The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18 episode transcript - U.S. History by Crash Course

View all full transcripts of U.S. History by Crash Course on the blog: view now

Do you like podcasts? Go to PodExtra AI homepage (podextra.ai) to play and view complete AI-processed content of podcasts: summaries, mindmaps, topics, takeaways, transcripts, keywords and highlights.

The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

From: U.S. History by Crash Course

In which John Green teaches you about the election of 1860. As you may remember from last week, things were not great at this time in US history. The tensions between the North and South were rising, ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. The North wanted to abolish slavery, and the South wanted to continue on with it. It seemed like a war was inevitable, and it turns out that it was. But first, the nation had to get through this election. You'll learn how the bloodshed in Kansas and the truly awful Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the decrease in popularity of Stephen Douglas, the splitting of the Democratic party, and the unlikely victory of a relatively inexperienced politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's election would lead directly to the secession of several southern states, and thus to the Civil War. John will teach you about all this, plus Dred Scott, Roger Taney, and John Brown.

Full Transcript

The Election of 1860 the Road to Disunion Crash Course US History 18

speaker01 00:00:00

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course us history and today we discuss one of the most confusing questions in American history. What caused the Civil War? Just it's not a confusing question at all. Slavery caused the Civil War like states rights and nationalism, economics from the past. Your senior year of high school you will be taught American government by Mr Fleming, a white Southerner who will seem to you to be about 182 years old, and you will say something to him in class about states rights. And Mr Fleming, we will turn to you and he will say a stake's. Right to what, sir? And for the first time in your snotty little life, you will be well and truly speechless.

speaker01 00:45:00

The road to the Civil War leads to discussions of states, rights to slavery and differing economic systems, specifically whether those economic systems should involve slavery and the election of Abraham Lincoln, specifically how his election impacted slavery. But of those things would have been issues without slavery. So let's pick up with the most controversial section of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law.

speaker01 01:06:00

Now, long time Crash Course viewers will remember that there was already a Fugitive Slave Law written into the United States Constitution. So what made this one so controversial? Under this new law, any citizen was required to turn in anyone he or she knew to be a slave to authorities, and that made, like every person in New England, into a sheriff. And it also required them to enforce a they found ABS. So they ought to be sheriffs. And they didn't even get little gold badges. Have a gold badge? Awesome, thank you.

speaker01 01:34:00

This law was also terrifying to people of color in the north because even if you'd say, been born free in Massachusetts, the courts could send you into slavery if even one person swore before a judge that you were a specific slave. And many people of color responded to the Fugitive Slave Law by moving to Canada, which at the time was still technically an English colony, thereby further problematizing the whole the idea that England was all about tyranny and the United States was all about freedom. But anyway, most important result of the Fugitive Slave Law was that it convinced some northerners that the government was in the hands of a sinister slave power.

speaker01 02:07:00

Sadly, slave power was not a heavy metal band or Britney spear's new single, or even a secret cabal of powerful slave, but rather a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of proto-slavic congressmen. That conspiracy theory is going to grow in importance.

speaker01 02:20:00

But before we get to that, let us discuss railroads, underrated in Monopoly and underrated in the Civil War, let's go to the thought bubble. Railroads made shipping cheaper and more efficient and allowed people to move around the country quickly, and they had a huge backer also a tiny backer in the form of Illinois Congressman Stephen Douglas, who wanted a transcontinental railroad because, one, he felt it would bind the union together at a time when it could use some binding. And 2, he figured it would go through Illinois, which would be good for his home state. But there was a problem to build a railroad. The territory through which it ran needed to be organized, ideally as states, and if the railroad was going to run through Illinois, then the Kansas and Nebraska territories would need to become state like so. Doug was pushed forward.

speaker01 03:01:00

The Kansas Nebraska Act In 1854, the Kansas Nebraska Act formalized the idea of popular sovereignty, which basically meant that white residents of states could decide for themselves whether the state should allow slavery. Douglas felt this was a nice way of avoiding saying whether he favored slavery. Instead, he could just be in favor of letting other people be in favor of it. Now, you'll remember that the previously bartered Missouri compromise banned slavery in new states north of this here line, and since in theory, Kansas or Nebraska could have slavery if people there decided they wanted it under the Kansas Nebraska Act, despite being north of that, their line, this in practice repealed the Missouri Compromise. As a result, there was quite a lot of violence in Kansas, so much so that some people say the Civil War really started there in 18850 two-sevenths Kansas, Nebraska Act led to the creation of a new political party, the Republicans. Yes, those Republicans, thanks, thought so. Douglass Law helped to create a new coalition party dedicated to stopping the extension of civil, and it was made of former free soilers northern anti-slave wigs and some know nothing. It was also a completely sectional party, meaning that it drew supporters almost exclusively from the free states in the north and west, which you'll remember from like 2 minutes ago.

speaker01 04:14:00

We're tied together by common economic interests and the railroad. I'm telling you, don't underestimate railroads. By the way, we are getting to you Dred Scott, and now we return at last to slave power for many northerners, the Kansas Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, was yet more evidence that Congress was controlled by a sinister slave power group doing the bidding of rich plantation owners, which is conspiracy theories go, wasn't the most far-fetched. In fact, by 1850 two-four the North was far more populous than the South. It had almost doubled the South's congressional representation, but in spite of this advantage Congress had just passed a law extending the power of slave states, and potentially because two new states meant for new senators, making the federal government even more Pross Avery? And to abolitionists, that didn't really seem like democracy, reason that many Northerners cared enough about Kansas and Nebraska to abandon their old party loyalties was that having them become slave states was seen as a threat to northerners.

speaker01 05:09:00

Economic self andin weest. Remember, the West was seen as a place where individuals, specifically white individuals, could become self-employed farmers. As Lincoln wrote, the whole nation is interested that the best use be made of these territories. We want them to be the homes of free white people. They can not be to any considerable extent if slavery is planted within them. New free states are places for poor people to go to and better their condition. So the real question was, would these western territories have big slave based plantations like happened in Mississippi or small family farms of frolicking 3 white people like happened in Thomas Jefferson's imagination?

speaker01 05:45:00

So the new Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate in 1956 and did remarkably well. John CE Fremont from California picked up 39% of the vote, all of it from the North West, and lost to the Democrat James Buchanan, who had the virtue of having spent most of the previous decade in Europe and thus not having a position on slavery. I mean, let me take this opportunity to remind you that James Buchanan's nickname was the old public functionary.

speaker01 06:07:00

Meanwhile, Kansas was trying to become a state by holding elections in 1954 and 1000 and hundred and 50005. I say trying because these election were so fraudulent that they would be funny, except that everything stops being funny like 12 years before the Civil War, and it doesn't get really funny again until Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin, thank you for being in the public domain and giving us a much needed break from the nation divide against itself, discovering that it can stand.

speaker01 06:31:00

So part of the Kansas problem was that hundreds of so-called border ruffians flocked to Kansas from pro-slavery Missouri to cast ballots in Kansas elections, which led to people coming in from free states and setting up their own rival. Governments fighting eventually broke out, and more than 200 people were killed. In fact, in 1856, proslavery forces laid siege to anti-slavery lawr Kansas with cannon. Violent incident involved the murder of an entire family by an antislavery zealot from New York named John Brown. He got away with that murder, but hold on a minute. We'll get to him anyway.

speaker01 07:01:00

In the end, Kansas passed two constitutions because, you know, that's a good way to get started as a government. The proslavery Lecompton Constitution was the first that went to the us Congress, and it was supported by Stephen Douglas as an example of popular sovereignty at, except that the man who oversaw the voting in Kansas called it a vile fraud. Congress delayed Kansas's entry into the Union because Congress's primary business delay until another, more fair referendum took place, and after that vote Kans did join the us as a free state in 1861, by which time it was frankly too late.

speaker01 07:32:00

Alright, so while all this craziness was going on in Kansas and Congress, the Supreme Court was busy rendering the worst decision in its history. Dred Scott, Fred Scott had been a slave whose master had taken him to live in Illinois and Wisconsin, both of which barred slavery. So Scott sued, arguing that if slavery was illegal in Illinois, then living in Illinois made him definitionally, not a slave. The case took years find its way to the Supreme Court and eventually in 1857 Chief Justice B Taney from Maryland handed down his decision.

speaker01 08:02:00

The court held that Scott was still a slave, but it went even further, attempting to settle the slavery issue once and for all. Taney ruled that black people, quote, had for more than a century before been regarded as being of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the Negro must justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. So that is an actual quote from an actual decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Wow, I mean, taney's ruling basically said that all black people anywhere in the United States could be considered property and that the court was in the business of protecting that property. This meant that a slave owner could take his slaves from Mississippi to Massachusetts and they would still be slave, which meant that technically there was no such thing as a free state. At least that's how people in the North, especially Republicans, saw it. The Dred Scott decision helped convince even more people that the entire government, congress, President Buchanan, and now the Supreme Court were in the hands of the dreaded slave power.

speaker01 09:13:00

We're going to do the mystery document now, Stan, I am so confident about today's mystery document that I am going to write down my guess right now. And I'm going to put it in this envelope. And then when I'm right, I want a prize. All ever get is punishment, I want prizes, okay? The rules here are simple, I guess the author of the mystery document, I already did that, and then I get rewarded for being right. All right, total confidence. Let's just read this thing, and then I get my reward.

speaker01 09:42:00

I look forward to the days when there shall be a serviles iurreta in the South, when the black man shall assert his freedom and wage a war of extermination against his master, when the torch of the incendiary shall light up the towns and cities of the South and blot out the last vestige of slave slavery. And though I may not mock at their calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will hail it as the dawn of a political millennium. I was right right here.

speaker01 10:12:00

Guess in advance, John Brown what Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings Seriously, Stan, whatever I'm going to talk about John Brown anywhere in 1859, John Brown led a disastrous raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, hoping to capture guns and then give them to slaves who would rise up and use those guns against their masters. But Brown was an awful military commander and not a terribly clear thinker in general, and the raid was an abject failure. Many of the party were killed and he was captured, he stood trial. And was sentenced to death. Thus he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause, which is probably what he wanted anyway. On the morning of his hanging, he wrote, I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away. But with blood. Well, he was right about that.

speaker01 11:00:00

But in general, any statement that begins I my name. And so the stage was set for one of the most important presidential elections in American history.

speaker01 11:13:00

In 1860, the Republican Party chose as its candidate Abraham Lincoln, whose hair and upper forehead you can see here. He'd proved his eloquence, if not his electability, in a series of debates with Stephen Douglas when the two were running for the Senate in 1950 8th Lincoln that election. But the debate made him famous, and he could appeal to immigrant voters because he wasn't associated with the no-knock in the Democrats, on the other hand, were, to use a historian term, a hot mess. The northern wing of the party favored Stephen Douglas, but he was unacceptable of voters in the Deep South. So Southern Democrats nominated John CE Breckenridge of Kentucky, making the Democrats the last remaining truly national party, no longer truly a national party, a third party, the Constitutional Union Party, to preserving the Constitution, quote, as it is, that is including slavery, nominated.

speaker01 12:00:00

John Bell of Tennessee, Abraham Lincoln received zero votes in 9 American states, but he won 40% of the overall popular vote, including majorities in many of the most populous states, thereby winning the Electoral College. So anytime a guy becomes president who literally did not appear on your ballot, there is likely to be a problem. And indeed Lincoln's election led to a number of Southern states seceding from the Union. Lincoln himself hated slavery, but he repeatedly said that he would leave alone in the states where it existed, but the demographics of Lincoln's election showed Southerners and northerners alike that slave power, to whatever extent it had existed, was over by the time he took office.

speaker01 12:39:00

On March 1, 1861, seven states had seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, and the stage was set for the fighting to begin, which it did when Southern troops fired upon the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. So that's when the Civil War started. But it became inevitable earlier, maybe in 1857 or maybe 50, or maybe in 1776, or maybe in 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in Virginia, because here's the thing in the Dred Scott decision. Chief Justice Taney said that black Americans had, quote, no rights, which the white man was bound respect, but this was demonstrably false. Black men had voted in elections and held property, including even slaves. They'd appeared in court on their own behalf. They had rights, they'd express those rights when given the opportunity and the failure of the United States to understand that the rights of black Americans were as inalienable as those of white Americans is ultimately what made the Civil War inevitable. So next week it's off to we go, thanks for watching.

speaker01 13:41:00

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, the show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself, our associate producer is Danica Johnson, and our graph team is Thought Cafe. Usually every week there's a liberto with a caption, but there wasn't one this week because of stupid Chief Justice Roger Taney. However, please suggest caption in comments where you can also ask questions about today's video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course us history and as we say in my hometown of Nerd Fighter, you don't forget to be awesome.