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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Mexican Cession 1848 

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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Mexican Cession 1848 

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the end of the Mexican- American War. It gave America more land which caused sectionalism. The country was having a debate over whether or not this new acquired land should allow slaves

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It was a short-lived political party that eventually merged into the Republican Party. It aided in the division of people especially regarding slavery

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He was elected because he won the electoral college 163/290 and won the popular vote.  His electron caused sectionalism in the United States

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It deemed California a free state and left New Mexico and Utah to decide for themselves whether they would be slave or free. This created the divide between people and created an imbalance between slave and free states

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The Compromise of 1850 acted as a temporary truce on the issue of slavery, primarily addressing the status of newly acquired territory after the Mexican-American War.

Under the Compromise, California was admitted to the Union as a free state; the slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C., a strict new Fugitive Slave Act compelled citizens of free states to assist in capturing enslaved people; and the new territories of Utah and New Mexico would permit white residents to decide whether to allow slavery.

Ultimately, the Compromise did not resolve the issue of slavery's expansion; instead, the fiery rhetoric surrounding the Compromise further polarized the North and the South.

The Mexican Cession begs the slavery question

At the end of the Mexican-American War, the United States gained a large piece of western land known as the Mexican Cession.

The issue of whether to permit slavery in the territories organized in this new land consumed Congress at the end of the 1840s. During the war, Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal to ban slavery in any new territory acquired from Mexico. The measure passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate.

Congress was also seeking resolutions for several other controversial matters. Antislavery advocates wanted to end the slave trade in the District of Columbia, while proslavery advocates aimed to strengthen fugitive slave laws. But the most pressing problem was California: the many emigrants who had flocked to the territory upon the discovery of gold in the late 1840s had forced the question of its statehood and status as a slave or free state.

The presidential election of 1848 determined which of these issues would be tackled first. Southern Mexican-American war military hero Zachary Taylor was elected president in 1848, much to the satisfaction of southern slaveholders. Although Taylor himself owned more than one hundred slaves, he prioritized national unity over sectional interests. He called on Congress to admit California as a free state.

The Great Compromiser vs. The Great Nullifier

The debate in Congress heated up quickly. Kentucky senator Henry Clay, also known as the " Great Compromiser," offered a series of resolutions, most of which aimed to limit slavery's expansion. Clay answered Taylor's request, calling for California to enter the Union as a free state, but he coupled this antislavery provision with a more robust federal fugitive slave law in hopes of sectional compromise.

Clay's resolution angered the deathly ill John C. Calhoun, also known as the " Great Nullifier" due to his role in the Nullification crisis. Calhoun, too sick to speak, had his friend deliver a speech condemning Clay's proposal as endangering Southern rights and prosperity. Calhoun reinforced the need for a stronger fugitive slave law and condemned what he saw as northern aggression, warning that the South would leave the Union sooner than submit to limitations on slavery.

Soon thereafter, Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster countered Calhoun in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. Webster called for national unity, famously declaring that he spoke "not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an American." While Webster denounced slavery, he regarded disunion as much worse.

Then, Whig senator William H. Seward declared that slavery was incompatible with the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," and proclaimed that slavery would be extinguished in the country. Seward's speech, in which he invoked the idea of a "higher moral law" than the Constitution and displayed contradictions within the Constitutional text itself, brought abolitionist rhetoric from the margins to the mainstream.

The speeches made in Congress were published in the nation's newspapers. The American public followed with great interest, anxious to learn how the issues of the day, especially the potential advance of slavery, would be resolved.

However, President Taylor and Henry Clay's inability to cooperate stalled the government's resolutions on slavery. Taylor then became suddenly ill and died within five days. Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him as president and worked with Congress to flesh out the "final" terms of the compromise.

Provisions of the Compromise of 1850

The package of bills included four major provisions:

A new, stricter Fugitive Slave Law: Congress passed a strict fugitive slave law, which required officials in all states and territories to assist with the return of enslaved people who had escaped to freedom or pay a substantial fine. Ordinary citizens were also required to assist in recapturing escapees or face fines or imprisonment. There were no safeguards to prevent opportunists from claiming that any person of African descent, including free black citizens of the North, was an escapee.

Admission of California as a free state: To balance the Fugitive Slave Act's concession to the South, Congress admitted California as a free state.

Popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah territories: Congress avoided a direct decision on the question of slavery in the new Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, employing the principle of popular sovereignty. This allowed white residents of the territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.

A ban on slave trading in Washington, DC: Antislavery advocates welcomed Congress's ban on the slave trade in Washington, DC, although slavery itself continued to be legal in the capital.

Most Americans breathed a sigh of relief over the deal brokered in 1850, choosing to believe it had saved the Union. However, the compromise stood as a temporary truce in an otherwise white-hot sectional conflict. Popular sovereignty paved the way for unprecedented violence in the West over the question of slavery.

What do you think?

Who do you think got the better deal in the Compromise of 1850, the North or the South? Why?

How did the Compromise of 1850 amplify the threat of disunion?

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The Compromise of 1850 (article) | Khan Academy

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The Compromise of 1850 acted as a temporary truce on the issue of slavery, primarily addressing the status of newly acquired territory after the Mexican-American War.

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It called for the capture of all discovered runaway slaves. This supported the Pro-Slavery movement and made it extremely difficult for any slave to be truly free because of that constant fear of being caught and punished

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This was a book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It's goal was to outline the horrors of slavery. It was a very controversial peace of it's time. It still had a lot of underlying racism, however she did believe that slavery was wrong. This caused sectionalism because it made people more Anti-Slavery and also called for Pro-Slavery people to retaliate

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He was a democrat and elected president in 52. His policies and actions helped push the country into a Civil War. He was very controversial during this time. He defeated a Whig for the presidency

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United States presidential election of 1852, American presidential election held on Nov. 2, 1852, in which Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Whig Winfield Scott.

American presidential election, 1852 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The Whig Party's last hurrah

The election of 1852 was contested in the aftermath of the Compromise of 1850, a series of measures passed by the U.S. Congress in an effort to settle outstanding slavery issues and to avert the threat of dissolution of the Union. The campaign itself would be marked by divisions within the political parties over the issue of slavery and would be the last presidential election in which the Whigs participated.

Both parties held conventions in June in Baltimore, Md. After a deadlock developed among Democratic supporters of the leading presidential contenders- Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, William L. Marcy, and James Buchanan-a coalition of New England and Southern delegates proposed the relatively unknown Franklin Pierce, who was nominated on the 49th ballot. Sen. William R. King was chosen as the Democrats' vice presidential candidate. King, a Buchanan backer, was offered the nomination in an effort to placate Buchanan's supporters. The Whig Party faced similar difficulty in reaching the required majority for a nomination but on the 53rd ballot settled on Winfield Scott, the foremost American military figure between the Revolution and the Civil War, over Pres. Millard Fillmore and prominent Massachusetts politician Daniel Webster. Both parties' platforms endorsed and promised to adhere to the Compromise of 1850, with the Democrats more unified in their support and additionally stressing their traditional beliefs in limited government. The campaigns followed the path that had been set out in previous elections, utilizing handbills, parades, and rallies-as well as direct attacks on the opposition. Both candidates were accused of being abolitionist and anti-Catholic.

The election was marked by low voter turnout-the lowest of any between 1840 and 1860. The North and the South had become so polarized over the slavery issue that the Whigs were no longer able to make a broad national appeal on the basis of "unalterable attachment to the Constitution and the Union." Despite-and perhaps in part owing to-the Whigs' best efforts to endear Scott to Catholic and immigrant voters, he won only 42 electoral votes to Pierce's 254, as many Southern Whigs flocked to the banner of the states' rights-oriented Democratic Party. At the time of his election, Pierce, age 47, was the youngest man to be elected to the U.S. presidency. His vice president, King, was too ill with tuberculosis to attend the inauguration in March 1853. Taking the oath of office in Cuba, where he had gone in search of a cure, King became the only American vice president to be sworn in on foreign soil. He returned to Alabama a few weeks later, determined to assume his responsibilities, but he died the day after he reached his plantation.

Collection of David J. and Janice L. Frent

For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1848. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1856.

Results of the 1852 election

The results of the 1852 U.S. presidential election are provided in the table.

Alison Eldridge, Digital Content Manager.

Franklin Pierce: Early life and career

...of the Democratic Party in 1852. After a deadlock developed among supporters of the leading presidential contenders-Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, and James Buchanan-a coalition of New England and Southern delegates proposed "Young Hickory" (a reference to Andrew Jackson, who had been known as "Old Hickory"), and Pierce was nominated...

Millard Fillmore: Presidency

In 1852 Fillmore was one of three presidential candidates of a divided Whig Party in its last national election, which it lost. He ran again in 1856 as the candidate of the Know-Nothing party (also known as the American Party), finishing third behind Democrat James Buchanan...

Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has changed significantly during its more than two centuries of existence. During the 19th century the party supported or tolerated slavery, and it...

United States presidential election of 1852

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united states presidential election of 1852

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United States presidential election of 1852 | United States government

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United States presidential election of 1852, American presidential election held on Nov. 2, 1852, in which Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Whig Winfield Scott. The election of 1852 was contested in the aftermath of the Compromise of 1850, a series of measures passed by the U.S. Congress in an

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This act repealed the Missouri Compromise. This caused sectionalism because there was no balance between slave and free states, which caused an uprising called Bleeding Kansas

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1851: The Kansas-Nebraska Act -- May 30, 1854

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This was created in order to combat the Kansas-Nebraska act and have some kind of order. Since the president at the time was a democrat and pro-slavery and the Republicans were more anti-slavery. This created sectionalism

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period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas

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Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts.

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He was an elected Democrat who was morally opposed to slavery but believed it was protected by the U.S. Constitution.  He tried to maintain peace between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the government, but tensions only escalated. His efforts were to try and delay the war, but sectionalism still prevailed

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A slaved sued his owner for keeping him as a slave when they moved into a free state. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court. This created sectionalism because of the clear racism and bias in the Supreme Court

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The U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court. In so holding, the Court also ruled that the federal government could not prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision was a prime factor leading to the Civil War, but the Fourteenth Amendment -which provides that anyone born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the nation and of his or her state-eventually rendered the case moot.

Dred Scott was an African American man who was born a slave in the late 1700s. In 1832, Scott's owner, Emerson, took him into the Wisconsin territory, which outlawed slavery, to do various tasks. While there, Emerson allowed Scott to get married, and left Scott and his wife in Wisconsin when Emerson traveled to Louisiana. Emerson died in 1843, and Scott attempted to purchase his freedom from Emerson's widow, but she refused. Scott then sued in federal court against Sandford, the executor of Emerson's estate for his freedom. He argued that, since he became a permanent resident in the federal territory of Wisconsin, which prohibited slavery, he became a freeman. The district court applied the laws of Missouri to find Scott was still a slave, and the Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Supreme Court, in a contentious opinion written by Chief Justice Taney, held that persons of African descent were not citizens of the United States. The Court reasoned that, at the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, persons of African descent were brought to the U.S. as property, and, whether later freed or not, could not become U.S. citizens. Even though many states granted citizenship to African Americans, the Court distinguished state citizenship from federal citizenship, and found the later precluded to African Americans because of whom the Court believed the founders meant to include in the original Constitution. Native Americans, on the other hand, were considered free and independent residents of North America at the time of the founding, so they could be federal citizens of the United States. As this applied to Dred Scott, he could not sue for his freedom from his time spent in the (at the time) federal territory of Wisconsin because, as the Court interpreted the Constitution, African Americans could simply not become federal citizens. However, as horrifying as this opinion is for Scott, he fortunately eventually became a freeman when Emerson's widow had a change of heart after marrying an abolitionist.

The aftermath of this case is seen to have inflamed the tensions between abolitionists and southerners. Previously, the Missouri Compromise tenuously kept the nation together by keeping federal territories north of Missouri freed. However, after this opinion, that was meaningless since slaveholders could bring their slaves into nominally free federal territory and not worry about the free status of that territory impacting their ownership over their slaves.

Commentators nearly unanimously agree that this case was a blemish on the history of the High Court. Robert Burt, writing in Washington and Lee Law Review, states that "[n]o Supreme Court decision has been more consistently reviled than Dred Scott v. Sandford," and that "of all the repudiated decisions [by the Supreme Court], Dred Scott carries the deepest stigma." He points out that Taney's opinion is the most "explicit racist dogma" in the history of the Supreme Court, and was not even accurate in interpreting the founders' inconsistent views on how African Americans fit into the new national framework. Another contemporary and widely shared criticism is the amount that Chief Justice Taney inserts his personal opinion-i.e. racism-into the holding opinion. Sanford Levinson, writing in Harvard Law Review Forum, states that Dred Scott has become synonymous with the general public with . . . 'judges on a rampage.'"

After the Civil War, however, the Fourteenth Amendment rendered Chief Justice Taney's entire opinion obsolete, in declaring that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States." Thus, while hastening the coming of the Civil War and serving as an example of the blatant infusion of racism in 19 th century jurisprudence, its effect was largely superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment.

See the text here.

[Last updated in November of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team]

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The U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court. In so holding, the Court also ruled that the federal government could not prohibit slavery in the territories.

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This was made after Bleeding Kansas. The proslavery southerners created their own constitution containing clauses that defended and protected slave holders and also excluded free black people living there. This was a power move from the pro slavery people and was widely controversial. It caused turmoil amongst the pro and anti slavery movements and thus furthered sectionalism

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Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for, or Tragic Prelude to, the Civil War

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the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, absent from the ballot in ten slave states, won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. This caused sectionalism because, since it was really the north that elected him, the southerners were mad and upset by the potential end of slavery

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South Carolina, in response to the election of president Lincoln, succeeded from the Union. This was the first established divide, causing an even more prominent divide in the country and increasing sectionalism substantially

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The Crittenden Compromise was an unsuccessful proposal to permanently enshrine slavery in the United States Constitution, and thereby make it unconstitutional for future congresses to end slavery. People weren't pleased about this especially in the government and this caused major sectionalism and led to the Civil War

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In December 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden (1787-1863) introduced legislation aimed at resolving the looming secession crisis in the Deep South. The "Crittenden Compromise," as it became known, included six proposed constitutional amendments and four proposed Congressional resolutions that Crittenden hoped would appease Southern states and help the nation avoid civil war. The compromise would have guaranteed the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states by reestablishing the free-slave demarcation line drawn by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Though Crittenden's plan drew support from Southern leaders, its rejection by many Northern Republicans, including President-elect Abraham Lincoln, led to its ultimate failure.

This was an unsuccessful effort to avert the Civil War during the winter of 1860-1861. Senator John J. Crittenden, a Kentucky Whig and disciple of Henry Clay, proposed six constitutional amendments and four resolutions. The amendments made major concessions to southern concerns. They forbade the abolition of slavery on federal land in slaveholding states, compensated owners of runaway slaves, and restored the Missouri Compromise line of 36 degree 30′, which had been repealed in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. One amendment guaranteed that future constitutional amendments could not change the other five amendments or the three-fifths and fugitive slave clauses of the Constitution. Crittenden's proposals also called for the repeal of northern personal liberty laws. Aware of congressional divisions, Crittenden urged that his plan be submitted to a nationwide vote.

Did you know? One of the most controversial aspects of the Critten Compromise was that it stipulated that the bills could never be changed or amended.

Despite considerable popular support for Crittenden's compromise, Congress failed to enact it. Although incoming secretary of state William Seward, viewed by southerners as a radical on slavery, backed the plan, most Republicans agreed with President-elect Abraham Lincoln, who opposed it.

The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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In December 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden (1787-1863) introduced legislation aimed at resolving the looming secession crisis in the Deep South. The "Crittenden Compromise," as it became known, included six proposed constitutional amendments and four proposed Congressional resolutions that Crittenden hoped would appease Southern states and help the nation avoid civil war.