The USA falls apart, Causes of the Civil War

What is your name?

What problem/controversy was first addressed in the Missouri Compromise of 1820?

• If the western territories should be free or slave
• If the USA should return the western territories to Mexico or keep the land

One problem with the Missouri Compromise was that there was way more free territory compared to slave territory. Why was the Missouri Compromise only a temporary solution?

• Politics: as the territories become states, the southern/slave states do not want to be in the minority if there was ever a vote to abolish slavery.
• The North had a smaller population and had less people in the House of Representatives. If there were more free states in the Senate than they could vote to abolish slavery and the South would be in the minority and not be able to win that vote.

In the 1840s, why did many southerners want to add Texas and attack Mexico?

• Getting slavery into new territories, which would eventually be states and have representation in Congress
• Voting down new tariffs to hurt the Northern states with factories that benefited from the tariff

What part of the Fugitive Slave Law angered many Northerners?

• Slaves were free if the got to the North
• Helping, or not stopping, a runaway became a crime

After the Compromise of 1850, was there more territory open to slavery or territory closed to slavery?

• territory open to slavery (slave)
• territory closed to slavery (free)

The 1854 Kansas – Nebraska Act ended the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept the territory north of Missouri’s southern border as free. Why did northerner Stephen Douglas come up with the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act?

• Because the southerners wanted the transcontinental railroad to go through the South and the North wouldn’t agree
• Because the northerners wanted the transcontinental railroad to go through the North and the South wouldn’t agree

Stephen Douglas’s plan, the Kansas Nebraska Act, ended the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept northern territory free. Why were some northerners mad that the Missouri Compromise was no longer a law?

• Slavery might be voted into areas that were once supposed to be free
• All northerners were abolitionists

Stephen Douglas’s plan, the Kansas Nebraska Act ended the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept northern territory free. Why did many southerners want to end the Missouri Compromise?

• Slavery might be voted into areas that were once going to be free
• The Missouri Compromise abolished slavery everywhere in the USA

The Kansas Nebraska Act used voting to decide if Kansas was free or slave. What happened in that vote/election?

• No one showed up to vote because they did not believe in democracy
• Border Ruffians from Missouri crossed into Kansas and voted illegally