05d: Of Human Bondage

Dancing Around The Problem
From the very beginning of America's history, the Founders despaired of reconciling the slave and free states. Various half-measures were taken: the rule that a slave counted for three-fifths of a free person for tax and election purpose, letting the international slave trade continue until 1808, and the banning of slavery in the Northwest Territory. Northerners and Southerners alike hoped that slavery would just die out, but the rise of "King Cotton" and its domination of the Southern economy made slavery even stronger. Thanks to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, adding slave and free states to the Union on a one for one basis was the law of the land.  Meanwhile, slavery was being phased out in empires around the world, and the US was being criticized for not joining the trend. Try as it might to solve the problem, America was merely holding off the inevitable. The ultimate solution nearly destroyed the nation.

As early as 1830 groups of middle-class Northerners began demanding what they called "abolition:" freedom and full civil rights for enslaved blacks. Yet half-measures like the Missouri Compromise held the Union largely intact until the Mexican War added massive new territories to the United States. Because territorial questions were handled by Congress, the extension of slavery became the hot button political issue. Southerners suspected a Northern plot against the Southern economy. Northerners were suspicious of President Polk: Polk wouldn't fight Great Britain for Oregon (a free territory), but he started a war with Mexico over Texas (which was slated  to become a slave territory). Northerners supported the Wilmot Proviso, which would have kept slavery out of former Mexican territory, while Polk wanted to extend the Missouri Compromise line all the way from Missouri to Southern California. Then came the 1848 California Gold Rush, which drew in tens of thousands of settlers and made California's statehood an issue far earlier than expected. There was no slave state ready to be added to the Union along with California, which led to all sorts of strange proposals for partition.

More half-measures
The Compromise of 1850 was a doomed attempt to fix the situation. Under this agreement Texas was designated a slave state, but California could enter as a free state. The Utah and New Mexico territories would make their own decisions about slavery under "popular sovereignty" - they themselves would vote slavery up or down. The slave trade (but not slavery) was banned in the District of Columbia, and a strong Fugitive Slave Law went into effect. Typically, this "solution" solved next to nothing. The Southerners wanted strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, but Northerners basically ignored it. Some Northern states even declared the Fugitive Slave Law illegal. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 best seller, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," aided the abolitionist cause immensely. Even though its African American characters were grossly stereotypical by modern standards, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" also brought home - or brought North - an accurate picture of how slavery deprived the blacks of human dignity.

Meanwhile, settlers were moving past Missouri into Kansas, raising once more the question whether Kansas would be free or slave. The 1853 Kansas-Nebraska Act provided once more for "popular sovereignty," this time in Kansas and Nebraska. Nebraska, which held no attraction for cotton planters, was no problem.  But popular sovereignty, Kansas style, meant two competing state governments - one freesoil, one proslavery - and a bitter fight over which of the two constitutions would be accepted when Kansas was admitted to the Union. Both Northern abolitionists and Southern slavery supporters financed settlements in Kansas, hoping to gain a majority. Slaveholding Missourians came over the border to help support the proslavery Kansans; freesoil Kansans returned the favors with "jayhawking" expeditions into slaveholding areas of Missouri. Meanwhile, both Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders raised money to equip well-armed parties of "settlers" to help their respective causes. This battleground of "popular sovereignty" became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

The Elections of 1860
In the rollup to the elections of 1860, Southerners and Northerners alike had plenty to be angry about. The 1856 beating of Massachusetts Senator Sumner by South Carolina Congressman Brooks over a slavery-resulted insult scandalized the North and thrilled the South. That same year, proslavery Kansans attacked and burned the freesoil city of Lawrence; in return, an antislavery fanatic named John Brown killed five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Dred Scott, that no black could be a citizen of the United States and that it was unconstitutional to ban slaveholding anywhere in the Union. This spurred the abolitionists to new heights of outrage.  President James Buchanan - a Pennsylvanian but a strong Southern sympathizer - recommended that Congress accept Kansas into the Union with a slaveholding constitution. This was too much for the Northern Democrats to bear, and they joined with the Republicans to defeat this measure in Congress.

With the Democratic party split into Northern and Southern wings over the question of Kansas, the way looked open for an antislavery Republican candidate to win the Presidency in 1860. When Republican Abraham Lincoln did just that, the Southern states quickly declared they were through with the United States. By spring 1861, eleven Southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.  Denying the eleven states' right to secede (Missouri and Kentucky would later try, but fail, to secede) President Lincoln declared that they were in rebellion. He then raised troops to keep the so-called "rebellious states" in the Union. On April 12, 1861 Confederate troops fired on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina. The American Civil War was officially on. By the time it ended in 1865, more than a million Americans (counting both sides) had been killed or wounded. Entire sections of the country were devastated. The tragedy of it all is underscored by the fact that Tsar Alexander II, autocratic ruler of Russia, was able to free Russia's serfs with the flick of his pen. What Great Britain couldn't accomplish in 1776 or 1812, the United States of America nearly accomplished all by itself.