The American Civil War
Early Decisions Regarding
Slavery
Northwest Ordinance of 1787 – banned
slavery west of Pennsylvania, north of
Ohio River.
 Constitution

– Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Over in 1807
– Fugitive Slave Clause

Missouri Compromise (1820) – Missouri
admitted as slave state, Maine admitted as
free state, slavery prohibited above 36
degree latitude line.
The Fugitive Slave Clause
Article Four, Section Two, Clause Three
 No Person held to Service or Labour in
one State, under the Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall, in
Consequence of any Law or Regulation
therein, be discharged from such Service
or Labour, but shall be delivered up on
Claim of the Party to whom such Service
or Labour may be due.

Slavery in the Territories
The Wilmot Proviso
 Free Soil or Constitutional Protection?

– Free Soil – prevent the extension of slavery.
– Constitutional Protection – Congress did not have
right to exclude slavery from territories, in fact had a
duty to protect it.
1850

Four Issues
– Rush of 80,000 gold miners to CA qualified it for
statehood, but CA’s entry as free state would upset
slave/free state balance in Senate.
– Unresolved status of the Mexican cession in the
Southwest. The Texas-New Mexico boundary was
also disputed, with Texas claiming everything east of
Santa Fe.
– Existence of slavery and huge slave market in nation’s
capital.
– Southerners resented the lax federal enforcement of
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
The Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850
– CA entered union as free state
– Territorial governments were organized in New
Mexico and Utah letting local people to decide
whether to permit slavery. (Popular Sovereignty)
– Texas-New Mexico border settled.
– Slave trade, but not slavery, abolished in Washington,
DC.
– Fugitive Slave Act.
Polarization and the Road to
War
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) – popular sovereignty
would decide whether slavery would be allowed in the
two territories.
 “Bleeding Kansas” – mini Civil War – proslavery v.
antislavery forces.

– Sack of Lawrence.
– Massacre at Pottawatomie.
– Caning of Charles Sumner.


Dred Scott Case
The Illinois Debates
– Lincoln v. Douglas

John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry, VA
The Dred Scott Case
The Case - Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their
freedom because they had been taken out of Missouri
into territories where slavery was prohibited.
 The Decision

– Dred and Harriet Scott were not citizens and had no right
to sue.
– The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional – congress
did not have the power to ban slavery anywhere in the
nation.
– Scotts being taken in and out of free territory did not
affect status.

Implications – According to the Supreme Court,
slavery was legal everywhere it had previously been
prohibited by congress.
Election of 1860

Election of 1860
– Democratic Party - Stephen Douglas and
John C. Breckinridge.
– Constitutional Union Party – John Bell.
– Republican Party – Abraham Lincoln.
The Divided House Falls


After Lincoln’s election South Carolina,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana and Texas seceded from the Union.
The Confederate States of America
– President Jefferson Davis


Three Options – (1) Compromise (2) Let
seven states “go in peace.” (3) Secessionist
states could be compelled to return.
Fort Sumter – The Civil War Begins
The Union Severed

Response to Fort Sumter
– Lincoln/North
– Lee/South

Balance of Resources
– North – population, railroads, industrialization,
shipyards, merchant fleet.
– South – military leadership, agricultural resources,
South fighting a defensive war.

Border States
– Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas –
seceded after Fort Sumter.
– Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri – stayed loyal to Union.
 Suspension of Habeas Corpus

Lincoln and Davis
Clashing on the Battlefield 18611862



Advances in weaponry
Union General Winfield Scott – The Anaconda Plan
War in the East
– Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) – Scott replaced by McClellan
– McClellan Attacked Richmond, Peninsula Campaign
– Antietam – Major Consequences: Emancipation Proclamation,
European decision to not recognize Confederacy.

War in the West
– Ulysses S. Grant
– Shiloh Church

Naval Warfare
– The Merrimac (the Virginia) v. The Monitor

Stalemate
Problems on the Home Front


Cotton Diplomacy – Confederacy believed they would get
European recognition because French and British would
want their cotton. Not successful.
Common Problems
– Monetary Problems
– Manpower Shortages
– Draft Riots

“During our forced marches and hard
fights, the soldiers have been compelled
to throw away their knapsacks and there
is scarcely a private in the army who has a
change of clothing of any kind. Hundreds
of men are perfectly barefooted and there
is no telling when they can be supplied
with shoes.”
– Confederate Captain
The Tide Turns
Emancipation Proclamation – declared all
slaves in states still in rebellion, free.
Blacks allowed to join the Union army.
 Changing Military Strategy

– Lee, “there is nothing to be gained by this
army remaining quietly on the defensive.”
– Gettysburg
– Meade replaced by Grant
– Total War
– William Tecumseh Sherman

Surrender at Appomattox, April 9th, 1865
“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 do 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
helped to save this Union.” Lincoln
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth.“
President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863