20 - Causes the Civil War

Causes of CIVIL WAR
1850 TO 1861
NORTH & SOUTH: 2 Ways of Life
• North:
• Growing Industry, commercial
trade, farming
• Large population (immigration)
• Cities: factories, workers
• Roads, RR’s, harbors
•South:
• Largely agricultural: cash crops
• Slave labor: 20% of population ONLY
• Most whites are poor landowners who own no slaves (but
some hope to: STATUS)
• Little industry; cotton becomes most profitable:
• “KING Cotton”….Cotton gin: increases
production
• Few cities
ISSUES DIVIDE NORTH & SOUTH
• Should slavery be allowed in the western
territories?
• This dispute ends in some compromises, but TENSIONS still
exist.
1. Missouri Compromise
2. Compromise of 1850
3. Fugitive Slave Act
4. Kansas Nebraska Act
Missouri Compromise (1820)
• Missouri = slave state
• Maine = Free State
• 36’30” = below are slave
states, above are free
• Applies only to the
Louisiana Purchase
Territory
Compromise of 1850
• Gold Rush = increase in California Population
• California is a free state
• New territories are open to popular sovereignty
• Stronger Fugitive Slave Law
Tension Grows
• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
(Harriet Beecher Stowe)
– Antislavery book
printed in 1852
• Limited factual
information, written in
anger at Fugitive Slave
Law
• Considered dramatic
• Success as a play and
book
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Transcontinental railroad
• Connect the east to the
west
• North favors the routes
• Kansas-Nebraska Bill is
introduced by Senator
Stephen Douglas of Illinois
in 1854
• Kansas and Nebraska
become territories
• Popular sovereignty
would determine the
question of slavery
• Latitude line of Missouri
Compromise is voided
Bleeding Kansas
• Abolitionists and pro-slavery voters in
Missouri rush to Kansas
• In a disputed election pro-slave voters
control government and enacts a sever
slave code
• Abolitionists draw up the Topeka
Constitution to end slavery
• John Brown led an attack on pro-
slavery voters
• Federal troops are called in
• Kansas eventually becomes a free state
in 1861
Dred Scott Case 1857: Fuels Anger in
North
• Dred Scott is a slave
• Owner (lives in Missouri) sent him to
work in Illinois (free state)
• Owner dies, Scott claims he should
now be free
• Chief Justice Roger Taney/Court’s
Decision:
• Scott not a citizen
• Mo. Compromise unconstitutional:
Congress had no right to ban slavery in
territories
• Only individual states can ban slavery
• South happy with decision/North is
furious
Lincoln – Douglas Debates
• Campaign for Illinois Senate seat in 1858
• Douglas had supported popular
sovereignty
• What had the Dred Scott Decision done to
popular sovereignty?
• Widely reported on, Lincoln is exposed to the
nation
Results
• Douglas is reelected to the
Senate
• Douglas is weakened in the
South
• Lincoln becomes a national
figure
• Supported by many in the
North
• Southerners find him and
unacceptable choice for
president
1859 - John Brown’s Raid on
Harper’s Ferry, Vi.
• John Brown - abolitionist who
used violence to get rid of
slavery
• 1859 – Brown and a small
following attack and occupy a
federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry,
Virginia
• Hoped to incite a slave
rebellion
• Brown is wounded, taken
prisoner, tried for treason and
hung
• South becomes terrified of
insurrection
How to view John Brown?
Slavery Issue Leads to New Political Parties
• Democratic Party: splitting over the issue

of slavery (N & S)
• Free-Soil Party: no slavery in territories
• NEW PARTY: 1854: Northern Democrats,

Free-Soil members, & others form the
Republican Party (mad over K-N Act)
• Democratic Party
• Some delegates walk out when a platform was proposed defending slavery
• Party splits
• Stephen Douglas is nominated on a platform which promises not to
interfere with slavery
• Southerners nominate John Breckenridge on a pro-slavery platform
• Republican Party
• Nominate Lincoln
• Platform opposes the extension of slavery
• However, realizes states should make their own decisions
• Constitutional Union Party
• Moderate states
• Nominate John Bell with the purpose of “reconciliation”
√ Abraham John Bell
Lincoln Constitutional
Republican 1860 Union
Presidential
Election
Stephen A. John C.
Douglas Breckinridge
Northern Southern
Election 1860
Election of 1860
• Lincoln wins
• Under 40% of
popular vote,
but gets the
majority of
electoral votes
• Does not win a
single southern
state
Results
• Southern states are upset at
Lincoln’s election
• By December 1860 South
Carolina secedes from the
Union
• By Feb. 1861 six more
states secede
• Secede = leave
• Form the Confederate States
of America
• President = Jefferson Davis
Lincoln Takes Office
• Lincoln’s first Inauguration, 7
states had already seceded.
Lincoln makes the following
statements:
• “The Union is perpetual”
• “promise not to interfere
with slavery in the States
where it exists”
• Denies secession’s legality
• Vows to preserve the Union
in face of “insurrection”
Fort Sumter, South Carolina

20 - Causes the Civil War

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Causes of CIVIL WAR

• Democratic Party: splitting over the issue

• Free-Soil Party: no slavery in territories

• NEW PARTY: 1854: Northern Democrats,

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