3. The Revolution in Northern Politics, 1854-1858

Questions:
1. Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act cause such a political explosion?
2. Why did the Republicans supersede Whigs and Know-Nothings as the main opposition party?
3. What was the significance of the Dred Scott decision, and what were its implications for Democrats and Republicans?

Richard Carwardine, “The Power of Opinion: Lincoln, the Illinois Public, and the New Political Order, 1854-58” from Lincoln (London: Pearson, 2003)
Eric Foner, “Free Labor: Republicans and Northern Society,” from Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)
Kenneth M. Stampp, “The Concept of a Perpetual Union,” Journal of American History 65, (1978), pp. 5-33. (JSTOR)
William E. Gienapp, “The Collapse of the Second Party System,” from The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Michael F. Holt, “Party dynamics and the coming of the Civil War,” from The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: Norton, 1978)
William E. Gienapp, “Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North Before the Civil War,” Journal of American History 72 (1985) (JSTOR)
Mark Voss-Hubbard, Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics Before the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)

Primary sources:
Abraham Lincoln, Eulogy for Henry Clay, 1851 (extract)
Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Ill., 16 Oct 1854.