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7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 16 of 18

A Nation Divided

Slavery, compromise and sectional conflict

What your child practices

Cotton and slavery in the South, free Black Americans and abolitionists, the compromises from the Missouri Compromise to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in New York, and the election of 1860.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 7.8a; 7.8b; 7.8c · regional differences, the failed compromises over slavery in the territories, and the causes of secession

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. The North and South split over slavery as the nation grew. Compromises (Missouri 1820, 1850, Kansas-Nebraska 1854) tried to settle where slavery could spread.
  2. The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) required people in free states to help return those who escaped; many New Yorkers resisted.
  3. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass spoke out. Lincoln won the 1860 election.

Example: What did the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 require? It was a law about people who escaped slavery. It forced people in free states to help return them. Answer: People in free states had to help return people who had escaped slavery

A Nation Divided in New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 16 of 18 in 7th grade Social Studies, after Westward Expansion and before The Civil War.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    The Dred Scott decision of 1857 ruled that…

    • Black Americans were not citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in territories
    • Kansas was free
    • slavery was illegal
    • all people were citizens

  2. Question 2

    In 1851, a crowd in Syracuse freed a man named Jerry who had been arrested under…

    • the Homestead Act
    • the Stamp Act
    • the Erie Canal Act
    • the Fugitive Slave Act

  3. Question 3

    The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers…

    • ban all farming
    • found missions
    • join Canada
    • vote on whether to allow slavery

  4. Question 4

    Lincoln's 1860 speech at Cooper Union in New York City helped him…

    • end the Civil War
    • win support for the Republican nomination for president
    • become governor of New York
    • buy Alaska

  5. Question 5

    John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was a leading voice for…

    • women's suffrage
    • abolition
    • free soil
    • states' rights and slavery

  6. Question 6

    How did the South's warm climate and rich soil shape its society?

    • it had the most railroads
    • large plantations grew cash crops worked by enslaved people
    • factories filled every town
    • no one farmed

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