States’ Rights, Compromises & Acts

1. States’ Rights, Compromises & Acts In this activity, you will explore the environment of the Northern and Southern regions. You will learn how geographical and climatological factors affected the development of the cultures and economics of the regions. Plus, go into more detail about states' rights, compromises, and the acts that were passed prior to the Civil War. You will learn that these issues also divided the nation in the early and middle 1800s.

2. Vocabulary Compromises: The settling of a dispute by each side agreeing to give up part of its demands. Acts: Formal decisions or laws. Cash crop: A crop that is grown in large quantities for sale to other people.

3. Videos • Northern Cities: Free labor  (0:59) • Southern Plantations: Slave labor  (1:08) • The Missouri Compromise  (0:40) • The Compromise of 1850  (0:52)  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act  (0:44)

4. Different Environments Northern States Southern States

5. The Northern States • The shorter growing season and cooler weather of the North led people to plant cool-weather crops such as vegetables, but not cotton. • The rocky soil may have limited the field sizes, as it was labor intensive to clear large fields. This may have limited the production size of crops. • Many ports and ultimately canals provided a destination into the new country for both people and the transporting of raw goods. • Cities and industry began to locate around the ports. • Using mass production, specialization, and division of labor factories using the textile inventions flourished, However, they still depended on the South for cotton. • More and more jobs were created and immigrants were free to take jobs of their choice.

6. The Southern States • The longer growing season, fertile soils, and warm humid climate were ideal for growing cotton and tobacco. • There were areas of fertile land that could be used as large fields to produce a lot of cotton, a cash crop. • Large farms or plantations were developed in order to grow enough cotton to make money. • Plantation owners could only make money if they had large crops and low costs. They used African slaves to work against their will. Slaves were not paid. • There were rivers by which to take goods to the few ports. Loading bales of cotton onto barges and ships to go to the gins and factories was labor intensive. Slaves were also used for this work.

7. The Slavery Disagreement • Most people in the North disliked slavery and did not want to see it spread to the new territories in the West. • White Southerners insisted on their rights to have slaves and to take them wherever they wanted.

8. Slaves began to rebel. In your table groups, read one of the following topics in your social studies textbook. Take notes. Share the information: • Slave Codes • Slave Rebellions • Underground Railroad • Free African Americans

9. Class Discussion • Why was the total number of slave and free states important? • Why were laws governing the territories very important? • What was the Missouri Compromise? Whichever group had more states had more voting power in Congress. Power shifted to North or South as territories became states. Maine entered the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. In Western territories, slavery was legal south of 36 1/2 degrees North Latitude.

10. Lincoln’s Quote • •What do you think Abraham Lincoln meant by the statement, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure (last)...half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other."