Congress divided:

• North:

• Supported Wilmot Proviso

• Feared that adding slave territories would give slave states more members in Congress and deny economic opportunities to free workers

• South:

• Opposed Wilmot Proviso

• Feared that additions of new free states to the Union would give more power to the North

If the North had fired the first shot, some or all of these doubtful states probably would have seceded, and the South might well have succeeded.

AS one immense farm, the South seemed to be handicapped by the scarcity of factories.

Lincoln thus became president not of the United States of America, but of the dis-United States of America. pg 434

The North was not only a huge farm but a sprawling factory as well. pg 439

--The Northern states were bound together by improved transportation and a high rate of economic growth based on both commercial farming and industrial innovation

• Manufacturing expanding rapidly

• Industry producing a wide range of goods and consumer products

• Larger majority of northerners involved in agriculture (commercial farming)

• Majority of agriculture done in the Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota)

• Large grain crops of corn and wheat were very profitable

• Used newly invented steel plows and mechanical reapers which meant farms were more efficient and they could plant on more land at one time

• Only needed a few supplemental workers during the harvest

• Very large population to fill the jobs of the expanding North

• High birthrate

• Immigration of Irish and German people

--> Agriculture was the foundation of the Southern economy

• Tobacco, rice, and sugar cane were lucrative cash crops

• Chief economic activity was the production and sale of cotton (called King Cotton)

• Primarily grown in South Carolina and Georgia

• When the industry began to expand, manufacturing moved into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas

• Cotton was 2/3 of all US exports in the 1850’s

• Small factories only producing 15 percent of the countries goods

• Southern wealth defined by the amount of land and slaves owned and as Southern economy expanded, so did slavery

• 1800-1 million slaves

• 1860-4 million slaves

• Slaves were 75 percent of the South’s population

"King" Abraham Lincoln. If the North had fired the first shot, some or all of these doubtful states probably would have seceded, and the South might well have succeeded.

Lincoln insisted repeatedly his paramount purpose was to save the Union at all costs.

Compromise of 1850:Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished.

At first, Clay introduced an omnibus bill covering these measures. Calhoun attacked the plan and demanded that the North cease its attempts to limit slavery. By backing Clay in a speech delivered on March 7, Webster antagonized his onetime abolitionist supporters. Senator William H. Seward of New York opposed compromise and earned an undeserved reputation for radicalism by claiming that a “higher law” than the Constitution required the checking of slavery. President Zachary Taylor opposed the compromise, but his death on July 9 made procompromise vice president Millard Fillmore of New York president. Nevertheless, the Senate defeated the omnibus bill. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois then split the omnibus proposal into individual bills so that congressmen could abstain or vote on each, depending on their interests. They all passed, and Fillmore signed them. The compromise enabled Congress to avoid sectional and slavery issues for several years.