HIST 103A Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Free Territory, Slave Power, New Economy
29 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 14.1: The Road to Disunion
Sectional Divide Over the Future of the West
➢Why did the future of western lands so bitterly divide Americans in the 1840s and 1850s?
○Intensive growth in the North
■Anti-slavery free territory
●1850s are boom years for northern farmers
●Built new transportation facilities, canal networks, railroad
networks, etc
○Improved communication and enabled better access to
markets and market communication
■New machinery with technological advances
●Led to urbanization
○Larger markets, conglomeration (people are living more
densely), people are working for wages, etc
○Wave of immigration of Irish and Germans increased
●New economy brings new levels of wealth
■Federalist idea of how growth happens
●Not by recreating the same kind of farm structure across a wider
territory, but intensifying it
○New waves of making money and developing their cities
○Extensive growth in the South
■Peak of slavery as a system for creating wealth in the US
●Growing extensively
○West into new territories acquired by the Mexican
American War and wars against native people
●Boom for cotton production
○Slave owners are able to increase their production
○Price of cotton stays steady and slave prices are cheap
■Rising demand and steady production of cotton
makes slave owners rich
■Slower population growth
●White immigrants do not migrate here
●No legal slave importation from outside the US
●South is losing its political power in the federal government
○Northern states are getting more votes in the House
■The House is dominated by the north
■Losing their ability to hold the Senate
●Increasing inequality among whites
○Increasing distribution of slave ownership
■⅓ of whites who own slaves in early 19th century
■¼ of whites own slaves by the 1850s
●Cheap form of wealth in the south is being
concentrated in upper quartile of society
●Politically dominating by a very wealthy, thin class of planters
○Political control is increasing narrowly concentrated
■Prospect of moving up in society is less of a
realistic prospect
●In the north, this is still an ongoing
possibility
○Connected economies
■But rival systems of labor and competition over areas to grow
●Expansion was necessary for both sides to continue prosperity and
existence
○South: Expanding slavery
■Economy was built on extensive growth
○North: Safety valve to encourage upper mobility
■Intensive growth led to more opportunities
●Over patterns of economic growth and how labor is treated
○Labor can be sold for a wage vs. something that can be
bought for a price because you own that property
Slavery As A Political Problem
➢Irritant of the Wilmot Proviso
○Slavery becomes an unignorable political problem in the US
■Whether slavery should expand to the west”
○Specifically a political problem for the irritant of the Wilmot Proviso
■Attached to a military spending bill by David Wilmot who required that all
lands gained from Mexico had to be free
●Passed in the House (antislavery northern majority) but failed in
the Senate
■Antislavery is not the same as abolition or anti-racism
●David Wilmot, like many anti-slavery northerners, did not want to
see extension of slavery or the shifting of population of African
Americans into that of other territories
■“The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent; let us keep
what remains to ourselves and our children”
○Never passes Congress, but does provoke new arguments in response to it
■Northerners increasingly favored ban on the extension of slavery
■Southerners, led by John C Calhoun, tried to devise new ways to nullify
federal power
●Created schemes to ensure political minories (slaveholders) to have
veto over the democratic majority
➢“Moderates” (Democratic party affiliated politicians) created new solutions
○Maintenance of Missouri Compromise line
■Keep the line of slavery at 36°30′
●Slaveowners do not abide and want to expand north and west
○Noninterference
■Let the territories decide for themselves, through popular sovereignty,
whether or not they want to become a slave state
●The federal government no longer is setting the rules for the
territories and requiring steps for them to become a state
○The states can decide
●Sounds like you are an acting practice of democracy
○In practice, people scrambled to get others who agree with
them into their territories and control the elections in the
territories
■Easier to do because you need a small number of
people to win the debate
●Creates lots of crises of legitimacy
○Popular sovereignty
➢The 1848 Election
○Major parties attempted to finesse the slavery issue
■Democrats are split up between a Wilmot Northern faction and a Southern
Fire Eating faction
●Lewis Cass
○Wilmot Northern Democratic nominee
○Finesses the issue by saying he wanted popular sovereignty
■Whigs are also split up between two factions: the Conscious Whigs
(people who felt their conscious coming at them and wanted antislavery)
and the Cotton Whigs (businessmen who had close ties to the South)
●Zachary Taylor
○Whig nominee
○Slave owner of a massive estate
○War hero in the Mexican-American War
■Wins the election
Document Summary
Sectional divide over the future of the west. 1850s are boom years for northern farmers. Built new transportation facilities, canal networks, railroad networks, etc. Improved communication and enabled better access to markets and market communication. Larger markets, conglomeration (people are living more densely), people are working for wages, etc. Wave of immigration of irish and germans increased. New economy brings new levels of wealth. Not by recreating the same kind of farm structure across a wider territory, but intensifying it. New waves of making money and developing their cities. Peak of slavery as a system for creating wealth in the us. West into new territories acquired by the mexican. Slave owners are able to increase their production. Price of cotton stays steady and slave prices are cheap. Rising demand and steady production of cotton makes slave owners rich. No legal slave importation from outside the us. South is losing its political power in the federal government.
