Unit 5.5 - Sectional Conflict: Regional Differences

key terms/events and significance

Irish Immigrants (MIG)

• Half of all immigrants were them / tenant farmers driven to leave due to crop failures & famine (1840s)

• Faced discrimination because of their Roman Catholic religion / competed with African Americans for domestic work & low-skilled jobs / strong communities in the North

• Understood English + electoral politics → entered local politics / joined the Democratic Party / Tammany Hall secured jobs & influence (1850s) in New York

German Immigrants (MIG)

• Economic hardships & failure of Democratic revolutions (1848) → seek refuge in US (1840 & 50s)

• Most had some modest means & considerable skills as farmers & artisans / moved westward in search of cheap, fertile farmland → established homesteads throughout Old Northwest & prospered 

• Limited political influence at first → became more active in public life & supported public education & opposed slavery

• Formed communities in cities where German is spoken / rural area formed their own Roman Catholic or Lutheran churches

Nativism (NAT)

• Native-born Americans were alarmed by the influx of immigrants / feared newcomers would take their job & dilute the Anglo culture / tensions from religions / Protestants vs. Roman Catholic / hostility to immigrants (1840s) → sporadic rioting in big cities

• Formed secretive anti-foreign society (Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner) → evolved into the American Party or Know-Nothing Party / supported policies that increased time acquired citizenship for immigrants & only native-born hold office

• Gained strength as the Whigs’ power disintegrated (early 1850s) / late 1850s, anti-foreign feeling faded due to increased division over slavery / periodically return if there is an increased immigration

Growth of Industrial Technology: Railroads

• Territorial expansion & economic growth (1840s to 1857) / railroad emerged as AMerica’s largest industry

• Required immense amounts of capital & labor → gave rise to complex business organization / local merchants & farmers bought stocks in new railroad companies to connect their area to outside world / local & state gov granted special loans & taxbreaks

• Cheap & rapid transportation promoted Western agriculture / united Northeast & Midwest commercial interests / gave the North strategic advantages in the Civil War

Panic of 1857 (WXT)

• Caused a sharp decrease in price for Midwestern agricultural products & a sharp increase in unemployment in Northern cities / cotton prices remained high & the South was less affected → Southerners believed their plantation economy was superior & continued union with the North was not needed

Fugitive Slave Law (PCE/ARC)

• This persuaded the South to accept California as a free state / North resented the law → a wedge between North & South

• Help owners track fugitive slaves that escaped to Northern state & return them / removed fugitive cases from state courts & made them exclusive jurisdiction of the federal gov / authorized special US commissioners to issue warrants to arrest fugitives / a captured person who claimed to be free was denied of trial right by jury / state & local officials were required to help enforce the law

• Who attempted to hide a runaway or obstruct the enforcement was subject to heavy penalities

Underground Railroad (ARC)

• Loose network of activists who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the North or Canada

• Most “conductors” and those operated “stations” were free African Americans & people who had escaped slavery with the help of White abolitionists

• Organized vigilance committees to protect fugitive slaves from slave catchers

Harriet Tubman (PCE/ARC)

• The most famous conductor / a woman who had escaped slavery

• Made at least 19 trips to the South to help some 300 people escape

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (ARC)

• Most influential novel about the conflict between an enslaved man, Tom, & his owner, Simon Legree / published in 1852 by a Northern writer Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Moved a generation of Northerners & many Europeans to regard all slaveowners as cruel & inhuman / Southerners condemned the “untruths” of the novel → through it was the North’s prejudice against the Southern life

Impending Crisis of the South (ARC)

• 1857, Hinton R. Helper’s nonfiction book / attacked the South’s economy / quickly got banned in the South

• Widely distributed in the North by antislavery & Free-Soil leaders

Southern Reaction to Anti-Slavery Literature (ARC)

• Counterattacked & argued was good for both the master and the enslaved / pointed out that slavery is sanctioned by the Bible & grounded in philosophy & history / it was permitted by the US constitution

• Contrasted the conditions of Northern wage workers (“wage slaves”) forced to work long hours in factories & mines 

• George Fitzhugh wrote books to retaliate the North’s attack to slavery issue

Explain how sectional variations related to slavery increased hostilities in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Slavery continued to be a heated debate between the North and South through the Fugitive Slave Law and the birth of novels at that time that condemned slavery. Beside moral concern, it was also about the issue of political power between the North and the South when neither side wanted to let the other has the advantage. Efforts to abolish slavery and to resist the abolition increased the tension between the North and South.