hello everyone it's Dr Livy um this week I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the leadup to the Civil War you have a lot of material to cover this week as you're learning about um the path to the Civil War and the war itself um and so I want to explain this sort of pathway um in a sort of concise brief way to help you a little bit as you're going through this material because it's a lot um to cover and it's very complicated the lead of the Civil War we can think about this is something that goes back deep um into to the history of the United States certainly you think about the beginning of the beginning of the 19th century in The Early Republic is a time when people were already considering the fact that these two systems of Labor um these two social systems um and certainly a system of free labor and a system of bondage that they just did not work well together um and that only of course gets worse and worse as the century progresses in this class you've learned a lot about um how the country had really worked to kind of stall this conflict as much as possible through a series of compromises and what we're going to talk about today really is focused on the breakdown of these compromises that they're not going to work anymore so we're really focused on the last set of these debates um thinking about how the investment in the practice of slavery had only grown more deep um in the South up to the up through the 1850s up to and through the 1850s um and was an investment that wasn't just held by this poit the sort of Pol iCal structure of the planter Elite who controlled um Southern States but it was also of course held by um those who were actually not benefiting from slavery economically but we're benefiting from it socially and culturally and that's of course poor whites and those are the bulk of the people actually are going to fight on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War okay so let's jump into this okay when you learned a little bit about the Mexican-American War and the sort of um the S resulting um territorial gains in the United States it provoked a lot of anxiety on the part um of Americans because of course we had had this balance between North and South that had been perpetuated to maintain a balance in the Senate but most of this territory was in areas that most likely was not going to practice slavy even if it was um south of that compromise of of 1820 line that Missouri Compromise line um there just wasn't any way that slavery could have um spread to their too sparsely populated it didn't make sense economically indeed in some of the territories like California people tried to bring slaves to make it work and there was just a lot of um resistance to it so it just wasn't going to happen um but many of these places needed to be brought into the Union right away now before that even comes about people in Congress were coming up with with ideas to make sure that slavery didn't spread one of them was a representative named David Wilmont okay I have a little image of him so we can think of as we're talking about we can think about him he's a pretty handsome guy okay um look looking right at us um David Wilmont came up with um a sort of piece of legislation ultimately um a rule that comes to be known as the Wilmont Proviso that says none of this land that would be taken during the Mexican-American War would ever be taken and put um towards use of slavery now the Wilmont Proviso was flying in the face of a movement that was starting to gain steam as a way to further compromise and this is a movement called popular sovereignty popular sovereignty simply put was instead of the federal government making decisions about what territories did in terms of slavery that people got to choose it was a popular vote to choose what um when they became a state whether they would practice slavery or not okay now this is one of the ways that slavery will actually continue to expand even though we we don't actually see ways for that to happen in the 1850s there are lots of crazy schemes one of them is to buy Cuba and turn it into a whole bunch of tiny little Southern um slave states there was a large U African population um people of African ancestry population in Cuba actually it turns out there still is and the idea they could turn into these little slave states this is um this is a proposal that was pushed forward know as the Austin Manifesto um in the 1850s it doesn't go anywhere um you get the idea this is like kind of crazy like there people are trying to find ways to expand slavery popular sovereignty is the only real way to do it and it comes to the foreground in 1850 in 1850 California had requested to join the union um they're skipping the territorial status as you can learn a lot about this and um our history of California of course they skip the territorial status they want to become a state but they want to become a free state and this would again not only throw off the balance but it's just there's no way to recover and so um a compromise is hammered out that essentially breaks down and ends the Missouri Compromise and um the that sort of Statute that had been on the books for so long this is the Compromise of 1850 it allows California to join the Union as a free state but it allows for the use of popular sovereignty um in some of the other territory it also led the federal government as part of this compromise to pass a new Fugitive Slave Law um that made it um something that required northern states and Northern officials to cooperate with slave raing parties parties of people from the South looking for escape slaves to cooperate and hand those slaves over okay this is super super important right people in the north hate this now in 1850 the majority of Norther white Northerners did not oppose the practice of slavery necessarily they weren't um for ending slavery they just didn't want slavery in their own communities within a decade anti-slavery goes from being a radical movement to being a very popular m mainstream movement um in part as it begins as a result of the food to the slave law now a lot of historians debate when did the Civil War become inevitable I would argue it's the Compromise of 1850 this is what sets us on this almost unbre unceasing and unbreakable path in the 1850s a lot of things happened that reflect this shift in Attitude particularly in the north about the practice of slavery and the increasing tensions between North and South one of them is a publishing of a novel a sentimentalist piece of fiction called Uncle Tom's Cabin it's written by har beater Stow Stow had experienced um spent she' spent a little bit of time in Kentucky um um on a farm on a plantation where slavery is practiced she wrote this very romantic story about slaves um uh and including a woman of mixed race off uh ancestry and so this is very popular book people are really into it and they see Slave people depicted as people in this book in a way that really had not pervaded or penetrated into American popular culture so it becomes this bestseller everyone reads it and people's attitudes are starting to change in fact Lincoln goes so far during the midst of the Civil War when he meets her at beer Stow just to say so you're the little woman who started this big war um so people understood this cultural impact of just this one book in 1854 um with people very anxious to have some of these new territories some of it part of the Louisiana Purchase join the union Congress passes something called the Kansas Nebraska Act which Builds on this notion of popular sovereignty it says the territories of Kansas and Nebraska if if they wanted to choose they could vote to choose whether they were going to be slave or free okay this causes a lot of upset and dis really distaste in the north right but it potentially creates the possibility that slavery will SP spread much further north and certainly throughout much of the central Midwest now in 1856 Kansas decides to try to enter the Union they have a vote um in that territory whether to be slave or free now you can imagine this vote was totally orderly and there were no problems I'm just kidding it was a disaster this is an event known as Bleeding Kansas people from both sides this is actually this kind of cool um uh inset um of a book that was written about what went down in Kansas okay um all of this violence dozens of people died okay lots of people were subjected to violence as people from the pro-slavery cause of the South and the anti-slavery cause of the north flooded into the state to try to um Bas basically alter the results of the election um and this should have been a sign that the country was starting to come apart at the scenes right in fact it's so crazy what happens in Kansas is NE either side accepts um fully the results of the election and they form two separate state governments so at one point um in the 1850s in Kansas for actually some time there were two separate state state governments with two separate capitals one a slave state one a free state crazy right you get the idea right this is of course in 1856 on in 1857 another sort of landmark sort of huge bombshell um of an event that is pushing us closer to the Civil War is a Supreme Court decision The Dread Scott decision in this case an enslave person was brought across um the boundary between slave and free states up as far north as Michigan and the question was is this person still a slave even though they're in a territory where slavery is illegal the court led by a pro slavery chief justice Roger teny argues yes in fact the laws of the states whether s determining whether slavery exists or not were immaterial okay because that person was property okay so that they are always a slave even if they're in a territory that does not permit slavery this enrages people in the north it is a huge decision and incites a lot of resistance certainly the idea that these free states many of whom had been free since the end of the 18th century were now going to be enslaved places potentially if people brought their slaves north um and again this is growing that anti-slavery cause it's in the midst of all this that we see a new political party filling the vacuum that was left by the collapse of the wigs and this is the Republican party that's right the same Republican party that exist today was a new party that was formed in support of civil rights it was formed in in general in opposition to slavery but a pretty moderate opposition to slavery um it had a very different set of objectives than maybe what we might think of in the Republican party today even though it's still described as the party of Lincoln Lincoln would not recognize the the party of of um the 21st century that we see the Republican party of today um indeed because the Republican party of this era was actually in support of a strong federal government that might regulate the practice of slavery as opposed to governments that focused on State's rights so um the first election um where we see a Republican presidential candidate 1856 it doesn't really do a whole lot it's actually a guy named John C Fremont and that name should sound familiar it's just students of aloney city of Fremont's named after he's from he's California he was a Senator actually from California um but eventually we're going to see the rise of a whole new um sort of wave of politicians including one individual who's very important to our story and that's Abraham Lincoln Lincoln will run um for office in 1858 as senator in the state of Illinois and in a series of debates um with Democrat Steven Douglas a man who ultimately goes on to win the election against Lincoln right we see the outlines of an argument against the practice of slavery not necessarily to end it permanently but to stop it from spreading to stop popular sovereignty this is a big deal of course this is the beginning of Lincoln's career his success in these debates which are widely covered throughout the United States really um promotes him to become the presidential candidate for the Republicans in 1860 now before the election of 1860 there's a series of events that are really important the one that I want you to be paying attention to is the raid that was conducted by man named John Brown now brown as you can tell he's kind of an interesting figure just from his image he looks little um kind of scary Brown believed he was a messenger of God and that his job on Earth was to end the practice of slavery okay he and a group of his followers including runaway slaves and free blacks will raid an Armory in Harper's fairy Virginia to try to spread arms and lead to a massive uprising of enslaved people in the South ultimately this is put down John will be tried with treason on John Brown will be tried to treason and will be executed okay but he becomes this kind of folk hero the anti-slavery movement and this is all happening right before the election of 1860 now you're probably used to pretty stayed presidential elections they may seem really exciting and they are right um but nothing like the election of 1860 there were four major candidates um all who had the potential to to win the presidency um but in particular there were two candidates that were um of real Focus the one that of course we all know the one we tend to focus on is of course Abraham Lincoln the Dem rats split between North and South so we have two separate Democratic nominees and then we have this um a representative from a third party that actually starts to gain some steam as well now Lincoln did not look like he was going to win in fact he wasn't even on the ballot in most southern states they wouldn't even let him on the ballot but he wins he's elected he wins a majority of electoral college which means okay he he's going to become president it's his election that will trigger the First Act of secession this is is a state government South Carolina okay which I think I may have used this phrase before um it was commonly said South Carolina was too small to be a republic too large to be an insane asylum um they're the first state that will in their their state legislature vote to secede which is not a process that's allowed by the Constitution as it turns out um and as most constitutional Scholars will argue this is what begins the process of the Civil War right States beginning to try to remove consultion the union and the union acting in response please do your reading carefully as you're learning about the Civil War there's lots of stuff don't get bogged down too much in all of the battles and the Nuance but think about the significance in that long larger timeline okay I look forward to reading your responses this week and I hope you're all doing well