The Road to War

1
The Road to War

• United States Civil War

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Content Area and Grade Level

• Grade Four
• At Level 2, the student is able to
• 4.6.spi.2. determine how the issue of slavery
  caused political and economic tensions between
  government policy and people's beliefs (i.e.,
  abolitionists, plantation owners, state's rights,
  central government, Loyalists).
• Grade Five
• Content Standard 5.0 History
• History involves people, events, and issues.
  Students will evaluate
• evidence to develop comparative and casual
  analyses, and to interpret
• primary sources. They will construct sound
  historical arguments and
• perspectives on which informed decisions in
  contemporary life can be based.
• Learning Expectations
• Era 5 - Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
• 5.01 Understand the causes, course, and
  consequences of the Civil War.

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In this lesson you will

• Explore the reasons that our country became
  divided and entered into the Civil War.
• At end of this activity you will write about the
  events that caused the Civil War.

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Events Before the War 1849
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Territories and States

• By 1850 our nations territory stretched over
  forest, plain and mountain. Within these
  boundaries lived 23 million people in a union
  comprising 31 states.

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Big Business

• New England and the Middle Atlantic states were
  the main centers of manufacturing, commerce and
  finance. Principal products of these areas were
  textiles, lumber, clothing, machinery, leather
  and woolen goods.

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Big Business

• At the same time, shipping had reached new
  heights, and vessels flying the American flag
  sailed the oceans, distributing wares to all
  nations.

8
Labor and Machinery

• The Midwest, with its boundless prairies and
  swiftly growing population, flourished.
• The introduction of labor-saving machines made
  possible an increase in farm production.
• The Midwest grew nearly half the nations wheat.

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Labor and Machinery

• The McCormick reaper made possible an increase in
  wheat production in the Midwest.

10
Labor and King Cotton

• The Souths economy centered on agriculture.
• Tobacco was important, but cotton eventually
  became the dominant crop.
• Slaves were used to cultivate all these crops,
  though cotton most of all.

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Slavery Defined

• Slavery was inherently a system of brutality and
  coercion in which beatings and the breakup of
  families through the sale of individuals were
  commonplace.

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Slave States

• One issue, however, divided the regional and
  economic differences between North and South
  slavery.

13
Slave States
Territories
Slave States
Free States
14
Slaves and the Cotton Crop

• Southerners felt the backwardness of their own
  region was due to the large amount of money made
  by Northern businessmen from marketing the cotton
  crop.

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Southern Slavery

• Northerners, on the other hand, declared that
  slavery, which the South felt was essential to
  its economy, was wholly responsible for the
  region's relative backwardness.

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Plantation Slaves

• Only a minority of Southern whites owned slaves.
  More than half of all slaves worked on
  plantations. The "poor whites" lived on the
  lowest rung of Southern society and held no
  slaves.

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Plantation Owners

• It is easy to understand the interest of the
  planters in slave holding, they owned most of the
  slaves. But most southerners and poor whites
  supported the institution of slavery as well.

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Freedom for Slaves?

• The plantation owners feared that if freed,
  blacks would compete with them for land.
• Just as important, the freeing of slaves raised
  the standing of the poor whites on the social
  scale. The rich plantation owners did not want
  this to happen.

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Labor Slavery vs Wage System

• Southern politicians insisted, for example, that
  the relationship between capital and labor was
  more humane under the slavery system than under
  the wage system of the North.

20
Right to be Free

• The greatest problem of slavery was not the
  behavior of individual masters and overseers
  toward the slaves, but slavery's fundamental
  violation of every human being's inalienable
  right to be free.

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Slavery

• The South believed it needed new territory for
  additional slave states to offset the admission
  of new free states.

22
No New Slave States

• Many Northerners believed that if not allowed to
  spread, slavery would ultimately decline and die.
  
• California, New Mexico and Utah did not have
  slavery, and when the United States prepared to
  take over these areas in 1846, there were
  conflicting suggestions on what to do with them.

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No New Slave States
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The Issue of States Rights

• Extremists in the South urged that all the lands
  acquired from Mexico be thrown open to slave
  holders.
• Antislavery Northerners, on the other hand,
  demanded that all the new regions be closed to
  slavery.
• Another group proposed that the government should
  permit settlers to enter the new territory with
  or without slaves as they pleased and let the
  people themselves determine the question.

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The Issue of States Rights

• Southern opinion held that all the territories
  had the right to sanction slavery.
• The North asserted that no territories had the
  right.

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Breaking the Nation Apart

• The South wanted to have their own nation and be
  able to decide what laws to have. The North did
  not want the country to be broken apart.

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States Rights
28
Freedom in California

• In January 1848 gold was discovered in
  California. California became a crucial question.
  Congress had to determine the status of this new
  region before an organized government could be
  established.

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New Territory Quarrels

• Senator Henry Clay halted a dangerous sectional
  quarrel with a complicated and carefully balanced
  plan.

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Compromise of 1850

• His compromise, known in American history as the
  Compromise of 1850. It stated
• California should be admitted as a state with a
  free-soil (slavery-prohibited) constitution.
• The remainder of land should be divided into the
  two territories of New Mexico and Utah and
  organized without mention of slavery.

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Compromise of 1850

• Texas should be given a portion of New Mexico for
  10 million.
• Effective machinery should be established for
  catching runaway slaves and returning them to
  their masters.
• The buying and selling of slaves (but not
  slavery) should be abolished in the District of
  Columbia.
• These measures were passed, and the country
  breathed a sigh of relief.

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Compromise of 1850

• For three years, the compromise seemed to settle
  nearly all differences.
• The new Fugitive Slave Law deeply offended many
  Northerners, who refused to have any part in
  catching slaves.

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Compromise of 1850

• Many Northerners continued to help fugitives
  escape, and made the Underground Railroad more
  efficient and more daring than it had been
  before.

Discover the secret message hidden in this slave
song.
34
Fugitive Slave Law

• In 1852, for example, Harriet Beecher Stowe
  published Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel provoked by
  the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. So many
  copies were sold the first year, and presses ran
  day and night to keep up with the demand.

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Quarreling in Kansas and Nebraska

• In 1854 as the region that now comprises Kansas
  and Nebraska was being settled, the old issue of
  slavery in the territories was renewed and the
  quarrel became more bitter.

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Missouri Objects

• Slave-holders in Missouri, objected to letting
  Kansas become a free territory, for their state
  would then have three free-soil neighbors
  (Illinois, Iowa and Kansas). They feared their
  state would be forced to become a free state as
  well.

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Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic senator from
  Illinois, proposed a bill, the Kansas-Nebraska
  Act. His plan called for Kansas and Nebraska, to
  permit settlers to carry slaves into them. The
  settlers were to then determine whether they
  should enter the Union as free or slave states.

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Kansas-Nebraska Act Passes

• In May 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the
  Senate amid the boom of cannon fired by Southern
  enthusiasts.

39
Bleeding Kansas

• The flow of both Southern slave holders and
  antislavery families into Kansas resulted in
  armed conflict, and soon the territory was being
  called "bleeding Kansas."

40
Dred Scott Decision

• Other events brought the nation still closer to
  war. In 1957 the Supreme Court's decision
  concerning Dred Scott was one such event.

Scott was a Missouri slave who had been taken by
his master to live in Illinois and the Wisconsin
Territory, where slavery had been banned.
Returning to Missouri, Scott sued for freedom on
the ground that his residence was on free soil.
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Dred Scott Decision

• The Supreme Court decided that Scott be declined
  freedom because he was not a citizen that he was
  the resident of a slave state (Missouri) and
  that slave holders had the right to take their
  "property" anywhere and that Congress could not
  restrict the expansion of slavery.

42
Court Invalidates Congress

• The Court's decision invalidated the whole set of
  compromise setup by Congress in trying to settle
  the slavery issue.

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Dred Scott Decision Angers North

• The Dred Scott decision stirred anger throughout
  the North. For Southern Democrats, the decision
  was a great victory, since it gave judicial voice
  to their justification of slavery throughout the
  territories.

44
Lincoln Restrict and Abolish Slavery

• Abraham Lincoln had long regarded slavery as an
  evil. In a speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854,
  he declared that all national legislation should
  be framed on the principle that slavery was to be
  restricted and abolished.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Senator Douglas, known as the "Little Giant," ran
  against Lincoln for the Illinois senate seat.
  Lincoln and Douglas engaged in a series of seven
  debates. In the end, Douglas won the election by
  a small margin, but Lincoln was recognized as a
  national figure.

46
John Brown Antislavery Fanatic

• John Brown, an antislavery fanatic captured and
  killed five proslavery settlers in Kansas. Later
  he led a band of followers in an attack on the
  federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Brown's goal
  was to use the weapons seized to lead a slave
  uprising.

Sing along, John Browns Body
47
Abraham Lincoln, 1858

• A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
  believe this government cannot endure
  permanently half-slave and half-free.

48
1860 Presidential Election

• In the presidential election of 1860 the
  Republican, Abraham Lincoln, ran against Stephen
  A. Douglas, a Democrat, and the Whigs party
  nominee, John C. Bell of Tennessee.

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Lincoln Wins

• Lincoln won only 39 percent of the popular vote,
  but had a clear majority of 180 electoral votes,
  carrying all 18 free states. Despite his poor
  electoral showing, Douglas trailed only Lincoln
  in the popular vote.

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Lincoln Wins
51
South Carolina secedes The Union Dissolves

• The southern states said that if Lincoln won the
  Presidential election, they would secede (leave)
  the union. South Carolina was the first southern
  state to seceded from the union.

52
Six More States Secede

• By February 1, 1861, six more Southern states had
  joined South Carolina in succession. On February
  7, the seven states adopted the constitution for
  the Confederate States of America. The other
  southern states as yet remained in the Union.

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Succession!

• Confederate White House

54
The Union Dissolves

• The South formed their own nation, The
  Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis
  served as the President.

55
Secession Legally Void

• Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the
  United States. In his inaugural address, he
  refused to recognize the secession, considering
  it "legally void."

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WAR!

• The battle began in April of 1861 when the
  Confederate Army took over Fort Sumter in
  Charleston, South Carolina.  

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Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

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Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

59
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

60
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

61
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

62
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

63
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

64
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

65
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

66
Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

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Civil War, Death and Destruction

• A war had begun in which more Americans would die
  than in any other conflict before or since.

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Writing Situation Pretend you are a news
reporter during the years prior to the Civil War.

• Directions for Writing Write an news article
  explaining the causes leading to the Civil War.

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Additional Resources

• A Day in the Life of A Slave
• An Interview with a Slave (listen to a first-hand
  experience)
• Civil War Quiz
• American Civil War Homepage
• Civil War Photographs