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CHAPTER 13 A House Divided, 1840–1861
This chapter concentrates on the events that led to the Civil War. It opens with a vignette demonstrating the
touchiness of southerners about slavery by the 1850s: Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis objected to placing a “liberty
cap” atop the statue planned for the U.S. Capitol’s dome because of the association of such caps with ancient Roman
slaves’ yearning for freedom. The main reason slavery had assumed a central role in the nation’s debate by the
1850s was territorial expansion—what many Americans called their “manifest destiny” to control the continent, a
topic the chapter explores through coverage of Texas independence and annexation, the settlement of Oregon and
California, and, finally, the Mexican War. The war with Mexico, begun in 1846 by President James Polk to acquire
California, was relatively short but controversial because many believed the war would encourage slavery’s
because of the discovery of gold there in early 1848. This gold rush created wealth as well as ethnic conflict. Also,
even before the treaty transferred land to the United States, Rep. David Wilmot (D-Pennsylvania) proposed banning
slavery from territory that might be taken from Mexico. This “Wilmot Proviso” gave rise to the Free Soil Party,
which spread antislavery’s appeal far beyond abolitionists and intensified sectional debate.
The Compromise of 1850 solved the issue of the status of slavery within the Mexican Cession but created new
controversy with a stronger Fugitive Slave Act. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) reopened the sectional divide over
slavery in the territories by overturning the Missouri Compromise’s prohibition on slavery in what were now Kansas
and Nebraska territories. The consequences of the act included political realignment with the collapse of the Whigs,
a brief nativist Know-Nothing movement, and the rise in the North of the Republican Party, based on free labor
ideology. In addition, a short civil war broke out between free soil and proslavery factions in Kansas. The attempt of
the secession of seven slave states and the formation of the Confederate States of America before his inauguration.
The chapter ends with the April 1861 Fort Sumter crisis, which kicked off the Civil War. Who Is an American?
(Primary Source document feature) includes a section of the Dred Scott decision by Chief Justice Roger Taney. Two
Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) entries cover northern white dissent against the Fugitive
Slave Act (1850), and a portion of South Carolina’s Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession (1860).
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Statue of Freedom
1. Jefferson Davis opposed plans to erect a statue atop the U.S. Capitol dome wearing a liberty cap
because it could be seen as symbolic of slaves seeking freedom.
II. Fruits of Manifest Destiny
A. Continental Expansion
1. In the 1840s, slavery moved to the center stage of American politics because of territorial expansion.
2. Americans settled in Oregon (administered by both England and the United States) and Utah (part of
Mexico).
a. Many believed God wanted the United States to expand to the Pacific Ocean.
B. The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and California
1. Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821.
a. The northern frontier of Mexico was California, New Mexico, and Texas.
2. California’s non-Indian population in 1821 was vastly outnumbered by Indians.
C. The Texas Revolt
1. The first part of Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of Americans was Texas.
a. Moses Austin made an agreement with the Spanish government.
2. Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, the Mexican government in 1830 annulled existing
land contracts and barred future emigration from the United States.
a. Stephen Austin led the call from American settlers demanding greater autonomy within Mexico.
D. The Election of 1844
1. The issue of Texas annexation was linked to slavery and affected the nominations of presidential
candidates.
a. Clay and Van Buren agreed to keep Texas out of the presidential campaign.
2. James Polk, a Tennessee slaveholder and friend of Jackson, received the Democratic nomination instead
of Van Buren.
a. He supported Texas annexation.
b. He supported “reoccupation” of all of Oregon.
3. Dark horse Polk defeated Clay in a close election.
a. Texas came into the Union just before Polk took office.
E. The Road to War
1. Polk had four clearly defined goals:
a. Reduce the tariff
2. Polk initiated war with Mexico to get California.
a. Fighting started in Texas’s disputed border area.
F. The War and Its Critics
1. Although most Americans (inspired by manifest destiny) supported the war, a vocal minority feared that
the only aim of the war was to acquire new land for the expansion of slavery.
G. Combat in Mexico
1. Combat took place on three fronts:
2. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848
a. The United States gained California and present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
b. The United States paid Mexico $15 million.
H. The Texas Borderland
1. As borders shifted, some residents suddenly became aliens.
a. Some Tejanos sent their children to English-speaking schools, but most refused to convert from
2. The area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was claimed by both Texas and Mexico and
1. A region (northern Mexico) that for centuries had been united was suddenly split in two, dividing
families and severing trade routes.
2. The spirit of manifest destiny gave a new stridency to ideas about racial superiority.
3. Race in the mid-nineteenth century was an amorphous notion involving color, culture, national origin,
5. The Texas constitution adopted after independence not only included protections for slavery but also
denied civil rights to Indians and persons of African origin.
J. Gold Rush California
1. The non-Indian population was 15,000 in 1848 but climbed to 360,000 by 1860.
2. California’s gold-rush population was incredibly diverse.
K. California and the Boundaries of Freedom
1. White miners expelled foreign miners from prospecting areas.
2. The boundaries of freedom in California were tightly drawn.
a. Indians, Asians, and blacks were all prohibited basic rights.
b. Thousands of Indian children, declared orphans, were bought and sold as slaves.
L. Opening Japan
2. Japan opened two ports to U.S. merchant ships in 1854; later in the decade, it established full diplomatic
relations with the United States.
III. A Dose of Arsenic
A. The Wilmot Proviso
1. Territory from Mexico fraying bonds of union
a. Methodist and Baptist churches split along sectional lines and issue of slavery.
3. In 1848, opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the Free Soil Party.
a. The party nominated Martin Van Buren for president.
b. Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, war hero and slaveholder, won the election.
B. The Free Soil Appeal
1. The Free Soil position had a popular appeal in the North because it would limit southern power in the
federal government.
be an affront to them and their distinctive way of life.
5. The admission of new free states would overturn the delicate political balance between the sections and
make the South a permanent minority.
C. Crisis and Compromise
1. The year 1848 brought revolution in Europe, only to be suppressed by counterrevolution.
2. With the slavery issue appearing more and more ominous, established party leaders moved to resolve
differences between the sections.
a. The Compromise of 1850 included:
D. The Great Debate
1. Powerful leaders spoke for and against the Compromise:
2. President Taylor, Compromise opponent, died in office, and the new president, Millard Fillmore,
secured the adoption of the Compromise.
E. The Fugitive Slave Issue
1. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives
without benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual.
3. The fugitive slave law also led several thousand northern blacks to flee to safety in Canada.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) showcases a letter from northern whites in
Connecticut to the Middletown Sentinel and Witness vowing to resist the Fugitive Slave Act (1850).
F. Douglas and Popular Sovereignty
2. Stephen Douglas saw himself as the new leader of the Senate after the deaths of Calhoun, Clay, and
Webster.
G. The Kansas-Nebraska Act
1. Under the Missouri Compromise, slavery had been prohibited in the Kansas-Nebraska area.
2. The Appeal of the Independent Democrats was issued by antislavery congressmen opposed to the
Kansas-Nebraska bill because it would potentially open the area to slavery.
3. The Kansas-Nebraska bill became law.
a. Democrats were no longer unified, as many northern Democrats opposed the bill.
IV. The Rise of the Republican Party
A. The Northern Economy
1. The rise of the Republican Party reflected underlying economic and social changes.
a. The railroad network grew from 5,000 miles to 30,000 by 1860.
B. The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings
a. But nonwhites whose ancestors lived in the country for centuries could not vote.
C. The Free Labor Ideology
1. Republicans managed to convince most northerners (antislavery Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers,
and Know-Nothings) that the “Slave Power” posed a more immediate threat to their liberties and
aspirations than did “popery” (Catholicism) or immigration.
a. This appeal rested on the idea of free labor.
D. Bleeding Kansas and the Election of 1856
1. Bleeding Kansas seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of leaving the decision of slavery up to the local
population—thus, aiding the Republicans.
2. The election of 1856 demonstrated that parties had reoriented themselves along sectional lines.
V. The Emergence of Lincoln
A. The Dred Scott Decision
1. After having lived in free territories, the slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom.
2. The Supreme Court justices addressed three questions:
a. Could a black person be a citizen and therefore sue in federal court?
b. Did residence in a free state make Scott free?
c. Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?
6. Who Is an American? (Primary Source document feature) includes a section of the Dred Scott decision
by Chief Justice Roger Taney (1857).
B. The Decision’s Aftermath
1. Rather than abandoning their opposition to the expansion of slavery, Republicans now viewed the
3. The Dred Scott decision caused a furor in the North and put the question of black citizenship on the
national political agenda. Many Republicans resisted the decision and declared for birthright citizenship.
C. Lincoln and Slavery
1. In seeking reelection, Douglas faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.
D. The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign
1. Lincoln campaigned against Douglas for Illinois’s senate seat.
2. The Lincoln-Douglas debates remain classics of American political oratory.
3. Lincoln shared many of the racial prejudices of his day.
4. Douglas was reelected by a narrow margin.
E. John Brown at Harpers Ferry
1. An armed assault by the abolitionist John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia,
2. Placed on trial for treason to the state of Virginia, Brown’s execution turned him into a martyr to much
of the North.
3. The South did not like the adulation of Brown in the North.
F. The Rise of Southern Nationalism
1. More and more southerners were speaking openly of southward expansion.
2. By the late 1850s, southern leaders were making every effort to strengthen the bonds of slavery.
G. The Democratic Split
1. At the 1860 convention, the Democratic Party reaffirmed the doctrine of popular sovereignty with its
platform.
a. Delegates from seven Lower South states left the convention.
2. This split led to two separate conventions six weeks later.
H. The Nomination of Lincoln
1. Republicans nominated Lincoln over William Seward, who had a reputation for radicalism.
2. Lincoln’s devotion to the Union appealed to many voters.
3. The party platform:
a. Denied the validity of the Dred Scott decision
I. The Election of 1860
1. In effect, two presidential campaigns took place in 1860:
a. Lincoln vs. Douglas in the North
2. The most striking thing about the election returns was their sectional character.
3. Without a single vote in ten southern states, Lincoln was elected the nation’s sixteenth president.
VI. The Impending Crisis
A. The Secession Movement
2. In the months that followed Lincoln’s election, seven states, stretching from South Carolina to Texas,
seceded from the Union.
3. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) highlights a portion of South Carolina’s
Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession (1860).
B. The Secession Crisis
2. The Crittenden plan proposed the protection of slavery where it existed and the extension of the
3. The Confederate States of America was formed before Lincoln’s inauguration by the seven states that
had seceded.
a. Jefferson Davis was president.
b. The Confederate Constitution explicitly guaranteed slavery.
c. Confederates were confident their new nation would thrive on the global stage and they wanted a
proslavery foreign policy in the Caribbean and the annexation of new areas.
C. And the War Came
1. In time, Lincoln believed, secession might collapse from within.
3. Lincoln made sure the North did not fire the first shot.
4. After the Confederates began the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln called
for 75,000 troops to suppress the insurrection.
5. Four Upper South states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) seceded and joined the
Confederacy rather than aid Lincoln in suppressing the rebellion.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss the controversy over Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom.
• Discuss manifest destiny. Was westward expansion across the continent inevitable? How was the language of
freedom used to justify expansion?
• Discuss how westward expansion and the Mexican War affected California. What role did East Asian markets
play?
• What were the promises and realities of free labor? Why didn’t proponents of free labor also take on the issue of
abolition?
• What destroyed the second American party system, and how was the electorate realigned?
• Describe the California gold rush and its impact on the Native Americans of the state.
• Explain the Dred Scott case and decision by the Supreme Court. Why did Scott lose?
• Why is it ironic that the South supported the Fugitive Slave Act?
• How did the events of the 1850s lead to the collapse of the Union in 1861?
• Who was responsible for the coming of the Civil War? Was it the South’s fault? The North’s? Were strong
personalities important? Was the war inevitable?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
John Brown
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html
From PBS’s Africans in America, this site chronicles John Brown’s life.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/kansas.html
This Library of Congress page contains numerous primary sources on the controversial law.
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/prelude/manifest_destiny_overview.html
This PBS website on the Mexican-American War has numerous articles on “manifest destiny.”
Sectionalism and Politics in the 1850s
http://history.furman.edu/editorials/see.py
Furman University’s Secession Era Editorials Project contains numerous editorials from newspapers around the United States
commenting on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the caning of Charles Sumner, the Dred Scott case, and the Harpers Ferry raid.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Chaffin, Tom. Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Cause of American Empire. New York: Hill & Wang, 2002.
Dolan, Eric Jay. When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. New York:
Liveright, 2012.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861. New York: Oxford University
Maizlish, Stephen E. A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018.
Majewski, John. A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia before the Civil War. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Peterson, Merrill. John Brown: The Legend Revisited. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2002.
Ramos, Raúl A. Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Form the class into an audience to play out the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Divide the students into two groups: Lincoln
supporters and Douglas supporters. Allow the groups to meet separately to familiarize themselves with the debate and the
main points for either side. Each group should select a spokesperson to play Lincoln or Douglas. Ask each group to compile a
set of questions to ask the opposition during the debate. Questions that the instructor can ask include: Should slavery expand?
What is the role of free blacks in America? Should we restrict Irish immigration?
2. Display images of the California gold rush and ask the students to write down their impressions of the images, including the
features they detect in the foreground and background. Then hold a class discussion for each image in which the instructor
asks the students how features of the images connect back to information in the textbook chapter regarding national politics of
