The One that Started it All..

The Election of 1860 ignited the start of the civil war.  It is also responsible for being the reason for the deep divisions of slavery.  These divisions can help explain the reason behind the events of the Fugitive Slave Act and Bleeding Kansas.  The photo below shows how the country was mostly divided between Lincoln and Breckenridge.  Lincoln was against slavery and won every Northern State.  Breckenridge saw slavery as a priority so the Southern states supported him.  Steven A. Douglas only was victorious in one state along with the New Jersey mess.  He split Jersey with Lincoln.  Douglas believed that people should vote on whether slavery should exist or not.  Missouri supported him because people crossing into Kansas to fight where pro slavery.  John Bell wanted to make no changes to the Constitution, which meant he thought slavery should stay so he won the states as you can see are between pro and anti-slavery.  Lincoln went on to win the election with just the support from the North.  The class groups then analyzed the five images of Civil War Art.  One of the images drawn (shown in our video) shows an American flag in the sky on April 11th, 1861.  That was the night before the confederate attacks on Fort Sumter.  Lincoln's men on April 12th fought the rebellions which was the official start of the Civil War.

Link to our Educreations Video 



https://www.educreations.com/lesson/embed/30080837/?ref=embed"

Who has the Keys to Success?

The pull of the trigger to start the Civil War had been inching closer and closer during the 1850's.  Our class learned about the North's and the South's statistics and how their strategies.  We analyzed many documents to figure out how each sides' differences could help lead them to victory.  The first document my group looked at was a railroad and slave density document.  It showed the railroad system and the entrenched slavery cotton production in the South.  The next one was called Slavery by the Numbers.  It gave facts about what the slaves did, how many there were, and what typical master was.  We then looked at the Resources for each side.  There were many pie charts that showed each advantage including population, slave population, and industrial and agricultural advantages.  We also read the Strengths of the North and South.  It showed what each side was particularly strong in and how they could benefit from them. 

After the document analysis, everyone in the class had to make their own Infographic.  The point of making it was to show how the important advantages of each side could affect the outcome of the Civil War.  There were many important points.  One was population where the North occupied 75% of the entire United States' population so that way, they could send people to go to war and have others stay back and help work farms and industries.  Another important point was the railroad mileage.  The North had 22,000 miles of railroads which is 13,000 more miles than the South at only 9,000.  The North had a big advantage here because they were able to transport more people, goods, but most importantly weapons and ammunition for fighting.  The next big point was the agricultural resources.  In our previous units, we have determined that slavery was entrenched in Southern-American society to produce substantial amounts of cotton and crops.  By the 1860s, the South had produced 2.28 billion pounds of cotton reaching a revenue of almost $200 million dollars in exports.  The South sold to foreign countries and the North.  The North's textile mills needed cotton for production and their economy would decrease dramatically had the South stopped selling cotton to them.  The South had the power to do that if they wanted to.  However, that would also lead to their economy degenerating as well.  Lastly, there was the war plan.  The North had a very clever strategy called the Anaconda Plan.  The North cut off the oceanic ports of the South and stopped the shipping through the Mississippi River.  That meant that goods nor weapons and supplies could be imported.  The South used an act of attrition, and they waited for an attack from any direction inland.  The North overall had more advantages than the South did.  Oh, and they also had the right kind of people, like the ones that wanted to abolish slavery, not keep it.




Link to my Piktochart

 https://magic.piktochart.com/output/4854999-untitled-infographic
          

Laws are Being Passed, but Not One Helps the Big Problem

There were may causes to the Civil War.  Slavery entrenched in our society and the country's morality of slaves were the overall reason.  Between the span of 1850 to 1859, many events occurred that got the attention of the government.  All of these events led to acts or laws being passed resolving it.  However, no one was really focusing on the big picture and that was slavery itself.  The 'elephant in the room' which was our class lesson is the debate over slavery for 19th century American politics.  In class, we read and learned about all of the events that took place.  Prior to these events, we learned about the Missouri Compromise that took place in 1820.  The South wanted fair representation in Senate so the compromise split the northern free and the southern slave states to 11 each.  However, all territory north of the 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude line would be free states.  Then came the gold rush in the unclaimed area of California in 1849.  California requested to join the union as a state in 1850.  This would be unfair to either the North or South because one side would have more representation than the other.  Henry Clay then proposed a five part compromise.  The first part was Texas.  Texas got to claim land in dispute and were given $0.01 billion (just a complicated way to say $10 million).  They were given this to pay off their debt to Mexico from the previous Mexican-American war.  This helped pro-slavery.  The second was part was the matter of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah.  The decision on whether or not they would be slave states would be determined by the inhabitants when applying for statehood.  This also favored pro-slavery.  Third was the abolishment of the slave trade (buying and selling) in D.C..  Although slavery was still allowed there, this favored anti-slavery.  Then California got to join the nation as a free state which obviously satisfied anti-slavery.  Lastly was the Fugitive Slave Act which overall stated that if a slave escaped to the North, they were not free and they had to be returned to their owner.  So, if you were a slave, you were a slave no matter where you were and this went for pro-slavery.  Another big event that occurred was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.  Senator Steven Douglas wanted to have a northern transcontinental railroad.  However, the land which it was going to pass through would only be beneficial to slave labor.  He suggested that slave labor should extend into Kansas and Nebraska but that would violate the Missouri Compromise.  However, the act did pass and it made it much easier for southern slave owners to extend northward over the line.  This benefited pro-slavery because slavery was extending and American politicians passed the act without worrying about the Missouri Compromise.  This helps show that the 'elephant in the room' is the decisions and laws within slavery, not just slavery as a whole.    

 (I give permission to Liam Dwyer, Ben Fischer, Jamie Callahan, and Julia Pustizzi to use this image.  We all helped make it but it was created by me.  Just so Mrs. Gallagher knows.) 

 

Clearly, slavery as one big topic was being ignored by American politicians.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to more hell revolving around slavery.  Bleeding Kansas of 1856 is safe to say probably the most violent of these acts.  Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner gave a speech that lasted two days.  It was called The Crime Against Kansas.  The bold senator was an anti-slavery advocate and he criticized southerners attracting and forcing slavery upon these territories.  He made insults to Senator Andrew Butler.  Butler's insane      nephew Representative Preston Brooks took it to heart and two days after Sumner's speech, Brooks went to Sumner's desk and brutally beat him with a cane.  People in the South honored him and this made the North very angry.  Southern advocates also burned down the anti-slavery capital which was Lawrence, Kansas.  The other capital was for Pro-slavery was Lecompton, Kansas.  In return, another group of insane people only this time from the North roused five pro-slavery supporting men from their beds, dragged them to their homes, and executed them in front of their families.  This event you could say favored both pro and anti- slavery because both sides inflicted violence on the other.  One last event was the Dred Scott case in 1857.  Dred Scott was born into slavery.  He was a slave in Missouri.  However, the importation of slaves was illegal at that time.  This led to him filing a lawsuit against his owner because he and his wife had lived in states where slavery was illegal.  He wanted to apply for citizenship but his slave owner would not let him.  However in his case, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against the his case.  This definitely favored pro-slavery because now slaves could not become citizens nor sue in court.  Slaves were slaves no matter where and the Missouri compromise turned out to be something that kept going further and further away in the distance.  This is what eventually led northerners to the attack which was the beginning of the Civil War.  All of these events help show that the 'elephant in the room' is slavery as one, but it the surrounding aspects caused by slavery and no one saw nor cared and probably there were politicians that didn't want to care but want to make it seem like they did.