1. Was the Civil War Inevitable?

2. I. Differences Between North and South
Urban; Industrialized
Factories
Railroads, canals, high immigrant population strongly opposition to slavery
Agricultural; rural society- plantations and small farms
Focused on cash crops for export- cotton, rice

3. Long-Term Causes of the Civil War
Sectionalism: loyalty Americans felt toward their own geographic region rather than to the country as a whole.
Slavery; Frederick Douglass, escaped slave, spoke out against horrors of slavery; Pro-slavery southerners argues slaves were better off than Northern factory workers
Extension of Slavery
Northerners didn’t want slavery in new territories
Southerners feared being outnumbered by free states
States’ rights
Southerners felt states had right to leave the Union

4. II. New Western Territories
Wilmot Proviso: proposed California, Utah, New Mexico free states
Southern congressmen feared a shift in balance of power
Felt it was unconstitutional since slaves were their property
Issue renewed as more territories were acquired and became states

5. III. The Senate Debates Compromise of 1850:
California free state; Slaves banned in Washington D.C.
Popular sovereignty allowed territory to vote for or against slavery
Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute resolved
Sale of slaves banned in District of Columbia

6. Fugitives not entitled to a trial by jury or allowed to testify
e. Fugitive Slave Act required free states to help capture and return escaped slaves.
Fugitives not entitled to a trial by jury or allowed to testify
Monetary incentive to return fugitive
Northern states passed personal liberty laws, forbidding imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteeing jury trials

7. IV. Resistance
Underground Railroad: Secret network to aid fugitive slaves in their escape
Harriet Tubman: ‘Conductor’ who helped about 300 slaves escape; who either remained in the North or continue to Canada
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Bestselling book that brought attention to the slavery issue as a great moral struggle

8. V. Breakdown of Compromise
A. Kansas and Nebraska act
Divided the territory into two states and establish popular sovereignty for both territories, repealing Missouri Compromise
“Bleeding Kansas”: supporters and opponents try to populate Kansas to vote illegally to influence the vote on slavery (violence not only in Kansas but also in the Senate)

9. B. Dredd Scott Decision:
a. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, an African American, was not a citizen and had no right to sue in court; also ruled that Congress had no right to forbid slavery in the territories
C. John Brown’s Raid
a. White abolitionist, attacked federal arsenal in Virginia, hoping to stir up slave revolts throughout the South.

10. VI. Secession Crisis Presidential Election of 1860
Democrats were divided, helping Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to win the election
Secession
South Carolina immediately seceded. Six Southern states followed, forming the Confederacy. Four states seceded after war broke out.
Fort Sumter
Lincoln sent supplies here in Charleston Harbor. Confederate forces fired on the fort, starting the Civil War