Troubled Times: The Sectional Crisis, 1850–1861

This is Unit Fourteen, part three, from the Dred Scott decision to the election of eighteen sixty. Part two closed with a party absorbing another party and a country running out of middle ground. This half is where the middle ground disappears entirely. Carry one structural fact. Before eighteen fifty-seven there were exactly two ways to contain the quarrel — a geographic line drawn in eighteen twenty, and popular sovereignty, which handed the question to whoever settled a territory. One Supreme Court opinion destroyed both, in the same decision, on the same reasoning. After that there was no constitutional middle position left for anyone to occupy, and everything in this lecture follows from that. By the end you will be able to state Taney's three holdings. To state both halves of what Lincoln said at Ottawa. To explain the Freeport Doctrine. To say what Harpers Ferry achieved. And to explain why forty percent of the vote was enough.

Two entries on how a Missouri freedom suit reached the Supreme Court.

The suit.

USH1 1998 Dred Scott's Suit

Dred Scott was born enslaved in Virginia in seventeen ninety-five and moved by the internal slave trade to Missouri, then taken to Illinois and Wisconsin Territory, both destinations covered by the Northwest Ordinance's prohibition of slavery. Back in Missouri he tried to buy his freedom, was refused, and sued on the ground that residence in free territory had made him free.

The courts below.

USH1 1999 The Courts Below

A jury found Scott, his wife and their two children free, and Missouri's Superior Court reversed that verdict on appeal, with Scott becoming the property of John Sanford of New York, misspelled Sandford in the case documents. He lost in federal court in eighteen fifty-four and appealed to the Supreme Court, which is how a Missouri freedom suit became a national ruling.

One entry now, and it is the most important constitutional entry in this course.

What the Court decided.

USH1 2000 Taney's Ruling

In eighteen fifty-seven Chief Justice Roger Taney, himself a former slaveholder who had freed the people he held, delivered the Court's decision. He ruled three things. Dred Scott remained enslaved. Black people could never be citizens of the United States, since a free Black person, in Taney's words, is not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution. And Congress lacked authority to limit slavery's spread into the territories, because enslaved people were property protected by the federal government and Congress could not stop a citizen taking with him his slaves when he removes to the Territory. The second and third holdings had immediate consequences. The Missouri Compromise of eighteen twenty was unconstitutional and had been all along, and popular sovereignty was implicitly invalidated, since a territorial majority could not forbid what Congress itself could not forbid. Scott had sued on the ground that residence in free territory made him free, and the citizenship holding removed his ability to bring the suit in a federal court at all. The importance is structural rather than moral. Before eighteen fifty-seven there were two ways to contain the quarrel, and Taney destroyed both at once, so afterwards there was no constitutional middle position left. Note what that does to the Republican Party. Its entire platform was stopping slavery's expansion by act of Congress, and the Court had now held that Congress may not do it. A party whose central policy has been ruled unconstitutional has few options left.

Three entries on the debates that followed, and note what carried them.

The debates.

USH1 2001 The Debates of 1858

Lincoln and Douglas held seven debates in the Illinois senate race of eighteen fifty-eight, and the texts were published nationally as they went, with Douglas already prominent and Lincoln becoming so through them. A state legislative contest became a national argument because of print, which is the same mechanism that carried Stowe's novel two years earlier.

How Douglas attacked.

USH1 2002 Douglas's Attack

Douglas called Republicans abolitionists who promoted miscegenation, and called them Black Republicans, a threat to the Constitution and to the founders' work — a racial charge used as the central campaign weapon in a northern state. Illinois voters opposed the extension of slavery and were not thereby in favour of racial equality, and Douglas built his whole campaign on that gap.

Lincoln's central claim.

USH1 2003 A House Divided

Lincoln held that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and that the government could not endure permanently half Slave and half Free, reading Dred Scott and Kansas-Nebraska together as one effort. He argued that the two together were an attempt to nationalise slavery, which was a claim about intent and not only about consequences.

One entry, and the course's rule for it is that both halves are quoted or neither is.

Lincoln at Ottawa.

USH1 2004 Lincoln at Ottawa

At Ottawa, Illinois, on August twenty-first, eighteen fifty-eight, Lincoln said two things in the same passage, and this course quotes both or neither. He disclaimed any purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. In the same breath he maintained that Black people held all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, and that in the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, the Black man was, in Lincoln's words, my equal. The setting matters. Douglas had spent the campaign calling Republicans abolitionists who promoted miscegenation, and calling them Black Republicans, and Lincoln was answering that charge in front of Illinois voters whose support he needed. Note the exact scope of each half. The disclaimer is about political and social equality, which in that campaign meant voting and intermarriage. The affirmation is about natural rights and about the product of a person's own labour. Do not sand this down in either direction. Quote only the disclaimer and you produce a Lincoln indifferent to slavery. Quote only the affirmation and you produce a Lincoln from a later century. What the passage shows is a politician working inside the limits of what Illinois voters in eighteen fifty-eight would tolerate, and locating the claim he could defend, which was the right of a person to what his own hand earns. That claim is narrower than equality and it is not nothing, since a right to the product of your labour is precisely what slavery takes.

One entry on the answer that saved a doctrine and destroyed a career.

How Douglas answered the ruling.

USH1 2005 The Freeport Doctrine

At the second debate Douglas was asked how popular sovereignty could survive Dred Scott, and he answered that whatever the Supreme Court decided, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please. The position helped him in Illinois, where voters opposed the extension of slavery, and he won the Senate seat. It also antagonised southern slavery supporters and fractured the Democratic Party, and it cost him the presidency two years later. Dred Scott had held that Congress could not bar slavery from a territory, which implicitly invalidated popular sovereignty, the doctrine Douglas had built his career on. His answer kept the doctrine alive by locating the power in the people rather than in any government, and southerners heard it correctly as a way around the ruling they had won.

Four entries on eighteen fifty-nine, and the raid at the centre of them failed completely.

Where the country stood.

USH1 2006 The Setting

Lincoln's speeches had clarified Republican opposition to extension and the belief that a Slave Power conspiracy sought to nationalize the institution, with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives by eighteen fifty-eight. Southern leaders split in response. Fire-Eaters demanded secession, while Jefferson Davis of Mississippi wanted constitutional protection of slavery instead.

The raid.

USH1 2007 Harpers Ferry

John Brown was born in Connecticut in eighteen hundred and held that slavery was an unacceptable evil that must be purged by violence. He told abolitionists his plan, some funded it, and Frederick Douglass refused, finding it suicidal. On October sixteenth, eighteen fifty-nine, Brown and eighteen armed men, Black and White, took the unguarded federal armoury at Harpers Ferry.

What happened next.

USH1 2008 The Raid Failed

Brown hoped to arm an uprising and found few enslaved people nearby, and townspeople attacked his party in the engine house, with federal troops under Colonel Robert E. Lee capturing them within days. Virginia hanged Brown on December second for treason. Note who commanded the troops, and note that no uprising took place at all.

How the country read it.

USH1 2009 The Reaction

Southerners saw a terrorist, support for secession grew, and several southern states passed anti-rebellion laws in response, with a Maryland resident asking whether one could live under a government whose subjects regard Brown as a martyr. Many northern antislavery advocates did consider him a martyr, comparing him to Jesus Christ. The raid failed; its consequences lay in how it was read.

Two entries on the party that came apart, and one refusal did it.

The break.

USH1 2010 The Democrats Break in Two

The Democratic convention at Charleston in April eighteen sixty broke up after northern Democrats rejected Jefferson Davis's move to protect slavery in the territories — a protection that would have been unpopular in the North and was therefore refused. Fire-Eaters had vowed to stop Douglas and insisted on a southerner, and Dred Scott and the Freeport Doctrine had already divided the party.

Four candidates.

USH1 2011 Four Candidates

At Baltimore the northern Democrats nominated Douglas and the southern Democrats nominated Vice President John Breckinridge of Kentucky, forming two competing sectional factions, while the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell of the border states. Bell pledged to end agitation and preserve the Union but never fully explained how. Republicans nominated Lincoln, making four candidates in one election.

One entry to close the unit, and the arithmetic in it is the whole argument.

Forty percent.

USH1 2012 Forty Percent

Lincoln took forty percent of the popular vote in eighteen sixty. He won every northern state except New Jersey. His name was blocked from southern ballots entirely, and he still carried a majority in the Electoral College. Fire-Eaters refused the result and South Carolina led the formal withdrawals beginning that year. Mary Boykin Chesnut of South Carolina wrote that now the Black radical Republicans have the power, fearing more mayhem like the John Brown raid. So a president was elected by a section, whose name a southern voter could not have marked on a ballot even in order to reject it. Secession followed from a demographic fact as much as a political one, because the North alone was now enough to elect a president over the united opposition of the South. Every compromise since eighteen twenty had assumed a sectional balance that could be maintained by admitting states in pairs, and the census had ended that.

Look at what you can now do. You can state Taney's three holdings — that Scott remained enslaved, that Black people could never be citizens, and that Congress could not limit slavery in the territories — and you can say what they destroyed, which was the line of eighteen twenty and popular sovereignty together, leaving no constitutional middle. You can state both halves of Ottawa: a disclaimer of political and social equality, meaning voting and intermarriage, and an affirmation of natural rights and of a man's claim to the bread his own hand earns. You can explain the Freeport Doctrine, which kept popular sovereignty alive by locating the power in the people, won Douglas a Senate seat and cost him a national party. You can say what Harpers Ferry achieved, which was nothing on the ground — no uprising, capture within days, Lee in command — and that its whole effect was in how each section read it. And you can explain why forty percent was enough: the North alone could now elect a president, and the census had ended the balance every compromise since eighteen twenty had assumed.