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American History
Part 2, Chapters 4 – 6
Manifest Destiny
In the 19th century United States, Manifest Destiny
was the widely held belief that American settlers
were destined to expand throughout the continent.
This concept, born out of "A sense of mission to
redeem the Old World by high example ... generated
by the potentialities of a new earth for building a
new heaven”.1
1
Merk, Frederick; Bannister, Lois (1963). Manifest destiny and Mission in
American History. Harvard University Press.
Manifest Destiny
The phrase itself meant different things to different
people, and was rejected by many people.
Manifest destiny was always a very general notion
rather than a specific policy. There was never a set
of principles defining Manifest destiny.
American Territorial Acquisition
Immigration 1790 to 1849
There was relatively little immigration from 1770 to
1830; indeed there was significant emigration to
Canada, including about 75,000 Loyalists as well as
Germans and other looking for better farms in what
is now Ontario.
Large scale immigration resumed in the 1830s from
Britain, Ireland, Germany and other parts of Central
Europe as well as Scandinavia1. Most were
attracted by the cheap farm land.
1Norway,
Sweden, Denmark (sometimes Finland and Iceland)
Population and Foreign Born 1790 to 1849
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1
Population
3,918,000
5,236,000
7,036,000
10,086,000
12,785,000
17,018,000
23,054,000
Immigrants1
60,000
60,000
60,000
60,000
143,000
599,000
1,713,000
Foreign Born %
200,000 2
800,000 2
2,244,000
1.6%
4.7%
9.7%
The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are
estimates.
2 The number foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations.
Immigration 1850 to 1930
Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans
immigrated to the United States with a peak in the
years between 1881 and 1885, when a million
Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the
Midwest.
Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5
million Irish entered America.
Immigration 1850 to 1930
After 1870 steam powered larger and faster ships,
with lower fares. This led to a new wave of migration.
This constituted the third episode in the history of
U.S. immigration. It could better be referred to as a
flood of immigrants, as nearly 25 million Europeans
made the voyage.
Conestoga (Covered) Wagon
Conestoga (Covered) Wagon
Slavery in America
• From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12
million Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas.
• Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is
now the United States.
• By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population
in the United States had grown to 4 million.
Slavery in America
• Slaves resisted the institution through rebellions and
non-compliance.
• They sometimes escaped through travel to non-slave
states and Canada.
• Escape was facilitated by the Underground Railroad.
Slavery in America
Slavery in America
• Between 1776 and 1804, slavery was outlawed in every
state north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line1.
• By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in the North were free.
• By 1840, virtually all blacks in the North were free.
• In Democracy in America (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville
noted that "the colonies in which there were no slaves
became more populous and more rich than those in
which slavery flourished.
1The
boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, taken as the
northern limit of the slave-owning states before the abolition of slavery.
Slavery in America
Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American
author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel
helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.
• The best-selling novel of the 19th century.
• The 2nd best-selling book of that century, following the
Bible.
• Credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the
1850s.
Slavery in America
Uncle Tom's Cabin featured the character of Uncle Tom, a
long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other
characters revolve.
The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while
also asserting that Christian love can overcome something
as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings
Slavery in America
Reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin has exerted an influence equaled by few
other novels in history.
Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of
protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of
books in response to the novel) while the book elicited
praise from abolitionists.
As a best-seller, the novel heavily influenced later protest
literature.
Slavery in America
By 1857, Uncle Tom's Cabin had been translated into 20
languages.
Later, it was translated into almost every language, including
Chinese – with translator Lin Shu 林紓 creating the first
Chinese translation of an American novel in 1901.
The American Civil War
The Civil War, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865
between the United States (the "Union" or the "North") and
several Southern slave states that had declared their
secession and formed the Confederate States of America
(the "Confederacy" or the "South").
The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, and
after four years of bloody combat (mostly in the South), the
Confederacy was defeated, slavery was abolished, and the
difficult Reconstruction process of restoring unity and
guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.
The American Civil War
The Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars.
Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced
weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of
civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation
and food supplies all foreshadowed World War I.
It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in
the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an
undetermined number of civilian casualties.
Jim Crow laws
• State and local laws in the United States enacted between
1876 and 1965.
• They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in
Southern states of the former Confederacy
• A supposedly "separate but equal" status for black
Americans.
• The separation led to treatment, financial support and
accommodations that were usually inferior to those
provided for white Americans.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law
signed by Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, allowing the
U.S. to suspend Chinese immigration, a ban that was
intended to last 10 years.
This law was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December
17, 1943.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
The first significant Chinese immigration to America began
with the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, and continued
with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of
the First Transcontinental Railroad.
During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold
was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well received.
As gold became harder to find and competition increased,
animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners
increased.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
After being forcibly driven from the mines, most Chinese
settled in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took
up low end wage labor such as restaurant and laundry work.
With the post-Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s,
anti-Chinese animosity became politicized, with people
blaming Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
On June 18, 2012, the United States House of
Representatives passed a resolution introduced by
Congresswoman Judy Chu, that formally expresses the
regret of the House of Representatives for the Chinese
Exclusion Act, which imposed almost total restrictions on
Chinese immigration and naturalization and denied ChineseAmericans basic freedoms because of their ethnicity.
This was only the fourth time that the U.S. Congress issued
an apology to a group of people.
For next week, please prepare for a short quiz
(10 questions) covering all of Part 1 Geography
and the first six chapters of Part 2 History.
Also, read Part 2 History,
Ch. 7,
pages 116 to 132