The southern region of the United States in the early years of the 1860’s had a most incomparable affect on the country. The disputes between the North and the South had caused a civil war, killing over one half a million people after the South seceded from the Union. The causes driving the South to secede grew to the point where one unified, strong country was no longer an option in the Southerner’s eyes. The Northerners viewed the Southerner’s needs as unnecessary and immoral desires. Due to the two regions differences, outbreaks of violence started a pandemonium. In the early 1860’s the Southern states seceded from the Union due to the uproar of disputes over, slavery in the territories, the Northern abolitionists growth in power and the …show more content…
Many attempts were made to resolve the major conflict such as, the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and The Compromise of 1850. While running for the presidential election of 1860, the Republicans and Democrats shared both their sides on slavery in the territories. The Republicans, who were dominantly Northerners, proclaimed no form of government authority could legalize slavery in the United States territories. (Document 1) Meanwhile, the Democrats who were mainly from the South voiced their opinion that all American citizens had the right to own slaves in the territories. Democrats also exclaimed that outlawing slavery in those areas was obstructing the rights of the people. (Document 1) Not only the political parties were split on the issue but the two regions of America were as well. Southerners stated that the Northerners believed they had the jurisdiction to control and prohibit slavery in the territories. This infuriated the Southern region of America and gave them reason to feel threatened that if Lincoln is elected, slavery will be gone. (Document …show more content…
Figures such as William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown played a large role in strengthening the abolitionist movement. Garrison was a white abolitionist who wrote The Liberator, which held the message of emancipation of slaves. John Brown was an abolitionist who took matters into physical hands and started what was soon to be called Bleeding Kansas when he took a few of his followers and killed five men to send a message. These two men were few of many who helped stir support and cultivate power for the movement to get slavery abolished. Southerners presumed true that the Northerners were teaching the kids to hate the Southerner’s kids, which had started disagreement at a young age. (Document 2) That was the least of the Southerner’s worries; the real threat they stated was the power being agglomerated by the Northerners and that they will use this power to emancipate slavery all together. (Document 2) The people of the North used raids led by the hostile legislation of the their states to go against the people of the
With the pressure following the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, many northerners opposed slavery and were concerned with the possibility of its expansion. In 1856, these northerners formed a new political party called the Republican Party. Once Abraham Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate, the South began making plans to secede from the union if Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. In the “South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession”, delegates state, “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. ”15
During the 1850s many problems started to arise within the government creating sectional tension within the country. Everything that caused an increase in the tension within the citizens of the United States, had happened pre-Civil War. Majority of the tension that emerged, came from sides being taken between the North and the South because of their difference in beliefs on slavery and state powers. Some of the events such as Fugitive Slave Act, Dred Scott Decision, and Brook’s attack on Charles Sumner caused the two regions to feel as if they had different interests. In the event of Bleeding Kansas, they even fought over political power in the country.
In the year 1863, as the nation approached its third year of the civil war, Abraham Lincoln issued two executive orders. On January 1st, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and on March 3rd 1863 he suspended Habeas Corpus in the entire North territories. Both directives were closely related with the ongoing civil war. As Milkis and Nelson write in their book “The American Presidency”…” Lincoln was no abolitionist. Indeed, his relative moderation on the slavery issue helped him wrest his party’s 1860 presidential nomination away from the avowedly pro-emancipation William H. Seward…”
Northern Democrats assumed that under this bill, slavery would never actually expand into the territories. They believe popular sovereignty would hold the land for the North. However, Southern Democrats believe that popular sovereignty would permit and protect slavery in the territories. Sothern’s believed that slaveholders had the same right as non-slaveholders to bring their property, including slaves, into the territories. When the Democratic Party had a convention in South Carolina, the Southern Democrats insisted that the party secures the rights of slaveholders to enter the territories.
Soon after the republicans party was founded from the anti-slavery element from both the Whigs and democrats. The majority of the party was made up of northern Whigs and democrats; Abraham Lincoln was a key figure in the support of the republicans helping them find new members. The Kansas Nebraska act participated greatly in the lead up to war as it created disputes between parties as well as the ending of the Whigs, before the act Whigs and democrats united around various issues to come up with and outcome but the act forced the
The 1858 Illinois senate race between Whig candidate Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas emphasized the opposing views dividing the Northern and Southern states regarding the expansion of slavery and the rights laid out by the founding fathers. Lincoln did not believe that slavery should be allowed to spread outside of the slave states that were already in place. He argued that the founding fathers had already set slavery on a path to extinction by prohibiting the extension of slavery into new territory where it had not existed and wanted a return to that ideology. Douglas, however, was a firm believer in local self-governance, removed from interference from Congress. He thought that local governments should decide the slavery issue for themselves, as they had done since the nation’s founding.
The Civil War was an American blood shed. Tens of thousands of soldiers died each day… ALONE! The Civil War started in 1861.The U.S had even amount of slave and free states and then a guy named John Brown “invaded” the South. Abraham Lincoln then got elected president in 1860. Then there was the main moment… the Civil War broke out about slavery in 1861.
On April 12, 1861, the Civil War was a war fought to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln, elected as the President representing the Republicans, supported the banning of slavery in all the U.S. territories. The Southern states viewed this as a violation to the Constitution, therefore, seven slave states formed the confederacy before Lincoln’s inauguration. Efforts for compromising failed, therefore both sides were prepared for war. Although, there may have been many different discussions on the underlying causes of the start on the war, it has been proven that the causes made the war in the end inevitable.
The question of slavery created a deep division among the delegates as many of the northern statesmen regarded slavery as illegal and should be abolished all together. Delegates from the southern states argued that slavery was an integral part of the southern agricultural and economic structure and opposed any plan that would create a stronger central government or include restrictions on the lucrative slave trade. The issue of slavery was treated as a political rather than a moral question that created consequences that legislators struggled with for over eighty years and lead to continued compromises such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
A House Divided: The Causes and Effects of the Civil War in the Institution of Slavery, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Militant Presidency of Abraham Lincoln The causes and effects of the Civil War will be defined through the institution of slavery and the military leadership of President Lincoln to resolve the uncompromising political position of the South/Confederacy. Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech will be an important primary source that defines the underlying resistance to the expansion of slave states into new territories taken by the U.S. government before the Civil War. More so, the uncompromising and increasingly militaristic aggression of the South in seceding from the Union defines the effects of this political “divide” between
The two out four questions that I choose are to 1.) Discuss the causes of the civil war. Cite as many facts as possible to back up your analysis. And answer 2.) If the enduring vision of America is embodied in the Declaration of Independence's statements about equality and universal rights to justice, liberty, and self-fulfillment, how much progress toward those ideals had blacks and women made by 1877?
Every northern Whig had opposed it; almost every southern Whig voted for it. With the emotional issue of slavery involved, there was no way a common ground could be found. Most of the southern Whigs soon were swept into the Democratic Party. Northern Whigs reorganized themselves with other non-slavery interests to become the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln. Differences between the North and South was again on the rise.
Abstract Slavery provided America with a wide range of labor, and fortune. Ideals from Christianity, and Revolution forced many to grapple with the idea of ending it. Throughout the antebellum era politicians debated the merits allowing the people of territories themselves to decide whether slavery would be prohibited or permitted. This solution created a host of problems. From the establishment of the Northwest and Southwest territories, to the Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, the acquisition of the Mexican Cession, and finally the debate over Kansas and Nebraska, the extension of slavery confounded politicians.
From the 1820’s to 1850’s the Democrats won all but two presidential elections. During the 1840s and ’50s, however, the Democratic Party, as it officially named itself in 1844, suffered serious inner strains over the issue of extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats, led by Jefferson Davis, wanted to allow slavery in all the territories, while Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, proposed that each territory should decide the question for itself through referendum. The 1860 election also included John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, and Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the newly established antislavery Republican Party. With the Democrats hopelessly split,
During the 1800s, slavery had become a hot topic in the United States, even though many did not even want to have the discussion about it. However, as we gained more land in the Mexican War slavery had to be addressed because the new territories were going to create an imbalance between the free and slave states. This imbalance would favor the South more than the North and give slavery the opportunity to spread further. Northerners, of course, did not agree with the idea of slavery spreading and worked to have legislation passed to support their perspective. Still, the legislation and the courts’ decision of cases related towards this matter, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act angered both the North and South and increased the sectionalism between them.