# data[].attributes.body
Fort Sumter is the place where the civil war began. It was an Island fortification in South Carolina a state that seceded. South Carolina Forces bombarded it and took it. Instead of sending troops and arms Lincoln only sent provisions in attempt to not provoke an attack.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Confederate forces shelled Fort Sumter for three and a half days before Northern commander Major Robert Anderson surrendered. This image depicts Fort Sumter as it appeared in 1861.

It all began at Fort Sumter.

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Five days later, 68 federal troops stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, withdrew to Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston Harbor. The North considered the fort to be the property of the United States government. The people of South Carolina believed it belonged to the new Confederacy. Four months later, the first engagement of the Civil War took place on this disputed soil.

The commander at Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, was a former slave owner who was nevertheless unquestionably loyal to the Union. With 6,000 South Carolina militia ringing the harbor, Anderson and his soldiers were cut off from reinforcements and resupplies. In January 1861, as one the last acts of his administration, President James Buchanan sent 200 soldiers and supplies on an unarmed merchant vessel, Star of the West , to reinforce Anderson. It quickly departed when South Carolina artillery started firing on it.

Fort Sumter lies in the center of Charleston Harbor.

In February 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 4,1861, Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office as president of the Union in Washington, DC. The fate of Fort Sumter lay in the hands of these two leaders.

As weeks passed, pressure grew for Lincoln to take some action on Fort Sumter and to reunite the states. Lincoln thought of the Southern secession as "artificial." When Jefferson Davis sent a group of commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the transfer of Fort Sumter to South Carolina, they were promptly rebuffed.

Lincoln had a dilemma. Fort Sumter was running out of supplies, but an attack on the fort would appear as Northern aggression. States that still remained part of the Union (such as Virginia and North Carolina) might be driven into the secessionist camp. People at home and abroad might become sympathetic to the South. Yet Lincoln could not allow his troops to starve or surrender and risk showing considerable weakness.

Jefferson Davis was inaugurated provisional president of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861, and elected president of the CSA later that year.

At last he developed a plan. On April 6, Lincoln told the governor of South Carolina that he was going to send provisions to Fort Sumter. He would send no arms, troops, or ammunition - unless, of course, South Carolina attacked.

Now the dilemma sat with Jefferson Davis. Attacking Lincoln's resupply brigade would make the South the aggressive party. But he simply could not allow the fort to be resupplied. J.G. Gilchrist, a Southern newspaper writer, warned, "Unless you sprinkle the blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days."

Davis decided he had no choice but to order Anderson to surrender Sumter. Anderson refused.

The Civil War began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery, under the command of General Pierre Gustave T. Beauregard, opened fire on Fort Sumter. Confederate batteries showered the fort with over 3,000 shells in a three-and-a-half day period. Anderson surrendered. Ironically, Beauregard had developed his military skills under Anderson's instruction at West Point. This was the first of countless relationships and families devastated in the Civil War. The fight was on.

In 1996, a large number of unexploded - and thus dangerous - Civil War mortar bombs were found at the bottom of a Vermont lake.
Learn More...

Report broken link

If you like our content, please share it on social media!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Confederate forces shelled Fort Sumter for three and a half days before Northern commander Major Robert Anderson surrendered. This image depicts Fort Sumter as it appeared in 1861. It all began at Fort Sumter. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union.

# data[].attributes.body
The series of events when 11 southern states left the Union They made a political capital in Alabama. Secession could not have been a long term solution because we would end up fighting about something like a territorial dispute .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Secession, as it applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War, comprises the series of events that began on December 20, 1860, and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union. The first seven seceding states of the Lower South set up a provisional government at Montgomery, Alabama. After hostilities began at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, the border states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the new government, which then moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia. The Union was thus divided approximately on geographic lines. Twenty-one northern and border states retained the style and title of the United States, while the eleven slave states adopted the nomenclature of the Confederate States of America.

The border slave states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained with the Union, although they all contributed volunteers to the Confederacy. Fifty counties of western Virginia were loyal to the Union government, and in 1863 this area was constituted the separate state of West Virginia. Secession in practical terms meant that about a third of the population with substantial material resources had withdrawn from what had constituted a single nation and established a separate government.

The term secession had been used as early as 1776. South Carolina threatened separation when the Continental Congress sought to tax all the colonies on the basis of a total population count that would include slaves. Secession in this instance and throughout the antebellum period came to mean the assertion of minority sectional interests against what was perceived to be a hostile or indifferent majority. Secession had been a matter of concern to some members of the Constitutional Convention that met at Philadelphia in 1787. Theoretically, secession was bound up closely with Whig thought, which claimed the right of revolution against a despotic government. Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and the British Commonwealth Men argued this theme, and it played a prominent role in the American Revolution.

Any federal republic by its very nature invited challenge to central control, a danger that James Madison recognized. He sought at the convention a clause that would prohibit secession from the proposed union once the states had ratified the Constitution. In debate over other points, Madison repeatedly warned that secession or "disunion" was a major concern. The Constitution as framed and finally accepted by the states divided the exercise of sovereign power between the states and the national government. By virtue of the fact that it was a legal document and in most respects enumerated the powers of the central government, the division was weighted toward the states. Yet much of the charter was drawn up in general terms and was susceptible to interpretation that might vary with time and circumstance.

The very thing that Madison feared took on a concrete form during the party battles of the Washington and Adams administrations. And paradoxically, Madison found himself involved with those who seemed to threaten separation. In their reaction to the arbitrary assumption of power in the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson and Madison argued for state annulment of this legislation. Jefferson's response in the Kentucky Resolution advanced the compact interpretation of the federal Constitution. Madison's Virginia Resolution was far more moderate, but both resolutions looked to state action against what were deemed unconstitutional laws. The national judiciary, they felt, was packed with their opponents. Neither resolution claimed original sovereignty for the states, but both argued for a strict reading of enumerated powers. During the War of 1812, a disaffected Federalist majority in New England advanced the compact theory and considered secession from the Union.

As modernization began to take hold in the United States, differences between the two major sections grew more pronounced: a plantation cotton culture worked by slave labor became concentrated in the South and industrial development featuring free labor in the North. A wave of reform activity in Europe and the United States made the abolition or at least the restriction of slavery a significant goal in the free states. Since abolition struck at the labor system as well as the social structure of the slave states, threats of secession punctuated the political dialogue from 1819 through 1860.

John C. Calhoun, the leading spokesman of the slave states, charged frequently and eloquently that the South and its way of life were under assault from an industrializing North. Like other proponents of endangered minorities, he looked to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and their assertion of the federal compact for the basis of his defense. He argued that a state or a group of states could nullify a federal law that was felt to be against a particular interest. But Calhoun made a fundamental extension of the Jeffersonian concept of states' rights and claimed original undivided sovereignty for the people acting through the states. Although always seeking an accommodation for the South and its slave plantation system within the Union, Calhoun had hoped that nullification was a proper, constitutional alternative to disunion. But he eventually invoked secession with particular vehemence after the territorial acquisitions of the Mexican War and the formation of the Free-Soil party in 1848. Nationalists like John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster countered the Calhoun argument. They declared that the Constitution operated directly through the states on the people, not upon the states as corporate bodies, and their view gained wide acceptance in the free states.

Calhoun was instrumental in fostering southern unity on a sectional basis and in formulating the call for a convention of delegates from the slave states to be held at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1850. There is little doubt that had he lived, Calhoun would have been a formidable force for secession as the ultimate weapon. His death and the working out of a compromise that strengthened moderate opinion in both sections kept the secessionist element at bay temporarily.

But the territorial issue flared up again, this time with renewed fury over the question of whether Kansas should enter the Union as a free or slave state. By now antislavery sentiment had grown significantly in the free states. And opinion leaders in the slave states drew closer together in defense against what they saw as an impending attack on their institutions. The Kansas question created the Republican party, a frankly sectional political organization, and it nominated John C. Frémont for president on a Free-Soil platform in 1856. Although the Democrats, still functioning along national lines, managed to elect James Buchanan president by a slim margin, the slave states threatened secession if the Republicans should win the election in 1860.

The South was committed to an agrarian way of life. It was a land where profitable and efficient plantations worked by slave labor produced cotton for the world market. It was also a land where a majority of its white population was made up of subsistence farmers who lived isolated lives on the edge of poverty and whose literacy rates were low compared with those in the more densely populated North.

The South nevertheless was beginning to industrialize, a factor that added to the social tensions surfacing during the 1850s between the haves-plantation owners and professional groups in the few urban centers-and the have-nots-an increasingly restive yeoman or small-farmer group. But the issue of black servitude provided cohesion for the white bloc and contributed greatly to a patriarchal system wherein the masses of the whites still looked to a planter-professional elite for political and social guidance. Although the northern masses might also defer to the opinions of the powerful and living conditions among the urban poor were precarious, educational levels were far higher than in the South. The ethic of free capital and free labor was deeply ingrained in the cities and in farm communities as well. It was this ethic that formed the ideological basis for a broad antislavery movement.

Southern leaders were concerned over internal stresses in their society and were increasingly aware of the moral and social repugnance the slave system engendered not only in the North but also in Western Europe. Southern leadership, though surely not unified in its response to a political victory of antislavery forces in 1860, began as early as 1858 to prepare its section for separation from the Union.

Even though the Republican platform of 1860 disavowed any move that would interfere with slavery where the custom and the law of a given state upheld it, many of the more extreme opinion makers in the South promoted the idea that a Republican victory meant eventual emancipation and social and political equality for their black population. So inflamed were the voters in South Carolina that before the election of Lincoln, they had chosen a convention that was committed to secession on news of a Republican victory. The situation of other states in the Deep South was more complicated. Elections were held promptly, but the results showed considerable division on secession. Three factions emerged: those for immediate secession, those who sought delay until the policy of the new administration toward the slave states became clear, and those who believed they could bargain with the new administration. All these groups, however, were united in support of the doctrine of secession. With this idea as a basic commitment, the better organized immediate secessionists were able to prevail.

The close connection between the right to revolution and separation from the governing power in the spirit of 1776 was an early theme in the provisional Confederacy. To be sure, the revolution was posited as a peaceful one. Separation from a Union perceived to be under the control of a tyrannical power that would destroy southern institutions was the objective.

Confederate leaders at this early date thought that the North would not fight to preserve the Union. But the provisional government nevertheless began purchasing arms and munitions, and seceded states started to equip and train their militias.

State and Confederate government authorities seized federal forts, arsenals, and other national property within their jurisdiction. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, federal troops held only Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and one or two other outposts in the South.

Concerned about the loyalty of the border states of Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, the new administration went so far as to offer the slave states an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee slavery where it legally existed. Lincoln himself in his inaugural address pledged only to hold federal property that was in the possession of the Union on March 4, 1861.

The provisional Confederacy likewise sought vigorously to stimulate secession sentiment in the border states. Had all the border slave states thrown in their lot with one or the other government, there might not have been a war, or conversely, separation might well have become an accomplished fact. As it was, however, the prompt action of the Lincoln administration after the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter secured Maryland and Delaware for the Union. Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality but eventually remained loyal to the Union. Missouri, too, though a major battleground for the contending forces, contributed most of its resources in men and matériel to the Union.

Once the war was joined, waves of patriotic sentiment swept over North and South. Vocal political opposition would exist on both sides, but it was never strong enough to overthrow either government. Secession as revolution, an early theme in southern rhetoric, was not emphasized after the formation of the Confederacy. Rather, Jefferson's compact theory was enshrined in its Constitution. A nation could not have been formed, nor a war fought, if the states were wholly independent of any central authority.

Behind it all, of course, was the unity of a minority geographical section defending a distinct set of institutions that were thought to be under attack. The original federal Union that shared the exercise of power with the states strengthened the concept of secession. It also supplied a pretext for southern leaders to seize the initiative and form a separate nation.

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.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Secession - Definition, Civil War & Southern States

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Secession, as it applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War, comprises the series of events that began on December 20, 1860, and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the lower and upper South severed their ties with the Union.

# data[].attributes.body
Abraham Lincoln wins the election and becomes president over Stephen A. Douglas. He won without the support of a single southern state and only because there were more free states than slave states.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in the territories. In 1860, this issue finally came to a head, fracturing the formerly dominant Democratic Party into Southern and Northern factions and bringing Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to power without the support of a single Southern state.

Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's victory came declarations of secession by South Carolina and other states, which were rejected as illegal by the then-current President, James Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln.

Welcome: Minnesota and Oregon become states during this election cycle

Original 13 States control fewer than 50% of total Electoral Votes for first time

Lincoln received only about 40% of the popular vote in a divided nation on the brink of Civil War

New Jersey: Douglas won the popular vote on a Fusion slate comprised of 3 of his electors and 2 each for Breckinridge and Bell. Apparently - the history is a bit murky - some voters received a ballot with seven Douglas electors, taking votes from the Breckinridge/Bell electors. Bottom line - the 3 Douglas electors on the Fusion slate received the most votes, while the most votes for the four remaining spots went to Lincoln's electors.

Issues of the Day: Slavery (Dred Scott decision, Secession)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states' rights and slavery in the territories.

# data[].attributes.headline
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, 1859

# data[].attributes.subject
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, 1859

# data[].attributes.body
John Brown tried to raid a federal arsenal called Harper's Ferry trying to start a slave revolt. with his sons. His sons died but he was kept for a trial then killed. He was justified to do this because the slaves were basically hostages trapped in Harper's ferry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery.

Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses-he declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837, his life changed irrevocably when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, during which he was so moved that he publicly announced his dedication to destroying the institution of slavery. As early as 1848 he was formulating a plan to incite an insurrection.

In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory. On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge. On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with broad swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown's sons was killed in the fighting.

By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of enslaved people. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the "Secret Six," and assembled an invasion force. His "army" grew to include 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons. The group rented a Maryland farm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault.

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few enslaved people. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons.

The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The 59-year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood." It was a prophetic statement. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown's raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry | October 16, 1859 | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery. Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery [...]

# data[].attributes.body
A series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. discussed slavery states rights and much more.The free port doctrine helped Douglas by giving states more rights, but also let local legislation decide if they wanted to ban slavery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Historians have traditionally regarded the series of seven debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois state election campaign as among the most significant statements in American political history. The issues they discussed were not only of critical importance to the sectional conflict over slavery and states' rights but also touched deeper questions that would continue to influence political discourse. As Lincoln said, the issues would be discussed long after "these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent."

What is often overlooked is that the debates were part of a larger campaign, that they were designed to achieve certain immediate political objectives, and that they reflected the characteristics of mid-nineteenth-century political rhetoric. Douglas, a member of Congress since 1843 and a nationally prominent spokesman for the Democratic party, was seeking reelection to a third term in the U.S. Senate, and Lincoln was running for Douglas's Senate seat as a Republican. Because of Douglas's political stature, the campaign attracted national attention. Its outcome, it was thought, would determine the ability of the Democratic party to maintain unity in the face of the divisive sectional and slavery issues, and some were convinced it would determine the viability of the Union itself. "The battle of the Union is to be fought in Illinois," a Washington paper declared.

Although senators were elected by the state legislatures until 1913, Douglas and Lincoln took their arguments directly to the people. The timing of the campaign, the context of sectional animosity within which it was fought, the volatility of the slavery issue, and the instability of the party system combined to give the debates a special importance. Not long before, Douglas had defied President James Buchanan and the southern Democratic leadership when he opposed the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the controversial Lecompton constitution, a stand for which he received support from Republicans in Congress as well as their interest in his reelection. At the same time, Buchanan and the southern slave interests gave tacit (and in some instances explicit) support to Lincoln's candidacy because of their hostility to Douglas. As a result of this strange alignment, Lincoln's principal task was to keep Illinois Republicans from supporting Douglas by exposing the moral gulf that separated them from the senator and to win the support of radical abolitionists and former conservative Whigs. A relative newcomer to the antislavery cause (before 1854, he said, slavery had been a "minor question" with him), Lincoln used the debates to develop and strengthen the moral quality of his position.

The groundwork for the campaign was laid in Lincoln's famous House Divided speech in Springfield on June 16, 1858. Douglas opened his campaign on July 9 in Chicago. By mid-August, the two candidates had agreed to a series of debates in seven of the state's nine congressional districts.

Lincoln opened the campaign on an ominous note, warning that the agitation over slavery would not cease until a crisis had been passed that resulted either in the extension of slavery to all the territories and states or in its ultimate extinction. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he declared. Lincoln's forecast was a statement of what would be known as the irrepressible conflict doctrine. The threat of slavery expansion, he believed, came not from the slaveholding South but from Douglas's popular sovereignty position-allowing the territories to decide for themselves whether they wished to have slavery. Furthermore, Lincoln charged Douglas with conspiring to extend slavery to the free states as well as the territories, a false accusation that Douglas tried vainly to ignore. Fundamental to Lincoln's argument was his conviction that slavery must be dealt with as a moral wrong. It violated the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, and it ran counter to the intentions of the Founding Fathers. The "real issue" in his contest with Douglas, Lincoln insisted, was the issue of right and wrong, and he charged that his opponent was trying to uphold a wrong. Only the power of the federal government, as exercised by Congress, could ultimately extinguish slavery. At the same time, Lincoln assured southerners that he had no intention of interfering with slavery in the states where it existed and assured northerners that he was opposed to the political and social equality of the races, points on which he and Douglas agreed.

Douglas rejected Lincoln's notion of an irrepressible conflict and disagreed with his analysis of the intentions of the Founding Fathers, pointing out that many of them were slaveholders who believed that each community should decide the question for itself. A devoted Jacksonian, he insisted that power should reside at the local level and should reflect the wishes of the people. He was convinced, however, that slavery would be effectively restricted for economic, geographic, and demographic reasons and that the territories, if allowed to decide, would choose to be free. In an important statement at Freeport, he held that the people could keep slavery out of their territories, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, simply by withholding the protection of the local law. Douglas was disturbed by Lincoln's effort to resolve a controversial moral question by political means, warning that it could lead to civil war. Finally, Douglas placed his disagreement with Lincoln on the level of republican ideology, arguing that the contest was between consolidation and confederation, or as he put it, "one consolidated empire" as proposed by Lincoln versus a "confederacy of sovereign and equal states" as he proposed.

On election day, the voters of Illinois chose members of the state legislature who in turn reelected Douglas to the Senate in January 1859. Although Lincoln lost, the Republicans received more popular votes than the Democrats, signaling an important shift in the political character of the state. Moreover, Lincoln had gained a reputation throughout the North. He was invited to campaign for Republican candidates in other states and was now mentioned as a candidate for the presidency. In winning, Douglas further alienated the Buchanan administration and the South, was soon to be stripped of his power in the Senate, and contributed to the division of the Democratic party.

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.

Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault. Start your free trial today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Historians have traditionally regarded the series of seven debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois state election campaign as among the most significant statements in American political history. The issues they discussed were not only of critical importance to the sectional conflict over slavery and states' rights but also touched deeper questions that would continue to influence political discourse.

# data[].attributes.body
A supreme court case where Sandford won.  The results meant that blacks did not have citizens rights or the right to sue. Also said that congress could not decide whether states would be free or slave. The supreme court should not always be trusted because the people on the jury can be biased sometimes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
bibliography guide virtual program service digital reference section library of congress primary documents dred scott sandford

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dred Scott v. Sandford: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dred Scott v. Sandford: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Services and Programs, Digital Reference Section, Library of Congress)

# data[].attributes.body
A series of violent events occurring in the United States which arose from political and and ideological debate This would not have happened if the Kansas Nebraska acts did not happen because the Kansas Nebraska acts created factions who fought for dominance.

# 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
The Kansas Nebraska act allowed both states to choose to be free or slave states. Replaced the Missouri compromise.

Douglas wanted repeal the Missouri compromise so that he could organise Kansas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The History Place - Abraham Lincoln: Kansas-Nebraska Act

# data[].attributes.body
passed in 1793 and 1850 let slave owners and governments go after runaway slaves. Henry David Thoreau was one of the main abolitionists that was against this. He helped runaway slaves.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854)

# data[].attributes.body
California entered the union as a free state, the fugitive slave act was amended, the slave trade was abolished and the boundary dispute between New Mexico and Texas was settled an issue was finding a way to please the south even with adding a free state

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
bibliography guide virtual program service digital reference section library of congress primary documents compromise 1850

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Compromise of 1850: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Compromise of 1850: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Services and Programs, Digital Reference Section, Library of Congress)

# data[].attributes.body
The free soil party was an important anti slave party before the civil war. They did not win the election but did help the Whig party win by taking some of the voters from the usual party.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was most recently revised and updated by

Free-Soil Party, (1848-54), minor but influential political party in the pre- Civil War period of American history that opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Fearful of expanding slave power within the national government, Rep. David Wilmot of Pennsylvania in 1846 introduced into Congress his famous Wilmot Proviso, calling for the prohibition of slavery in the vast southwestern lands that had been newly acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot concept, which failed in Congress, was a direct ideological antecedent to the Free-Soil Party. Disappointed by the ambivalent position of the Whig Party toward slavery, "Conscience" Whigs held a convention in August 1848 at Buffalo, New York. There they were joined by delegates from 17 states drawn from the Liberty Party and the antislavery faction of the New York Democrats, known as "Barnburners." The Free-Soilers' historic slogan calling for "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men" attracted small farmers, debtors, village merchants, and household and mill workers, who resented the prospect of black-labour competition-whether slave or free-in the territories.

In 1848 the Free-Soil Party nominated the former U.S. president Martin Van Buren to head its ticket. Though the party polled only 10 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election that year, it weakened the regular Democratic candidate in New York and contributed to the election of the Whig candidate Gen. Zachary Taylor as president. The Free-Soil vote was reduced to 5 percent in 1852, when John P. Hale was the presidential nominee. Nevertheless, a dozen Free-Soil congressmen later held the balance of power in the House of Representatives, thus wielding considerable influence. In addition, the party was well represented in several state legislatures. In 1854 the disorganized remnants of the party were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which carried the Free-Soil idea of opposing the expansion of slavery one step further by condemning slavery as a moral evil as well.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Zeidan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free-Soil Party | Definition, History, & Beliefs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Free-Soil Party (1848-54), minor political party in the pre-Civil War period of American history that opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. In 1852 it wielded some influence, including the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was absorbed into the Republican Party in 1854.

# data[].attributes.body
banned slavery in the states gained from the Mexican war. It was protested by southerners because it would unbalance the amount of representatives for free states and slave states in congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Wilmot Proviso further divided the North and the South over the issue of slavery. Many Southerners believed that slavery should be legal everywhere in the United States. A growing number of Northerners, including many Ohioans, opposed slavery's expansion. Some of these Northerners opposed slavery on moral grounds, arguing that African Americans were human beings.

# data[].attributes.body
The Missouri compromise was an effort to balance congress by making Missouri a slave state and Maine a free one. It did not last long because it was repealed in 1854, but it could have been.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents.

The links at right highlight eras of American History. Each of these sections link to a list of important documents from that era. For each item on these lists there is a page with background information about the document, a list of links to digital materials concerning that document from the Library's site and elsewhere, and bibliographies both for general readers and for younger readers.

Sections and Topics:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress that supplement and enhance the study of these crucial documents. Each section of this site links to a list of important documents from that era.