Mr. RizzoU.S. History: Civil War Do Now The Civil War is coming. Agenda 12/3

Mr. Rizzo U.S. History: Civil War

Do NowThe Civil War is coming.

Agenda 12/3


Based on your knowledge of US History, what are some of the events or issues that led to the Civil War?

Do Now


Civil War

Differences between the North and the South finally threatened the existence of the nation.

The debate that followed on how slavery should be treated in new lands centered on constitutional issues.


Until the Civil War, the Constitution had recognized and protected slavery in three ways: the Three-Fifths Compromise, the provision that Congress could not end the importing of slaves before 1808, and the fugitive slave clause.

Slavery Issue


These compromises had been made in order to encourage southern states to ratify the Constitution.

With the expansion of American territory in the West, controversy brewed over whether these new territories should allow slavery or not.

Slavery Issue


Northerners who sought to stop the spread of slavery argued that the Congress had power over the territories.

The Northwest Ordinance had banned slavery in the territory north of the Ohio River, while the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had banned slavery in the part of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36'30'N latitude.

These precedents (or previous acts), they argued, showed that Congress had the power to ban slavery in new territories.

Northern Views



Southerners argued that the Constitutional recognition and protection of slavery meant that Congress did not have the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into the territories.

They also argued that Congress had a constitutional duty to protect slavery where it already existed in the South.

Southern Views



1850 Compromise

Until 1850, there were an equal number of slave and free states in the Union.

The South thus maintained a balance of power in the Senate.

The admission of California as a free state in 1850 threatened to upset this balance.


1850 CompromiseThe issue of slavery in the new territories was

settled for a brief time by the Compromise of 1850, which included three key provisions:

1.California entered the Union as a free state.

2. The Fugitive Slave Act required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners.

3. Popular sovereignty, or a vote of the people living in the territory, would determine whether a territory in the Mexican Cession was to be slave or free.


1850 CompromiseThe Compromise of 1850 pleased almost no

one. Northerners ignored the Fugitive Slave Act. The popular sovereignty provision was unclear. Would the vote to make a territory slave or free

be held at the time the territory was settled or when it applied to become a state?

This uncertainty almost certainly ensured future conflict.



In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had prohibited slavery in the lands that made up Kansas and Nebraska.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned the Missouri Compromise by allowing those territories to decide the question of slavery by popular sovereignty.

Kansas-Nebraska Act


When pro- and antislavery people rushed into Kansas to vote on the issue, violence erupted, known as Bleeding Kansas.

A pro-slavery mob destroyed homes, stores, and an antislavery newspaper office in Lawrence, Kansas.

John Brown and an antislavery group killed pro-slavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek.

Kansas-Nebraska Act


Violence even erupted in the U.S. Senate, where the southern congressman Preston Brooks beat abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner because of remarks made in a Sumner speech.

Kansas-Nebraska Act


Reactions to the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to changes in the political party system.

One major party, the Whigs, split into Northern and Southern wings and soon died out.

The Democrats were seriously weakened in the North.

A new party, the Republicans, was founded to oppose the spread of slavery. It was a sectional rather than a national party and proclaimed a platform of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men."

Republican Party


In 1857 the Supreme Court gave its ruling on the question of slavery in the territories in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

The ruling held that no African Americans, slave or free, were citizens, and therefore, they were not entitled to constitutional protection.

The ruling also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress could not deprive people of their right to property—slaves—by banning slavery in any territory.

The Dred Scott Case


In Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, challenged the well-known senator Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in the campaign for U.S. Senate.

A series of debates were held, then the Illinois legislature reelected Douglas to the Senate.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates


The Lincoln-Douglas debates weakened Douglas in the South while making Lincoln a national political figure unacceptable to the South because of his position against the extension of slavery.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates


In 1859, John Brown led a small group in a raid against a federal arsenal in what is now West Virginia.

His plan was to seize weapons and lead a slave uprising.

Although he was unsuccessful and was later executed for treason, he became a Northern hero.

The incident increased Southern distrust of the North.

John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry


Do NowElection of 1860.Dred Scott Case.Quiz tomorrow.

Last day to makeup the quiz from Tuesday (Reform Movements\Expansion)

Agenda 12/4


The election of 1860 showed clearly how divided the United States had become.

The only remaining national party, the Democratic party, split between North and South with each wing running a candidate.

Voters in the North chose between Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas and Republican Abraham Lincoln, while Southerners voted for Southern Democrat J.C. Breckinridge or John Bell of the newly formed Constitutional Union Party.

The Election of 1860


Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican to be elected President, received only 40 percent of the popular vote.

None of the southern electoral votes went to Lincoln.




The election of a Northerner who opposed the extension of slavery drove some Southerners to threaten secession.

To prevent secession, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed the Crittenden Compromise, which would have divided the nation, slave versus free territory, all the way to California, along the Missouri Compromise line.




The compromise was defeated because congressional Republicans would not support it.

Some did not believe that the South would go through with their threats to leave the Union.



In December 1860, South Carolina decided to secede from, or leave, the Union.

By February 1861, six more southern states seceded and with South Carolina formed the Confederate States of America.

Jefferson Davis, a former senator from Mississippi, became president of the Confederacy.

President James Buchanan took no action to stop them.

Secession Crisis


He stated that neither he nor Congress had the power to preserve the Union because it "rests upon public opinion and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in war.“

Lincoln disagreed and denied that states could secede.

In his First Inaugural Address in March 1861, Lincoln stated that "in view of the Constitution and the law, the Union is unbroken."

Secession Crisis


Lincoln's policy was to oppose secession but to take no military action until the South started fighting.

In April 1861, the South seized Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion. Southerners saw Lincoln’s action as an act of war. Four more southern states, including Virginia, seceded.

The Civil War had begun.

The Civil War Begins


Documents

Mr. RizzoU.S. History: Civil War Do Now The Civil War is coming. Agenda 12/3