- Imagine trying to fix a cracked wall by putting bandages on it.

It might hold for a little while, but eventually the wall is going to break.

That's what the United States was doing in the years leading up to the Civil War.

For decades, the nation was deeply divided over slavery and the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

In practice, much of this conflict centered on whether slavery would be allowed to expand and how it would be enforced across state lines.

Instead of solving these problems, leaders relied on temporary solutions.

Policies like the Compromise of 1850, Southern responses such as the Georgia Platform, Supreme Court decisions like the Dred Scott case, the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and heated debates over secession, especially in Georgia, only widened the cracks.

As Abraham Lincoln warned, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

By the late 1850s, those cracks were impossible to ignore.

So let's take a closer look at the key short-term causes that pushed the nation and Georgia toward a civil war.

(engaging music) For years, the balance of power between free states and slave states in Congress had been carefully maintained.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had helped keep things even by admitting a pair of new states.

Missouri, which allowed slavery, and Maine, which did not.

It also banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36, 30 line.

But that balance was threatened in 1850 when California applied for statehood as a free state.

Southern leaders feared that losing power in Congress would eventually allow officials in the North to end slavery altogether in the United States.

Talk of secession, or leaving the Union, spread quickly across the South.

To prevent the country from falling apart, lawmakers passed a series of bills known as the Compromise of 1850.

Its two most important parts were that California entered the Union as a free state, and the Fugitive Slave Act, which required runaway and slaved people to be returned to their enslavers, even if they were caught in free states.

While this compromise kept the union together, it also increased tensions.

Many Northern citizens resisted the Fugitive Slave Act while Southern leaders argued that it should be strictly enforced in all states.

So much for the state's rights argument.

In Georgia, leaders debated whether to accept this compromise or secede.

Prominent politicians like Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs helped draft the Georgia Platform.

It stated that Georgia would accept the Compromise of 1850, but only as long as the federal government respected Southern rights, including enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

Georgia's decision influenced other Southern states and helped delay the Civil War for another 11 years.

But once again, the problem wasn't solved, just postponed.

Then in 1857, the issue of slavery reached the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who had lived with his enslaver in free US territories.

Scott believed that living on free soil made him a free man, so he sued for his freedom, but the Supreme Court ruled against him.

(gavel bangs) The court declared that Black Americans, enslaved or free, were not US citizens, and Congress had no power to ban slavery in the territories, making the Compromise of 1850 unconstitutional.

This meant that the US government could not stop slavery from spreading.

The Dred Scott ruling strongly favored the South and shocked the North.

Many Northerners believed the court had gone too far, while Southern leaders felt validated.

So instead of settling the issue of slavery, the Dred Scott case inflamed tensions and pushed the country closer to conflict.

By 1860, compromise was no longer working.

The nation was so divided that four presidential candidates ran for office: Abraham Lincoln, a Republican; Steven Douglas, a Democrat; John Breckenridge, a Southern Democrat; and John Bell, a member of the Constitutional Union Party.

Lincoln's Republican Party opposed the expansion of slavery, which terrified Southern states.

In fact, Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in Georgia or most of the South.

Still, Lincoln won the election with enough electoral votes to become president.

To many white Southerners, Lincoln's victory felt like a turning point.

They feared slavery and their way of life was under threat.

One by one, Southern states voted to secede or withdraw from the Union.

Before it chose to secede, Georgia seriously debated the decision.

In January 1861, Georgia lawmakers spent three days arguing over whether to stay in the Union or leave it.

On one side were large plantation owners, slaveholders, Governor Joseph E. Brown, and influential leaders like Robert Toombs.

They believed secession was the only way to protect slavery and the rights of Southern states.

On the other side were those who wanted to stay in the Union, which generally included small farmers, non-slaveholders, representatives from Northern Georgia, and most notably Alexander Stephens.

Stephens, who had helped pass earlier compromises gave a powerful speech against secession, warning that it would lead to war.

Even though he supported slavery, he believed leaving the Union was a dangerous mistake.

At first, the vote was close, but in the end, Georgia voted 208 to 89 in favor of secession.

On January 19th, 1861, Georgia officially left the Union and soon joined the Confederate States of America.

The American Civil War didn't start overnight.

For decades, tension had been building over issues like slavery and states' rights.

These long-term conflicts created a divided nation, but it was a series of short-term actions and decisions, including the Compromise of 1850, Georgia's response known as the Georgia Platform, the Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling, Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, and the debate over secession in Georgia that finally pushed the country past the breaking point.

By 1861, the cracks in the nation were too deep to patch.

The bandages had failed, and the United States was headed forward its bloodiest conflict.

(strange music) (air swooshes)