Document 1: Railroads and Slave Density I Cotton (Maps) These maps are meant to give students a visual sense that the Northern and Southern economies were very different, the North more industrial symbolized by the greater number of railroads, the South more agricultural and dependent on slave labor, and cotton production. Even though they were slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware with lower slave density did not secede from the Union. In two states in the South, slaves outnumbered whites, and in others, the numbers of slaves and whites was nearly even. This brings up one intangible motivation for war - a fear of being outnumbered by former slaves. The data in this table supplements the Slave Density map. State % of Population Slaves Maryland 17 Kentucky 22 Missouri 13 Virginia 35 North Carolina 34 South Carolina 58 Georgia 42 Florida 45 Tennessee 24 Alabama 44 Arkansas 22 Mississippi 51 Louisiana 49 Texas 27
Document 2: Resources of the Union and the Confederacy, 1861: (Chart) The population total for the eleven Confederate states in 1860 was about 8,700,000.This included some 3,500,000 slaves, and about 130,000 free blacks. Subtract all African-Americans from the Confederate total and you have the white Confederate total of about 5,100,000, or less than one quarter of the total Northern population. (Note: Some population estimates for the Confederacy are slightly higher at around 9,100,000 but the large difference between South and North still holds.) Not only did the North have a huge advantage over the South in manufacturing but the gap between the two sections had widened. Northern manufactures in 1860 were nearly four times greater than they had been in 1840. For those Southerners who wished to build up manufacturing there were several problems. One was the lack of fast-moving rivers and streams to provide water power for mills. Another, was the relative lack of investment capital. A large portion of Southern investment went into land and slaves.
Document 3: Two Economies: The Impending Crisis of the South Hinton Helper (1829-1909) was from North Carolina and a critic of the Southern economy. He believed that slavery hurt the South because it drew off investment capital that would be better spent on things like railroads and manufacturing. While Northerners welcomed Helper's argument, Southerners, rich planters in particular, feared that Helper might cause non-slaveholding whites in the South to rebel. Helper's books were banned and burned in parts of the South.
Document 4: Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was the most famous Black abolitionist of his day. An escaped slave, he worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison for years trying to end slavery. He moved to Rochester, New York, in 1847 and became the publisher of an abolitionist weekly newspaper called The North Star. This speech, delivered July 5, 1852, was a response to a request to speak about what the 4th of July means to the Negro race. Accounts say there were about 500 people in attendance, each paying 12 1/2 cents for admission. Douglass began his speech by asking his mostly white fellow-citizens in the audience why they had invited him to speak on this day. He asked, "What have I, or those I represent, to do with your nation s independence?" And further, "Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?" Douglass went on: "...I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!" Many historians regard this as Frederick Douglass's finest speech. He didn t hold back.
Document 5: Cannibals All! George Fitzhugh (1806-1881) was a native Virginian and a sociologist whose two most famous books were Sociology for the South (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857) Fitzhugh shifted the debate about slavery from being a defense of a necessary evil to the praise of slavery as a positive good. He felt that workers in the capitalist system that was practiced in the North were victims of exploitation by their employers, the "cannibals." They were "slaves without masters." The plantation slave was much better off than the Northern factory worker because it was in the owner's interest to preserve the health and morale of their property. A corollary to this idea was Fitzhugh's belief that the Southern aristocracy was racially superior to those who held power in the North.
Document 6: The Reaction to John Brown The purpose of this document is to underline the fact that for people on the political edges - abolitionists in the North and staunch conservatives in the South - the morality of slavery was an explosive issue. True, many Northerners feared an end to slavery because ex-slaves could move North, compete for jobs, and upset the social balance. And true, also, many Southerners were uncomfortable about slavery. However, that still left many in both sections who loved or hated Brown and everything he represented. The following reaction appeared October 21, 1859, in the Charleston, South Carolina Mercury. As we anticipated, the affair, in its magnitude, was quite exaggerated; but it fully establishes the fact that there are at the North men ready to engage in adventures upon the peace and security of the southern people, however heinously and recklessly, and capable of planning and keeping secret their infernal designs. It is a warning profoundly symptomatic of the future of the Union with our sectional enemies.
Document 7: Kansas - Nebraska Act The plan to bring the Kansas and Nebraska territories into the Union put pressure on the delicately balanced Missouri Compromise. Settlers and rail road supporters sought to connect Chicago to the West. They pressed Congress to organize these territories and eventually admit them as states. At first, Southerners were opposed to this idea because, under the Missouri Compromise, Kansas and Nebraska would have become free-states. But when a bill supported by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois included a provision that the slavery question be decided by popular sovereignty, Southerners changed their position. Debate on the bill was passionate. Some members of the Senate carried concealed revolvers or bowie knives into the chamber fearing for their lives. All of the bill's Northern opponents, whether on economic or moral grounds, objected to the possible expansion of slavery. The economic concerns had to do with fear of Southern strength, and fear by Northern workers that slavery in the territories would shut out migrant free labor from the East. Still, the bill passed both houses of Congress. In the House the tally was 113 Aye and 100 Nay. In the Senate it was more lopsided - 35 Aye, 13 Nay. The only Southern Democrat to vote against Kansas Nebraska was Texas Senator Sam Houston, who knew it would upset the delicate balance between the sections. It cost Houston his Senate seat. While Douglas had enough support to pass his bill in the United States Senate, he faced opposition from President Franklin Pierce who held veto power. Pierce believed that the Missouri Compromise had kept peace between white Northerners and Southerners. Several Southern senators visited Pierce in the White House and served an ultimatum: either support Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act or lose all political support in the South. Pierce gave in to the senators.
Document 8: The Caning of Charles Sumner The issue of "bleeding Kansas" caused blows to be struck - first verbal then physical - in the United States Senate. By the Southern code of honor, Brooks should have challenged Sumner to a duel, but that option was reserved for social equals. It is of note that Senator Butler, who was not in the chamber at the time of the attack, expressed his wish that the whole scene had never occurred. To add insult to very grave injury, three days after Sumner was beaten, his efforts to defeat Kansas Nebraska proved to have been in vain. The bill was passed in the Senate by a 35-13 vote. The "Aye" votes included many Northern democrats with political ties to Stephen Douglas, the bill's sponsor. Party loyalty and a railroad with a Northern terminus in Chicago trumped slavery expansion in some Northern quarters.
Document 9: The Dred Scott Decision Under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger Taney, himself from the slave state of Maryland, the Supreme Court said that slaves were not considered men in the sense that the Declaration of Independence declares that all men are created equal. For this reason, Scott did not even have the right to appear in court. The decision stated further that slaves were property and that the government was prohibited from interfering with any person's property. For good measure, the court went on to declare the Missouri Compromise "void" and "in operative." The Scott family lost their case, but they were transferred to another owner who freed them. Dred Scott died of consumption shortly after becoming free. Also dead was any attempt to restrict the extension of slavery into states entering the Union. Abolitionists envisioned with horror a nation in which slavery was permitted across the land.
Document 10: House Divided In 1858, one month after delivering this speech accepting his nomination for Senator by the Illinois Republican party, Lincoln challenged his Democratic Party rival, Stephen Douglas, to a series of debates. The debates focused on the general issue of slave expansion, and the specific issue of popular sovereignty in Kansas. Even though he lost the election, the debates thrust Lincoln into the national spotlight, and led to his Republican Party nomination for president in 1860. This is only a short excerpt from the "House Divided" speech. The bulk of the speech charges that Douglas, along with Chief Justice Taney of Dred Scott fame, ex-president Franklin Pierce, and current President James Buchanan had all architected what Lincoln called a piece of "machinery" designed to reestablish slavery throughout the entire United States.
Document 11: The Election of 1860 Some historians have described the 1860 election as actually two elections, one in the North, the other in the South. Lincoln's name was not even on the ballot in most Southern states. In the North the race was between Lincoln and his old Illinois opponent, Stephen Douglas. In the South the race was between Breckenridge and Bell. The popular vote in several Northern states shows that the sentiment for Lincoln over Douglas was not overwhelming. Consider this sampler of Northern state popular vote counts: State Illinois Lincoln 172,171 Douglas 160,215 Indiana 139,033 115,509 New Jersey 58,346 62,869 New York 362,646 312,510 Ohio 231,709 187,421 In New England the vote was much more lopsided for Lincoln. In the border state of Missouri, Lincoln only got 10% of the vote; in Kentucky, where he was also on the ballot, Lincoln got only 1% of the vote. It is noteworthy that in 1860 Lincoln did not carry a majority of the nation's voters. In fact he received 38% of the popular vote. In other words, 62% of the American voters in 1860 voted for a more conservative position on slavery than that held by the Republican Party and Lincoln. It is often argued that Lincoln's election was the trigger that led to Southern secession.