Kristoffer Cuesta

1st Hr.
A.P. US Hist.
12/03/10
Chapter 13: The Impending Crisis
I. Looking Westward
A. General Info
1. General Info
a. By the end of the decade, the nation possessed all the territory of the present-
day United States except Alaska, Hawaii, and a few relatively small areas
acquired later through border adjustments.
b. Out of the many factors that accounted for this great new wave expansion, the
most important was the hopes and ambitions of the many thousands of
Americans who moved into or invested in these new territories.
B. Manifest Destiny
1. General Info and Racial Justification
a. Manifest Destiny rested on the idea that America was destined by God and by
history to expand its boundaries over a vast area, and area that included, but
was not necessarily limited to the continent of North America
b. American expansion was not selfish, its advocated insisted; it was an altruistic
attempt to extend American liberty to new realms
c. Throughout the 1840s, many Americans defended the idea of westward
expansion by citing the superiority of the “American race”- white people of
northern European origins
d. The Indians, the Mexicans, and others in the western regions were racially unfit
to be part of an “American” community, Westward expansion was a movement
to spread both a political system and a racially defined society
e. Advocates of Manifest Destiny disagreed about how far and by what means the
nation should expand
f. Some had relatively limited territorial goals; others envisioned a vast new
“Empire of liberty” that would include Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Pacific
Islands and ultimately, few dreamed, much of the rest of the world.
g. Not everyone embraced the idea of Manifest Destiny. Henry Clay and other
prominent feared, correctly as it turned out, that territorial expansion would
reopen the painful controversy over slavery and threaten the stability of the
Union.
h. But their voices were barely audible over the clamor of enthusiasm for the
expansion in the 1840s
C. Americans in Texas
1. General Info
a. The United States had once claimed Texas as a part of the Louisiana Purchase,
but it had renounced the claim in 1819. Twice thereafter the United States had
offered to buy Texas, only to meet with indignant Mexican refusals
b. But in the early 1820s, the Mexican government launched an ill-advised
experiment that would eventually cause it to lose its great northern province: it
encouraged American immigration into Texas.
c. The Mexicans convinced themselves that settlers in Texas would serve as an
effective buffer against United States expansion into the region; the Americans,
they thought, would soon become loyal to the Mexican government
 d. An 1824 colonization law designed to attract American settlers promised the
newcomers cheap land and a 4 year exemption from taxes.
e. By the 1830, there were about 7,000 Americans living in Texas, more than
twice the number of Mexicans there.
2. Stephen Austin
a. The most successful of them was Stephen F. Austin, a young immigrant from
Missouri who had established the first legal American settlement in Texas in
1832.
b. Austin and other intermediaries were effective in recruiting American
immigrants to Texas, but they also created centers of power in the region that
competed with the Mexican government.
c. In 1826, one of these American intermediaries led a revolt to establish Texas as
an independent nation
d. The Mexicans quickly crushed the revolt and, four years later, passed new laws
barring any further American immigration into the region. They were too late,
Americans kept flowing into their territory
D. Tensions Between the United States and Mexico
1. General Info
a. Friction between the American settlers and the Mexican govt. arose from their
desire to legalize slavery which the Mexican government had made illegal in
Texas in 11830.
b. Austin and his followers wanted to reach a peaceful settlement that would give
Texas more autonomy within the Mexican republic. Others wanted to fight for
independence.
c. A new law increased the powers of the national government of Mexico at the
expense of the state governments, a measure that Texans from the United
States assumed Santa Anna was aiming specifically at them
d. The Mexicans even imprisoned Stephen Austin in Mexico City for a time,
claiming that he was encouraging revolts among his fell Americans in Texas.
2. San Jacinto
a. General Sam Houston managed to keep a small force together. He defeated the
Mexican army and took Santa Anna prisoner. American troops then killed many
of the Mexican soldiers in retribution for the executions at Goliad
b. Santa Anna, under pressure from his captors, signed a treaty giving Texas
independence. And while the Mexican govt. repudiated the treaty, there were
no further military efforts to win Texas back.
c. One of the first acts of the new president of Texas, Sam Houston, was to send a
delegation to Washington with an offer to join the Union. There were
supporters of expansion in the United States who welcomed these overtures;
indeed, expansionists in the U.S. had been supporting and encouraging the
revolt against Mexico for years.
d. President Jackson did not support annexation and even delayed recognizing the
new republic until 1837. Presidents Martin Van Buren and William Henry
Harrison also refrained from pressing the issue during their terms of office
e. England and France quickly recognized and concluded trade treaties with
Texas. In response, President Tyler persuaded Texas apply to state hood again
in 1844.
 f. But when Secretary of State Calhoun presented an annexation treaty to
Congress as if its only purpose were to extend slavery, northern senators
rebelled and defeated it.
E. Oregon
1. Disputed Claims
a. Both Britain and the United States claimed sovereignty in the region- the British
on the basis of explorations in the 1790s by George Vancouver, a naval officer;
the Americans on the basis of simultaneous claims by Robert Gray, a fur trader
b. Unable to resolve their conflicting claims diplomatically, they agreed in an 1818
treaty to allow citizens of each country equal access to the territory
c. White settlement in the region consisted largely of American and Canadian fur
traders
d. Missionaries considered the territory an attractive target for evangelical efforts,
especially after the strange appearance of four New Perce and Flathead Indians
in St. Louis in 1831
e. Some missionaries considered the visit a divinely inspired invitation to extend
their efforts westward. They were also motivated by a desire to counter the
Catholic missionaries from Canada, whose presence in Oregon, many believed,
threatened American hopes for annexation
f. Significant numbers of white Americans began emigrating to Oregon in the
early 1840s, and they soon substantially outnumbered the British settlers there
g. The tribe blamed the Whiteman mission for the plague, and in 1847 they
attacked it and killed thirteen whites, including Marcus and Narcissa
F. Westward Migration
1. General Info
a. Southerners flocked mainly to Texas. But the largest number of migrants came
from the Old Northwest- white men and women, and a few African Americans,
who undertook arduous journeys in search of new opportunities.
b. Some- particularly after the discovery of gold in California in 1848- hoped for
quick riches. Others planned to take advantage of the vast public lands the
federal govt. was selling at modest prices to acquire property for farming or
speculation
c. Still others hoped to establish themselve3s as merchants and serve the new
white communities developing in the West.
d. Some were on religious missions or were attempting to escape the epidemic
diseases that were plaguing many cities in the East
G. Life on the Trail
1. Oregon Trail
a. They generally gathered in one of several major depots in Iowa and Missouri,
joined a wagon train led by hired guides, and set off with their belongings piled
in covered wagons, livestock trailing behind
b. The major route west was the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail, which stretched from
Independence across the Great Plains and through the South Pass of the Rocky
Mountains
c. The mountain and desert terrain in the later portions of the trip were
particularly difficult. Most journeys lasted five or six months, and there was
always pressure to get through the Rockies before the snows began, not always
an easy task given the very slow pace of most wagon trains
d. In the years before the Civil War, fewer than 400 migrants died in conflicts with
the tribes.
 2. Life on the Trail
a. Families divided tasks along gender lines: the men driving and repairing the
wagons or hunting game; the women cooking, washing clothes, and caring for
children
b. Almost everyone, male or female, walked the great majority of the time, to
lighten the load for the horses drawing the carriages
c. Many expeditions consisted of groups of friends, neighbors, or relatives who
had decided to pull up stakes and move west together. And it was partly
because of the intensity of the experience: many weeks of difficult travel with
no other human contacts except, occasionally, with Indians
II. Expansion and War
A. The Democrats and Expansion
1. James K. Polk
a. Henry Clay and former president Martin Van Buren both tried to avoid taking a
stand on the controversial issue of the annexation of Texas
b. Many southern Democrats supported annexation, and the party passed over
Van Buren to nominate a strong supporter of annexation, the previous
unheralded James K. Polk
c. Polk entered office with a clear set of goals and with plans for attaining them
John Tyler accomplished the first of Polk’s goals for him
d. Interpreting the election returns as a mandate for the annexation of Texas, the
outgoing president won congressional approval for it in February 1845. That
December, Texas became a state
e. The British minister in Washington brusquely rejected a compromise Polk
offered that would establish the United States-Canadian Border at the 49 th
parallel; he did not even refer the proposal to London.
f. The British government accepted Polk’s original proposal. On June 15, 1846,
the Senate approved a treaty that fixed the boundary at the 49 th parallel.
B. The Southwest and California
1. Texas Boundary in Dispute
a. Texans claimed the Rio southern border, a claim that would have added much
of what is now Mexico to Texas.
b. In the 1820s, the Mexican government had invited American traders into the
region ,hoping to speed development of the province
c. New Mexico began to become more American than Mexican. California was a
vast region and contained several western Indian tribes and perhaps 7,000
Mexicans, mostly descendants of Spanish colonists. Gradually, white Americans
began to arrive: first maritime traders and captains of Pacific whaling ships,
who stopped to barter goods or buy supplies
d. Then merchants who established stores, imported merchandise, and developed
a profitable trade with the Mexicans and Indians; and finally pioneering
farmers, who entered California from the east, by land, and settled in the
Sacramento Valley
e. Polk dispatched the troops under Taylor to Texas, he sent secret instructions to
the commander of the Pacific naval squadron to seize the California ports if
Mexico declared war.
C. The Mexican War
1. Failure of the Slidell Mission
 a. Polk turned to diplomacy and dispatched a special minister, John Slidell, to try
to buy off the Mexicans. But Mexican leaders rejected Slidell’s offer to purchase
the disputed territories.
b. On January 13, 1846, as soon as he heard the news, Polk ordered Taylor’s army
in Texas to move across the Neuces River. For months, the Mexicans refused to
fight. But finally, according to disputed American accounts, some Mexican
troops crossed the Rio Grande and attacked a unit of American soldiers.
c. Whig critics charged from the beginning that Polk had deliberately maneuvered
the country into the conflict and had staged the border incident that had
precipitated the declaration
d. Many other critics argued that the hostilities with Mexico were draining
resources and attention away from the more important issue of the Pacific
Northwest; and when the United States finally reached its agreement with
Britain on the Oregon question, opponents claimed that Polk had settled for
less than he should have because he was preoccupied with Mexico
e. The president ordered Taylor to cross the Rio Grande, seize parts of
northeastern Mexico, beginning with the city of Monterey, and then march on
to Mexico City
f. In the summer of 1846, a small army under Colonel Stephen W. Kearny
captured Santa Fe with no opposition. Then Kearny proceeded to California,
where he joined a conflict already in progress that was being staged jointly by
American settlers
g. Kearny brought the disparate American forces together under his command,
and by the autumn of 1846, he had completed the conquest of California
h. At this point, Polk and General Winfield Scott launched a bold new campaign.
With an army that numbered more than 14,000, Scott advanced 260 miles
along the Mexican National Highway toward Mexico City, kept American
casualties low, and never lost a battle before finally seizing the Mexican capital
2. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
a. Polk had sent a special presidential envoy, Nicholas Trist, to negotiate a
settlement. On February 2, Trist reached agreement with the new Mexican
govt. on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which Mexico agreed to cede
California to the United States and acknowledge the Rio Grande as the
boundary of Texas.
b. In return, the U.S. would pay the Mexicans $15 million dollars
III. The Sectional Debate
A. Slavery and the Territories
1. Wilmot Proviso
a. In August 1846, while the Mexican War was still in progress, Polk asked
Congress to appropriate $2 million for purchasing peace with Mexico
b. Representative David Wilmot introduced an amendment to the appropriation
bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico
c. President Polk supported a proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise line
through the new territories to the Pacific coast, banning slavery north of the
line and permitting it south of the line
d. When Polk declined to run again, the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass of
Michigan, a dull, again party regular. The Whigs nominated General Zachary
Taylor.
 e. From this emerged the new Free-Soil Party, which drew from the existing
Liberty Party and the antislavery wings of the Whig and Democratic Parties and
which endorsed the Wilmot Proviso. Its candidate was former president Martin
Van Buren
2. Free-Soil Party
a. The Free-Soilers elected ten members to Congress. The emergence of Free-Soil
Party as an important political force, like the emergence of the Know-Nothing
and Liberty Parties before it, signaled the inability of the existing parties to
contain the political passions slavery was creating
B. The California Gold Rush
1. Forty-niners
a. The gold-rush migrants threw caution to the winds. They abandoned farms,
jobs, homes, families; they piled onto ships and flooded the overland trails-
many carrying only what they could pack on their backs
b. The overwhelming majority of the Forty-niners were men, and the society they
created on their arrival in California was unusually volatile because of the
absence of women, children, and families
c. The Chinese in California were free laborers and merchants, looking for gold, or
more often, hoping to profit from other economic opportunities the gold boom
was creating
d. A series of labor shortage in California led to an overt exploitation of Indians
that resembled slavery in all but name./ White vigilantes were already hunting
down and killing thousands of Indians before the gold rush
e. There was substantial gold in the hills of the Sierra Nevada, and many people
got rich from it. But only a tiny fraction of the Forty-niners ever found gold, or
even managed to stake a claim to land on which they could ever look for gold.
f. By the early 1850s, California’s population, which had always been diverse, had
become even more so. The gold rush had attracted not just white Americans,
but Europeans, Chinese, South Americans, Mexicans, free blacks, and slaves
who accompanied southern migrants
C. Rising Sectional Tensions
1. General Info
a. Congress balked in part because of several other controversies concerning
slavery that were complicating the debate. One was the effort of antislavery
forces to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, a movement bitterly by
southerners
b. Another was the emergence of personal liberty laws in northern states, which
barred courts and police officers from helping to return runaway slaves to their
owners.
c. In response, southerners demanded a stringent law that would require
northern states to return fugitive slaves to their owners. But the biggest
obstacle to the president’s program was the white South’s fear that two new
free states would be added to the northern majority
d. In the North, every state legislature but one adopted a resolution demanding
the prohibition of slavery in the territories
 D. The Compromise of 1850
1. Clay’s Proposed Solution
a. The aging Henry Clay, who was spearheading the effort believed that no
compromise could last unless it settled all the issues in dispute between the
sections. As a result, he took several measures that had been proposed
separately
b. Among the bill’s provisions were the admission of California as a free state; the
formation of territorial governments in the rest of the lands acquired from
Mexico, without restrictions on slavery; the abolition of the slave trade, but not
slavery itself, in the District of Columbia; and a new and more effective fugitive
slave law
c. In the first phase of the debate, the dominant voices in Congress were those of
old men- national leaders who still remembered Jefferson, Adams, and other
founders- who argued for or against the compromise on the basis of broad
ideals
d. He insisted that the North grant the South equal rights in the territories, that it
agree to observe the laws concerning fugitive slaves, that it cease attacking
slavery, and that it amend the Constitution to create dual presidents, one from
the North and one from the South.
e. To William H. Seward, the ideals of union were to him less important than the
issue eliminating slavery. Jefferson David believed the slavery issue was less
one of principles and ideals than one of economic self-interest. Stephen A.
Douglas devoted his career not to any broad national goals, but to sectional
gain and personal self promotion
f. On July 9, 1840, Taylor suddenly died from a violent stomach disorder. He was
succeeded by Millard Fillmore of New York. He supported the compromise and
used his powers of persuasion to swing northern Whigs into line
g. Douglas’s first step, after the departure of Clay, was to break up the bill Clay
had envisioned as a great, comprehensive solution to the sectional crisis and to
introduce instead a series of separate measures to be voted on one by one
h. The Compromise of 1850 was a victory of bargaining and self-interest. Still,
members of Congress hailed the measure as a triumph of statesmanship; and
Fillmore, signing it, called it a just settlement of the sectional problem
IV. The Crises Of The 1850s
A. The Uneasy Truce
1. Opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act
a. The Democrats chose Franklin Pierce, and the Whigs chose General Winfield
Scott
b. Whigs were the principal victims in the election. They suffered the massive
defection of antislavery members angered by the party’s evasiveness on the
issue. Many of them flocked to the Free-Soil Party, whose antislavery
presidential candidate, John P. Hale, repudiated the Compromise of 1850
c. Franklin Pierce, a charming, amiable man of no particular distinction,
attempted to maintain part harmony by avoiding divisive issues, and
particularly by avoiding the issue of slavery
 d. Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act intensified quickly after 1850,
when southerners began appearing in northern states to pursue people they
claimed were fugitives.
B. “Young America”
1. Ostend Manifesto
a. The great liberal and nationalist revolutions of 1848 in Europe stirred them to
dream of a republican Europe with governments based on the model of the
U.S.
b. In 1854, a group of Pierce’s envoys sent him a private document from Ostend,
Belgium, making the case for seizing Cuba by force
c. When the Ostend Manifesto, as it became known, was leaked to public, it
enraged many antislavery northerners, who charged the administration with
conspiring to bring a new slave state into the Union.
d. The kingdom of Hawaii agreed to join the U.S., but the treaty died in the Senate
because it contained a clause prohibiting slavery in the islands
C. Slavery, Railroads, and the West
1. Transcontinental Railroad and Slavery
a. Broad support began to emerge for building a transcontinental railroad. The
problem was where to place it- and in particular, where to locate the railroad’s
terminus, where the line could connect with the existing rail network east of
the Mississippi
b. Northerners favored Chicago, the rapidly growing capital of the free states of
the Northwest. Southerners supported St. Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans
c. In 183, Davis sent James Gadsen to Mexico, where he persuaded the Mexican
government to accept $10 million in exchange for a strip of land that today
comprises part of Arizona and New Mexico and that would have facilitated a
southern route for the transcontinental railroad
D. The Kansas-Nebraska Controversy
1. Kansas-Nebraska Act
a. In an effort to make the measure acceptable to southerners, Douglas inserted a
provision that the status of slavery in the territory would be determined by the
territorial legislature
b. In theory, the region could choose to open itself to slavery. When southern
Democrats demanded more, Douglas agreed to an additional clause explicitly
repealing the area into two territories instead of one
c. The legislation divided and destroyed the Whig Party, which nearly disappeared
by 1856. It divided northern Democrats and drove many of them from the
party.
d. Most importantly, it spurred the creation of a new party that was frankly
sectional in composition and creed.
E. “Bleeding Kansas”
1. Pottawatomie Massacre
 a. After the events in Lawrence, John Brown gathered six followers and in one
night murdered five pro-slavery settlers, leaving their mutilated bodies to
discourage other supporters of slavery from entering Kansas
b. Northerners and southerners alike came to believe that the events in Kansas
illustrated the aggressive designs of the other section.
c. In May 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts rose to give a speech titled
“The Crime Against Kansas.” In it, he gave particular attention to Senator
Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, an outspoken defender of slavery.
d. The South Carolinian was, Sumner claimed, the “Don Quixote” of slavery.
e. Several days after the speech, Brooks approached Sumner at his desk in the
Senate chamber and began beating him with a cane.
f. Sumner, trapped in his chair, rose in agony with such strength he tore the desk
from the bolts holding it to the floor. Then he collapsed, bleeding and
unconscious.
F. The Free-Soil Ideology
1. “Free-Soil” Ideology
a. In the North, its beliefs centered in “free soil” and “free labor.” Although
abolitionists generated some support for their argument that slavery was a
moral evil and must be eliminated, most white northerners came to believe
that the existence of slavery was dangerous not because of what it did to
blacks, but because of what it did to whites.
b. According to this vision, the South was the antithesis of democracy- a closed,
static society, in which slavery preserved an entrenched aristocracy and in
which common whites had no opportunity to improve themselves
c. The South was, northern free-laborites further maintained, engaged in a
conspiracy to extend slavery throughout the nation and thus to destroy the
openness of northern capitalism and replace it with the closed, aristocratic
system of the South.
d. The only solution to this “slave power conspiracy” was to fight the spread of
slavery and extend the nation’s democratic ideals to all sections of the country.
G. The Pro-Slavery Argument
1. The Pro-slavery Argument
a. In response to these pressures, a number of white southerners produced a new
intellectual defense of slavery. Professor Thomas R. Dew of the College of
William and Mary helped begin that effort in 1832.
b. John C. Calhoun stated the essence of the case in 1837: Southerners should
stop apologizing for slavery as a necessary evil and defend it as “a good- a
positive good”
c. Above all, southern apologists argued slavery was good because it served as
the basis for the southern way of life- a way of life superior to any other in the
United States, perhaps the world
d. Others wrote with horror of the factory system and the crowded, pestilential
cities filled with unruly immigrants. The South was, by contrast, was a stable,
orderly society.
 e. It allowed the aristocracy to enjoy a refined and accomplished cultural life. The
defense of slavery rested too on increasingly elaborate arguments about the
biological inferiority of African Americans. And just as abolitionist arguments
drew strength from Protestant theology in the North, the proslavery defense
mobilized the Protestant clergy in the South to give the institution a religious
and biblical justification
H. Buchanan and Depression
1. Election of 1856
a. Democratic Party leaders chose James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a reliable
party stalwart who as minister to England had been safely out of the country
during the recent controversies.
b. The Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who had made a national
reputation as the explorer of the Far West and who had no political record.
c. The Know-Nothing party was beginning to break apart, but it nominated
Millard Fillmore. Buchanan won a narrow victory over Fremont and Fillmore
d. In the year Buchanan took office, a financial panic struck the country, followed
by a depression that lasted several years.
e. In the North, the depression strengthened Republican Party because distressed
manufacturers, workers, and farmers came to believe that the hard times were
the result of the unsound policies of southern controlled Democratic
administrations.
I. The Dred Scott Decision
1. Taney’s Sweeping Opinion
a. Chief Justice Taney declared that Scott could not bring in a suit because he was
property and had virtually no rights at all. Consequently, he concluded that
Congress possessed no authority to pass law depriving persons of their slave
property in the territories. The Missouri Compromise had always been
unconstitutional
b. Southern whites were elated: the highest tribunal in the land had sanctioned
parts of the most extreme argument. In the North, the decision produced
widespread dismay. Republicans threatened that when they won control of the
national government, they would reverse the decision- by packing the Court
with new members
J. Deadlock over Kansas
1. Lecompton Constitution Rejected
a. Buchanan pressured Congress to admit Kansas under the Lecompton
constitution. Stephen A. Douglas and other western Democrats refused to
support the president’s proposal, which died in the House of Representatives.
b. Finally, Congress approved a compromise: The Lecompton constitution would
be submitted to the voters of Kansas again. Again, Kansas voters decisively
rejected the Lecompton Constitution
K. The Emergence of Lincoln
1. Lincoln’s Position
 a. Lincoln believed if the nation could accept that African Americans were not
entitled to basic human rights, then it could accept that other groups-
immigrant laborers, for example- could be deprived of rights too.
b. And if slavery were to extend into the western territories, opportunities for
poor white laborers to better their lots there would be lost
c. Lincoln believed slavery was wrong, but he was not an abolitionist. That was in
part b/c he could not envision an easy alternative to slavery in the areas where
it already existed
d. He shared the prevailing view among northern whites that African Americans
were not prepared to live on equal terms with the whites
e. Douglas’s position satisfied his followers sufficiently to win him reelection to
the Senate, but it aroused little enthusiasm and did nothing to enhance his
national political ambitions
f. Lincoln, by contrast, lost the election but emerged with a growing following
both in and beyond the state
L. John Brown’s Raid
1. John Brown’s Raid
a. In the fall of 1859, John Brown, the antislavery zealot whose bloody actions in
Kansas had inflamed the crisis there, staged an even more dramatic episode,
this time in the South
b. On Oct. 16, he and a group of 18 followers attacked and seized control of a U.S.
arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. But the slave uprising Brown hoped to inspire
did not occur, and he quickly found himself besieged in the arsenal by citizens,
local militia, companies, and before long, U.S. troops under the command of
Robert E. Lee
c. No single event did more than the Harpers Ferry raid to convince white
southerners that they could not live safely in the Union
d. John Brown’s raid, many southerners believed (incorrectly) had the support of
the Republican Party, and it suggested to them that the North was now
committed to producing a slave insurrection
M. The Election of Lincoln
1. Divided Democrats
a. When the convention endorsed popular sovereignty, delegates from 8 states in
the lower South walked out. The remaining delegates couldn’t agree on a
presidential candidate and finally adjourned after agreeing to meet again in
Baltimore, in June
b. The decimated convention at Baltimore nominated Stephen A. Douglas. In the
meantime, disenchanted southern Democrats met in Richmond and nominated
John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Later, a group of conservative ex-Whigs met
in Baltimore to form, the Constitutional Union Party, with John Bell of
Tennessee as their presidential candidate.
c. The Republican leaders, in the meantime, were trying to broaden their appeal
so as to attract every major interest group in the North that feared the South
was blocking its economic aspirations.
d. The platform supported the right of each state to decide the status of slavery
within its borders. But it also insisted that neither Congress nor territorial
legislatures could legalize slavery in the territories
e. In the November election, Lincoln won the presidency with a majority of the
electoral votes. Within a few weeks of Lincoln’s victory, the process of disunion
began- a process that would quickly lead to a prolonged and bloody war
between two groups of Americans, each heir to more than a century of
struggling toward nationhood, each now convinced that it shared no common
ground with the other.