Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2016 i Cobblestone American History and Current Events for Kids and Children

Long before fighting with guns started in the Civil War (1861–1865), Americans fought with words and ideas. As this issue shows, nearly all the disagreements involved slavery, and efforts to compromise never permanently eliminated the threat that slavery presented to the nation’s united future. When the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the delegates faced a problem: The country’s regional differences made agreeing on how “to form a more perfect union” difficult. The southern states’ fertile land and warm weather were ideal for growing large agricultural crops, which depended on an enslaved labor force. The northern states’ rocky soil and cold winters made them rely on occupations in trade and industry. And most northern states had started to abolish slavery. After four months of heated debate…

To Nat Turner, the unusual bluish-green sun that dawned one morning was a sign. Together with an earlier solar eclipse and his religious visions, Turner took the second solar eclipse as an indication that “I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.” Turner and six other enslaved men set out early on the morning of August 21, 1831. Their first stop as they moved through Southampton County, Virginia, was at the house of Turner’s master, where they killed the entire family. Within 36 hours, Turner’s group had grown to about 70 men, and they had killed at least 55 white people. Most of the men involved in the insurrection were quickly captured. After a trial, many of the convicted men were either executed or…

White Americans found compromises between slavery and freedom in the early years of the nation. They protected slavery in the U.S. Constitution but provided for the slave trade to end in 1808. They added slave states and free states to the Union in pairs. They divided the 1803 Louisiana Purchase between slavery and freedom by letting slavery exist above the 36° 30' line of latitude only in Missouri. But something happened in 1848 that ended the ability to compromise: The United States and Mexico negotiated an end to their recent war (1846–1848). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred a huge parcel of western land to the United States. It stretched from Texas to the West Coast, including land that would later become the states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and…

A dramatic and frightening moment occurred in the U.S. Senate on May 22, 1856: Preston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives, attacked Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner was an antislavery Republican from Massachusetts. Three days earlier, he had delivered an impassioned speech in support of Kansas being admitted to the Union as a free state. His “Crime Against Kansas” speech attacked the institution of slavery and those who supported it. He spoke harshly of the two Democratic senators who had authored the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854: Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Brooks was related to Butler, and he decided to defend his relative’s honor. Brooks entered the Senate Chamber after the day’s business had been concluded. He approached Sumner at his desk…

In the congregation of an Ohio church in 1838, a tall man stood, his right hand in the air. “Here, before God,” John Brown swore solemnly, “I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.” Thus began the journey of the “Old Lion” to Harpers Ferry. Brown’s hatred of slavery began in his youth when he witnessed the beating of a slave boy who had befriended him. That experience, he later wrote, made him “a most determined Abolitionist.” His father’s position as a trustee at Ohio’s Oberlin College, a noted abolitionist institution, may have influenced his strong beliefs, too. By the time he was in his mid-50s, Brown had moved his family often, leaving a trail of failed businesses behind him. Through all his professional failures, he had supported the…

Can you solve this puzzle about the events that led up to the Civil War? All the answers can be found in this issue. Answers on page 43. ACROSS 4. The concept of popular sovereignty in western territory in the 1850s led to a small-scale civil war that became known as Bleeding ______. 5. One aspect of the Compromise of 1850 was stricter enforcement of the ______ Slave Act. 9. The expansion of this crop in the South became tied to the growth of an enslaved labor force. 11. Abraham ______’s election as president in 1860 convinced many southerners that efforts to compromise were over and that it was time secede from the Union. 12. This compromise in 1820 determined that, with one exception, slavery would not be allowed in…

Thanks to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States added a vast territory west of the Mississippi River and had room to grow in the new century. Exactly how states should be carved from that land raised concerns, however. And its undefined western border led to some uncertainty. Where did U.S. land end? Where did Spanish territories begin? At that time, Spain controlled a large portion of the Americas, including present-day Mexico, Florida, and the American Southwest. The desire to control New Orleans had been behind talks between officials in the United States and France, which had previously owned Louisiana. New Orleans was the territory’s largest and most important city. Located on the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico, it was a strategic trading and shipping port. With…

For some Americans, the issue of slavery hung on a single question: Should a nation that valued liberty hold people as slaves? Across the nation, abolitionists—people who wanted to end slavery and immediately emancipate all enslaved people—organized to stop it. Free black Americans in the North had worked hard to rescue fugitive slaves from slave catchers and to end slavery since at least the 1820s, but white Americans had paid them little attention. Slowly, though, the abolitionist movement grew among white Americans in the North, too. By 1820, every state in the North had either prohibited or provided for slavery’s gradual abolition. Abolitionists made the institution of slavery and the evils of human bondage a moral and political issue. Southerners, meanwhile, resented what they saw as interference in their affairs.…

Enslaved people have fought for their freedom throughout history—take a look. Gladiator War During the Roman Empire, many slaves were forced to become gladiators. Crowds filled arenas to watch the warriors fight to the death. One such gladiator was Spartacus, a former soldier who had been sold into slavery. In 73 B.C., he and other slaves used kitchen utensils to escape from a gladiator training school. After hearing about the escape, more slaves joined Spartacus’s group. When Roman forces tried to put an end to the rebellion, the rebel slaves fought back, winning battles and recruiting more fighters. Eventually, however, the rebels began to fight among one another. Within two years, they were defeated, and Spartacus was killed. As a warning to other slaves, Roman officials had 6,000 of the…

Gold! After its discovery at John Sutter’s mill on the American River in 1848, thousands of people rushed to California. Many went to seek their fortunes in the goldfields. Others saw opportunity in opening businesses to provide goods and services to miners and settlers. Over the next year, the large number of people who headed west led to the quick settlement of California and a push for statehood. The journey from the East Coast, however, was not easy. It could take six months to travel overland by wagon or foot and involved crossing mountain ranges and a 40-mile desert. Sailing around South America’s Cape Horn took just as long. Traveling by boat to Central America and Panama and then traveling overland through the jungle to the Pacific Ocean was faster—about…

As the highest court in the nation, the U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to interpret the federal laws under the Constitution. Its decisions establish a precedent and have far-reaching consequences. Take the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, for example. Dred Scott v. Sandford has roots that tied it to the 1820 Missouri Compromise. That law admitted Missouri into the Union as a slave state but prohibited slavery in other territory ceded by France to the United States. Scott was an enslaved African American who originally belonged to a man living in Missouri. In 1834, an army surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, purchased Scott. Emerson moved to Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin Territory, which banned slavery under the Missouri Compromise. He took Scott with him. Eventually, when Emerson returned to…

The word “contraband” is often defined as “illegal traffic in smuggled goods.” It derives from two Latin words—contra (against) and bando (legal proclamation)., It also can be defined, however, as “goods that may be seized and confiscated by a belligerent (warring party) if sent to an opposing party” This last definition is how Benjamin F. Butler used the word during the Civil War. Butler was a lawyer-turned-general in the Union army. He justified keeping escaped and runaway slaves who joined his camp by considering them contraband, much like a shovel or a gun, because they were being forced to work for the Confederacy in its effort to make war. Answer to Dr. D’s Mystery Hero from page 45 : Harriet Tubman…