March 12, 2007 - The Crisis Turns Violent

Today's agenda:
1. Review homework
2. Putting It Together (pg 44)
HW: Putting It Together puzzle piece (this does NOT go in the INB)

Today in history, we began "putting it all together." Specifically, we began putting together all the factors, both North and South, that will lead to the outbreak of the Civil War. We took a lot of time today to carefully review last night's homework, titled "The Crisis Turns Violent." After the Compromise of 1850, the war of words between North and South turned hot, and certain events led to violent behavior.

The publishing of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 sparked outrage among Southerners and Northerners alike. Readers in the North were deeply moved, and the issue of slavery became not merely a political issue, but a moral issue for the first time. Critics in the South charged that Harriet Beecher Stowe never spent any time in the South, and used sweeping generalizations to paint the White South as a cruel and amoral society.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 sent shockwaves through the North as the promises of the Missouri Compromise were broken. John Brown was so enraged that he and his followers hacked five pro-slavery men to death with broadswords at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas. After a highly irregular vote for the Kansas legislature, the territory exploded in violence. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces each created their own legislatures in two separate capitals. Chaos ensued.

The caning and Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks and the Dred Scott decision also pushed sectional conflict further to the brink of war. By 1858, the North had several reasons to be up in arms. It will ultimately be two events, one in 1859 and one in 1860, that will drive the South to secede from the Union.

What two events could lead a people to want to break away from their own nation? Find out in our next class!

RVI