Introduction

Hi, I'm Kevin Wait,

an assistant professor in American history here at Durham University

and in this short series of lectures will be

learning about what historians call the sectional crisis,

meaning the political struggle between the free states of

the North and the slave states of the South,

which ultimately led to the American Civil War.

And we're gonna be tackling this fairly big

and fairly complex topic in six short lectures.

First, we're going to ask, Why were slaveholders so eager and in fact,

so desperate to expand slavery across the continent?

Then we're going to move into California to learn about the California gold Rush

and the compromise of 18 50 which turned California into a free state.

From there, we'll move further west into Kansas, where the sectional crisis

really devolved into violence known as bleeding Kansas.

Then we'll learn a little bit about the Republican Party.

The first explicitly anti slavery party

in American history

in Unit five,

will study John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 18

59 and the abolitionist movement in the United States,

and finally will conclude with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 18 60

the secession of 11 slaveholding states, which ultimately triggered

the American Civil War.

Now, before we really dive into the content of these lectures,

I want to issue something of a disclaimer.

These lectures are all about American slavery and the political

crises that evolved out of this issue of slavery.

And that's because slavery was the driving force that led to the American Civil War.

Unfortunately,

a lot of people are still under this misguided belief that slavery was somehow, uh,

tangential was somehow a secondary issue

in the coming of the American Civil War.

A lot of schools in the United States,

and especially a lot of schools in the American South teach that it was really the

issue of states' rights and not the issue of slavery that led to the Civil War.

Uh, or if you were for any reason to take a U.

S citizenship test,

you would be asked this question to name one issue

that led to the American Civil War and again,

states' rights is considered a perfectly adequate response to that question.

Now, if somebody tries to tell you that it was states' rights and not slavery,

that led to the American Civil War you might

consider responding with a little bit of a challenge.

Asked them to name two of these rights.

What were the so called states rights that Southerners

were so keen to defend in the 18 fifties?

And my guess is they wouldn't be able to name

two of these rights because there was really only one right

that Southerners during this period cared about.

And that was the right

of individual states

to protect slavery against what they saw as an inhospitable federal government.

States rights, in fact, was just a nice little euphemism

for slave holding rights.

So the question for us to consider at the outset of these lectures is this.

Why we're Southerners so keen to defend and to expand slavery?

Why were they willing to risk a civil war to

defend their right to hold other human beings as property?

And the short answer is

slavery generated immense wealth for certain Americans in the 19th century.

In fact,

there's really no industry in the present day that comes close to

generating the sort of wealth that slavery produced in the 19th century.

On the eve of the American Civil War.

In about the year 18 60 American slaveholders

were the richest people in the country,

which made them

among the richest in the world.

The 12 wealthiest counties in the United States at this point were all

located in the slave South and the South's four million black slaves.

Together,

the combined total of their value was more than the combined total

of all the railroads and all the factories in the entire country.

So this is why

Southerners were so defensive about the institution of slavery.

If something should happen

to their right to hold slaves, they stood to lose a tremendous amount of money.

Now,

I should add that Southerners constituted a real minority in the United States.

Sorry.

Slaveholders constituted a real minority in the United States at this point.

In 18 60 there were 18 states in which slavery

was illegal and 15 states in which slavery was legal.

And in those 15 states,

only about one in four families owned any slaves.

But this tiny minority of slaveholders was immensely

influential. They basically held the reins of political power

in the south,

and they were ultimately willing to fracture the union

and to go to war against their fellow Americans.

to preserve

their institution of slavery.

the story of how that comes to pass of how this controversy over slavery spiralled

into civil war is what we're gonna be exploring together in these next six lectures.