United States: Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction

Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction

By the mid-19th cent. the territorial gains and westward movement of the United States were focusing legislative argument on the extension of slavery to the new territories and breaking down the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Wilmot Proviso illustrated Northern antislavery demands, while Southerners, too, became increasingly intransigent. Only with great effort was the Compromise of 1850 achieved, and it was to be the last great compromise between the sections. The new Western states, linked in outlook to the North, had long since caused the South to lose hold of the House of Representatives, and Southern parity in the Senate was threatened by the prospective addition of more free states than slaveholding ones. The South demanded stronger enforcement of fugitive slave laws and, dependent on sympathetic Presidents, obtained it from Millard Fillmore and especially from Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which repealed the Missouri Compromise, led to violence between factions in “bleeding Kansas” and spurred the founding of the new Republican party. Although there was sentiment for moderation and compromise in both North and South, it became increasingly difficult to take a middle stand on the slavery issue, and extremists came to the fore on both sides. Southerners, unable to accept the end of slavery, upon which their entire system of life was based, and fearful of slave insurrection (especially after the revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831), felt threatened by the abolitionists, who regarded themselves as leaders in a moral crusade. Southerners attempted to uphold slavery as universally beneficial and biblically sanctioned, while Northerners were increasingly unable to countenance the institution.

Vigorous antislavery groups like the Free-Soil party had already arisen, and as the conflict became more embittered it rent the older parties. The Whig party was shattered, and its Northern wing was largely absorbed in the new antislavery Republican party. The Democrats were also torn, and the compromise policies of Stephen A. Douglas were of dwindling satisfaction to a divided nation. Moderation could not withstand the impact of the decision in the Dred Scott Case, which denied the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories, or the provocation of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859). The climax came in 1860 when the Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated three opponents to win the presidency.

Southern leaders, feeling there was no possibility of fair treatment under a Republican administration, resorted to secession from the Union and formed the Confederacy. The attempts of the seceding states to take over federal property within their borders (notably Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C.) precipitated the Civil War (1861–65), which resulted in a complete victory for the North and the end of all slavery. The ensuing problems of Reconstruction in the South were complicated by bitter struggles, including the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Military rule in parts of the South continued through the administrations of Ulysses S. Grant, which were also notable for their outrageous corruption. A result of the disputed election of 1876, in which the decision was given to Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel J. Tilden, was the end of Reconstruction and the reentry of the South into national politics.

Sections in this article:

See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. Political Geography