Us ch 1

• US Civil War


  Fits into its geographical and chronological contexts
• Learning objectives


  • Understand how the US Civil War fits into its geographical and chronological contexts
  • Find out about the short-, medium- and long-term causes of the US Civil War
  • Investigate to what extent the attempts to address the issue of slavery in the decades prior to the Civil War were effective
  • Understand the rise in sectional tension, and the breakdown of consensus, in the 1850s
• The issue of slavery is often cited as a major cause of the US Civil War
• Slavery was permitted in slave states and not permitted in free states
• Territories belonged to the United States but had not yet become states, and had to choose whether to become slave or free states
• New states were more likely to be slave states
• The 13 states which created the original USA covered a distance of thousands of kilometres along the eastern coast
• In the subtropical south, farming began mostly to depend on slaves of African descent, including large-scale farms called plantations which produced cash crops
• In the milder north, farming was smaller scale with individual families using paid workers to produce crops for themselves and local markets
• The North and the South developed into two distinct political sections
• A balance between the North and South was achieved in the first years of the USA, but that balance was not fixed
• The changing relationship between the North and South is key to understanding the events which led to the Civil War
• The political system and the balance of sectional interests in 1820 influenced the tensions between the federal and states governments, and between the judicial and political structures
• Federal government


  National government, with the capital located on land between the slave states of Virginia and Maryland
• White House


  Home of the US president, head of state and head of government
• US Congress


  Drew up US laws, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate
• House of Representatives


  Represented the people, directly elected by adult white male citizens on a state-by-state basis
• Senate


  Represented the states, with each state having the same number of senators
• Separation of powers


  Distinction between the different branches of government
• Checks and balances


  The different branches of government working together
• Supreme Court


  Highest court in the USA, with the constitutional right to annul any law passed by Congress or a state legislature which it felt went against the principles of the US Constitution
• Slavery had existed for almost 200 years in the British colonies which had formed the USA in 1783
• By 1860, there were about 4.4 million black people in the USA, and 3.9 million were slaves
• In 1783, slavery was legal in all of the original 13 American states, but by 1800, six had abolished it
• In the states south of the Mason-Dixon Line, slavery actually increased, especially in the Lower South, which was well-suited to the rapid development of cotton production and the use of slave labour
• Slavery became more important to the South and to the USA in the early 19th century, not less
• Slavery was not the only problem facing the balance of sectional interests, but it gradually emerged as the principal issue dividing North from South
• Defenders of slavery could maintain things as they were by using the constitutional rights of slave-owners, or by expanding the USA to the south-west to create new slave states
• Most Southerners thought new lands to the south-west would become slave states, but this became impractical early in US history
• Abolitionism was a rising force in 1850s America
• Secession


  Leaving an organisation or federation, as when the Southern states left the USA and formed the Confederacy
• According to most Northern political thinkers, secession was constitutionally illegal
• Slaves might be freed as a strategy to defeat a rebellion, either by slaves or by their owners, in the context of a civil war
• Slavery could be abolished by force, perhaps in a revolution led by slaves
• As new lands were acquired from France and Mexico in the early 19th century, slavery expanded
• At this time, the issue of slavery was seen as a matter for sectional politics rather than a national concern
• There were many who were neither pro-slavery nor abolitionist, and they wanted to continue the political compromises which had established the USA and ensured its successful development
• Opponents of slavery believed they could get rid of it through peaceful emancipation, military emancipation, or violent emancipation
• Manifest Destiny


  The right of the USA to overspread and possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and self-government
• Texas had been part of the Spanish Empire, and then of Mexico when that country became independent in 1821