1. The Crisis of Union
Chapter 16

2. The Crisis of Union
“The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic…Mexico will poison us.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. I. The Wilmot Proviso

4. Calhoun Responds…

5. II. Popular Sovereignty
Lewis Cass

6. III. Election of 1848
Lewis Cass
Zachary Taylor
Martin Van Buren

8. IV. California Gold Rush

9. V. California Statehood

10. VI. Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay
John C. Calhoun
Daniel Webster

11. Unexpected Power Shift
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore

12. VII. The Fugitive Slave Act

13. VIII. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe

14. IX. Election of 1852
Franklin Pierce
John P. Hale
Winfield Scott

16. X. Foreign Adventures pp. 626-627

17. XI. Kansas-Nebraska Crisis
Stephen Douglas

18. XII. Bleeding Kansas

19. John Brown

20. XIII. Bleeding Sumner
Andrew Butler
Preston Brooks
Charles Sumner

22. XIV. Election of 1856
Millard Fillmore
John C. Fremont
James Buchanan

24. XV. Dred Scott Case

25. Roger Taney

26. St. Louis

27. VXI. Lecompton Constitution

28. Douglas
Buchanan

30. XVII. Panic of 1857

31. XVIII. Lincoln-Douglas Debates

35. Stephen Douglas, in a debate with Abraham Lincoln (1857):
“Mr. Lincoln tried to avoid the main issue by attacking the truth of my proposition, that
Our fathers made this government divided into free and slave states, recognizing the
right of each to decide all its local questions for itself. Did they not thus make it? It is
true they did not establish slavery in any of the States, or abolish it in any of the
territories, but finding thirteen States, twelve of which were slave and one free, they
agreed to form a government uniting them together, as they stood divided into free and
slave states, and to guarantee forever to each State the right to do as it pleased on the
slavery question…He says he looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished
everywhere. I look forward to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it
pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it
chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business – not mine. I care more for the great
principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the Negroes
in Christendom.

36. Lincoln:
“I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to those rights as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects – certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

37. Douglas:
“If you, Black Republicans, think the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so.”
Lincoln:
“Because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone.”

38. Lincoln:
“When…you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro; when you have put him down and made it forever impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out in the darkness like that which broods over the spirits of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?”

39. XIX. John Brown’s Raid

40. Harper’s Ferry, 1859

41. John Brown’s Fort

45. John Brown at his sentencing:
“Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.”

47. “That new saint will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“That new saint will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”

49. Cadets Who Witnessed Execution

50. Last Moments of John Brown
By Thomas Hovenden

51. John Brown’s Grave in New York

52. XX. Election of 1860

53. Douglas
Breckinridge

54. Constitutional Union Party
John Bell

56. XXI. Secession of the Deep South

57. Jefferson Davis

58. Confederate Capitol Building
Virginia State House
Confederate Capitol Building