Secession, in the end, raised the possibility of emancipation through war, a possibility most Republicans knew, of course, had always been an option, but one they nonetheless hoped would never be necessary. In time, these divisions became both sectional and irreconcilable. This mural, created over eighty years after John Browns death, captures the violence and religious fervorof the man and his era. The Compromise of 1850 Known as the "Great Compromiser," Henry Clay formulated the Compromise of 1850 as one of his last signicant political works. The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. The notorious confrontation between Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina and Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner depicted in Figure 1, illustrates the contempt between extremists on both sides. 7. NavigueWeb. The Whig Party blamed Democrats for defending slavery at the expense of the American people, but antislavery was never a core component of the Whig platform. Engs, Robert F., and Randall M. Miller, eds. This lithograph imagines the consequences of the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850. Meanwhile, news from a number of failed European revolutions alarmed American reformers, but as exiled radicals filtered into the United States, a strengthening womens rights movement also flexed its muscle at Seneca Falls, New York. The federal commissioners who heard these cases were paid $10 if they determined that the defendant was enslaved and only $5 if they determined he or she was free.20 Many Black northerners responded to the new law by heading farther north to Canada. The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. Anthony Burns, the fugitive slave, appears in a portrait at the center of this 1855 print. The Impact of the Revolution on Slavery, 35. Far more important than the Utah invasion, however, was the ongoing . Circuit Court in Northern states and territories to take extreme steps in order to help secure and return any runaway slaves from . The Missouri debate had also deeply troubled the nations African Americans and Native Americans. Writer, activist, and teacher Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1837 to a well-to-do African American family. The heavily-criticized statute authorized commissioners of the U.S. South of that line, running east from Missouri to the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase lands (near the present-day Texas panhandle), slavery could expand. As the North gradually abolished human bondage, enslaved men and women headed north on an underground railroad of hideaways and safe houses. In some ways that is precisely what it did. Whigs, like Abraham Lincoln, found their protests sidelined, but antislavery voices were becoming more vocal and more powerful. 5 Why was the sectional crisis important? 11. On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede, and issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes., 8. Enslaved laborers meanwhile remained vitally important to the nations economy, fueling not only the southern plantation economy but also providing raw materials for the industrial North. Douglasss entrance into northern politics marked an important new development in the nations coming sectional crisis. The country seemed to teeter ever closer to a full-throated endorsement of slavery. The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. A new transatlantic antislavery movement began to argue that freedom was the natural condition of man. The balancing act between slavery and freedom continued. Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed laws that would gradually abolish slavery in the new state. Texas, which had already come into the Union as a slave state, was asked to give some of its land to New Mexico in return for the federal government absorbing some of the former republics debt. Borderland negotiations and accommodations along the Ohio River fostered a distinctive kind of white supremacy, as laws tried to keep blacks out of the West entirely. Events in Texas would shatter the balance. 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. The Fugitive Slave Act created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal power, including an alarming increase in the nations policing powers. Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation. $ 57.47 $ 40.49 3 items. Abraham Lincoln, and ultimately, the Civi l W ar. 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. Both of these events changed the relationship of the nation in many ways. Nicholas Wood, A Sacrifice on the Altar of Slavery: Doughface Politics and Black Disenfranchisement in Pennsylvania, 18371838,. Enslaved workers also helped give rise to revolutionary new ideals that in time became the ideological foundations of the sectional crisis. A vibrant red sets off the free states. Questions over the expansion of slavery remained open, but nearly all Americans concluded that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed. 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. He went to the gallows in December 1859. 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? James K. Polk: Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845. The story of voter fraud in Kansas had begun years before in 1854, when nearby Missourians first started crossing the border to tamper with the Kansas elections. . On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede and issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes.33 The declaration highlighted failure of the federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act over competing personal liberty laws in northern states. Noting this, critics at the time attacked the Pierce administration for not living up to the ideals of popular sovereignty by ensuring fair elections. Douglas had a number of goals in mind. The Missouri Compromise marked a major turning point in America's sectional crisis because it exposed to the public just how divisive the slavery issue had grown. 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. Kentucky and Tennessee emerged as slave states, while free states Ohio, Indiana (1816), and Illinois (1818) gained admission along the rivers northern banks. Calhoun's pamphlet sparked a national debate over the doctrine of nullification and its constitutionality. It was a promising start. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River. In Article I, Section 2, for example, the Constitution enabled representation in the South to be based on rules defining an enslaved person as three-fifths of a voter, meaning southern white men would be overrepresented in Congress. News reached Washington, and the federal government sent soldiers. That wealth and luxury fostered seemingly limitless opportunities and inspired seemingly boundless imaginations. The framers of the Constitution never used the word slave. The bruising Missouri debates ultimately transcended arguments about the Constitution. Weeks after Abraham Lincolns inauguration, rebels in the newly formed Confederate States of America opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. This showing, they urged, was truly impressive for any party making its first run at the presidency. "Bleeding Kansas" was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis. The Sectional Crisis The Road to the Civil War 1850-1861 2. Both of these images continued to pervade public memory after the Civil War, but in the North especially (where so many soldiers had died to help end slavery) his name was admired. Leonhardt (engraver), Map Showing the Distribution of the Slave Population of the Southern States of the United States Compiled from the Census of 1860, c. 1861. Others began to explore the option of more radical and direct action against the Slave Power. Believing their fate had been sealed as permanent noncitizens, some African Americans would consider foreign emigration and colonization. Whites discontented with the direction of the country used the slur and other critiques to help chip away at Democratic Party majorities. By the time of the Missouri compromise debate, both groups saw that whites never intended them to be citizens of the United States. Both regions saw the fate of the growing Western territories as inexorably tied to their own way of life and whether free labor or slavery would continue to flourish. In 1853, the Nebraska Territory was huge, extending from the northern end of Texas to the Canadian border. After the war many southerners claimed that secession was primarily motivated by a concern to preserve states rights, but the primary complaint of the very first ordinance of secession listed the federal governments failure to exert its authority over the northern states. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. Fighting spread even farther against Native Americans in the Far West and against Mormons in Utah. Slavery briefly receded from the nations attention in the early 1820s, but that would change quickly. The nations militants anticipated a coming breakdown and worked to exploit it. One year earlier, Burns had escaped slavery in Virginia, and a group of slave catchers had come to return him to Richmond. it showed that a president could win the While some may argue that the sectional crisis is a result of the fight for power between the North and South; the sectional crisis can be attributed to three main factors and their effects on the nation, differences . Each revolution seemed to radicalize the next. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. In June 1856, the newly named Republican Party held its nominating convention at Philadelphia and selected Californian John Charles Frmont. What was the main cause of sectional tension? The state of Mississippi seceded. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. The debate filled newspapers, speeches, and congressional records. For nearly a century, most white Americans were content to compromise over the issue of slavery, but the constant agitation of Black Americans, both enslaved and free, kept the issue alive.3. Texas struggled with ongoing conflicts with Mexico and raids from the powerful Comanche. Liberty leaders demanded the end of slavery in the District of Columbia, the end of the interstate slave trade, and the prohibition of slaverys expansion into the West. Amos A. Lawrence to Giles Richards, June 1, 1854, quoted in Jane J. Pease and William H. Pease, eds., Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854, in.