1. Unit 7 Prologue to the American Civil War
American History
Unit 7
Prologue to the American Civil War
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2. The Civil War An Introduction
During the 1800’s, Northerners and Southerners found that they disagreed about a lot of things.
The two parts of our country seemed more like to different countries.
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3. Slavery was a big problem!
Northerners wanted to stop the spread of slavery.
Southerners wanted new states to allow slave-holding.
But it wasn’t the only problem: foreign trade and taxes also caused hard feelings between the two sections of the country.
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4. - E Richard & Linda R. Churchill
“Rarely in human history has war really settled a problem. The Civil War made as many problems as it settled. It divided the nation so completely that some problems left over from the Civil War are still around today.”
- E Richard & Linda R. Churchill
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5. Slavery
By the early 1700s, slavery had caught on in a huge way throughout the Southern colonies.
In places like South Carolina, slavery became essential to the economy, and slaves soon outnumbered whites in that colony.
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6. Slavery The Declaration of Independence declared no slave free.
The constitution skirted the issue, except for the purposes of:
Determining representation in Congress (the 3/5’s Compromise)
And specifying that the slave trade (importation of slaves) was to end in 20 years.
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7. Slavery
From the beginning, a significant amount of Americans were opposed to slavery!
They issued a statement against the institution as early as 1724.
During the colonial periods, slave markets were active in the North as well as the South. However, the agricultural economy of the northern colonies was built upon small family farms instead of large plantations. Although some people in the North were passionately opposed to slavery on moral grounds, it is also true that the region lacked the economic motives for it. After independence, various states outlawed the institution of slavery altogether. Rhode Island, traditionally a seat of tolerance, abolished slavery as early as 1774, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 excluded slavery from the vast Northwest Territory.
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8. The Underground Railroad
As the generation of the late eighteenth century had been fascinated by inventions like the cotton gin, so, by the third decade of the nineteenth century, Americans were enthralled by another invention: railroads.
The railroads seemed nothing less than a miracle technology, and maybe because of abolitionists (those who wanted to abolish or get rid of slavery) were in search of a moral miracle to end slavery.
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9. The Underground Railroad
Maybe this is why they called the loosely organized, highly stealthy network developed in the 1830s to help fugitive slaves escape to the North or Canada the Underground Railroad.
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10. Harriet Tubman
The most famous “conductor” of the Underground Railroad” was Harriet Tubman
She was a courageous, self-taught, charismatic escaped slave, single-minded in her dedication to freeing others.
Born in Dorchester County, Maryland, about 1821, she escaped to freedom about 1849 by following the North Star. Not content with having achieved her own freedom, she repeatedly risked recapture throughout the 1850s by journeying into slave territory to lead about 300 other fugitives, including her parents, to freedom. With the outbreak of Civil War, Tubman volunteered her services as a Union army cook and nurse, then undertook hazardous duty as a spy and guide for Union forces in Maryland and Virginia. Capture would surely have meant death. After the war, Tubman operated a home in Auburn, New York, for aged and indigent African Americans. She ran the facility until her death on March 10, She was buried with full military honors.
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11. Abraham Lincoln’s Rise to Power
Born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Served as militiaman in the Black Hawk War of 1832.
Although he had little appetite for military life, he took “much satisfaction” in having been elected captain of his militia company.
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12. Lincoln becomes the 16th President of the United States
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13. Lincoln hoped to prevent a war.
During the election, he had spoken out strongly against the spread of slavery and hoped that one day it would end.
Lincoln hoped to prevent a war.
“We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln told Southerners after taking the oath of office.
“We must not be enemies.”
But time was running out.
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14. Secession!
Lincoln’s election to the Presidency pushed the South to secession.
They considered Lincoln to be a “black Republican”.
The first to leave the Union was South Carolina on December 20, 1860; Mississippi followed next on January 9th, 1861, Florida on January 10th, Alabama on January 11th, Georgia on Jan. 19th, Louisiana on Jan. 26th, and Texas on February 1st.
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15. Jefferson Davis Together these seven states formed a new country.
They called the new country
the Confederate States of
America.
They elected Jefferson Davis
as President.
Four days after declaring
succession, delegates from
these states met in Montgomery,
Alabama, where they wrote their
own constitution for the
Confederate States of America.
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16. James Buchanan Before Lincoln was officially
inaugurated, James Buchanan
declared his powerlessness as
the Union crumbled around him.
Either he really didn’t have a clue what to do, or he simply just wanted to leave the problem to incoming president.
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17. Fugitive Slave Act?
Lincoln believed that the Fugitive Slave Act should be enforced.
Yet be remaining silent on these issues during the period between his election and his inauguration, he conveyed the impression that he fully shared the Radical Republican opposition to any kind of compromise on the subject of slavery.
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