Led by Jefferson Davis and existing from to , the Confederacy struggled for legitimacy and was never Secession, as it applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War, comprises the series of events that began on December 20, , and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union.
The first seven The election of was one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American history. Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in In all, some 55 people were killed between and The struggle intensified Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Compromise of Missouri Compromise. And deeply felt resentment contributed to the increasing intensity of feeling that led to the secession of more pro-slavery states and the eventual outbreak of war. The issue of enslavement had been dividing Americans since the founding of the nation when the passage of the Constitution required compromises recognizing the legal enslavement of human beings.
In the decade preceding the Civil War, enslavement became the central political issue in America. The Compromise of had been intended to satisfy concerns over enslavement in new territories.
Yet it also brought forward a new Fugitive Slave Act , which infuriated citizens in the North, who felt compelled to not only accept but essentially participate in enslavement. The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the issue of enslavement into American living rooms when it appeared in Families would gather and read the book aloud, and its characters, all of them dealing with enslavement and its moral implications, made the issue seem highly personal.
Other events of the s, including the Dred Scott Decision , the Kansas-Nebraska Act , the Lincoln-Douglas Debates , and John Brown's raid on a federal arsenal, made enslavement an inescapable issue.
And the formation of the new Republican Party, which had opposition to the spread of enslavement into new states and territories as a central principle, made it a central issue in electoral politics. When Abraham Lincoln won the election of , pro-slavery states in the South refused to accept the results of the election and began to threaten to leave the Union.
In December, the state of South Carolina, which had long been a hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment, held a convention and declared it was seceding.
And it looked like the Union would already be split before the new president's inauguration on March 4, As the threats of pro-slavery states to leave the Union began to sound quite serious following Lincoln's election, northerners reacted with surprise and increasing concern.
In the South, motivated activists, dubbed Fire Eaters, stoked outrage and encouraged secession. An elderly senator from Kentucky, John J. Crittenden, stepped up to try to broker some solution. Crittenden, who was born in Kentucky in , had been well educated and became a prominent lawyer. In he had been active in politics for 50 years and had represented Kentucky as both a member of the House of Representatives and a U.
As a colleague of the late Henry Clay , a Kentuckian who had become known as the Great Compromiser, Crittenden felt a genuine desire to try to hold the Union together. Crittenden was widely respected on Capitol Hill and in political circles, but he was not a national figure of the stature of Clay, or his comrades in what had been known as the Great Triumvirate , Daniel Webster and John C. On December 18, , Crittenden introduced his legislation in the Senate. His bill began by noting "serious and alarming dissensions have arisen between the Northern and Southern States, concerning the rights and security of the rights of the slaveholding States The bulk of his bill contained six articles, each of which Crittenden hoped to pass through both houses of Congress with a two-thirds vote so that they might become six new amendments to the U.
A central component of Crittenden's legislation was that it would have used the same geographic line used in the Missouri Compromise, 36 degrees and 30 minutes of latitude. States and territories north of that line could not allow enslavement, while it would be legal in states to the south of the line.
And the various articles also sharply curtailed the power of Congress to regulate enslavement, or even abolish it at some future date. Some of the legislation proposed by Crittenden would also toughen laws against freedom seekers. Reading the text of Crittenden's six articles, it's hard to see what the North would achieve by accepting the proposals beyond avoiding a potential war.
For the South, the Crittenden Compromise would have made enslavement permanent. When it appeared obvious that Crittenden couldn't get his legislation through Congress, he proposed an alternative plan: the proposals would be submitted to the voting public as a referendum. The Republican president-elect, Abraham Lincoln, who was still in Springfield, Illinois, had indicated that he did not approve of Crittenden's plan. When legislation to submit the referendum was introduced in Congress on January , Republican legislators used delaying tactics to ensure that the matter got bogged down.
A New Hampshire senator, Daniel Clark, made a motion that Crittenden's legislation be tabled and another resolution substituted for it. That resolution stated that no changes to the Constitution were required to preserve the Union, that the Constitution as it was would suffice.
Crittenden thought he could muster support from both South and North and avert either a split of the nation or a civil war. The major problem with the plan was that it called for a complete compromise by the Republicans with virtually no concessions on the part of the South. The Republican Party formed in for the main purpose of opposing the expansion of slavery into the Western territories, particularly the areas north of the Missouri Compromise line.
Just six years later, the party elected a president, Abraham Lincoln , over the opposition of the slave states. Crittenden was asking the Republicans to abandon their most key issues.
The vote was 25 against the compromise and 23 in favor of it. All 25 votes against it were cast by Republicans, and six senators from states that were in the process of seceding abstained. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The book is considered by many to be the first modern novel as well as one of the greatest novels of all time. The protagonist is a minor noble, Faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the leader of Iran since , is forced to flee the country.
Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after At midnight in Iraq, the United Nations deadline for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait expires, and the Pentagon prepares to commence offensive operations to forcibly eject Iraq from its five-month occupation of its oil-rich neighbor. At p.
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