War Approaches

 Before, during, and after the debate over the Kansas- Nebraska Act, there were clear signs that the bonds that tied the nation together were rapidly coming apart.  In Boston during 1854, an angry crowd attacked Federal Marshalls and slave catchers who were escorting an escaped slave named Anthony Burns who had lived in Boston for many years. One Marshall was fatally stabbed and the U.S. Army was called in to restore order.

 In May of 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with his cane until he was unconscious and severely injured.  While the beating took place, two fellow Southerners prevented anyone from helping Sumner. One of them held a pistol on other senators and shouted for them to “Let them be” while the attack was taking place.  The reason for the attack was that Sumner had criticized his relative (Senator Andrew Butler) in an anti-slave speech. Sumner was unable to return to work for over three years due to the injuries he received in the attack.

 Brooks was a hero in the South. Many sent him a new cane to replace the one that he had broken over Sumner’s head. The common Southern view was that he had taught the “cowardly Yankee’s” a well-deserved lesson.  The North was deeply shocked and angered by the incident. Northern anger increased when it was discovered that no charges were to be pressed against Brooks (to avoid raising North-South tensions). The entire incident proved to Northerners that compromise with the South was impossible and that slavery only led to violence.

 Frustration over the unwillingness of the Whigs and Democrats to face the issue of slavery and its spread to the west, men committed to stopping the spread of slavery formed the Republican Party in Michigan during  The party was not an abolitionist party. The Republicans did not wish to destroy slavery, they only wished to stop its spread.  Southerners, however, were convinced that the Republicans were radical abolitionists who were dedicated to destroying the South.  The party was too new to challenge the Democrats, but one member from Illinois attracted national attention with a powerful speech.

 “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

 The Republicans chose Mexican War hero and frontiersman John C. Fremont to run for President, a man with little political experience.  Millard Fillmore ran for what was left of the dying Free Soil Party.  The Democrats selected a career politician and Northerner, James Buchanan, to run for President. He was known to be sympathetic to the South and its views.

John Fremont Millard Fillmore James Buchanon

 Buchanan won enough support from the North and South to win the election.  The Republicans, however, won 33% of the national vote without winning a single Southern State.  The South quickly realized what this meant – their power to influence national politics was nearly gone. Many Southerners began to talk of seceding if a Republican candidate ever became President.  With their power in Congress slipping away, Southerners knew that the only real influence that they would have in the Federal Government would be through the office of the Presidency.

 A new Republican candidate was selected to run against Democrat Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois Senate Race – Abraham Lincoln. He challenged Douglas to several debates, which became the center of attention throughout the United States.  During the debates, Douglas claimed that Lincoln was a radical abolitionist who wanted to free slaves everywhere, destroy relations between the North and South, push the nation into a civil war, and flood the North with free blacks that would take away white jobs.

 Douglas argued that a vote for a “Black Republican” such as Lincoln was a vote for war. Douglas also supported the idea of popular sovereignty in the territories – slavery was acceptable to him if the people of a territory wanted it.  Lincoln took the more difficult position in the debates. He claimed that slavery was an evil that could no longer be ignored or allowed to spread any further. He warned his audiences that the nation would have to deal with the slave issue or that it would destroy the nation. Lincoln opposed popular sovereignty and the spread of slavery.

 Lincoln also argued that freed slaves should be given all of the rights granted to whites in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. While not willing to accept slaves as fully equal to whites, Lincoln did believe that slaves should have equal rights – especially the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Lincoln lost the election, but won fame all over America. In the North, this election helped to bring him to the attention of Republican Party leaders and eventually led to his nomination in 1860 as the Republican candidate for president.