Chapter 4 Lesson 4: a Country Divided

Chapter 4 Lesson 4: A Country Divided

Life on the Plantation

• Plantations are large farms where crops such as cotton or sugarcane are grown.
• Owners would plant and grow cash crops in order to sell and make money.
• Plantation workers were mostly African slaves who worked from dawn to dusk every day except for Sundays.
• Some slave owners were cruel and there were few laws that protected enslaved workers.
• Families could be broken up if the parents and children were sold to different workers.
• Frederick Douglas was a famous speaker and writer on the topic of slavery.

Reacting to Slavery

• Harriet Tubman was one woman who escaped from slavery. She later became a leader of the Underground Railroad.
• The Underground Railroad was not really a railroad but a group of people who helped slaves escape to freedom.
• These people would often hide slaves in their homes and provide them with food for their journey.
• Harriet Tubman made 19 trips back to the slave states and brought more than 50,000 enslaves men, women, and children to freedom.
• In most northern states, slavery was illegal and the people there thought slavery was wrong and should be ended in all parts of the country.
• Abolition was a word that meant “an end of slavery”
• Abolitionists worked to end slavery.
• People in the Southeast believed that they needed enslaved people to make money from their crops. Slave owners claimed that they provided their slaves with proper food, clothing, and shelter and that they were well cared for.
• Southerners started to talk about leaving the Union, or the group of states that make up the United States.
• Abraham Lincoln became president, and although he was not an abolitionist, he believed that no more slave states should be added to the union.
• Many southerners were concerned that Lincoln would use his power to end slavery everywhere.

A Nation at War

• Shortly after Abraham Lincoln became president, 11 southern states began to form a new country called the Confederate States of America.
• Jefferson Davis was chosen as the president of the Confederacy.
• In April 1861, the confederate soldiers fired on the union soldiers at Fort Sumter, which marked the beginning of the Civil War or “The War Between the States”. This war lasted more than four years.
• The Southern army was led by Robert E. Lee, which was one of the best leaders.
• The war was fought mostly in the South, so they knew the land better.
• The north had more people in their army and they had more factories to make guns, uniforms, and other supplies.
• On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln gave the announcement called the Emancipation Proclamation stating that all slaves would be freed.
• More than 18,000 freed slaves began to fight for the Union side in the war. The Union began to win more and more battles under General Ulysses S. Grant.
• Finally, Lee surrendered to Grant to end the war.