What were the Causes of the Civil War?

What were the Causes of the Civil War?

T. Seay, BHS

What were the causes of the Civil War?

1. Manifest Destiny– American pride in democracy– Desire to move west, acquire land, and spread

democracy– With new territory came the question of whether

it would be slave or free • Wilmot Proviso (1846) : suggestion that slavery be

banned in all new territories. Very controversial. Led to deep sectional conflict (fist fights on House floor, e.g.)

Manifest Destiny

What were the causes of the Civil War?

What were the causes of the Civil War?

2. Compromise of 1850: After the War with Mexico:– California admitted as a free state– Borders of Texas settled– Status of rest of former Mexican territory to be

decided (later) by POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY• Kind of left the slavery issue hanging: nobody was

happy with the outcome• Southern leaders started threatening to SECEDE

What were the causes of the Civil War?

3. Stereotypes of North and South grew more intense– South seen as a backward place– North seen as elitist and meddling

What were the causes of the Civil War?

• Literature – The “American Renaissance”• Social critics expressed concerns about society in the

1840s and 1850s• Henry David Thoreau (“Civil Disobedience,” Walden)• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

– Made many in North aware of hardships of slavery

What were the causes of the Civil War?

• FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT (1850)– Passed by southern legislators in Congress– Made northern states return people who had

escaped slavery in the South and fled to the North• Angered northern abolitionists: RADICALIZED THEM!

Warning Fugitive Slaves

What were the causes of the Civil War?

What were the causes of the Civil War?

4. KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (1854)– Opened Great Plains to settlement; slavery to be

decided by POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY– What actually happened is that it turned the plains

into a virtual battle ground between pro-slavery settlers and anti-slavery settlers

– “BLEEDING KANSAS”: open warfare in Kansas territory (1856)

– Similar violence happened in U.S. cities (New York, New Orleans)

What were the causes of the Civil War?

5. The Dred Scott decision (1857)• Scott was enslaved to a Missouri man who took

him to Illinois and Wisconsin territory (free state/free territory)– Scott married and had a child in free territory– 1846: Got back to Missouri and sued master for

freedom (he had resided in free territory)– Reached Supreme Court 11 years later– Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that gov. could not

interfere with movement of “property”

Dred Scott died in 1858

What were the causes of the Civil War?

What were the causes of the Civil War?

• Dred Scott decision made more northerners angry

What were the causes of the Civil War?

6. JOHN BROWN’S RAID• Brown, a radical ABOLITIONIST, wanted to go into

South and start a general slave uprising• 1859: led group of 22 white and African-American

men to raid U.S. military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia– Huge failure (no uprising, 8 men dead, including 2 of

Brown’s sons)– Brown hanged for treason– Aroused fear in South of slave rebellions

John Brown

What were the causes of the Civil War?

What were the causes of the Civil War?

• Election of ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1860)– Votes divided between North and South: split the

country in two– The South SECEDED from the Union

South Carolina secedes

What were the causes of the Civil War?

What were the causes of the Civil War?

• Eleven states seceded from the Union and formed the “Confederate States of America”– South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,

Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina

confederate states

What were the causes of the Civil War?