavery’s expansion had divided the country along believed any argument about slavery in the new sectional lines, North against South. Many moderates territories acquired from Mexico was “an abstract began searching for a solution that would spare question.” No one would take enslaved African Congress from having to wrestle with the issue of Americans to the Southwest, Polk thought, because slavery in the territories. the dry climate would not support the kinds of farm- Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan proposed one ing that made slavery profitable. solution. Cass suggested that the citizens of each new As an angry debate broke out in Congress, how- territory should be allowed to decide for themselves ever, Polk realized that the issue of slavery in the ter- if they wanted to permit slavery or not. This idea ritories was not something he could brush aside. His came to be called popular sovereignty. diary reflected his fear that the question “cannot fail Popular sovereignty appealed strongly to many to destroy the Democratic Party, if it does not ulti- members of Congress because it removed the slav- mately threaten the Union itself.” ery issue from national politics. It also appeared GOVERNMENT The Wilmot Proviso In August 1846, Representative David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, pro- posed an addition to a war appropriations bill. His amendment, known as the Wilmot Proviso, proposed that in any territory the United States gained from Mexico “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist.” Wilmot was one of a group of Northern Democrats who believed the president was “pro-Southern.” Polk had supported a new tariff that helped the South at the expense of Northern manufacturers. He had then compromised with the British on Oregon, a territory where slavery was likely to be banned, but had gone to war against Mexico for land that Southerners would occupy. Wilmot’s proposal outraged Southerners. They believed that any antislavery decision about the terri- tories would threaten slavery everywhere. Despite fierce Southern opposition, a coalition of Northern Democrats and Whigs passed the Wilmot Proviso in the House of Representatives. The Senate, however, refused to vote on it. Poster calling for antislavery meeting CHAPTER 10 Sectional Conflict Intensifies 321 democratic since the settlers themselves would

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