Download American History – A Survey

American History – A Survey
By Alan Brinkley
Chapter 13
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The Impending Crisis
o New conflicts arose in the U.S. over slavery
 North – the strident and increasingly powerful abolitionist movement, which kept the issue alive in the
public mind and increased sectional animosities
 South – increasingly belligerent defense of slavery and a rising insistence on its expansion
o As more territory became part of the states the question arose – what would be the status of slavery in the
territories?
o Looking Westward
 By the end of 1850 America owned all the territory of the United States, except for Alaska and Hawaii
 Advocates of expansion justified their goals with a carefully articulated set of ideas – an ideology
known as “Manifest Destiny”
 Manifest Destiny
 Manifest Destiny rested on the idea that America was destined to expand its boundaries over
a vast area, an area that included, but was not necessarily restricted to, the continent of North
America
 Advocates insisted it was an altruistic attempt to extend American liberty to new realms
 Many Americans defended the idea of westward expansion by citing the superiority of the
“American race” – white people of northern European origins
o The Indians, the Mexicans, and others in the western regions were racially unfit to be
part of an “American ” community
 Westward expansion was a movement to spread both a political system and a racially-defined
society
 Some believed that the expansion should be limited, while others believed that they should
take Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, parts of the Pacific Ocean, and ultimately the whole
world
 Some believed that it should be taken by force while others believed that it could be done
peacefully
 Americans in Texas
 The Mexican government began to encourage American immigration in the 1820s
o They saw Americans as a way to improve the economy, be a buffer between the
expansion of America, and be cannon fodder for the local Indians
 They believed that the new Americans would soon become loyal to the Mexican government
 Thousands of Americans took advantage of Mexico’s welcome
o By 1830 there were about 7,000 Americans living in Texas
 Twice the number of Mexicans
 Stephen F. Austin established the first legal American settlement in Texas in 1822
 In 1826 an American intermediaries led a revolt to establish Texas as an independent nation
 Mexicans put in a new law banning American immigration
 By 1835 there were over 30,000 Americans in Texas
 Mexican-American Tensions
 Friction between the settlers and the Mexican government continued to grow
o Cultural and economic differences
o Settlers wanted to legalize slavery, which the Mexican government had made illegal
in Texas in 1830
 Some wanted a peaceful settlement while others wanted to fight for their
independence
 The instability in Mexico caused General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to seize power as a
dictator
 Sporadic fighting between Americans and Mexicans in Texas began in 1835 and escalated as
the Mexican government sent more troops into the territory
 In 1836 the American settlers defiantly proclaimed their independence from Mexico
 Santa Anna led a large army into Texas where Americans were so divided that they did not
know who they were fighting under
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The Mexicans slaughtered the Americans at the Alamo mission in San Antonio
Another garrison at Goliad suffered the same fate when the Mexicans executed most
of the force after it had surrendered
Americans began fleeing from Santa Anna’s army after these events
General Sam Houston kept a small force together
April 23, 1836, at the Battle of San Jacinto, he defeated the Mexican army and took Santa
Anna prisoner
Santa Anna signed a treaty giving Texas independence
One of the first acts that Sam Houston did after the treaty was to send a delegation to
Washington with an offer to join the Union
There were those who supported the idea of the annexation of Texas because of manifest
destiny
There were those who did not see it as a good idea because it would upset the balance of slave
and free states, and also because it would give the south a greater number of votes in the
electoral college
Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, and Tyler all did not annex Texas
The Texas question quickly became a central issue in the election of 1844
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 Oregon
 Control of what was known as Oregon country was another major political issue in the 1840’s
o Both Britain and the United States claimed sovereignty in the region
 They were not able to resolve their conflicting claims diplomatically
o They agreed in an 1818 treaty to allow citizens of each country equal access to the
territory
 American interest in Oregon grew substantially in the 1820s and 1830s
 Missionaries said that by repudiating Christianity, the Indians had abdicated their right to the
land
 By the mid-1840s, American settlements had spread up and down the Pacific coast
o The new settlers were urging the United States government to take possession of the
disputed Oregon territory
 The Westward Migration
 People began to flock to these new regions
 The character of the migrations varied according to the destination of the migrants
o Those heading for mining or lumbering were mostly me
o Those heading for farming were mainly families
 Some hoped for quick riches from the California Gold Rush
 Others hoped for farm land
 Others wants to establish themselves as merchants
 Some were on religious missions
 Some were attempting to escape the epidemic diseases that were plaguing many cities in the
East
 The vast majority were looking for economic opportunities
 Life on the Trail
 The major route west was the Oregon Trail
 From that point they could go north to Oregon or South to California on the California Trail
or they could go south into New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail
 Death was great on these migrations
 Not many migrants had problems with Indians
o Some Indians helped to serve as guides along the trails
Expansion and War
 Advocates of manifest destiny kept on propagandizing on behalf of annexing Texas, Oregon, and other
lands
 Others feared that annexation would cause sectional conflicts
 The Democrats and Expansion
 In the 1844 election – Clay and Van Buren both stated that they favored the annexation of
Texas, but only with the consent of Mexico
 Democrats nominated a stronger supporter of annexation, James K. Polk
o The first “dark horse” to win the presidential nomination of his party
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Polk won the election because of his belief that “the reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period are great American measures”
 Polk got Congress to approve an annexation treaty for Texas
 Polk got Britain to draw the American-Canadian border at the 49th parallel
 The Southwest and California
 As soon as the United States admitted Texas to statehood in 1845, the Mexican government
broke diplomatic relations with Washington
o A dispute developed over the boundary between Texas and Mexico
 Texans claimed the Rio Grande as both their western and southern border
 Mexicans said that the border was at the Nueces River
o Polk recognized Texas’ claim and sent General Zachary Taylor to the Nueces River
to guard against a possible Mexican attack
 American’s began to show increased interest in New Mexico territory
 Americans were also increasing their interest in an even more distant province of Mexico –
California
o By 1845 there were 700 Americans in California
 Some of these new settlers began to dream of bringing California into the United States
o Annexationists supported their demands for acquiring these western lands by citing
the racial differences between white Americans and their Mexican rivals
o They argued that Mexicans represented a different and inferior race
 Polk committed himself to acquiring both New Mexico and California for the United States
 The Mexican War
 Polk sent off a minister to the Mexicans to try and buy off the land
o John Slidell
o The Mexicans refused the proposal
 January 13, 1846 Polk ordered Taylor’s army in Texas to move across the Nueces to the Rio
Grande
o On May 13, 1846 Congress declared war
 Polk ordered Taylor to capture Mexico City
 In the meantime, Polk ordered other offensives against New Mexico and California
o Organizing the Americans in California was John C. Fremont
 “Bear Flag Revolution”
 By the autumn of 1846 the conquest of California was completed
o The united states now owned the two territories that it had fought for
 After several battles against General Winfield Scott in Tampico and Vera Cruz to Mexico
City, a new Mexican government took power sand announced its willingness to negotiate a
peace treaty
 Polk was eager to end the war quickly
o He sent a delegate – Nicholas Trist – to negotiate a settlement
 1848 – Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
 Mexico agreed to cede California and New Mexico to the United
States and acknowledge the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas
o The United States paid the Mexican government $15 million
 Many northerners saw the idea of annexing all of Mexico as a way to spread slavery into new
realms
The Sectional Debate
 Slavery and the Territories
 In 1846 Polk asked Congress for $2 million to buy peace with Mexico
o David Wilmot introduced an amendment to the appropriation bill that would have
prohibited slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico
 Wilmot Proviso
 Southern militants claimed that since the territories belonged to the entire nation, all
Americans had equal rights in them
 President Polk supported a proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise line through the new
territories to the Pacific coast
 Others supported a plan known as “popular sovereignty”
o Would allow the people of each territory to decide the status of slavery there
 In the next election Zachary Taylor of the Whig party won
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A Free-Soil Party arose
o No slaves in the new territories, no blacks in the new territories
 The emergence of the Free-Soil Party as an important political force signaled the inability of
the existing parties to contain the political passions slavery was creating
 The California Gold Rush
 In 1846 there was a gold rush in California
o People began to flock there in droves
 The gold rush attracted some of the first Chinese migrants to the western United States
 The gold rush created a serious labor shortage in California
o This shortage created many positions for those who needed work
 The gold rush was of crucial importance to California
o Conflicts over gold intersected with racial and ethnic tensions to make the territory
an unusually turbulent place
o Pressure grew to create a more stable and effective government
 The gold rush became another factor putting pressure on the United States to resolve the
status of the territories – and of slavery within them
 Rising Sectional Tensions
 There was a particular pressure to establish a new government in California
 Taylor believed that statehood could become the solution to the issue of slavery in the
territories
 California adopted a constitution that prohibited slavery
o Congress was weary on this idea because of several controversies
 The abolishment of slavery in D.C.
 Personal Liberty Laws
 Fugitive Slave Laws
 Border disputes between Texas and New Mexico
 The biggest reason that Congress did not vote right away was that the South
was afraid that the two new free states would tip the balance of national
politics further against them
 Southern leaders were beginning to talk about secession from the Union
 The Compromise of 1850
 Henry Clay believed that no compromise could work unless it settled all the issues in dispute
between the sections
o A compromise was brought forth
 It said
 That California be admitted as a free state
 That in the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico, territorial
government be formed without restrictions on slavery
 That Texas yield in its boundary dispute with New Mexico and
that the federal government compensate it by taking over it’s
public debt
 That the slave trade, but not slavery itself, be abolished in D.C.
 That a new and more effective fugitive slave law be passed
o FAILED
 New leaders took over positions in Congress
o They were able to produce a compromise in 1850
 Zachary Taylor died on July 9, 1850
o Millard Fillmore takes his place as president
 Fillmore supported the compromise
 Stephan Douglas broke up the bill into 5 bills so that they could be voted on separately
o ALL PASSED
The Crises of the 1850s
 The Uneasy Truce
 In the 1952 election the democrats chose Franklin Pierce, the Whigs chose General Winfield
Scott
 Divisions among the Whigs helped produce a victory for the Democrats in 1852
 Northern hostilities arose when Southerners started having trials in the North over the
Fugitive Slave Law
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Said that slaves accused of having escaped from slavery had no right to a trial by
jury and could not testify on their own behalf
o A federal judge or commissioner could turn alleged runaways over to slave owners
simply on the basis of affidavits from slave owners
 Some Northern states passed liberty laws to use state authority to interfere wit the deportation
of fugitive slaves
 Ableman v. Booth (1857) – declared the Fugitive Slave Law void
 White southerners saw that one element of the Compromise of 1850 grew virtually
meaningless because of mob action and unconstitutional legalisms in the North
“Young America”
 The liberal and nationalist revolutions of 1848 in Europe stirred America to dream of a
republican Europe with governments based on the model of the United States
 Pierce had been unsuccessfully attempting through diplomacy to buy Cuba from the Spanish
Empire when he received a document from Ostend, Belgium, making the case for seizing
Cuba by force
o Ostend Manifesto
o Enraged many antislavery northerners
 Charged the administration with conspiring to bring a new slave state into
the Union
 Hawaii agreed to join the United States in 1854
o The treaty died because they prohibited slavery
Slavery, Railroads, and the West
 Slavery in the territories fully revived the sectional crisis
 In the Old Northwest settlers urged the government to open the area to them
o Provide territorial governments and dislodge the tribes so as to make room fro white
settlers
 The interest in further settlement raised two issues
o Railroads and slavery
 Broad support for building a transcontinental railroad began to emerge
o The problem was where the eastern terminus would be located
 Jefferson David – Pierce’s secretary of war – tried for a southern route west
o A railroad would have to pass through a region in question from Mexico
 1853 – Gadsden Purchase – Gadsden persuaded the Mexican government to accept $10
million in exchange for a strip of land
The Kansas-Nebraska Controversy
 Stephen Douglas wanted the transcontinental railroad to be in the north
 There was the problem of the Indians in the Northwest territory
 Douglas attempted to improve his region’s chances by removing the obstacle
o 1854 – he introduced a bill to organize a huge new territory west of Iowa and
Missouri.
 Nebraska
 Douglas said that in Nebraska the position of slavery would be voted on by the territory
through a territorial legislature
o Popular sovereignty
 When southern democrats wanted more Douglas made two revisions to the bill
o A clause specifically repealing the antislavery provision of the Missouri
Compromise
o The division of the area into two territories
 Nebraska and Kansas
 Because law in May 1854
 Kansas-Nebraska Act
o Destroyed the Whig Party
o Divided northern Democrats
o Spurred the creation of a new party
 Republican
“Bleeding Kansas”
 After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act white settlers began moving into the territory
 In 1855 after an election pro-slavery forces elected a majority to the legislature
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Outraged free-staters chose delegates to a constitutional convention at Topeka and adopted a
constitution excluding slavery
 President Pierce denounced the free-staters as traitors and threw the full support of the federal
government behind the pro-slavery territorial legislature
 John Brown
o Pottawatomie Massacre
 John Brown and others massacred those in favor of slavery for retribution
 Left their bodies out to discourage others from being pro-slavery
 “Bleeding Kansas” became a powerful symbol of the sectional hostility
 Charles Sumner – gave a speech about the inhumanity of the ideal of slavery – was later
attacked and became a martyr in the North – a martyr to the barbarism of the South
The Free-Soil Ideology
 Tensions were a reflection of the two sections’ differing economic and territorial interests
 A reflection of a hardening of ideas in both North and South
o In the North, proper structure of society came to center on the belief in “free soil”
and “free labor”
o Northerners began to believe that the existence of slavery was dangerous not because
of what it did to blacks, but because of what it threatened to do to whites
o They believed in the right of all citizens to own property, to control their won labor,
to have access to opportunities for advancement
o The South, then, was the antithesis of democracy
o The South was a backwards society
o The South was engaged in a conspiracy to extend slavery throughout the nation and
thus to destroy the openness of northern capitalism and replace it with the closed
system of the South
o The only solution was to fight the spread of slavery and work for the day when the
nation’s democratic ideals extended to all sections of the country
 Freedom National
o This ideology was largely Republican
The Pro-Slavery Argument
 In the south a different ideology was emerging
 By the mid-1830’s a militant defensiveness regarding the system was beginning to replace
this ambivalence
 With the expansion of the cotton economy into the Deep South, slavery now became lucrative
once again
 In response to abolitionist attacks a growing number of white southerners began to elaborate
an intellectual defense of slavery
o The Pro-Slavery Argument – Professor Thomas R. Dew of the College of William
and Mary outlined the case for slavery
o Southerners should stop apologizing for slavery as a necessary evil and defend it as
“a good – a positive good”
o Blacks needed the guidance of white masters
o Slavery was good for southern society because it was the only way the two races
could live together in peace
 Many of the southern Protestant clergy supported slavery
o Because African Americas were inferior it was the responsibility of the white race to
nurture them, to teach them morality and efficiency, and to protect them from the
evils of the world
 Southerners believed that northerners were abandoning traditional American values and
replacing them with a spirit of greed, debauchery, and destructiveness
o The South, however, was a stable, orderly society, operating at a slow and human
pace
 Southern representatives managed to impose a “gag rule”
o All antislavery petitions would be tabled without being read
Buchanan and Depression
 In the 1856 presidential election Democrats choose James Buchanan
 Republicans choose John C. Fremont (“Bear Flag Revolution”)
 Buchanan won the election
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 When Buchanan took over a financial panic struck the country, followed by a depression
The Dred Scott Decision
 Dred Scott v. Sandford
 Dred Scott had been a slave who traveled with this master into Illinois, where slavery was
forbidden
o In 1846, after his master’s death Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that his
residence in free territory had made him a free man
 In 1850 Scott was declared free by a circuit court
o The decision was the appealed and Scott was given to Sanford’s brother
 Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri or of the United
States and hence could not bring a suit in the federal courts
o No person of African descent could be a citizen
o Slavers were property
o Therefore the Missouri Compromise had always been unconstitutional
 Frederick Douglass – this very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people
may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the complete overthrow of the
whole slave system
Deadlock over Kansas
 Buchanan wanted to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state
 Buchanan’s proposal passed the Senate, but western Democrats helped block it in the House
 In 1858 Congress approved a compromise
o The Lecompton constitution would be resubmitted to the voters of Kansas
o If the document was approved Kansas would e admitted, if rejected, statehood would
be postponed
 It was rejected
 In 1861 Kansas finally entered the Union as a free state
The Emergence of Lincoln
 In the Congressional elections of 1858 Stephen A. Douglas was pitted against Abraham
Lincoln
 Lincoln sought to increase his visibility by engaging Douglas in a series of debates
o The Lincoln-Douglas debates
 By their end Lincoln became nationally prominent
 Douglas accused the Republicans of promoting a war of sections, of wishing to interfere with
slavery in the South, and of advocating social equality of the race
 Lincoln accused the Democrats of conspiring to extend slavery into the territories and
possibly into the free states as well
o The nation’s future rested on the spread of free labor
o The Republicans would challenge slavery in the new territories, but would leave it
alone where it already existed
o A house divided against itself cannot stand
 Douglas said that people of a territory could legally exclude slavery before forming a state
constitution simply by refusing to pass laws recognizing the right of slave ownership
 The Freeport Doctrine
John Brown’s Raid
 October 16, 1859 – John Brown and some eastern abolitionists (“the Secret Six”) attacked
and seized control of a United States arsenal in Harpers Ferry
o After ten of his men were killed, Brown surrendered
o He was tried in a Virginia court for treason against the state, sentenced to death
 December 2, 1859 – John Brown was hung
 The raid convinced the Southerners that they could not live safely in the Union
 Brown became a martyr to the abolitionist cause
The Election of Lincoln
 In the presidential election of 1860 battles between southerners and westerners had torn apart
the Democratic Party
 The Democrats chose Stephan Douglas and John C. Breckinridge
 The Republicans chose Abraham Lincoln
 Lincoln won
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The election of Lincoln became the final signal to many white southerners that their position
in the Union was hopeless
Two weeks after Lincoln’s election South Carolina seceded from the Union