One of the good and useful things about history is that it grants people the ability to look at events in the past, separated by time from the passions and confusion of the day-to-day events, and see how events connect in the long term. In doing this, certain events serve as guideposts to understanding how such a dramatic event as a civil war occurred. For your enjoyment and edification, the decade from 1850 to 1860 can be evaluated in terms of five steps that led to war:
The struggle for Kansas
The rise of the Republican Party
The Dred Scott decision
John Brown’s raid
The election of Abraham Lincoln
This chapter examines each one of these points in detail, then puts them all together to provide a backdrop for the growing sense of crisis that finally led to war.
Struggling for Kansas
As settlers continued to move into new territory, Congress was forced to deal with maintaining a balance of power between the Northern and Southern states. One approach had worked fairly well since 1820 — drawing a geographical boundary line (no slaves north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude — basically the border between Missouri and Arkansas) that extended to the Pacific. This was known as the Missouri Compromise line. It worked because states could enter the Union in pairs: one above and one below the line (Maine-Missouri; Arkansas-Michigan; Florida and Texas-Iowa and Wisconsin). Most of these new Northern states (except Iowa) came from territory that had outlawed slavery in 1787. Because the rich lands of the new Southern states were ideal for growing cotton and other profitable crops, slavery followed the opening of these new states, allowing for an acceptable balance of power in the Congress.
Slavery, as an issue, did not move to the forefront of the national consciousness until after the Mexican-American War. By 1850, everything had changed (see Chapter 1). Faced now with a major crisis over the balance of power, Congress made an exception to the 1820 geographical boundary by admitting California as a free state, but remained faithful to the boundary line with the disposition of New Mexico territory as a way to mollify Southern fears. Yet shortly thereafter, the future of the Kansas-Nebraska territory posed another threat. All of that territory was above the 1820 geographical boundary, and therefore, technically, non-slave territory. The South couldn’t allow that to happen unless two new slave states could also be added to balance power, which didn’t look likely to happen in the near future. The territory north of the Missouri Compromise line was attractive farmland; in contrast, the arid high desert territory south and west of Texas below the compromise line reserved for slavery had little attraction for farmers, whether they owned slaves or not. Another crisis over the political control of the future of America, far more serious than the one in 1850, was brewing.
THE “LITTLE GIANT”
Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861), a Democrat, came to Washington as congressman from Illinois in 1843 and was elected to the Senate in 1847. He became chairman of the Committee on Territories, a position that was highly influential in dealing with the increasingly rancorous debate over the expansion of slavery into the new territories. Douglas gained influence by engineering the portion of the legislation that made up the Compromise of 1850 allowing New Mexico and Utah territories to determine their futures as slave or free states. Seeing an opportunity to solve the slavery question once and for all and unite the Democratic Party under his leadership (which would assure his reelection to the Senate in 1858 and open the door to the presidency in 1860), Douglas enunciated his doctrine of popular sovereignty. The deceptively simple formula of letting the people decide became the basis of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the turmoil that followed in Kansas, Douglas had to defend his policy in his campaign for the Senate against challenger Abraham Lincoln. Douglas, who stood at five feet four inches, was known as the “Little Giant.” He was a formidable orator and astute politician who carefully avoided the traps Lincoln set for him in the debates and won reelection. He would find himself the leader of a fractured Democratic Party in 1860, one presidential candidate among three others, including Lincoln. Garnering only 12 electoral votes in defeat, Douglas fully supported the new Republican president, but died of typhoid fever a month before the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Essentially, Douglas wanted to bypass the issue of slavery altogether in favor of westward expansion. Never believing slavery would expand into the Great Plains anyway, he proposed legislation that would allow the people who entered the territory to decide whether their future state would allow slavery or not. This idea, called popular sovereignty, would take Congress off the hook and give the power to individual citizens to decide the issue for themselves. While it seemed the perfect solution for a democracy, the act threw everything out of balance. Under the logic of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, all territory could legally be opened to slavery, and the compromise boundary line of 1820 no longer held.
This outraged Northerners who were willing to take action to ensure that slavery would be restricted in new territories at all costs. With the rest of the unorganized territory legally open to slavery as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the South believed the time was now or never to assert its rights and ensure that its future power base in the West would be secure. By doing so, it would stave off what appeared to be the increasingly real threat of the North eventually overwhelming the South. Without a balance between free and slave states, the North would gain a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, leaving the South to the mercy of hostile Northern politicians and abolitionists, who would dictate the future direction of the nation. The stage was set for conflict in Kansas. Whichever section won political control of Kansas — by fair means or foul — had a good chance of controlling other territories and the political power in Congress when those territories became states. The political stakes for each section now became very high.
The violence begins
Between 1855 and 1856, Kansas experienced the horror of irregular warfare, serving as the first battleground of pro-slavery and antislavery forces. Northern abolitionist supporters sponsored settlers to move to Kansas and establish a non-slaveholding voting majority that would ban slavery in the new state. Pro-slavery groups from Missouri, called Border Ruffians, entered the state to stuff ballot boxes and intimidate non-slave owners. Soon violence became commonplace as each faction used open force and intimidation to gain an advantage. New Englanders sent rifles to Kansas (in containers labeled “Bibles”) to arm antislavery paramilitary groups. Pro-slavery raiders completely destroyed the town of Lawrence, Kansas. Amazingly, only two people were killed. But acts of retaliation followed, including the murder of five suspected pro-slave settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. A radical antislavery activist named John Brown (see the upcoming section “John Brown’s Raid”) led the band of six murderers.
A congressional committee investigating the incident took no action. Pro-Northern newspapers played down the murders, and Brown was never prosecuted. This outraged Southerners, who claimed justice was being ignored in favor of a political agenda (this may sound familiar to you). As lawlessness took control, the country stood by as Kansas tumbled into anarchy, bleeding from a thousand wounds.
Rising from the Collapse: The Republican Party
The struggle for political power was reflected in the birth and death of a number of political parties between 1850 and 1860. To understand the rise of the Republican Party, one must first understand the collapse of the national party system, which occurred between 1854 and 1858. For over a decade, two political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, dominated