The Beginnings of the American Civil War

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The Beginnings of the American Civil War
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The issues that divided America in the first half
of the nineteenth century

• Cultural
• Economic
• Political

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Economic divisions the North

• The Northern states developed an industrial
  economy based on manufacturing, commerce,
  banking, farming, free labor, and the rapid
  growth of cities.
• They favored high protective tariffs to protect
  Northern manufacturers from foreign competition.

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• The dominant economic and social class comprised
  
• merchants
• manufacturers
• bankers, and
• professionals

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Economics the South

• The Southern states developed an agricultural
  economy consisting of
• a slavery-based system of plantations in the
  lowlands along the Atlantic and in the Deep
  South, and
• small subsistence farmers in the foothills and
  valleys of the Appalachian Mountains.

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• The South strongly opposed high tariffs, which
  made the price of imported manufactured goods
  much more expensive

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Slavery and states rights

• As the United States expanded westward, the
  conflict over slavery grew more bitter and
  threatened to tear the country apart.

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Slavery
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Compromises to Slavery

• The admission of new states continually led to
  conflicts over whether the new states would allow
  slavery (slave states) or prohibit slavery
  (free states). Numerous compromises were struck
  to maintain the balance of power in Congress.

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The Missouri Compromise (1820)

• This compromise drew an east-west line through
  the Louisiana Purchase, with slavery prohibited
  above the line and allowed below, except that
  slavery was allowed in Missouri, north of the
  line.

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Missouri Compromise
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Compromise of 1850

• In the Compromise of 1850, California entered
  as a free state, while the new Southwestern
  territories acquired from Mexico would decide on
  their own.

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Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

• It repealed the Missouri Compromise line by
  giving people in Kansas and Nebraska the choice
  whether to allow slavery in their states
  (popular sovereignty).

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Kansas-Nebraska Act

• This law produced bloody fighting in Kansas as
  pro- and anti-slavery forces battled each other.
• Missourians went into Kansas to vote for slavery

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Kansas-Nebraska Act

• It also led to the birth of the Republican Party
  that same year to oppose the spread of slavery.

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Abolition Movement
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Abolitionist movement

• The movement grew in the North, led by William
  Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, an
  antislavery newspaper.
• Also led by many New England religious leaders,
  who saw slavery as a violation of Christian
  principles.

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Abolition Movement

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, wife of a New England
  clergyman, wrote Uncle Toms Cabin, a
  best-selling novel that inflamed Northern
  abolitionist sentiment.
• Southerners were frightened by the growing
  strength of Northern abolitionism.

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Underground Railroad
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Slave Revolts

• Slave revolts in Virginia fed white Southern
  fears about slave rebellions
• These fears led to harsh laws in the South
  against fugitive slaves.
• Southerners who favored abolition were
  intimidated into silence.

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Gabriel Prosser

• In 1800, Gabriel Prosser planned to gathered
  1,000 rebellious slaves outside Richmond.
• After seizing weapons from the arsenal, they
  would go about the city slaughtering all whites
  and taking over Richmond

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• The Insurrection failed as two Africans gave away
  the plot.
• Gabriel was captured and hung with 35 others

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Nat Turner

• Summer of 1831, Nat Turner, a slave preacher, led
  a band of African Americans armed with guns and
  axes from house to house in Southampton County,
  Virginia.

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Nat Turner

• They killed sixty white men, women, and children
  before being overpowered by state and federal
  troops.
• More than a hundred blacks were executed in the
  aftermath.

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Nullification

• Southerners argued that individual states could
  nullify laws passed by the Congress.
• They also began to insist that states had entered
  the Union freely and could leave (secede)
  freely if they chose.
• An idea brought forward by John C. Calhoun in 1828

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Abraham Lincoln - recently joined the new
  Republican Party
• Stephen Douglas, a Northern Democrat
• Conducted numerous debates when running for the
  U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858.

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• Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery into new
  states Douglas stood for popular sovereignty.

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• Douglas stood for popular sovereignty.

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• Lincoln warned, A house divided against itself
  cannot stand. The nation could not continue
  half-free, half-slave. The issue must be
  resolved.

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Dred Scott Decision

• Supreme Court overturned efforts to limit the
  spread of slavery
• Fugitive Slave Act required slaves who escaped
  to free states to be forcibly returned to their
  owners in the South