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Since the South had cash crops and the cotton industry, the North had factories and manufactoring plants.

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Historically, textbooks have taught that incompatibility between northern and southern economies caused the Civil War. The industrial revolution in the North, during the first few decades of the 19th century, brought about a machine age economy that relied on wage laborers, not slaves.

At the same time, the warmer Southern states continued to rely on slaves for their farming economy and cotton production. Southerners made huge profits from cotton and slaves and fought a war to maintain them. Northerners did not need slaves for their economy and fought a war to free them. Everything else, many textbooks claim, was tied to that economic difference and was anchored by cotton.

The agricultural economy was certainly one cause of the Civil War, but not the only one. Wars are never simple and neither are their causes. Many other factors that helped bring about the war are central to understanding America's past.

So what did start the Civil War-a war that divided the nation, destroyed crops, cities, and railroad lines, and claimed 630,000 lives? Many factors plunged the nation into chaos in 1861. Key political causes include the slow collapse of the Whig Party, the founding of the Republican Party, and, most important, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president.

Religious opposition to slavery increased, supported by ministers and abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison. Geographical conflict over the spread of slavery into western territories and states-areas with neither an industrial nor a farm economy-grew. And political deals, such as the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and Compromise of 1850, and Supreme Court rulings, such as the Dred Scott decision in 1857, divided the country even more. These divisions went far beyond cotton and economics.

Urban vs. Rural, Factory vs. Farm

The central story told in textbooks is that the industrial revolution, beginning with the first textile mill in New England in the 1790s, created an economy that did not need slaves. Southerners, however, continued to use slave labor on their farms because agriculture was profitable. Closely related to this change, cities rose as population centers in the North created an urban society while the South remained primarily agrarian.

Census data on farms and cities, however, reveals that while cities grew rapidly in the North between 1800 and 1860, they did not become leading population centers until 1920, 60 years after the Civil War began. In 1860, there were more farms in the North than in the South, although Southern states, especially in the Cotton Belt, had the majority of large farms (1,000 acres or more).

Census data on farms and cities, however, reveals that while cities grew rapidly in the North between 1800 and 1860, they did not become leading population centers until 1920, 60 years after the Civil War began.

The notion that there were no southern cities was also a myth. The U.S. had eight cities with more than 150,000 residents in 1860 and three of them-St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans-were in slave states. Several other southern cities, such as Louisville, Mobile, and Charleston, had more than 20,000 residents each and were listed among the largest urban places in the U.S.

Similarly, data demonstrate the presence of manufacturing in the South. Richmond, VA, had mills and factories as early as 1800. The 1860 census shows the fairly even spread of manufacturing across the states, with only New York and Pennsylvania recording 17,000 or more manufacturing establishments (see Primary Source Farms Census Data [1860], List of Urban Areas [1860], and Manufacturing Census Date [1860]).

"Cotton is King!" bellowed James Hammond, a U.S. Senator from South Carolina, in 1859, reminding all of the importance of cotton in the South. A major error in the agricultural vs. industrial revolution theme, however, stated in book after book, is that slavery existed to produce cotton.

When I ask college students to talk about the causes of the war, many tell the story of Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. They remind me that there were no factories in the South prior to 1860 and are astonished when I tell them that factories flourished in the South as early as John Adams's Presidency. They gloat over the North's shipping yards and are surprised to learn of the busy shipping industry based in cities such as Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. Their jaws drop when I talk about the thousands of slaves in the South who worked in busy cities, not on quiet plantations.

Slaves did not arrive in the U.S. in the early 1800s to work on cotton plantations. They began to arrive in the early 1600s to work on farms that grew a number of different crops. Sugar and tobacco became the most profitable to meet European demands for crops that did not grow in the colder European climate. Virginia planters made a fortune growing tobacco, making tobacco the first King. Cotton succeeded tobacco on the throne much later. By 1860, however, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana replaced Georgia and South Carolina as leading growers of cotton (see Primary Source Cotton and Slaves Data [1860]).

[Students'] jaws drop when I talk about the thousands of slaves in the South who worked in busy cities, not on quiet plantations.

If farming was so important, why did southerners rush to enslave the colder Kansas and Nebraska territories that remained snow covered in winter months? In these areas, representing only one third of the United States, only 130 slaves lived. Why were southerners eager to bring territories such as New Mexico, Texas, and California-where very little cotton was grown-into the Union as slave states? There were many reasons completely unrelated to cotton. Pro-slavery advocates in California, for example, wanted slaves to prospect for gold and build gold and silver mines.

And if slavery was so central to the southern economy of farming, why did only one fourth of southerners own slaves? Why were so many prominent southerners, such as George Washington, George Wythe, and Thomas Jefferson, opposed, at least in theory, to the institution? Slavery, too, was seen as a moral evil by the hundreds of thousands of northern abolitionists who published newspapers and marched in the streets of small towns and large cities carrying their colorful banners.

Abraham Lincoln did not target farming and cotton in his arguments against slavery; he used morality. He told one audience in Chicago in 1859 that, "I think slavery is wrong, morally and politically." Lincoln told another audience that America could not be seen "fostering human slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of human freedom." And, of course, in his fabled "House Divided" speech he predicted that the United States would be either all slave or all free.

Turbulent politics also led to the war. Following the compromise of 1850, legal, political, and physical battles raged over whether or not to admit Kansas as a slave state, a state with no cotton. Many students believe that the Republican Party, created in 1855, focused on slavery in the 1860 campaign, but their key issues centered on political corruption of the Buchanan Administration. The Republican platform called for containment, not the end of slavery.

Lincoln's election, however, proved to be the icing on the southern secession cake. Only a minority of southern newspapers favored leaving the union prior to Lincoln's election; most supported secession after.

The notion that slave labor for cotton fields caused the Civil War has been reinforced by textbooks and fictional narratives for more than a century. Historians, however, argue for a more nuanced, complex understanding.

Other factors leading to war include John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, raucous battles over the Fugitive Slave Act, and President Buchanan's refusal to arbitrate between North and South, all connected to the increasingly bitter debate over slavery. In addition, northern newspapers campaigned against states' rights, southerners resented new taxes, and the Fort Sumter crisis turned into a pivotal moment (see Primary Source Editorials [1860-1861]).

The notion that slave labor for cotton fields caused the Civil War has been reinforced by textbooks and fictional narratives for more than a century. Historians, however, argue for a more nuanced, complex understanding. The Civil War was fought for many reasons, not solely or even primarily because of the growing importance of cotton on southern farms. Moving away from economic differences and cotton as simplistic causes leads to a more complex and far more interesting story.

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Historically, textbooks have taught that incompatibility between northern and southern economies caused the Civil War. The industrial revolution in the North, during the first few decades of the 19th century, brought about a machine age economy that relied on wage laborers, not slaves.

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The south wanted more of the states to have slavery

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Nicholas Bunner -

The chief force beyond internal US conflict in the nineteenth century, which repeatedly threatened the state of the Union and eventually drove the nation to civil war, was not the institution of slavery itself, not necessarily the question of whether or not persons could be owned and treated as chattel property or not. No, rather it was the question of that institution's expansion, to the newly acquired territories which were continually added to the ever-growing republic, that was the issue at hand. The reason for this conflict over merely the spread of slavery, rather than its entire existence, was largely due to concerns over the balance of political power in the United States, as the slaveholding South sought to increase the power it wielded on the national stage, through which it could protect its own interests, in the form of enshrining slavery in federal law as an inalienable right of theirs. At the same time, northern whites feared that the expansion of slavery, and the corresponding growth of the Southern political bloc, would neuter their own political power, and that the United States would eventually become totally dominated by elite Southern slaveholders protecting their own interests. When northern congressmen fought against the annexation of Texas, they did so because it requested to be a slave state. They didn't intend to end slavery in the United States; they didn't intend to launch a national abolitionist campaign. They simply feared, as former President John Quincy Adams warned his supporters, that the annexation of a slave-holding territory as vast as Texas would undermine New England's political power forever. And it was the zeal with which southern politicians strove to silence and any and all opposition to slavery, imposing a gag rule on its debate in Congress, and suing for libel those who spoke out against slavery, that enabled northerners like John Quincy Adams to galvanize their supporters against the expansion of Southern power. They were able to, quite easily and effectively, make the case to their fellow northerners that the Southern power brokers cared only for their own interests, and were willing to go so far as to silence the fundamental rights of fellow whites, their rights to free speech, the ability to speak their minds about any topic, in defense of their own selfish pursuits (Baptist 268). William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist journalist, wrote against slavery for years, but when he garnered the most support was when he railed against southerners' efforts to suppress any opposition to their policies (313). Anti-slavery sentiment in the north was at its most zealous whenever northerners perceived their own political freedom as coming under fire. Opposition to slavery stemmed from the fear among northern whites that, if slavery were to continue to expanding to new territories, which would inevitably join the southern slave-holding coalition, they would become politically irrelevant, no longer able to influence the sway of national politics.

Southerners, meanwhile, used every legal tool at their disposal to protect their rights to own people, and force them to work for their masters' profit. The common interest that united them, that forged them into the bloc that dominated US politics until the civil war, was that of slavery and its defense. They viewed slavery, as well as its expansion, as a fundamental right of theirs, inalienable and granted by the Constitution. Additionally, they saw it as the key to their economic prosperity and, whenever faced with difficulty, they knew that by expanding slavery to new lands, opening up ever-increasing production possibilities, they could continue to ensure their own well-being (300). And they fought tooth and nail to ensure the primacy of their constitutional interpretations: they determined to see slavery protected absolutely by constitutional law under Supreme Court rulings, to see the institution spread to the new territories of the United States, to see its inalienability embedded within every law of the land, and they declared that anything less than this absolute and unconditional victory would leave their status in the Union an untenable affair (346). Indeed, every new territorial acquisition, every application for statehood, drove this unerring resolve home. Over the question of Missouri's admission, John C. Calhoun privately informed John Quincy Adams that denial of Missouri's rights to hold slaves would necessitate that the South allied itself with Britain once more, against the northern Union, and that this return to colonial rule would be driven by absolute necessity, as southerners saw slavery's expansion as the very foundation of their future (156). Two years of incredible tension saw debate rage on Congress' floor before the Missouri Compromise was formed and, even then, many southern politicians won their election and re-elections shortly after on the basis of opposition to the Compromise. The problem had been pushed off, momentarily, but was an ever-present, underlying threat. As long as the United States continued to expand, the question of slavery's expansion would return. And Americans were hungry for expansion, as they wished to become one of the great world powers, and began to see it as their right and very destiny to extend their power and dominion as far as they could, securing forever America's place at the top layer of world power. Sure enough, the crisis returned with Texas, a vast territory the US had secured from Mexico, which had asked for admission to the Union as a slave state. Southerners were adamant in their belief that unless they had the freedom to expand as they wished, their entrepreneurial and political ambitions would be inexcusably curtailed. On the national stage, new rhetoric gained traction among southern politicians: a slave-holding West may be the required price of continued Union (333). Increasingly, southerners were seeing inextricable ties between slavery's growth and their own economic and political power.

Northerners, for their part, were terrified by the solidarity and strength of the burgeoning southern bloc. On the Missouri issue, something happened which few had anticipated: the House of Representatives had actually passed the bill banning slavery in Missouri, due to heavy northern support. Though the Senate rejected the House's version of the bill, and debate would continue for years before the Missouri Compromise would be reached, the truth could not be denied: northerners were ready to draw a line. It wasn't slavery itself they were fighting against; they weren't quite ready to act against their own self-interest by removing the cotton stream that formed the lifeblood of the young nation. No, it was slavery's expansion; it was the further growth of southern power. They were frightened that they were losing any semblance of control in the national government, that soon the country would be overrun by elite slaveholders. John Quincy Adams wrote that the situation revealed the nasty truth lurking beneath the surface: they were on a path that ended in blood. Southerners stood steadfast in their belief that slavery was inseparable from any of their other inalienable rights, while it became clear that, if pushed, there would be massive northern opposition to slavery's expansion (155). Indeed, by the next session of Congress, William Plumer of New Hampshire declared that it had become unthinkable for any free-state politician to condone slavery's expansion, that any further expansion would render the North powerless, handing the government over to "arrogant planter-politicians" (156). The question of Missouri's status on a state had presented a very different choice from that of Lousiana's acquisition: this wasn't about securing the United States' freedom to expand by eliminating roadblocks of European empire; this was solely a question of whether the new state would be admitted as slave-holding or free. The vehemence of the debates, and the utter polarization along sectional lines revealed the stark contrast between the two power bases, and the extent to which they would fight for their continued position of power. The South saw slavery's expansion as inextricably tied to its own prosperity, whilst the North refused to allow the South to grow even more, and thus render the North a mere subject state within the Union. The northerners, the mainstream, at least, weren't fighting against slavery itself, and they never had been. Even among northerners, emancipation was unthinkable: they couldn't live alongside massive populations of free blacks, and they couldn't very well ship millions of people somewhere else. They never tried to break slavery, merely to halt its advance. And it was that struggle, over whose vision of the future would emerge dominant and which region would become the junior partner that drove the conflict of the nineteenth century.

Works Cited

Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic, 2014. Print.

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The Expansion of Slavery in the United States

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Nicholas Bunner - The chief force beyond internal US conflict in the nineteenth century, which repeatedly threatened the state of the Union and eventually drove the nation to civil war, was not the institution of slavery itself, not necessarily the question of whether or not persons could be owned and treated as chattel property or not.

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With John Brown raiding Harpers Ferry in West Virginia,

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Facts, information and articles about John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry, a one of the causes of the civil war

Raid On Harpers Ferry Facts

Date

October 16-18, 1859

Location

Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia

Forces Engaged

88 US Marines (USA)
21 Raiders

Casualties

2 Marines
10 Raiders

Raid On Harpers Ferry Articles

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Raid On Harpers Ferry summary: The Harpers Ferry raid conducted by fanatical abolitionist John Brown and 21 followers in October 1859 is considered one of the major events that ultimately led to the American Civil War. Brown was hanged December 2 for murder and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia.

John Brown Assembles An Army

The 21 men accompanying Brown in what he dubbed the "Provisional Army" were a mixed lot, united only in their hatred of slavery. Five were black and 16 white. The raiders' second-in-command was John Henry Kagi, a former schoolteacher. William Leeman was a shoemaker from the state of Maine. Stewart Taylor was Canadian-born. John E. Cook came from a well-to-do family. One of the black men, Dangerfield Newby, hoped Brown's actions would help him to rescue his wife from slavery. Two others, John Copeland and Lewis Leary, were former slaves like Newby.

Brown himself had operated tanneries, attempted (unsuccessfully) to become a minister, and had tried and failed at various other business enterprises. In Kansas Territory, he and a small group of fellow abolitionists had killed five pro-slavery men near Pottowatamie Creek. When he discussed his plans for a raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry with Frederick Douglass, in August 1859, Douglass warned him, "You'll never get out alive."

John Brown at Harpers Ferry

After sundown on Sunday, October 16, 1859, Brown and his men left a farm he had rented under the name "Isaac Smith" in Western Maryland, across the Potomac from Harpers Ferry. Walking through a heavy rain, they reached the town in darkness, capturing several watchmen and cutting telegraph wires. Hayward Shepherd, a black man who was a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad baggage handler, confronted them and was killed, the first fatality of the raid.

They seized the arsenal and armory, as well as Hall's Rifle Works, a private enterprise, and took 60 hostages from among prominent men of the area, including Lewis Washington, a great-grand nephew of George Washington. If Brown hoped the slaves of these men would join his revolution, he was disappointed; none did. The raiders also made a serious mistake when they detained a B&O train for five hours, but then let it go on to Baltimore. The conductor notified authorities in Washington after the train reached Baltimore around noon on the 17th.

The Occupation of Harpers Ferry

When armory workers arrived on Monday morning and discovered Brown and his raiders had taken over the buildings, word went out and local militia companies assembled. They surrounded the armory. The raid's second fatality occurred around 7 a.m., when Thomas Boerly of Harpers Ferry was shot and killed. Before the day ended, two more local residents, George W. Turner and the mayor of Harpers Ferry, Fontaine Beckham, were also killed.

Brown, with one of his sons and four other riflemen, took nine of the prisoners and holed up in the armory's fire engine house, a smaller structure about 30×35 feet. Later, this became known as "John Brown's Fort." Several of his accomplices tried to escape; some succeeded, others were killed in the attempt.

Robert E. Lee Takes Command at Harpers Ferry

When the B&O conductor's message about what was happening at Harpers Ferry reached President James Buchanan in Washington. A detachment of 86 U.S. Marines was dispatched to Harpers Ferry, led by First Lieutenant Israel Green and accompanied by Major William W. Russell. The major was the paymaster for the Marine Corps, but as a staff officer he could not command the force. Secretary of War John B. Floyd had placed overall command in the hands of a former superintendent of West Point, Army Lieutenant Colonel (brevetted colonel) Robert E. Lee, who had come up from Washington, accompanied by Lt. J.E.B. (Jeb) Stuart of the 1st U.S. Cavalry, who had carried Floyd's message to Arlington to summon Lee. The two Army officers, riding a special train ordered for them by B&O president John W. Garrett, caught up with the Marines at Sandy Hook, about a mile and a half east of Harpers Ferry.

Upon reaching Harpers Ferry, Lee determined that many of the local militia soldiers in the town were drunk. He promptly ordered all saloons closed.

On the morning of the 18th, Lee sent a summons to the insurgents ordering them to lay down their arms and surrender. When, as he expected, they rejected his demands, he sent Lt. Green, clad in his dress uniform, and 12 of the Marines to storm the fire engine house; Major Russell accompanied them, armed with nothing but a rattan stick. Three of them were furnished sledge hammers for breaking in the door. Once inside, they were to attack with bayonets, lest stray bullets hit some of the hostages. Lee explained to the Marines how they could distinguish the insurgents from the captives and ordered the storming party "not to injure the blacks detained in custody unless they resisted." Several slaves had been taken along with their owners and armed when Brown's men rounded up hostages.

In his report to the Secretary of War the following day, Lee described the action of the storming party:

"At the concerted signal the storming party moved quickly to the door and commenced the attack. The fire-engines within the house had been placed by the besieged close to the doors. The doors were fastened by ropes, the spring of which prevented their being broken by the blows of the hammers. The men were therefore ordered to drop the hammers, and, with a portion of the reserve, to use as a battering-ram a heavy ladder, with which they dashed in a part of the door and gave admittance to the storming party. The fire of the insurgents up to this time had been harmless. At the threshold one marine fell mortally wounded. The rest, led by Lieutenant Green and Major Russell, quickly ended the contest. The insurgents that resisted were bayoneted. Their leader, John Brown, was cut down by the sword of Lieutenant Green, and our citizens were protected by both officers and men. The whole was over in a few minutes."

Casualties in John Brown's Raid

The Marine killed was Private Luke Quinn, the third man through the door, shot through the abdomen. The man behind him, Pvt. Mathew Ruppert, suffered a slight facial wound. Lieutenant Green inflicted a deep cut on the back of John Brown's neck, but the fanatical abolitionist was still alive. No captives were harmed, and there were no further deaths among the townspeople.

Among the raiders, two were bayoneted to death in the fire house. In all, 10 raiders died of wounds received during the raid on Harpers Ferry; the first to die was Dangerfield Newby, who had hoped to win his wife's freedom. Six more were hanged, and five escaped, several of them later serving in Union regiments during the Civil War.

Stuart, with a few Marines, was sent to the farm Brown had rented. They found Sharp's carbines, revolvers, "a number of sword pikes, blankets, shoes, tents, and all the necessaries for a campaign," as Lee described it.

Robert E. Lee on John Brown's Motives

Of Brown, Lee wrote, "He avows that his object was the liberation of the slaves of Virginia, and of the whole South; and acknowledges that he has been disappointed in his expectations of aid from the black as well as white population, both in the Southern and Northern States. The blacks, whom he forced from their homes in this neighborhood, as far as I could learn, gave him no voluntary assistance. The servants of Messrs. Washington and Allstadt, retained at the armory, took no part in the conflict, and those carried to Maryland returned to their homes as soon as released. The result proves that the plan was the attempt of a fanatic or madman, who could only end in failure; and its temporary success, was owing to the panic and confusion he succeeded in creating by magnifying his numbers."

That evening, a false rumor that a band of men had attacked a home in Pleasant Valley, Maryland, sent a number of families scurrying to Harpers Ferry for protection.

In The Aftermath Of John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Brown was convicted of murder, insurrection and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was hanged at Charles Town, the seat of Jefferson County, near Harpers Ferry on December 2, 1859. His attempts to capture the federal arsenal and free "all the slaves in the South" had failed, but abolitionists quickly made him into a martyr for freedom. It is often said he accomplished with his death what he could not have accomplished while living.

Robert E. Lee would leave the U.S. Army in the spring of 1861 and win eternal fame as the commander of the largest Confederate army. His chief of cavalry with that army would be Jeb Stuart. Israel Green would also resign his commission to join the Confederacy, though he was offered a colonelcy in the militia of his native Wisconsin. He also rejected an offer to be a lieutenant colonel in Virginia's Confederate infantry, choosing instead to accept the rank of captain in the Confederate States Marine Corps. He rose to the rank of major and became adjutant and inspector.

Of the principal U.S. military officers at Harpers Ferry, only Maj. Russell did not go to the Confederacy. He was still Paymaster of the United States Marine Corps when he died in October 1862, three years after John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid. Learn more about John Brown

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Facts, information and articles about John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry, a one of the causes of the civil war Raid On Harpers Ferry Facts Date October 16-18, 1859 Location Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia Forces Engaged 88 US Marines (USA) 21 Raiders Casualties 2 Marines 10 Raiders Raid On Harpers Ferry Articles Explore articles from [...]

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Bleeding Kansas was a series of violent outbreaks between the north and the south

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Said to have been coined by Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, the label "Bleeding Kansas" was first fixed on that strife-ridden territory by antislavery publicists. The opening of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854 under the principle of popular sovereignty provoked a protracted political crisis in both Kansas and the nation at large. Rival governments had been established in Kansas by late 1855, one backed by proslavery Missourians, the other by antislavery groups. Although the Pierce and Buchanan administrations recognized the former, Republicans as well as a number of northern Democrats deemed it a fraud imposed by Missouri "border ruffians." Civil conflict in Kansas accompanied the political polarization. The volatility to be expected of a frontier area was compounded by the activities of parties interested in the slavery issue-both the Missourians and the northerners who reputedly shipped free-state settlers and armaments to the region.

Did You Know?

During the Civil War, Kansas suffered the highest rate of fatal casualties of any Union state, largely because of its great internal divisions over the issue of slavery.

Hostilities between armed bands seemed imminent in late 1855 as well over a thousand Missourians crossed the border and menaced Lawrence, a free-state stronghold. On May 21, 1856, ruffians actually looted that town. In response, John Brown orchestrated the murder several days later of five proslavery settlers along Pottawatomie Creek. Four months of partisan violence and depredation ensued. Small armies ranged over eastern Kansas, clashing at Black Jack, Franklin, Fort Saunders, Hickory Point, Slough Creek, and Osawatomie, where Brown and forty others were routed in late August.

John W. Geary, appointed territorial governor in September, managed to cool the "border war" with the aid of federal troops. But Kansas had hardly ceased bleeding-as became apparent in 1858 with the Marais des Cygnes massacre of five free-state men and pronounced disorder in several counties. Although Kansans in that year once and for all rejected the proslavery Lecompton constitution, such violence continued on a smaller scale into 1861.

The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

The groundbreaking series reimagined. ROOTS premieres Memorial Day at 9/8c on HISTORY.

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Bleeding Kansas - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Said to have been coined by Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, the label "Bleeding Kansas" was first fixed on that strife-ridden territory by antislavery publicists. The opening of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854 under the principle of popular sovereignty provoked a protracted political crisis in both Kansas and the nation at large.

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Harriet Tubman helped slaves from the south escape to the north

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Quaker Abolitionists

The Quakers are considered the first organized group to actively help escaped enslaved people. George Washington complained in 1786 that Quakers had attempted to "liberate" one of his enslaved workers.

In the early 1800s, Quaker abolitionist Isaac T. Hopper set up a network in Philadelphia that helped enslaved people on the run. At the same time, Quakers in North Carolina established abolitionist groups that laid the groundwork for routes and shelters for escapees.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1816, was another proactive religious group helping fugitive enslaved people.

What Was the Underground Railroad?

The earliest mention of the Underground Railroad came in 1831 when enslaved man Tice Davids escaped from Kentucky into Ohio and his owner blamed an "underground railroad" for helping Davids to freedom.

In 1839, a Washington newspaper reported an escaped enslaved man named Jim had revealed, under torture, his plan to go north following an "underground railroad to Boston."

Vigilance Committees-created to protect escaped enslaved people from bounty hunters in New York in 1835 and Philadelphia in 1838-soon expanded their activities to guide enslaved people on the run. By the 1840s, the term Underground Railroad was part of the American vernacular.

How the Underground Railroad Worked

Most of the enslaved people helped by the Underground Railroad escaped border states such as Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland.

In the deep South, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made capturing escaped enslaved people a lucrative business, and there were fewer hiding places for them. Fugitive enslaved people were typically on their own until they got to certain points farther north.

People known as "conductors" guided the fugitive enslaved people. Hiding places included private homes, churches and schoolhouses. These were called "stations," "safe houses," and "depots." The people operating them were called "stationmasters."

There were many well-used routes stretching west through Ohio to Indiana and Iowa. Others headed north through Pennsylvania and into New England or through Detroit on their way to Canada.

Fugitive Slave Acts

The reason many escapees headed for Canada was the Fugitive Slave Acts. The first act, passed in 1793, allowed local governments to apprehend and extradite escaped enslaved people from within the borders of free states back to their point of origin, and to punish anyone helping the fugitives. Some Northern states tried to combat this with Personal Liberty Laws, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1842.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was designed to strengthen the previous law, which was felt by southern states to be inadequately enforced. This update created harsher penalties and set up a system of commissioners that promoted favoritism towards owners of enslaved people and led to some formerly enslaved people being recaptured. For an escaped person, the northern states were still considered a risk.

Meanwhile, Canada offered Black people the freedom to live where they wanted, sit on juries, run for public office and more, and efforts at extradition had largely failed. Some Underground Railroad operators based themselves in Canada and worked to help the arriving fugitives settle in.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was the most famous conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Born an enslaved woman named Araminta Ross, she took the name Harriet (Tubman was her married name) when, in 1849, she escaped a plantation in Maryland with two of her brothers. They returned a couple of weeks later, but Tubman left again on her own shortly after, making her way to Pennsylvania.

Tubman later returned to the plantation on several occasions to rescue family members and others. On her third trip, she tried to rescue her husband, but he had remarried and refused to leave.

Distraught, Tubman reported a vision of God, after which she joined the Underground Railroad and began guiding other escaped slaves to Maryland. Tubman regularly took groups of escapees to Canada, distrusting the United States to treat them well.

Frederick Douglass

Formerly enslaved person and famed writer Frederick Douglass hid fugitives in his home in Rochester, New York, helping 400 escapees make their way to Canada. Former fugitive Reverend Jermain Loguen, who lived in neighboring Syracuse, helped 1,500 escapees go north.

Robert Purvis, an escaped enslaved person turned Philadelphia merchant, formed the Vigilance Committee there in 1838. Former enslaved person and railroad operator Josiah Henson created the Dawn Institute in 1842 in Ontario to help escapees who made their way to Canada learn needed work skills.

New York City-based escapee Louis Napoleon's occupation as listed on his death certificate was "Underground R.R. Agent." He was a key figure guiding fugitives he found at the docks and train stations.

John Parker was a free Black man in Ohio, a foundry owner who took a rowboat across the Ohio River to help fugitives cross. He was also known to make his way into Kentucky and enter plantations to help enslaved people escape.

William Still was a prominent Philadelphia citizen who had been born to fugitive enslaved parents in New Jersey. An associate of Tubman's, Still also kept a record of his activities in the Underground Railroad and was able to keep it safely hidden until after the Civil War, when he published them, offering one of the clearest accounts of Underground Railroad activity at the time.

Who Ran the Underground Railroad?

Most Underground Railroad operators were ordinary people, farmers and business owners, as well as ministers. Some wealthy people were involved, such as Gerrit Smith, a millionaire who twice ran for president. In 1841, Smith purchased an entire family of enslaved people from Kentucky and set them free.

One of the earliest known people to help fugitive enslaved people was Levi Coffin, a Quaker from North Carolina. He started around 1813 when he was 15 years old.

Coffin said that he learned their hiding places and sought them out to help them move along. Eventually, they began to find their way to him. Coffin later moved to Indiana and then Ohio, and continued to help escaped enslaved people wherever he lived.

John Brown

Abolitionist John Brown was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, during which time he established the League of Gileadites, devoted to helping fugitive enslaved people get to Canada.

Brown would play many roles in the abolition movement, most famously leading a raid on Harper's Ferry to create an armed force to make its way into the deep south and free enslaved people by gunpoint. Brown's men were defeated, and Brown hanged for treason in 1859.

By 1837 Reverend Calvin Fairbank was helping enslaved people escape from Kentucky into Ohio. In 1844 he partnered with Vermont schoolteacher Delia Webster and was arrested for helping an escaped enslaved woman and her child. He was pardoned in 1849, but was arrested again and spent another 12 years in jail.

Charles Torrey was sent to prison for six years in Maryland for helping an enslaved family escape through Virginia. He operated out of Washington, D.C., and had previously worked as an abolitionist newspaper editor in Albany, New York.

Massachusetts sea captain Jonathan Walker was arrested in 1844 after he was caught with a boatload of escaped enslaved people that he was trying to help get north. Walker was fined and jailed for a year, and branded on his right hand the letters "SS" for Slave Stealer.

John Fairfield of Virginia rejected his slave-holding family to help rescue the left-behind families of enslaved people who made it north. Fairfield's method was to travel in the south posing as a slave trader. He broke out of jail twice. He died in 1860 in Tennessee during a rebellion.

End of the Line

The Underground Railroad ceased operations about 1863, during the Civil War. In reality, its work moved aboveground as part of the Union effort against the Confederacy.

Harriet Tubman once again played a significant part by leading intelligence operations and fulfilling a command role in Union Army operations to rescue the emancipated enslaved people.

Sources

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad. Fergus Bordewich.
Harriet Tubman: The Road To Freedom. Catherine Clinton.
Who Really Ran the Underground Railroad? Henry Louis Gates.
The Little Known History of the Underground Railroad in New York. Smithsonian Magazine.
The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad. The New Yorker.

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Underground Railroad - Definition, Background & Leaders | HISTORY

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The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the South. The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it operated from the late 18th century to the Civil War, at which point its efforts continued to undermine the Confederacy.

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The south didn't agree with the election of Lincoln

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The Election of 1860

In the mid-19th century, the issue of slavery was threatening to divide the United States. More than three decades of compromise had not strengthened the Union, but rather polarized it, so that by the 1850s, politics were largely a matter of geography. Southerners generally supported policies that supported agriculture and expanded slavery, while Northerners largely supported policies that supported business and contained slavery.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates had further divided the Democratic Party. In 1860, the extreme pro-slavery Southern Democrats (also known as 'fire-eaters') stormed out of the convention where the Party had gathered to select a presidential candidate. What was left of the Northern (or 'National') Democratic Party chose Stephen Douglas after much debate. The Southern (or 'Constitutional') Democratic Party nominated the current Vice President, John Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union Party was formed by Northerners and Southerners who sought to preserve the Union by taking the text of the U.S. Constitution as their platform. They chose John Bell to run for president. Recognizing that the turmoil in the nation was a distinct advantage, the Republicans just needed a candidate to win the West (plus Pennsylvania and New Jersey). They turned to Abraham Lincoln.

The Republican Party painted a romanticized image of 'Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter,' making him the poster child for free labor - proving that even a poor American could climb his way to the top with intelligence and hard work. Republicans campaigned almost exclusively in the North, with limited efforts in border states.

Tuesday, November 6, 1860, was Election Day and had the second-highest voter turnout on record at 81.2%. The results were oddly scattered. All four candidates won some states, but only Douglas won states in both the North and South. In fact, Lincoln came in dead last in the Border States and didn't even appear on the ballot in most parts of the South. Breckinridge, for his part, actually won more counties than any other candidate.

In the end, Lincoln garnered only about 40% of the popular vote, but because of the population of the North and West, he won the Electoral College easily. Though his opponents declared that Lincoln only won because the Democrats were split, the numbers tell a different story. Even if all anti-Lincoln voters had united behind one candidate, Lincoln would still have carried the Electoral College and become president in 1860. Still, considering 60% of American voters chose anyone but Lincoln, a new question faced the nation: would they accept the results of the election?

South Carolina's Secession

Within days of Lincoln's election, South Carolina met to discuss secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina voted unanimously to repeal its ratification of the Constitution and withdraw from the United States of America. Then, on Christmas Eve they approved the text of their articles of secession and wrote a defense of their decision. They pointed out that the Constitution protected slavery. The Northern states had breached their contract by refusing to assist in the return of fugitive slaves, so the Southern states were released from their obligation to the Union. They believed that Lincoln - once he was inaugurated - would not protect their rights or sovereignty. Furthermore, they cited the Declaration of Independence as support for their right to abolish a government that did not protect the rights of its people (although it's worth noting here that most of the 'Founding Fathers' did not believe that the Declaration asserts the right of secession).

You might remember that this wasn't the first time South Carolina had threatened to secede, but it was the first time they had actually done it. This didn't have to mean war. In fact, the outgoing president - James Buchanan - didn't support secession, but he sympathized with South Carolina's reasons and felt that a president had no constitutional means of stopping them. And, at the same time that South Carolina was deciding to sever its ties with the Union, one last-ditch effort was made by Senator John Crittenden to avert the crisis. He proposed restoring the Missouri Compromise Line at 36°30' and extending it all the way to the Pacific. All territory north of the line would be forever free and all territory south of the line would receive federal protection for slavery. Furthermore, he wanted to secure it with a Constitutional Amendment. Republicans refused to support the Crittenden Compromise, and the dominoes began to fall.

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southern secession & the new confederacy - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Lincoln's Election, Southern Secession & the New Confederacy - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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In the mid-19th century, the issue of slavery was threatening to divide the United States. More than three decades of compromise had not strengthened the Union, but rather polarized it, so that by the 1850s, politics were largely a matter of geography.