Subscribe

8th grade · Social Studies · Unit 9 of 10

A Nation Divided

Slavery, compromises and sectional conflict

What your child practices

The effects of slavery on different regions, the lives of enslaved people and free Black Americans, the Fugitive Slave Acts, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and abolitionists. Told factually.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 8.5(B); 8.7(B); 8.7(C); 8.7(D); 8.7(E); 8.12(B); 8.21(C) · slavery and sectionalism, the Fugitive Slave Acts, and compromises before the Civil War

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. As the US grew, North and South argued about slavery in new lands; the Wilmot Proviso proposed banning slavery in land won from Mexico.
  2. Free Black people in the North still faced unfair laws and limits on voting and jobs.
  3. John Quincy Adams fought the “gag rule,” which blocked Congress from discussing petitions against slavery.

Example: What did the Wilmot Proviso propose? It came during the US–Mexican War. It was about the new land from Mexico. It proposed no slavery there. Answer: to ban slavery in land won from Mexico

A Nation Divided in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 9 of 10 in 8th 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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and became…

    • a Confederate general
    • a famous speaker and writer against slavery
    • a plantation owner
    • president

  2. Question 2

    The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 allowed slaveholders to…

    • free enslaved people
    • vote twice
    • recapture people who had escaped to other states
    • end the slave trade

  3. Question 3

    The Wilmot Proviso proposed to…

    • buy Alaska
    • make slavery legal everywhere
    • end the railroad
    • ban slavery in land won from Mexico

  4. Question 4

    The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required people in free states to…

    • pay no taxes
    • help return people who had escaped slavery
    • move west
    • free all enslaved people

  5. Question 5

    William Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator to…

    • sell newspapers about sports
    • call for an immediate end to slavery
    • support slavery
    • advertise farms

  6. Question 6

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

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

More 8th grade