In 1857, the United States was hit with a massive economic crash that furthered the divisions within the United States. The influx of gold from the California Gold Rush, which began in 1849, led to currency inflation, and grain production was overextended in response to demand caused by the Crimean War. Because of this, the crash hit the North and West hardest. The South was relatively untouched by the financial crash, because the price of cotton continued to be high in overseas markets. The South used this situation to justify its slave-based economy over the wage-based economy of the North.

Harriet Beecher Stowe authored Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a magazine series and then published it as a novel in 1852. Stowe, an ardent abolitionist, was the sister of the well-known minister Henry Ward Beecher. Stowe was, in many ways, inspired to write the novel after a fellow abolitionist, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob. Emily Dickinson was a famous American poet of the late 19th century. Henry David Thoreau was an influential author and part of the transcendentalist movement of the early to mid-
19th century.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe describes the dehumanizing nature of slavery. The work reflected Stowe’s own views of Christianity as well as the role of Chris- tianity within the abolitionist movement. The work furthermore challenged the contempo- rary views of women’s role in society held within the Cult of Domesticity. The novel did not, however, offer a path to the end of slavery, but only described the horrors of the institution.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was well received in the Northern states, selling an estimated three hundred thousand copies in its first year pub- lished. In the South, however, it did not receive such a warm welcome. Many declared it slanderous. The author and bookstores that attempted to sell the novel received numerous threats. Authors of the South began to produce works to counter Stowe’s attacks. These works included The Sword and the Distaff by the famous southern novelist William Gilmore Simms and Mary Henderson Eastman’s Aunt Phillis’s Cabin. John Brown led his famous uprising at Harpers Ferry almost seven years later, and the Know-Nothing Party represented the views of the nativist groups, taking a platform on restricting the influx of immigrants.

The Dred Scott decision of 1857 declared that blacks were not guaranteed citi- zenship under the Constitution and therefore did not have political or legal rights. It also stipulated that an African-American’s residence in a state or territory where slavery was illegal did not in any way grant emancipation. Combined, these principles further guaran- teed the protection of slave owners’ property rights while stripping even freedmen of any legal protection. This made the Fugitive Slave Act even more repressive, since those charged as fugitives had little legal protection or recourse. In essence, this made it easier to kidnap freedmen and allowed for cruel treatment of slaves who were captured.

In August 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia. It resulted in 56 deaths, the largest number in such an uprising during the antebellum period. Southern states responded with stricter slave laws and Black Codes. Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 (see questions 247, 248, and 249). “Bleeding Kansas” was the name given to the outbreak of violence in the Kansas Territory in 1854 as pro- and anti-slavery groups (including the abolitionist John Brown) battled over the issue of slav- ery. “Bleeding Sumner” refers to the assault on the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts, who was severely beaten by Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina in 1856. Brooks attacked Sumner after Sumner made an anti-slavery speech, “The Crime Against Kansas,” which directly insulted Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. John Brown, a militant abolitionist, led a raid on the military arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, hoping to use the weapons stored there to arm future slave uprisings.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois in 1854. Its proposed purpose was to admit Kansas and Nebraska as states in order to build a connecting railroad from Chicago to the West. However, the act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery north of Missouri, and allowed settlers in those territories to instead decide the issue through popular sovereignty. This led to a series of events in 1854 known as Bleeding Kansas, in which pro-slavery groups and abolition- ists gathered in Kansas to influence the territories’ stance on the issue. John Brown gained national attention during this time by killing multiple pro-slavery supporters with a sword, and this period in its entirety caused further political separation between the North and South.

In the 1856 election, the American Party emerged from the Know-Nothing Par- ties that had been popular earlier and had limited success in areas such as New York and Pennsylvania. The party nominated former president Millard Fillmore as its candidate and had some success, winning roughly 22 percent of the popular vote. Part of the party’s suc- cess was rooted in the popular anti-immigrant sentiment that existed at the time, but it was also influenced by the collapse of the Whig Party prior to the election. The Whigs split over the issue of slavery, and many of the anti-slavery Whigs in that election helped form the Republican Party, which was able to win 33 percent of the popular vote. James Buchanan of the Democratic Party won the election with 45 percent of the popular vote.

The Freeport Doctrine was part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates during the 1858
Illinois Senate race. In the debates, Abraham Lincoln tried to make Stephen Douglas look like a defender of slavery, while Douglas attempted to defend himself by citing the notion of popular sovereignty. The earlier Dred Scott decision stated that territories were not allowed to outlaw slavery, making Douglas’s position look weak. Douglas developed a position, which became known as the Freeport Doctrine, that while states could not outlaw the prac- tice of slavery, they could still pass laws unfriendly to the practice that would prevent slavery from taking hold. Douglas’s position was well received by the people of Illinois, and Douglas went on to win the Senate seat. At the same time, it alienated much of his southern support, hurting his future presidential bid. At the same time, the Lincoln-Douglas debates gave Lincoln nation recognition, enabling him to become the Republican candidate in 1860.

The Dred Scott decision was the first time since the Marbury v. Madison case that the Supreme Court struck down a law passed by Congress. In Dred Scott, the court deemed that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it violated slave owners’ rights to property. This upheld Stephen Douglas’s proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 insofar as slavery could not be automatically outlawed in the territories, but at the same time, it also made it illegal to outlaw the practice outright through popular sovereignty. Instead, the state would have to practice the Freeport Doctrine, also introduced by Douglas, which would involve creating laws that were so unfriendly to slavery that they would in effect keep the practice out of the state.