Chapter 4: Slavery, Rum, and Romanism

Chapter 4: Slavery, Rum, and Romanism

Northerners became more violent with the Kansas-Nebraska Act (May 1854). Along with the Burns case, it was, McPherson claims, the most important single event that pushed the country into civil war. It killed off the Whig Party and gave rise to the Republican party. The split between the Whigs was in part due to President Fillmore's efforts to enforce the fugitive slave law. Southerners didn't care to organize this new territory since it lay north of the 36' 30 line where slavery was excluded by the Missouri Compromise.

Stephen A Douglas tried to stop the Missouri Compromise by repealing it. Then, he added the explicit repeal of the slavery ban north of the latitude line. This looked like a way to keep Kansas in slavery and Nebraska in freedom. Freesoilers were not surprised by this bid for more slave power, but northern Whigs (conscience Whigs) opposed it and the Whigs faded away. Soon, Lincoln would join the Republicans and form the platform when he opposed the morality of slavery. In the election of 1854, Democrats lost most of their party. There were a series of speeches between Douglas and Lincoln to increase support for their respective parties.

Soon, new coalitions formed in the North  to oppose slavery. Anti-Nebraska, Fusion, People's, Independent, and the Republican Party formed to support this platform. Republicans and Know-Nothings weakened the Democrat influence in the North. The Republican Party would soon become the second major party.

But, issues over slavery soon split the Know Nothings due to nativist ideals. It soon grew stronger in the South than in the South, and antislavery Know Nothings joined the Republicans. The nativist movement formed in part due to the surge in immigrants. But despite problems in the 1854 election over "freedom, temperance, and Protestantism against slavery, rum, and Romanism" (p. 137, Slavery, Rum, and Romanism in Battle Cry of Freedom). Bleeding Kansas convinced most northerners than the slave power a bigger threat to republican ideals than Catholicism was. 

Key Terms:

• nativism: people who wanted to keep power out of immigrant and Roman Catholic hands
• Know Nothings: (aka American Party) a political party in the 1850s that wanted to keep power out of immigrants and Roman Catholic hands (nativists)
• Republican Party: began in the 1850s to keep slavery out of territories; also campaigned for broader national issues (more protective tariffs, liberal land distribution in the West, more road development); comprised of Whigs, northern Democrats, Free Soilers
• conscience Whigs: Whigs in the North that were against slavery because it was immoral and would join the Republican Party when it forms
• Freeport Doctrine: Stephen Douglas said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates (in spite of the Dred Scott case) that exclusion of slavery in a territory where it was legal could be determined by the voters and led to his loss in the 1860 presidential election.
• Bleeding Kansas: termed by Charles Sumner about the Kansas territory when there was violence between the border ruffians who wanted slavery there and the Unionists who wanted to keep it as a free state

Questions:

• In what ways did Bleeding Kansas affect the Northerners into believing slave power was bad? The book didn't really explain that in this chapter, though I think it will in the next chapter.
• How did the Know-Nothings keep power out of immigrant hands?
• If laws were passed, would that even be constitutional?

Citations: 

• McPherson, James M. "4: Slavery, Rum, and Romanism." In Battle Cry of Freedom, 117-144. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Accessed March 11, 2015. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Southern_Chivalry.jpg.
• Accessed March 11, 2015. http://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/files/1613/2241/4257/Riots-American_Patriot.jpg.