Regional Tensions: Immigration, Slavery, and Abolitionism

Regional Tensions: Immigration and Slavery

Immigrants in America Before the Civil War

• Influx of Irish and German immigrants seeking a new home in America.
• Immigrants settled in cultural enclaves to preserve their customs, languages, and religion.
• Cultural Enclaves: Ethnic communities where immigrants maintained their cultural customs, languages, and religions.

Irish Immigrants

• Many settled in New York City, specifically the Five Points neighborhood.
• Lived in slums characterized by:
  • Disease
  • Unemployment
  • High infant mortality rates

German Immigrants

• Some settled in urban areas along the coast.
• Many moved west in search of land for farming.

Nativist Movement

• Significant movement arose to oppose immigration.
• Strong anti-Catholic nativist sentiment.
• Nativism: A policy of protecting the interests of native-born people against those of immigrants.
• Nativists were primarily white Protestants who discriminated against Irish and German Catholic immigrants.
• Know-Nothing Party: A political party formed around opposition to immigration.
  • The movement aimed to limit immigrants’ cultural and political influence.

Regional Tensions: Slavery

North vs. South

Labor Systems

• The economies of the North and South differed dramatically.

Free Soil Movement and Party

• Many northerners opposed the expansion of slavery on economic grounds, not necessarily moral grounds.
• Feared competition from enslaved labor in new territories, making it impossible for free wage laborers to compete for jobs.
• Supported the Wilmot Proviso to keep lands gained from the Mexican Cession free of slavery.
• Aimed to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories, not to abolish it in the South.
• Southerners viewed this as a threat to their constitutional rights.

Abolitionist Movement

• A minority in the North comprising both free black and white members.
• Highly influential due to effective strategies and tactics.

Strategies and Tactics of Abolitionists

• Words:

  • Printed Words:
    • The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison’s influential abolitionist newspaper.
    • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel depicting the dehumanization and brutality of slavery.
      • Northern readers were exposed to the evils of slavery, leading to increased opposition.
      • Southern readers were outraged and attempted to ban the book.
  • Spoken Words:
    • Frederick Douglass: Eloquent speeches weaving together abolitionist pathos, logos, and ethos.

• Assisting Enslaved People's Escape:

  • Underground Railroad: A network of trails and safehouses helping enslaved people escape to the North.
    • Tens of thousands of enslaved people used this passage to freedom, some going to Canada to avoid the Fugitive Slave Law.

• Violence:

  • John Brown: A radical abolitionist who advocated for a slave uprising.
  • Raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859): Brown’s plan to seize the federal arsenal, distribute weapons to enslaved people, and ignite a rebellion.
    • The raid failed, and Brown was captured and hanged.
    • Southerners saw the raid as evidence of abolitionist intentions to incite a race war.