Unit 5 Review: Manifest Destiny, Mexican-American War, Civil War Causes, and Reconstruction (1844-1877)

Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion (1840s)

  • Manifest Destiny:
    • Belief that Americans were destined to expand across the entire continent.
    • Popular due to the idea that land equaled opportunity.
    • Motivations:
      • Economic: Resources, open land, chance to get rich (gold).
      • Agricultural: Fertile soil for farmers.
      • Religious: Mormons seeking isolation in Utah (Salt Lake City).
  • Westward Migration:
    • Thousands of settlers risked lives on trails like the Oregon Trail (2,000 miles).
  • Government Support:
    • Homestead Act: Provided free land to settlers who could survive on it.
    • Pacific Railroad Act: Facilitated the construction of railroads across the country.
  • Transnational Focus:
    • Increased trade with Asia.
    • Treaty of Wanghia: Opened trade with China.
    • Treaty of Kanagawa: Forced Japan to open ports to American ships.

James K. Polk and the Mexican-American War (1845-1848)

  • James K. Polk's Ambition:
    • Focused on westward expansion.
    • Negotiated with Britain to secure Oregon up to the 49th Parallel.
  • Tensions with Mexico:
    • Escalated over the Texas border (Rio Grande vs. Nueces River).
    • Polk sent troops into the disputed area.
    • Skirmish led to Polk's declaration of war, claiming "American blood was shed on American soil."
  • Mexican-American War (1846-1848):
    • US captured major cities and blockaded Mexico.
    • Ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848).
      • The US gained a significant amount of land known as the Mexican Cession.
    • Increased conflict with American Indians and Mexican Americans.
      • Sand Creek Massacre (1864): Hundreds slaughtered.

Compromise of 1850

  • Issue:
    • Slavery in the Mexican Cession.
    • Wilmot Proviso: Proposed to ban slavery in the new territories but failed in the Senate.
  • Compromise of 1850:
    • Proposed by Henry Clay to balance free and slave state interests.
    • Five components:
      • California admitted as a free state.
      • Utah and New Mexico territories to decide on slavery via popular sovereignty (voting).
      • Slave trade banned in Washington D.C.
      • Stricter Fugitive Slave Act.
      • Texas received 10,000,000 for ceding land claims.
    • Impact:
      • Fugitive Slave Act angered Northerners.
      • Increased resistance: Underground Railroad, personal liberty laws.
      • The South still felt inadequately protected regarding slavery expansion.

Immigration and Abolitionist Movements

  • Immigration Surge:
    • Revolutions in Europe (1848) and the Irish Potato Famine led to increased immigration from Ireland and Germany.
    • Immigrants settled in Northern cities, forming ethnic communities.
    • Nativism arose due to anti-immigrant sentiment.
  • Abolitionist Movement:
    • Abolitionists were a minority but influential.
    • Key Figures:
      • Frederick Douglass: Fiery speeches, including "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
        • Exposed hypocrisy of American freedom.
      • Harriet Beecher Stowe: Wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
        • Exposed the horrors of slavery, supposedly influencing Lincoln.
      • Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad, helped enslaved people escape.
    • Deepening sectional conflict: Immigration, economic divide, slavery.

Causes of the Civil War

  • Failed Compromises:
    • Missouri Compromise: Repealed.
    • Compromise of 1850: Exacerbated tensions.
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act:
    • Allowed states to vote on slavery (popular sovereignty).
    • Repealed the Missouri Compromise line.
    • Led to "Bleeding Kansas": Violence over slavery votes.
      • John Brown: Abolitionist who staged a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry.
  • Political Developments:
    • Formation of the Republican Party (1854): Anti-slavery.
    • Breakdown of Governmental Functions:
      • Weak Executive Branch: Ineffective presidents.
      • Legislative Branch: Violence in the Senate (Charles Sumner beaten by Preston Brooks).
      • Judicial Branch: Dred Scott v. Sanford.
        • Ruled slaves were not citizens, and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.
  • John Brown's Prediction:
    • Foresaw that the crimes of the land would only be purged with blood.

Election of 1860 and Secession

  • Divided Nation:
    • The North and South were done with compromises.
    • Sectional tensions at an all-time high.
  • Presidential Election of 1860:
    • Four candidates:
      • Abraham Lincoln (Republican): Against slavery spreading westward.
      • Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat): Popular sovereignty.
      • John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat): Pro-slavery.
      • John Bell (Constitutional Union Party): Constitution above all
    • Lincoln's victory triggered secession because the Republican party was based entirely in the North and he wasn't even on the ballot in 10 southern states.
  • Southern Secession:
    • South Carolina seceded first.
    • Six more states followed, forming the Confederate States of America, led by Jefferson Davis.

Civil War (1861-1865)

  • Start of the War:
    • Lincoln aimed to keep the Union together.
  • Firing on Fort Sumter: Confederate forces fired on the Union military base in South Carolina.
    • Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion.
  • Unevenly Matched Sides:
    • The North: More people, industry, railroads, and resources.
    • The South: Better generals and home-field advantage, a population willing to fight to the death.
      • War of attrition.
  • Early Battles:
    • First Battle of Bull Run: Humiliating Union defeat.
  • War Strategies:
    • Confederacy: Hold out, play defense, hope for European intervention.
    • Union: Anaconda Plan.
      • Blockade the South.
      • Control the Mississippi River.
  • Turning Point (1863):
    • Battle of Gettysburg: Lee's offensive failed, forcing retreat.
    • Battle of Vicksburg: Union gained control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy.
  • Total War (1864-1865):
    • Union: Grant is promoted and he brings in William Sherman.
    • Sherman's March to the Sea: Destruction through Georgia.
    • Grant hammered the Confederates with nonstop battles.
  • End of the War (1865):
    • Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.
  • Casualties:
    • 698,000 people died

Political Aspects of the Civil War

  • Lincoln's Initial Goal:
    • Preserving the Union, not initially ending slavery.
  • Emancipation Proclamation (1862):
    • Issued after the Union's sort of victory at Antietam.
    • Freed enslaved people in Confederate-held territories.
      • Did not free enslaved people in border states.
    • Reframed the war as a fight against slavery.
    • Kept Europe from recognizing the Confederacy.
    • Thousands of formerly enslaved people enlisted in the Union Army (nearly 200,000).
  • Gettysburg Address:
    • Redefined the Civil War.
      • The war was about preserving democracy and fulfilling the ideals of the founding fathers.
      • The Union must win so that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
  • Significance:
    • Freedom and dignity for Black Americans.

Reconstruction (1865-1877)

  • Post-War South:
    • In ruins due to total war.
    • Reconstruction: Rebuilding the South.
  • Lincoln's 10% Plan:
    • Lenient towards the South.
    • Readmit Southern states when 10% of voters pledged loyalty.
    • Lincoln assassinated in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth.
  • Andrew Johnson's Plan:
    • Similar to Lincoln's but offered pardons to former Confederates.
  • Radical Republican Plan:
    • Punish the South, protect black rights, enforce with the military.
    • Johnson vetoed Radical Republican measures.
    • Congress impeached Johnson.
  • Reconstruction Amendments:
    • Thirteenth Amendment: Abolished slavery.
    • Fourteenth Amendment: Birthright citizenship and equal protection.
    • Fifteenth Amendment: Black men's right to vote.
  • Limited Success:
    • Black Codes limited freedoms of African Americans, forcing them into forced labor.
    • Sharecropping: Wage labor almost equivalent to slavery.
    • Lynchings and terrorist organizations suppressed black voters.

Failure of Reconstruction

  • Backlash:
    • Southern whites resisted Reconstruction.
    • Sharecropping, lynchings, and KKK activity.
    • Convict leasing: Black men arrested for made-up crimes and forced into unpaid labor.
  • Supreme Court Decisions:
    • Compromised black rights.
    • Slaughterhouse Cases (1873): Civil rights were a state, not federal, issue.
    • The US v. Cruikshank: The federal government couldn't punish white mobs that murdered black Americans.
  • Compromise of 1877:
    • Disputed presidential election of 1876.
    • Republicans and Democrats made a deal.
    • Remove federal troops from the South.
    • Elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president.
    • Reconstruction ended.
    • Black rights were crushed.
  • Aftermath:
    • Jim Crow laws, segregation, and voter suppression took over.
    • Reconstruction failed.
    • Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments became the legal foundation for the Civil Rights Movement a hundred years later.