SAQ/MCQ

Things to consider for your SAQ evidence:

  • Northern and Mid-Atlantic states abolition of slavery or gradual emancipation

  • Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery above the Ohio River in Northwest Territory

  • Missouri Compromise as evidence of tensions and sectionalism

  • Development of political parties with regional loyalties

  • Crisis over tariffs and nullification (Tariff of Abominations; Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions)

  • impasses over annexation/acquisition of new territory

  • Breakdown of series of compromises in the 1850s (Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas)

  • Growing economic division between the North and South (e.g., Industrialization, Transportation, and Communication)

  • The Hartford Convention as an example of Northern sectional interest causing conflict with the South.

  • The enactment of the “Gag Rule” prohibiting the discussion of slavery in Congress Fugitive Slave Law

  • Aftermath of Dred Scott v Sandford Responses to slave rebellions/revolts (Nat Turner, German Coast, John Brown’s)

  1. The Missouri Compromise was a federal law that defined boundaries for where slaverywould and would not be permitted to expand in new territories. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott ruled that the federal government had no authority to regulate slavery, as it was determined to be the responsibility of individual states or territories to decide, making the Missouri Compromise null and void.

  2. Southern Democrats were the most vocal supporters of slavery and generally believed that individual states, not the federal government, had the authority to regulate slavery as they saw fit. Because the United States Constitution did not specifically address the regulation of slavery, pro slavery Democrats used the Tenth Amendment to argue that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to dictate how states enacted laws regulating slavery.

  3. The Republican Party emerged following the Dred Scott decision partially to advocate restrictions on the expansion of slavery to western territories and future states. While many Republicans were vocal abolitionists and wanted the immediate end of slavery, others had been free soilers, and though opposed to slavery, sought to isolate its existence and use other methods to see its demise

  4. The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 granted African Americans full citizenship rights under the United States Constitution. However, the enactment of segregation and Jim Crow laws following the end of Reconstruction meant that this amendment was unevenly enforced.

  5. During Radical Republican control of the US Congress in the immediate years after the Civil War, amendments and legislation was put forward and ratified, abolishing slavery and granting equal protection of all citizens of the United States, regardless of race.

  6. As the United States expanded its territory during the Antebellum, disagreements over the allowance of slavery in the territories led to sectional conflicts at the federal level.

  7. As the Civil War waged on, support for the Northern cause was often dependent on battlefield success. In the early years of the war, the Union suffered defeat after defeat, causing the northern population to become skeptical. In addition, following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the war took on a new goal, abolishing slavery. Lincoln, moving into an election year of 1864, would use every opportunity, such as the Gettysburg Address, to gain support for the war effort

  8. With the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, the infamous Supreme Court decision made in Dred Scot v Sandford was repudiated, as citizenship and equal protection under the law for all citizens was guaranteed in the Constitution.

  9. As the Reconstruction governments of the South began to organize and meet the requirements of the Republican Congress for read emittance, the former advocates of the Confederacy began to regain positions of power. Coupled with the fear and terror perpetuated by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the newly established voting rights of freedmen were limited, allowing the Democratic Party to regain control of the South.

  10. In November of 1876, American voters had favored the Democratic candidate, Governor Samuel Tilden of New York, over the Republican, Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, by a popular vote margin of 51% to 48%. Both parties claimed to have won three Southern states, which would give each candidate an electoral win. Congress appointed a special electoral commission of 15 members to decide the winner of the election.

  11. The federal election commission created by the US Congress in 1876, which declared Hayes the winner, resulted in the Republican compromise with Democrats, who would accept the results of the election if all federal troops were removed from the South. This marks the end of the period known as Reconstruction

  12. The Civil War was a continuation of the sectionalism and conflict that characterized United States politics since the creation of the nation, and, thus, it was not a change or break from the past.

  13. The Civil War represented an unprecedented breakdown of United States politics, a sharp contrast to the general consensus in the political system in the period prior to the outbreak of the war, which made it a major break from the past.