The document traces the events leading up to the American Civil War, including the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, and Lincoln's election in 1860 which prompted Southern states to secede. It discusses the political, economic, and cultural divisions between the North and South around the issue of slavery that ultimately led to the outbreak of the Civil War following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861.

1. Towards Disunion

3. Nation?
State?
Country?

4. Images credit: The Gray and the Blue: A Comic Strip History of the Civil War by Charles H. Hayes

11. Missouri Compromise, 1820

14. Mexican-American War, 1846-1848

16. The Compromise of 1850
Issue South North Compromise
California CA slave CA free
CA free
TX/NM
Border
Wanted TX to get
the land for
slavery
Wanted NM to get
the land b/c
slavery status
undetermined
NM gets land
TX gets $10 million
Slavery in DC Keep slavery End slavery
Keep slavery,
Bans slave trade
Fugitive Slave
Law
Want strict
fugitive slave law
No fugitive slave
law
Strict fugitive slave law
Slavery in
NM & UT
Slavery in both Ban in both
Popular sovereignty
Major Figures Calhoun, Taylor Webster, Fillmore
Clay, Douglass

17. Compromise of 1850

18. Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
by Harriet
Beecher Stowe
1852
 Sold 300,000 copies
in first year.
 2 million in a
decade!

19. Harriet
Beecher
Stowe
(1811 – 1896)
“So this is the lady
who started the Civil
War.” - Lincoln

20. 1852 Presidential Election
Franklin Pierce Winfield Scott John Parker Hale
Democrat Whig Free Soil

21. 1852
Election
Results

22. Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854: decide slavery by pop
sov.
Unravels MO Comp and
leads to bloodshed in KS

23. Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

26. “Bleeding Kansas”
Border
“Ruffians”
(pro-slavery
Missourians)

27. “The Crime Against
Kansas”
Sen.
Charles
Sumner
(R-MA)
Congr.
Preston
Brooks
(D-SC)

28. John Brown:
Madman, Hero or Martyr?
Mural in the Kansas Capitol
building by John Steuart Curry (20c)

31. Birth of the Republican Party,
1854

33. 1856 Presidential Election
James Buchanan John C. Frémont Millard Fillmore
Democrat Republican Whig

34. 1856
Election
Results

35. Dred Scott v.
Sanford, 1857
• Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
• Blacks (slave or free) aren’t US
citizens, not protected by US
Const, can’t sue
• Congress can’t prohibit slavery
in fed. territory (undoes MO
Comp and KS-NB).
• Slaves, as private property, can’t
be taken away from their
owners without due process.
• Strengthened opposition to
slavery, split Dems on sectional
lines.

37. Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858

39. John Brown’s Raid
on Harper’s Ferry, 1859

49. 1860 Presidential Election

51. Republican Party Platform in 1860
• Free-soilers: Non-extension of slavery
• N: Protective tariff
• NW: Government aid to build Pacific RR
• W: Internal improvements at federal expense
• Farmers: free homesteads

52. 1860
Election
Results

57. Secession!: SC Dec. 20, 1860

63. Lincoln’s reaction to secession
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere
with the institution of slavery in the States where it
exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no
inclination to do so.”
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government
will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in
heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the
most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”
- Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

64. Fort Sumter: April 12, 1861

68. The Basic Causes of Southern Secession
1. Slavery
2. State’s Rights vs. Federal Gov.
3. Economic Differences
4. Cultural Differences
Lincoln’s Reason for Fighting the War:
1861-1862: PRESERVE UNION
1863-1865: PRESERVE UNION + END SLAVERY

69. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the
Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If
I could save the Union without freeing any slave I
would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the
slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do
because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I
forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help
to save the Union.”
- Lincoln, August 22, 1862