4. Sectional Crisis and the Election of Lincoln, 1857-1860

Questions:
1. What divided Lincoln and Douglas in their debates of 1858?
2. Why was the idea of the “Slave Power” so powerful in northern politics in the 1850s?
3. How did events in Kansas between 1856 and 1859 influence politics?
4. Why and with what consequences did Stephen Douglas break with the President Buchanan’s administration?
5. Did Lincoln win in 1860 mainly because the opposition was divided?

Robert W. Johannsen, “The Politics of Slavery,” from Lincoln, the South and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991)
Harry V. Jaffa, “1858: Lincoln versus Douglas. The Alternatives,” from Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959)
Graham Peck, “Was Stephen A. Douglas Antislavery?,” in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Summer 2005)
Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004)
Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Primary sources
Lincoln, “House Divided” speech (1858)
Lincoln, “Cooper Union Address” (1860)
James Henry Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech in Congress, 1858