Key Causes of the Civil War
A: What is slavery?
Q: This system emerged as a way for freed slaves and poor whites in the South to work land owned by others in exchange for a share of the crops.
What is sharecropping?
Q: This 1860 event led to heightened tensions between North and South and marked the beginning of Southern secession movements.
A: What is Lincoln’s Election?
This term refers to allowing voters within a U.S. territory to decide whether to allow slavery, a key concept debated in the 1850s.
A: What is popular sovereignty?
Q: What 1861 event marks the formal beginning of the Civil War, involving the bombardment and subsequent surrender of a Union fort in South Carolina?
A: What is the Battle of Fort Sumter?
Q: Disputes over this principle, concerning the balance of power between state and federal governments, fueled tensions leading to the Civil War.
A: What are states’ rights?
Q: This organization’s rise during Reconstruction aimed to maintain white supremacy through intimidation and violence.
A: What is the Ku Klux Klan?
Q: This 1854 act allowed territories to decide the issue of slavery based on popular sovereignty, leading to violent conflict.
A: What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Q: Part of the Compromise of 1850, this law required Northern states to return escaped enslaved people to their Southern enslavers.
A: What is the Fugitive Slave Law?
Q: This controversial book, published in 1852 and authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe, exposed the harsh realities of slavery and fueled abolitionist sentiment.
A: What is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?
Q: This term refers to the economic and cultural differences between the industrialized North and the agrarian South, a key factor in the conflict.
A: What are economic differences?
Q: Following the Civil War, Southern states faced substantial difficulties in this area, caused by widespread devastation and the transition from a slave-based economy.
A: What are economic struggles?
Q: This 1857 Supreme Court decision declared that African Americans could not be citizens and heightened sectional tensions over slavery.
A: What is the Dred Scott Decision?
Q: This abolitionist led a notable raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1859, aiming to incite an armed slave revolt.
A: Who is John Brown?
Q: Known as “The Great Compromiser,” this politician was instrumental in crafting key agreements such as the Missouri Compromise, aiming to balance interests between free and slave states.
A: Who is Henry Clay?
Q: Debates over this movement proposed that citizens of each new territory should decide on the status of slavery themselves.
A: What is popular sovereignty?
Q: Despite the passing of key amendments, there was significant political resistance to these reforms intended to grant newly freed African Americans equal rights.
A: What are African American rights?
Q: This series of legislative measures in 1850 aimed to balance the interests of slave and free states and included the Fugitive Slave Act.
A: What is the Compromise of 1850?
Q: This series of bills, passed in 1850, tackled issues related to territories acquired from the Mexican-American War and included measures for both Northern and Southern interests.
A: What is the Compromise of 1850?
Q: This violent series of events in the Kansas Territory during the mid-1850s was a direct result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as pro- and anti-slavery forces clashed.
A: What is Bleeding Kansas?
Q: This act of territorial expansion sparked debates about the extension of slavery and contributed heavily to the onset of the Civil War.
A: What is westward expansion?
Q: The implementation of these legal changes aimed to abolish slavery, grant citizenship, and protect voting rights, but faced considerable opposition and challenges.
A: What are the Constitutional Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th)?
Q: These years mark the conflict between the Union and Confederacy, a pivotal war that determined the future of slavery and the nation.
A: What is the Civil War (1861-1865)?
Q: Name the 1857 Supreme Court decision that ruled African Americans were not citizens and had no standing to sue in federal court, exacerbating sectional tensions.
A: What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
Q: Often dubbed the “Little Giant” for his role in the debates of popular sovereignty in the territories, this politician ran against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election.
A: Who is Stephen A. Douglas?