Wages of Whiteness

The Dred Scott decision (1857) sought to enshrine white supremacy in constitutional law and vanquish the antislavery activists who opposed Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis’s Democratic Party. Nevertheless, the Davis-Douglas rivalry intensified in the late 1850s. Racism and anti-abolitionism were flimsy foundations for party unity because they could not resolve the tension between Douglas’s majoritarianism and Davis’s dedication to slaveholders’ property rights. This conflict exploded into intraparty war in 1858 as Democrats debated the admission of Kansas as a state under the proslavery Lecompton Constitution. Embraced by Davis and like-minded Democrats for safeguarding property rights, the Lecompton Constitution was assailed by Douglas and his allies as a perversion of popular sovereignty. After clashing over Lecompton in the Senate, Davis and Douglas had to defend themselves back home. Davis veered toward more extreme positions on reopening the Atlantic slave trade and passing federal legislation to protect slavery in western territories. Meanwhile, Douglas ran for re-election against Abraham Lincoln, a formidable foe who forced him to prove that popular sovereignty could produce free states. By 1859, Democrats’ efforts to win state and local elections exacerbated their party’s internal sectional conflict.

Manifest Destinies

The U.S.-Mexican War propelled Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis to the pinnacles of power but triggered a new round of sectional conflict that shook the Democratic Party to its core. Davis’s celebrated military service won him a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he fought to protect slaveholders’ property rights throughout the nation’s massive new western domain. Douglas joined him in the Senate as the self-appointed spokesman for a vast western constituency stretching from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. As they attempted to govern the Mexican Cession and the Oregon Territory, Davis and Douglas grappled with portentous questions about democracy, property rights, and the Union. Douglas embraced popular sovereignty as a means to preserve white men’s self-government, but Davis denounced it as a cloaked free soil doctrine and demanded positive federal protection for property in human beings. Their conflict escalated until Douglas helped broker the Compromise of 1850. Douglas hailed the compromise as a permanent basis for sectional peace, while Davis’s dogged resistance to the measure briefly upended his career.

The Politics of Slavery and the Coming Civil War

This article is divided into four parts. The first recounts the events of the sectional crisis up to the Compromise of 1850. The second looks at factors underlying these events: the relationship between slavery and the Democratic Party, deepening attachment of the South to slavery, the economic and social changes that generated antislavery sentiment in the North (including the shift to wage labor), and the much neglected role of slave resistance in the politics of the sectional conflict. The third shows the decisive impact of these factors in the final decade of peace. The fourth refers to, and criticizes, some current interpretations and misunderstandings of the origins of the Civil War,

Democrats and Whigs

The rivalry between the Whig and Democratic Parties, often called the “Second American Party System,” first emerged in Andrew Jackson’s administration (1829–1837). Democrats organized to secure Jackson’s 1828 election, then united behind his program of Indian removal, no federal funding of internal improvements, opposition to the Bank of the United States, defense of slavery, and the “spoils system” that used patronage for party building. Whigs supported Henry Clay’s pro-development American System, sympathized with evangelical reform, and reluctantly accepted Democratic techniques for popular mobilization and party organization. The mature parties competed closely in most states and briefly eased sectional conflict, before splitting in the 1850s over slavery in the territories. Whigs made no presidential nomination in 1856, and the Second Party System disintegrated. As it did, Northern Whigs and antislavery Democrats merged in the Republican Party, southern Whiggery steeply declined, and Democrats survived as the only national party.

Speculations

This chapter explains speculations that a civil war would be sparked by a sectional conflict between rival classes and economies. Radicals in both regions imagined an unavoidable battle between free labor and slavery. It shows how new technology and burgeoning capitalism affected American approaches to the future. The telegraph promoted faith in the reach and permanence of human actions. The railroad encouraged a go-ahead culture of enterprising visionaries who won the race of life by progressing ahead of ordinary men and fashioning the future. These changes increased the tempo of life, heightened fears of economic panics and political conspiracies, and emboldened speculators who hoped to capitalize on a showdown between free and slave labor.

Understanding the Roots of War

This chapter focuses on the sectional conflict leading to war. It reviews changing interpretive approaches before focusing on new work that often takes a global or Atlantic and primarily economic perspective. It raises many questions that may usefully inspire future research. The South, the North, and the “middle” or “border” third of the nation receive attention, as do African Americans and popular attitudes toward the nation.

We Are Approaching a Crisis Pregnant with Immense and Momentous Results

This chapter follows the political aftermath of John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Brown, an abolitionist, attempted to start a massive slave rebellion and although unsuccessful, the incursion added another layer of animosity to the sectional conflict and made it all the more difficult for white border southerners to adhere to a middle ground position between the North and the South. The possibility of future abolitionist attacks, which would undoubtedly take place on the soil of the Border South, pushed some white border southerners into the secessionist ranks and undercut the arguments of political moderates who espoused a proslavery Unionist outlook. This chapter also investigates the political divisions within the region by exploring the contest for Speaker of the House of Representatives which took place in the U.S. Congress just weeks after Brown’s raid.