APUSH Unit 5 Notes

Belief that Americans were destined to expand across the continent.
Popular due to:
- Land = opportunity.
- Resources and open land in the West.
- Chance to get rich (gold).
- Religious freedom (e.g., Mormons in Utah - Salt Lake City).
Settlers moved west in large numbers, facing hardships on trails like the Oregon Trail (2,000 miles).
Government support:
- Homestead Act: Free land if settlers could survive on it.
- Pacific Railroad Act: Supported railroad construction.
Transnational interests: Trade with Asia.
- Treaty (unpronounceable): Opened trade with China.
- Treaty of Kanagawa: Forced Japan to open ports to American ships.

Tensions with Mexico over the Texas border.
US claimed Rio Grande as border; Mexico insisted on Nueces River.
Polk sent troops, skirmish occurred, used as justification to declare war.
US victory led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848).
US gained vast territory: the Mexican Cession.
- Issue: Should slavery be allowed in this new land?
Increased conflict with American Indians and Mexican Americans.
- Examples: Unfair treaties, Sand Creek Massacre (1864).

Attempt to resolve the slavery issue in the Mexican Cession.
Wilmot Proviso: Proposed banning slavery in land gained from Mexico (failed).
Five parts:
- California admitted as a free state.
- Utah and New Mexico: Popular sovereignty (voting) to decide on slavery.
- Slave trade banned in Washington D.C.
- Fugitive Slave Act: Required Northerners to return escaped slaves.
- Texas paid $10,000,000$ to give up land claims.
Fugitive Slave Act angered Northerners, led to resistance (Underground Railroad, personal liberty laws).
Southerners still dissatisfied, wanted stronger guarantees for slavery's expansion.
Failure of the compromise contributed to the Civil War.

Revolutions in Europe (1848) and potato famine in Ireland led to increased immigration to the US.
Immigrants (Irish, German) settled in Northern cities, forming ethnic communities.

Abolitionists were a minority but influential.
Frederick Douglass: Speeches against slavery (e.g., "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?").
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," exposing slavery's horrors.
Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad helped enslaved people escape.
Growing divide between North and South over slavery, economics, and immigration.

Previous compromises failed (Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850).
Kansas-Nebraska Act: Allowed popular sovereignty in Kansas and Nebraska, nullifying the Missouri Compromise.
- Led to "Bleeding Kansas" (violence over slavery vote).
- John Brown: Abolitionist, involved in violence in Kansas and raid on Harpers Ferry.
Formation of the Republican Party (1854) in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Executive Branch: Weak presidents unable to address slavery issue.
Legislative Branch: Violence in Congress (e.g., Charles Sumner beaten by Preston Brooks).
Judicial Branch: Dred Scott v. Sanford: Slaves were not citizens, Congress couldn't ban slavery in territories.
Quote from John Brown: "…crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

Four candidates:
- Abraham Lincoln (Republican): Against slavery's expansion.
- Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat): Popular sovereignty.
- John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat): Pro-slavery.
- John Bell (Constitutional Union): Focused on preserving the Union.
Lincoln won without being on the ballot in 10 Southern states.

South Carolina seceded after Lincoln's election.
Six more states followed, forming the Confederate States of America (President: Jefferson Davis).
Lincoln aimed to preserve the Union; promised not to invade the South unless necessary.
Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War.

Unevenly matched sides:
- North: More people, industry, railroads.
- South: Better generals, home-field advantage, willlingness to fight to death (war of attrition).
First Battle: Bull Run (Union defeat).

Confederacy: Hold out, defense, hope for European intervention.
Union: Anaconda Plan (blockade, control Mississippi River).
Early Confederate victories due to Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Homefront Struggles: New York City Draft Riots (North), Richmond bread riots (South).

Battle of Gettysburg: Union victory, Lee's offensive repelled.
Battle of Vicksburg: Union control of Mississippi River, Confederacy split in Half.
Ulysses S Grant promoted and appointed William Sherman to instate Total War.
- Sherman's "March to the Sea": Destruction through Georgia.
Grant's strategy: Nonstop battles to wear down the Confederates.
Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse (1865).
Casualties: 698,000 deaths (deadliest war in American history).

Issued after Antietam.
Freed enslaved people in Confederate-held territories (not border states).
Reframed the war as a fight against slavery.
Prevented European recognition of the Confederacy.
Thousands of formerly enslaved people joined the Union Army (e.g., 54th Massachusetts Regiment).

Preserving democracy and fulfilling the ideals of the founding fathers.
The Union must win so "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Effort to rebuild the South after the Civil War.
Lincoln's 10% Plan: Readmit Southern states if 10% of voters pledged loyalty.
Andrew Johnson's Plan: Similar to Lincoln's, pardoned former Confederates.
Radical Republican Plan: Punish the South, protect black rights, military enforcement.
Johnson impeached for opposing Radical Republicans.

Initial progress: Black men gained citizenship and voting rights, held public office, federal troops in the South.
White Southerners resisted: Sharecropping, lynchings, KKK, convict leasing.
Supreme Court decisions weakened black rights:
- Slaughterhouse Cases (1873): Civil rights were a state issue.
- U.S. v. Cruikshank: Federal government couldn't punish white mobs.
Compromise of 1877: Hayes became president, troops removed from the South, Reconstruction ended.
Black rights were suppressed: Jim Crow laws, segregation, voter suppression.
14th and 15th Amendments became the foundation for the later civil rights movement.