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The Missouri Compromise allowed Missouri to be a slave state but Maine became a non-slave state
Could the MO Compromise have been a lasting solution to the debate between slave and free states?
Yes because the MO Compromise didn't allow states above the 36º 30' latitude line to stop the debate between he south and the north.

"https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/missouri-compromise#:~:text=This%20legislation%20admitted%20Missouri%20as,remainder%20of%20the%20Louisiana%20Territory."

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Nat Turner's Rebellion was a rebellion of about 200 slaves and created conflict with white people.
What were both the positive and negative effects of this rebellion?
A positive outcome was that he educated slaves that this was not ok and they had to fight back. A bad result was that the rebellion was violent, which isn't right either.

"https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/nat-turner"

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It was led by David Wilmont and he wanted to prevent slavery into new states.
Why was the Wilmot Proviso protested by Southerners?
The southerners didn't like it because their main income is because of slaves and if slavery disappeared, they wouldn't be able to make money.

"https://www.britannica.com/event/Wilmot-Proviso"

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Wilmot Proviso, in U.S. history, important congressional proposal in the 1840s to prohibit the extension of slavery into the territories, a basic plank upon which the Republican Party was subsequently built. Soon after the Mexican War, Pres. James K. Polk asked Congress for $2,000,000 to negotiate peace and settle the boundary with Mexico. In behalf of anti-slavery forces throughout the country, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot offered an amendment (August 8, 1846) to the bill forbidding slavery in the new territory, thus precipitating bitter national debate in an atmosphere of heightening sectional conflict. Despite repeated attempts, the Wilmot Proviso was never passed by both houses of Congress. But out of the attempt by both Democrats and Whigs to subordinate or compromise the slavery issue grew the Republican Party, founded in 1854, which specifically supported the Wilmot principle.

Amy Tikkanen.

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Wilmot Proviso | Slavery, Abolition & Expansion

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Wilmot Proviso, in U.S. history, important congressional proposal in the 1840s to prohibit the extension of slavery into the territories, a basic plank upon which the Republican Party was subsequently built. Soon after the Mexican War, Pres. James K. Polk asked Congress for $2,000,000 to negotiate

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It was a new party that didn't want slavery to expand to the west.
Though they did not win the presidential election, what political progress was made by the Free Soil party?
The party itself died but the idea didn't, It spread to another party and had the same opposing thought to get rid of slavery in the west.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Free-Soil-Party

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It was a compromise between big and small populated states on congressional representation.
What were the hurdles faced in trying to pass the Compromise of 1850?
Larger states wanted congressional representation based on population but the smaller populated states wanted non-population-based congressional representation because there were fewer people.

"https://www.history.com/news/how-the-great-compromise-affects-politics-today#:~:text=The%20Great%20Compromise%20was%20forged,smaller%20states%20demanded%20equal%20representation."

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The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation. To keep the convention from dissolving into chaos, the founding fathers came up with the Great Compromise. The agreement, which created today's system of congressional representation, now influences everything from "pork barrel" legislation to the way votes are counted in the electoral college during presidential elections.

The debate almost destroyed the U.S. Constitution.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates from larger states believed each state's representation in the newly proposed Senate should be proportionate to population.

Smaller states with lower populations argued that such an arrangement would lead to an unfair dominance of larger states in the new nation's government, and each state should have equal representation, regardless of population.

The disagreement over representation threatened to derail the ratification of the U.S. Constitution since delegates from both sides of the dispute vowed to reject the document if they didn't get their way. The solution came in the form of a compromise proposed by statesmen Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut.

The Great Compromise created two legislative bodies in Congress.

Also known as the Sherman Compromise or the Connecticut Compromise, the deal combined proposals from the Virginia (large state) plan and the New Jersey (small state) plan.

According to the Great Compromise, there would be two national legislatures in a bicameral Congress. Members of the House of Representatives would be allocated according to each state's population and elected by the people.

In the second body-the Senate -each state would have two representatives regardless of the state's size, and state legislatures would choose Senators. (In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was passed, tweaking the Senate system so that Senators would be elected by the people.)

The plan was at first rejected but then approved by a slim margin on July 23, 1787.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Smaller states have disproportionately more power in the Senate.

At the time of the convention, states' populations varied, but not by nearly as much as they do today. As a result, one of the main lingering political effects of the Great Compromise is that states with smaller populations have a disproportionately bigger voice in the nation's Congress.

As political scientist George Edwards III of Texas A&M University points out, California hosts about 68 times more people than Wyoming, yet they have the same number of votes in the Senate.

"The founders never imagined ... the great differences in the population of states that exist today," says Edwards. "If you happen to live in a low-population state you get a disproportionately bigger say in American government."

The imbalance of proportionate power favoring smaller states in the Senate means that interests in those states, such as mining in West Virginia or hog farming in Iowa, are more likely to get attention-and money-from federal coffers.

"In the Senate when they're trying to get to 51 votes to pass a bill, every vote counts," says Todd Estes, a historian at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. "That's when the smaller states can demand amendments and additions to bills to look out for their own state's interest."

The Great Compromise also skewed the electoral college.

The principle of protecting small states through equal representation in the Senate carries over into the electoral college, which elects the president, since the number of electoral votes designated to each state is based on a state's combined number of representatives in the House and Senate.

That means, for example, even though Wyoming only has three votes in the electoral college, with the smallest population of all the states, each elector represents a far smaller group of people than each of the 55 electoral votes in the most populous state of California.

The system ensures power is distributed geographically.

Some scholars see the small-state bias in the Senate as critical. The arrangement means that power in the Senate is distributed geographically, if not by population, ensuring that interests across the entire country are represented.

Gary L. Gregg II, a political scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, argues in a 2012 article in Politico that major metropolitan areas already hold power by hosting major media, donor, academic and government centers. The structure of the Senate and the corresponding representation in the electoral college, he says, ensures that the interests of rural and small-town America are preserved.

Was that the intention of the Founding Fathers? Edwards is doubtful since, as he points out, the majority of Americans at the time of Constitutional Congress came from rural areas-not urban. "No one was thinking about protecting rural interests," Edwards says. "Rural interests were dominant at the time."

Whatever the viewpoint on the fairness of the Great Compromise's distribution of delegates to the Senate, it is unlikely to ever change. This is because equal-state representation in the Senate is specifically protected in the Constitution.

According to Article V of the Constitution, no state can lose its equal representation in the Senate without the state's permission. And no state is likely to willingly give up their say in the Senate.

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How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affects Politics Today

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The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation. To keep the convention from dissolving into chaos, the founding fathers came up with the Great Compromise.

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It forced northerners to return run-away slaves to the south.
How was Henry David Thoreau involved in the fight against the Fugitive Slave Act?
He refused to take part in slavery so he protested and applauded James Brown and the abolitionists and continued to disobey the act.

"https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/henry-david-thoreau"

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The Kansas Nebraska act repealed the Missouri Compromise and let Kansas and Nebraska into the U.S.
Why did Douglas want to repeal the Missouri Compromise and replace it with the KS/NE act?
He wanted the people of Kansas and Nebraska to see if slavery would be allowed there or not.

"https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/kansas-nebraska-act#:~:text=Douglas%20hoped%20this%20idea%20of,expand%20westward%20with%20few%20obstacles."

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In 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska, a vast area of land that would become Kansas, Nebraska, Montana and the Dakotas. Known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the controversial bill raised the possibility that slavery could be extended into territories where it had once been banned. Its passage intensified the bitter debate over slavery in the United States, which would later explode into the Civil War.

Stephen Douglas and Westward Expansion

The discovery of gold in California in 1849, and California's subsequent request to become a state, sparked a fierce battle in Congress. As California had banned slavery, its admission to the Union would upset the fragile balance between slave and free states. By the end of 1850, Senator Henry Clay (with Douglas' help) had persuaded Congress to accept the Compromise of 1850. By its terms, California entered the Union as a free state, while the territories of Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona (all acquired in the Mexican-American War) were left to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery within their borders.

Did you know? Kansas was admitted as a free state in January 1861 only weeks after eight Southern states seceded from the union.

Douglas hoped this idea of "popular sovereignty" would resolve the mounting debate over the future of slavery in the United States and enable the country to expand westward with few obstacles. But the Compromise of 1850 (especially the strict new Fugitive Slave Act it contained) galvanized the abolitionist movement and fueled mounting debate over whether the institution of slavery should be allowed to expand along with the nation.

Introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854

Known as the "Little Giant," Douglas was one of the country's most prominent politicians by 1854, and was seen as a likely future president. He was also a big booster of the planned transcontinental railroad, which would provide faster, more reliable transportation across the country. Douglas wanted the railroad to be built along a northern route that would go through Chicago as well as a vast area of land known as the Nebraska Territory, which had been included in the Louisiana Purchase.

Southern slaveholders and their allies in Congress opposed Douglas' initial bill to organize the Nebraska Territory. In 1821, the Missouri Compromise had outlawed slavery everywhere in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36º 30' parallel, and the two proposed territories lay north of this line.

Douglas needed proslavery votes to pass his "Nebraska Bill," as it was known at the time. To get them, he added an amendment that repealed the Missouri Compromise and created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska. Settlers in each territory would vote on the issue of whether to permit slavery or not, according to the principle of popular sovereignty.

WATCH: Kansas-Nebraska Act

Opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Despite fierce opposition from abolitionists and Free Soilers, as those who opposed extending slavery into new territories were known, the Senate passed the Nebraska bill. President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May 30, 1854.

In the months before the bill's passage, most of the Native American groups living on the land in question signed treaties ceding their land to the U.S. government, and all were eventually forced to move south to reservations in what is now Oklahoma.

In the North, where abolitionist feeling was growing, many condemned Douglas for striking down the Missouri Compromise and paving the way for slavery's extension into the territories, rather than its ultimate extinction.

There was no question that Nebraska would be a free state, but the fate of its southern neighbor, Kansas, became a matter of fierce debate. Pro- and antislavery activists flooded into the new Kansas territory, each side seeking to turn popular sovereignty to their own advantage. As the two sides traded outbursts of violence and intimidation, "Bleeding Kansas" would generate national headlines, further inflaming sectional tensions over slavery's future.

Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act also had a profound political impact. Debate over the bill split the Whig Party, which ultimately dissolved, and split Douglas' Democratic Party along sectional lines. In one of the most heated moments in the debate, proslavery Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, resorted to beating antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with his cane on the Senate floor in 1856.

Opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act inspired the formation of the Republican Party, which became the nation's leading antislavery political party. It also drew Abraham Lincoln, a former one-term congressman from Illinois, back into the political arena. By 1858, Lincoln's eloquent argument against slavery's extension would go on display in a now-famous series of debates with Douglas, as Lincoln unsuccessfully challenged the "Little Giant" for his Senate seat.

Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election marked a decisive defeat not just for Douglas-who ran as the northern representative of the divided Democrats-but for his belief that popular sovereignty could prevent national politics from dissolving into a regional conflict over slavery. In fact, the Kansas-Nebraska Act served to further divide the nation, and served as a crucial step along the path to the Civil War.

Sources

Ross Drake, "The Law That Ripped America in Two." Smithsonian, May 2004.
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery(W.W. Norton, 2010)
Kansas-Nebraska Act - May 30, 1854. U.S. Senate.
Zach Garrison, Kansas-Nebraska Act. Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. Kansas City Public Library.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that allowed settlers of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether slavery would be allowed within their state's borders. The conflicts that arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act's passage led to the period of violence known as Bleeding Kansas, and contributed to unrest that led to the American Civil War (1861-65).

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It is the series of violent events that happened in Kansas between pro-slavery, and anti slavery people.
If the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed and replaced, would this violence have occurred? Explain.
Certain people wanted slavery but some people didn't. The Missouri compromise made a lot o tension between the groups so if it wasn't repealed, there may have been more fights.

https://www.history.com/topics/slavery/missouri-compromise

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Missouri Compromise: Date, Definition & 1820 - HISTORY

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The Missouri Compromise, an 1820 law passed amid debate over slavery, admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state.

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It was a court ruling that stated that slaves are not citizens and cannot be protected by the government.
Should the Supreme Court always be trusted? Explain.?
Sometimes the Supreme court can be biased. There was no diversity on the court and they were all white men so always trusting the court wasn't a good idea.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford

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It was a series of 7 debates between Lincoln and Douglass during the Illinois senatorial campaign.
What was the “Freeport Doctrine” and how did it both help and hurt Douglas?
The free-port doctrine hurt Douglass' chance to win the election because Lincoln made a trap for him to say that slavery should be allowed in places with police regulations.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lincoln-douglas-debates#:~:text=The%20Freeport%20Doctrine%20is%20derived,to%20achieve%20victory%20in%201860.

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In the summer and the fall of 1858 two of the most influential statesmen of the late antebellum era, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln faced off in a series of debates focused on slavery as they vied for a United States Senate seat representing Illinois. In the long term, the Lincoln-Douglas debates propelled Lincoln's political career into the national spotlight, while simultaneously stifling Douglas' career, and foreshadowing the 1860 Election.

By 1858, Stephen A. Douglas was the most prominent politician in the West, if not the entire country. However, Douglas was in the midst of a massive feud with the Buchanan administration and the Democratic Party bosses over the Lecompton Constitution, which seriously affected his chances of being re-elected. The Lecompton Constitution was a state constitution for Kansas that illegitimately used popular sovereignty to push through a pro-slavery constitution that did not represent the will of Kansans. Douglas also faced an enormous backlash in the North for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, so by coming out against the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, Douglas highlighted that popular sovereignty could be used to restrict slavery in the territories, which pleased his those constituents who supported anti-slavery measures.In contrast, Lincoln was a relatively unknown, "prairie lawyer" with only one term in Congress under his belt, which he served over a decade prior to his senatorial candidacy. Lincoln was also a member of a relatively new anti-slavery party-the Republican party. Despite Douglas' fame, and Lincoln's lack of it, for Douglas to achieve victory in this contest required some campaigning, which led to the debates.

From August 21 to October 15, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas traveled to seven cities across Illinois to engage in public debates. Unlike our modern political debates where candidates go back and forth roughly every few minutes, the format for the debates between Honest Abe and the Little Giant featured one candidate talking for an hour followed by the other candidate speaking for an hour and a half before the first candidate was given thirty minutes for a rebuttal. Lincoln and Douglas alternated which candidate went first and which candidate responded, although, as the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four out of the seven debates. Citizens across the Midwest traveled in droves to see Lincoln and Douglas speak, and those who missed the debates would read their transcripts in Democratic and Republican newspapers the following day. Additionally, after the election, Lincoln edited the transcriptions and published them in a book, which became popular among Republicans. It is important to note that at that time the general public did not elect senators through a popular vote as they do now. Rather, Illinoisans elected members to the state legislature and whichever party received the majority of seats would then elect their candidate to the U.S. Senate seat. Consequently, Lincoln and Douglas were not simply campaigning for themselves but also for their respective political parties.

The main focus of these debates was slavery and its influence on American politics and society-specifically the slave power, popular sovereignty, race equality, emancipation, etc. Although personally against slavery, Lincoln reiterated in these debates that he wanted to "avoid doing anything that would bring about a war between the free and slave states" and as such supported a free-soil platform rather than an emancipation platform. Lincoln believed that slaves were humans, and as humans deserve the fundamental right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which Lincoln interpreted as only the right to not be enslaved, not the right to citizenship. Lincoln believed that one race must be superior to the others and he was "in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." First and foremost, Douglas believed in the inferiority of African Americans and often articulated this conviction quite bluntly. However, Douglas believed just because this group was inferior did not automatically mean that they should be enslaved. To Douglas, it was up to the citizens in respective states/territories to decide if they wanted slavery-reconfirming his support of popular sovereignty. Whether blacks were free or enslaved did not matter to Douglas, what mattered was they were never to be citizens and always subordinate to whites. One of the biggest differences between Douglas' and Lincoln's views on slavery is that, unlike Lincoln, Douglas did not consider slavery a moral issue, an agonizing dilemma, nor was it an issue that would tear the Union apart.

In the end, Douglas triumphed over Lincoln with Democrats gaining forty-six seats to the Republican's forty-one. However, while Douglas might have won the battle, Lincoln won the true war: the 1860 Presidential Election. The popularity of these debates and of Lincoln's book propelled Honest Abe into the Republican spotlight, who appreciated this articulate anti-slavery leader. Lincoln's stellar performance in these debates enabled his nomination for President in 1860.

For his part, Douglas, already on thin ice with the southern wing of the Democratic party, ruined any chance of reconciliation by supporting the Freeport Doctrine, which provided a free-soil foil to the southern pro-slavery version of popular sovereignty. During a debate in Freeport, Illinois Douglas fell right into Lincoln's trap when answering a question about how territories could restrict slavery in the wake of the Dred Scott decision. The Freeport Doctrine is derived from Douglas's response in which he argued that slavery could only exist in places with support from local police regulations. By unequivocally supporting this doctrine, Douglas hurt his chances to achieve victory in 1860.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates remain steeped in folklore and historians and the public alike consider them to be a representation of true grassroots democracy. The thirty years prior to these debates were marred with conflict over slavery, and never in that time did two politicians go head to head to discuss this contentious issue in such a public and articulate way. These debates reinvigorated Lincoln's political career and propelled him to the spotlight among Republicans. Simultaneously, Douglas used these debates to reaffirm his support for popular sovereignty which further alienated the senator from the Democratic Party. All in all, these debates set the stage for a much more important showdown, both for these politicians and for the country, the Election of 1860.

Suggested Reading:
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America The Lincoln-Douglas Debates​

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In the summer and the fall of 1858 two of the most influential statesmen of the late antebellum era, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln faced off in a series of debates focused on slavery as they vied for a United States Senate seat representing Illinois.

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John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859)

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John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859)

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John Brown and his gang traveled on Harper's Ferry to get armory and weapons.
Was John Brown justified in his plan?
John Brown's plan was from a good thought but he was violent to achieve his plan so John Brown's plan was not justified.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Harpers-Ferry-Raid

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Harpers Ferry Raid | Definition, Date, History, & Facts

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Harpers Ferry Raid: Harpers Ferry Raid, assault that took place October 16-18, 1859, by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armory located at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia). It was a main precipitating incident to the American Civil War.

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It was an election won by Abraham Lincoln against John Bell, John C. Breckinridge, and Stephen A. Douglass.
How did divided political parties lead to Lincoln’s election?
The democrats believed in popular sovereignty and wanted slavery and the republicans opposed slavery.

https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/1860-election.htm#:~:text=Candidates%20for%20President%20in%201860&text=Divided%20over%20the%20slavery%20issue,Breckinridge%20for%20president.

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The 1860 Presidential Election - Lincoln Home National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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A small part of a community breaking off from a bigger part of a community.
Could secession have been a long-term solution?
Southerners threatened to secede  from the U.S. because the North was becoming too anti-slavery. It wouldn't solve the problem for long however, because it wouldn't stop the U.S. from controlling the South and slavery so there was no long term solution.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/secession

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secession, in U.S. history, the withdrawal of 11 slave states (states in which slaveholding was legal) from the Union during 1860-61 following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Secession precipitated the American Civil War.

Secession had a long history in the United States-but as a threat rather than as an actual dissolution of the Union. Pro-secessionists found philosophical justification for altering or abolishing a government and instituting a new one in the Declaration of Independence. More specifically, those who held that the Union was simply a compact among the states argued that states could secede from that compact just as they had earlier acceded to it.

While never counseling secession, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had clearly enunciated the states' rights-compact doctrine in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Their political opponents, New England Federalists, briefly considered withdrawing from the Union at the Hartford Convention in 1814. The Mississippi question elicited hints of secession from proslavery states, but the famous Missouri Compromise (1820) temporarily quieted the agitation. South Carolinians, however, went to the very brink of secession in the 1830s over the tariff question.

From the 1840s to 1860, Southerners frequently threatened to withdraw from the Union as antislavery sentiment in the North grew stronger. The Compromise of 1850 eased some of the sectional strife, but the problem of permitting or prohibiting slavery in the western territories continued to inflame opinion on both sides throughout the 1850s.

The Republican Party formed during this decade around the idea that the territories should remain free; i.e., slaveholding should not be permitted in them. Southerners vowed that the election of a Republican president in 1860 would make secession a certainty. When the Democratic Party disintegrated in 1860 over the slavery-extension question, Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president.

On December 20, 1860, a special convention called in South Carolina unanimously passed an ordinance of secession. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed in January, and Texas voted to secede on February 1, 1861-still more than a month before Lincoln was actually inaugurated. Pres. James Buchanan denied the right of secession, but he also denied the right of the federal government to use force against the seceded states.

Lincoln waited a month after his inauguration before deciding to send provisions to Fort Sumter in the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, 1861, Confederate guns opened fire on the fort, and the Civil War began. Forced now to make a choice between the Union and the Confederacy, the states of the Upper South- Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee-voted to secede.

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Secession | History, Definition, Crisis, & Facts

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Secession, the withdrawal of 11 slave states (states in which slaveholding was legal) from the Union during 1860-61 following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. The secessionist states formed the Confederate States of America. Secession precipitated the American Civil War.

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It was the first official battle that led to the civil war.
What actions did Lincoln take to prevent an outbreak of violence at Fort Sumter?
Lincoln sent out a group of 75,000 troops to stop the rebellion from breaking out.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Fort-Sumter

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Battle of Fort Sumter, (April 12-14, 1861), the opening engagement of the American Civil War, at the entrance to the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. Although Fort Sumter held no strategic value to the North-it was unfinished and its guns faced the sea rather than Confederate shore batteries-it held enormous value as a symbol of the Union.

The United States Army began building Fort Sumter on an artificial island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor in 1829. The fort was named for Thomas Sumter, a general who had won key victories against the British in the Carolinas during the American Revolution. The fort was still under construction during the last months of Pres. James Buchanan's term, when a succession of events occurred that brought the contending regions of the United States to the verge of armed conflict. Soon after the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, the state of South Carolina called a convention that passed an ordinance of secession (December 20, 1860), and Gov. Francis Pickens sent commissioners to Washington, D.C., to claim possession of the forts in Charleston Harbor and all other U.S. property in his state.

On December 26, 1860, Maj. Robert Anderson, commanding officer of the Federal garrison at Charleston, secretly transferred his two weak companies from Fort Moultrie-which was located on a peninsula on the east side of the harbour and was untenable against a land attack-to Fort Sumter in the mouth of the harbour. Pickens seized the arsenal and other forts around the harbour and began throwing up batteries against Sumter. Meanwhile, his commissioners in Washington requested the recall of the Federal troops from Charleston. Buchanan refused this request. In a message to Congress on December 3, Buchanan had already denied the right of secession, but he asserted that the Constitution gave him no right to attempt coercion. He hoped for compromise, and a committee of Congress considered various proposals for adjustment. A peace conference, called by Virginia, also met in Washington and suggested amendments to the Constitution that would satisfy Southern grievances. Lincoln and the leaders of the Republican Party refused to accept the adjustments that the Southerners demanded. In the meantime, Buchanan sent an unarmed commercial steamer, Star of the West, with supplies and reinforcements to Sumter, but it turned back when it was fired upon in the harbour on January 9, 1861.

Between January 9 and February 1 six other states ( Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) followed South Carolina's example. Without attempting negotiation, their governors seized all the forts and arsenals in their respective states except Fort Pickens in the harbour of Pensacola, Florida. Delegates from the seceding states met at Montgomery, Alabama, organized the Confederate States of America, and set up a provisional government with Jefferson Davis as president. Davis's inauguration took place on February 18. The Confederate government then assumed control of the negotiations about Sumter. Neither Buchanan nor Davis was eager to precipitate a crisis. Buchanan's fervent desire apparently was to leave the solution of the whole problem to his successor; Davis was chiefly concerned with getting his own administration in working order. He sent Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, an engineer officer of distinction, to Charleston to complete the defenses of the harbour. The day after Beauregard reached Charleston, Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington, D.C. (March 4).

A difficult problem confronted the new president. Seven slave states had seceded, but eight still remained in the Union. Any attempt at coercion would throw all these states, except Delaware (which practically counted as a Northern state), into the arms of the Confederacy. At this stage neither side wanted war. This was certainly true of the North, where a strong feeling was growing in favour of "letting the erring sisters depart in peace." The South had assumed a defensive role, that of a newborn country asking only to be left alone. Lincoln's inaugural speech was really addressed to the slave states still in the Union. To the Confederate states it sounded like a declaration of war, but they sought to avoid the responsibility of striking the first blow.

The South hoped to force Lincoln's hand over Sumter. Anderson's position there was daily growing more difficult. He would have gladly evacuated the fort to avert a civil war, but his duty as a soldier compelled him to sit with folded hands while the enemy was completing its preparations. His provisions would be exhausted by mid-April. The Confederate batteries had made such progress that he doubted whether it was still possible to relieve the fort unless possession of the whole harbour were secured, and for that purpose he estimated that 20,000 men would be required. The whole U.S. Army numbered only about 17,000 men, most of whom were scattered in small posts on the Western frontier, whence they could not be hastily withdrawn.

Only on March 5 did Lincoln learn that Anderson might be starved into surrender. Gen. Winfield Scott, the president's chief military adviser, urged evacuation on military grounds. However, Lincoln had pledged himself "to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the Government." It would be fatal to the prestige of his administration to start by going back on his word, and evacuation might seem a virtual recognition of the Confederacy. Against the advice of a majority of his cabinet, he determined to send a relief expedition, carrying only food supplies, to Sumter. If the Federal flag should be fired upon, that would constitute a casus belli, and the responsibility for beginning the war would rest on the Confederates.

Although he did not inform Anderson, Lincoln gave Pickens precise information regarding his intention. He must have foreseen the actual event. Through war, the Union could be restored, and the North, which was not agreed on policy, could be united. Pickens promptly informed the Montgomery government, and Davis ordered Beauregard to reduce Sumter. Upon Anderson's refusal to evacuate, the batteries opened fire at 4:30 am on April 12. The next afternoon Anderson agreed to surrender and evacuated the fort at noon on April 14. When the U.S. troops marched out of the fort, they waved the U.S. flag and carried out a gun salute. On the 50th round of the 100-gun salute, an explosion occurred, causing the only death of the engagement. Pvt. Daniel Hough of the 1st U.S. Artillery regiment was the first of as many as 850,000 Americans who would perish before the cessation of hostilities.

The Confederate leaders' ready acceptance of Lincoln's challenge may have been due to a fear that without a collision the ardour of the Southern people, many of whom had opposed secession, might abate. Neither Lincoln nor Davis could have foreseen the dimensions the war would assume.

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Battle of Fort Sumter | Location, Significance, & Map

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The Battle of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War.