🗽 US History · Expansion and Division
Causes of the Civil War cheat sheet
Everything you need on one page. Print it, or switch on test-yourself mode to blur the answers and check your memory.
Four labels
- Central cause: slavery and the fight over its spread into the western territories
- Other factors: tariffs, balance of power in Congress, views of federal power
- Events: compromises, laws, rulings, books, violence (1820 to 1859)
- Triggers: Lincoln's election, secession, Fort Sumter
Timeline
- 1820: Missouri Compromise (line at 36°30′)
- 1850: Compromise of 1850, with the Fugitive Slave Act
- 1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin
- 1854: Kansas–Nebraska Act; the Republican Party is formed
- May 1856: Lawrence and Pottawatomie (Bleeding Kansas, 1854 to 1859); Sumner caned in the Senate
- 1857: Dred Scott decision
- 1859: John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry
- November 1860: Lincoln elected
- December 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes
- February 1861: Confederate States formed
- April 12, 1861: Fort Sumter attacked
Two societies
- North: industry, cities, immigration, mostly free labor
- South: plantation agriculture built on enslaved labor
- Nearly four million people enslaved by 1860
- Northern mills and banks still profited from Southern cotton
Voices
- Garrison: The Liberator, 1831, immediate end to slavery
- Douglass: escaped 1838; life story 1845; North Star 1847
- Tubman: escaped 1849; guided others on the Underground Railroad
- Enslaved people resisted in many ways, including escape
Limits to remember
- States' rights: an argument of the era, tied to the right to hold enslaved people
- Tariffs: lowered in 1857; the higher tariff came after secession began
- A cause-and-effect map simplifies: many factors, many choices
Causes of the Civil War cheat sheet from HighSchoolQ.com, for personal study use.