1. Civil War Unit

2. How did the evolution of slavery in America lead to the Civil War?
In your Planner: 1. Annotated Timeline: Slavery in America 2. Civil War Map HW: None!
Today: Tuesday
5/10/16
Do Now:
1. Fill in your planner.
2. Take out Annotated Timeline from yesterday and open the PowerPoint I sent you in your .
Essential Question:
How did the evolution of slavery in America lead to the Civil War?

3. Ban on Import of Slaves
The Constitution allowed the international slave trade for 20 years during the era of the Middle Passage.
In 1807, Congress passed a law that banned the import of slaves beginning the following year. While illegal imports continued, the ban made imports of slaves much less frequent.
Image retrieved from

4. Textile-Based Industrialization
The Industrial Revolution began in textile mills in England in the 1760s and spread to America in the following decades.
The textile mills of New England (think: Northeast American) radically increased the demand for cotton and boosted the production of textiles.
Image retrieved from
Illustration from 1836 of men and women at work in a textile mill

5. 1835 advertising for purchase of slaves in Maryland
Domestic Slave Trade
Cotton was first grown in the American South in the 17th century (1600’s).
The Lower South’s long summers and fertile river valleys provided an ideal climate for cotton.
Demand for cotton soared in the early 1800’s & so did demand for slave labor on cotton plantations in the Lower South.
At the same time, the Upper South experienced an agricultural depression. Slaveholders in the Upper South sold their slaves “down river” at a huge profit, and cotton surpassed tobacco as the South’s largest cash crop.
1835 advertising for purchase of slaves in Maryland

6. New Slave States and Territories
Despite technology developments, the fastest way to get cotton was still by having humans pick it.
Masters used violence to force slaves to work harder and faster.
As cotton profits grew, planters expanded the areas where cotton was grown. Cotton growers pushed South and West into new land seized from Native Americans.
Plantation owners in these areas bought tens of thousands of slaves to harvest the new cotton that was being planted.
1860 photograph of slaves picking cotton in Alabama