A number of future Civil War soldiers and leaders fought in the Mexican-American War. 

Here’s the preamble of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America (the nation formed by the South after secession).  Given what we know about United States history since the nation’s earliest days, what about this statement should have alarmed southerners?   “We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”

Lectures indicated that to qualify as a planter in the Old South, one had to own fifty or more slaves.  Lectures also noted that nearly all free southerners were planters.

What Congressional event first indicated to northerners and southerners that their respective regions were significantly and disturbingly different?

In 1832, South Carolina nullified the federal tariff and refused to collect the tax.  President Andrew Jackson threatened to respond with force.   A civil war might have broken out at this point.  Why didn’t it, according to the lectures?

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated during the second year of the Civil War.

And how did the nation feel about  expansion? Who wrote that it was the “manifest design of Providence” that the United States expand as far as it could? When was this statement written? What is its significance?

The upper south hesitated to secede at first.  What action by Abraham Lincoln drove most of them out of the United States?

The Civil War is typically broken down into two regions:  The War in the West and the War in the East.  Battles in the West include Vicksburg and New Orleans.   Battles of the East include Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and Antietam.

One question about the Alamo is why did Santa Anna attack this outpost?  It was way out on the frontier with fewer than 300 men inside.  Why bother attacking and killing the defenders?  Why not just go around it?