Preface to the Civil War
Uploaded by codyconnor on Oct 31, 2005
Part I : Preface to the War
There many events that led to civil war, however many attempts were made to unite the country that were not successful but showed how passionate each side was to achieve their goals.
The first was the Missouri Compromise which established to keep an equal balance of power in congress. First, they divided the free state of Massachusetts into two states, Maine and Massachusetts and admitted Missouri as a slave state. It also established that all undeveloped territories the Louisiana Purchase admitted in the future that were below the 36° 30° line would be admitted as a slave state and any state above the 36° 30° line would be admitted as a free state.
The next event that added to the rising tensions was the Mexican Cession. The war between Mexico and the United States had its beginnings with the struggle over who would control Texas. American settlers began to move to territory after the Revolutionary War. The Louisiana Purchase had stretched the western boundaries of the United States farther west than they had ever been. Settlers were drawn west and right next to Louisiana was Texas.
In 1844 the United States annexed Texas and two years later the Mexican-American War began. The United States won the war and under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,. Mexico agreed to give up about 55 percent of its territory and got $15 million in return. The territory they gave was California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
The Compromise of 1850 abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia but bound Congress to create became the Fugitive Slave Law. The Compromise of 1850 also admitted California as a free state and separately organized the territories of Utah and New Mexico without restrictions on slavery. Northerners were disliked the Compromise of 1850 because it contained the Fugitive Slave Law which forced them to enable slavery to continue.
The next attempt to solve the issue of slavery was introduced by Stephen Douglas; he proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas proposed to divide the Nebraska territory into two territories; Kansas and Nebraska. In these territories the issue of slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty however according to the Missouri Compromise the Nebraska territory as a free territory. This upset the who were opposed to slavery because again, they would be forced to give slavery a...