Chapter 19 Flashcards
Harriet Beecher Stowe
the daughter of influential preacher Lyman Beecher, Harriet was influenced by the religious crusades of the Second Great Awakening to adopt an abolitionist perspective. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Stowe published the highly influential Uncle’s Tom Cabin to bring the atrocities of slavery into the light of the public consciousness, especially within the North. Stowe’s book outraged the South while hundreds of thousands of copies were sold in the North and abroad within the first year. The novel is considered to be a major stepping stone towards the Civil War and thus Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war” when he first met Stowe in person.
- Hinton R. Helper
a non-aristocratic white from North Carolina who hated both slavery and blacks, he was the author of The Impending Crisis of the South, in which he attempted to prove with various statistics that indirectly, the non-holding whites were the ones who suffered the most from the institution of slavery. Helper’s views were deeply scorned by the elite of the South and condemned as “dirty allusions” and spreading wicked “lies.” They took efforts to ban the book that undermined their power and Helper’s book was often burned along with Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
- John Brown
): a spare, gray-bearded, and iron-willed man who was believed to be insane, Brown was the controversial figure in the beginning stages of the battles within Kansas and the infamous raid on Harpers Ferry. Brown and his followers mutilated five bodies in retaliation against the Southern attack on Lawrence. Later on, Brown would become the mastermind behind the raid on Harpers Ferry, believing that God was leading him to free the slaves. Brown took over the arsenal with the belief that the slaves would rally to his position and start an uprising for a free state for blacks. However, such a response never came and Brown was captured by Marines under Robert E. Lee. Brown was sentenced to death for murder and treason, but he died as a martyr in the eyes of many Northern abolitionists, much to the dismay of the Southerners.
- James Buchanan
A weak president who was often swayed by his Southern supporters after his election in 1856. Buchanan was not a particularly adept politician and his presidency was marred by the Dred Scott decision, Bleeding Kansas, and the panic of 1857. On the matter of Kansas, Buchanan unwisely chose to throw his support behind the Lecompton Constitution for the statehood of Kansas. Opposed by Stephen Douglas on this matter, Buchanan’s actions led to the beginning of the permanent split between Northern and Southern Democrats. Ultimately, Kansas would remain a territory and Buchanan’s actions would cost him reelection in 1860, failing even to secure the Democratic nomination.
- Charles Sumner
A senator of Massachusetts who was among the few leading political figures who was an outspoken abolitionists. he was a tall and imposing figure and through his various dealings had become a highly disliked senator. In 1856, Sumner delivered a speech titled, “The Crime Against Kansas,” condemning the proslavery men and referring insultingly to one of the best-liked members of the Senate, Andrew Butler from South Carolina. His speech incited Congressmen Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina to beat him with a cane on the floor of Congress until the cane broke. Sumner suffered serious neurological damage and the blood that he shed could be considered among the first blows of the Civil War.
- John C. Fremont
): a war hero in California during the Mexican American War, Fremont was chose as the Republican nominee in 1856 with the nickname Pathfinder of the West. Fremont was largely chosen for his lack of association with the Kansas issue, even though he had little to no political experience. Ultimately, doubts over his honesty, capacity, and sound judgment cost him the election. The threats of Southern proslavery men also intimidated some northerners to vote for Buchanan so as to avoid a bloody conflict.
- Dred Scott
a black salve who had lived with his master for five years in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory. After his owner had died, Scott, with the backing of abolitionists, sued the widow for his freedom. He claimed that by living on free soil for five years, he had established his residency and was thus a free man. Ultimately, Scott’s case was shot down because blacks were not citizens of the United States and thus were not protected by the extension of court rights. The decision on Scott’s case caused Northerners to become even more defiant while the Southerners became outraged at this defiance.
- Roger Tane
The Chief Justice in the Dred Scott decision, Taney persuaded the rest of the Southern judges to go beyond dismissing the Scott case as a black who had no right to be represented in court. Instead, Taney probably thought that a more thorough ruling would put to rest any further debates on the matter of slavery. However, that was not the case. Under Taney’s direction, the Supreme Court ruled that slave owners could not be prohibited from taking their slaves where they pleased because slaves were property that were protected from government legislation under the Fifth Amendment. Furthermore, Taney ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, thus bringing an end to the legislation that had kept a lid on the slavery issue for over a generation.
- John C. Breckinridge
the nominee for the Southern Democrats in the election of 1860, he would eventually lose to Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election. The Southern Democrats split away from their Northern counterparts after they felt they could not support the Northerners’ choice of Stephen Douglas for the presidency. Instead, they formed a rival convention and nominated vice president John C. Breckinridge, a man of moderate views from the state of Kentucky. Under Breckinridge, the Southern Democrats supported the positions of extension of slavery into the territories and the annexation of slave-populated Cuba.
- John Bell
the presidential nominee for the Constitutional Union party in the election of 1860. The party itself looked to take a middle-of-the-road stance towards politics and thus nominated the compromise candidate of John Bell of Tennessee. Bell’s campaign was spurred on by the ringing of hand bells and handbills saying, “The Union, the Constitution, and the Enforcement of the Laws.”
- Abraham Lincoln (
a gaunt, thin figure originally born in a log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 as the Republican nominee. Lincoln was originally a political dead man after his spot resolutions during the Mexican American War. However, he developed a new reputation for himself by challenging and then holding his own against Stephen Douglas in a series of debates during their campaigns for the Illinois senator position. Although Lincoln lost the senator position battle, he had developed a name for himself while creating a divide within the Democrat Party by pushing Douglas into espousing the Freeport Doctrine. Thus, the stage was ripe of Lincoln’s election as President in 1860, after which South Carolina and other states seceded during the lame duck period.
- Jefferson Davis
The President of the Confederate States of America after those states seceded from the Union. Davis was a dignified and austere recent member of the U.S. Senate from Mississippi. He was a graduate of West Point and a former cabinet member with wide military and administrative experience. However, Davis often was not in good health and was known for his desires to be a Napoleonic strategist.
- James Henry Crittenden
): a senator from Kentucky who proposed the Crittenden amendment as a compromise method to permanently settle the slavery issue without going to war. Crittenden proposed that the 36 60 line be used as the divide between slavery in the new territories. Territories above would not allow slaves while those below would. Southerners opposed this measure because while the Northern territories were all but guaranteed of becoming free states, the Southern territories would still be in question as free or slave states left up to the question of popular sovereignty. Northerners opposed the compromise because the Amendment could not be overturned and thus abolitionists would be conceding the fact the slavery would exist forever in the South.
- self-determination
): the idea that each state or territory could determine for itself, the course of its political association. The idea came about from close interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. That document implied that if seceders felt that the government above them was doing anything wrong, they had the right to secede, much like how the colonies had separated from Britain when they had accused King George III of infringing upon their rights.
- southern nationalism
a feeling of identification with the South that developed with many southerners in the years leading up to the Civil War. Southern nationalism ran high as the election of 1860 got underway with the South becoming a subnation within the Union. Southerners had deeply held conviction about slavery and a protective tariff that were contrary to the beliefs of the Northerners and thus were very willing to join together as a section and oppose the North.
