第十三章 南北危机

Source / 原文：https://www.americanyawp.com/text/13-the-sectional-crisis/

I. Introduction

一、引言

Slavery’s western expansion created problems for the United States from the very start. Battles emerged over the westward expansion of slavery and over the role of the federal government in protecting the interests of enslavers. Northern workers felt that slavery suppressed wages and stole land that could have been used by poor white Americans to achieve economic independence. Southerners feared that without slavery’s expansion, the abolitionist faction would come to dominate national politics and an increasingly dense population of enslaved people would lead to bloody insurrection and race war. Constant resistance from enslaved men and women required a strong pro-slavery government to maintain order. As the North gradually abolished human bondage, enslaved men and women headed north on an underground railroad of hideaways and safe houses. Northerners and southerners came to disagree sharply on the role of the federal government in capturing and returning these freedom seekers. While northerners appealed to their states’ rights to refuse to capture people escaping slavery, white southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery. Enslaved laborers meanwhile remained vitally important to the nation’s economy, fueling not only the southern plantation economy but also providing raw materials for the industrial North. Differences over the fate of slavery remained at the heart of American politics, especially as the United States expanded. After decades of conflict, Americans north and south began to fear that the opposite section of the country had seized control of the government. By November 1860, an opponent of slavery’s expansion arose from within the Republican Party. During the secession crisis that followed, fears nearly a century in the making at last devolved into bloody war.

奴隶制向西扩张自美国建国之初便带来了问题。围绕奴隶制西扩以及联邦政府在保护奴隶主利益方面的作用，社会矛盾不断加剧。北方工人认为，奴隶制压低了工资，并侵占了本可供贫穷白人谋求经济独立的土地。而南方人则担忧，如果奴隶制无法扩张，废奴派将主导国家政治，而南方被奴役人口的不断增长将最终引发血腥叛乱和种族战争。被奴役的黑人持续不断的抵抗，使得南方需要一个坚定支持奴隶制的政府来维持秩序。随着北方逐步废除奴役制度，奴隶们通过由藏身处和安全屋组成的“地下铁路”向北逃亡。北方人与南方人围绕联邦政府在缉拿并遣返逃奴问题上的角色产生了严重分歧。北方人以“州权”为依据，拒绝协助抓捕逃亡奴隶，而南方白人则要求联邦政府对维护奴隶制度作出全国性的承诺。同时，被奴役的劳动力对美国经济仍至关重要，不仅支撑着南方的种植园经济，也为工业化的北方提供了原材料。关于奴隶制命运的分歧始终处于美国政治的核心问题，尤其是在国家疆域不断扩展的背景下。经过数十年的冲突后，南北双方开始担忧对方已掌控了联邦政府。1860年11月，共和党内部出现了一位反对奴隶制扩张的政治人物。在随之而来的脱离联邦危机中，积累近百年的恐惧最终演变为血腥战争。

II. Sectionalism in the Early Republic

二、早期共和国的区域主义

Prior to the American Revolution, nearly everyone in the world accepted slavery as a natural part of life. English colonies north and south relied on enslaved workers who grew tobacco, harvested indigo and sugar, and worked in ports. They generated tremendous wealth for the British crown. That wealth and luxury fostered seemingly limitless opportunities and inspired seemingly boundless imaginations. Enslaved workers also helped give rise to revolutionary new ideals that in time became the ideological foundations of the sectional crisis. English political theorists, in particular, began to rethink natural-law justifications for slavery. They rejected the long-standing idea that slavery was a condition that naturally suited some people. A new transatlantic antislavery movement began to argue that freedom was the natural condition of humankind.

在美国革命爆发之前，世界上几乎所有人都认为奴隶制是社会生活的自然组成部分。英属北美殖民地的南北方均依赖奴隶劳动力，这些奴隶种植烟草、采收靛蓝和甘蔗，并在港口劳作，为英国王室创造了巨额财富。这种财富和奢华带来了似乎无限的机遇，并激发了人们无穷的想象力。然而，被奴役的劳动者也在无意间催生了革命性的思想，这些思想最终成为区域危机的意识形态基础。英国的政治理论家尤其开始重新思考以自然法为依据的奴隶制辩护，他们否定了“奴隶制是某些人天生适合的状态”这一长期以来的观念。随之而来的跨大西洋废奴运动提出，自由才是人类的自然状态。

Revolutionaries seized onto these ideas to stunning effect in the late eighteenth century. In the United States, France, and Haiti, revolutionaries began the work of splintering the old order. Each revolution seemed to radicalize the next. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,” in the 1770s. French visionaries issued the “Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen” by 1789. But the most startling development came in 1803 in Haiti. A revolution led by the island’s rebellious enslaved people turned France’s most valuable sugar colony into an independent country administered by the formerly enslaved.

十八世纪末，革命者们利用这些理念取得了惊人的成果。在美国、法国和海地，革命者开始摧毁旧制度，每一次革命似乎都使下一次变得更加激进，推动着更大胆、更广泛的平等和自由宣言接踵而至。1770年代，美国革命者宣称“人人生而平等”。1789年，法国革命者发布了《人权和公民权宣言》。但最震撼世界的变革发生在1803年的海地，一场由被奴役者领导的革命使法国最重要的糖业殖民地变成了一个由曾经的奴隶管理的独立国家。

The Haitian Revolution marked an early origin of the sectional crisis. It helped splinter the Atlantic basin into clear zones of freedom and unfreedom, shattering the long-standing assumption that African-descended enslaved people could not also be rulers. Despite the clear limitations of the American Revolution in attacking slavery, the era marked a powerful break in slavery’s history. Military service on behalf of both the English and the American army freed thousands of enslaved people. Many others simply used the turmoil of war to make their escape. As a result, free Black communities emerged—communities that would continually reignite the antislavery struggle. For nearly a century, most white Americans were content to compromise over the issue of slavery, but the constant agitation of Black Americans, both enslaved and free, kept the issue alive.

海地革命成为区域危机的早期起点之一，它将大西洋世界分裂为自由区和奴役区，彻底打破了“非洲裔奴隶无法成为统治者”的长期假设。尽管美国革命在废奴问题上存在明显局限，但这一时期仍标志着奴隶制历史的重大断裂。无论是在英国军队还是在美军服役的奴隶，都有数千人因此获得自由。许多其他奴隶则利用战争的混乱逃亡，从而形成了自由黑人社区，这些社区不断激发反奴隶制斗争。尽管在近一个世纪的大部分时间里，大多数白人美国人都愿意在奴隶制问题上妥协，但黑人群体（无论是自由的还是被奴役的）持续的抗争使这一议题始终活跃。

The national breakdown over slavery occurred over a long timeline and across a broad geography. Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important. As the United States pressed westward, new questions arose as to whether those lands ought to be slave or free. The framers of the Constitution did a little, but not much, to help resolve these early questions. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River. Many took it to mean that the founders intended for slavery to die out, as why else would they prohibit its spread across such a huge swath of territory?

关于奴隶制的全国性裂痕经历了漫长的演变，并涉及广阔的地域。尤其是在美国西部，关于奴隶制的争论至关重要。随着美国不断向西扩张，人们开始思考这些新领土应当实行奴隶制还是自由制度。制宪者们在解决这些问题方面做了一些努力，但贡献有限。1787年的《西北条例》第六条禁止在俄亥俄河以北和以西的地区实行奴隶制。许多人认为，这表明制宪者希望奴隶制逐渐消亡，否则他们为何要禁止其在如此广阔的领土上扩展？

Debates over the framers’ intentions often led to confusion and bitter debate, but the actions of the new government left better clues as to what the new nation intended for slavery. Congress authorized the admission of Vermont (1791) and Kentucky (1792), with Vermont coming into the Union as a free state and Kentucky coming in as a slave state. Though Americans at the time made relatively little of the balancing act suggested by the admission of a slave state and a free state, the pattern became increasingly important, particularly when considering power in the United States Senate. By 1820, preserving the balance of free states and slave states would be seen as an issue of national security.

关于制宪者意图的辩论往往引发混乱和激烈争论，而新政府的实际行动则更能揭示国家对奴隶制的态度。国会批准佛蒙特州（1791年）和肯塔基州（1792年）加入联邦，其中佛蒙特州是自由州，而肯塔基州则是奴隶州。尽管当时的美国人并未过多关注这种州际平衡，但随着时间推移，特别是在参议院权力分配问题上，这一模式变得越来越重要。到了1820年，保持自由州与奴隶州的平衡已被视为国家安全问题。

New pressures challenging the delicate balance again arose in the West. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the size of the United States. Questions immediately arose as to whether these lands would be made slave or free. Complicating matters further was the rapid expansion of plantation slavery fueled by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Yet even with the booming cotton economy, many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that slavery was a temporary institution and would soon die out. Tensions rose with the Louisiana Purchase, but a truly sectional national debate remained mostly dormant.

西部新挑战再次打破了这一脆弱的平衡。1803年的《路易斯安那购地案》使美国的领土面积增加了一倍多，人们随即开始争论这些新领土是否应允许奴隶制。1793年棉纺机的发明加速了种植园奴隶制的扩展，使这一问题更加复杂。然而，即便在棉花经济蓬勃发展的背景下，许多美国人（包括托马斯·杰斐逊）仍认为奴隶制只是暂时的，很快就会自然消亡。虽然《路易斯安那购地案》引发了一定的紧张局势，但真正的全国性分裂尚未到来。

That debate, however, came quickly. Sectional differences tied to the expansion of plantation slavery in the West were especially important after 1803. The Ohio River Valley became an early fault line in the coming sectional struggle. Kentucky and Tennessee emerged as slave states, while free states Ohio, Indiana (1816), and Illinois (1818) gained admission along the river’s northern banks. Borderland negotiations and accommodations along the Ohio River fostered a distinctive kind of white supremacy, as laws tried to keep Black people out of the West entirely. Ohio’s so-called Black Laws of 1803 foreshadowed the exclusionary cultures of Indiana, Illinois, and several subsequent states of the Old Northwest and later, the Far West. These laws often banned African American voting, denied Black Americans access to public schools, and made it impossible for nonwhites to serve on juries and in local militias, among a host of other restrictions and obstacles.

然而，这场分裂很快爆发。自1803年后，西部种植园奴隶制的扩张使区域矛盾进一步加剧。俄亥俄河谷成为未来区域冲突的早期分界线。肯塔基州和田纳西州成为奴隶州，而沿河北岸的俄亥俄州、印第安纳州（1816年）和伊利诺伊州（1818年）则加入联邦为自由州。围绕俄亥俄河的边界谈判和妥协催生了一种独特的白人至上主义观念，这种观念通过法律手段试图将黑人完全排除在西部地区之外。例如，1803年俄亥俄州通过了所谓的“黑人法”，这些法律后来成为印第安纳州、伊利诺伊州以及其他旧西北部和远西部州份的排他性文化的先例。这些法律通常禁止非裔美国人投票、剥夺他们进入公立学校的权利，并使非白人无法担任陪审员或参加地方民兵等。

The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. St. Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful enslavers, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. In 1817, eager to put questions of whether this territory would be slave or free to rest, Congress opened its debate over Missouri’s admission to the Union. Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed laws that would gradually abolish slavery in the new state. Southern states responded with unanimous outrage, and the nation shuddered at an undeniable sectional controversy.

密苏里领地——路易斯安那购地案中最大的一块领土——成为区域危机的转折点。作为密西西比河上的繁华贸易中心，圣路易斯聚集了众多有权势的奴隶主，成为密西西比河谷北部和更广阔西部地区的重要商业枢纽。1817年，国会开始就密苏里是否应当成为一个奴隶州展开辩论。来自纽约的国会议员詹姆斯·塔尔马奇提出逐步废除新州奴隶制的法案，南方州对此一致表示愤怒，整个国家随之陷入了无可否认的区域对立之中。

Congress reached a “compromise” on Missouri’s admission, largely through the work of Kentuckian Henry Clay. Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state. In exchange, Missouri would come into the Union as a slave state. Legislators sought to prevent future conflicts by making Missouri’s southern border at 36°30′ the new dividing line between slavery and freedom in the Louisiana Purchase lands. South of that line, running east from Missouri to the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase lands (near the present-day Texas panhandle), slavery could expand. North of it, encompassing what in 1820 was still “unorganized territory,” there would be no slavery.

最终，国会在肯塔基州议员亨利·克莱的斡旋下达成“妥协”：缅因州作为自由州加入联邦，而密苏里州则作为奴隶州加入。为了防止未来发生类似冲突，立法者规定密苏里州南部边界（北纬36度30分）成为路易斯安那购地案领土上的奴隶制与自由制度分界线。在此线以南（从密苏里州东部延伸至德克萨斯狭长地带），奴隶制可以继续扩展；而在此线以北（1820年时仍属“未组织领土”），奴隶制被禁止。

The Missouri Compromise marked a major turning point in America’s sectional crisis because it exposed to the public just how divisive the slavery issue had grown. The debate filled newspapers, speeches, and congressional records. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. Legislators battled for weeks over whether the Constitutional framers intended slavery’s expansion, and these contests left deep scars. Even seemingly simple and straightforward phrases like “all men are created equal” were hotly contested all over again. Questions over the expansion of slavery remained open, but nearly all Americans concluded that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed.

密苏里妥协案成为美国区域危机的重大转折点，因为它向公众暴露了奴隶制问题已变得多么具有分裂性。这场辩论充斥着报纸、演讲和国会记录。此后，无论是支持废奴还是维护奴隶制的立场，都反复引用密苏里争论期间的观点。立法者们围绕制宪者是否支持奴隶制扩张展开了长时间的斗争，并因此留下了深刻的创伤。即便是“人人生而平等”这样看似简单明了的句子，也再次成为激烈争论的焦点。尽管奴隶制扩张的问题仍然悬而未决，但几乎所有美国人都达成共识：宪法保护已存在的奴隶制。

Southerners were not yet advancing arguments that said slavery was a positive good, but they did insist during the Missouri Debate that the framers supported slavery and wanted to see it expand. In Article I, Section 2, for example, the Constitution enabled representation in the South to be based on rules defining an enslaved person as three-fifths of a voter, meaning southern white men would be overrepresented in Congress. The Constitution also stipulated that Congress could not interfere with the slave trade before 1808 and enabled Congress to draft fugitive slave laws.

南方人当时尚未提出奴隶制是一种“绝对的善”的论点，但他们在密苏里辩论期间坚称，美国宪法的起草者支持奴隶制，并希望其得到扩展。例如，在宪法第一条第二节中，规定南方各州的国会代表人数是基于一个规则计算的，即每名被奴役者按照五分之三的人口计算。这意味着南方白人在国会中的代表权被放大。此外，宪法还规定，在1808年之前，国会不得干涉奴隶贸易，并赋予国会起草《逃奴法》的权力。

Antislavery participants in the Missouri debate argued that the framers never intended slavery to survive the Revolution and in fact hoped it would disappear through peaceful means. The framers of the Constitution never used the word slave. Enslaved people were referred to as “persons held in service,” perhaps referring to English common law precedents that questioned the legitimacy of “property in man.” Antislavery activists also pointed out that while Congress could not pass a law limiting the slave trade before 1808, the framers had also recognized the flip side of the debate and had thus opened the door to legislating the slave trade’s end once the deadline arrived. Language in the Tenth Amendment, they claimed, also said slavery could be banned in the territories. Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation. The bruising Missouri debates ultimately transcended arguments about the Constitution. They became an all-encompassing referendum on the American past, present, and future.

反对奴隶制的辩论者则认为，宪法的起草者从未打算让奴隶制在革命后延续下来，而是希望它能通过和平方式消失。宪法的起草者甚至避免使用“奴隶”一词，而是将被奴役者称为“受役使之人”（persons held in service），这一表述可能是基于英国普通法的先例，该先例质疑“人可以作为财产”的合法性。反奴隶制人士还指出，虽然国会在1808年前不能立法限制奴隶贸易，但宪法的起草者也承认了反对奴隶贸易的一方，因此在1808年之后，他们可以立法终止奴隶贸易。此外，他们还援引《宪法》第十修正案的措辞，认为这意味着国会有权在联邦领土内禁止奴隶制。最后，他们提到《宪法》第五修正案中的正当程序条款，该条款规定，财产可以通过适当的立法被剥夺。因此，密苏里辩论最终超越了对宪法条文的争论，成为一场涉及美国过去、现在和未来的全方位辩论。

Despite the furor, the Missouri crisis did not yet inspire hardened defenses of either slave or free labor. Those would come in the coming decades. In the meantime, the uneasy consensus forged by the Missouri debate managed to bring a measure of calm.

尽管这场争论引发了激烈的对抗，但密苏里危机并未立即促使双方形成对奴隶制或自由劳动的坚定立场。这种立场将在未来几十年逐渐形成。在此期间，密苏里妥协所达成的微妙共识，暂时缓和了局势。

The Missouri debate had also deeply troubled the nation’s African Americans and Native Americans. By the time of the Missouri Compromise debate, both groups saw that whites never intended them to be citizens of the United States. In fact, the debates over Missouri’s admission had offered the first sustained debate on the question of Black citizenship, as Missouri’s state constitution wanted to impose a hard ban on any future Black migrants. Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the U.S. Constitution but reaffirmed Missouri’s ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. Americans by 1820 had endured a broad challenge, not only to their cherished ideals but also more fundamentally to their conceptions of self.

然而，密苏里辩论也深深动摇了美国的非裔与美洲原住民群体。在密苏里妥协争论期间，这两个群体已经意识到，白人从未真正打算让他们成为美国公民。事实上，密苏里州宪法希望对未来的黑人移民实行严格禁令，这也促使国会进行了首次关于黑人公民权的持续性辩论。最终，立法者认为，这一禁令违反了美国宪法，但仍然确认密苏里州有权拒绝给予非裔美国人公民身份。到了1820年，美国人不仅遭遇了一场对其理想信念的全面挑战，更深层次地，这场危机动摇了他们对自身身份的认知。

III. The Crisis Joined

三、危机加剧

Missouri’s admission to the Union in 1821 exposed deep fault lines in American society. But the compromise created a new sectional consensus that most white Americans, at least, hoped would ensure a lasting peace. Through sustained debates and arguments, white Americans agreed that the Constitution could do little about slavery where it already existed and that slavery, with the State of Missouri as the key exception, would never expand north of the 36°30′ line.

密苏里于1821年加入联邦，使美国社会内部的深层裂痕暴露无遗。然而，密苏里妥协为南北双方建立了一种新的地区共识，至少大多数白人美国人希望这能确保持久的和平。经过长时间的辩论和争论，白人美国人基本达成共识：宪法对已经存在的奴隶制度无能为力，同时，除了密苏里州作为特例外，奴隶制永远不会扩展到北纬36°30′以北的地区。

Once again westward expansion challenged this consensus, and this time the results proved even more damaging. Tellingly, enslaved southerners were among the first to signal their discontent. A rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 threatened lives and property throughout the Carolinas. The nation’s religious leaders also expressed a rising discontent with the new status quo. The Second Great Awakening further sharpened political differences by promoting schisms within the major Protestant churches, schisms that also became increasingly sectional in nature. Between 1820 and 1846, sectionalism drew on new political parties, new religious organizations, and new reform movements.

西进扩张再次挑战了这一共识，而这次的影响更具破坏性。值得注意的是，被奴役的南方黑人率先对现状表达了不满。1822年，丹麦·维西（Denmark Vesey）领导的一场叛乱威胁到了南卡罗来纳州及整个卡罗来纳地区的生命和财产安全。与此同时，全国的宗教领袖也对新的现状日益不满。第二次大觉醒（Second Great Awakening）加剧了政治上的分歧，使主要的新教教派内部产生裂痕，而这些裂痕也逐渐呈现出南北对立的特征。从1820年到1846年，地区主义情绪不仅体现在政治党派之争，还渗透到宗教组织和社会改革运动之中。

As politics grew more democratic, leaders attacked old inequalities of wealth and power, but in doing so many pandered to a unity under white supremacy. Slavery briefly receded from the nation’s attention in the early 1820s, but that would change quickly. By the last half of the decade, slavery was back, and this time it appeared even more threatening.

随着政治变得更加民主化，领导者们开始攻击旧有的财富和权力不平等现象，但在这样做的同时，许多人却迎合了以白人至上主义为基础的统一观念。在19世纪20年代初，奴隶制曾短暂地从国家关注的焦点中淡出，但这一情况很快发生了变化。到了20年代后半期，奴隶制再次成为中心议题，而且这次它的威胁似乎更大了。

Inspired by the social change of Jacksonian democracy, white men, regardless of status, would gain not only land and jobs but also the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to attend public schools, and the right to serve in the militia and armed forces. In this post-Missouri context, leaders arose to push the country’s new expansionist desires in aggressive new directions. As they did so, however, the sectional crisis again deepened.

受杰克逊民主（Jacksonian Democracy）所推动的社会变革影响，白人男性，无论其社会地位如何，不仅能获得土地和工作机会，还享有选举权、担任陪审员的权利、接受公立教育的权利，以及在民兵和军队中服役的权利。在这种新的政治氛围下，一些领导者出现，他们推动国家扩张的愿望朝着更加激进的方向发展。然而，随着扩张的进行，地区性危机也再次加深。

The Democratic Party initially seemed to offer a compelling answer to the problems of sectionalism by promising benefits to white working men of the North, South, and West, while also uniting rural, small-town, and urban residents. Indeed, huge numbers of western, southern, and northern workingmen rallied behind Andrew Jackson during the 1828 presidential election. The Democratic Party tried to avoid the issue of slavery and instead sought to unite Americans around shared commitments to white supremacy and desires to expand the nation.

民主党最初似乎提供了一个有力的解决方案，以缓解地区主义带来的问题。他们承诺为北方、南方和西部的白人工薪阶层提供利益，同时团结乡村、小镇和城市居民。1828年总统选举期间，大量来自西部、南部和北方的工薪阶层选民聚集在安德鲁·杰克逊（Andrew Jackson）周围。民主党试图回避奴隶制问题，而是试图通过强化白人至上主义和扩张国家的共同愿望来团结美国人。

Democrats were not without their critics. Northerners seen as especially friendly to the South had become known as “Doughfaces” during the Missouri debates, and as the 1830s wore on, more and more Doughfaced Democrats became vulnerable to the charge that they served the southern slaving oligarchs better than they served their own northern communities. Whites discontented with the direction of the country used the slur and other critiques to help chip away at Democratic Party majorities. The accusation that northern Democrats were lapdogs for southern enslavers had real power.

民主党并非没有批评者。在密苏里辩论期间，那些被视为对南方特别友好的北方人被称为“软面团”（Doughfaces）。到了1830年代，越来越多的“软面团”民主党人被指责比起服务自己的北方社区，更忠于南方奴隶主寡头。那些对国家发展方向感到不满的白人利用这一称呼及其他批评，削弱了民主党的多数优势。指责北方民主党人是南方奴隶主的走狗，这一批评确实产生了相当大的影响力。

The Whigs offered an organized major-party challenge to the Democrats. Whig strongholds often mirrored the patterns of westward migrations out of New England. Whigs drew from an odd coalition of wealthy merchants, middle- and upper-class farmers, planters in the Upland South, and settlers in the Great Lakes. Because of this motley coalition, the party struggled to bring a cohesive message to voters in the 1830s. Their strongest support came from places like Ohio’s Western Reserve, the rural and Protestant-dominated areas of Michigan, and similar parts of Protestant and small-town Illinois, particularly the fast-growing towns and cities of the state’s northern half.

辉格党（Whig Party）成为了民主党在全国范围内的主要对手。辉格党的势力范围往往与新英格兰向西迁移的模式相吻合。他们的支持者来自一个奇特的联盟，包括富有的商人、中上阶层农民、上南方（Upland South）的种植园主，以及五大湖地区的定居者。由于这个联盟构成复杂，该党在1830年代难以向选民传递一个统一的信息。他们最强大的支持力量来自俄亥俄州的西部保留地（Western Reserve）、密歇根州以农村和新教徒为主的地区，以及伊利诺伊州的部分新教小镇和农村，尤其是该州北部快速发展的城镇和城市。

Whig leaders stressed Protestant culture and federal-sponsored internal improvements and courted the support of a variety of reform movements, including temperance, nativism, and even antislavery, though few Whigs believed in racial equality. These positions attracted a wide range of figures, including a young convert to politics named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln admired Whig leader Henry Clay of Kentucky, and by the early 1830s, Lincoln certainly fit the image of a developing Whig. A veteran of the Black Hawk War, Lincoln had relocated to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked a variety of odd jobs, living a life of thrift, self-discipline, and sobriety as he educated himself in preparation for a professional life in law and politics.

辉格党领袖强调新教文化以及由联邦政府资助的国内基础设施建设，并积极争取各种改革运动的支持，包括禁酒运动、本土主义（排外主义）以及一定程度上的反奴隶制，尽管很少有辉格党人真正支持种族平等。这些立场吸引了一大批人物加入，其中包括一位刚刚涉足政治的年轻人——亚伯拉罕·林肯（Abraham Lincoln）。林肯钦佩肯塔基州的辉格党领袖亨利·克莱（Henry Clay），到19世纪30年代初，林肯无疑符合一名典型辉格党人的形象。他曾参加黑鹰战争（Black Hawk War），随后迁居伊利诺伊州的新塞勒姆（New Salem），从事各种零工。他以节俭、自律、清醒的生活方式自学成才，为未来的法律和政治生涯做准备。

The Whig Party blamed Democrats for defending slavery at the expense of the American people, but antislavery was never a core component of the Whig platform. Several abolitionists grew so disgusted with the Whigs that they formed their own party, a true antislavery party. Activists in Warsaw, New York, organized the antislavery Liberty Party in 1839. Liberty leaders demanded the end of slavery in the District of Columbia, the end of the interstate slave trade, and the prohibition of slavery’s expansion into the West. But the Liberty Party also shunned women’s participation in the movement and distanced themselves from visions of true racial egalitarianism. Few Americans voted for the party. The Democrats and Whigs continued to dominate American politics.

辉格党指责民主党人维护奴隶制，牺牲了美国人民的利益，但反奴隶制从未成为辉格党的核心政策。许多废奴主义者对辉格党感到极度失望，以至于他们在1839年于纽约州华沙（Warsaw）成立了自己的政党——自由党（Liberty Party），这是一个真正的反奴隶制政党。自由党领袖要求废除哥伦比亚特区的奴隶制、终止州际奴隶贸易，并禁止奴隶制向西部扩张。然而，自由党同时排斥女性参与运动，并与真正的种族平等理念保持距离。该党在选举中几乎没有获得选票，民主党和辉格党仍然主导着美国政治。

Democrats and Whigs fostered a moment of relative calm on the slavery debate, partially aided by gag rules prohibiting discussion of antislavery petitions. Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837) became the newest states admitted to the Union, with Arkansas coming in as a slave state, and Michigan coming in as a free state. Michigan gained admission through provisions established in the Northwest Ordinance, while Arkansas came in under the Missouri Compromise. Since its lands were below the line at 36°30′, the admission of Arkansas did not threaten the Missouri consensus. The balancing act between slavery and freedom continued.

民主党和辉格党通过制定“封口规则”（gag rules）禁止国会讨论反奴隶制请愿，在一定程度上缓和了奴隶制辩论带来的紧张局势。在此期间，阿肯色州（1836年）和密歇根州（1837年）相继加入联邦，阿肯色州作为蓄奴州加入，而密歇根州则作为自由州加入。密歇根州依据《西北条例》获得州地位，而阿肯色州则根据《密苏里妥协》加入。由于阿肯色州的土地位于北纬36°30′线以南，因此其加入并未威胁到密苏里妥协所达成的共识。奴隶制与自由州之间的微妙平衡仍在维持。

Events in Texas would shatter the balance. Independent Texas soon gained recognition from a supportive Andrew Jackson administration in 1837. But Jackson’s successor, President Martin Van Buren, also a Democrat, soon had reasons to worry about the Republic of Texas. Texas struggled with ongoing conflicts with Mexico and raids from the powerful Comanche. The 1844 democratic presidential candidate James K. Polk sought to bridge the sectional divide by promising new lands to whites north and south. Polk cited the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Territory as campaign cornerstones. Yet as Polk championed the acquisition of these vast new lands, northern Democrats grew annoyed by their southern colleagues, especially when it came to Texas.

得克萨斯的事件打破了这一平衡。独立后的得克萨斯共和国于1837年得到了安德鲁·杰克逊（Andrew Jackson）政府的正式承认。但杰克逊的继任者、同为民主党的马丁·范布伦（Martin Van Buren）总统很快对得克萨斯的局势产生了担忧。得克萨斯面临着与墨西哥的持续冲突，并受到强大的科曼奇部族（Comanche）的袭扰。1844年民主党总统候选人詹姆斯·K·波尔克（James K. Polk）试图通过承诺为南北白人提供新土地来弥合南北分歧。他以吞并得克萨斯和获取俄勒冈领土作为竞选的核心承诺。然而，当波尔克推动这些新领土的获取时，北方民主党人对南方同僚的不满日益加剧，尤其是在得克萨斯问题上。

For many observers, the debates over Texas statehood illustrated that the federal government was clearly pro-slavery. Texas president Sam Houston managed to secure a deal with Polk and gained admission to the Union for Texas in 1845. Antislavery northerners also worried about the admission of Florida, which entered the Union as a slave state in 1845. The year 1845 became a pivotal year in the memory of antislavery leaders. As Americans embraced calls to pursue their manifest destiny, antislavery voices looked at developments in Florida and Texas as signs that the sectional crisis had taken an ominous and perhaps irredeemable turn.

在许多观察者看来，关于得克萨斯州地位的辩论表明联邦政府显然支持奴隶制。得克萨斯总统萨姆·休斯顿（Sam Houston）最终与波尔克达成协议，使得克萨斯于1845年加入联邦。同时，北方的废奴主义者也对佛罗里达州的加入感到担忧，因为佛罗里达同样是在1845年作为蓄奴州加入的。1845年成为废奴主义者记忆中的一个关键年份。随着美国人越来越相信自己肩负着“昭昭天命”（Manifest Destiny），废奴主义者则将佛罗里达和得克萨斯的加入视为南北矛盾加剧、甚至可能无可挽回的征兆。

The 1840s opened with a number of disturbing developments for antislavery leaders. The 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that the federal government’s Fugitive Slave Act trumped Pennsylvania’s personal liberty law. Antislavery activists believed that the federal government only served southern enslavers and were trouncing the states’ rights of the North. A number of northern states reacted by passing new personal liberty laws in protest in 1843.

1840年代初期，对废奴主义者而言，一系列令人不安的事件接踵而至。1842年，美国最高法院在普里格诉宾夕法尼亚案（Prigg v. Pennsylvania）中裁定，联邦政府的《逃奴法》（Fugitive Slave Act）凌驾于宾夕法尼亚州的“个人自由法”（Personal Liberty Law）之上。废奴主义者认为，联邦政府只是在为南方奴隶主服务，并正在侵犯北方各州的权利。作为抗议，多个北方州在1843年通过了新的个人自由法，以对抗联邦政府的裁决。

The rising controversy over the status of freedom-seeking people swelled partly through the influence of escaped formerly enslaved people, including Frederick Douglass. Douglass’s entrance into northern politics marked an important new development in the nation’s coming sectional crisis. Born into slavery in 1818 at Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass grew up, like many enslaved people, barely having known his own mother or date of birth. And yet because of a range of unique privileges afforded him by the circumstances of his upbringing, as well as his own genius and determination, Douglass managed to learn how to read and write. He used these skills to escape from slavery in 1837, when he was just nineteen. By 1845, Douglass put the finishing touches on his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The book launched his lifelong career as an advocate for the enslaved and helped further raise the visibility of Black politics. Other formerly enslaved people, including Sojourner Truth, joined Douglass in rousing support for antislavery, as did free Black Americans like Maria Stewart, James McCune Smith, Martin Delaney, and numerous others. But Black activists did more than deliver speeches. They also attacked fugitive slave laws by helping thousands to escape. The incredible career of Harriet Tubman is one of the more dramatic examples. But the forces of slavery had powerful allies at every level of government.

对于逃往自由州的奴隶的法律地位的争议日益加剧，而这在一定程度上受到了一些逃亡奴隶的影响，其中包括弗雷德里克·道格拉斯（Frederick Douglass）。道格拉斯的政治参与标志着国家即将迎来新的地区危机。他于1818年出生在马里兰州塔尔博特县（Talbot County），像许多被奴役者一样，他对自己的母亲和出生日期知之甚少。然而，由于他成长过程中所获得的一些特殊机会，再加上他的才华与坚定意志，道格拉斯学会了阅读和写作，并在1837年仅19岁时成功逃离奴隶制。1845年，道格拉斯完成了自传《弗雷德里克·道格拉斯的生平叙述》（Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass），这本书奠定了他作为奴隶制反对者的终身事业，并提升了黑人政治在公众中的可见度。其他曾经被奴役的人，如苏珍娜·特鲁斯（Sojourner Truth），也与道格拉斯一起鼓动废奴运动，而自由黑人如玛丽亚·斯图尔特（Maria Stewart）、詹姆斯·麦克休恩·史密斯（James McCune Smith）、马丁·德拉尼（Martin Delany）等人也积极投身其中。但黑人活动家不仅仅是发表演讲，他们还积极帮助逃奴逃往自由州。例如，哈丽特·塔布曼（Harriet Tubman）的传奇事迹便是其中最引人注目的例子之一。然而，奴隶制的支持者在政府各个层面都拥有强大的盟友。

The year 1846 signaled new reversals to the antislavery cause and the beginnings of a dark new era in American politics. President Polk and his Democratic allies were eager to see western lands brought into the Union and were especially anxious to see the borders of the nation extended to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Critics of the administration blasted these efforts as little more than land grabs on behalf of enslavers. Events in early 1846 seemed to justify antislavery complaints. Since Mexico had never recognized independent Texas, it continued to lay claim to its lands, even after the United States admitted it to the Union. In January 1846, Polk ordered troops to Texas to enforce claims stemming from its border dispute along the Rio Grande. Polk asked for war on May 11, 1846, and by September 1847, the United States had invaded Mexico City. Whigs, like Abraham Lincoln, found their protests sidelined, but antislavery voices were becoming more vocal and more powerful.

1846年标志着废奴运动的进一步挫折，同时也开启了美国政治的黑暗新篇章。波尔克总统及其民主党盟友急于将西部土地纳入联邦，并特别希望将国家的边界扩展至太平洋沿岸。政府的批评者认为，这些举措不过是南方奴隶主为了自身利益而进行的土地掠夺。1846年初的事件似乎证实了废奴派的担忧。墨西哥从未承认得克萨斯独立，因此在美国吞并得克萨斯后，仍然坚持对其领土的主权要求。1846年1月，波尔克下令美军进入得克萨斯，以维护美国在格兰德河（Rio Grande）沿岸的边界主张。5月11日，波尔克正式向国会请求宣战。到1847年9月，美国军队已经攻入墨西哥城。辉格党人，如林肯，虽然表达了抗议，但他们的声音很快被边缘化。而与此同时，废奴主义者的呼声却变得越来越响亮。

After 1846, the sectional crisis raged throughout North America. Debates swirled over whether the new lands would be slave or free. The South began defending slavery as a positive good. At the same time, Congressman David Wilmot submitted his Wilmot Proviso late in 1846, banning the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico. The proviso gained widespread northern support and even passed the House with bipartisan support, but it failed in the Senate.

1846年后，地区危机在整个北美进一步加剧。关于新获得的西部领土是实行奴隶制还是自由制的争论愈演愈烈。南方开始公开为奴隶制辩护，宣称它是一种“积极的福祉”。与此同时，国会议员戴维·威尔莫特（David Wilmot）在1846年末提出了“威尔莫特但书”（Wilmot Proviso），该提案禁止在从墨西哥获得的新领土上扩展奴隶制。这一提案在北方获得了广泛支持，并在众议院获得了跨党派通过，但最终未能在参议院通过。

IV. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

四、自由土地、自由劳动、自由人

The conclusion of the Mexican War led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty infuriated antislavery leaders in the United States. The spoils of war were impressive, but it was clear they would help expand slavery. Antislavery activists, who already judged the Mexican War an enslavers’ plot, vowed that no new territories would be opened to slavery. But knowing that the Liberty Party was also not likely to provide a home to many moderate voters, leaders fostered a new and more competitive party, which they called the Free Soil Party. Antislavery leaders had thought that their vision of a federal government divorced from slavery might be represented by the major parties in that year’s presidential election, but both the Whigs and the Democrats nominated candidates hostile to the antislavery cause. Left unrepresented, antislavery Free Soil leaders swung into action.

墨西哥战争的结束促成了1848年《瓜达卢佩-伊达尔戈条约》的签订。该条约令美国的反奴隶制领袖们极为愤怒。战争的战利品令人瞩目，但显然这些新领土将促进奴隶制度的扩张。反奴隶制活动人士早已认定墨西哥战争是一场奴隶主策划的阴谋，并誓言不会让任何新领土向奴隶制开放。然而，他们也明白，自由党（Liberty Party）并不能吸引众多温和派选民。因此，反奴隶制领袖们推动成立了一个更具竞争力的新政党，即自由土地党（Free Soil Party）。

Demanding an alternative to the pro-slavery status quo, Free Soil leaders assembled so-called Conscience Whigs, the remnants of the Liberty Party, and antislavery Democrats. The new coalition called for a national convention in August 1848 at Buffalo, New York. A number of ex-Democrats committed to the party right away, including an important group of New Yorkers loyal to Martin Van Buren. The Free Soil Party’s platform bridged the eastern and western leadership together and called for an end to slavery in Washington, D.C., and a halt on slavery’s expansion in the territories. The Free Soil movement hardly made a dent in the 1848 presidential election, but it drew more than four times the popular vote won by the Liberty Party earlier. It was a promising start. In 1848, Free Soil leaders claimed just 10 percent of the popular vote but won over a dozen House seats and even managed to win one Senate seat in Ohio, which went to Salmon P. Chase. In Congress, Free Soil members had enough votes to swing power to either the Whigs or the Democrats.

反奴隶制领袖们曾希望当年总统大选的主要政党能代表他们“让联邦政府摆脱奴隶制”的愿景，但辉格党和民主党提名的候选人都对反奴隶制事业持敌对态度。在政治上被边缘化的自由土地党领导人迅速行动起来。面对支持奴隶制的现状，他们联合了所谓的“良知辉格派”（Conscience Whigs）、自由党的残余势力以及反奴隶制的民主党人，共同推动改革。1848年8月，该联盟在纽约州水牛城召开全国大会。许多前民主党人迅速加入了这一新政党，其中包括一批忠于马丁·范布伦的纽约政客。自由土地党的纲领成功地将东西部领导层凝聚在一起，主张在华盛顿特区废除奴隶制，并禁止奴隶制度向新领土扩展。自由土地党在1848年总统选举中并未撼动政治格局，但其得票数是自由党的四倍以上，显示出了不俗的政治潜力。在该次选举中，自由土地党获得了10%的普选票，并赢得十余个众议院席位，甚至在俄亥俄州夺得一个参议院席位，由萨尔蒙·P·蔡斯（Salmon P. Chase）当选。在国会中，自由土地党的成员拥有足够的票数，使他们能够在辉格党和民主党之间左右逢源，施加影响力。

The admission of Wisconsin as a free state in May 1848 helped cool tensions after the Texas and Florida admissions. Meanwhile, news from a number of failed European revolutions alarmed American reformers, but as exiled radicals filtered into the United States, a strengthening women’s rights movement also flexed its muscle at Seneca Falls, New York. Led by figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, women with deep ties to the abolitionist cause, it represented the first of such meetings ever held in U.S. history. Frederick Douglass also appeared at the convention and took part in the proceedings, where participants debated the Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and Resolutions. By August 1848, it seemed plausible that the Free Soil Movement might tap into these reforms and build a broader coalition. In some ways that is precisely what it did. But come November, the spirit of reform failed to yield much at the polls. Whig candidate Zachary Taylor bested Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan.

1848年5月，威斯康星作为自由州加入联邦，这在一定程度上缓和了因德克萨斯和佛罗里达加入联邦而引发的紧张局势。同时，欧洲一系列失败的革命让美国改革者感到震惊，但流亡美国的激进分子也带来了新的政治活力。与此同时，美国的妇女权利运动也在不断壮大，并在纽约州塞尼卡瀑布镇召开了一场具有里程碑意义的会议。这场由伊丽莎白·卡迪·斯坦顿（Elizabeth Cady Stanton）和卢克丽霞·莫特（Lucretia Mott）等妇女权利活动家领导的会议，是美国历史上首次专门讨论妇女权利的大会。弗雷德里克·道格拉斯（Frederick Douglass）也出席了会议，并积极参与讨论。在会上，与会者起草了《宣言、申诉与决议》（Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and Resolutions），倡导性别平等。到1848年8月，自由土地运动似乎有可能吸纳这些改革力量，构建更广泛的政治联盟。然而，到了11月，改革的激情未能转化为选举胜利。在总统选举中，辉格党候选人扎卡里·泰勒（Zachary Taylor）击败了民主党候选人、密歇根州的刘易斯·卡斯（Lewis Cass）。

The upheavals of 1848 came to a quick end. Taylor remained in office only a brief time until his unexpected death from a stomach ailment in 1850. During Taylor’s brief time in office, the fruits of the Mexican War began to spoil. While Taylor was alive, his administration struggled to find a good remedy. Increased clamoring for the admission of California, New Mexico, and Utah pushed the country closer to the edge. Gold had been discovered in California, and as thousands continued to pour onto the West Coast and through the trans-Mississippi West, the admission of new states loomed. In Utah, Mormons were also making claims to an independent state they called Deseret. By 1850, California wanted admission as a free state. With so many competing dynamics under way, and with the president dead and replaced by Whig Millard Fillmore, the 1850s were off to a troubling start.

1848年的政治动荡很快平息。然而，泰勒总统的任期十分短暂，他因胃病于1850年突然去世。在他短暂的执政期间，墨西哥战争的胜利成果开始变质。加利福尼亚、新墨西哥和犹他地区的入联申请让全国局势进一步紧张。加利福尼亚因淘金热吸引了大量移民，而在横跨密西西比河以西的土地上，大批移民的涌入使新州的加入问题愈发紧迫。在犹他地区，摩门教徒也在推动成立他们自己的独立政权——“德塞雷特国”（Deseret）。到1850年，加利福尼亚提出申请，要求作为自由州加入联邦。随着种种矛盾交织在一起，加之总统去世，由辉格党人米勒德·菲尔莫尔（Millard Fillmore）继任，美国1850年代的政治局势变得异常严峻。

Congressional leaders like Henry Clay and newer legislators like Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois were asked to broker a compromise, but this time it was clear no compromise could bridge all the diverging interests at play in the country. Clay eventually left Washington disheartened by affairs. It fell to young Stephen Douglas, then, to shepherd the bills through Congress, which he in fact did. Legislators rallied behind the Compromise of 1850, an assemblage of bills passed late in 1850, which managed to keep the promises of the Missouri Compromise alive.

国会领袖亨利·克莱（Henry Clay）和伊利诺伊州的年轻议员斯蒂芬·A·道格拉斯（Stephen A. Douglas）被寄予厚望，希望他们能促成新的妥协方案。但这一次，明显没有任何妥协方案能够弥合美国内部的巨大分歧。克莱最终失望地离开华盛顿，而道格拉斯则接过重任，推动一系列法案在国会通过。最终，国会议员们支持了《1850年妥协案》（Compromise of 1850）——这一系列法案在1850年底通过，勉强维持了《密苏里妥协案》的承诺，使国家继续维持表面的平衡。

The Compromise of 1850 tried to offer something to everyone, but in the end it only worsened the sectional crisis. For southerners, the package offered a tough new fugitive slave law that empowered the federal government to deputize regular citizens in arresting runaways. The New Mexico Territory and the Utah Territory would be allowed to determine their own fates as slave or free states based on popular sovereignty. The compromise also allowed territories to submit suits directly to the Supreme Court over the status of freedom-seeking people within their bounds.

1850年妥协案试图为每一方提供一定的利益，但最终只加剧了地区性危机。对南方人来说，妥协案提供了一部严格的新逃奴法，授权联邦政府任命普通公民来逮捕逃奴。新墨西哥领土和犹他领土将根据“人民主权”原则决定是否允许奴隶制存在。该妥协案还允许各领土就其内部自由寻求者的身份直接向最高法院提起诉讼。

The admission of California as the newest free state in the Union cheered many northerners, but even the admission of a vast new state full of resources and rich agricultural lands was not enough. In addition to California, northerners also gained a ban on the slave trade in Washington, D.C., but not the full emancipation abolitionists had long advocated. Texas, which had already come into the Union as a slave state, was asked to give some of its land to New Mexico in return for the federal government absorbing some of the former republic’s debt. But the compromise debates soon grew ugly.

加利福尼亚作为最新的自由州加入联邦，令许多北方人欢欣鼓舞，但即便是一个充满资源和丰富农业土地的巨大新州，也不足以安抚所有人。除了加利福尼亚，北方人还获得了禁止华盛顿特区奴隶贸易的条款，但并未实现废奴主义者长久以来所主张的完全废除奴隶制的目标。德克萨斯州已作为奴隶州加入联邦，按照妥协方案，德克萨斯需将部分土地划给新墨西哥，并由联邦政府承担该州部分债务。然而，妥协方案的辩论很快变得激烈而丑陋。

After the Compromise of 1850, antislavery critics became increasingly certain that enslavers had co-opted the federal government, and that a southern Slave Power secretly held sway in Washington, where it hoped to make slavery a national institution. These northern complaints pointed back to how the three-fifths compromise of the Constitution gave southerners proportionally more representatives in Congress. In the 1850s, antislavery leaders increasingly argued that Washington worked on behalf of enslavers while ignoring the interests of white working men.

在1850年妥协案通过后，反奴隶制批评者越来越确信奴隶主已将联邦政府纳为己用，认为南方的“奴隶权力”在华盛顿暗中掌控政局，试图将奴隶制变成一项全国性的制度。这些北方的投诉指向了宪法中的三分之三妥协，即南方人在国会中根据奴隶人口比例拥有更多的代表席位。在1850年代，反奴隶制领袖越来越多地主张，华盛顿是在为奴隶主服务，而忽视了白人劳动阶层的利益。

None of the individual measures in the Compromise of 1850 proved more troubling to antislavery Americans than the Fugitive Slave Act. In a clear bid to extend slavery’s influence throughout the country, the act created special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial or even court testimony. Under its provisions, local authorities in the North could not interfere with the capture of fugitives. Northern citizens, moreover, had to assist in the arrest of fugitives when called upon by federal agents. The Fugitive Slave Act created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal power, including an alarming increase in the nation’s policing powers. Many northerners were also troubled by the way the bill undermined local and state laws. The law itself fostered corruption and the enslavement of free Black northerners. The federal commissioners who heard these cases were paid $10 if they determined that the defendant was enslaved and only $5 if they determined he or she was free. Many Black northerners responded to the new law by heading farther north to Canada.

在1850年妥协案中的各项措施中，没有哪一项比《逃奴法》更令反奴隶制的美国人感到忧虑。《逃奴法》明确旨在扩展奴隶制在全国的影响力。该法案设立了特别的联邦委员会来裁定被指控为逃奴者的命运，而无需陪审团审判或法庭证词。根据该法案的规定，北方的地方政府不能干预逃奴的捕捉。此外，北方公民还必须在联邦代理人的要求下协助逮捕逃奴。《逃奴法》为联邦权力的大规模扩张奠定了基础，尤其是国家警察权力的惊人增加。许多北方人对该法案如何削弱地方和州法律感到不安。该法案本身助长了腐败并使自由黑人北方人遭到奴役。处理这些案件的联邦委员，如果裁定被告是奴隶，则获得10美元，如果裁定其是自由人，则只获得5美元。许多黑人北方人通过向北逃往加拿大来回应这项新法律。

The 1852 presidential election gave the Whigs their most stunning defeat and effectively ended their existence as a national political party. Whigs captured just 42 of the 254 electoral votes needed to win. With the Compromise of 1850 and plenty of new lands, peaceful consensus seemed to be on the horizon. Antislavery feelings continued to run deep, however. One measure of the popularity of antislavery ideas came in 1852 when Harriet Beecher Stowe published her best-selling antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Sales for Uncle Tom’s Cabin were astronomical, eclipsed only by sales of the Bible. The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. Despite the powerful antislavery message, Stowe’s book also reinforced many racist stereotypes. Even abolitionists struggled with the deeply ingrained racism that plagued American society. While the major success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin bolstered the abolitionist cause, the terms outlined by the Compromise of 1850 appeared strong enough to keep the peace.

1852年总统选举是辉格党最为惨重的失败，并有效地结束了其作为全国性政党的存在。辉格党仅获得254张选举票中的42票。尽管通过了1850年妥协案并获得了大量新领土，和平的共识似乎即将到来，但反奴隶制情绪依然深刻。反奴隶制思想的一个体现是，1852年哈里特·比彻·斯托（Harriet Beecher Stowe）出版了她的畅销反奴隶制小说《汤姆叔叔的小屋》（Uncle Tom's Cabin）。《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的销量达到空前的程度，仅次于《圣经》的销量。这本书成为轰动一时的作品，帮助将反奴隶制话题带入了许多北方人的日常对话中。尽管该书传达了强烈的反奴隶制信息，但它也强化了许多种族主义的刻板印象。即便是废奴主义者也为美国社会根深蒂固的种族主义问题所困扰。尽管《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的成功推动了废奴运动，但1850年妥协案所列的条款似乎足够强大，能够维持表面的和平。

Democrats by 1853 were badly splintered along sectional lines over slavery, but they also had reasons to act with confidence. Voters had returned them to office in 1852 following the bitter fights over the Compromise of 1850. Emboldened, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a set of additional amendments to a bill drafted in late 1853 to help organize the Nebraska Territory, the last of the Louisiana Purchase lands. In 1853, the Nebraska Territory was huge, extending from the northern end of Texas to the Canadian border. Altogether, it encompassed present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, and Montana. Douglas’s efforts to amend and introduce the bill in 1854 opened dynamics that would break the Democratic Party in two and, in the process, rip the country apart.

到1853年，民主党在奴隶制问题上已严重分裂，但他们也有理由满怀信心地采取行动。经过1850年妥协案的激烈争斗后，选民将他们重新选入政府。得到了支持的伊利诺伊州参议员斯蒂芬·A·道格拉斯提出了一项修正案，目的是帮助组织内布拉斯加领土，这是路易斯安那购地后的最后一片土地。1853年，内布拉斯加领土面积巨大，从德克萨斯州的北端延伸至加拿大边界。总的来说，它包括了现在的内布拉斯加州、怀俄明州、南达科他州、北达科他州、科罗拉多州和蒙大拿州。道格拉斯在1854年修订并提出这项法案的努力，开启了会把民主党分裂成两派的政治动向，进而撕裂国家。

Douglas proposed a bold plan in 1854 to cut off a large southern chunk of Nebraska and create it separately as the Kansas Territory. Douglas had a number of goals in mind. The expansionist Democrat from Illinois wanted to organize the territory to facilitate the completion of a national railroad that would flow through Chicago. But before he had even finished introducing the bill, opposition had already mobilized. Salmon P. Chase drafted a response in northern newspapers that exposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a measure to overturn the Missouri Compromise and open western lands for slavery. Kansas-Nebraska protests emerged in 1854 throughout the North, with key meetings in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kansas would become slave or free depending on the result of local elections, elections that would be greatly influenced by migrants flooding to the state to either protect or stop the spread of slavery.

道格拉斯在1854年提出了一个大胆的计划，打算从内布拉斯加领土切割出一大块南部区域，将其单独设立为堪萨斯领土。道格拉斯的计划有多个目的。作为一名扩张主义的伊利诺伊州民主党人，他希望组织这个领土，以便完成一条横贯芝加哥的国家铁路。然而，在他提出法案之前，反对声已经开始集结。萨尔蒙·P·蔡斯在北方的报纸上起草了回应，揭露堪萨斯-内布拉斯加法案是推翻《密苏里妥协》并将西部土地开放给奴隶制的措施。1854年，北方爆发了堪萨斯-内布拉斯加法案的抗议活动，威斯康星州和密歇根州举行了重要的集会。堪萨斯州是否成为奴隶州或自由州，将取决于地方选举的结果，而这些选举将受到大批移民的影响，移民们争相涌入堪萨斯，以保护或阻止奴隶制的扩展。

Ordinary Americans in the North increasingly resisted what they believed to be a pro-slavery federal government on their own terms. The rescues and arrests of enslaved men like Anthony Burns in Boston and Joshua Glover in Milwaukee signaled the rising vehemence of resistance to the nation’s 1850 fugitive slave law. The case of Anthony Burns illustrates how the Fugitive Slave Law radicalized many northerners. On May 24, 1854, twenty-year-old Burns, a preacher who worked in a Boston clothing shop, was clubbed and dragged to jail. One year earlier, Burns had escaped slavery in Virginia, and a group of slave catchers had come to return him to Richmond. Word of Burns’s capture spread rapidly through Boston, and a mob gathered outside the courthouse demanding Burns’s release. Two days after the arrest, the crowd stormed the courthouse and shot a deputy U.S. Marshal to death. News reached Washington, and the federal government sent soldiers. Boston was placed under martial law. Federal troops lined the streets of Boston as Burns was marched to a ship, where he was sent back to slavery in Virginia. After spending over $40,000, the U.S. government had successfully reenslaved Anthony Burns. A short time later, Burns was redeemed by abolitionists who paid $1,300 to return him to freedom, but the outrage among Bostonians only grew. And Anthony Burns was only one of hundreds of highly publicized episodes of the federal government imposing the Fugitive Slave Law on rebellious northern populations. In the words of Amos Adams Lawrence, “We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs & woke up stark mad Abolitionists.”

北方普通美国人越来越多地抵制他们认为是支持奴隶制的联邦政府，并开始以自己的方式行动。像安东尼·伯恩斯（Anthony Burns）在波士顿和乔舒亚·格洛弗（Joshua Glover）在密尔沃基的奴隶营救和逮捕事件，标志着对1850年逃奴法的强烈反抗逐渐上升。安东尼·伯恩斯的案件展示了逃奴法如何激化了许多北方人的情绪。1854年5月24日，20岁的伯恩斯，一名在波士顿服装店工作的传教士，被用警棍殴打并拖进监狱。一年前，伯恩斯曾从弗吉尼亚州逃脱奴隶制，而一群捕奴者来将他带回里士满。伯恩斯被捕的消息迅速传遍波士顿，外面聚集了一群示威者要求释放伯恩斯。两天后，人群冲进法院，开枪打死了一名美国联邦执法官。消息传到华盛顿，联邦政府派兵前往。波士顿被宣布实行戒严。联邦军队站在波士顿的街头，伯恩斯被押送到一艘船上，送回弗吉尼亚州重新成为奴隶。美国政府花费超过4万美元，成功地将安东尼·伯恩斯重新奴役。不久之后，废奴主义者通过支付1300美元将伯恩斯救回重获自由，但波士顿人的愤怒只增不减。而安东尼·伯恩斯仅仅是数百个联邦政府强加逃奴法的公众事件之一。正如阿莫斯·亚当斯·劳伦斯所说：“头天晚上我们是一个老式的保守派妥协派的联邦辉格党人，醒来时变成了愤怒的废奴主义者。”

As northerners radicalized, organizations like the New England Emigrant Aid Company provided guns and other goods for pioneers willing to go to Kansas and establish the territory as antislavery through popular sovereignty. On all sides of the slavery issue, politics became increasingly militarized.

随着北方人情绪的激化，像新英格兰移民援助公司（New England Emigrant Aid Company）这样的组织开始为愿意前往堪萨斯并通过民众主权将该地区建立为反奴隶制领土的拓荒者提供武器和其他物资。奴隶制问题的各方政治立场逐渐变得越来越军事化。

The year 1855 nearly derailed the northern antislavery coalition. A resurgent anti-immigrant movement briefly took advantage of the Whig collapse and nearly stole the energy of the anti-administration forces by channeling its frustrations into fights against the large number of mostly Catholic German and Irish immigrants in American cities. Calling themselves Know-Nothings, on account of their tendency to pretend ignorance when asked about their activities, the Know-Nothing or American Party made impressive gains in 1854 and 1855, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic. But the anti-immigrant movement simply could not capture the nation’s attention in ways the antislavery movement already had.

1855年几乎使北方反奴隶制联盟偏离轨道。一个复兴的反移民运动短暂地利用了辉格党崩溃的机会，几乎通过将其不满情绪转化为对大批大多数为天主教徒的德国和爱尔兰移民的抗争，夺走了反对政府力量的能量。自称“无知党”（Know-Nothings），因为他们在被问及活动时总是表现出对自己行为的无知，"无知党"或美洲党在1854年和1855年取得了令人瞩目的成绩，尤其是在新英格兰和中大西洋地区。但反移民运动无法像反奴隶制运动那样吸引全国的关注。

The antislavery political movements that started in 1854 coalesced with the formation of a new political party. Harking back to the founding fathers, its organizers named it the Republican Party. Republicans moved forward into a highly charged summer.

1854年开始的反奴隶制政治运动与新政党的成立相结合，形成了共和党。其组织者回顾美国建国的历史，并以此为灵感命名为共和党。共和党迈向了一个充满活力的夏天。

Following an explosive speech before Congress on May 19–20, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was violently beaten with a cane by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the floor of the Senate chamber. Among other accusations, Sumner accused Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, Brooks’s cousin, of defending slavery so he could have sexual access to Black women. Brooks felt that he had to defend his relative’s honor and nearly killed Sumner as a result.

在1856年5月19日至20日的国会爆炸性演讲之后，马萨诸塞州参议员查尔斯·萨姆纳（Charles Sumner）在参议院议场被南卡罗来纳州众议员普雷斯顿·布鲁克斯（Preston Brooks）用手杖暴力殴打。萨姆纳在演讲中指控南卡罗来纳州参议员安德鲁·巴特勒（Andrew Butler），布鲁克斯的堂兄，支持奴隶制以便能对黑人女性进行性侵。布鲁克斯认为他必须捍卫亲戚的名誉，结果差点把萨姆纳欧殴打致死。

The violence in Washington pales before the many murders occurring in Kansas. Pro-slavery raiders attacked Lawrence, Kansas. Radical abolitionist John Brown retaliated, murdering several pro-slavery Kansans in retribution. As all of this played out, the House failed to expel Brooks. Brooks resigned his seat anyway, only to be reelected by his constituents later in the year. He received new canes emblazoned with the words “Hit him again!”

华盛顿的暴力事件与堪萨斯的多起谋杀案件相比显得微不足道。亲奴隶制的袭击者攻击了堪萨斯州劳伦斯市。激进的废奴主义者约翰·布朗（John Brown）进行了报复，杀害了几名亲奴隶制的堪萨斯人。随着这一切的发展，众议院未能将布鲁克斯开除。布鲁克斯最终辞去了自己的席位，但后来再次被选民选中。他还收到了刻有“再打一次！”字样的新手杖。

With sectional tensions at a breaking point, both parties readied for the coming presidential election. In June 1856, the newly named Republican Party held its nominating convention at Philadelphia and selected Californian John Charles Frémont. Frémont’s antislavery credentials may not have pleased many abolitionists, but his dynamic and talented wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, appealed to more radical members of the coalition. The Kansas-Nebraska debate, the organization of the Republican Party, and the 1856 presidential campaign all energized a new generation of political leaders, including Abraham Lincoln. Beginning with his speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln carved out a message that encapsulated better than anyone else the main ideas and visions of the Republican Party. Lincoln himself was slow to join the coalition, yet by the summer of 1856, Lincoln had fully committed to the Frémont campaign.

随着地区紧张局势接近爆发，两个党派都为即将到来的总统选举做好了准备。1856年6月，新成立的共和党在费城举行了提名大会，并选出了来自加利福尼亚的约翰·查尔斯·弗里蒙特（John Charles Frémont）。虽然弗里蒙特的废奴立场可能没有得到许多废奴主义者的满意，但他那富有活力和才华的妻子杰西·本顿·弗里蒙特（Jessie Benton Frémont）赢得了联盟中更激进成员的支持。堪萨斯-内布拉斯加辩论、共和党的组建以及1856年总统选举，都激励了一代新的政治领导人，包括亚伯拉罕·林肯（Abraham Lincoln）。从1854年他在伊利诺伊州皮奥里亚（Peoria）发表的演讲开始，林肯提出了一种比其他人更能概括共和党核心思想和愿景的政治信息。林肯本人加入联盟的速度较慢，但到1856年夏季，他已完全投入到弗里蒙特的竞选中。

Frémont lost, but Republicans celebrated that he won eleven of the sixteen free states. This showing, they urged, was truly impressive for any party making its first run at the presidency. Yet northern Democrats in crucial swing states remained unmoved by the Republican Party’s appeals. Ulysses S. Grant of Missouri, for example, worried that Frémont and Republicans signaled trouble for the Union itself. Grant voted for the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, believing a Republican victory might bring about disunion. In abolitionist and especially Black American circles, Frémont’s defeat was more than a disappointment. Believing their fate had been sealed as permanent noncitizens, some African Americans would consider foreign emigration and colonization. Others began to explore the option of more radical and direct action against the Slave Power.

弗里蒙特失败了，但共和党庆祝他在16个自由州中赢得了11个。这一表现，他们强调，对于任何首次竞选总统的党派来说都是非常令人印象深刻的。然而，在关键摇摆州的北方民主党选民依然没有被共和党的号召所打动。比如，来自密苏里州的尤利西斯·S·格兰特（Ulysses S. Grant）担心弗里蒙特和共和党标志着联邦的动荡。他投票支持民主党候选人詹姆斯·布坎南（James Buchanan），认为共和党的胜利可能会导致国家分裂。在废奴主义者，尤其是非洲裔美国人的圈子里，弗里蒙特的失败不仅仅是一次失望。许多非洲裔美国人认为他们的命运已经注定，成为永久的非公民身份，一些人开始考虑移民和殖民国外的选项。另一些人则开始探索对抗奴隶制力量的更激进和直接的行动。

V. From Sectional Crisis to National Crisis

五、从地区危机到国家危机

White antislavery leaders hailed Frémont’s defeat as a “glorious” one and looked ahead to the party’s future successes. For those still in slavery or hoping to see loved ones freed, the news was of course much harder to take. The Republican Party had promised the rise of an antislavery coalition, but voters rebuked it. The lessons seemed clear enough.

白人废奴主义领导人称弗里蒙特的失败为一次“光荣”的失败，并展望党派未来的成功。然而，对于那些仍处于奴隶制中的人，或者希望看到亲人获得自由的人来说，这个消息当然更难以接受。共和党曾承诺会建立一个废奴联盟，但选民们对此表示谴责。这些教训似乎已经足够明显。

Kansas loomed large over the 1856 election, darkening the national mood. The story of voter fraud in Kansas had begun years before in 1854, when nearby Missourians first started crossing the border to tamper with the Kansas elections. Noting this, critics at the time attacked the Pierce administration for not living up to the ideals of popular sovereignty by ensuring fair elections. From there, the crisis only deepened and democratic norms collapsed. Kansas voted to come into the Union as a free state, but the federal government refused to recognize their votes and instead recognized a sham pro-slavery legislature.

堪萨斯问题在1856年大选中显得尤为突出，笼罩了全国的情绪。堪萨斯选举中的选民欺诈事件开始于几年前的1854年，当时来自密苏里的选民开始越过边界，干涉堪萨斯的选举。对此，批评者当时指责皮尔斯政府未能履行民众主权的理想，没有确保选举的公正。从那时起，危机愈演愈烈，民主规范崩塌。堪萨斯选民决定加入联邦成为自由州，但联邦政府拒绝承认他们的选票，反而承认了一个虚假的亲奴隶制立法机关。

The sectional crisis had at last become a national crisis. “Bleeding Kansas” was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily be, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis. As the national mood grew increasingly grim, Kansas attracted militants representing the extreme sides of the slavery debate.

地区危机终于变成了国家危机。“流血的堪萨斯”成为了第一个证明地区危机能够轻易爆发，事实上已经在爆发成全面的国家危机的地方。随着全国情绪日益沉重，堪萨斯吸引了代表奴隶制辩论两极的激进分子。

In the days after the 1856 presidential election, Buchanan made his plans for his time in office clear. He talked with Chief Justice Roger Taney on inauguration day about a court decision he hoped to see handled during his time in office. Indeed, not long after the inauguration, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that would come to define Buchanan’s presidency. The Dred Scott decision, Scott v. Sandford, ruled that Black Americans could not be citizens of the United States and therefore could be transported as chattel from any state to another regardless of state law. This gave the Buchanan administration and its southern allies a direct repudiation of the Missouri Compromise. The court ruled that Scott, a Missouri slave, had no right to sue in United States courts. The Dred Scott decision signaled that the federal government was now fully committed to extending slavery as far and as wide as it might want.

1856年总统选举后的几天里，布坎南明确了自己在任期内的计划。他在就职当天与首席大法官罗杰·坦尼（Roger Taney）交谈，讨论了一项他希望在任期内处理的法院裁决。事实上，在就职后不久，最高法院作出了一项裁决，这一裁决将成为布坎南总统任期的标志。德雷德·斯科特案（Scott v. Sandford）裁定，黑人美国人不能成为美国公民，因此他们可以被视为财产，从任何州被转移到另一个州，而不受州法律的限制。这一裁定使得布坎南政府及其南方盟友直接否定了密苏里妥协。法院裁定，来自密苏里的奴隶斯科特没有权利在美国法院提起诉讼。德雷德·斯科特案标志着联邦政府已完全承诺将奴隶制扩展到任何它可能希望的地方。

The Dred Scott decision seemed to settle the sectional crisis by making slavery fully national, but in reality it just exacerbated sectional tensions further. In 1857, Buchanan sent U.S. military forces to Utah, hoping to subdue Utah’s Mormon communities. This action, however, led to renewed charges, many of them leveled from within his own party, that the administration was abusing its powers. Far more important than the Utah invasion, however, were the ongoing events in Kansas. It was Kansas that at last proved to many northerners that the sectional crisis would not go away unless slavery also went away.

德雷德·斯科特案似乎通过将奴隶制完全纳入国家体系来解决地区危机，但实际上，它只会加剧地区之间的紧张局势。1857年，布坎南派遣美国军队前往犹他，希望压制犹他摩门教社区。然而，这一行动导致了新的指控，其中许多来自他自己党内的人，指责政府滥用权力。然而，远比犹他入侵更为重要的是堪萨斯的持续局势。正是堪萨斯最终让许多北方人确信，地区危机除非奴隶制被消除，否则无法解决。

The Illinois Senate race in 1858 put the scope of the sectional crisis on full display. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln challenged the greatly influential Democrat Stephen Douglas. Pandering to appeals to white supremacy, Douglas hammered the Republican opposition as a “Black Republican” party bent on racial equality. The Republicans, including Lincoln, fired back with warnings of divisiveness and assertions that all Americans deserved equality of opportunity. Democrats hung on as best they could, but the Republicans won the House of Representatives and picked up seats in the Senate. Lincoln actually lost his contest with Stephen Douglas but in the process firmly established himself as a leading national Republican. After the 1858 elections, all eyes turned to 1860. Given the Republican Party’s successes since 1854, it was expected that the 1860 presidential election might produce the nation’s first antislavery president.

1858年伊利诺伊州参议院选举将地区危机的范围充分展示出来。共和党候选人亚伯拉罕·林肯挑战了具有重大影响力的民主党人斯蒂芬·道格拉斯。道格拉斯迎合了白人至上的诉求，猛烈抨击共和党反对派为“黑色共和党”，旨在实现种族平等。共和党人，包括林肯，回击道格拉斯，警告说这种分裂性言论将破坏国家统一，并主张所有美国人都应享有平等的机会。民主党人尽力坚持，但共和党赢得了众议院并在参议院中获得席位。林肯虽然在与道格拉斯的竞选中败北，但却在过程中坚定地确立了自己作为全国性共和党领导人的地位。1858年选举后，所有的目光都转向了1860年。鉴于自1854年以来共和党取得的成功，预计1860年总统选举可能会选出美国首位废奴总统。

In the troubled decades since the Missouri Compromise, the nation slowly tore itself apart. Congressmen clubbed each other nearly to death on the floor of Congress, and by the middle of the 1850s Americans were already at war on the Kansas and Missouri plains. Across the country, cities and towns were in various stages of revolt against federal authority. Fighting spread even farther against Native Americans in the Far West and against Mormons in Utah. The nation’s militants anticipated a coming breakdown and worked to exploit it. John Brown, fresh from his actions in Kansas, moved east and planned more violence. Assembling a team from across the West, including Black radicals from Oberlin, Ohio, and throughout communities in western Canada, Brown hatched a plan to attack Harper’s Ferry, a federal weapons arsenal in Virginia (now West Virginia). He would use the weapons to lead a revolt of enslaved people. Brown approached Frederick Douglass, though Douglass refused to join.

自密苏里妥协以来的几十年里，国家逐渐自我分裂。国会议员们几乎在国会大楼内互殴，到了1850年代中期，美国人已经在堪萨斯和密苏里平原上交战。在全国范围内，各大城市和小镇正在以不同的方式反抗联邦政府的权威。战斗蔓延至远西部的印第安人以及犹他州的摩门教徒。国家的激进分子预料到即将爆发的崩溃局面，并努力利用这一局势。约翰·布朗，在堪萨斯行动之后，向东进发，计划进行更多暴力行动。布朗召集了来自西部各地的团队，包括来自俄亥俄州奥伯林的黑人激进分子以及加拿大西部社区的成员，他计划袭击弗吉尼亚州的哈珀斯费里（现西弗吉尼亚州）联邦武器库。他打算使用这些武器发动一场奴隶起义。布朗曾接触过弗雷德里克·道格拉斯，但道格拉斯拒绝加入。

Brown’s raid embarked on October 16. By October 18, a command under Robert E. Lee had crushed the revolt. Many of Brown’s men, including his own sons, were killed, but Brown himself lived and was imprisoned. Brown prophesied while in prison that the nation’s crimes would only be purged with blood. He went to the gallows in December 1859. Northerners made a stunning display of sympathy on the day of his execution. Southerners took their reactions to mean that the coming 1860 election would be, in many ways, a referendum on secession and disunion.

布朗的袭击行动于10月16日开始。到10月18日，罗伯特·E·李指挥的部队就粉碎了起义。布朗的许多部下，包括他的几个儿子，都被杀害，但布朗本人幸存并被囚禁。布朗在监狱中预言，国家的罪行只有通过流血才能得到洗净。他于1859年12月走上了绞刑架。布朗被处决的当天，北方人表现出了震惊的同情。南方人则认为他们的反应意味着即将到来的1860年大选将在许多方面成为关于分裂和解体的公投。

Republicans wanted little to do with Brown and instead tried to portray themselves as moderates opposed to both abolitionists and pro-slavery expansionists. In this climate, the parties opened their contest for the 1860 presidential election. The Democratic Party fared poorly as its southern delegates bolted its national convention at Charleston and ran their own candidate, Vice President John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. Hoping to field a candidate who might nonetheless manage to bridge the broken party’s factions, the Democrats decided to meet again at Baltimore and nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

共和党不愿与布朗有任何关系，反而试图将自己塑造为温和派，反对废奴主义者和扩张奴隶制的支持者。在这种气氛下，各党开始为1860年总统选举展开角逐。民主党表现不佳，因为其南方代表在查尔斯顿的全国大会上脱离了大会并提名了副总统约翰·C·布雷肯里奇（来自肯塔基州）。民主党希望选出一位能够弥合党内分裂的候选人，于是决定在巴尔的摩再次召开大会，并提名了伊利诺伊州的斯蒂芬·A·道格拉斯。

The Republicans, meanwhile, held their boisterous convention in Chicago. The Republican platform made the party’s antislavery commitments clear, also making wide promises to its white constituents, particularly westerners, with the promise of new land, transcontinental railroads, and broad support of public schools. Abraham Lincoln, a candidate few outside Illinois truly expected to win, nonetheless proved far less polarizing than the other names on the ballot. Lincoln won the nomination, and with the Democrats in disarray, Republicans knew their candidate Lincoln had a good chance of winning.

与此同时，共和党在芝加哥举行了喧闹的大会。共和党平台明确表示该党对废奴的承诺，并向其白人选民，特别是西部选民，承诺新的土地、横贯大陆的铁路建设和对公立学校的广泛支持。亚伯拉罕·林肯，这个在伊利诺伊州以外几乎没有人认为有可能获胜的候选人，结果证明比选票上的其他名字更不具争议。林肯赢得了提名，且由于民主党陷入混乱，共和党知道林肯有很大的获胜机会。

Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 contest on November 6, gaining just 40 percent of the popular vote and not a single southern vote in the Electoral College. Within days, southern states were organizing secession conventions. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a series of compromises, but a clear pro-southern bias meant they had little chance of gaining Republican acceptance. Crittenden’s plan promised renewed enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and offered a plan to keep slavery in the nation’s capital. Republicans by late 1860 knew that the voters who had just placed them in power did not want them to cave on these points, and southern states proceeded with their plans to leave the Union. On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede and issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes.” The declaration highlighted failure of the federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act over competing personal liberty laws in northern states. After the war many southerners claimed that secession was primarily motivated by a concern to preserve states’ rights, but the primary complaint of the very first ordinance of secession listed the federal government’s failure to exert its authority over the northern states.

1860年11月6日，亚伯拉罕·林肯赢得了总统竞选，获得了40%的普选票，但在选举人团中没有获得南方的任何选票。几天之内，南方各州开始组织脱离联邦的大会。肯塔基州的约翰·J·克里滕登提出了一系列妥协方案，但由于方案明显偏向亲南方立场，因此几乎没有可能获得共和党的接受。克里滕登的计划承诺重新执行《逃奴法》，并提出在国家首都保持奴隶制。到1860年底，共和党人已经知道刚刚将他们送上权力宝座的选民不希望他们在这些问题上妥协，而南方各州则继续执行脱离联邦的计划。12月20日，南卡罗来纳州投票决定脱离联邦，并发布了《脱离原因宣言》。宣言指出，联邦政府未能执行《逃奴法》，导致北方各州的个人自由法案与之冲突。战争结束后，许多南方人声称脱离联邦的主要动机是为了保护州权，但第一个脱离联邦的命令中，主要的抱怨是联邦政府未能对北方各州施加足够的权威。

The year 1861, then, saw the culmination of the secession crisis. Before he left for Washington, Lincoln told those who had gathered in Springfield to wish him well and that he faced a “task greater than Washington’s” in the years to come. Southerners were also learning the challenges of forming a new nation. The seceded states grappled with internal divisions right away, as states with enslavers sometimes did not support the newly seceded states. In January, for example, Delaware rejected secession. But states in the Lower South adopted a different course. The state of Mississippi seceded. Later in the month, the states of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana also all left the Union. By early February, Texas had also joined the newly seceded states. In February, southerners drafted a constitution protecting slavery and named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi their president. Weeks after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, rebels in the newly formed Confederate States of America opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Within days, Abraham Lincoln would demand seventy-five thousand volunteers from the North to crush the rebellion. The American Civil War had begun.

因此，1861年标志着分裂危机达到了顶峰。林肯在前往华盛顿之前告诉在斯普林菲尔德为他送行的人们，他面临着“比华盛顿更为艰巨的任务”。南方人也在学习组建新国家的挑战。脱离的各州立即面临内部分裂，一些拥有奴隶主的州有时并不支持新脱离的州。例如，特拉华州在1月拒绝脱离联邦。但南方的下游州采取了不同的做法。密西西比州在1月脱离联邦。随后，佛罗里达州、阿拉巴马州、乔治亚州和路易斯安那州也相继脱离联邦。到2月初，德克萨斯州也加入了新脱离的州。2月，南方人起草了保护奴隶制的宪法，并选举密西西比州的杰斐逊·戴维斯为总统。在亚伯拉罕·林肯就职数周后，来自新成立的美利坚联盟国的叛军向南卡罗来纳州的萨姆特堡开火。几天后，亚伯拉罕·林肯向北方征召了七万五千名志愿者，以镇压叛乱。美国内战正式爆发。

VI. Conclusion

六、结论

Slavery had long divided the politics of the United States. In time, these divisions became both sectional and irreconcilable. The first and most ominous sign of a coming sectional storm occurred over debates surrounding the admission of the state of Missouri in 1821. As westward expansion continued, these fault lines grew even more ominous, particularly as the United States managed to seize even more lands from its war with Mexico. The country seemed to teeter ever closer to a full-throated endorsement of slavery. But an antislavery coalition arose in the middle 1850s calling itself the Republican Party. Eager to cordon off slavery and confine it to where it already existed, the Republicans won the presidential election of 1860 and threw the nation on the path to war.

奴隶制长期以来一直分裂着美国的政治。随着时间的推移，这些分裂不仅变得区域化，而且变得无法调和。1821年，围绕密苏里州入联的辩论是即将到来的区域风暴的第一个且最不祥的信号。随着向西扩张的继续，这些分歧变得更加严峻，特别是美国在与墨西哥的战争中获取更多土地时。国家似乎越来越接近于全力支持奴隶制。然而，1850年代中期，出现了一个自称为共和党的废奴联盟。共和党渴望将奴隶制限制在已经存在的地方，最终在1860年赢得总统选举，将国家推向了战争的道路。

Throughout this period, the mainstream of the antislavery movement remained committed to a peaceful resolution of the slavery issue through efforts understood to foster the “ultimate extinction” of slavery in due time. But as the secession crisis revealed, the South could not tolerate a federal government working against the interests of slavery’s expansion and decided to take a gamble on war with the United States. Secession, in the end, raised the possibility of emancipation through war, a possibility most Republicans knew, of course, had always been an option, but one they nonetheless hoped would never be necessary. By 1861 all bets were off, and the fate of slavery, and of the nation, depended on war.

在这段时期内，废奴运动的主流始终致力于通过和平的方式解决奴隶制问题，力求通过时间的推移实现奴隶制的“最终灭绝”。但正如脱离危机所揭示的那样，南方无法容忍一个与奴隶制扩展利益对立的联邦政府，最终决定冒险与美国开战。最终，脱离联邦提出了通过战争实现解放的可能性，这是大多数共和党人早已知道的，但他们仍希望这一点永远不必付诸实践。到1861年，所有的赌注都已被放弃，奴隶制和国家的命运取决于战争。