1. A Union in Peril: The Sectional Crisis Over Slavery’s Expansion

2. Questions for Today…
How did pro-slavery and free-soil ideologies shape discourse on the slavery question?
What were the main political and social events that contributed to this sectional crisis?

3. Definition of Ideology
1. “The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.”
“A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.”

4. Radical Abolitionists
Antislavery Impulses
Free-soilers
Abolitionists
Radical Abolitionists

5. Pro-Slavery Ideology
States’ Rights

6. Pro-Slavery Ideology
States’ Rights
Property Rights

7. Pro-Slavery Ideology States’ Rights Property Rights
“Positive Good” Myth

8. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820

9. Missouri Compromise of 1820
From Bedford St. Martins Instructor’s CD-ROM.

10. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso

11. Results of the Mexican War

12. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850

13. Compromise of 1850

14. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
From Bedford St. Martins Instructor’s CD-ROM.

16. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

17. Stephen Douglas Democratic Senator from Illinois

18. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
From Bedford St. Martins Instructor’s CD-ROM.

19. Stance of the Democratic Party
“The National Democratic organization is fully committed to the principles of the Nebraska Bill…it is committed to the doctrine that the soil, climate, and natural capacities of territories belonging to the Union, and the will of the people when they come to form their organic law, must decide the question of slavery, untrammeled by the interference of government.”
The Mississippian, Jackson, MS (1854)
Secession Era Editorials Project:

20. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Bleeding Kansas ( )

21. Sack of Lawrence, 1856

22. The Kansas-Missouri Border
James C. Malin in Atlas of American History, ed. James Truslow Adams (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), plate 121.

23. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Bleeding Kansas ( )
Dred Scott Decision (1857)

24. The Dred Scott Family

25. Reaction to Dred Scott Decision
“Divers[e] newspapers of the Democratic and Dark-Lantern species are howling grievously at the audacity of those free people who dare to doubt the omniscience, the infallibility, and the absolute disinterestedness of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States…If there be any censure to bestow, let it fall, in the name of the eternal equities, upon those who have dragged their official robes in the kennels of slave-breeding politics!...”
New York Tribune (1857)

26. Key Events: The Sectional Crisis
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Bleeding Kansas ( )
Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859)

27. John Brown Radical Abolitionist

28. Harper’s Ferry, Virginia
Inset:

29. Brown’s Martyrdom
“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 submit, so let it be done!”
John Brown, 1859

30. Summary
The sectional crisis occurred because of differing ideologies in the North and the South that made true compromise nearly impossible
Each side became increasingly radicalized and envisioned their opponents as “other”
Instead of fragmenting along party lines, politicians and everyday people separated along sectional lines