Causes and Events that Contributed to the U.S. Civil War

By aubreykhoury

  • Missouri Compromise

    • Agreement made to keep the balance of slave and free states equal.
    • Missouri was added as a slave state and Maine added as a free state in 1821.

  • Election of 1848 & Free Soil Party

    • distrusted both Cass and Taylor, Wilmot Proviso
    • internal improvements
    • against slavery
    • free government homesteads for settlers

  • Wilmot Proviso

    • Bill proposed after the Mexican War that stated that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any territory gained from Mexico.
    • It was never passed through both houses but it transformed the debate of slavery.

  • Compromise of 1850

    • includes California admitted as a free state,
    • the Fugitive Slave Act Made popular sovereignty in most other states from Mexican- American War

  • Fugitive Slave Act & Personal Liberty Laws

    • A law making it a crime to help runaway slaves.
    • If caught could face up to 6 months in prison and a $1000 dollar fine.
    • Laws passed by Northern states forbidding the imprisonment of escaped slaves

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin

    • Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853 that highly influenced england's view on the American Deep South and slavery.
    • a novel promoting abolition.
    • intensified sectional conflict.

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

    • This Act set up Kansas and Nebraska as states.
    • Each state would use popular sovereignty to decide what to do about slavery.
    • People who were pro-slavery and antislavery moved to Kansas, but some antislavery settlers were against the Act.
    • This began guerrilla warfare.

  • Bleeding Kansas

    • A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory.
    • The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent.

  • Lincoln-Douglas Debate & Freeport Doctrine

    • Douglas wanted slavery determined by popular sovereignty
    • Lincoln accepted slavery where it currently was but did not want it to expand into the new territories

  • Dred Scott Decision

    • A Missouri slave sued for his freedom, claiming that his four year stay in the northern portion of the Louisiana Territory made free land by the Missouri Compromise had made him a free man.
    • The U.S, Supreme Court decided he couldn't sue in federal court because he was property, not a citizen.

  • John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry

    1859; Brown seized a federal arsenal in Virginia, was eventually captured and sentenced to hanging.
    - This event epitomized the depth and passion of sectional feelings.

  • Election of 1860 & Republican Party

    • The election that gave President Lincoln his Presidency. He ran against 2 southerners and even though he did not win the popular vote he won the electoral votes and won the presidency
    • The Republicans won because the democratic party was divided over the issue of slavery.

  • Secession of Eleven Southern States

    • election, South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, the first state to ever officially secede from the United States