Period 5

• Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) - neither US nor Britain would take exclusive control of any future canal route in Central America
• Gadsden Purchase - Mexico sold southern sections of present-day New Mexico & Arizona to the United States
• By 1860s - hundreds of thousands of Americans had settled west using the Oregon, California, Santa Fe, & Mormon trails
• • Discovery of gold in California in 1848
  • Gold or silver rushes in westward territories
  • Mining boom brought tens of thousands of men into the western mountains 
  • California's population increase to 380,000 by 1860
  • Almost one-third of the miners in the West were Chinese
• 1844 - invention of electric telegraph & an increase in railroads increased the speed of communication & transportation
• Railroads emerged as the United States’ largest industry
• Panic of 1857 - prices for farmers dropped, unemployed in Northern cities increased, South unaffected (cotton prices remained high) - led Southerners to believe that their plantation agriculture was superior
• Ostend Manifesto: buying Cuba from Spain. A pro-slavery movement that angered the North.
• Fugitive Slave Laws - Southern slave owners could track down, capture, and enslave “fugitive” slaves who escaped to the North (and deny them right of trial by jury)
• • Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Novel about the conflict between an enslaved man and the brutal white slave owner
  • Moved Northerners and many Europeans to regard all slave owners as monstrously cruel and inhuman
  • Southerners saw the novel as a proof of the North’s “prejudice” against the Southern way of life
• Southern ideology - slavery as a “positive good” - contrasted the condition of Northern wage workers with the familial bonds the could develop on plantations between salves and masters
• Antislavery and proslavery literature polarized the nation even more - abolitionists concerned about slavery as a moral issue
• Compromise of 1850:

  • California was admitted as free
  • Slave Trade outlawed
  • Fugitive Slave Law
  • New Mexico and Utah decided slavery using Popular Sovereignty
• “Bleeding Kansas” - Slaveholders from Missouri set up homesteads to win control of the territory for the South
• John Brown’s Raid of Harper’s Ferry - John Brown led a raid attempting to arm slaves in Virginia to start a slave revolt
• Free-Soil Party advocated for preventing extension of slavery, free homesteads, and internal improvements
• • Many Northerners who opposed westward expansion of slavery did not oppose slavery in the South
  • Most Southern whites view attempts to restrict the expansion of slavery as a violation of their Constitutional rights
• Kansas-Nebraska Act - Divide Nebraska territory into Kansas and Nebraska and allow settlers in each territory to decide whether to allow slavery or not. Repealed Missouri Compromise
• Tensions over slavery divided Northern and Southern Democrats and broke apart the Whig party
• American Party/ Know-Nothing Party - opposition to Catholics and immigrants who were migrating in large numbers to Northern cities
• Formation of the Republican Party - Founded in 1854 as a direct reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act - purpose was to oppose the spread of slavery in the territories
• • Dred Scott decision - The Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott who sued for his freedom for these reasons
  • Scott had no right to sue in a federal court because he was not constitutionally considered a citizen
  • They considered slaves to be a form of property
  • Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional
• Lincoln-Douglas Debates - Lincoln emerged as a national figure and leading contender for the Republican presidential nominee
• • Election of 1860 
  • Northern and Southern Democrats held separate nominating conventions which led to their loss
  • Southern secessionists warned that if Lincoln was elected president their states would leave the Union
  • Constitutional Union party - wanted to preserve the Union
• • Secession of the Deep South - secessionists in South Carolina voted to secede - other states in the Deep South did the same
  • Representative of seven states created the Confederate States of America
  • Their Constitution placed limits on the government’s power to impose tariffs and restrict slavery
• Crittenden Compromise - John Crittenden proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaver in all territories south of the 36th parallel. Not passed.
• Lincoln initially rejected calls for emancipation of slavery. But soon realized that slavery was the problem
• Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation appealed strongly to Britain’s working class - antislavery feelings of the British majority. Gained allies
• South’s reliance on cotton exports did not gain enough traction to gain the help of a foreign nation (Europe began finding alternative nations for imports and other options for textile production such as wool or linen)
• Emancipation Proclamation gave Union shift in motivation & goal of war to ending slavery rather than just unification
• Early 1863 - Confederate economy in bad shape, soldiers deserting army
• Wartime Advantages

  • Union population: 22 million, South population: 5.5 million
  • Emancipation brought 180,000 African Americans to the Union army
  • Union controlled the majority of factories, railroads, and even farmland
  • Union had a well-established central government, experienced politicians, and a strong popular base
• Union Strategy

  • Use Navy to blockade Southern ports
  • Take control of the Mississippi River
  • Train an army of 500,000 strong to conquer Richmond
• Union won the Battle of Gettysburg. Victory of Civil war
• • Lincoln’s reconstruction plan centered around the idea that Southern states could not constitutionally leave the Union - viewed confederates as a disloyal minority
  • 10% plan or Proclamation of Amnesty was fairly lenient 
  • Goal to reconstruct southern states so that unionists were in charge rather than secessionists
• Freedmen’s Bureau - acted as an early welfare agency for freed people
• Black Codes restricted rights and movement of former slaves
• Civil Rights Act of 1866 - pronounced all African Americans to be US citizens
• 14th amendment - all those born or naturalized in US were citizens - obligated citizens to respect rights of US citizens
• Reconstruction Acts of 1867 - divided south into military districts each under the control of the Union army