The Road to War United States Civil War Content Area and Grade Level Fourth Grade TN Benchmarks –At Level 2, the student is able to –4.6.spi.2. determine.

The Road to War

United States Civil War

Content Area and Grade Level

• Fourth Grade TN Benchmarks– At Level 2, the student is able to

– 4.6.spi.2. determine how the issue of slavery caused political and economic tensions between government policy and people's beliefs (i.e., abolitionists, plantation owners, state's rights, central government, Loyalists).

Reasons

There were 2 main factors that led the United States into the Civil War. Slavery played a part of each factor:

•Economic Factors

•States Rights

Economic Issues• By 1850 our nation’s territory

stretched over forest, plain and mountain. Within these boundaries lived 23 million people in a union comprising 31 states.

• The 3 main regions of the U.S. had their own economy.

1850

Business & Industry

Cotton

Wheat

Big Business and Economy

• New England and the Middle Atlantic states were the main centers of manufacturing, commerce and finance. Principal products of these areas were textiles, lumber, clothing, machinery, leather and woolen goods.

Machinery and Economy• The Midwest, with its boundless

prairies and swiftly growing population, flourished.

• The introduction of labor-saving machines made possible an increase in farm production.

• The Midwest grew nearly half the nation’s wheat.

Machinery

• The McCormick reaper made possible an increase in wheat production in the Midwest.

King Cotton and Economy• The South’s economy centered

on agriculture.

• Tobacco was important, but cotton eventually became the dominant crop.

• Slaves were used to cultivate all these crops, though cotton most of all.

Slavery

• Slavery was inherently a system of brutality and coercion in which beatings and the breakup of families through the sale of individuals were commonplace.

Slave States

Slave StatesFree States

Territories

Freedom for Slaves?

• The plantation owners feared that if freed, blacks would compete with them for land.

• Just as important, the freeing of slaves raised the standing of the poor whites on the social scale. The rich plantation owners did not want this to happen.

Humane?

• Southern politicians insisted, for example, that the relationship between capital and labor was more humane under the slavery system than under the wage system of the North.

Slavery

• The greatest problem of slavery was not the behavior of individual masters and overseers toward the slaves, but slavery's fundamental violation of every human being's inalienable right to be free.

States Rights

• As new territories were being settled the issue of slavery again came to center stage.

• Where the newly developed states to be free states or slave states?

No New Slave States

• Many Northerners believed that if not allowed to spread, slavery would ultimately decline and die.

• California, New Mexico and Utah did not have slavery, and when the United States prepared to take over these areas in 1846, there were conflicting suggestions on what to do with them.

No New Slave States

States Rights• Extremists in the South urged that all

the lands acquired from Mexico be thrown open to slave holders.

• Antislavery Northerners, on the other hand, demanded that all the new regions be closed to slavery.

• Another group proposed that the government should permit settlers to enter the new territory with or without slaves as they pleased and let the people themselves determine the question.

Breaking the Nation Apart

• The South wanted to have their own nation and be able to decide what laws to have. The North did not want the country to be broken apart.

Congress Tries to Settle States Rights Question

• Compromise of 1850• Fugitive Slave Law• Kansas-Nebraska Act• Dred Scott Decision

Underground Railroad

• Many Northerners continued to help fugitives escape, and made the Underground Railroad more efficient and more daring than it had been before.

Discover the secret message hidden in this slave

song.

Lincoln• Abraham Lincoln had long regarded

slavery as an evil. In a speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, he declared that all national legislation should be framed on the principle that slavery was to be restricted and abolished.

Lincoln Wins

Succession!

• The southern states said that if Lincoln won the Presidential election, they would secede (leave) the union. South Carolina was the first southern state to seceded from the union.

Succession!

• By February 1, 1861, six more Southern states had joined South Carolina in succession. On February 7, the seven states adopted the constitution for the Confederate States of America. The other southern states as yet remained in the Union.

WAR!

• The battle began in April of 1861 when the Confederate Army took over Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.  

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Civil War, Death and Destruction• A war had begun in which more

Americans would die than in any other conflict before or since.

Writing Situation: Pretend you are a news reporter during the years prior to the Civil War.

Directions for Writing: Write an news article explaining the causes leading to the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, 1858

• “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.”

Additional Resources

• A Day in the Life of A Slave

• An Interview with a Slave (listen to a first-hand experience)

• Civil War Quiz

• American Civil War Homepage

• Civil War Photographs