WHistorians debating the origins of the American Civil War focus on the reasons why seven Southern states declared their secession from the United States, why they united to form the Confederate States of America, and why the North refused to let them go. While virtually all historians in the 21st century agree that conflicts over slavery caused the war, they disagree sharply regarding which kinds of conflict—ideological, economic, political, or social—were most important.
WThe 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged triumphant. Lincoln's election served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War.
WAbolitionism in the United States was the movement that sought to end slavery in the United States, and was active both before and during the American Civil War. In the Americas and Western Europe, abolitionism was a movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and to free the slaves. In the 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers condemned slavery on humanistic grounds, and English Quakers and some Evangelical denominations condemned slavery as un-Christian. At that time, most slaves were Africans or descendants of Africans, but thousands of Native Americans were also enslaved. In the 18th century, as many as six million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, at least a third of them on British ships to North America. The Colony of Georgia originally prohibited slavery.
WAmerican Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses is a book written by the American abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké, and her sister Sarah Grimké, which was published in 1839.
WBleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, United States, between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and murders carried out in Kansas and neighboring Missouri by pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery "Free-Staters". It has been called a civil war of its own, and a Tragic Prelude to the great American Civil War which immediately followed it. About 200 people were killed.
WJohn Brown was an American abolitionist. Brown, who said that speeches, sermons, and petitions were accomplishing nothing, that "moral suasion is hopeless", saw violence as necessary if slavery in the United States were to be eliminated. An intensely religious man who at one point studied for the ministry, and who effortlessly quoted the Bible from memory in his letters and speeches, Brown believed he was raised up by God to strike the death blow to human slavery. "He evinced a good deal of pride in stating that he had seven sons to help him in the cause." Brown said repeatedly that he was following the Golden Rule. He said the Declaration of Independence—all men are created equal—"meant the same thing".
WAnthony Burns was a fugitive slave whose recapturing, extradition, and court case led to wide-scale public outcries of injustice, and ultimately, increased opposition to slavery by Northerners.
WJohn Caldwell Calhoun was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina who served in many important positions including as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. He is remembered for strongly defending slavery and for advancing the concept of minority states' rights in politics. He did this in the context of protecting the interests of the white South when its residents were outnumbered by Northerners. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860–1861.
WThe Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including a relative of Brooks. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it contributed significantly to the country's polarization over the issue of slavery. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" and the use of violence that eventually led to the Civil War.
WThe Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. It also set Texas's western and northern borders and included provisions addressing fugitive slaves and the slave trade. The compromise was brokered by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen Douglas with the support of President Millard Fillmore.
WThe Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.
WJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for or Tragic Prelude to the Civil War.
WThe Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce. Douglas introduced the bill with the goal of opening up new lands to development and facilitating construction of a transcontinental railroad, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act is most notable for effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise, stoking national tensions over slavery, and contributing to a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas".
WThe Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Until the 17th Constitutional Amendment of 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures, so Lincoln and Douglas were trying to win control of the Illinois General Assembly for their respective parties. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln later faced after his victory in the 1860 presidential election. Illinois was a free state, and the main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery in the United States, particularly its future expansion into new territories.
WElijah Parish Lovejoy was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist. He was shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, during their attack on the warehouse of Benjamin Godfrey and W. S. Gillman, where Lovejoy's press and abolitionist materials were stored.
WThe Missouri Compromise was United States federal legislation that admitted Maine to the United States as a free state, simultaneously with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the US Senate. As part of the compromise, the legislation prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.
WThe Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of 1858 in was a key event in the history of abolitionism in the United States. A cause celèbre and widely publicized, thanks in part to the new telegraph, it is one of the series of events leading up to Civil War.
WThe Ostend Manifesto, also known as the Ostend Circular, was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. slaveholding expansionists. At the national level, American leaders had been satisfied to have the island remain in weak Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France. The Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security. It resulted from debates over slavery in the United States, manifest destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine, as slaveholders sought new territory for the expansion of slavery.
WPennsylvania Hall, "one of the most commodious and splendid buildings in the city," was an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built in 1837–38. It was a "Temple of Free Discussion", where antislavery, women's rights, and other reform lecturers could be heard. Four days after it opened it was destroyed by arson, the work of an anti-abolitionist mob. Except for the burning of the White House and the Capitol during the War of 1812, it was the worst case of arson in American history up to that date.
WStar of the West was an American civilian steamship that was launched in 1852 and scuttled by Confederate forces in 1863. In January 1861, the ship was hired by the government of the United States to transport military supplies and reinforcements to the U.S. military garrison of Fort Sumter. A battery on Morris Island, South Carolina manned by cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy fired upon the ship, effectively the first shots fired in the American Civil War.
WThe Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War.
WNathaniel Beverley Tucker was an American author, judge, legal scholar, and political essayist.
WUncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".
WVirginia v. John Brown was a criminal trial held in Charles Town, Virginia, in October of 1859. The abolitionist John Brown was quickly prosecuted for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, murder, and inciting a negro insurrection, all part of his raid on the United States federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He was found guilty of all charges, sentenced to death, and was executed by hanging on December 2.
WThe Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.