Key Concept 5.1 —The United States became more connected with the world, pursued an expansionist foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, and emerged as the destination for many migrants from other countries.

I. Popular enthusiasm for U.S. expansion, bolstered by economic and security interests, resulted in the acquisition of new territories, substantial migration westward, and new overseas initiatives.

Conflicts over Texas, Maine, & Oregon

By 1830, Americans (white farmers & black enslaved people) outnumbered Mexicans in Texas by three to one

1829 - tensions increased when Mexicans outlawed slavery & required all immigrants to convert to Roman Catholicism

When American’s refused, Mexico closes Texas to additional American immigrants

American from Southern states ignored Mexican prohibition

General Antionio Lopez made himself dictator -- American settlers led by Sam Houston revolted & declared Texas to be an independent republic

Sam Hourston captured Mexican general & applied for Texas to be added to the United States as a new state - Jackson & Van Buren put off annexation

John Tyler worked to annex Texas - US senate rejected his treaty of annexation in 1844

Northerners opposed to the annexation of Texas

Aroostook War - conflict between rival groups of lumbermen on the Maine-Canadian border

Conflict resolved in Webster-Ashburton Treaty - disputed territory was split between Maine & British Canada

The US based its claims to Oregon/ Pacific territory on…

Discovery of the Columbia river

Expedition of Lewis & Clark

Fur trading post & fort in Astoria, Oregon

Protestant missionaries & farmers settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s - success in farming the fertile valley caused 5,000 Americans to catch “Oregon fever” & travel down the Oregon Trail to settle the area south of the Columbia River

British & American negotiators agreed to divide the Oregon territory at the 49th parallel

War with Mexico

Polk wanted Slidell to…

Persuade Mexico to sell the California & New Mexico territories to the US

Settle the disputed Mexico-Texas border

Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande & captured an American army - killing 11

Congress approved war resolutions

General Stephen Kearney succeeded in taking Santa Fe & southern California

General Winfield Scott’s army succeeded in taking Vera Cruz & then captured Mexico City in 1847

Mexican government was forced agree to US terms

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas

United States took possession of California & New Mexico - US paid $15 million & assumed responsibility for any claims of American citizens against Mexico

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) - neither US nor Britain would take exclusive control of any future canal route in Central America

Gadsden Purchase - Mexico sold southern sections of present-day New Mexico & Arizona to the United States

By 1860s - hundreds of thousands of Americans had settled west using the Oregon, California, Santa Fe, & Mormon trails

Discovery of gold in California in 1848

Gold or silver rushes in Colorado, Nevada, the Black Hills, other westward territories

Mining boom brought tens of thousands of men into the western mountains

California's population increase to 380,000 by 1860

Almost one-third of the miners in the West were Chinese

Cities of Denver & San Francisco created by gold & silver rushes

Preemption Acts - gave squatters the right to settle public lands & purchase them for low prices

After 1840, industrialization spread to other states of the Northeast - factories produced more varieties of goods

Invention of sewing machine by Elias Howe shifted clothing production to factories

1844 - invention of electric telegraph & an increase in railroads increased the speed of communication & transportation

Railroads emerged as the United States’ largest industry

1850 - federal land grant to build Illinois Central Railroad

Cheap & rapid transportation promoted western agriculture

Panic of 1857 - prices for farmers dropped, unemployed in Northern cities increased, South unaffected (cotton prices remained high) - led Southerners to believe that their plantation agriculture was superior

II. In the 1840s and 1850s, Americans continued to debate questions about rights and citizenship for various groups of U.S. inhabitants.

Acquisition of vast western lands renewed sectional debate over the extension of slavery (Wilmot Proviso)

Northerners viewed the war with Mexico as part of a Southern plot to extend the “slave power”

Many Southerners we're dissatisfied with the territorial gains from the Mexican war - most eagerly sought possibility was the acquisition of Cuba

1852 elected president Franklin Pierce - pro-Southern policies

Dispatched three diplomats to negotiate the Ostend Manifesto to buy Cuba from Spain

Provoked an angry reaction for antislavery Congress members

Walker Expedition - William Walker sought to develop a proslavery Central American empire without the help of the federal government

Key Concept 5.2 — Intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions, debates over slavery and other economic, cultural, and political issues led the nation into civil war.

I. Ideological and economic differences over slavery produced an array of diverging responses from Americans in the North and the South.

Fugitive Slave Laws and provision for popular sovereignty became controversial

Fugitive Slave Laws - Southern slave owners could track down, capture, and enslave “fugitive” slaves who escaped to the North (and deny them right of trial by jury)

Fugitive Slave Laws resisted by antislavery Northerners

Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Novel about the conflict between an enslaved man and the brutal white slave owner

Moved Northerners and many Europeans to regard all slave owners as monstrously cruel and inhuman

Southerners saw the novel as a proof of the North’s “prejudice” against the Southern way of life

Southern ideology - slavery as a “positive good” - contrasted the condition of Northern wage workers with the familial bonds the could develop on plantations between salves and master

Antislavery and proslavery literature polarized the nation even more - abolitionists concerned about slavery as a moral issue

“Bleeding Kansas” - Slaveholders from Missouri set up homesteads to win control of the territory for the South

Emigrant Aid Company - organized by Northern abolitionist and Free-Soilers - paid for the transportation of antislavery settlers to Kansas

Fighting broke out between slavery and antislavery gorups - both groups created their own legislatures

Proslavery forces killed two and destroyed homes and businesses in the free-soil town of Lawrence

John Brown, abolitionist, attacked a proslavery farm killing five settlers

John Brown’s Raid of Harper’s Ferry - John Brown led a raid attempting to arm slaves in Virginia to start a slave revolt

Southern whites saw the raid as proof of North’s intentions to use slave revolts to destroy the South

II. Debates over slavery came to dominate political discussion in the 1850s, culminating in the bitter election of 1860 and the secession of Southern states.

Many Northerners who opposed westward expansion of slavery did not oppose slavery in the South

Free-Soil Party advocated for preventing extension of slavery, free homesteads, and internal improvements

Most Southern whites view attempts to restrict the expansion of slavery as a violation of their Constitutional rights

Popular sovereignty - determining whether to allow

The Compromise of 1850 - Proposed by Henry Clay to prevent political crisis with the need for law and order in the West

California is a free state

Utah and New Mexico decide on slavery issue through popular sovereignty

Land dispute given to new territories in return for assuming Texas’s public debt

Ban slave trade, permit whites to hold slaves

Fugitive Slave Laws

California added to the North’s power

Debate deepened the commitment of many Northerners to saving the Union from secession

Kansas-Nebraska Act - Divide Nebraska territory into Kansas and Nebraska and allow settlers in each territory to decide whether to allow slavery or not

Gave Southerners the opportunity to expand slavery

Repealed the Missouri Compromise

Tensions over slavery divided Northern and Southern Democrates and broke apart the Whig party

American Party/ Know-Nothing Party - opposition to Catholics and immigrants who were migrating in large numbers to Northern cities

Formation of the Republican Party - Founded in 1854 as a direct reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act - purpose was to oppose the spread of slavery in the territories - called for the repeal of Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law

More joined as violence in Kansas increased

Its success threatened and alienated the South

Dred Scott decision - The Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott who sued for his freedom for these reasons…

Scott had no right to sue in a federal court because he was not constitutionally considered a citizen

They considered slaves to be a form of property so Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory or deprive any person of property without due process of law

Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional

Southern Democrats supported ruling and Northern Republicans were infuriated

Supreme Courts ruled that all parts of western territories were open to slavery

Northerners suspected the the Democratic party had planned the Dred Scott decision

Induced thousands of former Democrats to vote Republican

Lincoln-Douglas Debates - Lincoln emerged as a national figure and leading contender for the Republican presidential nominee

Election of 1860

Northern and Southern Democrats held separate nominating conventions

Southern Democratic platform called for the unrestricted extension of slavery in the territories and the annexation of Cuba

Republican platform called for exclusion of slavery from territories, protective tariff, free land for homesteaders, and internal improvements to encourage western settlement

Southern secessionists warned that if Lincoln was elected president their states would leave the Union

Constitutional Union party - wanted to preserve the Union

Results concluded that the populous free states had enough electoral votes to select a president without the need for a single electoral vote from the South

Secession of the Deep South - secessionists in South Carolina voted to secede - other states in the Deep South did the same

Representative of seven states created the Confederate States of America

Their Constitution placed limits on the government’s power to impose tariffs and restrict slavery

Crittenden Compromise - John Crittenden proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaver in all territories south of the 36th parallel

Lincoln did not accept the compromise because it violated the Republican position against the extension of slavery

Key Concept 5.3- The Union victory in the Civil War and the contested Reconstruction of the South settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights.

The North’s greater manpower and industrial resources, the leadership of Abraham Lincoln and others, and the decision to emancipate slaves eventually led to the Union military victory over the Confederacy in the devastating Civil War.

Fort Sumter united Northerners behind a patriotic fight to save the union

During the war, Lincoln drew upon powers of commands in chief

In Fort Sumter he calls for 75,000 volunteers, authorized spending on war, and suspended the privilege of writ of habeas corpus

Military & political goal: keeping the border states in the Union

South’s population increase by 50% if they gained the border states

Lincoln initially rejected calls for emancipation of slavery

South’s reliance on cotton exports did not gain enough traction to gain the help of a foreign nation (Europe began finding alternative nations for imports and other options for textile production such as wool or linen)

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation appealed strongly to Britain’s working class - antislavery feelings of the British majority

Confiscation Act empowered freed slaves to join the Union army

Emancipation Proclamation gave Union shift in motivation & goal of war to ending slavery rather than just unification

Early 1863 - Confederate economy in bad shape, soldiers deserting army

Sherman marched through Georgia/ the South & destroyed infrastructure

March helped break the spirit of the Confederacy

Wartime Advantages

Union population: 22 million, South population: 5.5 million

Union population enhanced during the war by 800,000 immigrants

Emancipation brought 180,000 African Americans to the Union army (in critical years of war)

Union controlled the majority of factories, railroads, and even farmland

Union had a well-established central government, experienced politicians, and a strong popular base

Union Strategy

Use Navy to blockade Southern ports

Take control of the Mississippi River

Train an army of 500,000 strong to conquer Richmond

Antietam

Confederates retreated & failed to gain recognition from a foreign power

Lincoln used this victory to issue the Emancipation Proclamation

Turning Point

Union captured Vicksburg, Mississippi & took control of the length of the Mississippi River

Union won the Battle of Gettysburg

Reconstruction and the Civil War ended slavery, altered relationships between the states and the federal government, and led to debates over new definitions of citizenship, particularly regarding the rights of African Americans, women, and other minorities.

Lincoln’s reconstruction plan centered around the idea that Southern states could not constitutionally leave the Union - viewed confederates as a disloyal minority

10% plan or Proclamation of Amnesty was fairly lenient

Goal to reconstruct southern states so that unionists were in charge rather than secessionists

Required rewriting of state constitutions

1864 - Congress passed Wade-Davis bill - 50% loyal oath

Vetoed by Lincoln - tensions arise between presidential and congressional branches

Freedmen’s Bureau - acted as an early welfare agency for freed people

Initial authority to resettle freed blacks on confiscated land in the South

This land was given back when Johnson pardoned Confederate owners

Greatest success in establishing schools

Johnson’s policies gave southern state governments ability to restrict rights of black people with their constitutions (didn’t expand voting rights and were able to more easily gain seats in Congress)

Black Codes restricted rights and movement of former slaves

Civil Rights Act of 1866 - pronounced all African Americans to be US citizens

14th amendment - all those born or naturalized in US were citizens - obligated citizens to respect rights of US citizens

Reconstruction Acts of 1867 - divided south into military districts each under the control of the Union army

15th amendment - universal male suffrage

Civil rights act of 1875 - equal accommodations in public places - law was poorly enforced

Sharecropping offered little economic opportunity & became a new form of servitude