Download Manifest Destiny and Crisis

Manifest Destiny and Crisis
Manifest Destiny
 Fertile soil, the fur trade, and trade with foreign nations lured emigrants west.
 Many Americans believed in Manifest Destiny—the idea that the nation was meant to spread to
the Pacific.
 Emigrants were attracted to Oregon and California, although parts of these lands were claimed
by other nations (Great Britain in Oregon and Mexico in California).
 By the 1840s, several east-to-west routes had been carved—the Oregon Trail, the California
Trail and the Santa Fe Trail.
 As traffic on the trails increased, so did the hostility of Plains Indians.
 To avoid conflict, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed in 1851.
 Plains Indians agreed to set geographic boundaries in exchange for those lands belonging to
them forever.
 The Mexican government had encouraged American settlement in Texas, which was part of
Mexico.
 However, Mexico closed its borders in 1830 due to the failure of Americans to accept the
conditions of settlement, which the Mexican government would not negotiate.
 Americans defeated Mexican forces at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.
 Five months later, the citizens of Texas voted in favor of annexation—absorption—by the
United States as a slave state.
 Because of antislavery opposition and Mexico’s claims on Texas, President Jackson made no
move toward annexation.
 In the presidential election of 1844, Texas statehood was a key issue.
 The Whig candidate, Henry Clay, supported annexation.
 Anti-slavery Whigs felt betrayed and threw their support behind the pro-abolition Liberty Party
candidate.
 The Democrat, James Polk, won the election.
 Texas became a state in 1845.
 In 1846 the United States negotiated with Great Britain to gain the lands that would become
Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
 Great Britain took the Canadian province of British Columbia.
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 Texas’s entry into the Union and the attempt by Polk to buy California led to Mexico breaking
diplomatic relations with the U.S.
 Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to provoke war with the Mexicans in 1846.
 On May 9, Mexicans reportedly attacked Taylor’s men and Congress overwhelmingly voted for
war.
 In northern California, General John C. Fremont had begun an uprising.
 On July 14, 1846 they declared California independent and renamed the region the Bear Flag
Republic.
 Mexico refused to surrender.
 Polk sent forces to capture Mexico City, which was taken in September 1847.
 Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2 1848.
 Mexico gave the U.S. territory that would become California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona,
New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
 Mexico accepted the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas.
 In return, the U.S. paid a total of $18.25 million.
 $15 million in cash and $3.25 million in Mexican debt to the U.S.
 Manifest Destiny had been realized, but question of whether the new lands should allow slavery
would soon lead the country into another bloody conflict.
 What were the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
 Mexico ceded to the U.S. the territory that includes what are now the states of
California, Utah, Nevada, as well as most of New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado
and Wyoming. Mexico agreed to the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas. The
U.S. agreed to pay Mexico $15 million and take over $3 million of Mexican debt to the
U.S.
Slavery and Western Expansion
 In 1846, Northern Democrats and Whigs passed the Wilmot Proviso, which proposed that in any
territory the United States gained from Mexico, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall
ever exist.”
 Southern Democrats in the Senate refused to vote on it.
 Senator Cass of Michigan proposed the idea of popular sovereignty, meaning that the citizens of
each new territory should decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to permit slavery.
 In 1848 a new political party, the Free-Soil Party, was formed.
 Members opposed the spread of slavery on the “free soil” of the western territories.
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 During the election of 1848, Free-Soilers pulled votes away from the Democrats, allowing the
which candidate, Zachary Taylor to win.
 In 1848 gold was discovered in California.
 By the end of 1849, over 80,000 “Forty-Niners” had arrived in California.
 To keep order, Californians sought statehood.
 If California became a state, the free states would outnumber the slave states 16 to 15.
 A few Southern politicians began to talk of secession—taking their states out of the Union.
 Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed a compromise that would allow California to become
a free state if the rest of the Mexican cession could organize without restrictions on slavery.
 Also, Congress would be prohibited from interfering with domestic slave trade and would pass a
stronger law to help Southerners recover enslaved African Americans.
 President Taylor opposed the compromise.
 After his sudden death in 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him and supported
the measure.
 The Compromise of 1850 passed.
 Northerners were particularly opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it easy for anyone
to accuse any African American of being a runaway slave and sent South.
 Besides federal commissioners having financial incentive to rule for the slaveholders, the act
required federal marshals to assist slave catchers.
 This requirement drove abolitionists into open and active defiance.
 The Underground Railroad, an informal but well-organized network of abolitionists, helped
many enslaved people escape to Northern cities or Canada.
 Harriet Tubman, herself a runaway slave, was the most famous “conductor” of the Underground
Railroad.
 With the opening of the Oregon country and the admission of California, many people pushed
for a transcontinental railroad.
 The choice of the railroad’s eastern starting point was a contentious issue.
 Southerners favored a southern route, from New Orleans to San Diego.
 Northerners wanted the starting point to be Chicago.
 Senator Stephen A. Douglas wanted the railroad to start in Chicago.
 To win support, he eventually proposed to repeal the antislavery provision of the Missouri
Compromise in the Nebraska territory and to divide that territory in two.
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 Nebraska would become a free state; Kansas a slave state.
 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
 By 1856, Kansas had two governments—one opposing slavery and one supporting it.
 A territorial civil war soon began between settlers, and Kansas became known as “Bleeding
Kansas.”
 What was the Underground Railroad?
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The Underground Railroad was an informal but well organized network of abolitionists
whose goal was to help escaped enslaved persons reach freedom in Northern cities or in
Canada.
The Crisis Deepens
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act enraged abolitionists, mostly because it reopened the territories to
slavery.
 It shattered the Whig Party as many members joined with Free-Soilers and antislavery
Democrats to form the Republican Party.
 The main goal of the Republicans was to prevent Southern aristocrats from gaining control of
Congress.
 The Know-Nothings were another party to make gains in the 1854 Congressional elections.
 The Know-Nothings were an anti-Catholic, nativist party who opposed immigration.
 The Know-Nothings were divided over the issue of slavery, and the Northern Know-Nothings
were absorbed into the Republican Party.
 Democrat James Buchanan, who claimed that only he could save the Union, won the
presidential election of 1856.
 In 1856, the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford ruled that enslaved people taken into free
territories were still slaves.
 In part, the Court stated that Congress’s ban on slavery in the western territories was
unconstitutional.
 Democrats cheered the decisions, Republicans deplored it.
 Buchanan urged Kansas to apply for statehood, but there major divisions between pro- and antislavery settlers.
 When the pro-slavery legislature passed a pro-slavery constitution, anti-slavery forces voted it
down in a territory-wide referendum, or popular vote.
 Finally, in 1861, Kansas became a free state.
 John Brown was a abolitionist who used violence to oppose slavery.
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 He tried to incite an insurrection against slaveholders.
 When he and his followers tried to seize weapons at the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, a contingent of Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee forced his surrender.
 The Virginia court sentenced him to death.
 Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act severely divide the country?
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, which greatly angered
Northerners who wanted to limit slavery. Northerners quickly moved to the territory to
create an antislavery majority. Pro-slavery Missourians also hurried to Kansas. They
voted illegally to elect a pre-slavery legislature. In response, antislavery settlers held a
convention and wrote a constitution that excluded slavery. Then, Kansas had two
governments.
Ending of the Union
 John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was a turning point for the South.
 Southerners feared an African American uprising and were angered that Northerners would arm
them and encourage them to rebel.
 Republicans denounced John Brown’s raid, but many Southerners blamed the Republicans since
they opposed slavery.
 They wanted a federal slave code for the territories.
 Northern Democrats supported popular sovereignty.
 They did not want a federal slave code in the territories.
 The Democratic Party could not agree on a candidate for the 1860 election.
 Northern Democrats choose Stephen A. Douglas, who supported popular sovereignty.
 Southern Democrats chose John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.
 He was the vice president at the time.
 He supported the Dred Scott decision and a federal slave code for the western territories.
 The Constitutional Union Party was formed by people who wanted to uphold the Constitution
and the Union.
 Their candidate was former Tennessee senator John Bell.
 The Republican candidate was Abraham Lincoln.
 The Republicans campaigned against slavery in the western territories, against John Brown’s
raid, and for the right of the Southern states to preserve slavery within their boarders.
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 The Republicans also wanted higher tariffs, a new homestead law for western settlers, and a
transcontinental railroad.
 Lincoln won the election in 1860.
 The South saw his election as a victory for abolitionists.
 South Carolina was the first state to secede.
 By February 1860, six more southern states voted to secede.
 Crittenden’s Compromise, by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, suggested several
amendments to the Constitution.
 The amendments would guarantee slavery where it already existed.
 It would reinstate the Missouri Compromise line, extending it to California.
 Slavery would be banned north of the line, and protected south of the line.
 The compromise did not pass.
 A peace conference was held February 1861, in Washington D.C., but members failed to agree
on a plan to save the Union.
 No secessionist states attended the conference.
 Seceding states met and on February 8, 1861, declared themselves to be the Confederate States
of America, or the Confederacy.
 The Confederate Constitution was similar to the U.S. Constitution except it stated that each
state was independent and it guaranteed the existence of slavery in the Confederacy.
 It also banned protective tariffs and limited the term of the presidency.
 Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosen president of the Confederacy.
 In what ways did the Constitution of the Confederacy differ from the U.S. Constitution?
 The Confederate Constitution was similar to the U.S. Constitution except it stated that
each state was independent and it guaranteed the existence of slavery in the
Confederacy. It also banned tariffs and limited the term of the presidency.
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