5.5 Sectional Conflict: Regional Differences

Irish, Roman Catholicism, Tammany Hall, Germans, Nativism, industrial technology, railroads, Elias Howe, Samuel F. B. Morse, Panic of 1857, Fugitive Slave Law, Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Impending Crisis of the South, Hinton R. Helper, George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South

Tammany Hall

NYC democratic organization that was taken over by Irish immigrants by the 1830’s, anti-British and pro-worker

Nativism

• hostility towards immigrants for taking jobs, diluting culture, and practicing different religions

• formed Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, a secretive anti-foreign society that became a political organization called the American Party

American Party

anti-foreigner political organization

• supported policies increasing time needed to acquire citizenship and only allowing native-born citizens to hold public office

• gained influence and unsuccessfully nominated Millard Fillmore in 1856

groups that faced religious discrimination

Irish, Germans, Mexican Americans, and native Americans

industrial technology

• factories - made shoes, sewing machines, ready-to-wear clothes, firearms, precision tools, iron products for railroads

• sewing machine

• electric telegraph - sped up communication and transportation along with railroads

railroads

• replaced canal-building

• America’s largest industry led to need for immense amounts of capital and labor, complex business organizations

• promoted western agriculture, united commercial interests of the northeast and Midwest

• gave the North strategic advantages in the Civil War

Panic of 1857

• Midwestern agricultural products’ prices dropped (bad)

• Northern cities’ unemployment rates increased

• the South was mostly unaffected, cotton prices were still high, led to their belief in plantation economy superiority and that continued union was unnecessary

Fugitive Slave Law (1850)

• all fugitive state cases became exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government

• authorized U.S. commissioners to issue warrants for fugitives

• denied right of jury to fugitives who lied about free status

• required enforcement of federal law by state and local government officials

• northern activists protected African Americans through court cases, protests, and force despite threat of heavy penalties

Underground Railroad

network of activists that assisted fugitives to North/Canada, aid from Harriet Tubman (conductor), Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth

literature about slavery

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel depicting the cruelty and inhumanity of slave owners, moved Northerners and Europeans

• Impending Crisis of the South - nonfiction book by Hinton R. Helper attacking slavery for its weakening of the South’s economy

  • banned in the South

• Sociology for the South by George Fitzhugh - argued that slavery was better than the wage system and considered African Americans unequal