Key ideas - Unit 5

James K Polk and Manifest Destiny

  • Democrat, dark horse, beats the Whig Henry Clay
  • Wants to lower tariff
  • Expand each of country
    • Oregon (54 40 or fight)
    • Texas
    • California

Manifest destiny

  • Belief that God wanted the American people to occupy the entire continent
  • Spread civilization, democracy

Oregon Territory

  • Anglo-American Convention 1818 - US and England agree to peacefully occupy the Oregon Territory

  • American settlers flow in on Oregon Trail

    • Methodist missionaries, fur traders
    • Outnumber British settlers in Oregon Territory

  • Becomes an issue in the Election of 1844

  • Oregon Treaty

    • No 54 40, 49th parallel, no fight with Britain, no war; British peacefully left

Texas Annexation Issue

  • Became an independent, Lone Star Republic in 1836
  • Sam Houston is first president of Texas
    • Santa Anna of Mexico rejects this
  • 1837 - Andrew Jackson recognizes republic of Texas
  • Requested for annexation
    • Delayed due to the contentious issue of slavery
  • Texas looks for defensive assistance: Concern over England
  • The issue of Texas (1836 - 1844) no one wanted to deal with it
  • Polk turns it into a major issue
  • John Tyler (before Polk takes office) tried to pass it gets a majority.
    • Annexed

Wilmot Proviso

Issue of slavery in the territories inflamed sectional controversy

Missouri requested admission into the Union as a slave state in 1819

  • Threatened balance of power

Tallmadge Amendment

  • Prohibited the further introduction of slaves into the region
  • All slaves currently in Missouri would be freed at 25
  • Gradual elimination of slavery in Missouri
  • Passed by house, not senate

1846

  • US entry into Mexican American war provoked controversy
  • Concern amongst Northern Whigs that the war was an excuse to expand southern slavery

Spot resolution

  • Doubted that blood was spilt on US soil

Wilmot Proviso

  • Proposed a ban on slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican American War
    • South saw it as an attack on slavery
    • Defeated in the Senate
  • Both the Tallmadge Amendment and Wilmot Proviso never became federal law
  • Both Came to symbolize the issue of slavery
  • Both will be settled by a compromise

Mexican American War reawakened the slavery issue that would not stop until Civil War

Repeated attempts at political compromise failed to calm tensions over slavery

Trust between the north and south would break down and end in the Civil War

Kansas Nebraska Act

  • Attempt to resolve the issue of slavery in the territories
  • Increased sectional tension
  • Failure

Stephen Douglas wanted a RxR route and encourage western settlement

  • Southerners didn’t want the RxR b/c there’s no slavery in that region

Organized 2 territories based on the idea of Popular Sovereignty

  • Repealed the Missouri compromise

Whigs and democrats in the south vote for the Kansas Nebraska Act

Northern Whigs and Free Soil Democrats vote against.

  • Whig party divides
    • Republican party is born and opposes the Kansas Nebraska act

Birth of the Republican party

  • Northern Whigs,
  • Free soilers
  • Former liberty party abolitionists
  • Anti slavery

Bleeding Kansas

  • People flood into Kansas and start fighting with each other.

Manifest Destiny

Election of 1840

  • Whigs = William Henry Harrison + John Tyler (Former Democrat)
  • Harrison dies 32 days into office
  • Tyler still holds democratic ideas
    • Jacksonian
  • Starts to block the goals of the Whig party
  • Attempts to annex Texas
    • Defeated by Congress

Election of 1844

  • Polk wins
  • Wants texas
    • Tyler submits a proposal before Polk enters office, uses a joint resolution
  • Polk wanted to lower tariff, manifest destiny, 54 40

Manifest Destiny

  • America’s destiny to go from Pacific to Atlantic
    • White superiority

Oregon Dispute

  • Wanted 54 40, peacefully got 49th parallel, no war

Mexico

  • Still saw Texas as part of Mexico, river dispute
  • Polk attempts to buy California from Mexico
    • Slidell Mission: Mexico refuses offer of 25 million for CA
  • Northern Whigs oppose the war
  • Spot resolution - Was it an attack on American soil??
  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - got more land

Renewing Sectional Struggle

Free soil movement

  • Following Mexican American War, issue of slavery in the territories becomes the key cause of sectional tensions
  • Opposed to slavery in new territory
  • Keep west for opportunity for whites only
  • Not against slavery in the South

Election of 1848

  • Whigs took no position; elected Zachary Taylor
  • Cass = Democrat (popular sovereignty)
  • Free soil party = Martin Van Buren
  • Zachary taylor wins

Gold is discovered in California

  • 49er’s rush into California
  • Sectional tension between the North and the South
  • California makes a constitution banning slavery and ask Congress for admission as a free state

Mexican Cession

  • Until Cali admitted into region, equal balance of power

Threats of Secession

  • Radical southerners talk openly of secession
  • Henry clay and Stephen Douglas make compromise

Compromise of 1850

  • Cali = free state
  • Mexican Cession (Utah and New Mexico = popular sovereignty)
  • Slave trade banned in DC
  • Tougher fugitive slave law
  • Border dispute between NM and TX

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

  • Huge increase in sectional tension
  • Turned the north into a hunting ground for future slaves
  • Denied jury trial
  • Moderate northerners now sympathetic to abolitionist movement
    • Underground railroad

People more polarized

1852 election

  • Franklin Pierce (democrats) whigs divided
  • Debate over slavery slowed Manifest Destiny

Ostend Manifesto - Plan for the US to buy Cuba

  • Condemned by north

Gadsden Purchase

  • 10 million $$$; to create a RxR

Kansas Nebraska Act 1954

  • Stephen Douglas wants RxR route through Illinois out west and settlement
  • To win the south (since they wanted slavery in the region and wouldn’t agree to the RxR), allows popular sovereignty in the region

Disunion

Northern Resistance

  • Uncle toms cabin
    • Inspires northerns to resist Fugitive Slave Act
    • Morality argument
    • Horrors of slavery to northerners and Europeans

Kansas Nebraska Act

  • Assumed that Kansas = slave state and Nebraska = free state
  • People flood into Kansas to flood the votes
  • EFFECT = REPUBLICAN PARTY!!

Sumner brooks

  • Sumner gives a speech about Bleeding Kansas; insults southern senator Andrew Butler
  • Preston Brooks enters congress and beats sumner with a cane

Election of 1856

  • Republican party = John C Fremont
  • Democrats = James Buchanan [WON]
  • Know nothings = Millard Fillmore

Lecompton Constitution

  • Pro Slavery constitution for Kansas
  • Free soilers boycott the election
  • Rejected by congress

Dred Scott Case

  • Slave who sued for his freedom
  • Goes to Wisconsin and was free
  • Roger Taney was head and dominated by southerners
    • African Americans are not citizens of the US
    • Could not sue
    • Since slaves are property, can not be taken away
    • Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

  • Abe Lincoln debates Douglas for the Illinois Senate
  • Challenges douglas on the dred scott decision
  • Could slavery be prevented in the territories
    • Dred scott ruling says no
    • Douglas says that territories could limit slavery (freeport doctrine)
  • Douglas remains
  • Lincoln = national figure + house divided speech
    • Democrats split in 1860

John Brown and Harper’s Ferry

  • wanted to make a slave revolt in 1859
  • Attempts to take the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry
    • Charged with treason and hung
  • South is outraged
  • Brown is a martyr
  • Immediate cause of secession

Election of 1860

  • Democrats split due to slavery
    • Northern = stephen douglas
    • Popular sovereignty and fugitive slave act
    • Southern = John C. Breckinridge
    • Allow slavery, annex Cuba
  • Republicans = Lincoln
    • For free soilers: No extension of slavery
    • For northern manufacturers: Protective tariff
    • Northwest: Pacific railroad
    • Farmers: free homesteads
  • Secessionist claim that they’ll leave
  • Lincoln wins, but a minority president
    • Sectional president according to Southerners
  • SC votes for secession in 1860
  • Confederate states of America is formed
    • Jefferson Davis
  • James Buchanan does nothing to stop secession
    • Does not believe secession is legal, but no options

Crittenden Compromise

  • Tried to calm southern fears
  • Return to the Missouri Compromise
  • Republicans reject

Civil war

Fort Sumter

  • 7 southern states left before Lincoln took office
    • No right of secession and pledges to not interfere with slavery
  • Lincoln sends provisions to Fort Sumter, no aggression
    • SC attacked Fort Sumter, beginning of war
  • Impact
    • Unites northerners and preserving union
    • Calls for volunteers
    • Southerners rally around confederacy (4 more states)
    • Lincoln’s priority = keeping the border states from leaving union
  • Border states
  • Slave states that stay in the union
  • Goal of Lincoln was to keep them in the union
    • Would give more men to south
    • Would give the south more factories
    • Strategic geographic location
  • Martial law in Maryland
  • Guerilla warfare in missouri
  • Suspension of Habeas Corpus

North Advantages

  • Industrial resources, transportation , powerful navy and established government, population advantage, emancipation

North Disadvantage

  • Lack of leadership, many top leaders joined the south; lack of purpose

South Advantages

  • Fighting a defensive war, friendly population, sense of purpose, veteran military officials, cotton diplomacy with international Market

South Disadvantages

  • No Navy, no government structure, state rights, poorly equipped, no railroads, weak economy, weak manufacturing

Mobilization

  • Conscription act - all men had to register
    • Unfair to poor, could pay to get out
  • NY City Draft Riots
    • Mobs of immigrants attacked wealthy and African Americans

Lincoln did not want to end slavery, even though it was a moral issue…

  • Secession was not legal
  • Needed to keep border states
  • Fear for white workers in the north
  • Political concerns with Northern Democrats

Road to Emancipation

  • Two reasons to free slaves
    • Military: undermines economic foundation of the south
    • Ideological - not OK
  • Radical republicans pressured lincoln to make the war about slavery
  • Confiscation act
    • Slaves used for “insurrectionary purposes” declared free
  • 2nd confiscation
    • Freed all slaves who were enslaved by anybody engaged in rebellion against the US

Emancipation Proclamation

  • Justified as a military necessity
    • Declared slaves free in rebel territory
  • Strengthened the moral cause of the North
    • Not a war against secession, slavery
    • Helped keep Europe from aiding Confederacy
    • Gave the union new soldiers for Union army

Africans

  • Frederick Douglas saw enlistment as an opportunity to prove their citizenship
  • Massachusetts 54th regiment
  • Prejudice

Use of executive power

  • Civil liberties often reduced during national crisis
  • Suspends the writ of habeas corpus
    • People arrested without being informed of charges against them and no trial
    • Presidential power increased
    • Ordered a blockade without approval of Congress
    • Increase size of federal army

Politics

  • Cotton Diplomacy: Failed
  • State rights tradition
  • Radical republicans vs moderates
  • War democrats: support war but not Lincoln’s action
  • peace democrats opposed war (copperheads) wanted peace

Election of 1864 = Lincoln

Republican majority in Congress

  • Morrill Tariff Act (pay for war and protect industry)
  • Homestead act (set up sale of land in west)
  • Legal tender act (print greenbacks)
  • National bank act (financial landmark) that wanted to make a unified banking system
  • Pacific railway act

IMPACT

  • Loss of life
  • Southern economy destroyed and northern industrialization accelerated
  • Republican laws passed
  • Union preserved
    • Secession and nullification defeated
    • Civil War was ultimate test for American democracy
  • 4 million slaves freed by 13th amendment

Civil War battles

  • America’s deadliest war
  • Battle of Bull Run: Proved war would not be short (south wins)
  • Anaconda plan
    • Winfield Scott
    • Use navy to blockade coast and take control of Mississippi river
  • Antietam
    • Lee hopes to get foreign recognition and bring border states into the conflict
    • Lee retreats and recognition lost
  • Grant wins some battles in the west (vicksburg)
  • Gettysburg
    • Lee hoped to win on Union soil, failed and retreated to Virginia
  • Vicksburg
  • William Tecumseh Sherman
    • Total war through the south
    • Destroyed Georgia, infrastructure, atlanta
  • Appomattox
    • Lee surrenders