CCUS18 Election 1860
Hi I’m John Green; this is Crash Course
US History and today we discuss one of the
most confusing questions in American history:
What caused the Civil War?
Just kidding it’s not a confusing question
at all: Slavery caused the Civil War.
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but what about, like,
states rights and nationalism, economics--
Me from the Past, your senior year of high
school you will be taught American Government
by Mr. Fleming, a white Southerner who will
seem to you to be about 182 years old, and
you will say something to him in class about
states rights. And Mr. Fleming will turn to
you and he will say,
“A state’s rights to what, sir?” And
for the first time in your snotty little life,
you will be well and truly speechless.
intro
The road to the Civil War leads to discussions
of states rights...to slavery, and differing
economic systems...specifically whether those
economic systems should involve slavery, and
the election of Abraham Lincoln, specifically
how his election impacted slavery, but none
of those things would have been issues without
slavery.
So let’s pick up with the most controversial
section of the Compromise of 1850, the fugitive
slave law. Now, longtime Crash Course viewers
will remember that there was already a Fugitive
Slave Law written into the United States Constitution,
so what made this one so controversial?
Under this new law, any citizen was required
to turn in anyone he or she knew to be a slave
to authorities. And that made, like, every
person in New England into a sheriff, and
it also required them to enforce a law they
found abhorrent.
So, they had to be sheriffs and they didn’t
even get little gold badges. Thought Bubble,
can I have a gold badge? Oh. Awesome. Thank
you.
This law was also terrifying to people of
color in the North, because even if you’d
been, say, born free in Massachusetts, the
courts could send you into slavery if even
one person swore before a judge that you were
a specific slave.
And many people of color responded to the
fugitive slave law by moving to Canada, which
at the time was still technically an English
colony, thereby further problematizing the
whole idea that England was all about tyranny
and the United States was all about freedom.
But anyway the most important result of the
fugitive slave law was that it convinced some
Northerners that the government was in the
hands of a sinister “slave power.”
Sadly, slave power was not a heavy metal band
or Britney Spears’s new single or even a
secret cabal of powerful slaves, but rather
a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of
pro-slavery congressmen.
That conspiracy theory is going to grow in
importance, but before we get to that let
us discuss Railroads. Underrated in Monopoly
and underrated in the Civil War. Let’s go
to the Thought Bubble.
Railroads made shipping cheaper and more efficient
and allowed people to move around the country
quickly, and they had a huge backer (also
a tiny backer) in the form of Illinois congressman
Stephen Douglas, who wanted a transcontinental
railroad because 1. he felt it would bind
the union together at a time when it could
use some binding, and 2. he figured it would
go through Illinois, which would be good for
his home state.
But there was a problem: To build a railroad,
the territory through which it ran needed
to be organized, ideally as states, and if
the railroad was going to run through Illinois,
then the Kansas and Nebraska territories would
need to become state-like, so Douglas pushed
forward the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act formalized the idea
of popular sovereignty, which basically meant
that (white) residents of states could decide
for themselves whether the state should allow
slavery. Douglas felt this was a nice way
of avoiding saying whether he favored slavery;
instead, he could just be in favor of letting
other people be in favor of it. Now you’ll
remember that the previously bartered Missouri
Compromise banned slavery in new states north
of this here line. And since in theory Kansas
or Nebraska could have slavery if people there
decided they wanted it under the Kansas-Nebraska
Act despite being north of that there line,
this in practice repealed the Missouri Compromise.
As a result, there was quite a lot of violence
in Kansas, so much so that some people say
the Civil War really started there in 1857.
Also, the Kansas Nebraska Act led to the creation
of a new political party: The Republicans.
Yes, those Republicans.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, Douglas’s law
helped to create a new coalition party dedicated
to stopping the extension of slavery. It was
made of former Free-Soilers, Northern anti-slavery
Whigs and some Know- Nothings.
It was also a completely sectional party,
meaning that it drew supporters almost exclusively
from the free states in the North and West,
which, you’ll remember from like, two minutes
ago, were tied together by common economic
interests and the railroad.
I’m telling you, don’t underestimate railroads.
By the way, we are getting to you, Dred Scott.
And now we return at last to “slave power.”
For many northerners, the Kansas Nebraska
Act which repealed the Missouri Compromise
was yet more evidence that Congress was controlled
by a sinister “slave power” group doing
the bidding of rich plantation owners, which,
as conspiracy theories go, wasn’t the most
far-fetched.
In fact, by 1854, the North was far more populous
than the South--it had almost double the South’s
congressional representation--but in spite
of this advantage, Congress had just passed
a law extending the power of slave states,
and potentially--because two new states meant
four new senators--making the federal government
even more pro-slavery.
And to abolitionists, that didn’t really
seem like democracy.
The other reason that many northerners cared
enough about Kansas and Nebraska to abandon
their old party loyalties was that having
them become slave states was seen as a threat
to northerner’s economic self-interest.
Remember the west was seen as a place where
individuals--specifically white individuals--could
become self-sufficient farmers. As Lincoln
wrote: “The whole nation is interested that
the best use be made of these territories.
We want them for the homes of free white people.
They cannot be, to any considerable extent,
if slavery is planted within them. New Free
States are places for poor people to go to
and better their condition.”
So, the real question was: Would these western
territories have big slave-based plantations
like happened in Mississippi? Or small family
farms full of frolicking free white people,
like happened in Thomas Jefferson’s imagination?
So the new Republican party ran its first
presidential candidate in 1856 and did remarkably
well. John C. Fremont from California picked
up 39% of the vote, all of it from the North
and West, and lost to the Democrat James Buchanan,
who had the virtue of having spent much of
the previous decade in Europe and thus not
having a position on slavery.
I mean, let me take this opportunity to remind
you that James Buchanan’s nickname was The
Old Public Functionary.
Meanwhile, Kansas was trying to become a state
by holding elections in 1854 and 1855. I say
trying because these elections were so fraudulent
that they would be funny except that everything
stops being funny like 12 years before the
Civil War and doesn’t get really funny again
until Charlie Chaplin.
Ah, Charlie Chaplin, thank you for being in
the public domain and giving us a much-needed
break from a nation divided against itself,
discovering that it cannot stand.
Right so part of the Kansas problem was that
hundreds of so called border ruffians flocked
to Kansas from pro-slavery Missouri to cast
ballots in Kansas elections, which led to
people coming in from free states and setting
up their own rival governments.
Fighting eventually broke out and more than
200 people were killed. In fact, in 1856,
pro-slavery forces laid siege to anti-slavery
Lawrence, Kansas with cannons.
One particularly violent incident involved
the murder of an entire family by an anti-slavery
zealot from New York named John Brown. He
got away with that murder but hold on a minute,
we’ll get to him.
Anyway, in the end Kansas passed two constitutions
because, you know, that’s a good way to
get started as a government.
The pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was
the first that went to the U.S. Congress and
it was supported by Stephen Douglas as an
example of popular sovereignty at work, except
that the man who oversaw the voting in Kansas
called it a “vile fraud.”
Congress delayed Kansas’ entry into the
Union (because Congress’s primary business
is delay) until another, more fair referendum
took place. And after that vote, Kansas eventually
did join the U.S. as a free state in 1861,
by which time it was frankly too late.
Alright so while all this craziness was going
on in Kansas and Congress, the Supreme Court
was busy rendering the worst decision in its
history. Oh, hi there, Dred Scott.
Dred Scott had been a slave whose master had
taken him to live in Illinois and Wisconsin,
both of which barred slavery. So, Scott sued,
arguing that if slavery was illegal in Illinois,
then living in Illinois made him definitionally
not a slave.
The case took years to find its way to the
Supreme Court and eventually, in 1857, Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney, from Maryland, handed
down his decision.
The Court held that Scott was still a slave,
but went even further, attempting to settle
the slavery issue once and for all.
Taney ruled that black people “had for more
than a century before been regarded as beings
of an inferior order, and altogether unfit
to associate with the white race, either in
social or political relations; and so far
inferior that they had no rights which the
white man was bound to respect; and that the
negro might justly and lawfully be reduced
to slavery for his benefit.”
So...that is an actual quote from an actual
decision by the Supreme Court of the United
States of America. Wow.
I mean, Taney’s ruling basically said that
all black people anywhere in the United States
could be considered property, and that the
court was in the business of protecting that
property. This meant a slave owner could take
his slaves from Mississippi to Massachusetts
and they would still be slaves.
Which meant that technically, there was no
such thing as a free state. At least that’s
how people in the north, especially Republicans
saw it. The Dred Scott decision helped convince
even more people that the entire government,
Congress, President Buchanan, and now the
Supreme Court, were in the hands of the dreaded
“Slave Power.”
Oh, we’re going to do the Mystery Document
now? Stan, I am so confident about today’s
Mystery Document that I am going to write
down my guess right now and I’m going to
put it in this envelope and then when I’m
right I want a prize. All I ever get is punishment,
I want prizes.
Okay. The rules here are simple. I guess the
author of the Mystery Document. I already
did that. And then I get rewarded for being
right.
Alright total confidence. Let’s just read
this thing. And then I get my reward.
“I look forward to the days when there shall
be a servile insurrection in the South, when
the black man … shall assert his freedom
and wage a war of extermination against his
master; when the torch of the incendiary shall
light up the towns and cities of the South,
and blot out the last vestige of slavery.
And though I may not mock at their calamity,
nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will
hail it as the dawn of a political millennium.”
[1]
I was right!
Right here. Guessed in advance. John Brown.
What? STAN!
Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings? Seriously,
Stan? AH!
Whatever. I’m gonna talk about John Brown
anyway.
In 1859, John Brown led a disastrous raid
on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, hoping
to capture guns and then give them to slaves
who would rise up and use those guns against
their masters.
But, Brown was an awful military commander,
and not a terribly clear thinker in general,
and the raid was an abject failure. Many of
the party were killed and he was captured.
He stood trial and was sentenced to death.
Thus he became a martyr to the abolitionist
cause, which is probably what he wanted anyway.
On the morning of his hanging, he wrote, “I,
John Brown, am now quite certain that the
crimes of this guilty land will never be purged
away but with blood.”
Well, he was right about that, but in general,
any statement that begins “I-comma-my-name”
meh.
And, so the stage was set for one of the most
important Presidential elections in American
history. Dun dun dun dun dun dahhhhh.
In 1860, the Republican Party chose as its
candidate Abraham Lincoln, whose hair and
upper forehead you can see here. He’d proved
his eloquence, if not his electability, in
a series of debates with Stephen Douglas when
the two were running for the Senate in 1858.
Lincoln lost that election, but the debates
made him famous, and he could appeal to immigrant
voters, because he wasn’t associated with
the Know Nothings.
The Democrats, on the other hand, were--to
use a historian term--a hot mess.
The Northern wing of the party favored Stephen
Douglas, but he was unacceptable to voters
in the deep South. So Southern Democrats nominated
John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, making the
Democrats, the last remaining truly national
party, no longer truly a national party.
A third party, the Constitutional Union Party,
dedicated to preserving the Constitution “as
it is” i.e. including slavery, nominated
John Bell of Tennessee.
Abraham Lincoln received 0 votes in nine American
states, but he won 40% of the overall popular
vote, including majorities in many of the
most populous states, thereby winning the
electoral college.
So, anytime a guy becomes President who literally
did not appear on your ballot, there is likely
to be a problem.
And indeed, Lincoln’s election led to a
number of Southern states seceding from the
Union. Lincoln himself hated slavery, but
he repeatedly said that he would leave it
alone in the states where it existed. But
the demographics of Lincoln’s election showed
Southerners and Northerners alike that slave
power--to whatever extent it had existed--was
over.
By the time he took office on March 1, 1861,
seven states had seceded and formed the Confederate
States of America. And the stage was set for
the fighting to begin, which it did, when
Southern troops fired upon the Union garrison
at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor on April
12, 1861.
So, that’s when the Civil War started, but
it became inevitable earlier--maybe in 1857,
or maybe in 1850, or maybe in 1776. Or maybe
in 1619, when the first African slaves arrived
in Virginia.
Cuz here’s the thing: In the Dred Scott
decision, Chief Justice Taney said that black
Americans had quote “had no rights which
the white man was bound to respect.”
But this was demonstrably false. Black men
had voted in elections and held property,
including even slaves. They’d appeared in
court on their own behalf. They had rights.
They’d expressed those rights when given
the opportunity.
And the failure of the United States to understand
that the rights of black Americans were as
inalienable as those of white Americans is
ultimately what made the Civil War inevitable.
So next week, it’s off to war we go. Thanks
for watching.
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith
Danko. The show is written by my high school
history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself.
Our associate producer is Danica Johnson.
And our graphics team is Thought Café.
Usually every week there’s a libertage with
a caption, but there wasn’t one this week
because of stupid Chief Justice Roger Taney.
However, please suggest captions in comments
where you can also ask questions about today’s
video that will be answered by our team of
historians.
Thanks for watching Crash Course US History
and as we say in my hometown of nerdfighteria,
don’t forget to be awesome.
election 1860 -
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[1] Quoted in Goldfield p. 119