Justificaition of the Civil War
By: Sarah Skliutas and Michaela Troy
The Invention of the Cotton Gin
- In 1794 the cotton gin was ivented by Eli Whitney
- Revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber
- Became America's leadign export by the mid-19th century
- Offered Southerns justificiation to exppand slavery
The Invention of the Cotton Gin
Fugitive Slave Act
- Enacted by Congress in 1793
- Federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States
- Widespread resistance to the 1793 law later led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which added further provisions regarding runaways and levied even harsher punishments for interfering in their capture.
- Northern states passed special legislation in an attempt to circumvent them.
- Both laws were formally repealed by an act of Congress in 1864.
Missouri Compromise
- effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted.
Missouri Compromise
Garrison and Publication of The Liberator
- In 1831, Garrison published the first edition of The Liberator.
- Founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society the following year.
- In 1833, he met with delegates from around the nation to form the American Anti-Slavery Society.
- The Liberator would not have been successful had it not been for the free blacks who subscribed.
- Approximately seventy-five percent of the readers were free African-Americans.
South Carolina Nullification Crisis
- confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government in 1832–33 over the former’s attempt to declare null and void within the state the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832.
- resolution of the nullification crisis in favour of the federal government helped to undermine the nullification doctrine
- advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798–99.
- the union was a compact of sovereign states,
- states retained the authority to determine when the federal government exceeded its powers, and they could declare acts to be “void and of no force” in their jurisdictions.
South Carolina Nullification Crisis
Creation of the Republican Party
- With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, an act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty. By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.
- The Republicans rapidly gained supporters in the North, and in 1856 their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won 11 of the 16 Northern states. By 1860, the majority of the Southern slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans won the presidency.
- In November 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president over a divided Democratic Party, and six weeks later South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead, and in April 1861 the Civil War began.
Creation of the Republican Party
Annexation of Texas
- The Americans soon outnumbered the resident Mexicans, and by the which upset the Mexican government led to rebellion by the 1830s.
- In March 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico.
- The citizens of the independent Republic of Texas elected Sam Houston president but also endorsed the entrance of Texas into the Union.
- In 1844, Congress agreed to annex the territory of Texas.
- On December 29, 1845, Texas entered the United States as a slave state, broadening the irrepressible differences in the United States over the issue of slavery and setting off the Mexican-American War.
Compromise of 1850
- The compromise was the last major involvement in national affairs of Senators Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina
- Divisions over slavery in territory gained in the Mexican-American (1846-48) War were resolved in the Compromise of 1850.
- It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves.
Compromise of 1850
Underground Railroad
- the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made capturing escaped slaves a lucrative business
- Fugitive slaves were typically on their own until they got to certain points farther north.
- People known as “conductors” guided the fugitive slaves
- Hiding places included private homes, churches and school houses. These were called stations and safe houses. The people operating them were called “stationmasters.”
- A well known figure in the Underground railroad was Harriet Tubman, who returned to slavery following her escape to help other slaves get to freedom through the usage of the underground railroad
Kansas Nebraska Act
- The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that mandated “popular sovereignty”–allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders.
- Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas–Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the influential Lincoln
- Douglas debates–the bill overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory.
- The conflicts that arose between proslavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act’s passage led to the period of violence known as Bleeding Kansas, and helped paved the way for the American Civil War (1861-65).
Kansas Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
- Bleeding Kansas is the term used to describe the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory.
- In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory
- popular sovereignty would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state.
- Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision.
- Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control.
Raid at Harper's Ferry/ John Brown
Raid at Harper's Ferry/ John Brown
- Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery
- In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory
- On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge.
- On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men which led to an uprising of violence within in the territory.
- By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of slaves.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), her most celebrated work
- Sentimental and realistic by turns, the novel explored the cruelties of slavery in the South and exposed the moral ironies in the legal, religious, and social arguments of white apologists.
- To the dismay of many northern radicals, Uncle Tom’s Cabin casually endorsed colonization rather than abolition
- Stowe was unconcerned about the tactics that made slavery a political issue: for her, the problem was religious and emotional, and one that women were best equipped to confront.
Dred Scott vs. Sanfrod
Dred Scott vs. Sanfrod
- In March 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
- The case had been brought before the court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri
- Scott argued that his time spent in these locations entitled him to emancipation
- Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a staunch supporter of slavery, disagreed
- The court found that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship, and therefore blacks were unable to petition the court for their freedom
- The Dred Scott decision incensed abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions, which would erupt in war just three years later
Election of 1860
- The election of 1860 was arguably one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American history
- Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln against Democratic Party nominee Senator Stephen Douglas, Southern Democratic Party nominee John Breckinridge and Constitutional Union Party nominee John Bell.
- The main issue of the election was slavery and states’ rights
- Lincoln emerged victorious and became the 16th President of the United States during a national crisis that would tear states and families apart and test Lincoln’s leadership and resolve.