Download Events Leading to the Civil War

Events Leading to the Civil War
In 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 consisting of a
slavery-based system of plantations in the lowlands along the Atlantic and in the Deep South and
small subsistence farmers in the foothills and valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. 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 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. 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 Virginia-born 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 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. In addition, the Missouri Compromise drew an east-west line
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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. Henry Clay also proposed this compromise, which
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.
Because of Clay's role in both the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, historians
have called Henry Clay "the Great Compromiser." Hostility between the free North and the slave
South grew worse in 1854, when Stephen Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, proposed the KansasNebraska 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 were north of the Missouri
Compromise line, the Kansas-Nebraska 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 pro-slavery 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.
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.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, who had joined the new Republican party, ran for the United
States Senate against Stephen Douglas, an Illinois Democrat who was seeking re-election.
During this campaign, Lincoln and Douglas debated each other numerous times. In these debates
Douglas stood for “popular sovereignty” while Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery. In one of
these debates Abraham Lincoln warned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” By this
statement Lincoln suggested the nation could not continue indefinitely half-free and half-slave.
The slavery issue must be resolved. Although Stephen Douglas defeated Lincoln in 1858, he
made many Southerners angry by suggesting in the Freeport Doctrine that there was a way for
western settlers to prevent slavery in a territory.
The North’s increasing opposition to the spread of slavery frightened pro-slavery
Southerners. Southerners 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. Lincoln’s
“House Divided” speech was prophetic. The historical stage was set for the Civil War to begin.
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