🗽 US History · Expansion and Division
Causes of the Civil War: true or false
Decide fast, then read the reason. Wrong answers are the best teachers, so every statement explains itself.
All statements and answers
Most white Southern families did not enslave anyone, yet the Southern economy was built around slavery.
✓ True. Most white Southern families did not own enslaved people, but slaveholders held much of the region's wealth and political power, and the plantation economy depended on enslaved labor.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 applied only inside the slave states.
✗ False. It applied everywhere. It required that people who had escaped slavery be returned even from free states, and it required officials and citizens to help.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel, yet it shaped how many Northerners thought about slavery.
✓ True. It is a work of fiction, not a record of events, but it was widely read and moved many Northern readers to oppose slavery.
The Missouri Compromise banned slavery in every part of the Louisiana Purchase, including Missouri.
✗ False. Missouri entered as a slave state. The ban applied to the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the line at 36°30′, and slavery stayed legal south of it.
Dred Scott had lived in free territory and argued that this made him free, but the Supreme Court rejected his argument.
✓ True. Scott had lived in Illinois and in a territory where slavery was banned. He sued for his freedom, and the Court ruled against him.
Most Republican leaders publicly supported John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
✗ False. Most Republican leaders condemned the raid, although many white Southerners blamed the Republican Party for it anyway.
By 1860 nearly four million people were enslaved in the United States.
✓ True. The 1860 census counted nearly four million enslaved people, almost all of them in the slave states.
The Compromise of 1850 ended slavery in Washington, D.C.
✗ False. It banned only the buying and selling of enslaved people in the District, which is the slave trade. Slavery itself stayed legal there.
By 1860 the free states had a larger population than the slave states, and so more seats in the House of Representatives.
✓ True. The North had grown faster, with immigration and industry. Southern leaders feared that this shift would cost them control of Congress.
Kansas eventually entered the Union as a free state.
✓ True. After years of conflict that became known as Bleeding Kansas, Kansas was admitted as a free state in January 1861.
In his inaugural address Lincoln promised to end slavery in the Southern states.
✗ False. He said he would not interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. He opposed its spread into the territories and said no state could lawfully leave the Union.
In 1832 South Carolina declared federal tariff laws void inside its borders, an earlier use of the states' rights argument.
✓ True. That dispute was about tariffs and ended without war. It shows the argument for state power was not new in 1860, but by 1860 it was tied closely to protecting slavery.
The Civil War began when Union forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Confederate fort.
✗ False. Fort Sumter was a federal fort held by U.S. troops. Confederate guns opened fire on it on April 12, 1861.