8-4.3 Focus Question: What were the events and factors that lead to South Carolina’s secession from the Union?

Thomas Jefferson was able to purchase the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from France. The purchase of Louisiana doubled the size of the United States!

Curious to know what the new land offered, Jefferson would send two explorers, Lewis and Clark on an expedition to explore and report back to him.

As the United States grew and stretched westward, the issue of slavery and whether it should be allowed in the new territories would lead to an increase in sectionalism.

The first indicator of national trouble between the north and south came when Missouri applied for statehood. At the time, there were 11 slave states and 11 free states. Allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state would change the balance of power in Congress.

Henry Clay helped the opposing sides reach a compromise. The Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri in as a slave state and Maine as a free state. This kept the balance of free and slave states equal.

The Missouri Compromise also established a line- the ' line-which ran along the southern border of Missouri. All states entering the Union above the line would be free states. All states entering the Union south of the line would become Slave states.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was meant to calm things down a bit. But it would be a temporary solution and would not solve the issue of slavery which that would come to divide the nation again.

Southerners had grown increasingly hostile towards tariffs since they were first passed in Southerners argued that the tariffs discriminated against them and favored northern businesses. The tariffs made it more expensive to buy goods from other countries.

When the United States Congress passed a protective tax in 1828, then Vice President John C. Calhoun anonymously wrote an essay in which he argued that the tariff was unconstitutional.

Calhoun argued that individual states had the right to nullify or veto any federal law and even secede from the Union. This position threatened the unity of the United States and the exclusive right of the Supreme Court to decide whether or not an act of Congress was constitutional. This was the Nullification Crisis.

Nullification Crisis—A showdown between South Carolina and the federal government in the early 1830s. South Carolina wanted to nullify, or void, a tariff (tax on imported goods) that helped the Northern states, but hurt business at South Carolina’s port of Charleston.

Vice-president and South Carolina native John Calhoun led the fight against President Andrew Jackson (Jackson felt that the Union would fall apart if states were allowed to override federal laws). Eventually, a compromise was reached that eased tensions.

Continued expansion as a result of the Mexican War led to further controversy over the expansion of slavery. The U.S. would fight Mexico and in 1847 would pick up more land! This included Texas and most of the southwest. James Gadsen of South Carolina would go back to Mexico and get even more land for the U.S in the South west.

Even before the Mexican War ended, the question of whether slavery should be allowed to spread to the new territory became a heated one. In 1849, California would request to be admitted to the United States as a free state.

The entry of California would disrupt the carefully planned balance of free states to slave states form the Missouri Compromise.

Another compromise was reached! The Compromise of 1850 would have 4 parts to it. It did allow California to enter the Union as a free state.

These states were given the choice on whether they wanted slavery or not. This was called popular sovereignty. It created two new large territories-Utah and New Mexico. Utah and New Mexico.

Another part of the Compromise of 1850 stopped the slave trade in Washington, DC- but it did not outlaw slavery there.

The fourth part of the compromise was the most controversial. It strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law. This required Northerners by law to return any runaway slaves to the Southern owners. Escaped slave had to be returned or violators might be fined or imprisoned.

This last provision caused much controversy as northern states passed laws attempting to protect escaped slaves. Sympathy for fugitive slaves intensified with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in protest against the Fugitive Slave Act while southerners decried the ‘misconceptions’ about slavery that the book portrayed.

The next issue to escalate tensions and sectionalism was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Kansas-Nebraska Act basically threw out the Missouri Compromise.

It organized the remaining land from the Louisiana Purchase into two territories- Kansas and Nebraska. It allowed the slavery issue to be decided by the states themselves- Popular Sovereignty.

Bleeding Kansas A showdown over slavery erupted in Kansas. Northern abolitionists and southern slave owners temporarily moved into the Kansas Territory. Soon their fighting and bloodshed led people to call the area “Bleeding Kansas.”

In 1857, the Supreme Court would be the next to fan the flames of controversy. A Missouri slave named Dred Scott had lived in free territories with his master. When his master died, Scott sued fir his freedom.

The Supreme Court shot down Dred Scot’s hopes for freedom with their decision. The Supreme Court decided that African Americans were not citizens of the United States, even if they had been born in the United States, and therefore they had no right to sue in the Supreme Court. In fact, the court said they had no rights at all.

The court went on to rule that Scott was property and that the Constitution of the United States protects the owner of property from having that property taken away by the government. According to this decision, Dred Scott was not considered a person, but property and had no rights.

Congress could not pass measures such as the Missouri Compromise or the Kansas Nebraska Act limiting the expansion of slavery into the territories. Such acts were ruled unconstitutional because they denied the slave owner the right to take his property anywhere that he wanted.

The Dred Scott decision did not end the controversy over slavery. Pro-Slavery Anti-Slavery

Northerners claimed that the court would deny them the right to outlaw slavery in their states and would end the idea of popular sovereignty, limiting democracy. South Carolinians applauded the decision and accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling as the final word on the issue.

Harper’s Ferry Raid Abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia and the publicity that surrounded his trial further heightened sectionalism by stoking the fears of southern slave owners that abolitionists and freed slaves would be a danger to their lives as well as their livelihoods.

As the election of 1860 drew near, Abraham Lincoln would be thrust into the national limelight. Lincoln would be the presidential candidate for the new Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln campaigned on a platform of ‘free soil’. “Free soil’ is the idea that slavery should not be allowed to expand to the territories. Lincoln was not an abolitionist in 1860, but a free-soiler.

Lincoln won the election with electoral votes from the North. The South and Border States split their votes among several candidates.

The election of Lincoln as president would be the final straw for the South. They are just jealous of my awesome hat!

After Lincoln’s election, South Carolina called a special convention and signed the Articles of Secession claiming that the rights of South Carolinians had not been and would not be protected by the federal government.

Six other southern states seceded soon after. The Civil War would begin.