Pre Civil War DBQ
From 1861 to 1865 our nation faced a national crisis. The American Civil War devastated the nation, and tried to put an end to the many disputes that trouble the United States of America. The Civil War had many different causes, but three of those stand out above the rest. The three reasons that were important to laying the groundwork for the Civil War were abolitionism, The Dred Scott Decision, and The Kansas-Nebraska Act. One of the major causes of the Civil War was abolitionism. The rise of slavery in the early 1800's caused increased tension among the southern slave owners and the northern elite. The Southerners believed that the slaves they owned were better off than the northern "wage slaves" and that the southern society was superior. The slave owners also believed that the slaves were like children that needed to be taken care of until their death. Obviously, the northern elitists disagreed with the southerners arguments and began the abolitionist movement. The abolitionists used the horrible stories of the lives of slaves to sway the people to the ideals of anti-slavery. Abolitionists called the slave owners sinners and claimed that they were immoral humans. The slave ow
Sandford (misspelled in the ruling) therefore made The Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The Kansas-Nebraska Act also contributed to the beginning American Civil War. Scott's owner took him across the Missouri border into Wisconsin and Illinois. The Missouri Compromise was broken apart and therefore disrupted the national compromise between slave states and free states. The northern states began to fear the power of the southern states, and the fact that the Missouri Compromise was not considered illegal. The northerners were angered by the "Bleeding Kansas" uproar and one again proved to them, that slavery was and an extremely pressing issue that must be dealt with. The Kansas- Nebraska Act just continued to weaken the relation between the northern states and the southern states. Frederick Douglas was another widely known abolitionist. The pro slavery government attempted to arrest the anti-slavery government, and ended up killing 5 members. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the portion of the Missouri Compromise that disallowed slavery in the Kansas and Nebraska territories, this act allowed popular sovereignty within the two territories. In summary, The American Civil War was a trying time for our nation. The voting population of these territories would be allowed to decide if they were to be a slave state or a free state. John Brown, an anti-slavery activist responded by killing 5 slavery supporters while they were sleeping. Kansas, by the application of a flawed vote became a slave state. These personal accounts converted many to the abolitionist movement.
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