The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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In which John Green teaches you about the election of 1860. As you may remember from last week, things were not great at this time in US history. The tensions between the North and South were rising, ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. The North wanted to abolish slavery, and the South wanted to continue with it. It seemed like a war was inevitable, and it turns out that it was. But first, the nation had to get through this election. You’ll learn how the bloodshed in Kansas and the truly awful Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the decrease in popularity of Stephen Douglas, the splitting of the Democratic party, and the unlikely victory of a relatively inexperienced politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s election would lead directly to the secession of several southern states, and thus to the Civil War. John will teach you about all this, plus Dred Scott, Roger Taney, and John Brown.

Hey teachers and students – Check out CommonLit’s free collection of reading passages and curriculum resources to learn more about the events of this episode. The Lincoln and Douglass debates of the 1850s fueled the argument over state’s rights to decide on slavery and culminated when the two ran against one another in the Election of 1860: https://www.commonlit.org/texts/the-election-of-1860
In response to Lincoln’s election, the South seceded from the Union and the Civil War began: https://www.commonlit.org/texts/the-south-secedes

Learn more about the Dred Scott Decision in Crash Course Black American History #16: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VffLWl8asY

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44 Comments

  1. You are a clean, straight laced white guy with regular hair and features who is educated and who would have owned slaves back in the day.

  2. So, if you watched the intro, John mentions a guy named Mr. Fleming. That's Michael Fleming, my APUSH teacher at Jupiter High School in Florida right now. Mr. Fleming actually heard about how he was featured and called up John Green (don't ask me how he called him. I have no idea), and found out that a producer on the show was his old student, and this was an homage to what he taught that student. And yes, he's an old white Southerner and he acts like he's 182 years old. He's retiring this year, and he never had the retirement party he wanted (because of the pandemic), so I'd love it if all you APUSH students could comment something nice from wherever you are!! I'll be sending all the nice comments to him at the end of the year (shh, don't tell him)

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