Slavery in National Politics

1850-1856

Thomas Prentice Kettell

• Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (1856)

• North dependent on southern products but accrued most of the profits.

• Well received in the south but not in North, where the view was that slavery gave the south too much power in national politics.

The Armistice made things worse

• Fugitive Slave Act

• Personal Liberty Laws

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Franklin Pierce Administration

• 1852 Election (Dark horse democrat got nomination over better known rivals [49 ballots] and triumphed over better know Whig, Winfield Scott)

• Rewarded Southern Democrats with many of the key political appointments, weakening Democrats in the North

Dem: 50.8%; Whig: 43.9%; Free Soil4.9%

1852 Election

Franklin Pierce, 1804-1869

Major Happenings

• Ostend Manifesto

• Filibustering (Narciso Lopez)

• Kansas-Nebraska Act

Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Stephen A. Douglas• F Street Mess• Appeal of the Independent Democrats• Emergence of Republican Party• Troubled implementation (Border Ruffians,

New England Immigrant Aid Society)• Competing Territorial legislatures• Wakarusa War

More Kansas Violence• Sack of Lawrence, May 21, 1856

• Pottawatamie Creek Massacre, May 24, 1856

• The Crime Against Kansas,

May 19-20, 1856

• Great boon to the Republican

Party in the North (William E.

Gienapp)

1856 Election

• Nativism and the American Party

• Rise of the Republican Party

• Buchanan and the “Democracy”

Political Party Presidential Nominee Electoral % Pop PopularDemocratic James Buchanan 174 45.3 1,836,072 Republican John C. Fremont 114 33.1 1,342,345 Whig-American Millard Fillmore 8 21.6 873,053