Transcript American History

American History
Unit 7
Prologue to the American Civil
War
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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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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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“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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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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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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Slavery
• From the beginning, a significant amount of Americans were
opposed to slavery!
• They issued a statement against the institution as early as 1724.
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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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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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Harriet Tubman
• The most famous
“conductor” of the
Underground Railroad”
was Harriet Tubman
• She was a courageous,
self-taught, charismatic
escaped slave, singleminded in her
dedication to freeing
others.
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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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Lincoln becomes the 16th
President of the United States
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• 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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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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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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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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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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