The precursor to the Civil War was the 1840s, a turbulent time in which the Mexican American War occurred. America was the victor of the war, but a great debate surrounded the territories gained by this war; were they to be slave states or free states? Abolitionists led great movements against them becoming slavery, while slave owners saw it as a chance to further profit. The unrest from this contributed to the great animosity between most Northerners and Southerners in America that continued to grow and boil until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Leading up to the war there was session by many Southern states that formed the Confederacy with Jefferson Davis as president. The Abolitionist movement and the Secession of the Confederates …show more content…
In Document 1, he states how he believes the abolitionists have been too extreme in their pursuits. This address to the senate was an attempt to get the Compromise of 1850 in place, as a Union saving measure, as a resolution to the dispute over land gained after the Mexican-American War. The North wanted to ensure that these areas would not be slave states, so the Compromise of 1850 was put into action which was made up of laws entering California into the Union as a free state, created Utah and New Mexico as territories that could be slave or free due to popular sovereignty where the people voted, settled a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in favor of Texas, ended the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and made it easier for Southerners to recover fugitive slaves. This act was viewed as very controversial among abolitionists because it made it harder for the slaves seeking refuge to stay safe even in the North. The Whig Party was mostly dissolved by 1855, in part due to the Compromise and controversy around the party, as shown by the charts in Document 3. The extremism among abolitionists was noted by the Whigs, and these abolitionists frequently looked to Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a spark for why their movement was so necessary. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as portrayed in document 2, showed the harshness of slavery and is regarded by many as a cause of the war. Furthermore, the extreme of both sides was clearly exemplified by Bleeding Kansas, which was Southerens and extreme Abolitionists flocked to Kansas after it was decided it would be a free or slave state based on what the people voted. John Brown roused his followers against the pro slavery groups who had attacked the town of Lawrence and they ended up killing 5 pro-slavery people. Document 6 shows the effects of bleeding Kansas through the eyes of Frederick Douglas; Douglas believed that John