Road to Civil War

1
Road to Civil War
2

• Popular Sovereignty
• Beginning of Sectional Politics
• Slavery starting to tear country apart
• Whigs start to fragment

3

• Gold increases movement out West
• Sectional balance is in danger
• Underground Railroad becomes abolitionist tool
  and very effective

4

• Compromise of 1850
• North Concessions- popular soverignty in New
  Mexico and Utah, Texas a slave state. Stringent
  Fugitive slave law
• South Concessions-California a free state,
  Abolition of Slave trade in District of
  Columbia,New Mexico gains disputed territory

5

• Compromise shifts the balance of congressional
  power toward the North
• Southern states were looking to create a new
  balance, Looked toward Carribean for expansion,
  Nicaragua, Cuba
• The Man-stealing Law served to aid them in
  spreading slavery

6

• Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Popular Sovereingty
• Stephen Douglas thought it would solve the
  problem Democratically
• Made Missouri Compromise Unconstitutional
• Led to pro-slavery, anti-slavery factions
  fighting in Bleeding Kansas, John Brown and
  Pattawatomie massacre

7

• Abolitionist literature was important in fueling
  the anger over moral debate on slavery
• Dred Scott case ruled that Scott was property and
  had no rights. It ruled that Congress had no
  power to ban slavery in territories
• Republicans were outraged. The territories were
  the future

8

• Lincoln defeats Douglas but does not win any
  states in the South.
• South Carolinians pushed for secession upon
  Lincoln victory and 6 othe states soon joined
  them.
• Many southerners thought secession would go
  unopposed by North
• They compared their seperation to Colonial
  seperation from Great Britain