1. Events from the decade leading up to the American Civil War
Crisis of Union: The 1850s
Events from the decade leading up to the American Civil War

2. Warm-Up
Identify the parts of the Compromise of How did the Compromise impact the institution of slavery?

3. Guiding Question: Which event most significantly contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War?
During the 1850s, a series of events destabilized the United States. The destabilization resulted in Southern secession and the American Civil War.
* Missouri Compromise
* Wilmot Proviso
* Compromise of 1850
* Underground Railroad
* Fugitive Slave Act
* Uncle Tom’s Cabin
* Kansas-Nebraska Act
* Bleeding Kansas
* Caning of Charles Sumner
* The Lincoln Douglas Debates
* Dred Scott vs. Sandford
* John Brown’s Raid
* Presidency of James Buchanan
* Election of 1860
*Secession of South Carolina

4. Video Questions
Identify the significance of the following three topics in the video:
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
Fugitive Slave Law
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

5. Railroad Growth, 1850–1860
Figure 49: Railroad Growth, 1850–1860 ©Houghton Mifflin

6. Geographical Expansion and Population Growth, 1850
Figure 50: Geographical Expansion and Population Growth, 1820 ©Houghton Mifflin

7. The Antislavery Movement
The abolitionist movement, or the movement to end slavery, gained support during the early 1800s.
Many enslaved people escaped to freedom in the North by way of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of escape routes.
Resistance to abolitionism was strong and sometimes violent. Many white Northerners and most white Southerners opposed abolitionism.

8. Fugitive Slave Law The Process:
Federal Marshalls and Bounty Hunters track down runaway slaves, and capture them.
Return them to southern owners
Fugitive Slave cases fell under federal jurisdiction
Northerners who harbored escaped slaves were subject to jail time and a fine.
Northerners hated this law because they now felt complicit in the immorality of slavery – now they could not passively ignore the issue.

9. The Legal Status of Slavery, from the Revolution to the Civil War

10. Distribution of Slaves, 1790 and 1860
Figure 46: Distribution of Slaves, 1790 and 1860 ©Houghton Mifflin

11. Uncle Tom Poster

12. Uncle Tom Poster
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published during as a serial in an abolitionist newspaper, then in 1852 as a book that sold more than 300,000 copies in that year. Northerners, already angered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, felt increasing hostility toward the South. Frequent stage adaptations spread Stowe's antislavery message among northern workers who were unlikely to read books. "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war," Abraham Lincoln reportedly said when he met Stowe.
Even in 1860, the vast majority of northerners viewed blacks as an inferior race and opposed the abolition of slavery. But Stowe's novel had persuaded many northerners that slaveholders were bullies and threats to the republic. This poster depicts a dramatic and dangerous contrast between unrestrained power and powerlessness. Recall that the major political parties, Democrat and Whig, had played for decades on the dangers of unrestrained power, on the evils of the Bank of the United States or the dictatorial Andrew Jackson ("King Andrew I"). By showing Simon Legree as a violent tyrant, the poster captures the longstanding American fear of too much power in the hands of one person.
Questions for Discussion:
Think about what the photo suggests about social organization at Pueblo Bonito. How would the building of so massive a complex been coordinated? Would you expect the inhabitants to have been highly individualistic or intensely communal?
How do they compare in this respect with other Native American peoples discussed in this chapter?
What impact might this poster have on northerners who rejected abolitionism?
In what ways would it have spurred northern loathing of the white South?
How might it have encouraged northerners to think of slavery and slaveholders as threats not just to Uncle Tom but to the American republic itself?

13. Warm-Up
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.“ John Brown's last words, written on a note handed to a guard just before his hanging

14. Guiding Question
Which event most significantly contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War?

15. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed that these two new territories decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.
Douglas needed the territories organized b/c of his interests ($) in the transcontinental RR development
Popular Sovereignty - introduced to win Southern Congressional votes

16. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
Figure 58: The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 ©Houghton Mifflin

17. Bleeding Kansas

18. Bleeding Kansas “Bleeding Kansas” —
Under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, voters in these two territories could decide for themselves whether to become free or slave states (POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY).
Violence broke out between proslavery and antislavery forces sent by outside groups to Kansas, earning it the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.”
John Brown (abolitionist)
“Border Ruffians” - Pro-slavery Missourians

19. John Brown

20. Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, 1859
John Brown’s Raid —
October 16, 1859, John Brown led a raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
Brown had hoped to seize the arsenal’s weapons and give them to people.
Instead, the federal government intercepted his raid and Brown was hanged.
Northerners saw Brown as a martyr
Southerners denounced him as a tool of the abolitionists.

21. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
The Dred Scott Decision — The Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling proved to be controversial. In the ruling:
the Court held that slaves were not citizens
that living in a free state did not make a former slave free
that Congress had no power to ban slavery anywhere.

22. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
In 1858, Illinois Stephen Douglas ran for reelection against a relatively unknown Republican, Abraham Lincoln.
In a series of highly publicized debates, Lincoln and Douglas debated the issue of slavery in the territories. Douglas supported popular sovereignty, while Lincoln believed that the majority should not deny rights to the minority.
Lincoln did not support the extension of slavery to the territories, but he felt that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit slavery in the South.
Douglas won the election, but Lincoln earned a reputation for eloquence and that moral commitment would come to serve him well.

23. Abraham Lincoln in 1858 Denounced the Dred Scott decision as wrong.
Attacked popular sovereignty as wrong.
Even though he lost in 1858, he garnered a large following of anti-slavery Republicans which would help propel him to the Republican presidential nomination in 1860.

25. 1850s Political Realignment (a mess)
During the early 1850s:
Whig Party dissolved (split into northern and southern factions)
two new parties emerged:
the Know-Nothings (American Party)
the Republican Party
Many Northern Whigs abandoned their party, unhappy with the compromises it made on the issue of slavery.
Know-Nothing Party, so called because of its roots in a secret society, was also called the American Party.
Know-Nothings supported nativism, a movement to ensure that native-born Americans received better treatment than immigrants.
A new Republican Party was formed by antislavery Northerners who dedicated themselves to stopping the “Slave Power,” or the South. Consisted of Northern Whigs and “Free-soilers”
Democratic Party remained strongly in control in the South
Also had a northern wing of the Democratic Party
Also consisted of Southern Whigs

26. Evolution of Major Parties through 1860
Figure 33: Evolution of Major Parties ©Houghton Mifflin

27. Map 13.8 Political Realignment, 1848–1860 (p. 392)

28. Map 13.8 Political Realignment, 1848–1860 (p. 392)

29. Map 13.8 Political Realignment, 1848–1860 (p. 392)

30. Map 13.8 Political Realignment, 1848–1860 (p. 392)

31. Election of 1860

32. Presidential Election of 1860 (showing popular vote by county)

33. Election of 1860 The Election of 1860
The election of 1860 made the lack of national political parties clearer.
Partially with the help of the Border States (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), a Constitutional Union Party was formed in the South.
Republican Abraham Lincoln won the election without winning a single Southern electoral vote.

34. A Nation Divided - Civil War
The Lower South Secedes —
Southerners were outraged that a President could be elected without their votes.
They felt that the government had passed completely out of their hands.
Seven states of the Lower South, beginning with South Carolina, seceded, or left the Union.
These states formed a new nation, calling themselves the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.
The War Starts —
In the spring of 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
By firing on federal property, the Confederacy had committed an act of open rebellion, forcing Lincoln to call for military volunteers to respond to the attack.
Four more Southern states then seceded and joined the Confederacy.

35. Proposed Crittenden Compromise, 1860

36. Southern Opposition to Secession, 1860–1861
Map 19.5: Southern Opposition to Secession, 1860–1861 (American Pageant 12 ed)