Transcript The lead up to the Civil War

The Road to Disunion
The West and Freedom
• American freedom had long been linked to the availability of land
Where?
• Manifest Destiny-the expansion of the US throughout the American
continents was both justified and inevitable.
• In national myth and ideology the West would long remain “the last
home of the freeborn American.”
• The West, in this national myth, was vital for… the social condition of ...
Discussion Question
•Does Manifest Destiny have relevance in
America today? What evidence leads you to
believe that?
Continental Expansion
• In the 1840s, slavery moved to the center stage of American politics
because of ...
• The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and California
• Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821.
• The northern frontier of Mexico was ...
• California’s non-Native population in 1821 was vastly outnumbered by
Natives.
• Californios, a new class of Mexican cattle ranchers, arose in the 1830s
Continental Expansion
• The Texas Revolt:
• The first part of Mexico to be settled by significant numbers of Americans
was…
• Moses Austin
• Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, the Mexican government in
1830 annulled existing land contracts and barred future … from the United
States.
• Stephen Austin led the call from American settlers demanding greater autonomy within
Mexico.
• General Antonio López de Santa Anna sent an army in 1835 to impose ...
Continental Expansion
• The Texas Revolt:
• Rebels formed a provisional government that soon called for ...
• The Alamo
• Sam Houston
• Texas desired annexation by the United States, but neither Jackson nor Van
Buren acted on that because of political concerns regarding adding ...
Continental Expansion
• The Election of 1844:
• The issue of Texas annexation was linked to … and affected the nominations
of presidential candidates.
• Clay and Van Buren agreed to keep Texas out of ...
• James Polk, a Tennessee slaveholder and friend of Jackson, received the
Democratic nomination instead of Van Buren.
• Supported ….
• Supported “reoccupation” …
Mexican-American War
• The Road to War:
• Polk had four clearly defined goals:
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•
•
•
Reduce …
Reestablish the Independent …
Settle the …
Bring …
• Polk initiated war with Mexico to ...
• War lasted from 1846-1848
Mexican-American War
• The War and Its Critics:
• Although the majority of Americans supported the war, a vocal minority
feared the only aim of the war was to acquire new land for the expansion...
• Henry David Thoreau wrote On Civil Disobedience.
• Abraham Lincoln questioned Polk’s right to declare war by introducing a resolution in
Congress requesting the president to specify the precise spot where blood had first
been shed.
• War ends in American victory with Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848:
• It gave the United States the Rio Grande as a boundary for Texas, and gave the U.S.
ownership of California and a large area comprising roughly half of New Mexico,
most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado.
The Mexican Cession
• Organizing and settling the newly acquired territory became a …
• A region that for centuries had been united was suddenly …dividing
communities and severing ...
• “Male citizens” were guaranteed American rights.
• Natives were described as “savage tribes.”
• The spirit of manifest destiny gave a new stridency to ideas about ...
• Race in the mid-nineteenth century was an amorphous notion
involving color, culture, national origin, class, and religion.
Discussion Question
•Why do you think the United States felt it
necessary to clarify racial lines in the newly
acquired territory from the war with
Mexico? What about Mexico (and the
Spanish America) could aid in your
assumption?
The Mexican Cession
• Redefining Race:
• Mexico had abolished slavery and declared persons of Spanish,
Native, and African origin ...
• The Texas constitution adopted after independence not only included
protections for … but denied …to Natives and persons of African
origin.
The Mexican Cession
• Gold Rush:
• Drew people to California in large numbers, to search for the resource and/or
to establish ...
• California’s gold-rush population was incredibly ...
• The explosive population growth and fierce competition for gold worsened
conflicts among California’s ...
• California and the Boundaries of Freedom:
• The boundaries of freedom in California were tightly drawn.
• Natives, Asians, and blacks were all ...
• Thousands of Native children, declared orphans, were ...
The Crumbling of Union
• The Wilmot Proviso:
• In 1846, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed a
resolution prohibiting … from all territory acquired from ...
• In 1848, opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the …
• The party nominated Martin Van Buren for president.
• The Free Soil Appeal:
• The free soil position had a popular appeal in the North because it
would limit …in the federal government.
• Who? of the North also favored the Free Soil movement.
The Crumbling of Union
• The Free Soil Appeal:
• The Free Soil platform of 1848 called both for barring … from …and
for the federal government providing homesteads to settlers ...
• Many southerners considered singling out slavery as the one form of
property barred from the West to be an affront to them and their
“distinctive” way of life.
• The admission of new … would overturn the delicate political balance
between the sections and make the South a ….
The Crumbling of Union
• Crisis and Compromise:
• With the slavery issue front and center, established party leaders moved to
resolve differences between ….
• The Compromise of 1850 included:
•
•
•
•
Admission of …
Abolition of the slave trade (not slavery itself) in …
Stronger …
Mexican Cession territories would determine the status of slavery there (popular
sovereignty).
• Powerful leaders spoke for and against the Compromise:
• Against: John C. Calhoun and President Zachary Taylor (died in office)
• For compromise: Daniel Webster, new President Millard Fillmore (why it was passed).
The Crumbling of Union
• The Fugitive Slave Issue:
• The Fugitive Slave Act allowed special federal commissioners to
determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of … or even
testimony by the ...
• In a series of dramatic confrontations, fugitives, aided by abolitionist
allies, …
• The fugitive slave law also led several thousand northern blacks to
flee to safety in ...
The Crumbling of Union
• Douglas and Popular Sovereignty:
• Franklin Pierce won the 1852 presidential election.
• Stephen Douglas saw himself as the …of the Senate after the deaths
of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster.
• Douglas introduced a bill to establish territorial governments for
Nebraska and Kansas so that a …could be constructed.
• Slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty (territorial voters, not
Congress, would decide).
The Crumbling of Union
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act:
• Under the Missouri Compromise, slavery had been prohibited in the...
• The Appeal of the Independent Democrats was issued by antislavery
congressmen opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill because it would
potentially ...
• The Kansas-Nebraska Bill became law.
•
•
•
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Democrats no longer unified Why?
The … collapsed.
The South became solidly ...
The Republican Party emerged to prevent the ...
The Crumbling of Union
• The Rise of the Republican Party:
• The rise of the Republican Party reflected underlying … particularly in
the North.
• By 1860, the North had become a complex ...
• Two great areas of industrial production had arisen:
•?
•?
The Crumbling of Union
• The Free Labor Ideology
• Republicans managed to convince most northerners that the “Slave
Power” posed a more immediate threat to … than did “popery”
(Catholicism) or immigration.
• This appeal rested on the idea of ...
• Free labor could not compete with slave labor, and so slavery’s
expansion had to be … to ensure … for the white laborer.
• Republicans cried “freedom national,” meaning not abolition but
ending the federal government’s ...
• Republicans as a whole were not ...
The Crumbling of Union
• Bleeding Kansas and the Election of 1856:
• Bleeding Kansas seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of leaving the
decision of … up to the local population—thus, aiding ...
• Civil war within Kansas
• Charles Sumner
• The election of 1856 demonstrated that parties had reoriented
themselves along ...
The Crumbling of Union
• The Dred Scott Decision:
• After having lived in free territories, the slave Dred Scott sued for ....
• The Supreme Court justices addressed three questions:
• Could a black person be a citizen and therefore sue in federal court?
• Did residence in a free state make Scott free?
• Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?
The Crumbling of Union
• The Dred Scott Decision:
• Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roger A. Taney declared …
could be citizens
• Taney ruled that Congress possessed no power under the … to bar
slavery from … so Scott was still a slave.
• The decision in effect declared the Republican platform of ... to be…
• The Decision’s Aftermath:
• Rather than abandoning their opposition to the expansion of slavery,
Republicans now viewed the Court as controlled by ...
• Lecompton Constitution and Stephen Douglas
The Crumbling of Union
• The Emergence of Lincoln:
• Lincoln and Slavery:
• In seeking reelection, Douglas faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from
Abraham Lincoln.
• Although Lincoln hated … he was willing to compromise with the South to ...
• Lincoln’s speeches combined the moral fervor of …with the respect for order
and … of more conservative ...
The Crumbling of Union
• The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign:
• Lincoln campaigned against Douglas for ...
• The Lincoln-Douglas debates remain classics of American ...
• To Lincoln, freedom meant ...
• Douglas argued that the essence of freedom lay in …and individual ...
• Douglas asserted at the Freeport debate that … was compatible with the ...
• Lincoln shared many of the …(Even Lincoln, just a man).
• Douglas was ….
The Crumbling of Union
• John Brown at Harpers Ferry:
• An armed assault by the abolitionist John Brown on the … at Harpers
Ferry, Virginia, further heightened sectional tensions.
• Brown had a long career of involvement in ...
• Placed on trial for treason to the state of Virginia, Brown’s execution
turned him into ...
The Crumbling of Union
• The Rise of Southern Nationalism:
• More and more southerners were speaking openly of ...
• Ostend Manifesto
• William Walker and filibustering
• By the late 1850s, southern leaders were bending every effort to ...
• The Democratic Split
• The Democratic Party was split with its nomination of … in 1860 and the
southern Democrats’ nomination of John Breckinridge.
The Crumbling of Union
• The Nomination of Lincoln:
• Republicans nominated Lincoln over William Seward.
• Lincoln ...
• The party platform:
• Denied the validity of …
• Opposed …
• Added economic initiatives
• The Election of 1860:
• In effect, two presidential campaigns took place in 1860.
• The most striking thing about the election returns was their ...
• Without a single vote in ten … Lincoln was elected the nation’s sixteenth
president.
Secession and War
• The Secession Movement:
• Rather than accept …in a nation governed by their opponents …political
leaders boldly struck for ….
• In the months that followed Lincoln’s election how many states? stretching
from …to … seceded from the Union.
• The Secession Crisis:
• President Buchanan denied that a state could … but also insisted that …had
no right to use force against it.
• The Crittenden plan for sectional compromise was … by Lincoln because it …
• The Confederate States of America was formed before …by the seven states
that had seceded.
• Who was elected as President?
Secession and War
• And the War Came:
• In time, Lincoln believed, secession might ....
• Lincoln also issued a veiled warning:
• After the Confederates began the Civil War by …on April 12, 1861,
Lincoln called for how many troops? to suppress the ...
• Four Upper South states (????) seceded and joined the Confederacy
rather than aid Lincoln in suppressing the rebellion.