The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed settlers in those territories to determine whether to allow slavery, led to violent conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Militant abolitionist John Brown killed five pro-slavery advocates in Kansas, intensifying tensions. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 ruled that blacks could not be citizens. Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president in 1860 on a platform opposing slavery's expansion, leading several southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America before he took office, beginning the Civil War.

1. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil War
Part 15: The Path to Civil War (II)

2. THE KANSAS-
NEBRASKA ACT (1854)
• Designed by Senator Stephen
Douglas of Illinois.
• Created the states of Kansas
and Nebraska and opened new
lands for settlement.
• Repealed the Missouri
Compromise of 1820 by
allowing the people of Kansas
and Nebraska to vote on
whether or not slavery should
be allowed in their states.
• Recognized this vote as an act
of ‘popular sovereignty,’ ideally
to make slavery in new states
no longer a national issue.

3. BLEEDING KANSAS
• Douglas’ theory was that an
impending civil war between the
free states in the North and the
slave states in the South could
be avoided if all of the states
did not have to agree on
whether new states should
allow slavery or prohibit it.
• In practice, however, advocates
of slavery and abolitionists from
all across the country migrated
to Kansas to skew the vote.
• What resulted was a minor civil
war as both sides took up arms.

4. JOHN BROWN
A militant abolitionist who believed
he had received a vision from God
that commanded him to eradicate
slavery by force, John Brown left
his native Ohio to fight in Kansas in
1855. He took his sons with him.

5. JOHN BROWN
On May 24, at Pottawatomie
Creek, Brown and his sons seized
five slavery advocates and took
them from their homes and hacked
them to death with swords. A year
later, they fought four hundred pro-
slavery soldiers at Osawatomie.
They fought on for two months, but
were driven out of Kansas.

6. BLEEDING KANSAS
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act was
signed by President Franklin
Pierce in 1854.
• In 1855, an organization of new
settlers to Kansas wrote the
state’s first Constitution to give
it an abolitionist government.
• In 1857, advocates of slavery
wrote a new and different
Constitution, making slavery a
permanent feature of Kansas.
• Both sides of the war claimed
that their Constitution was the
only legally valid one in Kansas.

7. DRED SCOTT V.
SANDFORD
• In 1857, the Supreme Court
ruled on a landmark case known
as Dred Scott v. Sandford.
• Dred Scott, a slave, sued his
master for his freedom on the
basis that his master had taken
him from the South into Northern
states where slavery was illegal.
• The Supreme Court ruled
against Scott, denying that
African Americans had any rights
to citizenship in America.
• In effect, the ruling extended
southern laws regarding slavery
into states that had abolished it.

8. BLEEDING KANSAS
• In 1857 and 1858, abolitionists
voted down the pro-slavery
Constitution of Kansas, and
wrote and passed a third
Constitution which also
abolished slavery in Kansas.
• In 1859, a fourth Constitution
made Kansas a free state,
although it was not admitted
into the Union until 1861.
• Between 1854 and 1859, about
fifty people died and hundreds
were injured in the conflict that
consumed ‘Bleeding Kansas.’

9. JAMES BUCHANAN
• One of the authors of the
Ostend Manifesto.
• Succeeded Franklin Pierce as
President in 1857.
• A Democrat who entered into
open disagreement with his
fellow Democrat, Stephen
Douglas, over the chaos of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• Widely regarded as the worst
American President for his
inability to prevent the country
from drifting into a civil war.

10. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• Abolitionist lawyer and former
Whig from Illinois.
• Ran against Stephen Douglas
for election to the United States
Senate in 1858.
• Ran for election on behalf of the
Republican Party, which was
founded in 1854 in opposition
to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• Openly criticized Douglas and
Buchanan as well as the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court,
Roger B. Taney, for their policies
towards slavery as an institution
and slaves as human beings.

11. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• Commenced his candidacy
with the famous declaration of
his ‘House Divided’ speech…
• “A house divided against itself
cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot endure,
permanently, half slave and
half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved — I do
not expect the house to fall —
but I do expect it will cease to
be divided. It will become all
one thing or all the other.”

12. THE LINCOLN-
DOUGLAS DEBATES
• Throughout 1858, Lincoln and
Douglas appeared together in
public to engage in a series of
seven long, complex debates
on the issue of slavery.
• The debates captured the
attention of the nation and were
reprinted, word for word, in
newspapers across the country.
• Lincoln won the election,
forcing Douglas out of the
Senate. Meanwhile, Douglas’
disputes with Buchanan split
the Democratic Party, leaving
the Presidency vulnerable…

13. JOHN BROWN’S RAID
ON HARPERS FERRY
• In 1859, John Brown and a
band of about twenty followers
attacked the national armory in
Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
• Brown’s plan was to seize
weapons and then issue them
to slaves in Virginia in the hope
of provoking a slave uprising.
• Brown and his men were
attacked by federal troops. The
raid was put down. Brown was
arrested, charged with treason,
and sentenced to death.

14. JOHN BROWN’S RAID
ON HARPERS FERRY
• On December 2, 1859, John
Brown was hanged.
• Brown immediately became a
celebrated martyr for the cause
of the abolition of slavery.
• A number of America’s most
prominent abolitionists spoke
out in favor of Brown, praising
his use of violence in order to
abolish slavery and arguing that
the moral urgency of abolition
required taking up arms.

15. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• In 1860, just two years after
winning his election to the
Senate, Abraham Lincoln ran
for election as the Republican
candidate for the Presidency.
• With the Democrats split on the
issue of slavery, split between
the Douglas faction and the
Buchanan faction of the party,
Lincoln won a landslide victory.
• Despite Lincoln’s protests to
the contrary, the Southern
states feared that an abolitionist
President would attempt to
abolish slavery nationwide.

16. SECESSION BEGINS
On December 20, 1860, before
Lincoln had even been sworn in,
South Carolina declared that it
would secede (withdraw) from the
Union and no longer be a part of
the United States of America.

17. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil War
Part 15: The Path to Civil War (II)