Transcript Fall 2015 The Crisis of the Union- 1844

The Crisis of the Union: 1844-1860
Characteristics
• Rapid growth: Area, population, number of states
• Economic: Wealth, industry, urbanization
• South: influence was waning
• Social Criticism: Reform
• Literature:
• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickinson
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Herman Melville
• Frederick Douglas
• Sectional Division:
• North
• South
• Slavery and Expansion: Gold Rush, Fugitive Slave Act
Gold in the Hills…
San Francisco & Surrounding Areas
•First year 100,000 non-natives to region
•2$ billion extracted- peaked in 1852
Discovery at Sutter’s Mill
•Flakes of gold: American River
•Discovery of gold/signing of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Chinese & the Canton province
•Escaped Civil War
•Labor
• 1851 first Chinese laundry facility
• Merchants, cooks, cigar makers, restaurant owners, veg. farmers
•Problems with whites
•Yee Fung Cheung: doctor/herbal medicines
• Patient was wife of Governor Leland Stanford
•Restrictions on Chinese
Non-Natives in California
From the Islands
• South Sea Islands
•Hawaiians- sailors/ Kanaka colonies
•Sutter’s many wives: Manaiki, a gift from the Hawaiian king
By Boat
•Oregon,
•Mexico
•Chile
•Peru
The 49’ers
•1849- men mortgaged property & left for gold mines
•100,000 non-native population
•Gold mining towns
Women and the Gold Rush
Diversity of Women
•Different countries, statuses, classes, races
•Unusual opportunities
Occupations in Mining Towns
•Entertainers
•Saloon owners
•Laundry facility owners
•Brothels
•Domestic Skills
•Boarding Houses
•Miners
•Gold Prospectors: Jane Gurin, “Mountain Charley”
•Mexican and Chilean women: economic gain
Prostitution
•Wealth, power, and agency in a patriarchal society
•Young girls: China
•French prostitutes
The Mexican American War
Background
•Manifest Destiny + Technology (Farming) = Expansion
• Promoting U.S. expansion
• High birth rates
• Two economic depressions
• Frontier land is “free”
• Commerce and Self-Advancement
• Land ownership
• West Coast Ports
•1846-1848
•La Fronteria: Gloria Anzaldua, “Contested Borders,”: Land.
Instability of Mexico (1821 Independence from Spain)
•Economic system and Colonization
•Constant warfare with indigenous
•Weak national military system
•Lack of authority: Catholic Church/Mexico’s military
•Impoverished frontier community: could not support central government
•Informal, democratic, self-reliant frontier society VS central government
Trade: U.S. and Mexico
Background
•Lack of records: earliest commerce 1824/ silver
•Exports to Mexico: raw cotton, wheat flour finished, cotton products,
Texas, 1825-1848
•English goods to Mexico
•Dominated political economy
The Santa Fe Trail
•New Mexico-Chihuahua trade
•Silver
•David Weber: break from Spanish mercantilism to be embraced by American
capitalism.”
Cultural Significance
•Unequal partnership
•Resources benefited Americans
•Contested border
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Background
• Ended war February 1848
• Oldest treaty in affect
• 500,000 square miles of territory
• Rio Grande: Water border between Texas and Mexico
• Shaped international/domestic histories of Mexico & U.S.
• U.S.: attitude of moral superiority
Treaty
• Nicholas P. Trist and Luis G. Cuevas, Bernardo Couto and Miguel Atristain
• Changes to Treaty by U.S. Senate:
• Eliminated Article X, which stated that the U.S. government would honor and
guarantee all land grants
• Ignored Article VIII: guaranteed that Mexicans who remained more than one
year in the ceded lands would automatically become full-fledged United States
citizen
• Modified Article IX: Mexican citizens would be admitted at a later date.
• Created debate about slavery in new territories
Cultural Interpretations of the Treaty
Background
•Creation of the Contested Border
•Ensured that Mexico would remain under-developed
•Bitter lesson in U.S. aggression
•Reform movement: Benito Juarez La Reforma
Legacy
•Implications for international law
• Boundaries, mineral rights, civil and property rights
• Political struggle: Indigenous and Mexicans
•Contradiction between language and praxis
•“Just” and “Unjust” War
•Defining citizenship
•Identity
Military Lessons and Leaders
Background
•Significant to Civil War
Influence of Leaders
•Zachary Taylor (12th president for 16 months)
• Ulysses S. Grant (Union)
• Robert E. Lee (Confederate)
•Winfield Scott
• Robert E. Lee (Confederate)
Military Lessons & Traits
•Audacity: Boldness
• Scott’s campaign
• Lee used in every battle
• Stonewall Jackson (lieutenant, Shenandoah Valley, Second Manassas
• William T. Sherman: “March to Sea” in Atlanta. Scorched Earth
•Reconnaissance
•Flank Attack
•Change in Military Strategy
• Abandoned supply and communication lines
• Lee used strategy in North
The Compromise of 1850
Background
•Early years: Sectional crisis/ used grey area of federalism to pursue interests
•1850s: government was an art form
•Older verses new generations
•“Quick fix” remedy
• U.S. Constitution: Amendment 10
• Missouri Compromise 1820
First Draft of Compromise
•Henry Clay, 29 January 1850 Proposal
• CA admitted as free state *
• Utah and New Mexico- without any restriction to slavery* decide for themselves
• Denying Texas claim to extend borders beyond Rio Grande*
• Compensating $10 million to Texas (New provision- state debt added to federal)
• Ending practice of trade/sold slaves to pass through D.C.
• Slavery is legal in D.C.
• Rewriting the Fugitive Slave Act
• Denying Congress any future authority to regulate slavery
The Kansas Nebraska Act
Background
•The Great American Desert: 36-30 proviso. Compromise of 1820- Reservations/Major
destination of European immigrants.
•Railroads
•Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas
• “Douglas was a man who refused, on principle, to stand on principle.”
• His proposal
• Splitting Nebraska into two
• Kansas- slave state. Nebraska- free-soilers
• Outright appeal of Missouri Compromise (1820)
Bleeding Kansas
•Nebraska voted free-soil/ Kansas- pro-slavery supporters and violence
•Open transportation of arms
•Pro-slavery supporters from Missouri voted as Kansas citizens
•New “pro-slavery” legislators: draft of Fugitive Slave Act/crime to speak out against slavery
•May 1856: Violence begins/ 200 killed/$2 million worth of property damaged
John Brown’s Raid
Background
•October 1859
•“Provisional Army of the Unites States”
•United States Armory and Arsenal, Harpers Ferry, Virginia
The Raid
•Wanted to arm a slave uprising
•Took possession of armory and arsenal for three days
•12 Marines commanded by Robert E. Lee
•Seventeen killed- two enslaved, three townspeople, a slave-holder, one Marine, ten of Brown’s
men.
The Trial
•October 27th. Five days.
•45 minutes to reach decision of guilty.
•Sentence of execution by hanging
•Issued prophetic warning: South would be forced to settle the “Negro Question”
•Mary Brown: wife, buried him in North Elba, New York
The Dred-Scott Decision
Background
• 1857 finally decided
• Dred Scott
• Sold to U.S. Army surgeon: left St. Louis to a fort in Wisconsin Territory
• Scott: returned to St. Louis upon owners death
• Court ruled in favor
On Appeal
• Overturned by Missouri Supreme Court
• 11 years: U.S. Supreme Court
• Chief Justice Roger Taney: appointed by Andrew Jackson
• Interests of Southern people: not Dred Scott
Supreme Court Ruling
• Slaves were property: regardless of where travelled
• 1820 Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional
• Slaves, not being citizens, could not bring suit to court.
Araminta “Minty” Ross
Background
• Harriet Tubman
• December 1821, Maryland
• Head injury- periodic fainting spells
The Conductor
• Underground Railroad to Freedom
• Philadelphia, Maryland
• Strategic Plans
• 1856- $40,000 bounty on head
• 1860- Nineteen successful journeys, 300 slaves freed
During Civil War: Union
• Cook
• Nurse
• Spy
The Election of Abraham Lincoln
Background
• November 1860: frayed ties holding country together broke loose
• Nation: fight over extension of slavery
• December 1860: South Carolina left Union
• June 1860: 11 Southern states seceded from Union
• Claimed Constitutional right to leave Union
Thoughts on Leaving the Union
• Secession was unlawful
• States were physically unable to separate
• Fears of weakened government lead to anarchy
• Secession would destroy democracy
The South
• Establishment of the Confederate States of America
• Jefferson Davis
Five Reasons for the Civil War
1. Economic and Social Differences Between North and South
2. States versus Federal Rights
3. Fight Between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents
4. Growth of the Abolition Movement
5. The Election of Abraham Lincoln