https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566 U.S. History 1st HR en-us 2018-05-04 13:12:14 UTC 2025-10-08 02:01:22 UTC hello@padlet.com knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258020937 The burning issue that led to the disruption of the union was the debate over the future of slavery. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution.]]> 2018-05-04 13:26:57 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258020937 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258025233 Dred Scott was a slave who sought citizenship through the American legal system, and whose case eventually ended up in the Supreme Court. The famous Dred Scott Decision in 1857 denied his request stating that no person with African blood could become a U.S. citizen. Besides denying citizenship for African-Americans, it also overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had restricted slavery in certain U.S. territories.]]> 2018-05-04 13:36:17 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258025233 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258026850 By the early 1830s, those who wished to see that institution abolished within the United States were becoming more strident and influential. They claimed obedience to “higher law” over obedience to the Constitution’s guarantee that a fugitive from one state would be considered a fugitive in all states. The fugitive slave act along with the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped expand the support for abolishing slavery nationwide.]]> 2018-05-04 13:39:51 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258026850 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258027050 States’ Rights refers To the struggle between the federal government and individual states over political power. In the Civil War era, this struggle focused heavily on the institution of slavery and whether the federal government had the right to regulate or even abolish slavery within an individual state. The sides of this debate were largely drawn between northern and southern states, thus widened the growing divide within the nation.]]> 2018-05-04 13:40:23 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258027050 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258515581 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabins was published in serial form in an anti-slavery newspaper in 1851 and in book format in 1852. Within two years it was a nationwide and worldwide bestseller. Depicting the evils of slavery, it offered a vision of slavery that few in the nation had seen before. The book succeeded at its goal, which was to start a wave of anti-slavery sentiment across the nation. Upon meeting Stowe, President Lincoln remarked, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”]]> 2018-05-07 13:31:16 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258515581 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258519843 Some abolitionists actively helped runaway slaves to escape via “the Underground Railroad,” and there were instances in which men, even lawmen, sent to retrieve runaways were attacked and beaten by abolitionist mobs. To the slave holding states, this meant Northerners wanted to choose which parts of the Constitution they would enforce, while expecting the South to honor the entire document. The most famous activist of the underground railroad was Harriet Tubman, a nurse and spy in the Civil War and known as the Moses of her people.]]> 2018-05-07 13:39:02 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258519843 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258521742 Additional territories gained from the U.S Mexican- American War heightened the slavery debate. Abolitionists fought to have slavery declared illegal in those territories, as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had done in the territory that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Advocates of slavery feared that if the institution were prohibited in any states carved out of the new territories the political power of slaveholding states would be diminished, possibly to the point of slavery being outlawed everywhere within the United States. Pro- and anti-slavery groups rushed to populate the new territories.]]> 2018-05-07 13:42:52 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258521742 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258682312 In Kansas, particularly, violent clashes between proponents of the two ideologies occurred. One abolitionist in particular became famous—or infamous, depending on the point of view—for battles that caused the deaths of pro-slavery settlers in Kansas. His name was John Brown. Ultimately, he left Kansas to carry his fight closer to the bosom of slavery.]]> 2018-05-07 19:08:41 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258682312 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258682521 On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and a band of followers seized the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in what is believed to have been an attempt to arm a slave insurrection. (Brown denied this at his trial, but evidence indicated otherwise.) They were dislodged by a force of U.S. Marines led by Army lieutenant colonel Robert E. Lee.]]> 2018-05-07 19:09:19 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258682521 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258683058 Exacerbating tensions, the old Whig political party was dying. Many of its followers joined with members of the American Party (Know-Nothings) and others who opposed slavery to form a new political entity in the 1850s, the Republican Party. When the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, Southern fears that the Republicans would abolish slavery reached a new peak. Lincoln was an avowed opponent of the expansion of slavery but said he would not interfere with it where it existed.]]> 2018-05-07 19:10:45 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258683058 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258683646 That was not enough to calm the fears of delegates to an 1860 secession convention in South Carolina. To the surprise of other Southern states—and even to many South Carolinians—the convention voted to dissolve the state’s contract with the United States and strike off on its own.]]> 2018-05-07 19:12:32 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258683646 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258686983 On April 10, 1861, knowing that resupplies were on their way from the North to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, provisional Confederate forces in Charleston demanded the fort’s surrender. The fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused. On April 12, the Confederates opened fire with cannons. At 2:30 p.m. the following day, Major Anderson surrendered.]]> 2018-05-07 19:21:32 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258686983 knotwhun https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258688327 Around 1844, Harriet asked for and received permission from her owners to marry and live with John Tubman, a freeman, and took his last name, but she was required to continue working for her owner. In 1849, Harriet and two of her brothers ran away after their master died, afraid that they would be sold. Her brothers had second thoughts, and the group returned. Not long after, Harriet left on her own, on foot in the middle of the night, using a part of the Underground Railroad that was already in place in eastern Maryland. She traveled only at night, using the North Star and instructions from helpers in the Underground Railroad to guide her about 90 miles to Pennsylvania.]]> 2018-05-07 19:25:56 UTC https://padlet.com/knotwhun/1n67z2kbt566/wish/258688327