Road to Secession
Events leading to Civil War

• Sectionalism
• Compromise of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Act 1850
• Ostend Manifesto, 1854
• Kansas Nebraska Act, 1854
• Bleeding Kansas, 1855-1856
• Know Nothings
• Dred Scott v Sanford, 1857
• John Brown, 1859
• Election of 1860

• What are the major events that led to civil war?
• What debate was renewed with the acquisition of
California Territory and its application for statehood?
• What major divisions existed in American
Society?
• What is Zinn’s argument concerning the events that led the United States to wage a civil war?

• To exclude slavery from the western territories was exclude white southerners from pursuing their vision of American dream
• North politicians argued that exclusion preserved equality of all white men and women to live and work with out competition from slavery labor or rule by despotic slaveholders.

• Reinforced their right to seize and return to bondage slaves who had fled to free territory

– Response to the fugitive slave act
• Slave catches and planters enslaved free blacks, polarized north and south further
• Galvanized popular opinion against slavery further

American minister to England James Buchanan, minister to Spain Pierre Soule, and John Y.
Mason, minister to France. 1854

Kansas Nebraska Act, 1854
This 1854 map shows slave states (grey), free states (red), and US territories (green) with
Kansas in center
(white).

• Competition of anti and pro slavery immigration –Beginning of civil war
– Further polarized north and south
Titus and pro-slavery forces on their way to attack Lawrence

• Political Realignment
– Know Nothings:
• Mostly former Whigs
• Anti –immigrant
– Extend naturalization from 1 to 21 years
• Anti- Catholic
– Legislation barring them from public office
• Nativist
– New Republican Party
• Anti-slavery conscious Whigs & Democrats
• Most Important political force
– Democrats
• Pro-slavery, southern sectional party

• Taney & 9 justices - 2 days
• black people, not citizens, could not sue
• framers of the constitution never intended citizenship for slaves
• slaves being of an inferior order….so far inferior that they had not rights which the white man was bound to respect

• Raid against federal arsenal
• Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
– Trained his rebels & took the arsenal
– Hoped to spark a slave revolt
– Captures and Hung for treason

• Democratic Party Split
– Nominated Stephen Douglas
• Former Whigs – Constitutional Union Party
– Nominated John Bell
• Republicans
– nominated Lincoln