Aim: Was the Civil War inevitable?

1. Aim: Was the Civil War inevitable? How was the United States drifting towards disunion?

2. Why and how was America divided in the mid 1800's? In the 1850’s, differences between the North and South (& West) Increasingly divided the country.

3. How did the States try to keep the Union together? The Missouri Compromise

4. The Compromise of 1850

5. Kansas Nebraska Act • Promoted by Stephen Douglas • Controversy: declared the Missouri Compromise “inoperative and void” • Authorized the use of popular sovereignty to determine the status of slavery • Motives- desire for Southern support and the building of a transcontinental railroad Why did the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act lead to “bleeding Kansas ” and so much political discord?

6. Bleeding Kansas • Explain why “the nation took the greatest single step in its march toward the abyss of secession and civil war” when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. • Explain why Kansas Territory came to be the focus of sectional hostilities in the mid-1850s.

7. What happened to Senator Charles Sumner? • Sumner was against slavery, and he believed that the crimes in Kansas were a “rape of virgin territory.” • While working in his office, Congressman Preston Brooks, a pro slavery activist, attacked him violently beating him with his cane. • Brooks became a hero in the South and Sumner became a martyr for freedom in the North.

8. What does this 1856 cartoon represent?

9. How was the event like a dress rehearsal for the Civil War? • It deepened the divide between the North and the South, and aggravated the issue of whether slavery should be allowed in unchartered territories or not. • It created lasting revenge in Kansas, and a schism between those who supported slavery and those who were against it.

10. Harper’s Ferry & John Brown • John Brown was a staunch, white abolitionist, and friend of Fredrick Douglass • Brown planned to rob Harpers Ferry (weapons arsenal) and use weapons to assist slaves in escaping • Long-range foal was to drive southward into Tennessee and Alabama to raiding federal arsenals and inciting slave insurrections.

11. Brown’s trial • Brown was tried in a Virginia court for treason even though he attacked federal property • He was found guilty of treason and murder and was sentenced to death, before which, he made a five minute speech denying that he came to Virginia to commit violence. He claimed his only goal was to liberate the slaves. • In the North, Ralph Waldo Emerson compared Brown to Jesus Christ and declared that his death had made “the gallows as glorious as the cross,” • After Harpers Ferry, Southerners believed that secession and creation of a slaveholding confederacy were now the South’s only options.

12. The Dred Scott Case - The Decision that changed America…Who was Dred Scott? • Missouri Slave • Sued for his freedom • Lived in Illinois for four years, which was a free state, while he was a slave of an army surgeon • Claimed that living in a free state for that long abolished his slave status.

13. Dred Scott Facts • 1850: Missouri court gave Dred Scott his freedom. • Two years later the decision was reversed and Scott was a slave once again. • Scott appealed this to the Federal Courts. • By a 7-2 margin the major decision was that he had no right to sue a federal court for freedom because he was not a citizen of the U.S. • Claimed he had no respectable rights.

14. Impact of Decision • The ruling made clear that: • congress had no right exclude slavery from the federal territories since any law excluding property was a violation of the fifth amendment (prohibition against the seizure of property without due process of law). • that slaves and free blacks were not citizens thus the Constitution and Bill of Rights were not intended to apply to them.

15. The Breakdown of the Party System • In response to massive foreign immigration • Resentment against the growing political power of foreigners • The “Know-Nothings” were formed out of a secret society (against Immigration & Catholicism) • Lincoln opposed b/c of the intolerance • “When the Know-Nothings get in control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, foreigners, and Catholics.’” • 1856 the Know-Nothings are replaced by the Republicans in the North • 1856 election- won by Democrat James Buchanan

16. With the election of 1860 looming what kind of President did the public really need?

17. What was the biggest problem facing the nation? “If we could first know where we are, and whether we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” - Abraham Lincoln “House Divided”

18. Lincoln- Douglas Debates • In 1858 another important election was held for the Senator of Illinois. The election was important because of the two men who were running for that office. • Stephen Douglas,a Democrat, was the man who introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The other candidate, a Republican,was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln wanted all states to be free, but did not want to stop slavery in the states where it was already decided. • Douglas and Lincoln held a series of debates which helped the Americans decide how they really felt about slavery. People came from hundreds of miles to hear the debates. Lincoln lost the race by only a few votes.

19. Based on the criteria, who would be the best candidate?

20. What do these statistics show about the United States in 1860? • How did Lincoln win? Candidate Popular Vote % Popular Vote Electoral Vote Lincoln 1,865,593 39.79% 180 (all free states) Douglas 1,382,713 29.40% 12 (MI & 3/7 NJ votes Breckinridge 848,356 18.20% 72 (all cotton states) Bell 592,906 12.61% 39 (VA,KY,TN)

21. Secession