1. USHC Standard 3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how regional and ideological differences led to the Civil War and an understanding of the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on democracy in America.
USHC 3.1: Evaluate the relative importance of political events and issues that divided the nation and led to civil war, including the compromises reached to maintain the balance of free and slave states, the abolitionist movement, the Dred Scott case, conflicting views on states’ rights and federal authority, the emergence of the Republican Party, and the formation of the Confederate States of America.

2. What divisions between the North and South led to the Civil War?
• The ideas of popular sovereignty and free soil proved most troublesome when the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the area north of the 36°30’ to deciding the question of slavery by popular vote, thus overturning the Missouri Compromise • Kansas-Nebraska Act: created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory

4. Competition of pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces turned “Bleeding Kansas” into a battleground and led to the emergence of the Republican Party
“Bleeding Kansas”: a series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery free-staters and pro-slavery supporters that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of Missouri between 1854 and At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state.
The Republicans took the free soil position on the expansion of slavery into the territories

5. What was the “free soil” position?
The idea of free soil was NOT abolitionism
The main purpose of the “free soil” position was to oppose the expansion of slavery in the western territories
“free soil” meant that non slave-owning whites did not want to compete with slave labor in the territories
The Republicans took the free soil position, but Republicans and Abraham Lincoln were NOT abolitionists

6. Why did compromise between the North and South eventually become impossible?
The Dred Scott Decision further called into question the democratic principle of popular sovereignty and made compromise impossible
The Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because slaves were property and the Constitution protected the right of slave owners to their property regardless of where they took their slaves
Once the Supreme Court ruled the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional Congress could make no law restricting the expansion of slavery

7. The ruling led Northerners to fear that the Supreme Court, dominated by southern Democrats, might rule state laws against slavery unconstitutional and so the democratic process of popular sovereignty would not be effective in restricting the spread of slavery
The Democratic Party split along sectional lines and the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860 running on a platform of “free soil”

8. What ultimately led to secession and war?
Lincoln’s election in 1860 led southern states to meet in convention and pass articles of secession stating that their rights as states were being violated by the federal government
Secession: the withdrawal from the Union of 11 Southern states in the period 1860–61, which brought on the Civil War
It was the disagreement over expanding slavery into the territories and the election of Lincoln that led southerners to argue that their rights as states were being violated by the federal government and so they had the right to secede

9. Why secession?
Secessionists believed that the federal government under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln would not allow slavery to expand into the territories
This would cause the balance of power in the Senate to be upset, which would eventually lead to Congress eventually abolishing slavery

11. To protect slavery, South Carolina secessionists led other southern states in seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America
The Confederacy began to occupy the federal forts that were located in the South