Download Unit 8 ~ Events Leading to the Civil War

Events Leading to the Civil War
VUS.6 ~ What were the cultural, economic, and political issues that divided the nation, including
tariffs, slavery, the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, and the role of the
states in the Union?
Competing economic interests, continued westward expansion, and the institution of slavery divided
America in the first half of the nineteenth century and caused the development of increasingly greater
sectional tensions. Sectional tensions during this period also resulted from debates over the nature of the
Union, like that which occurred during the Nullification Crisis of Andrew Jackson’s presidency. The nation
struggled to resolve (work out) these sectional issues, which produced a series of crises and compromises.
These crises often took place over the admission of new states to the Union during the decades before the
Civil War. The issue was whether the number of “free states” and “slave states” would remain balanced,
thus affecting the distribution of power in the Congress between the different sections of the country.
When the United States ultimately failed to work out a settlement acceptable to both the “free” North
and the “slave” South, the Civil War resulted. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the United
States became divided economically. The Northern states developed an industrial economy based on
manufacturing. They favored high protective tariffs to protect Northern manufacturers from foreign
competition. Protective tariffs are taxes on imports, which are so high that Americans cannot afford to
buy foreign goods. In contrast, the Southern states developed an agricultural economy largely dependent
upon a labor force of African-American slaves. The South strongly opposed high tariffs, which made the
price of imported manufactured goods much more expensive.
These economic divisions, which separated the North and the South, increasingly caused many
Americans to identify more with the section of the country in which they lived than with their status as
Americans. This development caused the nation to struggle to resolve sectional issues between the North
and South, which produced a series of crises and compromises. During the decades before the Civil War,
these crises often took place over the admission of new states into the Union. The basic issue was always
whether the number of “free states” and “slave states” would be balanced, thus affecting the distribution
of power in the Congress. As the United States expanded westward, the conflict over slavery grew more
bitter and threatened to tear the country apart.
After 1830, the abolitionist movement grew in the North. Abolitionists were people who wanted to
abolish (end) slavery immediately. One of the most important abolitionist leaders was William Lloyd
Garrison, who started in Boston in 1831 an antislavery newspaper called The Liberator. Many New England
religious leaders also became active in the abolitionist movement, because they saw slavery as a violation of
Christian principles. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe, the wife of a New England clergyman published an
antislavery novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This novel quickly became a best-seller in the free states.
Because Stowe’s novel emphasized the cruelties of slavery, it inflamed Northern abolitionist sentiment and
attracted previously indifferent Northerners to the antislavery cause.
Southerners grew increasingly frightened by the strength of Northern abolitionism. The growing
force of the positive response to the abolitionist message in the North especially alarmed many
Southerners. Southerners also feared the possibility of violent slave rebellions. Two important slave
conspiracies occurred in Virginia during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1800 Gabriel Prosser,
an African-American slave, planned an insurrection (revolt) of more than 1,000 slaves in Richmond, Virginia.
The Virginia militia put down Gabriel’s Rebellion and executed thirty-five slaves, including Prosser himself.
The most important slave revolt occurred in Southampton County, Virginia. Nat Turner, another Virginiaborn slave, had learned to read and write during childhood. As an adult, Turner became an electrifying
preacher. In 1831, his anger at slavery’s injustices exploded. Nat Turner armed slave recruits with axes
and clubs and traveled throughout the county, killing all whites whom they met. Before the authorities put
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down Nat Turner’s Rebellion, fifty-five whites and more than a hundred blacks had died. Turners’ revolt
stunned the South and fed white Southern fears about slave rebellions. These fears led the Southern
state legislatures to pass harsh laws against fugitive slaves, as well as stricter slave codes. Slave codes
were the laws that governed the lives of African-American slaves. In such an emotional atmosphere white
Southerners, who had previously favored abolition, were intimidated into silence.
The admission of new states during the first half of the nineteenth century continually led to
sectional conflicts over whether the new states would allow slavery and thereby become slave states or
prohibit slavery and enter the Union as free states. The North and the South struck numerous
compromises to maintain the balance of power in Congress between “free” and “slave” states. In 1820,
Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed the first major compromise, which was called the Missouri Compromise.
Under the terms of the Missouri Compromise, Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, while Maine
entered as a free state. This arrangement kept the number of slave and free states equal at twelve each.
Since the Constitution grants each state two United States senators, the Missouri Compromise kept the
United States Senate evenly divided with twenty-four slave state senators and twenty-four free state
senators. Neither section could control the Senate on matters related to African-American slavery. In
addition, the Missouri Compromise drew an east-west line at the 36º 30´ parallel through the Louisiana
Purchase, with slavery prohibited north of the line and allowed south of it.
Soon after the 1849 California gold rush, California applied for admission to the Union as a free
state. California's admission to the Union threatened the balance between slave and free states in the
United States Senate. It also disrupted the sectional peace, which the Missouri Compromise had
established thirty years before. After much debate, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850. Since
Henry Clay also proposed this compromise, historians have called Clay “the Great Compromiser.” The
Compromise of 1850 had several provisions (parts). First, California was admitted to the Union as a free
state. Second, the territories of New Mexico and Utah were created with the provision for popular
sovereignty. In other words, the new southwestern territories recently acquired from Mexico would
decide on their own whether they would permit slavery. Third, the slave trade, but not slavery itself was
abolished in Washington, D. C. Fourth, Congress passed a stricter fugitive slave law. This new law made it
easier for slave catchers to capture and return runaway slaves, who had reached northern free states.
Since this act returned fugitive slaves from the free territory of the Northern states to bondage in the
South, the North hated this part of the compromise. Consequently, the fugitive slave law greatly increased
sectional tensions, because it pitted southern slaveholders against outraged northerners.
Hostility between the free North and the slave South grew worse in 1854, when Stephen Douglas,
an Illinois Democrat, proposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill. (A bill is a proposed law; an act is a bill, which
Congress has passed and the President has signed into law. In short, a bill is a proposed law, while an act is
another term for a law.) Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act did
three things. First, it created two new territories: Kansas and Nebraska. Second, it gave the people in
Kansas and Nebraska the choice of whether to allow slavery in their territories. This idea was called
"popular sovereignty." (Popular refers to the people. Sovereignty means rule. Therefore, "popular
sovereignty" meant the people would vote to decide whether they wanted slavery in their territory or
state.) Third, since both Nebraska and Kansas lay north of the Missouri Compromise line, the KansasNebraska Act repealed (did away with) the Missouri Compromise.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act had two major results. Abolitionists and most Northerners believed the
Kansas-Nebraska Act betrayed the Missouri Compromise's promise that all territory north of 36 30
would be forever free. Consequently, the Kansas-Nebraska Act produced bloody fighting in Kansas as proslavery and antislavery forces battled each other. Americans soon referred to this territory as "Bleeding
Kansas." Second, the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the birth of the modern Republican Party. In 1854, a
group of Northerners founded the Republican Party specifically to oppose the spread of slavery into the
western territories.
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In 1857, the Supreme Court became involved in the growing sectional conflict by handing down its
decision in the Dred Scott case. In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled the Missouri
Compromise was unconstitutional. Because this decision overturned efforts to limit the spread of slavery in
the western territories, it outraged Northerners. Northerners also hated the Fugitive Slave Act, which
Congress had passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. This law required slaves who escaped to free
states to be forcibly returned to their owners in the South.
The North’s increasing opposition to the spread of slavery frightened pro-slavery Southerners.
Southerners, who strongly believed in states’ rights, argued that individual states could nullify laws passed
by Congress. (To nullify a law meant to void it or do away with it.) They also began to insist that states
had entered the Union freely and could therefore leave or “secede” freely if they chose. The historical
stage was set for the Civil War to begin.
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