Civil War Dbq

Slavery was overall the direct cause of the Civil War. However, many events in the years leading up to the Civil War also contributed to its beginning. Unfair laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act contributed by infuriating the Northerners who were against slavery. The Dred Scott decision kept the Southerners happy, but angered the Northerners, furthering the divide between the North and the South. Two other events that led to the Civil War were John Brown’s Raid and the election of 1860, which angered the South. All of these events led to the Civil War by continuing to divide the North from the South. The nation was further divided by the issue of runaway slaves. Many of the northern states had passed laws against aiding slave catchers. However, in 1850, Congress passed The Fugitive Slave Act which was a law that put the federal government completely in charge of aiding slave catchers. The law stated that if anyone was caught helping an escaped slave they would either be heavily fined or put in jail. One of the many issues Northerners had with this law was that a white man could take any black man, escaped or free, and claim him as his slave. Black men also could not testify for themselves to try to prove they were free, it was completely up to the judge to decide

The Democrats had two candidates running, John C. Breckinridge and Stephen Douglas, due to a proposed slave code for the territories. John Bell was nominated by the Constitutional Union Party, a political party created by the southern states and the border state Whigs, and Abraham Lincoln was nominated by the Republican Party. Despite not being on the ballot in nine southern states, Lincoln won the presidential election with 38 percent of the vote. This angered the South because they felt like they no longer had a say in politics. Lincoln’s victory caused seven of the southern states to secede and form the