SECTIONAL CONFLICT

Henry Clay of Kentucky, although never president, was one of the most influential American politicians of the first half of the 19th century. (Library of Congress)

The United States in 1850 was a huge nation stretched between two oceans. Wide differences in geography, natural resources, and development were obvious from region to region.

New England and the Middle Atlantic states were the main centers of finance, commerce, and manufacturing. Principal products included textiles and clothing, lumber, and machinery. Maritime trade flourished. The Southern states were chiefly agricultural, producing tobacco, sugar, and cotton with slave labor. The Middle Western states were agricultural, too, but their grain and meat products came from the hands of free men and women.

In 1819, Missouri had applied for statehood. Northerners objected because there were 10,000 slaves there. Congressman Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed a compromise: Missouri would enter the Union and continue to permit slavery, while Maine would enter as a free state.

Regional positions on the issue hardened in the decades following the Missouri Compromise. In the North, the movement to abolish slavery was vocal and grew increasingly powerful. In the South, the belief in white supremacy and in maintaining the economic status quo was equally vocal and powerful. Although thousands of slaves escaped north through a network of secret routes known as the Underground Railroad, slaves still comprised a third of the population in the slave states at the time of the 1860 census.

Most Northerners were unwilling to challenge the existence of slavery in the South, yet many opposed its expansion into the western territories. Southerners felt just as strongly that the territories themselves had the right to decide their status. A young politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, felt that the issue was a national, not a local one. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said. "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved ... but I do expect it will cease to be divided."

In 1860, the Republican Party nominated Lincoln as its candidate for president on an anti-slavery platform. In a four-man race, he won only 39 percent of the popular vote but a clear majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the group of citizens who directly elect the U.S. president and vice president, following the popular vote.

The storm that had been gathering for decades was about to explode with brutal force. Southern states had threatened to leave the Union if Lincoln were elected; the secessions started even before he was sworn in. It would be up to the new president to try to hold the Union together.