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The Missouri Comprimise was a comprimise that tried to stop northern attempts to stop slavery by saying that Missouri was a slave state and Maine was a free state. I think that the Missouri Comprimise was not a lasting decision because it was very confusing since it was in part of one state and also in the other.

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Table of Contents

1. Pro- and Anti-Slavery Factions in Congress

2. Maine and Missouri: A Two-Part Compromise

3. Shortcomings of the Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a law that tried to address growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. By passing the law, which President James Monroe signed, the U.S. Congress admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state. It also banned slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands located north of the 36º 30' parallel (the southern border of Missouri). The Missouri Compromise would remain in force for just over 30 years before it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that the compromise was unconstitutional, setting the stage for the Civil War.

Pro- and Anti-Slavery Factions in Congress

When the Missouri Territory first applied for statehood in 1818, it was clear that many in the territory wanted to allow slavery in the new state. Part of the more than 800,000 square miles bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Missouri was known as the Louisiana Territory until 1812, when it was renamed to avoid confusion with the newly admitted state of Louisiana.

Missouri's bid to become the first state west of the Mississippi River, and to allow slavery within its borders, set off a bitter debate in a Congress that was-like the nation itself-already divided into pro- and anti-slavery factions.

In the North, where abolitionist sentiment was growing, many people opposed the extension of the institution of slavery into new territory, and worried that adding Missouri as a slave state would upset the balance that currently existed between slave and free states in the Union. Pro-slavery Southerners, meanwhile, argued that new states, like the original 13, should be given the freedom to choose whether to permit slavery or not.

During the debate, Rep. James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to the statehood bill that would have eventually ended slavery in Missouri and set free the existing enslaved workers living there. The amended bill passed narrowly in the House of Representatives, where Northerners held a slight edge. But in the Senate, where free and slave states had exactly the same number of senators, the pro-slavery faction managed to strike out Tallmadge's amendment, and the House refused to pass the bill without it.

Maine and Missouri: A Two-Part Compromise

After this stalemate, Missouri renewed its application for statehood in late 1819. This time, Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed that Congress admit Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, but at the same time admit Maine (which at the time was part of Massachusetts) as a free state.

In February 1820, the Senate added a second part to the joint statehood bill: With the exception of Missouri, slavery would be banned in all of the former Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36º 30' latitude, which ran along Missouri's southern border.

On March 3, 1820, the House passed the Senate version of the bill, and President James Monroe signed it into law four days later. The following month, the former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that the "Missouri question...like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."

Shortcomings of the Missouri Compromise

Though the Missouri Compromise managed to keep the peace-for the moment-it failed to resolve the pressing question of slavery and its place in the nation's future. Southerners who opposed the Missouri Compromise did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while Northerners disliked the law because it meant slavery was expanding into new territory.

In the decades after 1820, as westward expansion continued, and more of the Louisiana Purchase lands were organized as territories, the question of slavery's extension continued to divide the nation. The Compromise of 1850, which admitted California to the Union as a free state, required California to send one pro-slavery senator to maintain the balance of power in the Senate.

In 1854, during the organization of Kansas and Nebraska Territories, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois spearheaded the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which mandated that the settlers of each territory should decide the issue of slavery for themselves, a principle known as popular sovereignty.

The controversial law effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery north of the 36º 30' parallel. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act sparked violence between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in " Bleeding Kansas," delaying Kansas' admission to the Union. Opposition to the act led to the formation of the Republican Party, and the emergence to national prominence of Douglas's Illinois rival, a formerly obscure lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Bitter controversy also surrounded the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. According to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and six other justices, Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, as the Fifth Amendment guaranteed owners of the enslaved could not be deprived of their property without due process of law. The 14th Amendment, passed in 1865 after the conclusion of the Civil War, would later overturn major parts of the Dred Scott decision.

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Missouri Compromise: Date, Definition & 1820 - HISTORY

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The Missouri Compromise, an 1820 law passed amid debate over slavery, admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state.

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Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccesful proposal. This proposal was to ban slavery in the Mexican-American War. The confilict over this war was a important event leading to the Civil War. The southerners saw it as a northern stop slavery as a insult to them.

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Contents

1. Competing Economic Priorities in North and South

2. Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery

3. New Land After Mexican-American War

4. Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare

As the United States grew and expanded into new territories throughout the early to mid-19 th century, divisions also deepened. At the heart of those divisions lay the issue of slavery. In 1846, a Pennsylvania representative named David Wilmot proposed legislation intended to bar slavery's expansion into the lands acquired after the Mexican-American War.

The Wilmot Proviso failed to pass-and debate over the proposal exacerbated North-South tensions. "It is part of a larger, broader discussion about the future of slavery," says Dr. Miller W. Boyd III, a historian, teacher and lecturer in St. Louis, Missouri. "It is one small link in a long chain going towards the Civil War."

Competing Economic Priorities in North and South

Slavery emerged as a hotly contested issue between the North and the South in large part because different economic realities prevailed in the different regions. The North's economy was focused more on industry and manufacturing, while crops like tobacco and cotton were big money-makers for white Southerners.

"In Pennsylvania, for example, people were growing wheat. Wheat was not as labor-intensive as other cash crops. Slaves were almost incidental to society," Boyd explains. "In a place like Louisiana or Virginia, you don't have a society with slaves, you have a slave society. Everything is determined or shaped around chattel slavery."

Those differences in economic priorities influenced how slavery was viewed and the degree to which it was tolerated or considered necessary in various parts of the country.

Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery

Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Early Abolitionists tended to be Northerners who objected to slavery on religious and moral grounds. They recognized the humanity of enslaved people, the inhumanity of slavery, and saw the contradiction in allowing such a racist system to persist in a country founded on the principle that "all men are created equal."

Southerners benefited exponentially from the economic advantages of keeping a compulsory work force in bondage and most were unwilling to see slavery abolished. They resented attempts to curtail it-arguing that slavery was the life's blood of their economy and an integral part of their way of life. That stance paved the way to the Confederacy and its eventual secession from the United States.

Wilmot wasn't an abolitionist or an advocate for slavery. He and those affiliated with him, as members of the Free Soil Party, weren't fighting to preserve or abolish slavery. They were content to let slavery persist, however they wanted to prevent it from spreading as America expanded into new territory. Wilmot and those aligned with him wanted to create and preserve economic opportunities for white citizens.

"Wilmot wanted more land available for poor and middling whites to cultivate," says Boyd. "He was trying to help them not have to compete everywhere with slaved-produced crops." Because wherever slavey was allowed to thrive, it took jobs from and suppressed the wages of the working class. Wilmot and his affiliates also feared that slave states had gained too much political power and wanted to see that influence curtailed.

New Land After Mexican-American War

Interim Archives/Getty Images

So when, in August of 1846, President James Polk put forward a special appropriations bill to ask Congress for $2,000,000 to acquire territory from Mexico as part of peace negotiations after the Mexican-American War, Wilmot's Proviso sought to keep slavery from expanding into any of that newly obtained land.

"This war was fought for the acquisition of territory and the hope of expanding not only American borders, but slavery as well," says Boyd.

Wilmot was a member of a Democratic Party that had split into opposing factions over the issue of slavery during the 1844 election. That rift became further entrenched when President Polk accepted less land in a compromise with Great Britain involving Oregon yet sought a greater percentage of Texas from Mexico.

Northern Democrats like Wilmot worried about the implications of the United States acquiring additional territory where slavery would be permitted. By sponsoring the Wilmot Proviso, Wilmot was acting on behalf of his constituents, namely free, white Pennsylvanians.

(See the full text of Wilmot's Proviso as preserved by the National Archives.)

Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare

The Wilmot Proviso was dead in three days. It passed twice in the U.S. House of Representatives where Northerners had the majority. But it failed in the U.S. Senate where there was an equal amount of support for the free states and the slave states. Polk's "Appropriation to Secure Peace Bill" passed in early 1847 without Wilmot's Proviso.

Although the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 didn't pass with Polk's appropriations bill, it still left a lasting legacy. The proposed amendment's purpose was simple and straightforward: slavery and involuntary servitude would be banned forever in all territories acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War. The only exception (much like in the 13th Amendment) would be unpaid labor as punishment for a crime.

The similarity in the wording of those two documents is not coincidental. The 13th Amendment borrowed some of its language from the Wilmot Proviso, which in turn took some of its language from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Although Wilmot's Proviso failed by itself, it fueled volatile division and debate between the Northern and Southern states over slavery and ultimately made the Civil War more inevitable. It also spurred on the creation of the Republican Party because, as Boyd explains, "the Republican party was the culmination of this anti-slavery, abolitionist, but also mostly Free Soil rhetoric."

The Wilmot Proviso highlighted competing economic interests that inflamed North-South tensions around the topic of slavery, pushed the country closer to the Civil War, and continued to divide America well after the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Sources

Wilmot's Proviso, UShistory.org.

The Wilmot Proviso, NBC News Learn.

Wilmot Proviso Transcript, U.S. National Archives.

"How are U.S. states, territories, and commonwealths designated in the Geographic Names Information System?" USGS.

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The Failed 1846 Amendment That Tried to Contain Slavery

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Competing Economic Priorities in North and South Wilmot Proviso: Limiting the Spread of Slavery New Land After Mexican-American War Wilmot Proviso Fails, Tensions Flare As the United States grew and expanded into new territories throughout the early to mid-19 th century, divisions also deepened. At the heart of those divisions lay the issue of slavery.

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The Free Soil Party was a group of people who supported free public land to settlers. They also didn't want more slavery in the western territories. The Free Soil Party got chosen to the Ohio Legeslature. This gave them the power to convince people.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Free-Soil Party, (1848-54), minor but influential political party in the pre- Civil War period of American history that opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Fearful of expanding slave power within the national government, Rep. David Wilmot of Pennsylvania in 1846 introduced into Congress his famous Wilmot Proviso, calling for the prohibition of slavery in the vast southwestern lands that had been newly acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot concept, which failed in Congress, was a direct ideological antecedent to the Free-Soil Party. Disappointed by the ambivalent position of the Whig Party toward slavery, "Conscience" Whigs held a convention in August 1848 at Buffalo, New York. There they were joined by delegates from 17 states drawn from the Liberty Party and the antislavery faction of the New York Democrats, known as "Barnburners." The Free-Soilers' historic slogan calling for "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men" attracted small farmers, debtors, village merchants, and household and mill workers, who resented the prospect of black-labour competition-whether slave or free-in the territories.

In 1848 the Free-Soil Party nominated the former U.S. president Martin Van Buren to head its ticket. Though the party polled only 10 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election that year, it weakened the regular Democratic candidate in New York and contributed to the election of the Whig candidate Gen. Zachary Taylor as president. The Free-Soil vote was reduced to 5 percent in 1852, when John P. Hale was the presidential nominee. Nevertheless, a dozen Free-Soil congressmen later held the balance of power in the House of Representatives, thus wielding considerable influence. In addition, the party was well represented in several state legislatures. In 1854 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carried the Free-Soil idea of opposing the expansion of slavery one step further by condemning slavery as a moral evil as well.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Zeidan.

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Free-Soil Party | Definition, History, & Beliefs

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Free-Soil Party (1848-54), minor political party in the pre-Civil War period of American history that opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. In 1852 it wielded some influence, including the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was absorbed into the Republican Party in 1854.

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The Comprimise of 1850 admitted that California was a free state and left 2 states to decide for themselfs whether or not they want to be a slave state. Those 2 states were New Mexico and Utah. One reason why the Comprimise of 1850 was hard to pass was that Texas was 10 million dollars in debt. The debt was a factor in why it was not passed.

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The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican-American War (1846-48). It admitted California as a free state, left Utah and New Mexico to decide for themselves whether to be a slave state or a free state, defined a new Texas-New Mexico boundary, and made it easier for slaveowners to recover runways under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 was the mastermind of Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephan Douglas. Lingering resentment over its provisions contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Mexican-American War

The Mexican-American War was a result of U.S. President James K. Polk's belief that it was America's " manifest destiny " to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Following the U.S. Victory, Mexico lost about one-third of its territory including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. A national dispute arose as to whether or not slavery would be permitted in the new Western territories.

Who Was Responsible for The Compromise of 1850?

Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, a leading statesman and member of the Whig Party known as "The Great Compromiser" for his work on the Missouri Compromise, was the primary creator of the Missouri Compromise. Fearful of the growing divide between North and South over the issue of slavery, he hoped to avoid civil war by enacting a compromise.

Famed orator and Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster, while opposed to the extension of slavery, also saw the compromise of 1850 as a way of averting national discord, and disappointed his abolitionist supporters by siding with Clay.

When Clay, facing health problems, grew too ill to argue his case before the senate, his cause was taken up by Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, an ardent proponent of states' rights when it came to deciding the issue of slavery.

John C. Calhoun, a former vice president-turned senator from South Carolina, sought the expansion of slavery into new territories, but in an 1850 speech to the Senate, wrote: "I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion."

When the full compromise failed to pass, Douglas split the omnibus bill into individual bills, which permitted congressmen to either vote or abstain on each topic. The untimely death of President Zachary Taylor and ascendancy of pro-compromise Vice President Millard Fillmore to the White House helped contribute to the passage of each bill. Calhoun died in 1850 and Clay and Webster two years later, making their roles in the Compromise of 1850 one of their last acts as statesmen.

Main Points of The Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five separate bills that made the following main points:

Permitted slavery in Washington, D.C., but outlawed the slave trade

Added California to the Union as a "free state"

Established Utah and New Mexico as territories that could decide via popular sovereignty if they would permit slavery

Defined new boundaries for the state of Texas following the Mexican-American War, removing its claims to parts of New Mexico but awarding the state $10 million in compensation

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required citizens to assist in apprehending runaway slaves and denied enslaved people a right to trial by jury.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The first Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress in 1793 and authorized local governments to seize and return people who had escaped slavery to their owners while imposing penalties on anyone who had attempted to help them gain their freedom. The Act encountered fierce resistance from abolitionists, many of whom who felt it was tantamount to kidnapping.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled all citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves and denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial. It also placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners, who were paid more for returning a suspected slave than for freeing them, leading many to argue the law was biased in favor of Southern slaveholders.

Outrage over the new law only increased traffic along the Underground Railroad during the 1850s. Northern states avoided enforcing the law and by 1860, the number of runaways successfully returned to slaveholders hovered around just 330.

Both Acts were repealed by Congress on June 28, 1864, following the outbreak of the Civil War, the event proponents of the Compromise of 1850 had hoped to avoid.

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The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican-American War (1846-48). It admitted California as a free state, left Utah and New Mexico to decide for themselves, defined a new Texas-New Mexico boundary, and made it easier for slaveowners to recover runway slaves.

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The Fugitive Slave Act were a pair of federal laws saying that you could capture and return runaway enslaved people. Henry David Thoureau helped the runaway slaves and he also helped them to repeal The Fugitive Slave Law.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Fugitive Slave Acts, in U.S. history, statutes passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 (and repealed in 1864) that provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a federal territory. The 1793 law enforced Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution in authorizing any federal district judge or circuit court judge, or any state magistrate, to decide finally and without a jury trial the status of an alleged fugitive slave.

The measure met with strong opposition in the Northern states, some of which enacted personal-liberty laws to hamper the execution of the federal law; these laws provided that fugitives who appealed an original decision against them were entitled to a jury trial. As early as 1810 individual dissatisfaction with the law of 1793 had taken the form of systematic assistance rendered to Black slaves escaping from the South to New England or Canada-via the Underground Railroad.

The demand from the South for more effective legislation resulted in enactment of a second Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Under this law fugitives could not testify on their own behalf, nor were they permitted a trial by jury. Heavy penalties were imposed upon federal marshals who refused to enforce the law or from whom a fugitive escaped; penalties were also imposed on individuals who helped slaves to escape. Finally, under the 1850 act, special commissioners were to have concurrent jurisdiction with the U.S. courts in enforcing the law. The severity of the 1850 measure led to abuses and defeated its purpose. The number of abolitionists increased, the operations of the Underground Railroad became more efficient, and new personal-liberty laws were enacted in many Northern states. These state laws were among the grievances officially referred to by South Carolina in December 1860 as justification for its secession from the Union. Attempts to carry into effect the law of 1850 aroused much bitterness and probably had as much to do with inciting sectional hostility as did the controversy over slavery in the territories.

For some time during the American Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Acts were considered to still hold in the case of Blacks fleeing from masters in border states that were loyal to the Union government. It was not until June 28, 1864, that the acts were repealed.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Fugitive Slave Acts | Definition & History

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Fugitive Slave Acts, in U.S. history, statutes passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 (repealed in 1864) that provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into federal territory. Learn more about the Fugitive Slave Acts in this article.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed The Missouri Compromise. It created two new places and it allowed popular sovereignty. Douglas wanted to repeal The Missouri Compromise because he thought it would resolve the future of slavery, and to help the country expand westward.

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Kansas-Nebraska Act - Definition, Date & Significance | HISTORY

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that allowed settlers of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether slavery would be allowed within their state’s borders. The conflicts that arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act’s passage led to the period of violence known as Bleeding Kansas, and contributed to unrest that led to the American Civil War (1861-65).

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The Bleeding Kansas was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas. If the Missouri Comprimise were replaced the violence would have still happened just not this severe.

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Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. In all, some 55 people were killed between 1855 and 1859. The struggle intensified the ongoing debate over the future of slavery in the United States and served as a key precursor to the Civil War.

Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

By early 1854, with the United States expanding rapidly westward, Congress had begun debating a proposed bill to organize the former Louisiana Purchase lands then known as the Nebraska Territory. To get crucial southern votes for the bill, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed an amendment that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had outlawed the extension of slavery north of the 36º 30' parallel (Missouri's southern border) except in Missouri itself.

Passed over fierce opposition in Congress and signed into law in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and gave each the right to decide whether or not to permit slavery when it joined the Union. Douglas believed that popular sovereignty, as this idea was known, would resolve the ongoing sectional debate between North and South over slavery's extension into the territories.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided Douglas' Democratic Party and inspired the formation of the Republican Party, which opposed extending slavery into new territory. While Nebraska was so far north that it was virtually guaranteed to become a free state, Kansas bordered the slave state of Missouri. Over the next seven years, Kansas became a battleground over the future of slavery in the United States.

Struggle Over Elections

In New England, a group of abolitionists formed the Emigrant Aid Company, which sent anti-slavery settlers to Kansas to ensure it would become a free territory. On the other side, thousands of pro-slavery Missourians flooded into the new territory to illegally vote in Kansas' first territorial election in November 1854. Pro-slavery candidate John Whitfield easily defeated two Free Soil candidates to become the territory's delegate to Congress, with only half the ballots cast by registered voters.

In March 1855, when elections took place for the first territorial legislature, thousands of heavily armed "border ruffians" showed up in Kansas again. Through illegal votes and intimidation of anti-slavery voters, they ensured the election of a slate of pro-slavery legislators.

Northerners and other anti-slavery settlers refused to accept this government and set up their own. Some of these Free Staters, known as "jayhawkers," armed themselves in preparation for clashes with pro-slavery forces. As tensions increased within the territory, President Franklin Pierce recognized the pro-slavery legislature as the only legitimate government of Kansas.

Did you know? During the Civil War, Kansas suffered the highest rate of fatal casualties of any Union state, largely because of its great internal divisions over the issue of slavery.

John Brown Responds to Violence in Lawrence

Sporadic outbursts of violence occurred between pro-and anti-slavery forces in late 1855 and early 1856. In a sharp escalation of that violence, a pro-slavery group stormed the Free State stronghold of Lawrence on May 21, 1856, destroying printing presses, looting homes and stores and setting fire to a hotel.

In response to the "Sack of Lawrence," as it became known, the abolitionist John Brown marched through Pottawatomie Valley in Kansas territory on May 24 along with seven men, including four of his sons. Determined to confront pro-slavery settlers, the group dragged five men from their homes along Pottawatomie Creek and brutally killed them.

Despite the visibility of the violence in Kansas, relatively few of the settlers in the new territory were deeply invested in the conflict over slavery. Many of those listed on the pro-slavery side were poor farmers who didn't even enslave people, while few anti-slavery settlers were champions of Black rights. Both groups simply wanted land for themselves and their families, but were caught up in the ongoing battle that was tearing the nation apart.

'Bleeding Kansas' Draws National Attention

The upheaval in Kansas captured the attention of the entire nation and even spread to Congress. Two days before Brown's attack in Pottawatomie, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with his cane on the Senate floor in retaliation for Sumner's angry speech denouncing supporters of slavery in Kansas (including Brooks' cousin, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina).

In July 1856, pro-slavery forces suppressed a meeting of the Free State government in Topeka, another anti-slavery stronghold. Brown again retaliated, leading his supporters in guerrilla attacks at Black Jack and Osawatomie. That fall, newly appointed territorial governor John Geary ordered armed settlers to disperse, and the violence waned.

In late 1857, Free Staters boycotted the vote to send delegates to a constitutional convention at Lecompton, citing illegal pro-slavery influences on the election. Seeking to quickly resolve the issue of Kansas statehood, President James Buchanan pushed Congress to accept the Lecompton Constitution, despite overwhelming opposition from Douglas and others who saw it as an illegal violation of popular sovereignty.

As a compromise, Congress sent the Lecompton Constitution back to Kansas for another vote in August 1858; this time Free Staters voted, and the constitution was rejected.

Impact of Bleeding Kansas

Though attention on Kansas had waned after 1856, sporadic violence continued, including the murder of a group of Free Staters along the Marais des Cygnes River in May 1858 and the temporary return of Brown, who led a raid to liberate a group of enslaved people in the winter of 1858-59. Brown's role in the violence in Kansas helped him raise money for his raid on Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. The raid failed, and Brown was executed, becoming a martyr to the abolitionist cause.

The unsettled situation in Kansas was still a matter of heated controversy during the 1858 Senate race in Illinois, when the former one-term congressman Abraham Lincoln, now a Republican, challenged Douglas for his Senate seat. Lincoln lost that race but his eloquent performance in their series of debates helped revive his political career and earn him a national reputation by 1860.

Though Kansas adopted a free state constitution in a convention at Wyandotte in 1859, pro-slavery forces in the Senate refused to let the territory enter the Union as a free state. Only after the Confederate states seceded in the wake of Lincoln's election in 1860 did Congress approve the Wyandotte Constitution. Kansas entered the Union in January 1861, barely three months before the Civil War began.

Sources

Bleeding Kansas. American Battlefield Trust.
Ross Drake, "The Law That Ripped America in Two." Smithsonian, May 2004.
Nicole Etcheson, "Bleeding Kansas: From the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Harpers Ferry." Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. Kansas City Public Library.
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery(W.W. Norton, 2010)

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Bleeding Kansas - Summary, Causes & John Brown's Role

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Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. In all, some 55 people were killed between 1855 and 1859.

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This was a landmark decision of the United States which held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship. The Supreme Court should not always be trusted since after all they are human so they can manipulate things and make them their way.

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What was the Dred Scott decision?

How did the Dred Scott decision contribute to the American Civil War?

How did the Dred Scott decision affect the election of 1860?

How is the Dred Scott decision remembered?

Dred Scott decision, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7-2) that a slave ( Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court's history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court's great "self-inflicted wound."

Background

Dred Scott was a slave who was owned by John Emerson of Missouri. In 1833 Emerson undertook a series of moves as part of his service in the U.S. military. He took Scott from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state) and finally into the Wisconsin Territory (a free territory). During this period, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, who became part of the Emerson household. Emerson married in 1838, and in the early 1840s he and his wife returned with the Scotts to Missouri, where Emerson died in 1843.

Scott reportedly attempted to purchase his freedom from Emerson's widow, who refused the sale. In 1846, with the help of antislavery lawyers, Harriet and Dred Scott filed individual lawsuits for their freedom in Missouri state court in St. Louis on the grounds that their residence in a free state and a free territory had freed them from the bonds of slavery. It was later agreed that only Dred's case would move forward; the decision in that case would apply to Harriet's case as well. Although the case was long thought to have been unusual, historians later demonstrated that several hundred suits for freedom were filed by or on behalf of slaves in the decades before the Civil War.

All-American History Quiz

Scott v. Emerson took years to be resolved. In 1850 the state court declared Scott free, but the verdict was reversed in 1852 by the Missouri Supreme Court (which thereby invalidated Missouri's long-standing doctrine of "once free, always free"). Emerson's widow then left Missouri and gave control of her late husband's estate to her brother, John F.A. Sanford, a resident of New York state (his last name was later incorrectly spelled Sandford on court documents). Because Sanford was not subject to suit in Missouri, Scott's lawyers filed a suit against him in U.S. district (federal) court, which found in Sanford's favour. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which announced its decision in March 1857, just two days after the inauguration of Pres. James Buchanan.

The decision

Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney's opinion for the court was arguably the worst he ever wrote. He ignored precedent, distorted history, imposed a rigid rather than a flexible construction on the Constitution, ignored specific grants of power in the Constitution, and tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses. His logic on the citizenship issue was perhaps the most convoluted. He admitted that African Americans could be citizens of a particular state and that they might even be able to vote, as they in fact did in some states. But he argued that state citizenship had nothing to do with national citizenship and that African Americans could not sue in federal court because they could not be citizens of the United States. Scott's suit, therefore, should have been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction by the district court. On this point, however, Taney stood on shaky constitutional ground: if even one state considered an African American a citizen, then the Constitution required that all states, and by inference also the federal government, had to accord that person "all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States" (Article IV, Section 2), which includes the right to sue in federal court. Furthermore, Article III, which establishes the jurisdiction of the federal courts, does not mention national citizenship but rather declares that "the judicial Power" shall extend, among other things, "to Controversies...between Citizens of different States" (the so-called "diversity jurisdiction").

Even with this weak argument, Taney could have been accused of nothing worse than faulty reasoning, if he had stopped there. If Scott was not a U.S. citizen, he could not sue in federal court, and the case would therefore have been improvidently granted. But Taney was determined to impose a judicial solution on the slavery controversy. Although later courts would adopt the policy of deciding constitutional questions on the narrowest possible grounds, the pre-Civil War courts often decided all issues that could support their rulings. Thus Taney continued, holding that Scott had never been free and that Congress had in fact exceeded its authority in the Missouri Compromise because it had no power to forbid or abolish slavery in the territories. The Missouri Compromise, which had served as the accepted constitutional settlement for nearly four decades, thus fell. Even the doctrine of popular sovereignty as articulated in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)-whereby the people of each federal territory would have the power to decide whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or a slave state-lacked constitutional legitimacy, according to Taney. He thus voided the principles of free soil (opposition to slavery in the territories and in newly admitted states), territorial sovereignty, and indeed every aspect of antislavery constitutional thought.

Regarding the question of Scott's freedom, Taney held that Scott could not claim to be free on the basis of his residence in Illinois or Wisconsin. Whatever status Scott might have had while in a free state or territory, he argued, once he had returned to Missouri his status depended entirely on local law, notwithstanding the doctrine of once free, always free.

Taney would have been on reasonably strong ground had he limited himself to upholding the district court's decision based on the idea that status was to be determined by the states. Alternatively, he could have held that Scott was not entitled to sue Sanford in federal court on the basis of diversity of jurisdiction, because Missouri did not allow even free African Americans to be citizens. But Taney outraged much of the North by asserting that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States. The framers, in his view, did not regard African Americans as being among the "people" for whose benefit and protection the new government was founded, notwithstanding the perfectly general language of the Declaration of Independence and of the preamble to the Constitution.

Two justices, John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts, wrote devastating critiques of Taney's opinion. Curtis in particular undercut most of Taney's historical arguments, showing that African Americans had voted in a number of states at the founding. "At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation," he wrote:

All free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.

Thus, Curtis argued, they were members of the nation and could not now be denied the right to claim citizenship.

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Dred Scott decision | Definition, History, Summary, Significance, & Facts

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Dred Scott decision, legal case (1857) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (7-2) that a slave who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby entitled to his freedom, that African Americans were not and could never be U.S. citizens, and that the Missouri Compromise (1820) was unconstitutional.

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The Lincoln-Douglas Debates were a series of formal political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas for one of the United States Senate Seats. The "Freeport Doctrine" said that slavery could be executed by local legeslation.

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Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories.

The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier. The Mexican War, however, had added new territories, and the issue flared up again in the 1840s. The Compromise of 1850 provided a temporary respite from sectional strife, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854-a measure Douglas sponsored-brought the slavery extension issue to the fore once again. Douglas's bill in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise by lifting the ban against slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ latitude. In place of the ban, Douglas offered popular sovereignty, the doctrine that the actual settlers in the territories and not Congress should decide the fate of slavery in their midst.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act spurred the creation of the Republican Party, formed largely to keep slavery out of the western territories. Both Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the Republican stand on free soil were seemingly invalidated by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Supreme Court said that neither Congress nor the territorial legislature could exclude slavery from a territory.

When Lincoln and Douglas debated the slavery extension issue in 1858, therefore, they were addressing the problem that had divided the nation into two hostile camps and that threatened the continued existence of the Union. Their contest, as a consequence, had repercussions far beyond determining who would win the senatorial seat at stake.

When Lincoln received the Republican nomination to run against Douglas, he said in his acceptance speech that "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and that "this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Douglas thereupon attacked Lincoln as a radical, threatening the continued stability of the Union. Lincoln then challenged Douglas to a series of debates, and the two eventually agreed to hold joint encounters in seven Illinois congressional districts.

The debates, each three hours long, were convened in Ottawa (August 21), Freeport (August 27), Jonesboro (September 15), Charleston (September 18), Galesburg (October 7), Quincy (October 13), and Alton (October 15). Douglas repeatedly tried to brand Lincoln as a dangerous radical who advocated racial equality and disruption of the Union. Lincoln emphasized the moral iniquity of slavery and attacked popular sovereignty for the bloody results it had produced in Kansas.

At Freeport Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas replied that settlers could circumvent the decision by not establishing the local police regulations-i.e., a slave code-that protected a master's property. Without such protection, no one would bring slaves into a territory. This became known as the " Freeport Doctrine."

Douglas's position, while acceptable to many Northern Democrats, angered the South and led to the division of the last remaining national political institution, the Democratic Party. Although he retained his seat in the Senate, narrowly defeating Lincoln when the state legislature (which then elected U.S. senators) voted 54 to 46 in his favour, Douglas's stature as a national leader of the Democratic Party was gravely diminished. Lincoln, on the other hand, lost the election but won acclaim as an eloquent spokesman for the Republican cause.

In 1860 the Lincoln-Douglas debates were printed as a book and used as an important campaign document in the presidential contest that year, which once again pitted Republican Lincoln against Democrat Douglas. This time, however, Douglas was running as the candidate of a divided party and finished a distant second in the popular vote to the triumphant Lincoln.

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Lincoln-Douglas debates | Summary, Dates, Significance, & Facts

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Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier.

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John Brown's Raid On Harper's Ferry was to initiate a slave revolt in the Southern States by taking over the arsenal. I think that John Brown was not justified in his plan.

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Link To John Brown's Raid On Harper's Ferry

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Link To John Brown's Raid On Harper's Ferry

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Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery.

Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses-he declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837, his life changed irrevocably when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, during which he was so moved that he publicly announced his dedication to destroying the institution of slavery. As early as 1848 he was formulating a plan to incite an insurrection.

In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory. On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge. On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with broad swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown's sons was killed in the fighting.

By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of enslaved people. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the "Secret Six," and assembled an invasion force. His "army" grew to include 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons. The group rented a Maryland farm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault.

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few enslaved people. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons.

The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The 59-year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood." It was a prophetic statement. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown's raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War.

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John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry | October 16, 1859 | HISTORY

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Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery. Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery [...]

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The 1860 Presidental Election was between Abraham Lincoln and John Breckinridge. Lincoln won. Lincoln got 180 electoral votes and Breckinridge got 72. Divided Political Parties gave Lincoln a better chance because they would vote against the other people.

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Who were the candidates in the United States presidential election of 1860?

Why was the U.S. presidential election of 1860 important?

What was the outcome of the U.S. presidential election of 1860?

What was the "Team of Rivals"?

United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on November 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery, and in the months following Lincoln's election (and before his inauguration in March 1861) seven Southern states, led by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War (1861-65).

The conventions

Following on the heels of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court voided the Missouri Compromise (1820), thus making slavery legal in all U.S. territories, the election of 1860 was sure to further expose sectional differences between those, especially (but not solely) in the North, who wanted to abolish slavery and those who sought to protect the institution. The Democratic Party held its convention in April-May 1860 in Charleston, S.C., where a disagreement over the official party policy on slavery prompted dozens of delegates from Southern states to withdraw. Unable to nominate a candidate (Sen. Stephen A. Douglas received a majority of the delegates' support but could not amass the required two-thirds majority needed for nomination), Democrats held a second convention in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 18-23, though many of the Southern delegates failed to attend. At Baltimore the Democrats nominated Douglas, who easily defeated Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice president of the United States. Trying to unite Northern and Southern Democrats, the convention then turned for vice president first to Sen. Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama, who declined nomination, and eventually to Herschel V. Johnson, a former U.S. senator and former governor of Georgia, who was chosen as Douglas's running mate. Disaffected Democrats, largely Southerners, then nominated Breckinridge, with Sen. Joseph Lane of Oregon as his running mate. Both Douglas and Breckinridge claimed to be the official Democratic candidates.

The Republican convention was held in Chicago on May 16-18. The party, which had formed only in the 1850s, was largely opposed to the extension of slavery in the U.S. territories. Though many party members favoured the total abolition of slavery, the party pragmatically did not call for abolition in those states that already had slavery. Entering the convention, Sen. William H. Seward of New York was considered the favourite for the nomination, and on the first ballot he led Abraham Lincoln, who had been defeated in Illinois in 1858 for the U.S. Senate by Douglas, as well as a host of other candidates. On a second ballot the gap between Seward and Lincoln narrowed, and Lincoln was subsequently nominated on the third ballot. Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated as Lincoln's running mate.

Trying to transcend the sectional divide was the Constitutional Union Party, which was formed in 1859 by former Whigs and members of the Know-Nothing Party. The Constitutional Unionists named former senators John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts as their presidential and vice presidential nominees, respectively. The party's platform particularly appealed to border states in its attempt to ignore the slavery issue and focus instead on fealty to the U.S. Constitution:

U.S. Presidential History Quiz

Resolved, that it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws; and that, as representatives of the Constitutional Union men of the country in national convention assembled, we hereby pledge ourselves to maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, these great principles of public liberty and national safety against all enemies, at home and abroad, believing that thereby peace may once more be restored to the country, the rights of the people and of the states reestablished, and the government again placed in that condition of justice, fraternity, and equality which, under the example and Constitution of our fathers, has solemnly bound every citizen of the United States to maintain a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

The campaign

After his nomination, Lincoln put aside his law practice and ran a stay-at-home campaign, in which he made no stump speeches, though he did give full time to the direction of his campaign. His "main object," he had written, was to "hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks," and he counseled party workers to "say nothing on points where it is probable we shall disagree." With Republicans united, and with division within the Democratic Party and surrounding Bell's candidacy, the primary fear that Republicans had was that some disunity might appear and hamper their chances. Breckinridge also did little campaigning, giving only one speech. Douglas, however, was an active campaigner, in both the North and the South, where he gave a passionate defense of the Union and strenuously opposed secession. Still, much of the campaigning that did follow consisted of parades and rallies that boosted interest in the election (on election day some four-fifths of eligible voters turned out).

Despite four main candidates (and Douglas's forays into the South), the contests in the states were sectionally fought, with Douglas and Lincoln dominant in the North and Breckinridge and Bell dueling for support in the South. On election day Lincoln captured slightly less than 40 percent of the vote, but he won a majority in the electoral college, with 180 electoral votes, by sweeping the North (with the exception of New Jersey, which he split with Douglas) and also winning the Pacific Coast states of California and Oregon. Douglas won nearly 30 percent of the vote but won only Missouri's 12 electoral votes. Breckinridge, with 18 percent of the national vote, garnered 72 electoral votes, winning most of the states in the South as well as Delaware and Maryland. Bell, who won 12.6 percent of the vote, secured 39 electoral votes by winning Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The results in the South are instructive in understanding the deep sectional divide. Lincoln did not win any votes in any state that would form the Confederacy, with the exception of Virginia, where he garnered only 1 percent of the total vote (Douglas won slightly less than 10 percent). By the time of Lincoln's inauguration in March, seven Southern states had seceded, and barely a month after Lincoln became president, the country became engaged in civil war.

The 1860 election is regarded by most political observers as the first of three "critical" elections in the United States-contests that produced sharp and enduring changes in party loyalties across the country (although some analysts consider the election of 1824 to have been the first critical election). After 1860 the Democratic and Republican parties became the major parties in a largely two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balance-except in the South, which became solidly Democratic. The two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods, though the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (1885-89 and 1893-97).

For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1856. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1864.
Michael Levy

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united states presidential election of 1860

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U.S. Presidential Election of 1860 | Candidates & Results

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U.S. presidential election of 1860, American election in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. After Lincoln's election seven Southern states seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War.

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Secession was the withdrawal of eleven southern states from the union in 1860. Which led to the Civil War. No Secession could not have been a long term solution since it led to the Civil War.

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secession, in U.S. history, the withdrawal of 11 slave states (states in which slaveholding was legal) from the Union during 1860-61 following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Secession precipitated the American Civil War.

Secession had a long history in the United States-but as a threat rather than as an actual dissolution of the Union. Pro-secessionists found philosophical justification for altering or abolishing a government and instituting a new one in the Declaration of Independence. More specifically, those who held that the Union was simply a compact among the states argued that states could secede from that compact just as they had earlier acceded to it.

While never counseling secession, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had clearly enunciated the states' rights-compact doctrine in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Their political opponents, New England Federalists, briefly considered withdrawing from the Union at the Hartford Convention in 1814. The Mississippi question elicited hints of secession from proslavery states, but the famous Missouri Compromise (1820) temporarily quieted the agitation. South Carolinians, however, went to the very brink of secession in the 1830s over the tariff question.

From the 1840s to 1860, Southerners frequently threatened to withdraw from the Union as antislavery sentiment in the North grew stronger. The Compromise of 1850 eased some of the sectional strife, but the problem of permitting or prohibiting slavery in the western territories continued to inflame opinion on both sides throughout the 1850s.

The Republican Party formed during this decade around the idea that the territories should remain free; i.e., slaveholding should not be permitted in them. Southerners vowed that the election of a Republican president in 1860 would make secession a certainty. When the Democratic Party disintegrated in 1860 over the slavery-extension question, Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president.

On December 20, 1860, a special convention called in South Carolina unanimously passed an ordinance of secession. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed in January, and Texas voted to secede on February 1, 1861-still more than a month before Lincoln was actually inaugurated. Pres. James Buchanan denied the right of secession, but he also denied the right of the federal government to use force against the seceded states.

Lincoln waited a month after his inauguration before deciding to send provisions to Fort Sumter in the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, 1861, Confederate guns opened fire on the fort, and the Civil War began. Forced now to make a choice between the Union and the Confederacy, the states of the Upper South- Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee-voted to secede.

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Secession | History, Definition, Crisis, & Facts

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Secession, the withdrawal of 11 slave states (states in which slaveholding was legal) from the Union during 1860-61 following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. The secessionist states formed the Confederate States of America. Secession precipitated the American Civil War.

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Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on a island protecting Charleston from Naval invasion. Abraham Lincoln threatened to resupply Fort Sumter.

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Construction and Design

Fort Sumter was first built in the wake of the War of 1812, which had highlighted the United States' lack of strong coastal defenses. Named for Revolutionary War general and South Carolina native Thomas Sumter, the fortification was one of nearly 50 forts built as part of the so-called Third System, a coastal defense program implemented by Congress in 1817.

The three-tiered, five-sided fort's coastal placement was designed to allow it to control access to the vital Charleston Harbor. While the island itself was only 2.4 acres in size, the fort was built to accommodate a garrison of 650 soldiers and 135 artillery pieces.

Did you know? There were no casualties during the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War. The only Union deaths came during the evacuation: One soldier was killed and another mortally wounded in an accidental explosion during a planned 100-gun salute.

Construction of Fort Sumter first began in 1829 in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, on a manmade island built from thousands of tons of granite. Building ground to a halt in the 1830s amid a dispute over ownership of the stretch of the harbor, and did not resume until 1841. Like many Third System fortifications, Fort Sumter proved a costly endeavor, and construction slowed again in 1859 due to lack of funding. By 1860 the island and the outer fortifications were complete, but the fort's interior and armaments remained unfinished.

Fort Moultrie

Construction of Fort Sumter was still underway when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Despite Charleston's position as a major port, at the time only two companies of federal troops guarded the harbor. Commanded by Major Robert Anderson, these companies were stationed at Fort Moultrie, a dilapidated fortification facing the coastline.

Recognizing that Fort Moultrie was vulnerable to a land assault, Anderson elected to abandon it for the more easily defensible Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860. South Carolina militia forces would seize the city's other forts shortly thereafter, leaving Fort Sumter as the lone federal outpost in Charleston.

Battle of Fort Sumter

A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called Star of the West arrived in Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back to sea.

Major Anderson refused repeated calls to abandon Fort Sumter, and by March 1861 there were over 3,000 militia troops besieging his garrison. A number of other U.S. military facilities in the South had already been seized, and Fort Sumter was viewed by many as one of the South's few remaining hurdles to overcome before achieving sovereignty.

With the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln in March 1861, the situation soon escalated. Knowing that Anderson and his men were running out of supplies, Lincoln announced his intention to send three unarmed ships to relieve Fort Sumter. Having already declared that any attempt to resupply the fort would be seen as an act of aggression, South Carolina militia forces soon scrambled to respond.

Civil War Begins

On April 11, militia commander P.G.T. Beauregard demanded that Anderson surrender the fort, but Anderson again refused. In response Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter shortly after 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. U.S. Captain Abner Doubleday-later famous for the myth that he invented baseball-ordered the first shots in defense of the fort a few hours later. The first shots of the Civil War had been fired.

Beauregard's 19 coastal batteries unleashed a punishing barrage on Fort Sumter, eventually firing an estimated 3,000 shots at the citadel in 34 hours. By Saturday, April 13, cannon fire had broken through the fortress's five-foot-thick brick walls, causing fires inside the post. With his stores of ammunition depleted, Anderson and his Union forces had to surrender the fort shortly after 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held before the U.S. evacuation. The bombardment of Fort Sumter would play a major part in triggering the Civil War. In the days following the assault, Lincoln issued a call for Union volunteers to quash the rebellion, while more Southern states including Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee cast their lot with the Confederacy.

Beauregard and Du Pont

Following Beauregard's bombardment in 1861, Confederate forces occupied Fort Sumter and used it to marshal a defense of Charleston Harbor. Once it was completed and better armed, Fort Sumter allowed the Confederates to create a valuable hole in the Union blockade of the Atlantic seaboard.

The first Union assault on occupied Fort Sumter came in April 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont attempted a naval attack on Charleston. Commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Du Pont arrived in Charleston with a fleet of nine ironclad warships, seven of which were updated versions of the famed U.S.S. Monitor.

While Du Pont had hoped to recapture Fort Sumter-by then a symbol of the Confederate rebellion-his attack was poorly coordinated and met with unfavorable weather conditions. In collaboration with Fort Sumter, Confederate batteries commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard hammered the ironclad fleet with artillery fire, and underwater mines posed a constant threat to the ships' hulls.

Outgunned and unable to properly maneuver in heavy currents, Du Pont's fleet eventually withdrew from the harbor after taking over 500 hits by Confederate guns. Only one Union soldier was killed during the battle, but one of the ironclads, Keokuk, sank the next day.

Five Confederates were killed during the attack, but the damage to Fort Sumter was soon repaired and its defenses improved. Confederate soldiers even managed to salvage one of Keokuk 's 11-inch Dahlgren guns and mount it on the fortress.
READ MORE: 7 Important Civil War Battles
Fort Wagner

In July 1863, Union troops laid siege to Fort Wagner, a valuable post on Morris Island near the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After being met with heavy fire from Fort Sumter, Union General Quincy Adams Gillmore turned his guns on the fort and unleashed a devastating seven-day bombardment.

On September 8, a force of nearly 400 Union troops attempted to land at Fort Sumter and capture the post by force. Union Rear Admiral John Dahlgren mistakenly believed the fort was manned by a skeleton crew, but the landing party was met by over 300 Confederate infantry, who easily repulsed the assault.

Following the failed infantry attack, Union forces on Morris Island recommenced their bombing campaign on Fort Sumter. Over the next 15 months, Union artillery effectively leveled Fort Sumter, eventually firing nearly 50,000 projectiles at the fort between September 1863 and February 1865. Despite suffering over 300 casualties from the Union bombardments, the beleaguered Confederate garrison managed to retain control of the fort until February 1865.

Only when Union General William T. Sherman was poised to capture Charleston did the Confederates finally evacuate. Union forces would reclaim Fort Sumter on February 22, 1865. Robert A. Anderson and Abner Doubleday, the two commanding officers from the original siege of Fort Sumter, would both return to the fortress on April 14, 1865, for a flag-raising ceremony.

Fort Sumter National Monument

After the Civil War, the derelict Fort Sumter was rebuilt and partially redesigned. It would see little use during the 1870s and 1880s and was eventually reduced to serving as a lighthouse station for Charleston Harbor. With the start of the Spanish-American War (1898), the fortress was rearmed and once again used as a coastal defense installation. It would later see service during both World War I and World War II.

In 1948, Fort Sumter was decommissioned as a military post and turned over to the National Park Service as a National Historic Site and part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. Tours are now available, attracting more than 750,000 visitors every year.

Sources

Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie: History & Culture. National Park Service.
Fort Sumter. American Battlefield Trust.
Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins. Smithsonian Magazine.

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We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Fort Sumter: Civil War, Battle & Location | HISTORY

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Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the Civil War.