1819. The newly-born United States of America
sat in a state of delicate balance. 11:11. 11 free states, 11 slave states. From the
outside looking in, it appeared to be perfect harmony. Equal states, equal representation,
equal influence in federal affairs. But this was only from the outside looking in. In reality,
there was no focus on balance for the Americans. Instead, all that mattered now, was expansion… Manifest Destiny - that was the reason why
the United States government was hellbent on snagging more and more territory. Although
the phrase wouldn’t be coined until the mid-1800s, the belief held by many Americans
that it was the nation’s destiny to expand westward as far as can be, drove the U.S.
to do just that. Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York,
North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi,
Illinois, and Alabama. That was the whole of the United States thus far as of 1819,
but only a year later, this would change. In 1818, the Missouri Territory, previously
obtained as part of the Louisiana Purchase, began its push for statehood. The following
year, the district of Maine would be allowed to break off from Massachusetts and do the
same. It didn’t take long for this to cause a conundrum for the contemporary U.S., however,
because the addition of two more states had the potential to upset the numerical balance
between slave states and free states. On the one hand, Northerners and pro-abolitionists
in Congress argued that the addition of Missouri - which seemed to quickly lean toward wanting
to become a slave state - would expand slavery and thus bring them further away from their
goals. The Southerners, though, were obviously in
favor of adding another slave state and thus argued that any new candidate for statehood
should have the right to decide for themselves, just as the first 13 colonies, which side
of the fence they want to fall on. The debate in both the House of Representatives and the
Senate would continue into 1819, at which point Maine was now brought into the mix as
Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House at the time, suggested that Missouri should be added
to the union as a slave state, but that Maine should also be added, contrarily as a free
state. This proposal was subsequently debated into
yet another year, when in 1820, the Senate added to the bill, requiring that any other
territories north of the 36º 30’ latitude line that had been agreed upon below Missouri’s
lower border could only enter the union as free states. With everyone finally in some
level of agreement, the Missouri Compromise was signed into law. This triggered a tit-for-tat war of adding
one new slave state for every new free state and vice versa, starting with Arkansas in
1836, Michigan the next year, and Florida in 1845. And since Florida was a slave state,
it was assumed that the next territory to enter the union and statehood would be another
free state - but things became complicated when Texas had a demanding request for the
United States: annex us, now. The history of Texas had been a rollercoaster
thus far, and yet it was only now preparing for its biggest climb yet. Texas, up until
recently a part of Mexico after being freed from the grip of the Spaniards, wanted to
join a different nation - the U.S.A. The Texans’ pleas were initially ignored by the U.S. government,
which wasn’t in much favor of annexing the nearby territory. With growing pressure from Britain for Texas
to be an independent nation and America’s undeniable thirst for expansion, opinions
would soon change nevertheless and Texas would, in fact, join the union on December 29, 1845.
Here was the issue though: Texas wanted to be a slave state, which would offset the balance
the Northerners had tried so hard to keep. Furthermore, Texas had made claims to territories
that put it in direct conflict with its former host of Mexico. And with Texas newly a part of the United
States, those presumptuous claims were now the responsibility of the U.S. - something
that Mexico didn’t take lightly. Recently elected President James K. Polk,
however, didn’t care one bit what the Mexicans thought. Instead, he was an aggressive supporter
of Manifest Destiny and quickly upon his inauguration hoped to seize the contested territories.
Thus, Polk at first attempted to purchase his desired lands. He sent American diplomat John Slidell to
offer the administration in Mexico City $30 million in exchange for California, New Mexico,
and disputed territories along the Texas border. The Mexicans, aghast and unshakeably against
such an idea, declined to even meet with Slidell, which angered Polk. The Manifest Destiny supporter
would not be swayed by this rejection and instead decided that, if diplomacy wouldn’t
work, he would reel his neighbors into a war he knew the United States would win. As a
result, in the early weeks of 1846, the president sent American troops to the Texas border to
egg the Mexicans on - and it worked. It only took a few months for Mexican soldiers to
fire on the Americans and give Polk the excuse to declare war… With the Mexican-American War underway, debates
continued within the United States pertaining to the slave state vs. free state debacle.
With the free states now outnumbered, the Northerners felt that Polk, being a Southerner
himself, was actually committing his land grab in order to further bolster the slave
state advantage, which boosted North-to-South tensions. Still, the war raged on with now-famed
generals like Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee showing their prowess and adding to
their resumes while the Americans inched closer to Mexico's capital. The city was eventually
taken and warfare halted, leading to the long-awaited Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - which now forced
Mexico to cede not only the contested territories in California and New Mexico but also lands
of modern-day Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. Polk had gotten his
way and more, but it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. New land meant more to fight
over back home.// Over the next few years, Iowa, Wisconsin,
and California would all give their bids for statehood, eventually bringing about the Compromise
of 1850. This series of bills would address a multitude of things, though mostly focused
on the institution of slavery within the union. In short, it determined that California would
join the Union as a free state but was required to send one pro-slavery senator to the Senate
in order to maintain the readjusted balance. From now on, however, slave or free states
from the remaining territories gained from Mexico would be decided as such by popular
sovereignty. This went alright at first, as would the admission
to statehood of Minnesota in 1858 and Oregon in 1859, but predictably, there was simultaneously
another reason for tensions to rise. As part of the new establishment of popular
sovereignty, Senator Stephen Douglas suggested applying the strategy to a proposed newly
organized Nebraska territory that would at once repeal the Missouri Compromise slave-state
border and split the Nebraska territory in two. Now, despite a struggle to actually pass
the new bill that would become known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the populations of both
territories were left to vote on whether they wished to permit slavery or not. The consequence
of this, and maybe unpredictably so, was that settlers began flooding to both Nebraska and
Kansas - settlers from both sides of the slavery debate. This slippery slope ushered in a tragic
era known as Bleeding Kansas, which would eventually see Kansas enter the union in 1861,
surprisingly, as a free state. This would be the final state admitted to the union before
the start of the Civil War… Why did things get to this point? How could
such a young nation have fallen into battle with itself so fast? Why were the North and
South so opposed to each other? The issue of slavery and thus the North vs.
South contention can be blamed on vastly different cultural aspects of the two halves of America.
For the North, slavery was not really needed as the upper states had quickly become industrialized
and thus didn’t have to rely on as much manpower. This gave Northern citizens the opportunity
to unbiasedly consider the moral standing of the entire institution of slavery, prompting
many to call it into question. Supported by the ideas of European immigrants who had come
from nations that had already outlawed slavery, these Northerners began to turn toward abolitionism.
This was in total opposition to their fellow Americans down south, of course, but this
was because the South had failed to industrialize as the North had. Instead, Southerners were more economically
dependent on free labor for plantations and the like, which meant that their personal
finances and way of life could be entirely affected by the banning of slavery - thus
making it hard for a Southerner to even give the moral aspect a second thought - though
some did and still supported the institution. And with the invention of the cotton gin,
the matter only became more solidified - the South needed slavery. The problem then arose
as the North wondered if Southerners wanted to extend slavery even further, whereas the
latter worried that the former was going to take the slaves they already had. Both, ironically,
would be right. The North and South were miles away from reconciling this difference. Debatably, there was also the issue of federal
vs. state rights, although this factor is hard to blame entirely. Not only did the later-formed
Confederacy have a shockingly large bureaucratic system for a collection of states who were
opposed to overbearing federal governments, but there had also been previous opportunities,
such as during the Nullification Crisis a few decades prior, for the South to go to
war with the North or at least raise more of a ruckus if state rights were the core
issue. Still, it is true that many people at the time, particularly in the south, had
more loyalty to their state than country as a whole, and state vs. federal disconnect
likely played somewhat of a role in tensions, even if second fiddle to the slavery argument. The fanning of the flames, however, came from
a string of amplifying events. The Fugitive Slave Act, for example, had been part of the
Compromise of 1850 and galvanized abolitionists as it had made the federal government responsible
for finding, returning, and penalizing escaped slaves and anyone who aided them - even if
they made it to a free state. With the Northerners deeply troubled by this
development, politically active citizens of the upper United States would soon form their
own opposition party to the pro-slavery Democrats - the Republican Party. This new entity would also become host to
the controversial Abraham Lincoln shortly after its birth. Lincoln had previously served on the U.S.
House of Representatives in 1846 before joining the Republicans and running for Senate a decade
later. Although he lost the Senate race to Stephen Douglas, the series of speeches and
debates that proceeded the election had both catapulted him to popularity in the North
while earning him a fair share of enemies in the South. His mere existence as a political
entity, thus, stirred the pot and increased tensions. But then, so did Bleeding Kansas. Guerilla warfare is one way that this period,
from 1855 through 1859, has been described. While Nebraska was somewhat hit by the flood
of both pro and anti-slavery settlers hoping to sway the coming vote, it was Kansas that
was truly beaten. Pro-slavery residents of neighboring states used legal loopholes to
cross the border and vote in Kansas’s territorial elections, setting off a domino effect that
would lead to a split government and all-out violence. Historians estimate that anywhere from 50
to 200 Americans died as a consequence in the 4 years span, something akin to pouring
a couple of gallons of gasoline on the growing fire burning toward Civil War. Charles Sumner’s congressional speech about
Kansas would further heighten the situation. A Republican Northerner, Sumner had actually
memorized every last word in his impassioned speech titled “The Crime Against Kansas”
in which he lambasted the entire institution of slavery and even took direct jabs at pro-slavery
senators. This instance serves as a clear example of
the current level of tensions in the union and Congress, as South Carolina Representatives
Preston Brooks and Laurence Keitt reacted to the damning speech by physically assaulting
Charles Sumner with a cane, beating him so severely that he would need 3 full years of
leave to recover. And this was only a year before one of the most controversial and anger-fueling
incidents of the entire lead-up to the civil war. It was the Dred Scott Case that soon put the
move toward all-out military conflict between the North and South into hyperdrive. The case
revolved around a slave-since-birth by the name of Dred Scott. After the death of his
original owner in 1832, Scott had been purchased by a man named John Emerson, and upon his
death, Scott and his family would then be transfered into the ownership of Emerson’s
wife, Irene. Previously, Scott and his family had been brought along for travels across
multiple free states and territories, although at no point had they attempted to run or sue
for their freedom. Instead, once Irene took ownership, Scott attempted to buy their freedom
off of her. Irene was obstinate and insisted on keeping her slaves around, which led Dred
and his wife Harriet to, finally, go the route of a lawsuit. They each filed on the basis of two Missouri
statutes, as they were currently living with Irene in St. Louis. One stated that any slave
taken to a free state would thus be free and could not be returned to enslavement even
if they left the free state, while the other allowed for anyone to file a suit for wrongful
enslavement. The Scott couple was given logistical support
from abolitionists, fellow churchgoers, and ironically, the family of their previous owner. This allowed them to actually take their case
to court, which was first shot down in 1847 on a technicality but was given the option
of a retrial. The next trial would come in January of 1850 and this time, the Scotts
actually won their freedom. Irene, however, quickly appealed the decision to the Missouri
Supreme Court. Two years later, the court sided once more with Irene, thus re-enslaving
the Scott family. Unwilling to give up now, Scott filed a federal
lawsuit with the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri the following
year. Before the case could be decided upon again,
Irene would transfer the Scotts over to her brother, John Sandford, hence the name of
the new case: Dred Scott vs. Sandford. In the spring of 1854, the federal court ruled
in favor of Sandford, thus prompting Scott to appeal yet again, now to the United States
Supreme Court. This final trial would start on February 11,
1856, with a growing list of abolitionist and even politician supporters in favor of
the Scotts. Nevertheless, less than a month later, a decision was made, and once more,
Dred Scott had lost. And not only this, but the judge most notably
credited for the final ruling, a Southerner named Roger Taney, asserted that no African
American even had the right to sue for anything in the federal court, because they lacked
the ability to be United States citizens. While the Scotts would already have their
freedom by now thanks to Irene's new abolitionist husband and the help of their old owner’s
family, the case itself was the final straw for many abolitionists… John Brown has gone down in history as one
of America’s most infamous abolitionists, and on October 16, 1859, he would prove exactly
why. He warned an armory watchman as he and a group of fellow abolitionists launched what
would be an ambitious but ultimately failed raid on Harper’s Ferry. After taking several
hostages from the town and capturing the U.S. Armory and Arsenal, the raiders would be stalled
by a local militia as General Robert E. Lee made his way into the town to wrap things
up. Brown and his men had aimed to spark a local
slave rebellion, but instead, many of the raiders were killed once Lee and his Marines
arrived, with Brown himself being captured and later hanged for his acts of treason against
the state of Virginia. John Brown had failed and he had died, but his animosity for the
South was shared by far too many for the tide to be turned by this point. With the election of anti-slavery Northerner
Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to the presidency, enough was enough… Immediately after the future “Emancipator”
was elected to office, the South Carolina General Assembly called for a convention to
consider secession. Much to the pleasure of the locals, South Carolina thus voted unanimously
to leave the United States of America. Days later they issued a document justifying their
decision to secede, and making one dramatically important point in the process: “A geographical
line has been drawn across the Union”. And it truly had. 10 more Southern states
would follow suit and join the newly founded Confederate States of America, led by their
chosen president, Jefferson Davis. The Union president, Abraham Lincoln, refused to recognize
the Confederacy as legitimate, insisting that he wished to take no one's slaves and simply
wanted to keep the Union together. This meant nill to the Southerners, who were rapidly
attempting to create a unified nation out of a handful of states who had all made a
big fuss about state autonomy. And not just that, but the South was at a major disadvantage
for the impending war. Precise numbers are debated, but it can be
estimated that at the time of the mass secession and formation of the Confederacy, the Union
boasted a population of roughly 22 million, in comparison to the South’s approximate
9 million. Of those numbers, the Union would eventually enlist around 2 million soldiers
whilst the Confederates could only tally about 900,000. Furthermore, the Northerners had
something close to 20,000 miles worth of railroads, which was double what the Confederate states
could claim, thus giving the Union a better advantage for moving troops and supplies in
wartime. And while its often argued that the Confederate
generals, such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Nathan Bedford
Forrest, and Patrick Cleburne gave the South a tactical military edge on their upstairs
neighbors, the North was surely ahead in other ways; like the fact that they produced around
90% of goods in the former United States at the time. But still, the Union was losing its grip on
the South. It only had limited holdings left in Confederate states, and it was about to
lose another… Fort Sumter was the last Union stronghold
in South Carolina, and “strong” is being generous. It was outmanned and undersupplied,
to say the least, and with Southerners now cracking down on Union property within their
borders, it was surrounded. The Confederates attempted to force the little remaining Union
forces at the fort to surrender. The latter refused, and the Confederates opened fire.
The Civil War had begun…
