Download The Coming of the Civil War

What we know…..

Growing sectionalism
– VA & KY resolutions – nullification
– Tariff of 1828 – SC threatens to secede
– Economic differences
– Southern resentment of northerner’s
interference (abolition, temperance, etc.)
– Growing tensions over states’ rights vs.
federal rights
The Coming of the Civil
War
Chapter 11
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

By Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1852)
– Eliza Harris, Uncle Tom
(protagonists)
– Simon Legree (antagonist)

Reaction the fictional novel
– Northerners see it as an accurate
portrayal, fear slavery will ruin
America
– Southerners feel it is untrue
 Plantations are happy families
 Slave owners care more for their
workers than factory owners
 Cannibals All! By George Fitzhugh
Effects of the Missouri Compromise

1820 – MO – Slave, ME – Free; no slavery North
of 36 N. Did not settle whether slavery would
be legal in the new territories

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (after Mex. War)
– Northerners fear new states would be slave
– Tried to keep slavery out of the territories
Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850





California admitted as a
free state
Territories of New Mexico
and Utah will decide
whether slavery would be
legal (popular
sovereignty)
End slave trade in
Washington, D.C.
Slavery would remain
legal in Washington, D.C.
Fugitive Slave Act
Debate over Compromise of 1850

John C. Calhoun opposes
– Epitomizes Southern position
– State’s rights – right for states to
nullify acts or withdraw from the
union
– Government’s job is to protect right
to own property

Daniel Webster supports
– Change of opinion – to save the
Union
– Felt slavery would not be necessary
in New Mexico
– Thought it was constitutional to
return slaves; upsets North
Compromise of 1850 passes
 Southerners
not happy about California
 Northerners not happy about the Fugitive
Slave Act
 Again, only temporarily settles the issue
Changes in Political Parties

Whigs decline
– Never win Presidential election after 1848
– Nativism – ensure American born citizens get better
treatment than immigrants
 Response to high level of immigrants
 Worried about Catholic immigrants (Irish)
– Order of the Star Spangled Banner
 Secret nativist society
 “I know nothing”
– American party develops from them, nick-named the
Know-Nothings
 Popular in local elections in the North – feared immigrants
The Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854

Stephen Douglas pushes issue
of slavery in the territories of
Kansas and Nebraska
– Wanted to connect Chicago with
the west
– Wanted to run for President,
needed Southern Democrat
support

Introduces the KansasNebraska Act in January 1854
– Popular-sovereignty – letting
people in a territory decide if
slavery would be allowed
– Would require repealing the
Missouri Compromise
– Passes after nine months
The Republican Party
Party develops against slavery
 Demanded the repeal of the KansasNebraska Act (fear slavery in new
territory) and the Fugitive Slave Act
 Gained support from anti-slavery
Democrats, Whigs, and Free Soilers
 Direct ancestor of the modern Republican
Party

Bleeding Kansas

Race for settlement of
Kansas
– Free soilers - capital at
Topeka
– Pro-slavery capital Lecompton

Violence
– “Sack of Lawrence” –
antislavery town
– “Pottawatomie Massacre” –
slavery town (John Brown
leads)

Charles Sumner beaten
by Preston Brooks
Slavery and National Politics


Election of 1856 – James Buchanan
–Dem.
The Dred Scott Decision
– Scott v. Sandford – March 1857
– Chief Justice Roger B. Taney rules
against Scott
 Not a citizen, could not sue
 Slaves were property
 Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional because of 5th
Amendment (couldn’t ban slavery!)
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Debates between
Stephen Douglas and
Abraham Lincoln over
the issue of slavery in
the territories
 Douglas wins Senate
election in 1858
 Lincoln becomes wellknown

John Brown’s Raid
October 16, 1859, raid on
the federal arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, Virginia
 Wanted to take weapons
and give them to slaves
 Colonel Robert E. Lee
helps capture
 Brown hanged

– Northerners call him a
martyr
– Southern say he is a tool of
the Republicans
Election of 1860

Democrats split nomination
– Southern Democrats – John C. Breckinridge (states’
rights/slavery)
– Northern Democrats – Stephen Douglas (popular
sovereignty)
Constitutional Party chooses John Bell of
Tennessee (moderate)
 Republican Party chooses Abraham Lincoln
 The Election

– South split between Bell and Breckinridge
 Lincoln not even on the ballot in the South
– Lincoln wins North and the election (only 39% of the
popular vote)
– South is outraged; feel they were not even counted
South Carolina Secedes
South angry that
Lincoln wins without
an electoral vote from
the South
 South Carolina
secedes on December
20, 1860
 Georgia, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas
soon follow

The Confederate States of America
Delegates meet in February 1861 in
Montgomery, Alabama to create a new
government
 Montgomery the capital and Jefferson
Davis the President
 Lincoln sworn in on March 3, 1861,
refused to honor the Confederacy

The Civil War Begins


Fort Sumter – 1st fighting
– Federal fort – SC
– Should Lincoln re-supply the
fort or let it fall to the
Confederacy?
– Duty to enforce law
– Anderson surrenders fort to
General Beauregard
War declared between the two
nations
– Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas join
Confederacy