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Day 16 Warm-Up Quiz
•
1. Why event prompted the South
secede?
•
2. Where did the Civil War begin?
•
3. What incident in the Senate reinforced
sectional differences between the North
and South?
•
4. Who was the first (and only) president
of the Confederacy?
• 5. What did Abraham Lincoln think about
secession?
Countdown to Civil War
Bleeding Kansas
• Pro and anti-slave
militias fight for
control
– Fraudulent election in
Kansas results in proslave government
– Anti-slave forces form
their own government
• Pro-slave mob
ransacks anti-slave
town of Lawrence
• Fanatic abolitionist
John Brown responds
with Pottawatomie
massacre
– Brown & his
supporters drag five
men from their houses
& hack them to death
in front of their
screaming families
• By end of 1856 about
200 settlers dead on
both sides
Meanwhile, far away from the fighting, in the peaceful Senate
• Republican Senator Charles Sumner delivers
inflammatory speech about Kansas
– Says pro-slavery forces were “hirelings picked from the drunken
spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization.”
– Also implies that SC senator Andrew Butler sleeps with his
slaves (and makes fun of his speech impediment).
– Sumner’s rudeness might have backfired except….
• Butler’s kinsman Preston Brooks took offense
• Preston Brooks beats
Charles Sumner with a cane
– Keeps beating him after he’s
unconscious
– Breaks his cane
• Northerners are horrified
– Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I do
not see how a barbarous
community and a civilized
community can constitute one
state. We must either get rid of
slavery, or get rid of freedom.”
• Southerners send Brooks
new canes
– Richmond paper says “These
vulgar abolitionists in the
Senate…must be lashed into
submission”
• Both sides are appalled at
the other…North and South
seem like two different
civilizations
• 1856 election -- now it is impossible to avoid the slave
question, but the Democrats still hold their party together
Dred Scott v.
Sanford
• Dred Scott was a slave
who was taken into free
territory for a time, then
back to the South
• When his master died
Scott sued for his
freedom
– (free territory = freedom)
• The case was appealed
to the Supreme Court
•
Supreme Court rules
against Scott
1. Scott can’t sue because
blacks aren’t citizens
•
“they had no rights which the
white man was bound to
respect.”
2. Also says that free
territories can’t deprive
citizens of property
•
declares the Missouri
Compromise & popular
sovereignty unconstitutional
– Scott was freed by Missouri
owners; worked as porter
for 9 months before dying of
tuberculosis
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
• Abraham Lincoln challenges Stephen Douglas for his
Senate seat in 1858
– Lincoln gets his name in papers for the 1st time
• Series of debates in 1858 – how to reconcile popular
sovereignty w/Dred Scott decision
– Douglas’ “Freeport Doctrine”: Don’t enforce slave law
– Lincoln says slavery is a moral, not political issue
John Brown
• In 1859 fanatical abolitionist
John Brown & his followers
try to seize federal arsenal
at Harper’s Ferry, VA
• They want to get guns &
start a slave revolt
– probably should have informed
local slaves first
– Slaves don’t arrive, but militia
do
– Brown’s men are surrounded
in the local engine house with
11 hostages.
• U.S. Marines (under
command of Robert E. Lee)
arrive from Washington D.C.
• John Brown is
captured, charged
with treason, and
hanged
• He became a martyr
in the North
– Emerson compares
him to Jesus
• The South was
terrified
– It’s one thing for slaves
to revolt on their own;
but if Northerners are
helping them….
• The South believes
Republicans want a
slave revolt
1860 election
• Democratic party finally splits over slavery
• Lincoln is nominated as the Republican candidate
– Platform calls for stopping the expansion of slavery
• After Lincoln wins the
South starts to secede
– South Carolina
secedes first in Dec
1860; six other states
follow before
inauguration
The Confederate States of America
• Jefferson Davis is
elected president of
CSA
• Constitution of CSA
gives more power to
the states and allows
slavery
• President Buchanan decides to leave the issue
to his successor
• CSA starts to seize federal forts & arsenals….
Lincoln’s Inauguration
• Lincoln says secession
is not legal
– Constitution = will of the
people, not will of the
states, so states cannot
secede
– “The Union of these
states is perpetual”
• Also says that he will
not interfere with
slavery where it exists.
•
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may
have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely
they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Meanwhile in Charleston…
• Ft. Sumter is still occupied by
federal troops & won’t give up
– Neither side wants to fire the first
shot.
– Lincoln decides to reinforce
Sumter w/food (not weapons)
– Davis has a dilemma – leave fort
(& look weak) or start a war
April 12, 1861 – Civil War begins when
Confederacy fires on Ft. Sumter