United States History Student Edition

01 Introducing Division and Civil War

Division of the Nation During the mid-1800s, the North and the South increasingly grew apart over the issue of slavery. As political compromises failed to solve the issue, war seemed inevitable. Few Americans could imagine the horrors such a war would bring.

Escaping Slavery

» Aided by abolitionists, enslaved people traveled in darkness to escape their slaveholders. Those who escaped and those who helped them took great risks, as depicted in this engraving from the late 1800s.

“ I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, May 26, 1856

PHOTO: (t)Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com; (c)Digital Commonwealth/Boston Public Library (Rare Books Department); (b)GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo; TEXT: Emerson, Ralph Waldo. In Cooke, George Willis. Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Writings, and Philosophy. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881.

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