Period 5 (1844-1877)

Manifest Destiny

Religious justification for expansion (God created land for Americans and it’s their destiny to expand)

Cause: Cali Gold Rush (1848-1849)

• Only a few miners successful

• Others find work there farming, serving miners, railroad work

• Government supported (1862 Pacific Railway Act and 1862 Homestead Act)

Effect: ideas of American superiority

Effect: new western states cause slavery expansion debates

Effect: conflict with Native Americans

Pacific Railway Act

1862

Government give land to build the transcontinental railroad

Offer incentives to anyone helping to build the rr

Homestead Act

1862

Gave land to people as long as they promised to improve it (even colored people)

• Cause: want occupy land so natives can’t reoccupy it

• Effect: support small farmers instead of large slaveowners

• Effect: support westward expansion

Mexican American War

1846-1848

US and Mexico war over territory disputes

• Cause: US annexation of Texas (Mexico view as act of aggression)

  • Americans in Texas fight for independence from Mexico but not recognized

• Cause: Manifest destiny and desire for more land (especially Texas and California)

• End with 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848

US paid $15M for Mexican territory, ending Mexican American War

• Effect: discrimination in new territory

• Effect: sectional tensions (N/S think other side is trying to take all the economic opportunity)

Wilmont Proviso

1846

Failed proposal to make all new land from Mexico free

Compromise of 1850

• Stronger fugitive slave law angered the North bc now they had to be involved in slavery

• Cali as a free state

• New territory has popular sovereignty

• Abolish DC slave trade

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

1852

Abolitionist book exposing people to the true cruelty of slavery

• Cause: fugitive slave act

• Effect: make more moderate Northerners abolitionist

• Effect: put pressure on the South

Kansas-Nebraska Act/Bleeding Kansas

1854

Popular sovereignty in new states of Kansas and Nebraska

• Effect: Bleeding Kansas (violent conflicts between proslavery and abolitionists for pop sovereignty)

• Effect: Destroyed Whig party, split Democratic party into Dem and Republicans

Dred Scott v Sanford

1857

Dred Scott (slave) sues owner for refusing to sell freedom

Supreme Court rule that he can’t sue bc black people are not citizens

• Effect: appease the South and anger the North

Lincoln Election

1860

Catalyze civil war by causing many Southern states to secede & form Confederacy 1860-1861 bc Lincoln is antislavery

Civil War Aspects

1861-1865

North Strategy: Anaconda plan (squeeze South economically by blocking their ports and Mississippi River)

• Industrial, population, resource advantage

South Strategy: outlast the north

• home territory, more morale advantage

• Want European help but couldn’t get it bc Uncle Tom’s Cabin and not much European need for Southern cotton

• Effect: unite states into one nation

• Effect: end slavery and give black ppl citizenship

• Effect: increase industrialization

• Effect: give women more roles

Battle of Fort Sumter

4/1861

• Cause: Confederacy think Ft. Sumter is theirs bc its in their territory, attack it when Union tries to resupply it

• Effect: Union loss

• Effect: secession of 4 more border states

Battle of Bull Run/Manassas

7/1861

Deadly confederate win

• Effect: changed Northern view that Civil War would be an easy win

1st and 2nd Confiscation acts

1861-1862

1: authorized taking of Southern property as war “contraband”

2: authorized freeing of escaped Southern slaves as “war prisoners'“ bc they were also contraband

• still poor treatment of black soldiers sometimes in the Union

• Cause: want decrease South labor force

Battle of Antietam

9/1862

South invade North for the first time

• Bloodiest day in US history

• Effect: Northern victory

• Effect: new photography → show true costs and unheroicness of war, loss of morale in the North

Emancipation Proclamation

1863

Declared freedom of all slaves in confederacy

• Cause: want to weaken South by taking away their labor

• Cause: want to boost North morale (made it a fight for abolition rather than just to reunite the US)

  • Effect: Europe (antislavery) can’t support South

• Effect: more black ppl join Union army bc fight for their own freedom

Battle of Gettysburg

7/1863

“high water mark:” as far as the Confederacy got to winning the war

U.S.Grant successfully defend Southern invasion of the North (Robert E Lee)

• Turning point of the civil war for the north

• Effect: boost Northern morale

• Effect: Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (try to channel grief of lost soldiers into more morale for the North)

Sherman’s March

1864

Turned to a total war against the South to destroy their morale

• Attack and destroy infrastructure through Georgia, capture atlanta

13th Amendment

1/1865

abolished slavery

RE Lee surrender to US Grant

4/1865

At Appomatox

• Effect: end the civil war

Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

• Cause: didn’t want Lincoln to give black people citizenship

Reconstruction

Black codes in the South continue legal discrimination against freed slaves even with slavery abolished

• Black people bound by povery

• Trapped by labor contracts with planters (basically slavery)

  • Sharecropping: had to rent land from whites and pay with crops

• legalize discrimination

1st Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment

1866 and 1868

Gave black citizenship against the Dred Scott decision

14th:

• Equality, due process of law

• Restrict states from taking rights

KKK formed

1866

• Cause: want white supremacy and destroy Republican party

• Committed violent Acts on black churches and schools

• Implement literacy tests to restrict black voters

• Effect: fed govt issue Force Acts and KKK Act (1871) attempt to forcefully stop discrimination

Freedmen’s Bureau

1865

Advocacy group for freed blacks

• welfare to ease economic transition

• schools and healthcare

• Ultimately ended because of Southern resistance

15th Amendment

1870

Allow every citizen to vote

• Effect: Grandfather Clause, poll taxes, literacy tests to restrict Southern voters

1877 Compromise

Compromise giving Republican presidency in return for end of military-enforced Reconstruction in the South

• Gave Democratic “home rule” to the South

• Cause: Northern military exaustion

• Cause: fading abolitionist spirit