# data[].attributes.body
Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave who became a union spy for the civil war. She helped slaves escape from their masters.

# data[].attributes.body
John Brown took men on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry Virginia trying to start an armed slave revolt.

# data[].attributes.body
People tried to get rid of slavery and the south didn't like it.

# data[].attributes.body
Dred Scott was a slave who sued his master's widow for freedom. He said that his master led him onto free soil in Illinois so he would be free.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a slave who, in the 1840s, chose to sue his master's widow for his freedom. He argued that his master, John Emerson, escorted him onto free soil in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, so he'd legally-even if inadvertently-granted him freedom.

In 1857, the case reached the United States Supreme Court. The justices ruled against Scott. John Emerson's widow had since remarried, and she returned Scott, his wife, and his daughters to their owners, the Blow family, in May 1857, just months after the ruling.

Both Dred and Harriet Scott died shortly thereafter, never to witness the legacy of their fight. The Dred Scott case was a major event on the road to the Civil War.

The Supreme Court's ruling was a provocative opinion. It stated flatly that Blacks had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect" and rejected the right of any territory to ban slavery within its own borders. Inflaming public opinion in the North, the case led to a hardening of antislavery attitudes and a surge in popularity for the new antislavery Republican Party.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a slave who, in the 1840s, chose to sue his master's widow for his freedom. He argued that his master, John Emerson, escorted him onto free soil in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, so he'd legally-even if inadvertently-granted him freedom. In 1857, the case reached the United States Supreme Court.

# data[].attributes.headline
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

# data[].attributes.subject
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

# data[].attributes.body
It is a novel published in serial form in an anti-slavery newspaper. It depicted the evils of slavery and offered a vision of slavery that few people had seen before.

# data[].attributes.body
Bleeding Kansas was a bunch of violent confrontations between pro and anti-slavery forces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bleeding Kansas - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.body
John Brown was an abolitionist who killed many people. He started in Kansas then left to carry his fight closer to slavery.

# data[].attributes.body
The Missouri Compromise laid the groundwork of the fighting and disagreements between the north and the south for the civil war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Missouri Compromise was passed into law in 1820 and regulated slavery in the western states. Though it was passed forty-one years before the Civil War, it still played a large role in laying the groundwork for the war that was to come. It contributed to the division and disagreement between north and south regarding the issue of slavery and made the issue more contentious between the two sides of the country.

The Missouri Compromise was written by Henry Clay, and both pro and anti-slavery proponents in Congress agreed to it. The Compromise forbade slavery in Louisiana and any territory that was once part of it in the Louisiana Purchase. Slavery was also forbidden anywhere north of the 36/30 parallel, except within the territory of Missouri (which was being proposed as a state), where it was to be allowed.

This compromise remained the law of the land until it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and shortly thereafter was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dredd Scott case. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed slavery in Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory, which were higher than the 36/30 parallel. It also allowed future states that were admitted to the union to allow the population of that territory to decide themselves through voting whether they would allow slavery or not. The Kansas-Nebraska Act did away with the prohibition on slavery in the areas established by the Missouri Compromise.

By repealing the Missouri Compromise, people in the anti-slavery north viewed Congress as allowing the south to exert more control in Congress, and they resented it. It also made the south seem more aggressive in their pro-slavery sentiments. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise lead to the formation of the anti-slavery Republican party.

During the thirty-four years the Missouri Compromise was active, most Americans were happy with it. They viewed it as an important compromise between north and south and as sacred as the Constitution itself. Many people view the compromise as postponing the inevitable Civil War, which would probably have occurred sooner than it did without the relative peace the Compromise brought. Others felt that it made the north seem more aggressive in its anti-slavery views and contributed to southern resentment, which may have led to the Civil War occurring sooner.

The Missouri Compromise was meant to create balance between slave and non-slave states. With it, the country was equally divided between slave and free states. Admitting Missouri as a slave state gave the south one more state than the north. Adding Maine as a free state balanced things out again. Thomas Jefferson predicted dividing the country this way would eventually lead the country into Civil War. Others felt it was the perfect solution to the slave and anti-slave problem the country was facing at the time.

Whether the Missouri Compromise directly lead to the Civil War or postponed it depended on which side of the country you lived in at the time, and how you looked at it politically. Either way, it was an important early milestone in the road to the war that lead to freedom for millions of people and a new way of life in the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Missouri Compromise: What Was it and How Did it Contribute to the Civil War?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Missouri Compromise was passed into law in 1820 and regulated slavery in the western states. Though it was passed forty-one years before the Civil War, it still played a large role in laying the groundwork for the war that was to come.

# data[].attributes.body
As the U.S. expanded west, the south feared that they would lose there rights and power.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To many nineteenth century Americans, the expansion of slavery into Western territories caused a great deal of controversy. Since the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, the North and the South had grown further apart in terms of economy, ideology, and society. The North, especially, was afraid that the South would force its "peculiar institution" upon the entire Union. These fears were realized when the expansion of slavery into western territories entered Congressional debates. The federal government, hoping to prevent a civil war, temporarily resolved the issue with compromises. As the compromises appeared to become more one-sided, however, sectional divides between the North and South became more pronounced.

View Edward L. Ayers on the Civil War from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo:
The Sectional Divide between the North and the South
While the South utilized slavery to sustain its culture and grow cotton on plantations, the North prospered during the Industrial Revolution. Northern cities, the center of industry in the United States, became major metropolises due to an influx of immigrants. With this willing and cheap workforce, the North did not require a slave system. Although some northerners found the institution of slavery morally reprehensible, most did not believe in complete racial equality either. Slavery became even more divisive when it threatened to expand westward because non-slave holding white settlers did not want to compete with slaveholders in the new territories.
First Steps Towards Controlling Slavery and Westward Expansion
Politicians were forced to deal with the issue of slavery and its westward expansion as early as the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The States had previously maintained a shaky balance in the Senate with an equal number of representatives from both Slave and Free States. As Missouri prepared to enter the Union as a Slave State, this tentative balance threatened to come undone. Henry Clay of Kentucky temporarily solved the issue by crafting the Missouri Compromise, bringing Missouri into the Union as a Slave State and, as a balance, Maine entered as a Free State. The Compromise also made future bondage illegal in all areas of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel with the exception of Missouri; all future states below this line would become Slave States. This Compromise solved the immediate problem of slavery in the Louisiana Purchase by sweeping the real issue of slavery under the rug in order to placate both northern and southern politicians. In the years to come, politicians of both northern and southern states would not be so quick so compromise.
Conquests from Mexico
When the United States entered into a war with Mexico over Texas and its western territories, the issue of extending slavery in the west resurfaced in Congress. [explain] Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania first introduced a potential solution to the problem in 1846. His proposed amendment stated:

"...the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."

Wilmot's proviso suggested that slavery should be prohibited in any territories acquired from Mexico. This would encourage white farmers to move west and implied that slavery was not an institution which should stretch far beyond its borders. Fearful of the southern "Slave Power" in Congress, many northern politicians quickly backed Wilmot's amendment. Meanwhile, southern politicians railed that such an act was unconstitutional and vehemently blocked the passage of the Wilmot Proviso. As a result, it never passed and the issue of slavery in westward territories remained a topic of heated debate.
Territories Becoming States
Congress was forced to revisit this issue yet again when California petitioned for statehood in 1849. Because California appeared to have anti-slavery inclinations, southern democrats were reluctant to let it enter the Union and disrupt the sectional balance in Congress. The resulting Compromise of 1850 was supposed to ensure that the interests of both sides remained intact. For the North, the Compromise guaranteed that California would enter the Union as a Free State and the slave trade would end in the District of Columbia. For the South, the Compromise promised that popular sovereignty would decide the question of slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories. Furthermore, the Compromise reshaped the existing Fugitive Slave Act and required northerners to help capture runaway slaves. This Act enraged the people of the North as it was a direct violation of their state laws and many argued that the "people of the free states are made [plantation owners'] constables and slave-catchers, bound as 'good citizens' to engage in a business at which their humanity must revolt..."

Just four years later in 1854, new statehood controversies arose and forced the issue of slavery back into Congress. Kansas and Nebraska were both large territories petitioning for statehood. However, southerners opposed their admittance because the Missouri Compromise mandated that these two territories would enter as Free states. To satisfy southern states already threatening session, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This new act repealed the Missouri Compromise; instead, the people living in Kansas and Nebraska would vote to determine the fate of the states. When voters from nearby Missouri snuck into Kansas in order to vote to make the territory a slave state, tensions between the two sides exploded. War broke out in Kansas between pro-slavery sympathizers and abolitionists, earning it the nickname "bleeding Kansas." The violence in the west would soon spread east.

Check out this clip which highlights the escalating violence between the north and south on the issue of westward expansion:

The fighting in Kansas foreshadowed the great fighting that would take place just six years later. The compromises of the early nineteenth century did not settle the issue of slavery and westward expansion. Instead, they suppressed the issue and acted as temporary salves. However, as the compromises appeared to benefit Slave States more often than they did Free States, sectional antagonisms between the North and the South were becoming more distinct. Ultimately, negotiations unraveled and a bloody Civil War erupted.

Below, James Oakes: Emancipation and the Question of Agency from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Westward Expansion and the American Civil War - US History Scene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To many nineteenth century Americans, the expansion of slavery into Western territories caused a great deal of controversy. Since the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, the North and the South had grown further apart in terms of economy, ideology, and society. The North, especially, was afraid that the South would force its "peculiar institution"...

# data[].attributes.body
The underground railroad was a secret network to help slaves escape.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What was the Underground Railroad?

The Underground Railroad was a secret network organized by people who helped men, women, and children escape from slavery to freedom. It operated before the Civil War (1861-1865) ended slavery in the United States. The Underground Railroad provided hiding places, food, and often transportation for the fugitives who were trying to escape slavery. Along the way, people also provided directions for the safest way to get further north on the dangerous journey to freedom.

Enslaved people escaping North would often stay in "safe houses" to escape capture.

These houses were owned by people, both black and white, who were sympathetic to the cause.

The people who helped enslaved people escape were called "conductors" or "engineers." The places along the escape route were called "stations." Sometimes those escaping were called "passengers." Sometimes they were called "cargo" or "goods." Conductors helped passengers get from one station to the next. Sometimes they traveled with people escaping all the way from the South, where they had been enslaveed, to the North or to Canada, where they would be free. Sometimes the conductors traveled only a short distance and then handed those escaping to another helper. Engineers, who were the leaders of the Underground Railroad, helped enslaved people who were running away by providing them with food, shelter, and sometimes jobs. They hid them from people who were trying to catch them and return them to slavery.

A well-organized network of people, who worked together in secret, ran the Underground Railroad. The work of the Underground Railroad resulted in freedom for many men, women, and children. It also helped undermine the institution of slavery, which was finally ended in the United States during the Civil War. Many slaveholders were so angry at the success of the Underground Railroad that they grew to hate the North. Many northerners thought that slavery was so horrible that they grew to hate the South. These people who hated each other were ready to go to war when the time came.

Why was it called that?

" back to About home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pathways to Freedom | About the Underground Railroad

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What was the Underground Railroad? The Underground Railroad was a secret network organized by people who helped men, women, and children escape from slavery to freedom. It operated before the Civil War (1861-1865) ended slavery in the United States. The Underground Railroad provided hiding places, food, and often transportation for the fugitives who were trying to escape slavery.

# data[].attributes.body
Many people didn't want Abraham Lincoln to be President.

# data[].attributes.body
Some people wanted more safety, food, and medical help for soldiers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Only a tiny fraction of any soldier's time was spent in front line combat. Instead, the vast majority of his existence revolved around the monotonous routines of camp life, which presented its own set of struggles and hardships.

Once in the ranks, military life turned out to be far different than what the majority of Civil War soldiers had expected. Patriotic zeal blinded most of these volunteers to the realities and hardships they were signing up to experience. The passage of several generations had muted the country's memory of the deprivations of the American Revolution. Few had participated in the war with Mexico, which left a popular legacy of glorious victory. Certainly, argued the conventional wisdom, this sectional crisis would be resolved in a few short, painless months.

Volunteers viewed the battlefield as a great stage upon which they would either "secure their liberty" or "save the Union." While they acknowledged that losses would occur, no one envisioned their potential demise in any but heroic circumstances, but four years of the daily struggle to survive in military camps would prove otherwise. Twice as many Civil War soldiers succumbed to death from disease as from bullets, shells and bayonets. By varying estimates, between 400,000 and 500,000 soldiers lost their lives on this less gallant of stages. What was the basis of this noncombat struggle, and how did the common soldier cope?

During the fair-weather campaign season, soldiers could expect to be engaged in battle one day out of 30. Their remaining days were filled with almost interminable drilling, punctuated with spells of entertainment in the form of music, cards and other forms of gambling. The arrival of newspapers or mail from home - whether letters or a care package - in camp was always cause for celebration. Despite such diversions, much time was still left for exposure to the noncombatant foes of poor shelter, unhealthy food, and a lack of hygiene, resulting in waves of sickness and disease.

After the first months of the war, the shelter half, or "dog tent," became the most practical means of overnight shelter. While portable and lightweight, shelter halves provided minimal protection for their two inhabitants. Sgt. Austin C. Stearns of the 13th Massachusetts described his shelter as "simply a piece of cloth about six feet square with a row of buttons and button holes on three sides; two men pitched together by buttoning their pieces together and getting two sticks with a crotch at one end and one to go across at the top and then placing their cloth over it and pinning it down tight." To protect the soldier from the damp ground, a tarred or rubberized blanket could be used. A stout wool blanket kept the chill off. Unfortunately, many soldiers discarded these heavy items on a long march or when entering combat, and lived (or died) to regret it when the weather changed. As the war moved forward, an exhausted soldier often merely lay on his blanket at night in an effort to simplify his life and maximize periods of rest. Such protracted exposure to the elements boded ill for his life expectancy.

Rations on the march varied from plentiful to scarce. On paper, the Union army enjoyed the best rations of any army in history up to that time, but logistical difficulties inherent in feeding armies of tens of thousands resulted in occasional shortages. The Confederacy, while fighting on predominately "home turf," often found it difficult to consistently deliver full rations to its troops on the march, largely due to procurement and transportation problems.

The full Union marching ration consisted of one pound of hard bread (the infamous hardtack), three-quarters of a pound of salted pork or one-and-a-quarter pound of fresh meat, along with coffee, sugar and salt allotments. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy adopted the Union ration, but reduced it by 1862. Fresh meat and coffee became increasingly scarce. As fresh fruits and vegetables disappeared from military diets, soldiers' immune systems deteriorated and vitamin deficiency diseases such as scurvy proliferated. The Union army responded by issuing desiccated vegetables. As described by Corp. Joseph Van Nest of the 101st Ohio, these delicacies consisted of "a combination of corn husks, tomato skins, carrots and other kinds of vegetables too numerous to mention." This bounty had been dried and compressed into a sheet or block and, when boiled, expanded to many times its previous size. While denigrated as "desecrated vegetables" by the boys in blue, they consumed them with alacrity as a variation in an otherwise bland diet. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the culinary science of the era, most of the needed vitamins disappeared during processing.

Confederate soldiers usually had to forage for fresh vegetables. During the deprivations of the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, one Johnny Reb wrote, "Our men get a vegetable diet by cooking up polk, potato tops, May pop vines, kurlip weed, lambs quarter, thistle and a hundred kind of weeds I always thought poison. I thought it trash...but the boys call it 'long forage'..." On the march, "foraging" - a convenient euphemism for theft - would be employed by both sides in an attempt to improve the daily diet. Despite orders to the contrary, some Confederates liberally practiced this thievery during their forays into the North and even when marching and camping in friendly territory.

The commissary took a back seat on the march to the needs of the ordinance department, but still trumped the quartermaster, whose top priority was to provide forage for draft animals, not replacing uniform components. Threadbare patriots consequently appeared, particularly in the Confederate armies, and the "battlefield requisition" became a prime means of supply for the South. As Sgt. John Worsham noted at the end of the war:
"Nearly all equipment in the Army of Northern Virginia were articles captured from the Yankees.... Most of the blankets were those marked 'US," and also the rubber blankets or cloths. The very clothing that the men wore was mostly captured, for we were allowed to wear their pants, underclothing and overcoats. As for myself, I purchased only one hat, one pair of shoes, and one jacket after 1861."
Soldiers North and South also shared in the infestation of body lice in their clothing and bedding. Due to constant outdoor living, often under poor sanitary conditions, the "grey back vermin" became a visible manifestation of all of the invisible bacteria and germs whose presence was unknown to mid-19th-century science.

The seasonal movement to permanent winter camps would simultaneously improve and harm the physical condition of the Civil War soldier. While the men remained in one place, the supply chain of wagons and railroads caught up to their daily needs. Union logisticians employed their superior resources in overcoming commissary and quartermaster problems, but the Confederates also managed to supply their men in winter camp under more challenging conditions.

Periodic shortages did exist, but were vividly remembered by the Southerners. Both sides shared the difficulties that emerged from remaining in one place for an extended period of time. The majority of soldiers, being from rural backgrounds, had not been exposed to such a wide cross section of the human population and its communicable diseases. When accumulated in camps of tens of thousands, soldiers without natural immunities would succumb to the likes of measles and chickenpox. Those same large numbers, residing in one spot for more than a month, caused horrendous situations in relation to sanitation. The use of "sink pits" as latrine mechanisms ultimately led to the presence of human fecal bacteria in the water supply. That water supply, in many instances, did not need much help in the area of contamination. Swift running, clear water would be the exception more often than the rule. These conditions created the greatest killer of the war: amoebic and bacterial dysentery.

Whimsically called a case of the "quickstep," dysentery did more damage than the infernal killing creations of man. The creation of penicillin and other antibiotics was still decades away, leaving medical staffs of the Civil War few tools to combat the war's greatest killer. By the end of the war, the Union Sanitary and Christian Commissions made great strides in improving camp hygiene and clean water. The Confederacy had nothing on such a scale, although experience also improved camp conditions for the boys in gray.

After four long years of war, the military encampments had taken their toll. Although the 2:1 rate of death from disease over combat may seem alarming to us today, it represented a significant improvement from earlier conflicts, like the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, when that number was closer to 5:1. Not until World War II did the number of battle casualties approach the losses from disease.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Only a tiny fraction of any Civil War soldierâ€™s time was spent in front line combat. Instead, the vast majority of his existence revolved around the monotonous routines of camp life, which presented its own set of struggles and hardships.

# data[].attributes.body
Slavery was one of the key reasons that the Civil War started.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This page gives an overview of slavery in the United States.