The Civil War & Reconstruction

Sectional Crisis

The establishment of the cotton gin allows cotton to become a cash crop which triggers a resurgence in slavery.

The acquisition of land after the Mexican War reignited debates over slavery being extended into the newly acquired territories as slaveholders want to get in on the cotton boom.

Slaveholders, wannabe slaveholders, and those who profit from slavery or the racial discrimination that flows from the institution all want slavery to expand.

Enslaved, free, and freed blacks as well as increasingly prominent white abolitionists (Garrison) and anti-slavery activists (like Whitman & Lincoln) oppose the further expansion of slavery.

Both camps are ready to fight to advance their cause. The ties holding the Union together unravel from 1850-1860.

This is not predestined. Indeed, had both sides been willing to compromise it is likely that there would have been no war, no emancipation proclamation, no Reconstruction, etc. However, historians can look back at this time period to understand why the war began when it did.

The Path to Civil War

1820 Missouri Compromise

1846-1848 War with Mexico

1846 Wilmot Proviso established & rejected

1848 Gold discovered in California Territory

1850 Compromise of 1850

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act overturns Missouri Compromise

1855-1856 Bleeding Kansas

1857 Dred Scott decision

1859 John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry

1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln

1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union

1861 Confederacy formed, Fort Sumter attacked; Civil War begins

Preview of the Deepening Crisis over Slavery

Resurgence of Debates Over SlaveryThis term we have seen tobacco, indigo, rice, and sugar as

the primary cash crops produced by enslaved people in the colonial and early revolutionary eras. We have also learned that slaves were deployed as domestic servants, in cities, as artisans, dockworkers, in factories, mines, etc.

Although most Americans are familiar with cotton as a crop produced by enslaved people, this crop did not become mass produced by enslaved people until the 1800s.

Cotton was a labor-intensive and expensive to produce in mass because laborers had to pull the tiny seeds from the cotton by hand. Until the 1790s, most slaveholders stayed away from it.

Enslaved people were growing their own cotton on provisional lands to make clothing, linen, etc. However most cotton is imported into the U.S. until circa 1793.

This will change with the development of the cotton gin.

Resurgence of Slavery Cotton Gin was created by Eli

Whitney and patented in 1793. The gin freed enslaved laborers to pick the cotton and use the gin to separate the seeds. Cotton is easier to produce in massive amounts as a result of this invention.

Short staple cotton (with a shorter growing season) becomes “king” among the antebellum cash crops produced by enslaved people.

Though other crops (sugar in LMV) and industries (mining, factories, lumber) use slave labor, cotton becomes the foundation of antebellum slavery.

Resurgence of SlaverySugar cane cultivation in

Lower Mississippi Valley (Louisiana) region grows.

Refugees from Saint- Domingue (Haiti) bring skills and desire to rebuild.

Sugar becomes a major cash crop.

Intensifies demand for slave labor in the LMV region and pushes it from a “society with slaves” to a “slave society.”

Four things were needed to turn cotton & sugar into the cash crops that transformed slavery and the nation:A steadfast desire of Americans to recreate the

wealth of the eastern seaboard in the western territories;

New and vacant land on which to settle and produce cash crops;

Capital (or $$$) to finance the purchase of land, slaves, and startup costs; and

Mass unfree labor to carry out the clearing of the land and the cultivation of this crop (slavery had already been used profitably for almost 2 centuries in BCNA).

“Slave Country”

Source: Adam Rothman, “Slavery and National Expansion in the United States,” Magazine of History, 23 no. 2 (2009)

New Immigrants looking to take advantage of economic opportunities in the new nation. Indentured servitude has died out and been replaced by slave

labor for people of African descent and wage labor for people of European descent.

Poor and middling American born whites. These people are looking to recreate the wealth and political

power generated by slaveholders in the South and entrepreneurs and industrialists in the North. These people don’t want to be wage laborers, they want their own land, farms, businesses, etc.

Elite whites in North and South. They want to expand their wealth and political power by moving

west.Slaveholding apparatus

The men (and their families) who do not necessarily own slaves but benefit from slavery—doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, slave traders, slave catchers, merchants, etc. who move west.

Desire

Many of these women and men have seen the social, economic, and political benefits of slavery and they want to recreate the wealth and power produced in the east in the West. Scholars have read their letters, diaries, and journals which show their desire to become rich gain power by owning slaves. Walter Johnson notes that they want “make a [new] world [for themselves] out of slaves.”

At the same time we know that many people heading west were opposed to slavery for economic reasons—where slavery existed, planters gobbled up land (shutting out small independent farmers) and the use of enslaved labor decreased the wages of white workers. These people believe they can generate wealth by banning slavery from the western territories.

The contrasting visions of the trans-Mississippi west, especially over whether or not slavery will exist there, will lead both groups to clash.

Desire

The will to create wealth intensifies westward expansion from the eastern seaboard to the southern and western interior. On the minds of migrants is the federal question of whether slavery will be allowed in the West.

The NWO, 1787, determined where slavery can exist in newly acquired territories (it is banned North of the Ohio River but permitted South of the Ohio River) but Congress made no provisions for land beyond the Mississippi (because they hadn’t acquired it yet). With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, this changes.

The LA purchase doubles the size of the U.S. and activates new debates about where slavery can exist. See map here.

There will be future acquisitions through the war with Mexico and the forced expulsion and decimation of the Native American population and as we shall see below, with every acquisition, the debate over slavery’s existence in the West will reignite.

The desire for land to cultivate cash crops will also yield filibustering campaigns in Latin America and an offer to purchase Cuba to extend U.S. slavery throughout the hemisphere.

Land—the U.S. grows in size.

A key issue with these land acquisitions is that the land was not vacant.

Native Americans, whom early colonists had driven from the Atlantic coast, are still residents. However, demand for land and ideas about white superiority result in repeated decisions to remove the indigenous people from the land. This demand would continue until the end of the 19th century.

The removal of Native Americans to West of Mississippi River occurred via: Informal removal through violence (attacks) and war;Formal through (illegitimate and legal) land grab treaties; 42,000 Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws removed in the 1830s;

andCherokee Removal 14,000 (4000 died) aka the Trail of Tears,

1838.

Land

Northern industrialists who want cheaply produced cotton for textile mills or other goods like salt, turpentine, lumber.

Northern, Chesapeake, Lowcountry slaveholders who sell “surplus” slaves south and west as they abolish slavery or shift to other economies that require less slave labor.

Wealthy bankers and investors, especially from northern states and from England.

These men lend money to those migrants who are heading west so that they can buy land, buy slaves, finance their startup costs, build homes, roads, business, run trade, etc. They also make money off of goods produced by slave labor.

Money/Capital

Slavery had been used to supply labor in North America since the 17th century so it is a no-brainer that they will use slave labor in the cotton kingdom.

One source of the enslaved laborers who were sent west was the reopened transatlantic slave trade. Between the end of the American Revolution and 1808 when

Congress ended it, more than 250,000 African slaves were imported into the U.S.

However, because the demand is so strong, thousands of African captives were smuggled annually thereafter until 1857.

Another source will be the domestic slave trade. Approx 2 million enslaved people were transported from the

Northern states that were abolishing slavery via gradual abolition laws and from the eastern coast areas of the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry.

The Second Middle Passage had some of the same horrors of the First Middle Passage.

Labor

With all of the ingredients in place, slavery expands across the continent and intensifies.

Slavery is a key part of the new nation’s economy, so much so that scholars like Adam Rothman refer to the U.S. during this period as a “slave country.” Slavery wasn’t simply a private industry, it was protected

and backed by the U.S. government, especially in the Deep South and the borderlands the U.S. shared with Mexico and with Native American land.

As slavery intensifies, slaveholders move to accumulate more wealth by moving west and protect their interests by seeking political protection in electoral politics. This would be difficult to accomplish because just as they

are expanding their interests, those who are opposed to slavery for economic, moral, and religious reasons start to become more vocal and politically active.

Cotton & Sugar Kingdom

Cotton Production & Slave Labor, 1800-1860

1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 18600

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

Thousands of Bales of CottonThousands of Slaves

During the antebellum period a growing frustration with slavery congealed into several campaigns to end it. Enslaved people and free and freed black people opposed slavery

for their own reasons. White Americans opposed it for different reasons.

Some white Americans are opposed slavery for moral or religious reasons. We call these women and men abolitionists because they campaigned to end slavery.

Other white Americans who were opposed slavery for purely economic and political reasons (hating competition with slaveholders’ wealth and enslaved people’s cheap labor). These people disliked African Americans & objected to their presence in the U.S. We call these women and men anti-slavery activists. Rather than moving to end slavery, these people wanted to stop the institution from spreading westward.

In the years leading up to the Civil War they worked separately and sometimes collectively to push back against slaveholders to end slavery or to stop slavery from spreading west.

Opposition to Slavery

Northwest Ordinance (1787) to the Missouri Compromise (1820)How to settle issue of slavery in older territory and

newly acquired territory via the Louisiana Purchase.Jacksonian Era, 1820s-1840s

Problem of slavery in the west is dormant—no new territory acquired but the big “fill-in” as Americans move west.

Mexican War, 1846-1848Convergence of resurgent proslavery expansion and

new “free soil” and abolitionist movements drives final wedge in nation.

3 Phases of Struggle over Slavery

Source: Adam Rothman, “Slavery and National Expansion in the United States,” Magazine of History, 23 no. 2 (2009).

The Northwest Ordinance (1787)—article 6 outlawed slavery north of the OH River in what became OH, IN, MI, IL, and WI; slavery permitted south of the OH River in what became KY, TN and later AL and MS.

The Louisiana Purchase (1803)—security concerns, about the size of the black population, emerge in the wake of Haitian Revolution leads to some pushback on slavery spreading into the territory. There is an initial ban on importing foreign slaves but it is lifted

as proslavery forces gain power in Congress and in the White House and as more slaveholders and “wannabe” slaveholders move west. Debates about slavery in the West continue to fester and escalate.

The Missouri Compromise (1820)—tensions come to a head about settling land acquired under the LA Purchase when Missouri applied for admission to the Union as a slaveholding state. Opponents to slavery in the West want the application for admission to the Union blocked.

Phase 1

To settle the issue, another compromise is established. Missouri can enter the Union as a slaveholding state as long as Maine enters as a free state. This keeps the balance of power in Congress and in elections for the presidency equal between slaveholders and those who are opposed to slavery for economic, moral, and religious reasons.

Those who develop the compromise draw a line through the LA Purchase territory and establish that slavery can exist south of the line but it will be banned north of the line. Moreover, no slave state can enter the Union unless there is a free state ready to join at the same time and vice versa. This keeps the balance of political power equal for the time being. See interactive map here. But the debate will reappear once more land is acquired.

Phase 1

Jefferson had this response to the debates over the Missouri Compromise in a 1820 letter he wrote to John Holmes: “like a fire bell in the night, [the debate], awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and help up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

Phase 1

Phase 1

Signaling his unease

over the intensity of

the debates over

slavery’s westward

expansion and its

impact on the future

republic, a prescient

Jefferson wrote, it is

as though “we have

the wolf [slavery] by

the ear, and we can

neither hold him

safely nor let him

go. Justice is in one

scale, self-

preservation is in

the other.”

After the Missouri CompromiseAnti-slavery and abolitionist movements begin to

build more moral, economic, racialized support and they are aided by a growing free black population.

Historians note that they started to frame their arguments against slavery’s westward expansion in terms of a “slave power conspiracy.”The “slave power conspiracy” is the idea that

slaveholders are gobbling up the land and using their wealth and political power to make the entire U.S. open to slavery.Most abolitionists want to end slavery once and for all (few

addressed or discussed what would come afterwards).Most anti-slavery activists accept slavery’s existence in the

East but they want to stop it from expanding into the West.

Phase 2

After the Missouri CompromiseProslavery forces feel the threat of the growing

abolition and anti-slavery movements.Many historians note that they framed their

support for slavery and its expansion westward in terms of a “money power conspiracy.” The “money power conspiracy” is the idea that northern

and British industrialists and entrepreneurs are using their wealth and political power to not only stop the expansion of slavery but end the institution all together so that free labor can replace slavery.They want to secure slavery where it exists and be allowed

to have slavery or to take their slaves anywhere in the country they want.

Phase 2

During this period, we will also see the articulation of a state’s rights argument that reasoned that states could leave the Union and/or be able to reject laws that they believed did not favor them or that might drastically alter their quality of life.

In 1832, South Carolinians revolted against high import duties that they believed hurt their state and benefited northern industry.

Phase 2

Phase 2

They, led by John

Calhoun, adopted

an Ordinance of

Nullification and

argued not only

could they reject

laws they could

also leave the

U.S.

Phase 2

President Andrew

Jackson and many

opponents of

nullification

worked out a

compromise to

avoid disunion

but the idea of

nullification

lingered among

many southern

power brokers.

After the Missouri CompromiseNo new land is acquired by the U.S. until Texas is

annexed in 1845, so there are no new tensions over slavery’s expansion in the U.S.

Westward expansion yields “fill-in” movement as Americans move west, filling in the territory acquired under the Louisiana Purchase.

The Domestic Slave Trade ignites w/ 2 million slaves transported.Sold via domestic slave markets or taken west with their

masters. See Walter Johnson’s Soul by Soul and/or Ira Berlin’s chapter “The Migration Generations,” in Generations of Captivity.

Most people are relocated from along the eastern seaboard states into the interior states (LA, AL, AR, MS, TX). See Adam Rothman’s Slave Country.

Phase 2

Manifest Destiny-the

belief that Americans

were predestined to

control the continent

shaped their

aggressive movement

westward, despite

the occupation and

ownership of the land

by Native Americans

and by Mexico, which

had recently gained

its independence

from Spain.

Phase 3

In 1872 artist John Gast painted American Progress, which depicted the migrations west. Here the goddess-like figure of Columbia, who embodies the U.S., leading the way into a darkened west.

Phase 3

President James K.

Polk sent troops

into the

borderlands region

which became one

of several catalysts

for the U.S.-

Mexican War.

Some northern

opponents of

slavery’s expansion

argued that it was

a war of conquest

designed to spread

slavery further

south and west.

The war concludes

with the U.S. as

the victor.

Through the

Treaty of

Guadalupe

Hidalgo, the U.S.

controls the area

that today

comprises the

states of

California, Utah,

Nevada, and parts

of Arizona and

New Mexico.

Phase 3

Annexation of Texas, 1845.Mexican War, 1846-48.

In Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Mexico cedes land to the U.S. which extends U.S. territory to the Pacific.

Both acquisitions reignite the debates about whether and where slavery could exist in the newly acquired territories. See this map of national expansion through war and purchase.

California, Compromise of 1850. The discovery of gold in 1848 activates massive migration.

California applies for admission to the Union as a free state, even though the territory spans Missouri Compromise line. Slaveholders protest admission.

As we shall see, the compromise Congress sketched out resulted in slavery being banned in California and slaveholders getting a much stronger Fugitive Slave Law.

Phase 3

With the other lands acquired via the Mexican War, there is a new fight over slavery’s expansion. Slaveholders, “wannabe” slaveholders, and

members of the slaveholding apparatus are adamant about moving west and northwest.

Opponents of slavery resist vowing to stop slavery’s spread westward so that working and middle class white men and their families could move west without having to worry about competing with slaveholders who gobbled up the land or enslaved people who were worked for free or for much less than white men.

Congress tried to settle the issue with another compromise.

Phase 3

Phase 3

To address his

anti-slavery

constituents’

wishes, Senator

David Wilmot

proposes a

proviso (1846) to

ban slavery in

lands acquired in

Mexican War.

He argues that

the land should

be preserved for

non-slaveholding

white men.

The bill failed to become law but the slaveholding apparatus sees it as a threat and decide that any step to ban slavery in the West would be the death knell for the institution.

The slaveholding class started fortifying their defense of slavery and articulating a willingness to secede or go to war to protect the institution and the way of life that slavery created for them and their families.

As slaveholders flex their political muscle, abolitionists and antislavery advocates mobilize politically to end slavery and to stop its expansion westward.

Phase 3

Liberty Party is established in 1840 as a national political party composed of abolitionists (those opposed to slavery for moral and or religious reasons). They fail to win significant votes in elections to end slavery.

Free Soil Party established, 1848. This is a national political party established by anti-slavery activists (those opposed to slavery for mostly economic reasons). The party’s members are both Democrats and fmr Whigs and Know

Nothings. They fail to win national elections and the parties dissolve but their

political momentum builds. In 1854 antislavery activists establish the Republican Party whose

members want to contain slavery in the South and end slaveholders’ influence on federal government, U.S. policy, and in western settlement.

This political mobilization against slavery and its expansion westward will lead to the political fights of the 1850 that descend into war.

Phase 3

To address lingering

issues over slavery in the

West, Congress passes

legislation in favor of

popular sovereignty, an

idea brought to political

reality under the 1854

Kansas-Nebraska Act,

that allowed the people

who moved into

territories to vote on

whether slavery should

exist there.

Rather than ending the

political fights over

slavery’s expansion, the

political debates over

popular sovereignty

escalate and descend into

violence in the Kansas

elections.

Phase 3

This image shows the ruins of the Free State Hotel in the aftermath of the sacking of Lawrence in 1856.

Cuban Filibuster Movement

In the 1850s, U.S.

slaveholders start

campaigning to

take over land in

Latin America to

extend their wealth

and power.

They found their

biggest champion

in Narcisco Lopez

who launched

several campaigns

to foment

revolution in

several

slaveholding Latin

American colonies

and countries.

Narcisco Lopez’s filibusters seize Cardenas, Cuba, May 1850

As if tensions aren’t bad enough, the political rhetoric heats up as both groups start to speak in terms of “progress” and the Nation and conspiracy theories. Both slavery supporters and opponents see their future and that of

the nation as tied to what happens in the West. Both groups use fatalistic language to describe what will happen if

their opponents’ goals are realized in the West. The language they use to describe themselves and their opponents

is exaggerated and attuned to advance their political and economic agenda of allowing slavery to continue & expand or having it end or remain contained.

Some historians argue that this intensified rhetoric, which is spread more quickly because of technological advancements (more newspapers, railroads/steamboats, and the Atlantic cable), will make it more difficult for Americans to reach further compromise.

The earlier slides provided a preview but the following slides provide more detail.

The Path to Civil War

Advocates of slavery argue that northern bankers and industrialists want to use their economic might to end slavery’s expansion and turn all white Americans into the oppressed working-class laborers who own no property and are often locked in the grip of poverty and often die in industrial workplaces because of horrible labor conditions created by greedy industrialists and bankers.

The Path to Civil War

Opponents of slavery and its expansion argue that slaveholders and those who benefit from slavery want to use their economic might and growing political might to allow slavery to expand not only in the West but throughout the nation. They want to continue to gobble up the land for themselves and steal the labor and lives of even more people, and use their wealth and influence to public policy. In the process, slaveholders rob working-class white men of the opportunity to advance because make achieving wealth impossible.

The Path to Civil War

One key thread in these debates is the second wave of the abolitionist movement.

I-1770-1830 —Includes Quakers, other religious opponents to slavery, and those shaped by the Enlightenment and Great Awakening to end slavery. They are committed to ending slavery gradually, peacefully, and

compensating slaveholders for the loss of their human property. II-1831-1865—Includes the mostly white biological and

ideological descendants of first movement, free black people, and fugitive slaves like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Increasingly, they reject gradual abolition and compensation. The more radical of this group, like William Lloyd Garrison,

David Walker, and John Brown will reach a point where they support the use of violence and war to end slavery.

These people help with the Underground Railroad, lobby Congress to end slavery, deliver anti-slavery speeches, and publish anti-slavery novels, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Abolitionism

Anti-slavery activists aren’t the same as abolitionists in that they oppose slavery and its expansion for economic and political reasons. They believed that men should be paid for their labor.

They hate being forced to compete with slaveholders and enslaved people’s labor because they know the financial odds are stacked against them.

They hate the political power slaveholders wield over local, state, and national government.

They are embodied by men like Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln.

Although there is much dividing abolitionists and anti-slavery activists, increasingly they will work together under the Republican Party to challenge proslavery Democrats and win the White House.

Anti-Slavery Americans

As both camps are defending their interests, the discovery of gold in California intensifies westward migration (including slaveholders and their slaves). When California applies for admission to the Union as a free state, slaveholders cry foul re: the “money power conspiracy”.

Slaveholders and their opponents clash in public debates and in Congress re: the admission of CA as free state. Henry Clay (author of the Missouri Compromise) and other members of Congress create the Compromise of 1850 that pacifies both the South and the North for a short period.

Compromise of 1850

California enters the Union as a free state;New Mexico was to be made a territory and

Texas was to remain within its borders;Utah was to be made into a territory with no

estd decision on slavery;New Fugitive Slave Law placed under federal

jurisdiction;The Slave Trade was abolished in

Washington, D.C.Neither slaveholders nor opponents of slavery

are happy with the compromise but it keeps the peace.

Compromise of 1850

Slaveholders and free soilers are still moving west into Kansas & Nebraska where slavery would have been prohibited under the Missouri Compromise. As the territories apply for admission to the Union, Americans ask: Will slavery be allowed in the territory?

Stephen A. Douglas works out a plan to settle the question: Popular sovereignty which means, allow residents of the

territories to decide the status of slavery themselves. This decision nullifies the Missouri Compromise.

Americans rush into the Kansas territory and battles ensue as they try to vote in an election determining the fate of slavery in the territory. 200 people die in the fighting, leading many to dub it “Bleeding Kansas.”

The violence & arguments about Kansas reflect tension.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Tensions got so

high in the debates

over Kansas that

southerner

Preston Brooks

responds to

inflammatory

speeches about his

uncle by Charles

Sumner by

attacking him with

a cane.

Southerners

rejoiced and

northerners were

outraged.

Brooks attacks Sumner

Dred Scott Case In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court,

which had been silent about the debates about slavery in the territory, weighs in its ruling in the Dred Scott decision.

Scott was an enslaved man who had been taken into a free territory. He and his lawyers argued that since slavery didn’t exist where he lived for a period, he had gained his freedom. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that slaveholders could take their slaves into any of the territories and their enslaved status would not change.

Abolitionists, Anti-Slavery activists, and enslaved and free black people cried foul over the “slave power conspiracy.”

Plans to raise an

army of abolitionists

and enslaved people

to end slavery by

force.

Although the plan

fails and Brown and

other conspirators

are executed for

treason, proslavery

southerners are

mortified that white

men would use

violence to end

slavery.

John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry

John Brown Trial

“The Trial of John

Brown at

Charlestown,

Virginia, for

Treason and

Murder.” Sketch

by Porte Crayon

(David Strother).

By the end of 1859, the U.S. was rife with sectional strife over the issue of slavery expanding into the western territories.

Political figures continued to try to hammer out additional compromises over the issue.

Although the Civil War is not predestined to happen, historians have looked back over this period and determined that argument’s about slavery’s expansion westward and about states’ rights to reject federal policies that they believe are detrimental to their survival helps us to better understand why the war happened when it did.

On the Eve of Civil War

Fergus Bordewich, America’s Great DebateWilliam Cooper, The South and the Politics of

SlaveryDavid Herbert Donald, et al eds., The Civil War

and Reconstruction;Don Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott CaseEric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free MenMichael Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850sTony Horwitz, Midnight RisingThomas Morris, Free Men AllMichael Morrison, Slavery and the American

West

Sources & Recommended Reading

Cotton gin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.

Louisiana Purchase Map: http://thelouvertureproject.org/index.php?title=Image:United_states_map_1803.jpg

Native American Cultures Map: http://www.worldmapsonline.com/UnivHist/30014_6.gif.

Native American Removal: http://www.worldmapsonline.com/UnivHist/30068_6.gif.

Cutting the Sugar Cane: http://readinganthro.wordpress.com/

Sugar cane: http://www.topnews.in/sugarcane-cultivation-orissa-decline-2175105

Battle of Buena Vista: http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20103/outline%2013%20umf%20103_06.htm.

Compromise Map: http://americancivilwar.com/pictures/compromise_1850.html

Brooks attacks Sumner: http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20103/outline%2013%20umf%20103_06.htm.

Southern Chivalry: http://www.civilwaracademy.com/bleeding-kansas.html.

John Brown: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html

John Brown Trial: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/brown/john_brown_trial.cfm.

California Gold Diggers: Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:California_Gold_Diggers.jpg.

Gast’s American Progress: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/American_progress.JPG.

Thomas Jefferson: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Thomas_Jefferson_by_Rembrandt_Peale%2C_1800.jpg

Guadalupe Hidalgo Map: http://tbenewnation.wikispaces.com/War+with+Mexico+-+The+Treaty+of+Guadalupe+Hidalgo

David Wilmot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/David_Wilmot.png

John C. Calhoun: http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/johnccalhoun.html

Andrew Jackson: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Andrew_Jackson.jpg

Image sources:

Domestic Slave trade: http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/index.cfm;jsessionid=f8302075491325377941656?migration=3&topic=7&type=map&bhcp=1 ; http://www.inmotionaame.org/gallery/index.cfm;jsessionid=f8302075491325377941656?migration=3&topic=7&type=map&bhcp=1

U.S. Territorial Growth Map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Territorial_Growth_1810.jpg

Cuban Filibuster Movement: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/filibusters.htm

Image sources:

The 1860 election;“Why A Lincoln Presidency Meant War”;The secession winter;Secession;The beginning of the Civil War.

Next?