Download Events Leading to the Civil War

NARRATIVE #6
Events Leading to the Civil War
Standard VUS.6c. The student will demonstrate knowledge of the major events during the first half
of the nineteenth century by describing the cultural, economic, and political issues that divided the
nation, including slavery, the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, and the role of the states
in the Union.
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
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NARRATIVE #6
senators. 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. 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 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 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 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.
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. When Lincoln was elected President in 1860, the South
seceded. The War was on – started shorted thereafter with the firing on Ft. Sumter, SC.
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