As the textbook states on page 482: “However much [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis and other southerners argued that succession and the war were about states’ rights, the states of the Lower South seceded in 1860-1861 primarily to preserve slavery.
The South Carolina Declaration on the Immediate Causes of Secession explains that the state left the union because of the ‘increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery.’” (Chapter 14, page 482).
In fact, Alexander Stephenson, the Vice-President of the Confederacy told supporters in March 1861 on the eve of the war that “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” Indeed, the question of slavery was a major debate even during the Constitutional Conventions.
Using the textbook, lectures, and other course materials, trace the role of slavery in the buildup to the Civil War starting with the aftermath of the American Revolution (after the midterm).
This question will require you to describe the following: the role of labor differences between the North and South; The Compromise of 1820; The Free-Soil Movement; Compromise of 1850; Kansas-Nebraska Controversy; the Election of 1860.
These are not the only aspects of the controversy rooted in slavery you can discuss. If you would like, you may bring in other events, people, and policies as well (optional, not required), like John Brown, John C. Calhoun, the Texas Revolution, Mexican-American War, Lincoln’s election, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fugitive Slave Laws, the list goes on.
