W. W. Norton & Company | Inventing America, 2 ed.

Chapter 15: A House Dividing (1851-1860)

Chapter Outline

The Crystal Palace (1851)
1. London's Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations
2. "Yankee Notions": American Practicality
3. The America's Cup
4. The Colt Pistol
  1. Samuel Colt
  2. The "peacemaker"
5. The American System of Manufactures
  1. Colt Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut
  2. Springfield Armory
  3. Export of American technology and production methods
American Science
1. Empirical Research, Practical Results
  1. Electricity
    1. Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution
    2. Samuel F. B. Morse
    3. Alexander Dallas Bache
  2. The "Lazzaroni"
  3. American Association for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia (1848)
2. Federal Scientific Support
  1. Smithsonian Institution
  2. U.S. Coast Survey
  3. U.S. Naval Observatory
  4. U.S. Army Topographical Engineers
3. Amateur Scientists
4. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes's United States Exploring Expedition (1838-42)
5. John C. Frémont's Overland Expeditions
6. "The Great Reconnaissance" (1848-61)
  1. Pacific railroad survey: Pacific Railroad Reports (1855-60)
  2. Federal subsidies for science
7. Commodore Matthew C. Perry
The Sectional Crisis
1. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
2. Southern Response: George Fitzhugh
3. Election of 1852
  1. Whig nominee Winfield Scott of Virginia
  2. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire
  3. Pierce's election and the decline of the Whig Party
4. Young America
5. The Ostend Manifesto (1854)
6. Toward a Transcontinental Railroad
7. The Gadsden Purchase (1854)
8. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
9. Party Realignments
  1. American, or "Know Nothing," Party
    1. nativism
    2. Order of United Americans and the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner
  2. Republican Party
    1. midwestern origins
    2. antislavery
    3. free labor ideology
10. Bloody Kansas
  1. Antislavery, or "free state," forces
    1. Amos Lawrence's Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company
    2. "free state" capital at Topeka
  2. Proslavery, or "slave state," forces
    1. Senator David Atchison of Missouri
    2. "slave state" capital at Lecompton
  3. The caning of Charles Sumner (1856)
  4. The Pottawatomie Massacre (1856)
    1. John Brown
    2. Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas
  5. Democratic divisions
11. Election of 1856
  1. Division of the American Party (Know-Nothings)
    1. "South American" nominee Millard Fillmore of New York
    2. "North American" support for Republican Party
  2. Republican nominee John C. Frémont of California
  3. Democratic nominee James Buchanan of Pennsylvania
  4. Buchanan's election as a minority president
12. The Dred Scott Decision (1857)
  1. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
  2. William Seward's "slave power conspiracy"
13. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
14. The Panic of 1857
15. John Brown's Raid (1859)
  1. National armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
  2. Execution and martyrdom
16. The Election of 1860
  1. Democratic convention in Charleston, South Carolina
    1. Calhoun Doctrine: federal support for slavery in territories
    2. withdrawal of southern Democrats
  2. Second Democratic convention in Baltimore, Maryland
    1. southern Democrats
      1. nomination of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky
      2. Calhoun Doctrine and territorial expansion
    2. northern Democrats
      1. nomination of Stephen Douglas of Illinois
      2. popular sovereignty in territories
  3. Republican convention in Chicago, Illinois
    1. platform of antislavery, protective tariff, Homestead Act, Pacific railroad, internal improvements
    2. Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln of Illinois
  4. Constitutional Union convention in Baltimore
    1. nominee John Bell of Tennessee
    2. appeal to border states of upper South
  5. Lincoln's election with less than 40 percent of the popular vote