*After Polk, Zachary Taylor the war hero was elected as a Whig.  He died on 9 July, 1850 after combination of heatstroke and indigestion caused by eating cherries and cream on an exceedingly hot 4th of July.  His VP was Millard Fillmore.  He did not win re-election because the party was split between him and Daniel Webster and Winfield Scott, none of whom won the presidency.  He was succeeded by the Mexican War veteran Franklin Pierce, whose last surviving child died in a train accident shortly before his inauguration.  After Benny’s death, Pierce supposedly took to drinking (and his wife also sank into partial insanity, writing letters to her dead son for months after his death), and was known as the ‘hero of many a well-fought bottle.’  A pro-slavery northerner, Pierce got votes from both North and South, but was not re-nominated, in part because of his depression.  Rather, James Buchanan, Polk’s Secretary of State, ran against and defeated John Frémont, the first Republican candidate.  He was not a very effective president, and was not nominated to run again.

*In 1860, the Democratic party was split.  Northern Democrats believed in popular sovereignty in the west—the state should decide if they should have slavery or not.  Southern Democrats believed the government should protect slavery everywhere.  The Democrats eventually ran two candidates, the Northern Democray Stephen Douglas, and the Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, future Confederate General.

*The Republicans were split between advocates of immediate abolition such as William H. Seward and those who opposed slavery in the territories but did not think the Constitution let them end it immediately where it already existed, such as Lincoln.  Lincoln was nominated because he was seen as more moderate among Republicans, but many southerners felt that even his election would result in the immediate end of slavery, the impoverishment of the region, and the destruction of their way of life.

*Some moderates, especially in states along the border, supported a third party, which wanted to preserve the status quo and the Union and slavery.  The Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell of Tennessee, the owner of the most slaves in the state, most of whom worked not in the field but in his ironworks.

*With the democrats split, Douglas carried only Missouri and part of New Jersey, and Breckinridge won most of the South.  Bell won Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia.  Lincoln won every free state except the part of New Jersey Douglas got.

*Certain that the election of a Black Republican would ensure the end of slavery, if not immediately, at least eventually, as the west would be arranged in free states, the tariff would be raised, the Fugitive Slave Act would be ignored, and emancipation would eventually be demanded, the south begins to discuss was to leave the United States.

*The southern states, remembering the old ideas of nullification, and believing that each state entered the Union as an independent nation that had the right to leave if it wished, consider secession.

*President Buchanan was opposed to secession.  He said the Constitution forbade it.  However, he also believed that the Constitution did not give him the power to stop the Southern states by force.

*1.15 PM, 20 December, 1860, South Carolina secedes from the Union.  An anti-secession observer claimed that SC was too small to be a republic, but too large to be an insane asylum.

*Some people suggested compromising, and letting slavery into all the territories south of the Missouri Compromise line, hoping this would satisfy the South.  Others said the South should be allowed to go freely—they had the right, and it would get slavery out of the Union.  Still others wanted to use force to keep the South in the Union.

*In January, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana secede.  Texas follows in February, and Arizona becomes a Confederate Territory in March (although Confederate Arizona was the southern half of the old Territory of New Mexico).  In February, 1861, Jefferson Davis, formerly Secretary of War, became President of the Confederate States of America, and a Constitution was created almost identical to that of the US, except that the president had one six-year term and a line-item veto, and the international slave trade was outlawed from the start.

*Lincoln claimed he would not use force to bring the South back into the Union.  However, he did say he would continue to hold all US forts and other military installations in the South.  In truth, many soldiers and especially officers went over to the Confederacy, and many more just went home.  Only a couple federal forts remained manned in the South.  One of these was Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour, which was important economically and militarily, but also symbolically, as it was in the heart of secessionism.

*Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter was asked to leave, and was told he could not be re-supplied.  Lincoln insisted that he would maintain the fort.  On 6 April, 1861, Lincoln warned the governor of South Carolina that he would soon be sending food, but no soldiers or weapons, to Sumter.  President Davis told General Beauregard to prevent this and to take the fort by force if Anderson will not surrender.

*12 April, after 24 hours of battle, Sumter surrenders without any casualties except a Confederate horse.

*Lincoln has pushed the South into firing the first shot, making the South look like the aggressor.

*Lincoln calls for troops—he wants 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion.  States in the Upper South, who had not wanted to secede, but who accepted the right of others to do so, refused to fight against other Southerners, and Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and on 8 June, 1861, Tennessee.  Kentucky would pass an ordinance of secession, but would be occupied by the Union army before it could act upon it.  Missouri would pass an ordinance of secession, and would have years of bloody internal struggle.  Maryland was likely to secede, especially after Massachusetts troops passing through town fired upon a crowd protesting the war, killing several people, but Lincoln arrested and imprisoned the governor and legislature of Maryland without trial so they could not vote on the matter.   Although slavery was legal in Delaware, it was no longer very important to the economy, and there was no significant effort at secession in Maryland.

*Soon, the North would invade the South, and the bloodiest war in American history would begin.

BACK TO SYLLABUS