Week 5.  Splitting the Nation in Two, Multiple Causes

1:  The Role of Slavery and the Sectional Divide:

1) Persistence of sectional divide: 3/5 Compromise at Constitutional Convention delays confronting the issue of slavery, representation and the congressional balance of power.

2) Assertion of federal supremacy by Marshall’s Supreme Court confirms anti-Federalist warnings about undermining states’ rights: Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and South Carolina Nullification Crisis demonstrate that states’ rights issue has not been settled.

3) A “fire bell in the night”: Missouri Compromise (1820) delays critical issue of slavery in the new territories.

4) Wilmot Proviso reveals that northern sentiment overwhelmingly anti-slavery (against the spread of slavery) but very hostile to blacks and abolitionists.

5) Free Soil Party tips 1848 election to Whigs and heightens southern fears of economic and political domination by the North.

6) Compromise of 1850 (especially the Fugitive Slave Act) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) exacerbate the sectional divide.

7) Bleeding Kansas: violent rhetoric and actions increase on both sides of the slavery conflict. 

8) Whig party breaks up over slavery; Republican party (founded 1854) and ominous sectional vote in 1856 presidential campaign.

9) Dred Scott decision (1857) erases efforts to resolve the slavery extension issue by invalidating the Missouri Compromise.

10) Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858): South infuriated by Douglas’s assertion that territories could ban slavery through popular sovereignty despite Dred Scott decision.

11) John Brown’s raid (1859) and the election of Lincoln (refuses to compromise on extending slavery) leads to secession of South Carolina in December, 1860.

3: The Union is Tested:

1) “Secessionitis”: seven states secede by March 1861 to form Confederate States of America; four more states secede after Ft. Sumter and Lincoln’s call for volunteers.

2) Lincoln’s initial war aim, to restore the Union (with or without slavery), reflects deep political and racial divisions in the North.

3) Lincoln uses emergency powers, suspends habeas corpus and arrests anti-War Democrats (Copperheads) to hold border states (Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri).

4) Northern public opinion reluctant to endorse emancipation; 1863 draft riots in New York demonstrate hostility to blacks and abolitionism.

5) Women in the war: nursing and U.S. Sanitary Commission; attempts to link the abolition of slavery to the drive for women’s rights.

6) Congressional Republicans push legislation formerly resisted by South: Land Grant colleges, subsidies to railroads, Homestead Act.

4: The North Turns Against Slavery:

1) Escaped slaves treated as “contraband of war”; Lincoln resists by Congressional Republican and the military to free slaves used to support the Confederacy.

2) Black and white abolitionists and radical Republicans endorse the eradication of slavery as the principal goal for the war.

3) Lincoln gradually concludes that emancipation inseparable from military victory; Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) allows Army to free slaves in rebel areas.

4) Congress approves black recruits; 200,000 blacks enlist and some see action in several theaters of the war; blacks constitute 1/3 of Union Navy.   

5) Lincoln gradually endorses full emancipation as central aim of the war.

6) Lincoln’s reelection (1864) destroys last hope of South for a negotiated peace and the survival of slavery.

7) 13^th Amendment (1865) bans slavery in the United States.

5: The Military Defeat of the South:

1) Northern economic and industrial advantages (4/5 of the factories; 2/3 of the railroads; 4/5 of the free population) fail to produce quick military victory.

2) South united by goal of self-determination and independence; non-slaveholding white majority (75%) committed to preserving the “southern way of life”.

3) Most skilled military officers (including West Point graduates) side with the Confederacy.

4) Early southern victories demoralize divided North; McClellan fails to pursue Robert E. Lee and Lincoln appoints a series of inadequate Union commanders.  

5) July, 1863 Union victories at Vicksburg (by General Grant) and Gettysburg blunt last southern chance to occupy Washington, capture Lincoln, and dictate peace.

6) South fails to win European recognition or intervention largely because of slavery.

7) Grant and Sherman (burning of Atlanta and march to the sea) grind down southern economy and manpower.

8) Union naval blockade: food shortages undermine southern civilian morale.

9) April 1865: Lee surrenders and Lincoln assassinated; physical and economic devastation of the South.