mid term

Period $1$ & $2$: Contact & Colonization ($1491$-$1754$)

Focus: Comparison of colonial goals and early labor systems.

• Spanish Colonization: Focused on converting Natives to Catholicism and extracting wealth like $gold$ and $silver$.

  • The Encomienda System: A grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist in America conferring the right to demand tribute and forced labor from the Indian inhabitants. It was intended to be a mutual agreement but often became a form of enslavement.

• French/Dutch: Focused primarily on the Fur Trade, maintaining amicable relationships and often marrying into Native tribes.

• British: Focused on agriculture and permanent settlement.

  • Labor Systems:

  • Indentured Servitude: White laborers who signed contracts to work for $4$ to $7$ years in exchange for passage. This was the primary labor source until late in the $17$th century.

  • Slavery: Following Bacon’s Rebellion ($1676$), elite planters shifted from unreliable indentured servants to the permanent, hereditary enslavement of Africans.

Period $3$: Revolution & The New Nation ($1754$-$1800$)

Focus: Constitutional construction and political compromises.

• $1763$ - The Turning Point: Britain ended "Salutary Neglect" and began taxing the colonies via the Stamp Act and Tea Act to pay off war debts.

• Constitutional Compromises:

  • The Great Compromise: Resolved the conflict between the Virginia Plan (population-based) and the New Jersey Plan (equal representation).

  • The House of Representatives: Based on population.

  • The Senate: Two representatives per state ($2$ per state).

  • The Three-Fifths Compromise: Settled the dispute over how enslaved people would be counted for representation and taxation; each enslaved person counted as $\frac{3}{5}$ of a person.

• Hamilton vs. Jefferson: Divided the nation into Federalists and Democratic-Republicans regarding the power of the central government and the "strict" vs. "loose" interpretation of the Constitution.

Period $4$: The Market Revolution & Reform ($1800$-$1848$)

Focus: Economic shifts, expansion, and sectional tension.

• The Missouri Compromise ($1820$): Admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the $36^\circ 30'$ latitude line.

• The Market Revolution: The shift to production for distant markets, fueled by the Cotton Gin, Steamboats, and the Erie Canal.

• Jacksonian Democracy: Expanded voting rights to the "Common Man" while simultaneously forcing the Trail of Tears.

• The Second Great Awakening: Sparked movements like Abolitionism, Women’s Rights (Seneca Falls), and Temperance.

Period $5$: Civil War & Reconstruction ($1844$-$1877$)

Focus: Territorial expansion and the legacy of Reconstruction.

• The Compromise of $1850$: A series of bills intended to settle the "Slavery Question" in new territories.

  • California: Admitted as a free state.

  • Utah and New Mexico: Slavery status determined by Popular Sovereignty (voting by residents).

  • Fugitive Slave Act: A harsh federal law requiring citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves, which enraged Northern abolitionists.

  • Slave Trade: Abolished in Washington, D.C.

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act ($1854$): Created two new territories and used Popular Sovereignty to decide the slavery issue, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise and leading to "Bleeding Kansas."

• The Civil War ($1861$-$1865$): Transformed by the Emancipation Proclamation ($1863$) into a war for the destruction of slavery.

• Reconstruction ($1865$-$1877$) and Post-War Systems:

  • $13$th, $14$th, and $15$th Amendments: Abolished slavery, granted citizenship, and provided voting rights.

  • Black Codes: Restrictive laws passed by Southern states ($1865$-$1866$) designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and keep them in a state of quasi-slavery.

  • Sharecropping: A system where farmers worked land owned by someone else for a portion of the crops, leading to a cycle of permanent debt.

  • Compromise of $1877$: An informal deal resolving the election of $1876$. Republicans won the Presidency in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and allowing the rise of Jim Crow laws.