Three Lectures on America's Path to Civil War
50 minutes
Democratic Senator from Illinois, known as "The Little Giant" for his small stature and powerful oratory. Douglas championed popular sovereignty as a compromise solution to the slavery question, believing local voters should decide. His Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed his presidential ambitions by alienating both Northern and Southern factions.
The central belief that every person should own their own labor and have the opportunity to improve their condition through hard work. More than a moral critique of slavery, this was a political economy argument: Republicans claimed slavery created a stagnant aristocracy, degraded all labor, and blocked social mobility for ordinary white workers. This ideology united farmers, workers, and businessmen against slavery's expansion - not necessarily because they cared about enslaved people, but because they feared slavery's competition.
In Philadelphia, violence erupted over which Bible would be used in public schools - Protestant King James or Catholic Douay-Rheims. Nativist mobs burned Catholic churches and attacked Irish neighborhoods. At least 20 people died. The riots showed how religious differences could explode into lethal violence when combined with ethnic and economic tensions.
Pro-slavery Missourians who crossed into Kansas Territory to vote illegally in territorial elections. Armed and often drunk, they intimidated antislavery settlers and stuffed ballot boxes. Their actions convinced Northerners that popular sovereignty was a fraud designed to force slavery into free territory. The name came from their rough appearance and violent tactics.
Radical Republican Senator from Massachusetts and passionate abolitionist. His "Crime Against Kansas" speech used deliberately provocative language comparing Senator Butler to Don Quixote with "the harlot, Slavery" as his mistress. Such personal insults violated Southern honor culture, but Brooks's violent response shocked the North. Sumner's empty desk became a symbol of Southern brutality.
A catastrophic potato blight destroyed Ireland's staple crop, causing mass starvation. Over 1 million died and another 1-2 million emigrated. The British government's inadequate response intensified Irish resentment of English rule. Famine refugees were often weakened by hunger and disease, arriving in America with nothing.
A wave of liberal and nationalist revolutions swept across Europe in 1848, seeking constitutional government and national unity. Most failed, leading to a diaspora of political refugees called "Forty-Eighters." These were often educated, politically radical, and committed to republican ideals - they would become important Republicans and abolitionists in America.
50 minutes
"The Pathfinder" was a famous Western explorer and military officer. Republicans chose him for his celebrity and lack of political baggage. Though he lost in 1856, his strong showing in the North proved that a purely sectional party could compete for the presidency. In 1860, Republicans would nominate a more experienced politician: Abraham Lincoln.
Born into slavery in Virginia, Scott was taken by his owner to the free state of Illinois and then Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. After returning to Missouri (a slave state), Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that residence in free territory made him free. His case became the most important Supreme Court decision before the Civil War.
Machine-made parts precise enough to be interchangeable between products. Before this, each product was handcrafted with unique components. This system allowed: faster production, easier repairs, less-skilled labor, and mass production. Eli Whitney promoted the concept for musket production; it became known as "the American System" because European visitors were amazed by it.
Senator James Henry Hammond declared in 1858: "No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king." Southerners believed their cotton monopoly gave them international leverage. In fact, Britain had stockpiled cotton, could get it from Egypt and India, and was morally opposed to slavery. The "King Cotton" strategy failed during the Civil War.
A non-slaveholding white North Carolinian who wrote The Impending Crisis of the South (1857). Helper attacked slavery not on moral grounds but as economically harmful to poor whites. His argument that slavery kept the South backward and poor whites oppressed was explosive - it suggested class conflict might split the white South. Helper was not an abolitionist and was deeply racist, but his book became Republican propaganda.
50 minutes
Born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana and Illinois. Self-educated lawyer and former Whig congressman. Lincoln opposed slavery as morally wrong but was not an abolitionist - he did not advocate immediate emancipation or racial equality. His position was that slavery should be contained, not abolished where it existed. The debates would make him famous and lead to his 1860 nomination.
Six wealthy Northern abolitionists who funded Brown's activities: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. They knew Brown planned violence but most did not know the specific target. Several fled to Canada when the raid failed, fearing prosecution. Their involvement showed respectable abolitionists were willing to fund armed insurrection.
U.S. Army colonel in 1859, Lee happened to be on leave in Washington when Brown's raid occurred. He was sent to command the Marines who captured Brown. Less than two years later, Lee would resign from the U.S. Army to command Confederate forces against the Union. His role at Harpers Ferry was a small irony of history.
By 1860, the American political system had failed to contain the slavery controversy. War was no longer a distant possibility but an approaching certainty.