Essays for History 103A final

Describe in detail the rise of abolitionism in the North in the antebellum period.

- The Antebellum Period in American history is generally considered to be the period before the civil war and after the War of 1812, although some historians expand it to all the years from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the beginning of the Civil War. It was characterized by the rise of abolition and the gradual polarization of the country between abolitionists and supporters of slavery. During this same time, the country's economy began shifting in the north to manufacturing as the Industrial Revolution began, while in the south, a cotton boom made plantations the center of the economy. The annexation of new territory and western expansion saw the reinforcement of American individualism and of Manifest Destiny, the idea that Americans and the institutions of the U.S. are morally superior and Americans are morally obligated to spread these institutions. - new political parties against slavery (free soil and republican) - northerners get more and more upset with states being admitted as slave states and about laws being passed (fugitive slave law) so more people wanted to go against slavery -Although many New Englanders had grown wealthy in the slave trade before the importation of slaves was outlawed, that area of the country became the hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets sprang into existence. These were numerous enough by 1820 that South Carolina instituted penalties for anyone bringing written anti-slavery material into the state.

Describe the "climate" of the antebellum period. What major "weather" events pushed the country towards Civil War? (period before the civil war and after the War of 1812) https://www.historynet.com/antebellum-period

- The Antebellum Period in American history is generally considered to be the period before the civil war and after the War of 1812, although some historians expand it to all the years from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the beginning of the Civil War. It was characterized by the rise of abolition and the gradual polarization of the country between abolitionists and supporters of slavery. During this same time, the country's economy began shifting in the north to manufacturing as the Industrial Revolution began, while in the south, a cotton boom made plantations the center of the economy. The annexation of new territory and western expansion saw the reinforcement of American individualism and of Manifest Destiny, the idea that Americans and the institutions of the U.S. are morally superior and Americans are morally obligated to spread these institutions. Events: -canals, turnpikes, early railroads -Second great awakening where people saw slavery as a sin -slave rebellions (One of the bloodiest rebellions in U.S. history occurred in August 1831 when Nat Turner organized a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. About 60 whites were killed and, after the rebellion was put down, the state executed 56 slaves accused of being part of it.) -Missouri compromise -American Anti slavery society: Their tone became increasingly confrontational, condemning slave owners as sinners and advising Americans to ignore the part of the U. S. Constitution that required runaways to be returned to their owners. -Many abolitionists helped form the Underground Railroad -Kansas- Nebraska Act Climate= harsh/ vast differences between the north and south that only heightened after the period

Describe women's role in the Second Great Awakening and subsequent Reform Movements.

- The Second Great Awakening led to a period of antebellum social reform and an emphasis on salvation by institutions. - The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival movement during the early nineteenth century. The movement began around 1790 and gained momentum by 1800; after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. The Second Great Awakening began to decline by 1870. It enrolled millions of new members and led to the formation of new denominations. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood. - Social reform prior to the Civil War came largely out of this new devotion to religion. Efforts to apply Christian teaching to the resolution of social problems presaged the social gospel of the late nineteenth century. Converts were taught that to achieve salvation, they needed not only to repent for personal sin but also work for the moral perfection of society, which meant eradicating sin in all its forms. Thus, evangelical converts were leading figures in a variety of nineteenth-century reform movements. - Reforms took the shape of social movements for temperance, women's rights, and the abolition of slavery. - The Second Great Awakening impacted women's roles in our country. The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival where people became more connected with their churches and with religious teachings. Many of the people involved in the Second Great Awakening were women. -One concept that evolved from the Second Great Awakening was allowing for a greater role of women, at first within the household structure, and later in our society at large. - Middle class women, wives, and daughters of businessmen found increasing control over their spiritual fervor and moral living outside the home. Women acquired a newfound strength in controlling their morality as preachers such as Finney and Cartwright appealed to women's emotions, work, and lifestyle. Indicating a tradition of women fostering the moral life and accountability of American moral spirituality, women made up the majority of new church membership and were most likely to continue faith after the evangelists left. Women's increasing role in the society can also be attributed to the expanding economy as women not only found increasing authority in the household, but also found more power as some started to enter the workforce. The Second Great Awakening's emphasis on women and morality led to great women reformers such as Dorothea Dix in a wide variety of movements including asylum reform, prison reform, educational improvement, and temperance advocacy. - The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival movement during the 19th century that was challenging women's traditional roles in religion. Out of the religious fervor many were inspired to purify the country. It fueled the women's rights movement, the abolitionist movement, and the temperance movement alike, three events that are closely tied together. Women, when fighting for the equal right to vote, sometimes based their belief on God's word. - In July of 1848 the first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton had the task of drawing up the Declaration of Sentiments that would define the meeting. Taking the Declaration of Independence as her guide, Stanton submitted a document including that, "all men and women had been created equal." - 1850 marks the first annual National Women's Rights Convention, which continued to take place each year through 1860. With an attendance rate of over 1,000 people this was one of the most successful series of conventions during the women's rights movement. - national women's suffrage association -all of this helped women gain the right to vote and aided the abolitionist movements. - By stressing the moral imperative to end sinful practices and each person's responsibility to uphold God's will in society, preachers like Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel Taylor, and Charles G. Finney in what came to be called the Second Great Awakening led massive religious revivals in the 1820s that gave a major impetus to the later emergence of abolitionism as well as to such other reforming crusades as temperance, pacifism, and women's rights.

What did Northerners mean when they levelled accusations of a vast slave power conspiracy.

- The Slave Power or Slaveocracy was the perceived political power in the U.S. federal government held by slave owners during the 1840s and 1850s, prior to the Civil War. Antislavery campaigners during this period bitterly complained about what they saw as disproportionate and corrupt influence wielded by wealthy Southerners. The argument was that this small group of rich slave owners had seized political control of their own states and were trying to take over the federal government in an illegitimate fashion in order to expand and protect slavery. The argument was widely used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854-55 to oppose the expansion of slavery. The main issue expressed by the term slave power was distrust of the political power of the slave-owning class. Such distrust was shared by many who were not abolitionists; those who were motivated more by a possible threat to the political balance or the impossibility of competing with unwaged slave labor, than by concern over the treatment of slaves. Those who differed on many other issues (such as hating blacks or liking them, denouncing slavery as a sin or promising to guarantee its protection in the Deep South) could unite to attack the slaveocracy.[1] The "Free Soil" element emphasized that rich slave owners would move into new territory, use their cash to buy up all the good lands, then use their slaves to work the lands, leaving little opportunity room for free farmers. By 1854 the Free Soil Party had largely merged into the new Republican Party.[2] - The existence of a Slave Power was dismissed by Southerners at the time, -southern power derived from 3/5th clause and fugitive slave law/ gag rule in the house/ wider subject of the Wilmot Proviso and slavery expansion in the Southwest after the Mexican war of 1846-1848. - In 1864, a writer named John Smith Dye charged that for over 30 years, the South's largest slaveowners and their political allies had engaged in a ruthless conspiracy to expand slavery. In a book entitled The Adder's Den or Secrets of the Great Conspiracy to Overthrow Liberty in America, he described a deliberate, systematic plan to expand slavery into the western territories and expand the South's slave empire. An arrogant and aggressive "Slave Power" had: entrenched slavery in the Constitution; caused financial panics to sabotage the Northern economy; dispossessed Indians from their native lands; and fomented revolution in Texas and war with Mexico in order to expand the South's slave empire.

What were the main factors for the United States to ultimately abandon Reconstruction?

- The effort to remake the South generated a brutal reaction among southern whites, who were committed to keeping blacks in a subservient position. To prevent blacks from gaining economic ground and to maintain cheap labor for the agricultural economy, an exploitative system of sharecropping spread throughout the South. Domestic terror organizations, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, employed various methods (arson, whipping, murder) to keep freed people from voting and achieving political, social, or economic equality with whites. -By the time of the 1876 presidential election, Reconstruction had come to an end in most southern states. In Congress, the political power of the Radical Republicans had waned, although some continued their efforts to realize the dream of equality between blacks and whites. - Paramilitary white-supremacist terror organizations in the South helped bring about the collapse of Reconstruction, using violence as their primary weapon. The "Invisible Empire of the South," or Ku Klux Klan, stands as the most notorious./ The Klan terrorized newly freed blacks to deter them from exercising their citizenship rights and freedoms/ Despite the great variety in Klan membership, on the whole, the group tended to direct its attention toward persecuting freed people and people they considered carpetbaggers, a term of abuse applied to northerners accused of having come to the South to acquire wealth through political power at the expense of southerners - As the Radical Republican influence diminished in the south, other interests occupied the attention of Northerners. Western expansion, Indian wars, corruption at all levels of government, and the growth of industry all diverted attention from the civil rights and well-being of ex-slaves. By 1876, Radical Republican regimes had collapsed in all but two of the former Confederate states, with the Democratic Party taking over. Despite the Republicans' efforts, the planter elite were regaining control of the south. This group came to be known as the "Redeemers," a coalition of prewar Democrats and Union Whigs who sought to undo the changes brought about in the south by the Civil War. Many were ex-plantation owners called "Bourbons" whose policies affected blacks and poor whites, leading to an increase in class division and racial violence in the post-war south.

Describe the changing ways that Southerners defended their continued practice of slavery during the 19th century.

- http://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp - The defenders of slavery included economics, history, religion, legality, social good, and even humanitarianism, to further their arguments -Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable. - Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks had slaves, the Romans had slaves, and the English had slavery until very recently./ Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos. This would lead to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. - In the Bible Abraham had slaves/ In the New Testament, Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it. - in court (ex. dred Scott had no rights to sue) Defenders of slavery turned to the courts, who had ruled, with the Dred Scott Decision, that all blacks — not just slaves — had no legal standing as persons in our courts — they were property, and the Constitution protected slave-holders' rights to their property.

How did the Founders and succeeding generations of politicians basically dodge the issue of slavery at the national level? Give as many examples as you can.

- no mention of it in the constitution - idk

Describe how the enslaved experience was different for black women.

- women cook/ clean/ more likely to be house servants than doing heavy work such as construction - susceptible to rape by masters (sometimes have kids with owners) advantage for owners because they multiplied work force because children followed mothers lineage - separated from children

Nullification Crisis

Argument between South Carolina and the federal government regarding the role of national government Southerners favored freedom of trade & believed in the authority of states over the fed. gov.--> declared federal protective tariffs null and void; South believed individual state cannot defy fed. gov. alone; led to increased sense among Southerners as "minority" & threat of secession rather than nullification was the South's ultimate weapon A sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by the Ordinance of Nullification, an attempt by the state of South Carolina to nullify a federal law - the tariff of 1828 - passed by the United States Congress. Q/ A The nullification crisis was a conflict between the U.S. state of South Carolina and the federal government of the United States in 1832-33. It was driven by South Carolina politician John C. Calhoun, who opposed the federal imposition of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 and argued that the U.S. Constitution gave states the right to block the enforcement of a federal law. In November 1832 South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the tariffs null, void, and nonbinding in the state. U.S. Pres. Andrew Jackson responded in December by issuing a proclamation that asserted the supremacy of the federal government. Having proclaimed the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within its boundaries, South Carolina threatened to secede from the union if the federal government attempted to enforce the tariffs. U.S. Pres. Andrew Jackson declared that states did not have the right of nullification, and in 1833 Congress passed the Force Bill, authorizing the federal use of force to enforce the collection of tariffs. Meanwhile, Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky engineered passage of the compromise tariff of 1833, which gradually lowered tariffs over the next 10 years.

What did Emerson mean when he said "Mexico will poison us." Was he right?

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher who is famous for leading the Transcendentalist movement in the nineteenth century. During the American-Mexican war, he is known for his famous quote, "The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man who swallows the arsenic which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us (Foner 67)." The immediate cause of this war was the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845 amidst the opposition from Mexico, and Emerson Waldo was always open to express his profound disapproval. - Yes country divided over annexation of Texas because it was hard deciding weather it would be a slave or free state. - He feared that the ultra-expansionist ambitions of the United States were tainted by ulterior motives, which on the long run would only harm the country by dividing its people -Emerson thought that if the US conquered Mexico the debate between wether it would be a slave or free state could separate the US - In 1844, Congress finally agreed to annex the territory of Texas. On December 29, 1845, Texas entered the United States as a slave state, broadening the irrepressible differences in the United States over the issue of slavery and setting off the Mexican-American War.

What was the Market Revolution? Why is this significant?

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/08-the-market-revolution/ (very helpful) talks about how slavery is effected by the revolution as well as causes of it such as the cotton gin • The Market Revolution was characterized by a shift away from local or regional markets to national markets. • The agricultural explosion in the South and West and the textile boom in the North strengthened the economy in complementary ways. • Eli Whitney 's cotton gin and pioneering work with metal mechanical parts contributed greatly to industrialization. • The rapid development and westward expansion during the Market Revolution resulted in land speculation which caused economic boom and bust. • In the 1820's and 1830's a market revolution was transforming American business and global trade. Factories and mass production increasingly displaced independent artisans. Farms grew and produced goods for distant, not local, markets, shipping them via inexpensive transportation like the Eerie canal. Government policies fostered the growth of capitalism. Cotton, produced by enslaved African Americans, was becoming Americas' most profitable global product. • Between the Revolution and the Civil War, an old subsistence world died and a new more-commercial nation was born. Americans integrated the technologies of the Industrial Revolution into a new commercial economy. Steam power, the technology that moved steamboats and railroads, fueled the rise of American industry by powering mills and sparking new national transportation networks. A "market revolution" remade the nation. Significant: changed the revolution slavery and stuff - Market revolution is.. economic changes where people buy and sell goods rather than make them themselves - Drastic changes in transportation (canals, RRs), communication (telegraph), and the production of goods (more in factories as opposed to houses) - the major change in the US economy produced by people's beginning to buy and sell goods rather than make them for themselves

How did the Civil War shift from a war to preserve the Union to a war to also end slavery?

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html - In his inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed that it was his duty to maintain the Union. He also declared that he had no intention of ending slavery where it existed, or of repealing the Fugitive Slave Law -- a position that horrified African Americans and their white allies. - To retain the loyalty of the remaining border states -- Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri -- President Lincoln insisted that the war was not about slavery or black rights; it was a war to preserve the Union. - The federal government had a harder time deciding what to do about escaping slaves. Because there was no consistent federal policy regarding fugitives, individual commanders made their own decisions. Some put them to work for the Union forces; others wanted to return them to their owners. Finally, on August 6, 1861, fugitive slaves were declared to be "contraband of war" if their labor had been used to aid the Confederacy in any way. And if found to be contraband, they were declared free. - They organized relief societies and provided aid. They also organized schools to teach the freedmen, women, and children to read and write, thus giving an education to thousands of African Americans throughout the war. - controband slaves free - Though "contraband" slaves had been declared free, Lincoln continued to insist that this was a war to save the Union, not to free slaves. But by 1862, Lincoln was considering emancipation as a necessary step toward winning the war. The South was using enslaved people to aid the war effort. Black men and women were forced to build fortifications, work as blacksmiths, nurses, boatmen, and laundresses, and to work in factories, hospitals, and armories. In the meantime, the North was refusing to accept the services of black volunteers and freed slaves, the very people who most wanted to defeat the slaveholders. In addition, several governments in Europe were considering recognizing the Confederacy and intervening against the Union. If Lincoln declared this a war to free the slaves, European public opinion would overwhelmingly back the North. On July 22, 1862, Lincoln showed a draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. It proposed to emancipate the slaves in all rebel areas on January 1, 1863. Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed with the proposal, but cautioned Lincoln to wait until the Union had a major victory before formally issuing the proclamation. Lincoln's chance came after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September of 1862. He issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22. The proclamation warned the Confederate states to surrender by January 1, 1863, or their slaves would be freed. Some people were critical of the proclamation for only freeing some of the slaves. Others, including Frederick Douglass, were jubilant. Douglass felt that it was the beginning of the end of slavery, and that it would act as a "moral bombshell" to the Confederacy. Yet he and others feared that Lincoln would give in to pressure from northern conservatives, and would fail to keep his promise. Despite the opposition, however, the president remained firm. On January 1, 1863, he issued the final Emancipation Proclamation. With it he officially freed all slaves within the states or parts of states that were in rebellion and not in Union hands. This left one million slaves in Union territory still in bondage. - Throughout the North, African Americans and their white allies were exhuberant. They packed churches and meeting halls and celebrated the news. In the South, most slaves did not hear of the proclamation for months. But the purpose of the Civil War had now changed. The North was not only fighting to preserve the Union, it was fighting to end slavery. - after war won... A new chapter in American history opened as the Thirteenth Amendment, passed in January of 1865, was implemented. It abolished slavery in the United States, and now, with the end of the war, four million African Americans were free.

How did the Civil War afford Northerners the opportunity to reshape the federal government?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-war-gave-birth-to-much-of-modern-federal-government/2011/09/22/gIQA43EFSL_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.560387dde4e8 - Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history, began during the Civil War and ended in 1877. It witnessed America's first experiment in interracial democracy. Just as the fate of slavery was central to the meaning of the Civil War, so the divisive politics of Reconstruction turned on the status the former slaves would assume in the reunited nation. - After rejecting the Reconstruction plan of President Andrew Johnson, the Republican Congress enacted laws and Constitutional amendments that empowered the federal government to enforce the principle of equal rights, and gave black Southerners the right to vote and hold office. ________________________________________________________ - The Civil War and its wartime Congresses gave birth to many of the pillars of the modern federal government. The government sold bonds for the first time and Congress approved the first national banking system. The Agriculture Department was born to help farmers. A national cemetery system was created to bury the Union dead. - Congress passed the nation's first income tax — necessitating a whole new staff that today numbers 93,000. Government contracting exploded, with private companies supplying weapons and gunpowder, mules and blankets in what would become a model for late 19th-century industrialists. "Before the war, there was a federal government and a bureaucracy," said Richard Bensel, an American political historian at Cornell University. "But there was no allegiance to a national government." After the war, "you have a social base that supports federal power. That's a big change." The Bureau of Pensions, which opened to write checks to wounded soldiers and the families of the dead, did not just grow into one of the country's biggest bureaucracies and earliest social welfare systems; it became a sort of national retirement system that buoyed the Republican political machine. (The bureau was folded into the new Veterans Administration in 1930.) Without Southern Democrats to impede them, activist Congresses authorized land grants for new universities, western settlers and a transcontinental railroad. Three key amendments to the Constitution adopted shortly after the war — abolishing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection and giving African Americans the right to vote — further cemented federal power.