Sectional conflict: regional differences

Influxes of new immigrants

Whereas in earlier periods, most immigrants to the United States came from the United Kingdom, including Scotland, in the 1840s, large waves of new immigrants, particularly from **Germany **and Ireland, arrived in the United States, fleeing political upheavals in Germany and starvation in Ireland. In California, the first waves of **Chinese immigrants **arrived, drawn primarily by the gold rush of 1849. Many American citizens protested the arrival of these new immigrants, emphasizing cultural, linguistic, and religious differences, and frequently depicting the new immigrants as economic threats to white, primarily Protestant, workers. The Native American Party, later known as the **American Party **or more commonly as the Know Nothing Party, drew much of its support from disaffected Whigs until those members joined the new Republican Party, and advocated for strict limits on immigration, greater domestic labor rights, and expanded rights for women; the “know nothing” designation derived from their public claims to “know nothing” about the American Party when questioned by outsiders. During the mid 1850s, the American Party saw over 30 candidates elected to the House of Representatives, with former Democrat Nathaniel Banks being elected Speaker of the House. In the election of 1856, the American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore as their presidential candidate; capitalizing on significant anti-immigrant sentiment, Fillmore earned over 21% of the popular vote and won Maryland’s 8 electoral college votes.

American Party platform, February 21, 1856 Philadelphia

Americans must rule America; and to this end native-born citizens should be selected for all State, Federal and municipal offices of government employment, in preference to all others…

A change in the laws of naturalization, making a continued residence of twenty-one years, of all not heretofore provided for, an indispensable requisite for citizenship hereafter, and excluding all paupers, and persons convicted of crime, from landing upon our shores; but no interference with the vested rights of foreigners.

Intensifying sectional differences

By the end of the 1850s, the emerging differences between the disparate regions of the country were both vast and profound. While northern cities increasingly relied upon industrial production for the generation of both wealth and employment, southern states became even more dependent on the enormous sums earned by the wealthiest cotton planters and the nearly 2 million enslaved persons forced to plant and pick cotton. Sectional political differences continued to emerge, too, as northern states saw the a variety of political parties merge and evolve with Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers, “Know Nothings,” and Republicans all contesting local, state and federal elections; in the south, however, the Democratic Party emerged as the dominant political party and would remain so, other than during a brief interregnum during Reconstruction, until the 1960s. Culturally, the different sections of the country increasingly diverged, too. Critically, the most important source of these cultural, economic, and political differences was the increasing divide over the institution of slavery.

An absolute good or a compact with the devil - perspective on slavery

The evolution of American perspectives about the institution of slavery from a regrettable but necessary evil to southern defenses of slavery as an absolute good and abolitionist condemnations of slavery as sinful and diabolical fundamentally shaped sectional interactions and differences in the 1850s.

John C. Calhoun, “Slavery a positive good”, February 6, 1837

I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good - a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject where the honor and interests of those I represent are involved. I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history.

While slaveowners like **Calhoun **sought to portray slavery as needed and beneficial to not only planters like himself but to the enslaved persons themselves, northern writers and politicians increasingly highlighted the brutality practiced by slaveowners.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.

With rising southern insistence on strict enforcement of the enhanced Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, slavery, which had previously seemed remote for many people in the north, became a vividly real and troubling challenge. With the high profile captures of escaped formerly enslaved persons in Boston, including of Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns, provoking open resistance by white Bostonians, Massachusetts and other northern states passed personal liberty laws to protect free African Americans and formerly enslaved persons in their states, further enraging southern slaveowners who criticized these laws as violating the US Constitution.

The intensification of emerging sectional cultural, economic, legal and political differences, particularly between northern and southern states, plunged the United States into a series of attempted compromises that were frequently undermined by vitriol and violent conflict.

Disputes over the moral and legal justifications for the continuation and expansion of slavery were central to the undermining of national unity.