The US in 1848-1861 was riven by the political crisis surrounding the expansion of slavery into the new western territories. They could not resolve the conflict, eventually leading to the Civil War. This is a lecture on that.
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assigned readings for this week
William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), 41, 43, 378, 137, 158: bit.ly/2z5AuF3
Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia (Boston: 1860), 16, 18-20: bit.ly/2ZcBUIy
1860 Republican Party Platform: bit.ly/3dU8kvo
South Carolina Declaration of Secession (1860): bit.ly/2WBszrY
Bibliography
William J. Cooper, We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860 - April 1861 (New York: Vintage Books, 2011). amzn.to/2T8tIFP
Joanne B. Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War (New York: Picador, 2018), ebook. amzn.to/3sqKgKW
Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010). amzn.to/2xbEKSp
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861, Reprint (1976; New York: Harper Perennial, 2011). amzn.to/3aeYy5q
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Wiki: Slavery’s western expansion created problems for the United States from the very start. Battles emerged over the westward expansion of slavery and over the role of the federal government in protecting the interests of enslavers. Northern workers felt that slavery suppressed wages and stole land that could have been used by poor white Americans to achieve economic independence. Southerners feared that without slavery’s expansion, the abolitionist faction would come to dominate national politics and an increasingly dense population of enslaved people would lead to bloody insurrection and race war. Constant resistance from enslaved men and women required a strong pro-slavery government to maintain order. As the North gradually abolished human bondage, enslaved men and women headed north on an underground railroad of hideaways and safe houses. Northerners and southerners came to disagree sharply on the role of the federal government in capturing and returning these freedom seekers. While northerners appealed to their states’ rights to refuse to capture people escaping slavery, white southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery. Enslaved laborers meanwhile remained vitally important to the nation’s economy, fueling not only the southern plantation economy but also providing raw materials for the industrial North. Differences over the fate of slavery remained at the heart of American politics, especially as the United States expanded. After decades of conflict, Americans north and south began to fear that the opposite section of the country had seized control of the government. By November 1860, an opponent of slavery’s expansion arose from within the Republican Party. During the secession crisis that followed, fears nearly a century in the making at last devolved into bloody war.