No Slaves? We want out?

Essential Question: How were the results of the Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery? 

The election of 1860 was a huge turning point for the long road to end slavery. The reasons there were deep divisions over slavery because of the results of the 1860 election was because Abraham Lincoln stated that he wanted to end slavery. Therefore, that turned some people off from the Union because they were pro slavery so it would not make sense to be apart of a anti slavery union. So the south feared that when Lincoln was elected president they would lose the right to own the slaves that they had, so they decided to succeed from the north. This was one of the events that we studied while learning about the events that lead up to the civil war. We created an Educreations video showing all of the events. We created a script and added some pictures to make a visual representation of the events.


Educreations Video

Citations:

Bombardment of Fort Sumter by Currier & Ives (1837–1885)

US Postage Stamp, 1961 issue, 4c, commemorating the Centennial of the battle at Fort Sumter, April 12-13, 1861. Civil War

"Historical Geography" map about Slavery, 1888 (See discussion at Civil War Memory)

North v. South

Essential Question: How did the differences between the North and the South affect each region's strategy and success in the Civil War?

The research that went into making this infographic really gave me an understanding on who had the advantage while leading up the the civil war. I leaned that overall, the north had a advantage on the south. It was actually pretty fun making the graphics. They were a great way to visualize the stats about slaves. I made the infographic through infogr.am. I chose to use graphs to show the data and made summaries explaining what the graph is showing. I made a few graphs showing slavery facts and then I made a list of the advantages that the north and the south had over each other. Then I summed up the list with a paragraph at the end.  

North v. south | Create infographics

Settling the Turmoil

Essential question: How we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in the early 19th century?

The term elephant in the room is a phrase that means that there is a completely obvious topic that people who are discussing something completely ignore. We know that slavery was the elephant in the room for American politics because the politicians know that the north and the south have completely different views on slavery so they think that a major fight would no doubtfully break out if they would ever bring up slavery while in discussion. While learning about the many events that lead up to the civil war, a common term that came up a lot was that the war was inevitable. It clearly was, so the American politicians avoided talking about slaves while in discusson. This means that the politicians knew that the civil war was completely inevitable. 

The Missouri compromise was a huge part of the civil war. The compromise created an even split of 11 slave states and 11 free sates. California requested to join the union as a free state. This messes up the whole north and south trend that was going on because California is far west. California was able to become a free state thanks to The Compromise of 1850. The compromise is a 5-part compromise created by a man named Henry Clay. He anticipated the inevitable controversy of the loss of balance between slave and free states. In the compromise, it says that slave trade will be abolished in DC buy you could still own slaves buy you can't buy or sell them. A rising problem that occurred.  A part of the compromise was the Fugitive Slave Law. This law state that if any citizen was to find a runaway slave, they would have to turn them in. Making them assist the recovery of fugitive slaves. The compromise of 1850 did what it was suppose to do, which was to keep the nation united. You could tell that they knew that the civil war was coming, so Henry Clay created it so that it would settle any negative inner turmoil that was brewing in America.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska act came rolling around. The act made the Missouri Compromise line meaningless because there was now open land for slave states to settle. The act allowed white males in those territories to decide whether or not the land would be free through popular opinion. The act pleased the southerners because they could move into the land and claim it as slave land. They could also expand both west and north. Chicago was the hub of transportation and commerce because the city was were the railroad began. The northerners were happy with the new railroads because they could easily access the west for trade and sales. 

In 1856, the Bleeding Kansas occurred. Bleeding Kansas is the term that represents the acts of violence during the settling of Kansas. Because the Kansas-Nebraska created either pro-slavery, or free state territories by the popular sovereignty, pro-slavery and antislavery settlers came rushing in to try to influence the decision on whether the territory should be free or not. Abolitionist John Brown and a band of other abolitionists massacre five pro-slavery settler on the night of may 24th. This created an uproar and people did not know what to do about it. Brown's actions created more acts of violence to occur. 

Since slavery was never really discussed and figured out, all these events had to happen. All of these actions came together and finally led to all out war which was the Civil War. If slavery was never the "elephant in the room" then maybe the war would of never of happened. To answer the essentail question, we know that slavery was the Elelephant in Room because we knew that the politicians expected a war to happen, so they created acts and laws to try to settle an tensions that might have hinted towards a war to break out.

  

Slavery's Awful Impact

How did slavery become economically entrenched  in American society by the early 19th century? • How does a system of slavery based on race affect  human dignity?   What human characteristics does such a system tend  to ignore?

Slavery becomes more and more of a problem because of the demand of the north. In the north, there were a lot of textile factories that were producing a mass amount of products. Because of the amount of products they were producing, they need the supplies. Cotton was a major supply that the north needed. Cotton was a big product in the south, therefore, causing more slaves to be needed. This made slavery become entrenched. In 1834, there were 2.3 million slaves in the United States of America. 24 years later, the number leaped up to 3.9 million slaves. That is simply because the number of cotton that was consumed per week in Lowell jumped from 235 thousand to 805 thousand.


 This chart clearly shows how the increase of textile mills directly impacts the amount of slaves that were in America.

To answer the questions of "how does a system of slavery based on race affect human dignity?" and "what human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore?" we split into groups and were each assigned a slavery activists who had different views about slavery. My group was assigned George Fitzhugh, who was advocating slavery. He wrote 2 books and several articles about how he believed that all work should be enslaved. He also believed slaves had it better as free laborers. The system of slavery continued to forget about some human characteristics. Slavery ignored the fact that slaves were humans also and that they should be treated as humans too. We watched a docudrama in class that was about a slave by the name of Futa Jallon. He was ambushed and captured by an African group and then sold into slavery. He was forced to walk 100 miles while chained. He was then sent on a boat with many other slaves. They were in the bottom of the boat so the crew didn't even know that some of them were dying. This is some clear evidence that the system of slavery completely ignored some important human characteristics such as everyone is human.