Author: Anonymous

Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act go into effect?   Considering all the damage that resulted from this law, what was the purpose of this legislation?

A number of future Civil War soldiers and leaders fought in the Mexican-American War. 

Andrew Johnson, who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was a southerner who owned slaves.

When southern states turned themselves into a Confederacy – a political system in which each state is sovereign – they were attempting an arrangement that had never before been tried in United States history.  

With the Gold Rush, California’s population rapidly swelled to nearly 100,000 people in about a year.  Accordingly, California petitioned to become a formal United States territory.  That’s a normal part of the process of becoming a state.  What happened when California made this completely reasonable request and why?

What Congressional event first indicated to northerners and southerners that their respective regions were significantly and disturbingly different?

Lectures indicated that to qualify as a planter in the Old South, one had to own fifty or more slaves.  Lectures also noted that nearly all free southerners were planters.

What was the argument put forward the the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest?

In 1832, South Carolina nullified the federal tariff and refused to collect the tax.  President Andrew Jackson threatened to respond with force.   A civil war might have broken out at this point.  Why didn’t it, according to the lectures?

In what ways did the Mexican-American War contribute to the coming Civil War?