15.3 and 15.4 youtube

• The Republican party was formed in 1854
• Parties that formed the Republican party

  • Anti-slavery Democrats
  • Free Soil party
  • Whig party
• Republican party


  • More liberal and progressive party
  • Aimed to stop the spread of slavery to the West
• John C. Fremont was the Republican party's first presidential candidate in 1856
• James Buchanan, a moderate Democrat, won the 1856 election
• Buchanan was seen as a "do-nothing" president who did not take a strong stance on slavery
• Buchanan was rumored to have helped with the Underground Railroad from the White House
• Rationality in classical economic theory

  Economic agents are able to consider the outcome of their choices and recognize the net benefits of each one
• Rationality in classical economic theory is a flawed assumption as people usually don't act rationally
• The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, ruled that slaves were not citizens and that Congress could not limit the spread of slavery
• The Dred Scott decision was a major blow to the Republican party's platform of stopping the spread of slavery
• Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer from Illinois, was nominated by the Republican party to run for the Senate against Stephen A. Douglas in 1858
• Congressional elections happen every 2 years, presidential elections every 4 years, and Senate elections every 6 years
• Stephen A. Douglas was known as a compromiser on the issue of slavery
• Lincoln was not dominated by the Republican party to run for an open Senate seat in the 1858 election against Senator Stephen A. Douglas
• Congressional elections happen every two years, the House term is two years and the Senate term is six years, and presidential elections happen every four years
• In 1856, James Buchanan was elected President, and in 1858 Lincoln ran against Douglas for the Senate
• Douglas was known for trying to compromise and soften the issues to bring the country together, and he came up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act using popular sovereignty to try to determine the issue of slavery
• People claimed Lincoln was an abolitionist who wanted equal rights for African Americans, but Lincoln responded that he did not want equality between the races and only wanted to stop the spread of slavery to new territories, not end it completely
• The Lincoln-Douglas debates


  1. Lincoln pushed Douglas to state his position on slavery

  2. Douglas responded with the Freeport Doctrine, saying popular sovereignty should determine the slavery issue

  3. This split the Democratic party into pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions
• Lincoln lost the 1858 Senate election to Douglas, but the split in the Democratic party set them up for failure in the 1860 election
• John Brown


  A radical abolitionist who failed at everything he did, but his raid on the Harper's Ferry arsenal is seen as the start of the Civil War
• Brown's raid was intended to spark a slave uprising, but instead the townspeople and US Marines under Robert E. Lee attacked and captured Brown
• Brown was tried and executed for treason and murder, and his actions made the South nervous about potential armed uprisings, leading them to increase the size and training of their state militias which would become the Confederate Army
• Other figures connected to Brown's raid included Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth
• Abraham Lincoln comes onto the national scene after the 1858 senatorial election in Illinois, even though he lost that election
• In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln runs on the premise of stopping the spread of slavery, not ending slavery itself
• The 1860 presidential election is a referendum on the issue of slavery, with the Democrats being pro-slavery and the Republicans being anti-slavery
• Lincoln wins the 1860 presidential election, but only with 40% of the popular vote
• The Democratic Party splits into two factions - Douglas' popular sovereignty faction and Breckinridge's pro-slavery faction
• The more populous North outvotes the South in the 1860 election
• The electoral map of the 1860 election shows a stark divide between the North (voting for Lincoln) and the South (voting for the Democrats)
• South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union, on December 20, 1860, citing the federal government's failure to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Six more southern states secede from the Union before Lincoln's inauguration, forming the Confederate States of America
• Jefferson Davis


  Elected president of the Confederate States of America, a Democrat from Mississippi who had military experience
• Alexander Stephens


  Elected vice president of the Confederate States of America, a Democrat from Georgia
• The Confederate Constitution is almost identical to the US Constitution, except for two key differences - a 6-year presidential term and a line-item veto for the president
• When Lincoln was elected president, his wife was watching him when he opened the letter and they were out in the Rose Garden clipping roses, and his wife later said it was like a man that had been sentenced to death when he read the letter
• Alexander Stephens, the Democrat from Georgia, was elected vice president of the Confederacy
• The Confederate Constitution was almost an identical copy of the US Constitution, except for two differences: 1) it gave the president a six-year term and more power than the US president, and 2) it gave the president a line-item veto