Bell Ringer Individuals have a moral obligation to help people.  To what extent do you help people?  How do you determine who is in need of help?  Are you helping or hurting those in need? “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” - Chinese Proverb

It was Prevalent in the south because of agriculture. The south had an agricultural economy & slaves were a cheap source of labor. The Northern economy was industrial. Immigrants were the source of labor. This was no different than the 100 years before the civil war.

What made the north and south split up? They were always different.

As the U.S. grew and gained more land, slavery was at the top of the list of questions about that new land. The first time that the North and South argued over this was over Louisiana. Now they would argue over all the land gained from Mexico. The North tried to pass a law called the Wilmot Proviso. This law would make slavery illegal in all the land taken from Mexico. It passed the house of representatives but failed in the senate. The South continued to have slavery but the writing was on the wall. Slavery would feud to a crisis some day soon. Meanwhile, you had abolitionists trying to get rid of slavery completely. You also had people helping slaves escape the South.

The most famous was Harriet Tubman. She was the conductor of the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a system of safe houses where a conductor (a person who knows all the safe houses) leads slaves from the South to the North. The underground Railroad does not work without people willing to risk their lives to help slaves escape.

The South passed strict laws against anyone helping slaves escape. They consider it theft & they punish it and anyone who helped them. They passed the Fugitive Slave Act. A deal is reached. Compromise of 1850 California would not have slavery. Together penalties for fugitive slaves or people helping them. Popular sovereignty in some states, it was decided that they would vote on whether or not to have slavery. Kansas/Nebraska Act went against the Missouri Compromise (1820), The Missouri Compromise of 1820 made it lawful to own slaves from the southern border of Missouri down through to Mexico, and illegal to own slaves from that line northward to Canada it would be given popular sovereignty. (36 degrees) What was the South doing to save its Slaves?

Kansas was split. Bleeding Kansas One city called Lawrence made a stand as a non-slavery territory. A pro slavery group attacked people of the city & burned down buildings. In retaliation, an antislavery group goes into a pro slavery city, kidnaps 5 men, cuts off their hands & stabs them in the chest. The violence spread into the senate where a senator who called slavery a crime was physically attacked on the senate floor. Out of this, anti- slavery political parties are formed. The most popular anti-slavery party as the Republican Party. This is the party Lincoln ran with and became president. In 1860, what do southerners think when every southern state vote against Lincoln & he still won. As the south feels that it had no power, the civil war will begin.

Some southern states decided they had no choice. They decided to secede, or leave, the United States. South Carolina was the first to leave the Union and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Four months later, six other states seceded. They were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana. Later Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined them. The people of these states elected Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy. The northern states were called the Union. President Lincoln said he would fight to keep the southern states as part of the United States. In Charleston, South Carolina there was a Union fort called Fort Sumter. The Union soldiers refused to leave this fort, so the Confederates fired cannons at the fort on April 12, l861. This was the beginning of the Civil War.

Home Learning: Research the following and write a summary of each of these documents. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 The Wilmot Proviso Fugitive Slave Act Popular Sovereignty prior to the Civil War The Compromise of 1850 Kansas/Nebraska Act