Download Events Leading to the Civil War VUS.6 ~ What were the cultural

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 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
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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 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.
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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