Page 362 - American Stories, A History of the United States

The dominant modern view is that the crisis was rooted in profound ideological differ-
ences over the morality and utility of slavery as an institution. Most interpreters agree that 14.1
the roots of the conflict lay in the fact that the South was a slave society and determined to
stay one, while the North was equally committed to a free-labor system. No other differ-
ences divided the regions in this decisive way. It is hard to imagine that secessionism would 14.2
have developed if the South like the North had abolished slavery after the Revolution.
Nevertheless, the existence or nonexistence of slavery will not explain why the cri-
sis came when and how it did. Why did the conflict become irreconcilable in the 1850s 14.3
and not earlier or later? Why did it take the form of a political struggle over the future
of slavery in the territories? Answers to both questions require an understanding of
political developments that tensions over slavery did not directly cause.
By the 1850s, the established Whig and Democratic parties were in trouble, partly
because they no longer offered the voters clear-cut alternatives on economic issues that
had been the bread and butter of politics during the heyday of the second-party system.
This created an opening for new parties and issues. After the Know-Nothings failed
to make hostility to immigrants the basis for a political realignment, the Republicans
used the issue of slavery in the territories to build the first successful sectional party in
American history. They called for “free soil,” not freedom for blacks because abolition-
ism conflicted with the northern majority’s commitment to white supremacy and its
respect for the original constitutional compromise that established a hands-off policy
toward slavery in the South. For Southerners, the Republican party now became the
main issue, and they fought it from within the Democratic party.
If politicians seeking new ways to mobilize an apathetic electorate are seen as the
main instigators of sectional crisis, we still have to ask why certain appeals were more
effective than others. Why did the slavery extension issue arouse such strong feelings
in the two sections during the 1850s? The same issue had arisen earlier and had proved
adjustable, even in 1820 when the second-party system—with its vested interest in
compromise—had not yet emerged. If the expansion of slavery had been as vital and
emotional a question in 1820 as it was in the 1850s, the moribund Federalist party
presumably would have revived in the form of a northern sectional party adamantly
opposed to admitting slave states to the Union.
Ultimately, therefore, we must recognize that the crisis of the 1850s had both a
deep social and cultural dimension and a purely political one. Beliefs and values had
diverged significantly in the North and the South between the 1820s and the 1850s.
Both sections continued to profess allegiance to the traditional “republican” ideals of
individual liberty and independence, and both were influenced by evangelical reli-
gion. But differences in the economic and social development of each region trans-
formed a common culture into two conflicting cultures. In the North, a rising middle
class adapted to the new market economy with the help of an evangelical Christianity
that sanctioned self-discipline and social reform (see Chapter 12). The South, on the
other hand, embraced slavery as a foundation for white liberty and independence. Its
evangelicalism encouraged personal piety but not social reform and gave only limited
attention to building the kind of personal character that made for commercial success.
The notion that white liberty and equality depended on resisting social and economic
change and—to get to the heart of the matter—continuing to have enslaved blacks to
do menial labor became more entrenched.
When politicians appealed to sectionalism during the 1850s, therefore, they could
evoke conflicting views of what constituted the good society. The South—with its alleg-
edly idle masters, degraded unfree workers, and shiftless poor whites—seemed to most
Northerners to be in flagrant violation of the Protestant work ethic and the ideal of open
competition in “the race of life.” From the dominant southern point of view, the North
was a land of hypocritical money-grubbers who denied the obvious fact that the virtue,
independence, and liberty of free citizens were possible only when dependent laboring
classes—especially racially inferior ones—were kept under the kind of rigid control that
only slavery could provide. Once these contrary views of the world had become the main
themes of political discourse, sectional compromise was no longer possible.
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