Topic 5.6 Notes – Failure of Compromise

Why Compromise Over Slavery in the Territories Failed

The core issue was bigger than any one territory. Every new state could shift the balance in Congress, so slavery in the West meant political power in Washington and the future of the Union.

Earlier deals had only postponed the fight:

• Missouri Compromise drew the 36°30′ line and tried a geographic compromise.
• Compromise of 1850 used popular sovereignty in some western lands and delayed a final answer.

This map is a good reminder of what that earlier geographic compromise looked like before the 1850s blew it apart.

Missouri Compromise map

The 1850s showed four failed ways of solving the issue:

• Geographic compromise failed when old boundaries no longer held.
• Popular sovereignty failed because both sides rushed in to control the vote.
• Judicial settlement failed because the Supreme Court’s answer satisfied the South and enraged the North.
• National party mediation failed because parties stopped bridging sections and became sectional themselves.

What made this spiral so dangerous was mistrust. Each side thought the other was using the federal government to force its system on the whole nation.

The chain you need to know

1. Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise line.
2. Bleeding Kansas showed popular sovereignty turning into fraud and violence.
3. Sectional violence hardened attitudes.
4. Dred Scott wiped out faith in congressional compromise.
5. Party realignment created sectional politics.
6. Democratic splits made compromise even less possible.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas

In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It organized Kansas and Nebraska and said settlers would decide slavery through popular sovereignty.

That sounded democratic, but it also repealed the Missouri Compromise restriction north of 36°30′.

• Northerners were outraged because they saw this as betrayal of a long-standing bargain, feared slavery spreading into land once closed to it, and talked about a Slave Power conspiracy.
• Southerners supported it because they argued slaveholders had equal rights in the territories and enslaved people were protected property.

How Kansas fell apart

Popular sovereignty assumed a fair local vote. Kansas got the opposite.

• New England Emigrant Aid Company sent antislavery settlers.
• Border ruffians from Missouri crossed over to vote illegally.
• Fraud in the 1855 elections created a proslavery legislature at Shawnee Mission.
• Antislavery settlers rejected it and formed a rival government at Topeka.

Bleeding Kansas

• Sack of Lawrence involved proslavery forces attacking an antislavery town.
• John Brown’s Pottawatomie Creek killings were a violent antislavery retaliation.
• Raids, murders, and destruction followed on both sides.

The big point is simple. Popular sovereignty produced rival governments, fraud, and violence instead of a settlement.

Violence and Court Decisions Deepened Sectional Conflict

Kansas violence spilled into national politics.

The caning of Charles Sumner

After Charles Sumner gave his “The Crime Against Kansas” speech, Preston Brooks caned him on the Senate floor in 1856.

• Many Northerners saw slaveholding brutality.
• Many Southerners praised Brooks for defending Southern honor.

Political cartoons like this one helped turn the attack into a national symbol of sectional hatred.

“Southern Chivalry” cartoon on the Sumner caning

Dred Scott v. Sandford

In 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that:

• African Americans were not U.S. citizens as he interpreted the Constitution.
• Dred Scott had no standing to sue in federal court.
• Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.
• The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

His logic used Fifth Amendment property-rights reasoning. To the South, this was a constitutional victory. To the North, it looked like proof the federal government served slaveholders.

This mattered enormously because if Congress could not restrict slavery, the main Republican position was under direct attack.

Party Realignment and the Final Breakdown of National Politics

The old party system had helped hold the Union together because both major parties had Northern and Southern wings. In the 1850s, that structure broke.

• The Whig Party collapsed over slavery.
• The American Party or Know-Nothings grew through anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic nativism, but it also split sectionally.
• The Republican Party formed in 1854 from former Northern Whigs, Free-Soilers, antislavery Democrats, and some ex-Know-Nothings. It opposed the extension of slavery and backed free-soil ideology, meaning western land should go to free labor.

Election of 1856

Lecompton Constitution and Democratic division

The Lecompton Constitution in 1857 was a proslavery constitution for Kansas. Buchanan supported it. Douglas opposed it because it violated fair popular sovereignty. Kansas later rejected it. That split Democrats at the exact moment national compromise needed them united.

Lincoln, Douglas, and John Brown

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln opposed expansion of slavery and used the House Divided idea. Douglas answered Dred Scott with the Freeport Doctrine, saying territories could exclude slavery by refusing to protect it legally. That helped him in Illinois but alienated Southern Democrats.

In 1859, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry tried to seize a federal arsenal and spark a slave uprising. He was captured by U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee and executed. Some Northerners praised him as a martyr. Southerners saw the raid as proof antislavery politics threatened their lives and property.