crisis of the 1850's
...oad with a southern terminus would have to pass through an area in Mexican territory. But in 1853, Davis sent James Gadsden, a southern railroad builder, to Mexico, where he persuade the Mexican government to accept $10 million in exchange for a strip of land that today makes up part of Arizona and New Mexico. This purchase only stressed sectional tensions and served as another factor in the crises of the 1850s to lead to the Civil war. The Gadsden Purchase was rejected by the Senate, and was only finally approved after 9000 square miles were cut from what he had attained. “The southern route for a Pacific railroad had squeaked through, but for the first time in history, the Senate had refused to accept land ceded to the United States.” (Potter, 183) The Kansas-Nebraska act played a big part in the sectional controversy and served as one of the major crises of the 1850s, and accentuated the movement towards separation of the Union and the Civil War. Stephen A. Douglas was a resident of Chicago and served as a senator from Illinois. He was the known leader of the northwestern Democrats, and wanted the transcontinental railroad for his own city. Douglas knew that the northern route through the west ran through a good deal of Indian Territory and because of this introduced a bill in January 1854 to organize and open to white people a new territory-Nebraska. The Missouri compromise set diameters from the Louisiana Purchase, that north of the 36 degree 30 parallel was closed to slavery. Nebraska was north of this line, but Douglas wanted the measure to be acceptable to southerners. So, Douglas inserted a clause that stated that the status of slavery in the new territory would be decided on “popular sovereignty” or by popular vote, that they could chose to open up the territory to slavery if they wanted to. Southern democrats were still greedy and demanded more. So, Douglas completely repealed the Missouri Compromise and agreed to divide the territory into two areas-Kansas and Nebraska. The second territory was most likely to be a slave state. This is what was known as the Kansas-Nebraska act. This piece in American history produced many critical, vast, and gloomy consequences and divided and destroyed the Whig Party, which vanished almost entirely in 1856. It divided northern democrats and drove many northern democrats from their party. Very importantly, it spurred creation of a new party, a new sectional party. These people in opposition to this bill became known as Anti-Nebraska democrats and Anti-Nebraska Whigs. These people named legislation and they became known as the Republican Party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act “destroyed the ascendancy of the Democratic Party in the Free states and had also upset the bisectional balance within the Democratic Party.” In March of 1857, the Supreme Court brought itself into the sectional controversy with one of the most controversial and notorious decisions in its history-its decision in Dred Scott vs. Sanford. Dred Scott was a Missouri slave, who was once owned by an army surgeon. The surgeon had taken Scott with him to Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery was not allowed or tolerated. After the surgeon died, in 1846 Scott sued his masters former wife, his masters widow, on grounds that his residence in free territory had freed him from slavery. In Missouri court in 1850, he was declared free. John Sanford, the brother of the surgeon’s widow, was claiming ownership of Scott, and he appealed to the circuit court, ruling now going to the state supreme court. The court reversed the decision. Dred Scott made an appeal to the federal courts and was denied. The Supreme Court was much divided on this issue; this type of decision would lead to more sectional controversy and the eventual Civil war. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared that he couldn’t bring suit to federal courts because he wasn’t a citizen. He claimed that blacks had no claim to citizenship, and really, no rights at all under the Constitution. Slaves were property, and under the Fifth Amendment, no property could be taken without “due process of law.” Taney made the conclusion that Congress wasn’t allowed to take this possessed property from their slave owners. Therefore, the Missouri Compromise was null. As a result of this controversial decision, Southern whites were happy: the southern slave opinion had won in one of the most powerful courts. But in the North, the decision was alarming and maddening. Republicans threatened that they’d reverse the decision by bringing the court new members, suggesting force. For obvious reasons, this is a huge sectional controversy. The Civil war was largely fought on the basis of slavery. Southerners obviously supported it, and the North was against it. This ruling just showed more riffs in the country. The decision was split, and the reactions to the decision were opposites. This was one of the crises of the 1850s that clearly led to the Civil war. The Dred-Scott decision “concurred that the view that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional and that the Republican platform, demanding the exclusion of slavery from the territories, was contrary to the fundamental guarantees protecting prope...