A Dividing Nation
History Alive! Chapter 21
Some differences between North and South
CLIMATE
ECONOMY
TRANSPORTATION
The North
has four seasons
and cold winters
The South
has mild winters,
long summers, and
lots of rain
had business and
industry
had agriculture,
especially cotton
and used slave labor
steamboats and
lots of railroad
lines
steamboats, but
few railroad lines
CONFLICT
The North wanted
• the Tallmadge
Amendment added to
Missouri’s application
for statehood
The South wanted
• Missouri to be
allowed to choose to
be a slave state
• no slavery west of the
Mississippi
• all new states to be
allowed to decide for
slavery or against
slavery in the state
COMPROMISE
The Missouri Compromise
The North accepted
• Missouri as a slave state
The South accepted
• Maine as a free state
AND
• 36 30 as the future line to
divide free states in the
North from slave states in
the South
The Missouri Compromise kept the country
together but…
The North really wanted
The South really wanted
NO MORE SLAVERY AT ALL
states to be free to decide
CONFLICT
• The Northern abolitionists
wanted no slavery in the
capital, Washington, D.C.
(is not a state)
BUT
• John Quincy Adams
proposed that no African
Americans born after
1845 would be slaves
Congress created a
GAG rule that would
keep everyone silent
about slavery so that
the compromise
would hold
CONFLICT
• Nat Turner and other slaves
rebelled
• Southern slaveholders made
new laws to control slaves and
tried to keep abolitionist writing
away from slaves
• Northern abolitionists helped
runaway (fugitive) slaves
• Southern slaveholders said
people who helped slaves were
stealing their property
• When Pres. Polk wanted money
from Congress to pay for a war
with Mexico, the Wilmot Proviso
said that all land taken from
Mexico would become free
states
• California wanted to join union
as free state
• South said that states should
decide themselves
• South said that if California was
free, the balance between free
and slave states would be lost
COMPROMISE
The Compromise of 1850
The North accepted
• that land taken from
Mexico could become
slave or free states
• that slaveholders in
Washington D.C.
could keep their
slaves
• that there was a
stronger Fugitive
Slave Law
The South accepted
• California as a free
state
• the end of slave trade
in Washington D.C.
CONFLICT
Northerners were angered
• by the Fugitive Slave Law
and refused to follow it
• by the Ostend Manifesto, a
message Northerners said
showed that President
Franklin Pierce wanted to
take Cuba from Spain to
make it a slave state
• by the Kansas-Nebraska
Act which broke the
Missouri Compromise and
said these territories could
choose to become free or
slave states
Southern slaveholders
were angered
• by Northerners refusal to
return fugitive slaves
• by the novel about a cruel
slave owner, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, which turned more
Northerners against
slavery
CONFLICT
Northerners were
upset when slavery
supporters in Kansas
invaded an
abolitionist town,
burned down a hotel,
threw printing presses
in a river, and looted
houses
Southerners were
upset when
abolitionist John
Brown and others
took revenge by
raiding a town and
killing five slavery
supporters
CONFLICT
Southerners were
upset when
Northerner Sumner
gave a very harsh
speech against
Southern
congressmen,
including the senator
who wrote the
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Northerners were
upset when
Southerner Preston
Brooks attacked
Sumner and beat him
with a cane so badly
that it took him 3 ½
years to recover
CONFLICT
The North was upset by the
Dred Scott Decision
• Dred Scott, a slave, said he
should be free because he
lived in a free state with his
master
• The Supreme Court said he
had no legal standing because
he was not a citizen and that
no African Americans, slave or
free, could ever become
citizens
• The Court said the Missouri
Compromise was
unconstitutional because it
took away the property rights
of slaveholders – and that
slavery would be allowed in
all of the territories
The South was upset
• When abolitionist John Brown
and others tried to steal
weapons from an arsenal (in
Harper’s Ferry, Virginia) to give
to slaves to help them rebel
• In 1860 when Northerner
Abraham Lincoln was
elected
CONFLICT
The South was upset when
Lincoln told a reporter he
would:
• support the Fugitive Slave
Law and not interfere with
slavery in the South
BUT he would
• NOT support opening new
territories to slavery
“Let there be no compromise.”
The North was upset when
• South Carolina seceded
• 6 more Southern states
seceded
• Southerners fired on
the U.S. federal Fort
Sumter