Introduction

From the beginning of the American Revolution, one word was held up higher than any other - liberty. The "sons of liberty" decorated "liberty trees" with "liberty caps," and, in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson claimed that "liberty" was an unalienable right of the people, "endowed by their Creator." Several years later, the delegates who met in Philadelphia to write a new constitution, proclaimed in the preamble that their responsibility was to "secure the blessings of liberty" for themselves and for future generations.

But, while the founding fathers professed their commitment to liberty, they also ensured that the institution of slavery would be maintained, thus denying one substantial portion of the American people any liberty whatever. The federal constitution accommodated slave holding interests by allowing slave states to continue importing new slaves until 1808. The Senate, with two members allotted to each state irrespective of population, was another guarantee of southern interests. In return, the northern states expected more freedom to export their products. Many delegates believed that the slave states would follow the lead of the northern states and abolish slavery. And, in an interesting twist of irony, the most vocal opponent of slavery at the constitutional convention was George Mason of Virginia, who owned more slaves than anyone present
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Compromises like that of 1787 became a critical part of American political culture. So, when Missouri sought admission to the Union as a slave state in 1820, Congress also admitted Maine as a free state, thus maintaining a balance between slave and free states. Congress also agreed to draw an arbitrary line across the rest of the country at the southern boundary of Missouri that would determine whether future states would be slave or free. Since most of the nation's leaders believed that settlement would not spread any further west, and since much of the remainder of the continent belonged to Spain, the Missouri Compromise was greeted with great optimism. But at least one of the Founding Fathers was concerned that there was serious trouble ahead. "This momentous question," Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend, "like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror."

Congress made every effort to avoid the potential quagmire of discussing the institution of slavery. In the 1830s antislavery groups sent petitions to Congress demanding the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. They were exercising their right, under the First Amendment, "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Both houses of Congress adopted a so-called "Gag Rule" in 1836, refusing to acknowledge the federal government's responsibility for slavery.So, for the first fifty years, Congress maintained a delicate balance between free and slave states. But, when the huge slave State of Texas was annexed in 1845 and when an even larger territory below the Missouri Compromise line was acquired from Mexico in 1848, the sectional differences became much more dangerous. In 1846, David Wilmot, a Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill excluding slavery from the territory acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso, though it failed to be adopted, sharpened the debate over the expansion of slavery into the territories. More important, though, the Wilmot Proviso brought the issue of slavery to the forefront of congressional debate.

The confrontation came more sharply into focus in 1850, when California, which was acquired from Mexico and on the slavery side of the Missouri Compromise line, sought admission to the Union as a free state. There were no other potential slave states seeking admission. So the balance between slave and free states would be broken. Three of the nation's most prominent statesmen - Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun - were nearing the end of the lives and careers in the Senate. Henry Clay, one of the nation's revered political leaders, proposed a compromise that would preserve the Union. The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state, and, among other provisions, established a fugitive slave law that theoretically made it much easier for slave owners to recapture slaves attempting to escape. Supported by the equally respected Daniel Webster, Clay's compromise seemed to give something to everyone. Many leaders in the North and South were optimistic that the compromise would ensure the long-term preservation of the Union. They, of course, were wrong.

The fragility of the compromise became apparent in 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposed a bill for organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska under the theory of popular sovereignty. Under this concept, both territories would be organized, but the residents of each territory could decide whether or not they wanted slavery. Although on the surface this concept seemed sound, the pro- and anti-slavery factions had become so passionate, Kansas became a battleground known as "Bleeding Kansas." The bloodshed spilled over into the United States Capitol. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts made an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate in which he denounced the "rape" of Kansas by pro-slavery forces. Sumner named several Southern politicians as culprits in his speech, including Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. Butler's nephew, Preston Brooks, a Congressman from South Carolina, attacked Sumner in his seat in the capitol, and nearly killed him.

As Kansas was bleeding, another event further polarized the nation. A slave from Missouri named Dred Scott had sued for his freedom, claiming that when his master took him into Illinois and Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal, he should have been freed. The case finally reached the United States Supreme Court, where the final decision was rendered in 1857. Chief Justice Taney ruled that Dred Scott as a slave had no right to sue, but went further to say that even if Scott were not a slave, he still could not sue because he was a Negro. Further, the court held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the authority to restrict slavery in any territories. Slaves were property, and the restriction of property without due process violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

In the process, the court also repudiated the concept of popular sovereignty, defining the idea of sovereignty more clearly than ever before. The Articles of Confederation had clearly stated that sovereignty resided in the states. But the Preamble of the Constitution seemed to suggest that "We the People of the United States" were the sovereign authority. With the Dred Scott Decision, the court assigned sovereignty definitely to the states. Congress would no longer have authority to regulate slavery in the territories. This strengthened the power of the slave states and lent credibility to northern fears that a "slave conspiracy" would dominate the United States government for the purposes of extending slavery.

As the Dred Scott case was working its way through the courts, this growing resistance to "Slaveocracy" gave rise to a new political party, the Republicans. It unsuccessfully ran its first candidate for president in 1856. Building on reactions to Kansas, to Dred Scott, and to efforts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, the Republicans swept Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860, despite warnings from southerners that Lincoln's victory would result in dissolution of the Union.

Indeed, shortly after the election, beginning with South Carolina, one southern state after another seceded from the Union, until there were eleven. The people in the seceding states believed that their liberties were threatened, just as the patriots had believed the king had jeopardized their freedoms during the American Revolution. Conversely, a vast majority of Northerners just as passionately believed that the constitutional system based on majority rule and free elections could not survive if the states that did not like the results of a particular election could simply leave the Union. They, too, believed that the liberties of northern farmers and workers were threatened by an ever-expanding slave system. So, looking at simple theory, the political basis for the Civil War seems to have been a constitutional issue - whether or not states could secede from the Union. But, of course, the cause of the crisis was far more complicated. At the heart of the constitutional debate was the institution of slavery. The seceding states used constitutional arguments to defend the existence and expansion of slavery. Many Northerners were willing to allow slavery to exist where it was, but were adamant that it should not extend further.

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration proceeded to employ its war powers (in the Emancipation Proclamation and in other actions) more aggressively than anyone had ever previously believed possible. At the end of the war, the three Civil War amendments were ratified only with the consent of military-dominated state governments in the defeated South. The 14th Amendment ultimately transformed the American political order, giving the federal government the responsibility to enforce the equality of law for all its people. Vesting the sovereignty of the nation in this relationship between the national government and individual citizens has led many scholars to consider the post-1865 United States a "second republic."