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7th Grade Social Studies
Canada, Mexico, & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 133— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
March 30, 2015
Focus: Look at the photograph on page 486. Read the caption entitled “Bleeding Kansas” and answer the question.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will describe the impact of the following events on the growing rift between North and
South:
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act.
2. I will analyze the troubled life and Presidency of Franklin Pierce.
3. I will reenact John Brown’s role in the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/1)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/6)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Friday 4/10
Handouts:
Jane Pierce letter
I. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A. Harriet Beecher Stowe
II. Kansas-Nebraska Act
III. President Franklin Pierce
IV. Pottawatomie Massacre
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Franklin Pierce
Benny Pierce
John Brown
Bleeding Kansas
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas
Jane Pierce
Border Ruffians
Beecher’s Bibles
Pottawatomie Massacre
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
What was a Beecher’s Bible? How did they get that nickname?
Why did Douglas push for the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Why was Kansas known as “Bleeding Kansas?”
Jane Pierce to her dead son Benjamin Pierce
My precious child - I must write to you, altho' you are never to see it or know it - How I long to see you and say something to you as
if you were as you always have been (until these last three dreadful weeks) near me. Oh! How precious do those days now seem,
my darling boy - and how I should have praised [sic] the days passed with you had I suspected they might be so short - Dear, dear
child - I cannot bear to think of that agonizing [sic] time, when I had just seen you all alive to what was passing around and near me,
but not near enough - oh had you but been within reach of your dear father - in a moment changed my dear boy bright form into a
lifeless one insensible to your parents' agony - But you spirit yourself, my dear one - was not your redeeming savior ready to
receive you? Your sweet little brother? Your dear Uncle Lawrence? - but you are beyond my knowledge at once - Ah, I trust in joy,
but I would fain have kept you here - I know not how to go on without you - you were my comfort dear - far more than you thought. I
was thinking how pleasantly we should go on together when we found ourselves at home again - and I would do everything to make
you love me and have confidence in me and bring you along gently and sweetly - Oh! You were indeed "a part of mine and of your
father's heart". When I have told you dear boy how much you depended on me, and felt that you could not do without me - I did not
say too how much I depended on you and oh! My precious boy how gladly would I recall all that was unreasonable - or hasty - or
mistaken in my conduct toward you. I see surely and I did frequently see afterward that I had wronged you - and would have gladly
acknowledged it only that I feared it might weaken your confidence in me and perhaps on that account not be as well for you - and
now I am at home again dear boy. Oh what anguish was mine on returning without you, and feeling that it must still be so, while I
live - to see your little bed that you loved so much - and which I look at many times in the day, and at night feel as if I must see it
shape [?] out again and the clothes turned down for you - and unconsciously look in the morning for it and you - and listen for your
bright cheerful voice your blithe "good morrow" - and oh! to look around and see your books and everything so connected with you your dear self - and now on this Sabbath which you loved so much as you said often how I have marked for you each hour with its
wonted occupation - and oh to think of you kneeling by me at our evening prayer tonight, dear child - has not the Savior made you
His as we so often asked. But now I must kneel alone and beg for strength and support under this crushing sorrow, that the blessed
Savior would comfort the heart of your pain stricken Mother - and help me better to bear the burden of your loss which has brought
desolation such as I have never (with all my former griefs) known.
Dear precious boy! I have passed through the bitter time of leaving our home, and without my child, my own dear Benny. How did I
think of you - dear - in every moment - of all your little parting notes and the many good-byes - and again the ride in those rail cars
agonizing to my soul - we went in to the same little saloon as when we went down to Andover the last time - we three then, now
only two - but we seemed to see you as when there before - and now we are in Boston, still without ,you, but I fancying what I
should do and what I should say to you - continually, and now we must "journey on e'en when grief is sorest" with the whole head
sick and the whole heart faint. I will "look to Jesus" (how often I have directed you to him my precious one) and sought his blessing
for you and myself - but my son, my dear son, how much I feel my own faults in regard to you - I know that I did not take the right
way and should have dealt with you very gently often when I judged hastily and spoke harshly. I can see that I was "unreasonable"
and sometimes almost wonder that you loved me at all. God help me now to correct in bitterness my errors when oh! It is too late for
you to have the sweet benefit of it - and now this Sabbath evening you will come in fancy before me and I sit close by you, with your
hand in mine perhaps, or you will lean against me on the sofa, or as sometimes you did on Sunday evening sit on my lap a little
while and we talk together and say hymns and then play and then by and by you go to bed first putting your arms around me and
laying your dear head on my shoulder and then you get in your bed and we have our Sabbath night kiss - but to think I can never
have another - Oh Benny, I have not valued such a sweet blessing as I ought.
Notes
Class 133— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
March 30, 2015
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
 Might have been able to sway public opinion in European countries
 The book encouraged abolitionists, but enraged Southern slave-owners.
 When Mr. Lincoln first met her, he said, “So, this is the little lady who started the war!”
 She was an abolitionist.
 She had visited plantations in Kentucky.
 She published a novel in March of 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to highlight the cruelty of slavery. The book
featured a wicked overseer, a kindly slave named Uncle Tom, and the injustice he endured. “She made vivid the
plight of the slave as a human being held in bondage.”
Kansas-Nebraska Act:
 Kansas and Nebraska need a government so the RR could travel through
o Douglas wants a Trans-Continental RR-wants it to run through Chicago
 Kansas would enter the Union after addressing the slavery issue through popular sovereignty
 The Nebraska Territory would be further subdivided into smaller territories (such as the Dakotas).
 The Compromise of 1820 was repealed. Slavery could exist in the territories.
 Popular sovereignty would prevail. What does that mean?
 Supported by Franklin Pierce (D)
o Will not get nominated for a second term
o Truly viewed as a poor President and one who leaves the country in a mess
o Pro slavery
o Talks of expansion-Cuba, South America (keep Britain out) northerners view this as the expansion of
slavery
o Alcoholic
Bleeding Kansas:
 Popular Sovereignty would determine the slave question
o Boarder Ruffians from MO would commit voter fraud. They would say they had the right to vote because
they had their wash done in Kansas or buy land for their child who was nine and say he could vote. They
also used force to get to the poles.
 Armed with rifles, Bowie knives, revolvers, and wooden clubs
 Wore no uniforms and had no officers
o There were 2,900 people able to vote in Kansas, 6,300 votes were cast-pro-slavery forces didn’t have to
cheat to win, they outnumbered the free-soilers anyways
 How did the proslavery forces attempt to silence Free Soil voices?
o Legalized slavery, capital offense to assist runaway slave
o Militant organizations form
 Kansas now had two governments-slave and free. Pierce (D) and the Senate (D) recognized the slave
government and the House recognized the free-soiler- whole nation is now divided. In essence-the war starts six
years before Sumter.
 Sack of the town of Lawrence
 Pottawatomie Massacre
o John Brown and several other anti-slavery members kill and hack-up pro-slavery citizens
 Brown and his sons pass out “Beecher’s Bibles” (i.e., guns-Named for the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward
Beecher-Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother) to anti-slavery forces-Sharps rifles were shipped in crates marked
bibles, medicine etc.
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7th Grade Social Studies
Canada, Mexico, & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 134— Brooks Canes Sumner
March 31, 2015
Focus: Based on the honor system duels can only take place between what kinds of people? How does honor relate to
the Brooks-Sumner affair?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will analyze how the Brooks-Sumner affair portrays the intense sectional differences that were dividing the country
in the 1850s.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/1)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/6)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Friday 4/10
Handouts:
Crime Against Kansas Speech-Charles Sumner
I. Brooks VS. Sumner
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Andrew P. Butler
Preston Brooks
John J. Crittenden
Ambrose S. Murray
Charles Sumner
Lawrence Keit
Honor
Edwin B. Morgan
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
Why did Brooks not duel Sumner?
Why did Brooks beat Sumner?
How did this event increase sectional tension between the North and South?
The Crime Against Kansas: The Apologies for the Crime; The True Remedy
Delivered to the United States Senate, 19-20 May 1856
by
Hon. Charles Sumner
The wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any
common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to
the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring
of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of Slavery in the National Government. Yes, Sir, when the whole
world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, making it a hissing to the nations, here in our
Republic, force -- ay, Sir, FORCE -- is openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of
political power. There is the simple fact, which you will vainly attempt to deny, but which in itself presents an essential
wickedness that makes other public crimes seem like public virtues.
This enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of crime which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when
it is understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine feud, not only in this distant Territory, but
everywhere throughout the country. The muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while
I speak, portents lower in the horizon, threatening to darken the land, which already palpitates with the mutterings of
civil war....
Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has
fallen from Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrong: I mean the
Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] and the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who, though unlike as Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza1, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the
elder Senator from his seat; but the cause against which he has run a tilt, with such ebullition of animosity, demands that
the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina
has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of
course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him,
-- though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight: I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always
profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of
her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy
of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea del Toboso is all surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock
equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the Slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of
the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames Equality under the Constitution, -- in other words, the full power in the
National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the
auction-block, -- then, Sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic
knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!
Not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was "measured," the Senator, in the unrestrained
chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls
them "sectional and fanatical"; and resistance to the Usurpation of Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating
fanaticism." To be sure, these charges lack all grace of originality and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator
does not hesitate. He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, now
domineering over the Republic, -- and yet, with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position, unable to see himself as others
see him, or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who
resist his sectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men who strive to bring back the Government to
its original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery was national, while Slavery and not Freedom was sectional, he
arraigns as sectional. This will not do. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senator that it is to himself,
and to the "organization" of which he is the "committed advocate," that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it upon them.
For myself, I care little for names; but, since the question is raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is
in no just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national, -- and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high
places that tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from South Carolina is one of the maddest zealots.
1
Don Quixote is a fictitious novel written by Miguel de Cervantes in the 1600s.
Thus was the Crime consummated. Slavery stands erect, clanking its chains on the Territory of Kansas, surrounded by a
code of death, and trampling upon all cherished liberties, whether of speech, the press, the bar, the trial by jury, or the
electoral franchise. And, Sir, all this is done, not merely to introduce a wrong which in itself is a denial of all rights, and
in dread of which mothers have taken the lives of their offspring, -- not merely, as is sometimes said, to protect Slavery
in Missouri, since it is futile for this State to complain of Freedom on the side of Kansas, when Freedom exists without
complaint on the side of Iowa, and also on the side of Illinois, -- but it is done for the sake of political power, in order to
bring two new slaveholding Senators upon this floor, and thus to fortify in the National Government the desperate
chances of a waning Oligarchy. As the gallant ship, voyaging on pleasant summer seas, is assailed by a pirate crew, and
plundered of doubloons and dollars, so is this beautiful Territory now assailed in peace and prosperity, and robbed of its
political power for the sake of Slavery. Even now the black flag of the land pirates from Missouri waves at the masthead; in their laws you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife; while, incredible to relate, the President,
gathering the Slave Power at his back, testifies a pirate sympathy.
With regret I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler], who, omnipresent in this debate, overflows
with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas has applied for admission as a State, and, with incoherent phrase,
discharges the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There was no
extravagance of the ancient Parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from
truth which he did not make, -- with so much of passion, I gladly add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional
aberration. But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure -- with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes
of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in details
of statistics or diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope[n] his mouth, but out there flies a blunder....
Notes
Class 134— Brooks Canes Sumner
March 31, 2015
Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
Sumner’s Crime Against Kansas Speech:
 Calls Andrew P. Butler a Senator of South Carolina and cousin of Brooks the Don Quixote of slavery
 Immediately after Sumner’s Crime against Kansas speech a South Carolinian “could not go into a parlor, or
drawing-room, or to a dinner party, where he did not find an implied reproach that there was an unmanly
submission to an insult to his State and his countrymen.”
Butler was old and Sumner was a rather large and powerful man. Therefore, Preston Brooks, cousin of Butler “felt it be
my duty to relieve Butler and avenge the insult to my State.”
Brooks could not challenge Sumner to a duel. First, he knew Sumner would not accept. Secondly, a duel can only
happen between equals. To duel Sumner would be to admit he was a social equal and was a man of honor. Therefore
“to punish an insulting inferior one used not a pistol or sword but a cane or horsewhip.”
If he had believed Sumner to be a gentleman, he might have challenged him to a duel. Instead, he chose a light cane of
the type used to discipline unruly dogs. For Southerners, Brooks’ actions were manly and honorable. According to the
Southern Honor System, a duel could only be fought between equals. Whippings, canings, and other forms of physical
abuse were reserved for inferiors. “The lesson that slaveholders wanted to instill was fairly simple: to take up the
slave’s cause was to suffer like a slave, to have no honor, to be condemned to a “social death,,” and to be virtually
outside the rule of law.”
May 22, 1856 about 12:45 P.M-Brooks Canes Sumner on the Senate Floor
 Preston Brooks: “I struck him with my cane and gave him about 30 first rate stripes with a gutta perch
can…Every lick went where I intended. For about the first five or six licks he offered to make a fight but I plied
him so rapidly that he did not touch me. Towards the last he bellowed like a calf.”

Sectionalism
o It was duplicated by slavery proponents with the slogan, “Hit him again!”
o Brooks reported that “fragments” of his cane “are begged for as sacred relics.”
o Inspired John Brown-he visited Sumner and saw his bloodied coat
o Definition of manhood
 South
 Brooks-manly spirit and praised for manliness
 Sumner-unmanly, acting like a woman
 North
 Sumner-true manliness lay in self-control-not force
 Brooks-brute
What happens to both?
 Brooks did not get the 2/3 votes to expel him from Congress (sectional voting)
 Brooks resigns but is elected unopposed back to Congress.
 Sumner’s Chair remains empty for the next 2 and half years-suffered severe psychosomatic shock.
“When the two sections no longer spoke the same language, shared the same moral code, or obeyed the same law, when
their representatives clashed in bloody conflict in the halls of Congress, thinking men North and South began to wonder
how the union could longer endure. ‘I do not see how a barbarous community and civilized community can constitute
one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom (Ralph Waldo Emerson).’”
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7th Grade Social Studies
Canada, Mexico, & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 135— Republican Party and Dred Scott
April 1, 2015
Focus: How did the Dred Scott decision overturn the Missouri Compromise? What was the reaction to this decision in
both the North and the South?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Student Objectives:
1. I will analyze how the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case further increased sectional tensions between
the North and the South.
2. I will analyze the values of the Republican Party.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/6)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Friday 4/10
Handouts:
none
I. Dred Scott
II. Republican Party
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Dred Scott
Roger Taney
Missouri Compromise
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
Why was the Dred Scott so important to the topic of slavery?
What were the effects of the Dred Scott decision in terms of increasing sectionalism?
Notes
Class 135— Republican Party and Dred Scott
April 1, 2015
Dred Scott:
 suing on the ground that his former residence in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory made him free
 Scott couldn’t sue-not a citizen-slave=property
 Congress did not have the power to outlaw slavery in the territories-MO Compromise Unconstitutional.
 Backlash because:
o The court majority consisted of 5 Southerners and one Northerner, with the other Northern judges
dissenting
o 1st time the Supreme Court invalidated a major act of Congress
o Dealing with the Constitutionality of the MO Compromise, the Court took up a question that was not
properly before it
o Thomas Hart Benton- Scott was “turned back from the door, for want of a right to enter the court room—
debarred from suing for want of citizenship; after which it would seem to be a grave judicial solecism to
proceed to try the man when he was not before the court.”
Election of 1856:
 Republican Party created-makes slavery an official party platform
 John C. Fremont (R)
 James Buchannan (D)-wins
o Only president from PA
o Only bachelor president