PW - The 1850s, con't Lesson

The 1850s, continued

Portrait of John Brown

John Brown

One famous abolitionist, John Brown, decided to fight slavery with violence and killing. In 1856, believing he was chosen by God to end slavery, Brown commanded family members and other abolitionists to attack proslavery settlers in Kansas, killing five men. In 1859, he led a group of white and black men in a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia). They seized federal weapons and ammunition, killing seven people. Brown's plan was to deliver the weapons and ammunition to slaves, who would then use them in an uprising against slaveholders and proslavery government officials, but the raid failed, and Brown was captured by U.S. Marines led by U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee. Eventually, Brown was convicted of treason against the state of Virginia and executed by hanging. Many Americans thought Brown was a terrorist killer. Others thought he was an abolitionist martyr.

Preserving the Union

Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. South Carolina voted to secede (to separate from) the United States, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and then Texas. They formed a new country called the Confederate States of America (also known as the "Confederacy"). When they attacked the U.S. Army base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, the long-feared Civil War had begun.

97 ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S “HOUSE DIVIDED” SPEECH (1858), delivered on the occasion of his nomination as the Republican candidate for senator from Illinois. This was probably Lincoln’s most radical statement about the implications of the slavery issue, the one in which he predicted that “this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” It got him in some trouble with Northern conservatives, especially when opponents quoted the remark out of context in order to suggest that Lincoln was an abolitionist. Lincoln did not, in this speech or on any other occasion before the war, call for the abolition of slavery.President Lincoln believed preservation of the United States (also known as the "Union") was the most important task for any U.S. president. He did not believe the southern states had the right to secede from the Union and thought they were merely rebelling against the government. He never considered the Confederacy a separate country. When Lincoln called for a large volunteer army to preserve the Union, more states - Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee - seceded to join the Confederacy. Although Lincoln had often stated he only wished to restrict the spread of slavery instead of abolish it, over time he did embrace the idea of ending slavery in the United States.

The War Started for a Reason

The Civil War started because northerners and southerners had serious differences of opinion about states' rights, slavery, and economics. Northern leaders were more likely to believe in the supremacy of the national government and be against the expansion of slavery. Southern leaders were more likely to believe in states rights and often thought of themselves as citizens of their state first and their country second. Most southern leaders supported the continuation of slavery. Also, differences in how each section of the nation had developed created opposing viewpoints about economic policies such as tariffs. When trying to remember the values and beliefs of the important leaders of the Civil War era, remember which side each was on and the basic beliefs that separated the two sides.

 

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