AMSCO 5.6 Failure of Compromise

Overview

AMSCO Topic 5.6, Failure of Compromise, covers the chain of events from 1852 to 1858 that destroyed every attempt to settle the slavery question peacefully and set the nation on the path to Civil War. Three slavery-related issues divided North and South: the morality of slavery, states' rights (especially the right to protect slavery), and economic differences between the free-labor industrial North and the slave-labor agricultural South. This chapter traces how popular sovereignty failed in Kansas, the Second Party System collapsed, the Supreme Court inflamed the crisis with Dred Scott, and Abraham Lincoln rose to national fame in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

This chapter picks up where the Compromise of 1850 left off. Every "solution" in 5.6 makes things worse. That's the whole story.

Historians still debate the big question: was the war inevitable, or did blundering politicians and extremism turn a solvable conflict into an unnecessary war? Keep both interpretations in mind. They make great essay material.

National Parties in Crisis: The Election of 1852 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

The two major parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, grew weak and divided over slavery in the 1850s. The Whigs cracked first.

The Election of 1852

The Whigs nominated Mexican War hero General Winfield Scott and tried to ignore slavery entirely, running on their traditional platform of improving roads and harbors. It didn't work. The party's antislavery and Southern factions fell to fighting, and the party neared a split.

The Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire as a compromise candidate. He was a Northerner, but Southern Democrats accepted him because he supported the Fugitive Slave Law. Pierce won all but four states in the Electoral College. The Whig Party's days were clearly numbered.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois wanted a transcontinental railroad running through the center of the country with a major terminus in Chicago (where, conveniently, he owned real estate). Southerners preferred a southern route, so Douglas cut a deal to win their votes:

• His bill divided the Nebraska Territory into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska
• Settlers in each would decide on slavery by popular sovereignty
• Both territories sat north of the 36°30' line, so the bill opened land to slavery that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had closed to it

Northern Democrats condemned the bill as a surrender to "slave power," but after three months of bitter debate, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and Pierce signed it. In effect, it repealed the Missouri Compromise that had kept regional tensions in check for over three decades.

"Bleeding Kansas" and the Sumner-Brooks Incident

After 1854, the conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces turned violent, both in Kansas and on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Violence in Kansas

Douglas expected antislavery farmers from the Midwest, who made up the majority of settlers, to settle the question peacefully. Instead, both sides rushed to control the territory:

• Slaveholders from neighboring Missouri set up homesteads to win Kansas for the South. Their enemies called them "border ruffians."
• Northern abolitionists and Free-Soilers organized the New England Emigrant Aid Company (1855) to pay transportation costs for antislavery settlers.
• Two rival governments formed: a proslavery legislature in Lecompton and an antislavery legislature in Topeka.

In 1856, proslavery forces attacked the free-soil town of Lawrence, killing two people and destroying homes and businesses. Two days later, abolitionist John Brown and his sons retaliated by attacking a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek and killing five. The territory earned the name "bleeding Kansas."

The Pierce administration did nothing to keep order or support honest elections in Kansas. Popular sovereignty, the supposedly democratic fix, had produced chaos and bloodshed.

Caning of Senator Sumner (1856)

Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner attacked the Democratic administration in a vitriolic speech, "The Crime Against Kansas," which included personal insults against South Carolina senator Andrew Butler. Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks, walked into the Senate chamber and beat Sumner over the head repeatedly with a cane. Sumner never fully recovered.

The reaction is the point. The North was outraged and the House voted to censure Brooks, while Southerners applauded him. The same act looked like an atrocity to one section and a defense of honor to the other.

Birth of the Republican Party and the Election of 1856

The Whig Party broke apart completely, and ex-Whigs scattered in three directions:

• Those worried about immigration joined the nativist Know-Nothing Party, which won some local and state elections in the mid-1850s before fading as slavery eclipsed immigration as the central issue
• Ex-Whigs who supported slavery's expansion joined the Democrats, whose core was now the South
• Ex-Whigs who opposed slavery's expansion formed the core of a new party

The Republican Party was founded in Wisconsin in 1854 in direct reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It combined Free-Soilers with antislavery Whigs and Democrats. Its goal was to stop the spread of slavery into the territories, not to abolish slavery itself. Its first platform called for repealing both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law. As Kansas bled, the party grew into the second largest in the country. But it was strictly a Northern, sectional party, and its rise threatened and alienated the South.

The Election of 1856

The Republicans' first presidential test came in 1856 with nominee John C. Frémont, the California senator and explorer known as the "Pathfinder." The Republican platform: no expansion of slavery, free homesteads, and a probusiness protective tariff. The Know-Nothings ran former President Millard Fillmore, who took 20 percent of the popular vote.

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, rejecting both Pierce and Douglas because they were too tied to the Kansas-Nebraska mess. Buchanan won, but Frémont carried 11 of the 16 free states. The math was alarming for the South: a purely sectional antislavery party could plausibly win the presidency without a single Southern vote. The election foreshadowed a party that would win all but four presidential elections between 1860 and 1932.

Constitutional Crises Under Buchanan: Lecompton and Dred Scott

Both major positions on slavery in the territories, the Democrats' popular sovereignty and the Republicans' no-expansion stance, took serious blows during Buchanan's administration (1857-1861).

The Lecompton Constitution

In 1857, the proslavery legislature at Lecompton submitted a proslavery state constitution for Kansas. Buchanan knew it lacked majority support but asked Congress to accept it and admit Kansas as a slave state anyway. Congress refused. Many Democrats, including Stephen Douglas, joined Republicans in rejecting it. In 1858, Kansas settlers, most of them antislavery, overwhelmingly voted the document down. Buchanan came out of the episode looking like a weak president doing the South's bidding.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Dred Scott was an enslaved man held in Missouri who had lived for two years in the free territory of Wisconsin before returning to Missouri. He sued for his freedom in 1846, arguing that residence on free soil made him free. The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Southern Democrat, ruled against Scott in March 1857, just two days after Buchanan's inauguration. The majority held:

• Scott had no right to sue in federal court because the Framers did not intend African Americans to be U.S. citizens
• Congress could not deprive any person of property without due process, and since enslaved people were treated as property, Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory
• The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional

In effect, the Court declared every Western territory open to slavery. Southern Democrats were delighted; Republicans denounced the ruling as "the greatest crime in the annals of the republic." The suspicious timing fed Northern fears of a "Slave Power" conspiracy between Buchanan and the Taney Court, pushing thousands of Democrats into the Republican Party. Northern Democrats like Douglas were stuck with an impossible task: defending popular sovereignty without rejecting Dred Scott. If Congress couldn't ban slavery from a territory, how could territorial voters?

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a successful trial lawyer and former one-term Whig congressman, challenged Douglas for his Illinois Senate seat. Douglas (the "Little Giant") was nationally famous as the champion of popular sovereignty; Lincoln was a relative unknown.

Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He was a moderate who opposed the expansion of slavery and framed slavery as a moral issue ("If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong"). Accepting the Republican nomination, he delivered his famous house-divided speech: "I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." That line made Southerners see him as a radical.

The two met in seven debates across Illinois. At Freeport, Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with Dred Scott. Douglas's answer became the Freeport Doctrine: slavery couldn't actually exist anywhere local citizens refused to pass slave codes maintaining it. The answer angered Southern Democrats, who felt Douglas didn't go far enough in backing Dred Scott.

The outcome cut both ways. Douglas kept his Senate seat but alienated Southern Democrats, damaging his 1860 presidential hopes. Lincoln lost the election but emerged as a national figure and a leading contender for the Republican nomination in 1860, which sets up the election of 1860 and secession.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the Topic 5.6 Failure of Compromise study guide for the course-aligned version of this material, and browse all chapters on the AMSCO notes page. For context, review AMSCO 5.5 on sectional differences before this chapter.

To check your understanding, work through APUSH guided practice questions, drill definitions in the key terms glossary, or try FRQ practice with instant scoring. Period 5 causation questions (why did compromise fail?) show up constantly on the exam, so practicing with this content pays off.