US History

U.S. History Study Guide

House, although they did not hold a majority. Secession was talked of openly by Southerners, and as tensions rose congressmen came to the sessions carrying revolvers and Bowie knives. John Brown and Harpers Ferry Raid Harpers Ferry, Virginia was the site of John Brown's Raid. The radical Abolitionist raided the federal armory there in 1859, planning to start a slave rebellion in the South. His plan failed as federal troops captured him. He was put on trial and found guilty of treason, then sentenced to hang. Brown was seen as a martyr of the Abolitionist cause. He strained the Northern and Southern relations further, Northerners condemned his execution, Southerners condemned his actions. Before Brown was executed, he left a note where he prophesied the coming storm " I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood." 12.18 Republican Ascendancy: The Election of 1860 In 1860, Buchanan announced he would not run for reelection. The Democratic Party ruptured over whom to nominate in Buchanan’s place. While Northern Democrats defended the doctrine of popular sovereignty and nominated Stephen Douglas for president, Southern Democrats opposed to popular sovereignty in favor of the Dred Scott decision, which provided absolute protection of slavery in all territories and nominated vice president John Breckenridge for president. Southern moderates from the lower South walked out of the Democratic Convention and formed their own party, the Constitutional Party, which nominated John C. Bell for president. These three candidates faced Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln emerged with a majority of the electoral votes, one hundred and eighty in total. He carried all eighteen Free states, but had not even appeared on the ballots of a number of slave states, and in ten slave states he did not receive a single popular vote. Lincoln’s election alienated the South that secession seemed imminent. While South Carolina had threatened earlier to secede from the Union over the Tariff of Abominations in 1828, the current threat was much direr. Significance • In the election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated three challengers representing the country’s varying pro-slavery political positions and created the final spark which would lead to the Civil War 12.19 The Secession Crisis Lincoln had declared he had no intention of disturbing slavery where it already existed, but many Southerners thought otherwise. They also feared further raids of the sort John Brown had attempted and felt their pride injured by the election of a president: for whom Southerners had not voted.

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