QR Challenge: Causes of the Civil War

Created using the ClassTools QR Treasure Hunt Generator

Teacher Notes

A. Prior to the lesson:

1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.

2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to

• Download a QR reader (e.g. I-Nigma | NeoReader | Kaywa) onto their mobile devices
• Bring these devices into the lesson.

3. Print out the QR codes.

4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.

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B. The lesson:

1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.

2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.

3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!

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C. TIPS / OTHER IDEAS

4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.

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Questions / Answers (teacher reference)

Question	Answer
1. 1. Compromise that was passed in 1820. Missouri (MO) will become a slave state, Maine (ME) will become a free state. After this, a line was drawn (imaginary) at the 36 30 line of latitude. Slavery could exist BELOW the line. Slavery could NOT exist ABOVE the line. A balance of power stayed between the free states and the slave states in Congress.
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3. 2. SC secedes, or separates, from the Union in 1861. Several other Southern states followed their lead.
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5. 3.Popular sovereignty is the idea that a territory could vote to determine if they should have slavery or if they should not have slavery. This led to violence in Kansas as slave supporters went to Kansas to vote and abolitionists went to Kansas to vote against slavery. They will meet there, and fighting will break out….many people will be killed.
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7. 4. Would TX and OR have slaves or not? This was a questions as we acquired new land. TX had to stay independent for 9 years because slavery was wanted in Texas, and if Texas had come in as a slave state, it would have upset the balance of states in Congress.
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9. 5. This was the newspaper that was published by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison that spoke out again slavery. This was outlawed in southern states.
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11. 6. Law proposed by David Wilmot that basically said any new land coming in from Mexico should be FREE SOIL, meaning that slavery could not spread. (1846). This passed the House of Representatives, but it did not pass the Senate, so yeah, it’s a not going to be a law.
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13. 7. The issue that southern states felt was violated….the southern states believed that the national government was becoming too powerful, and the right to own slaves should be left up to the states.
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15. 8. This compromise had several issues. The major issues were the fact that California was coming in as a free state and that the fugitive slave law was strengthened. This made things much worse.
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17. 9.1860, Lincoln is elected president (First Republican to be elected). This upset the South, and SC and other southern states seceded from the Union.
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19. 10. Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott, a slave who had been carried into free territory, was not free. The decision claimed that slaves were property and could be carried anywhere, and it went further by saving that slaves were inferior to white people.
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21. 11. this was the system that Harriet Tubman created to help slaves escape from the South into the North (often times Canada). Several people were part of this network of hiding slaves in their homes (IT WAS NOT AN ACTUAL RAILROAD!). Not many slaves were sent to freedom this way, but it was very symbolic of the abolitionist idea.
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23. 12. John Brown was a man who believed that slavery should be outlawed. He had already killed several people in Kansas that owned slaves. He will now (1859) try to raid a federal arsenal full of military guns to help the slaves get their freedom. He will fail miserable, and all of his sons are killed. He is captured and hanged for his crimes. He will become a martyr for the cause of abolitionist.
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25. 13. The political party is formed during this time campaigning on the idea of free soil, so slavery cannot spread, but it did not plan to outlaw slavery
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27. 14. This was the movement of “radicals” that wanted to get rid of slavery. Most abolitionists were found in North, but there were not many abolitionist…they were a small group of people who wanted slavery outlawed completely.

 

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