Lesson 4: Drifting Toward War

Lesson Focus

As the 1860 election approached, tensions between North and South reached a breaking point. This lesson explores the key events and figures that pushed the nation toward disunion and ultimately, civil war.

People to Know

Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, John Brown

Learning Objectives

• Evaluate the importance of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in sharpening the national conflict over slavery.
• Identify the purpose of John Brown's raid and analyze the intense northern and southern reactions to it.
• List the political events, including the 1860 election, that led seven Southern states to secede from the Union.

The intense debate over slavery's expansion after the Dred Scott decision set the stage for the 1858 Illinois Senate race.

Abraham Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas on whether a territory could legally ban slavery. In response, Douglas created the Freeport Doctrine, stating that a territory could effectively stop slavery by refusing to pass laws that protected it.

Though Douglas won the election, this stance cost him Southern support for the presidency, while Lincoln gained a national reputation.

Abolitionist John Brown believed he had a divine mission to violently overthrow slavery.

On October 16, 1859, he led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm enslaved people and trigger a massive uprising. The raid failed, and U.S. troops captured Brown, who was later executed for treason.

Note that Northerners viewed him as a martyr, while Southerners saw the raid as proof that the North intended to destroy their society.

Southern fears, already high from books like Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South, intensified as the Democratic party fractured over slavery, nominating two separate candidates.

This division allowed the Republican party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to win the Election of 1860 with a platform opposing slavery's expansion.

Lincoln won without carrying a single Southern state, confirming the South's fear of losing its national political power and becoming a permanent minority.

Following Lincoln's election in November 1860, seven Deep South states believed the federal government would move to abolish slavery.

Citing the theory of states' rights, they voted for secession and, by February 1861, formed a new government called the Confederate States of America.

Last-minute efforts to save the Union, like the Crittenden Compromise, failed to find agreement, leaving the nation broken and on the brink of war.

Deep-seated disagreements over slavery's expansion created a series of crises that made compromise impossible.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 exposed unbridgeable political divides, while John Brown's raid in 1859 fueled paranoia and fear. The Election of 1860 then confirmed the South's political isolation.

Pay special attention to how this rapid chain of events directly led to secession, pushing the nation from a state of political tension into one of national dissolution.