A Divided Nation

Abraham Lincoln

an Illinois lawyer who gained attention after he engaged in a series of debates on slavery when running for Illinois senator (he lost).

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Dred Scott

American slave who sued his master for keeping him enslaved in a territory where slavery was banned

John Brown

an abolitionist who attempted to lead a slave revolt and raid the federal armory at Harper's Ferry

Uncle Tom's Cabin

a novel telling the story of a fictional slave in the south that depicted slavery’s brutality

Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin

became the best-selling novel of the 1800s and had major influence on Northerner's view of slavery

Charles Sumner

Abolitionist senator who openly criticized the South and slavery

Sumner Caning

Preston Brooks (Pro Slavery) beat Charles Sumner (Anti-slavery) on the floor of the senate because of Sumner's criticisms of slavery; Sumner ended up with severe injuries and yet the south hailed Brooks as a hero

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves, allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal, and required their return to slaveholders

Effect of the Fugitive Slave Act

-much harder for abolitionists to help fugitives
-escaped slaves were no longer safe in the North
-corrupt: commissioners earned more $$ by declaring someone guilty of being a runaway than by declaring someone as innocent

Dred Scott Decision

Supreme Court ruling that declared that NO African Americans, slave or free, could be a citizen, and declared that the US could not ban slavery in any of the territories

Kansas-Nebraska Act

allowed voters residing in these two territories to decide via popular vote whether or not the territories became slave states or free states

Bleeding Kansas (1856)

A series of violent conflicts in the Kansas territory between anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions over the status of slavery.

Election of 1860

Slavery was so divisive that the democrat voters were split. 4 candidates ran. Lincoln, the only Republican, won-- he had the MOST votes out of all 4 candidates, but the majority of people did not vote for him

Effects of the Election of 1860

No southern states elected Lincoln; they feared an abolitionist was in the Whitehouse; Southern states began to secede rather than have Lincoln as their president

Secession Argument

"We voluntarily joined the U.S. so we can voluntarily leave it."

secede

formally break away or separate

secession

the act of seceding

Lincoln's 1860 Views

hated slavery but claimed that President did not have power to abolish it
had no intention of ending slavery in the South; only wanted to prevent slavery from spreading to new states
believed secession was illegal