Topic #9 Coming of the Civil War

What was abolitionism and who were the leading abolitionists during the antebellum era?

Abolitionism

John Russwurm (left) and Samuel Cornish (right)

Freedom’s Journal

David Walker

An Appeal to the Colored Citizens

William Lloyd Garrison

The Liberator

Theodore Dwight Weld

American Antislavery Society

Frederick Douglass

Believing that abolitionists were radicals that could lead to a war, what did more moderate northerners in the antebellum age advocate as a solution to the problem of slavery?

The American Colonization Society hoped to resettle blacks back to Africa

Liberia

Other than advocating for an end to slavery, how did antebellum abolitionists more actively try to help the slaves?

Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman

How did southerners react or reply to the abolitionists in the antebellum era?

Slavery in Bible

Other Southern Arguments in defense of slavery: Slaves weren’t ready for independence. They would be uncontrollable and hurt each other Slaves were better off than northern free white laborers Slaves supported Southern society, which was more refined and better (think chivalry) than cheap, dirty, anything-goes Northern society

In the earlier years of the antebellum age, how and why did the western territories play an important role in the issue of slavery. From 1820 to 1850, what attempts were made to deal with the divisive issue of slavery?

Missouri Compromise of 1820

The Missouri Compromise kept the issue at of slavery at bay until the US won from Mexico additional territory in the southwest in mid-to-late 1840s

David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso

Popular Sovereignty = letting the people in the territory themselves decide whether to have slavery or not

Free-Soil Party

How and why did the American political system from 1852 through the election of Abraham Lincoln fail to prevent the Civil War?

Winfield Scott

Franklin Pierce

1852 Election

Stephen Douglas

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Pottawatomie Massacre

John Brown

“Bleeding Kansas”

Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner

James Buchanan

John C. Fremont

Know-Nothing Party

Dred Scott

Roger Taney

Dred Scott Case

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harper’s Ferry Virginia

John Brown

Firehouse where Brown was captured

John Brown’s hanging

Robert E. Lee

Stephen Douglas

J. C. Breckinridge

Constitutional Union Party

South Carolina’s secession convention

Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter after shelling

Fort Sumter today