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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 1 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. 2