Events Leading to the Civil War

by Orville

There were many events that led to the Civil War. But these three, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, are very important. They all attempted to keep the North and South together and happy but failed.

The first compromise was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. When Missouri was to be admitted to the United States, there were many arguments in Congress about it. If it entered as a slave state, that would tip the balance of power in the Senate and give the South an advantage. Missouri was finally admitted as a slave state, and Maine was admitted as a free state. Also, slavery was banned from the territories north and west of Missouri. This kept the peace for some time.

The next compromise, the Compromise of 1850, allowed California to enter the Union as a free state. In exchange, the south received the Fugitive Slave Law. This law made it illegal to help a slave run away. If a person was caught helping a slave flee, he could be fined a lot of money and/or imprisoned. This angered some Northerners. Many had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and they had read the writings and heard the speeches of abolitionists, like Frederick Douglass. They were upset about slavery. This compromise did not really help at all. It actually made things worse because Northerners did not want to have to return runaway slaves to the South.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Steven A. Douglas said that there should be “popular sovereignty” in the territories of the USA. This meant that the people in the territories would be allowed to vote and decide for themselves on the issue of slavery. This repealed the Missouri Compromise.

After all these events, the North and South did not want to make any more compromises. As President Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. That meant the nation could not be half free and half slave any longer. They had to solve this problem the hard way. They had no choice but to go to war.