Introduction

Chapter 16 reviews the major themes presented in Nation of Nations. An expansionist impulse promoting encounters between diverse peoples, great abundance contrasting with vast inequity, periods of economic transformation stimulating religious renewal and social reform -- each is a familiar issue of the narrative. In Chapters 12, 13, and 14, you learned how northerners turned to political action to achieve their reform goals. At the same time, southern success in protecting slavery buoyed confidence for expansion into the new lands of the southwest. Yet these endeavors had unintended consequences. The intrusion of the moral questions of abolition, temperance, and women's rights into politics weakened the party system and led to political realignments. The acquisition of new lands turned the debate over slavery into a national issue. 

By the 1850s Americans' responses to events were increasingly tied to local attitudes. Did you read Uncle Tom's Cabin or were you prohibited? Did you tend a machine at the mill or pick cotton in the field? On national questions concerning the economy, regional identity prevailed over national. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, seven states seceded; and in February 1861, the Confederate States of America was established. Two months later the conflict many Americans regarded as "irrepressible" began.

The Web activities and additional research links for chapter 16 encourage you to draw together many of the strands set forth in previous Web work.

Web Activities 

1.  The extraordinary success of Uncle Tom's Cabin made Harriet Beecher Stowe one of the best known Americans of her era. Stage versions brought her memorable characters to a wide range of people and revitalized the debate over slavery. Playbills, like the one above, and illustrations from Uncle Tom's Cabin helped to personalize cruelties of the peculiar institution. Why do you think Stowe's work captured of the imagination and had such a profound impact on her audience? Use the following sites to assist you in answering these questions.

• View "The Book That Made This Great War" at the Library of Congress "African American Odyssey" exhibit. 
• George Aiken's script became the classic stage version. The original play also became the target of "Anti-Tom" performances and minstrel re-enactments. Go to Uncle Tom's Cabin on Stage. Follow the links to "Scripts," "Posters, Playbills & Other Images," and "Reviews of Performances." You need not follow all the internal links, but select samples from each in order to complete the activity tasks.
• Investigate aspects of the response to Stowe's work at Pro-Slavery Counterattack. 
• View the list of Anti Uncle Tom Novels. Go to Aunt Phillis's Cabin, read the first paragraph of the "Preface," and "Concluding Remarks," p. 266, and 278-281. How do you think pro-slavery advocates used aspects of Stowe's protest novel to serve the other side of the issue? 
• The southern periodical De Bow's Review promoted Anti-Tom Novels and editorials. Go to Note Upon Uncle Tom's Cabin, March 1853. How is the argument advanced?

2.  John Brown's activities in Kansas and his attack on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry heightened the political and moral debate over slavery. Southerners were shocked that some northerners made a martyr of a man hanged for treason. Was Brown a selfless zealot or a fanatic traitor? Do you agree that "John Brown's enduring legacy sprang not from his ill-fated raid but from the popular reaction to his cause"? Tour the following sites to find answers. 

• Make use of the Timeline of John Brown's Life to identify significant events that shaped his generation.
• Read the John Brown profile from the PBS documentary "The American Experience: Brown's Holy War." 
• Review accounts of John Brown's activities: Pottawatomie Massacre, John Brown and the Pottawatomie Creek Killings, The Harpers Ferry Raid,  and Militant Abolition: John Brown's Raid. What perspective does each site provide? How does the information compare to Eyewitness Accounts of the Raid, The Capture, The Trials (follow all links)?
• John Brown became an icon. He served the abolitionist cause, the Union war effort, and the civil rights movement. Study these examples: "John Brown, Meeting the Slave-mother and her Child on the steps of Charlestown jail on his way to execution,"  "The Last Moments of John Brown," and "John Brown's Speech to the Court at his Trial." 
• Finally, listen to Dr. Stephen B. Oates on John Brown (media clips require RealPlayer software). Why does Oates insist that John Brown continues to cast a long shadow across America after 135 years?

3.  Consider the dilemma secession and the establishment of the Confederate States of America created for the new president and the American public. If Lincoln's intent was to save the union, why did efforts at compromise fail? 

• Use the Chronology of the Secession Crisis to track events. 
• Read the Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, December 18, 1860. List the key provisions. How do they address both Republican and secessionist issues? Only the "unamendable amendment," preserving slavery where it already existed, passed. Why do you think neither faction accepted the full compromise? 
• How did the Free States respond to secession in January 1861? Read the "Resolutions" of Pennsylvania , Ohio, and New York.  How does each frame its argument? What common themes do you find in the "Resolutions"?
• Jefferson Davis became provisional president of the Confederacy in February, 1861. Read his Inaugural Address. What arguments does Davis advance as justification for having "entered upon the career of independence" and what steps does he announce to secure its future? How does this document compare with Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, March, 1861? What is Lincoln's response to secession? What concessions, if any, does he make? How does he propose to use federal power? Would a more conciliatory approach have avoided war?
• Skim the first sections of The First Wave of Secession, Winter, 1860 - 1861. Scroll down to "Local responses to Secession" from Franklin County, Pennsylvania and Augusta County, Virginia. Follow the links to representative newspaper articles from each county and list the sentiments each region expressed. Next go to The Beginning of War, March - June, 1861. Read the section "Firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's Troop Call" and document public reaction in the press accounts that follow. Compare your two lists. How did events in South Carolina change public responses? What did each county consider to be at stake?

Additional Research Links

The Political Realignment of the 1850s 

• For an examination of "nativism," the Know-Nothing Party, and Anti-Catholicism go to Knownothingism. The site summarizes the history of the anti-Catholic and anti-foreign movement. Included is the text of the Know-Nothing Party initiation oath and notes on literature circulated by the party in the 1850s. 
• The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner is part of the "Historical Minutes" series at the U. S. Senate site and gives an overview of the incident. Includes biographical links on key figures in the "Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress." 
• T. Lloyd Benson's Secession Era Editorial's Project at Furman University features editorials representing journalists around the nation on four topics; Kansas-Nebraska Bill Editorials (1854), Caning of Sumner Editorials (1856), Dred Scott Editorials (1857), Harpers Ferry / John Brown Editorials (1859).  Passionate and fiercely partisan, the editorials provide a periscope for viewing the public sphere of the 1850s. 
• One of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history was the Dred Scott decision. The Dred Scott-case provides the full text of the case, the opinion of the court by Chief Justice Taney, and the concurring and dissenting opinions. Dred Scott's fight for freedom profiles Scott's personal narrative, and Historian David Blight on the Dred Scott decision  addresses the case's significance. 
• Two speeches reflect the views of Republican Party leaders. In Rochester, New York, October 25, 1858, William Seward spoke of  "The Irrepressible Conflict." Seward indicted slavery, and the Democratic Party, and listed reasons why the Republican party was to be its successor. Abraham Lincoln's "Cooper Institute Address," February 27, 1860, attacking the argument that slavery was created and approved by the nation's founders, contributed to his emergence as a national figure.
• Harper's Weekly provides extensive archival materials on the election of 1860 at Presidential Elections,1860. Coverage includes an "Overview," "Biographies" of important figures, a summary of "Issues," and 25 cartoons that can be magnified with companion explanatory text.

The Roots of a Divided Society 

• For more on Hinton Rowan Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South read "Southern-born Hinton Helper -- not Harriet Beecher Stowe -- wrote the most stinging indictment of slavery" by Joseph Gustaitis in America's Civil War Times. 
• Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, the award winning project at the University of Virginia by Historian Edward L. Ayers and students, is one of the best history sites on the Web. The project chronicles everyday life in two communities, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County, Virginia, through the experience of the American Civil War. The site is organized in three parts:"The Eve of War" (for insights on Chapter 15 topics), "The War Years," and "Aftermath."  Sources "include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records." Use the Index as a comprehensive overview of the site contents.

Secession

• The Avalon Project: Confederate States of America Documents at Yale University includes "Declarations of Secession" from four states and "Messages and Papers of the Confederacy."
• Crisis at Fort Sumter is an interactive historical simulation by Richard B. Latner, Tulane University. The site is extensive, but you need not follow the complete process to gain access to a broad range of materials. The commentary includes insight into the historiographical debate about the Sumter question referred to in activity 3. 
• Jim Epperson's Causes of the Civil War focuses on links to primary documents from the period of the secession crisis.

<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=jpg::::/sites/dl/free/0073385468/236985/davidglobe2.jpg','popWin', 'width=90,height=112,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (3.0K)</a>

The Revolutions of 1848

• 1848 was the year of revolutions in Europe. An online text excerpt from R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton's A History of the Modern World (470-477) provides a good summary of the forces promoting universal upheaval throughout Europe. Read the section "Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West," for an overview of events in France. 
• For events in Germany read The German 1848 Revolution: A German Perspective. The failure of the liberal revolutions in Germany contributed to the arrival of immigrants known as the German Forty-eighters. Their legacy is analyzed in The German Forty-eighters in America: 150th Anniversary Assessment.