American History Chapter 13
What were some of the hardships faced on the trails westward?
However they traveled, overland migrants faced considerable hardships - although the death rate for travelers was only slightly higher than the rate for the American population as a whole. The mountain and desert terrain in the later portions of the trip were particularly difficult. Most journeys lasted 5 or 6 months (May to November), and there was always pressure to get through the Rockies before the snow began, not always an easy task given the with very slow pace of most wagon trains (about 15 miles a day). And although some migrants were moving West at least in part to escape the epidemic diseases of Eastern cities, they were not immune from plagues. Thousands of people died on the trail of cholera during the great epidemic of the early 1850s.
What was the Wilmot Proviso?
In August 1846, while the Mexican war was still in progress. Polk asked Congress to appropriate $2 million for purchasing peace with Mexico. Representative David Wilmont of Pennsylvania, an antislavery Democrat, introduced an amendments to the appropriation bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The so-called Wilmot Proviso passed the House but fell in the Senate. It would be called up,debated, and voted on repeatedly for years. Southern militants, and the meantime, contended the all Americans have equal rights in new territories including the right to move their "property" (slaves).
What happened in the second phase of the debate over Clay's proposed solution?
In July, after 6 months of this impassioned, nationalistic debate, Congress defeated the Clay proposal. And with that, the controversy moved into its 2nd phase, in which a very different cast of characters predominated. Clay, ill and tired, left Washington to spend the summer resting in the mountains. Calhoun had died even before the vote in July. And Webster accepted a new appointment as Secretary of State, thus removing himself from the Senate and from the debate. In place of these leaders, a new, younger group now emerged. One spokesman was William H. Seward, 49 years old, of New York, a wily political operator who staunchly opposed the proposed compromise. The ideals of Union were to him less important than the issue of eliminating slavery. Another was Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, 42 years old, a representative of the new, cotton South. To him, the slavery was less one of principles and ideals than one of economic self-interest. Most important of all, there was Stephen A. Douglas, a 37 year old Democratic senator from Illinois. A Westerner from a rapidly growing state, he was an open spokesman for the economic needs of his section - and especially for the construction of railroads. His was a career devoted not to any broad national goals but frankly to sectional gain and personal self promotion. The new leaders of the senate were able, as the old leaders had not been, to produce a compromise. One spur of the compromise was the disappearance of the most powerful obstacle to it: the president. Zachary Taylor had been adamant that only after California and possibly New Mexico were admitted as States could other measures be discussed. But on July 9th 1850, Taylor suddenly died - the victim of violence stomach disorder. He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore of New York - a dull, handsome, dignified man who understood the political importance of flexibility. He supported the compromise and used his powers of persuasion to swing northern Whigs into line. The new leaders also benefited from their own pragmatic tactics. Douglas's first step, after the departure of Clay, was to break up the ominous bill that Clay had envisioned as a great, comprehensive solution to the sectional crisis and to introduce instead a series of separate measures to be voted on 1 by 1. Thus representatives of different sections could support these elements of the compromise they liked and oppose those they did not. Douglas also gain support with complicated backroom deals linking the compromise to such nonidealogic matters as the sale of government bonds and the construction of railroads. As the result of his efforts, by mid September Congress had enacted and the president had signed all the components of the compromise. The compromise of 1850, unlike the Missouri compromise 30 years before it, was not a product of widespread cover agreement on common national ideas. It was, rather, a victory of self interest. Still, members of Congress hailed the measure as a triumph of statesmanship; and Millard Fillmore, signing it, called it a settlement of the sectional problem, "in its character final and irrevocable."
What did the election of 1844 look like?
In preparing for the election of 1844, the two leading candidates - Henry Clay and former president Martin Van Buren - both tried to avoid taking a stand on the controversial issue of the annexation of Texas. Sentiment for expansion was mild within the Whig party, and Clay had no difficulties securing the nomination despite his noncommittal position. But many Southern democrats supported annexation, and the party passed over Van Buren to nominate a strong supporter of annexation, the previously unheralded James K. Polk. Polk is not as obscure as his Whig critics claimed. He had represented Tennessee in the House of Representatives for 14 years, 4 of them as Speaker, and had subsequently served as governor. But by 1840, he had been out of the public office - for the most part out of the public mind - for 3 years. What made his victory possible was his support for the position, expressed in the democratic platform, "that the re-occupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas at the earliest practical period are great American measures." By combining the Oregon and Texas questions, the democrats hope to appeal to both northern and Southern expansionist. Polk carried the election by 170 electoral votes to 105, although popular majority was less than 40,000.
Why was Manifest Destiny opposed?
Not everyone embraced the idea of manifest destiny. Henry Clay and other prominent politicians feared, correctly as it turned out, that territorial expansion would reopen the painful controversy over slavery and threaten the stability of the Union. But their voices were barely audible over the clamor of enthusiasm for expansion in the 1840s, which began with the issues of Texas and Oregon.
What was the significance of the Dred Scott Decision?
A March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States projected itself into the sectional controversy with one of the most controversial and notorious decisions in its history - it's ruling on the case of Dred Scott V Sanford, handed down 2 days after Buchanan was inaugurated. Dred Scott was a Missouri slave, owned by an army surgeon who had taken Scott with him into Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery was forbidden. In 1846, after the surgeon died, Scott sued his master's widow for freedom on the grounds that his residence in free territory had liberated him from slavery. The claim was well grounded in Missouri law, and in 1850 the circuit court in which Scott filed the suit declared him free. By now, John Sanford, the brother of the surgeons widow, was claiming ownership of Scott, and he appealed that he appealed the circuit court ruling to the state Supreme Court, which reversed the earlier decision. When Scott appealed to the federal courts, Sanford's attorneys claim that Scott had no standing to sue because he was not a system citizen, but private property. The Supreme Court was so divided that it was unable to issue a single ruling on the case. The thrust of various rulings, however, was a stunning defeat for the antislavery movement. Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote one of the majority opinions, declared that Scott could not bring a suit in the federal courts because he was not a citizen. Blacks had no claim to citizenship, Taney argued, in in fact virtually no rights at all under the Constitution. Slaves were property, and the 5th amendment prohibited Congress from taking property without "due process of the law." Consequently Taney concluded, Congress possess no authority to pass a law depriving persons of their slave property in the territories. The Missouri compromise, therefore, had always been unconstitutional. The ruling did nothing to challenge the rights of an individual state to prohibit slavery within its borders, but the statement that the federal government was powerless to act on the issue was a drastic and startling one. Few judicial opinions have ever created as much controversy. Southern whites were elated: the highest tribunal in the land had sanctioned parts of the most extreme Southern argument. In the North, the decision produced widespread dismay. Republicans threatened that when they won control of the national government, they would reverse the decision - by packing the court with new members.
What was the resting point of Manifest Destiny?
A rested on the idea that America was destined - by God and by history - to expand its boundaries over a vast area, an area that included, that was not necessarily restricted to, the continent of North America. American expansion was not selfish, it's advocates insisted; it was an altruistic attempt to extend American liberty to new realms. John L. O'Sullivan, the influential democratic editor who gave them a movement its name, wrote in 1845 that the American claim to new territory... is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self government entrusted to us.
How did the U.S. government respond to Texas's newly gained independence?
Above all, American Texans hoped for annexation by the United States. One of the 1st acts of the new president of Texas, Sam Houston, was to send a delegation to Washington with an offer to join the Union. There were supporters of expansion in the United States who welcomes these overtures; indeed, expansionist in the United States had been supporting and encouraging the revolt against Mexico for years. But there was also opposition. Many American northerners oppose acquiring a large new slave territory, and others opposed increasing the Southern votes in Congress and in the electoral college. Unfortunately for the Texans, one of their opponents was president Jackson, who feared annexation might caused a dangerous sectional controversy and even a war with Mexico. He therefore did not support annexation and even delayed recognizing the new Republic until 1837. President's Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison also refrained from pressing the issue during their terms of office spurned by the United States, Texas cast out on its own. Its leaders sought money and support from Europe. Some of them dreamed of creating a vast Southwestern Nation, stretching to the Pacific, that would rival the United States - a dream that appealed to European nations eager to counter the growing power of America. England and France quickly recognizing concluded trade treaties of Texas. In response, president Tyler persuaded Texas to apply for statehood again in 1844. But when Secretary of State Calhoun presented an annexation treaty to Congress as if its only purpose was to extend slavery, northern senators rebelled and defeated it. Rejection of the treaty only spurned advocates of manifest destiny to greater efforts towards the goal. The Texas question quickly became the central issue in the election of 1844.
What did the war against Mexico look like in Northeastern Mexico?
American forces did well against the Mexicans, but victory did not come as quickly as Polk had hoped. The president ordered Taylor to cross the Rio Grande, seize parts of Northeastern Mexico, beginning with the city of Monterrey, and then march on Mexico City itself. Taylor captured Monterrey in September 1846, but he let the Mexican garrison evacuate without pursuit. Polk now began to fear that Taylor lacked the tactical skill for the planned advance against Mexico City. He also feared that, if successful, Taylor would become a powerful political rival (as, and fact, he did).
Why did Americans gain interest in the Oregon country?
American interests in Oregon grew substantially in the 1820s and 30s. Missionaries considered the territory an attractive target for evangelical efforts, especially after the strange appearance of four Nez Percé and Flathead Indians in Saint Louis in 1831. White Americans never discovered what had brought the Indians (who spoke no English) from Oregon to Missouri, and all 4 died before they could find out. But some missionaries considered the visit a divinely inspired invitation to extend their efforts westward. They were also motivated by a desire to counter the Catholic missionaries from Canada, whose presence in Oregon, many believed, threatened American hopes for annexation. The missionaries had little success with the tribes they had attempted to convert, and some - embittered by Indian resistance to their efforts - began encouraging white immigration into the region, arguing that by repudiating Christianity the Indians had abdicated their right to the land. "when a people refuse or neglect to fill the designs of Providence, they ought not complain of the results," said the missionary Marcus Whitman, who, with his wife Narcissa, had established an important, if largely unsuccessful, mission among the Cayuse Indians East of the cascade mountains.
What happened when Americans took an interest in Mexican California?
Americans were also increasing their interests in an even more distant provenance of Mexico: California. In this vast region lived members of several Western Indian tribes and perhaps 7,000 Mexicans, mostly descendents of Spanish colonists. Gradually, however, white Americans began to arrive: first maritime traders and captains of Pacific whaling ships, who stopped to barter goods or buy supplies; then merchants, who established stores, imported merchandise, and developed a profitable trade with the Mexicans and Indians; and finally pioneering farmers come a who entered California from the East, by land, and settled in the Sacramento Valley. Some of these new settlers began to dream of bringing California into the United States. President Polk soon came to share their dream and committed himself to acquiring both New Mexico and California for the United States. At the same time that he dispatched the troops under Taylor to Texas, he sent secret instructions to the commander of the Pacific naval squadron to seize the California ports if Mexico declared war. Representatives of the president quietly informed Americans in California that the United States would respond sympathetically to revolt against Mexican authority there.
What was the Pottawatomie Massacre?
Among the most fever and abolitionist in Kansas was John Brown, a grim, fiercely committed zealot who considered himself an instrument of God's will to destroy slavery. He had moved to Kansas with his sons so that they could fight to make it a free state. After the events in Lawrence, he gathered 6 followers (including 4 of his sons) and in one night murdered 5 pro slavery settlers, leaving their mutilated bodies to discourage other supporters of slavery from entering Kansas. This terrible episode, known as the Pottawatomie massacre, led to more civil Strife in Kansas - irregular, guerrilla warfare conducted by armed bands, some of them more interested in land claims or loot than in ideologies. Northerners and southerners alike came to believe that the events in Kansas illustrated (and caused by) the aggressive designs of the other section. "bleeding Kansas" became a symbol of the sectional controversy.
What happened between Preston Brooks and Charles Summers?
Another symbol soon appeared, in the United States Senate. In May 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts - a militant and passionately doctrinaire opponent of slavery - rose to give a speech entitled "the crime against Kansas." In it, he gave particular attention to senator Andrew P Butler of South Carolina, an outspoken defender of slavery. The Southern Carolinian was, Sumner claimed, the "Don Quixote" of slavery, having "chosen a mistress...who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him, though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight...the harlot of slavery." The pointedly sexual references in the generals viciousness of the speech enraged Butler's nephew, Preston Brooks, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina. Several days after the speech, Brooks approached Sumner at his desk in the senate chamber during a recess, raised a heavy cane, and began beating him repeatedly on the head and shoulders. Sumner, trapped in his chair, rose in agony with such strength that he tore the desk from the bolts holding it to the floor. Then he collapsed, bleeding and unconscious. So severe were his injuries that he was unable to return to the senate for 4 years. Throughout the North, he became a hero - a martyr to the barbarianism in the south. In the south, Preston Brooks became a hero, too. Censured by the house, he resigned his seat, returned to South Carolina, and stood successfully for reelection.
What was the Kansas-Nebraska Controversy?
As senator from Illinois, a resident of Chicago, and the acknowledg leader of Northwestern democrats, Stephen A. Douglas naturally wanted the transcontinental railroad for his own city and section. He also realized the strength of the principal argument against the northern route West of the Mississippi: that it would run mostly through country with a substantial Indian population. As a result, he introduced a bill in January 1854 to organize (and thus open to white settlement) a huge new territory, known as Nebraska, West of Iowa and Missouri. Douglas knew the south would opposes his bill because it would prepare the way for new free state; and the proposed territory was in the area of Louisiana purchase north of the Missouri compromise line (36ﾟ 30) and hence close to slavery. In an effort to make the measure acceptable to the southerners, Douglas inserted a provision that the status of slavery in the territory would be determined by the territorial legislation - that is, according to popular sovereignty. In theory, the region would choose open itself to slavery (although few believed it actually would). When Southern democrats demanded more, Douglas agreed to an additional clause explicitly repealing the Missouri Compromise. He also agreed to divide the area into two territories - Nebraska and Kansas - instead of one. The new, 2nd territory (Kansas) was more likely to become a slave state. And its final form the measure was known as the Kansas-Nebraska act. President Pierce supported the bill, and after a strenuous debate, it became law on May 1854 with the unanimous support of the South and the partial support of northern democrats. No piece of legislation in American history produced so many immediate, sweeping, and ominous consequences. It divided and destroyed the Whig party, which disappeared almost entirely by 1856. It divided the northern democrats (many of whom were appalled at the repeal of the Missouri compromise, which they considered an almost sacred part of the fabric of the Union) and drove many of them from the party. Most important of all, it spurred the creation of a new party that was frankly sectional in composition and creed. People in both majority parties who opposed Douglas's bill began to call themselves anti-Nebraska democrats and anti-Nebraska Whigs. In 1854, they formed a new organization and named it the Republican party. It instantly became major force in American politics. In the election of that year, the republicans won enough seats in Congress permit them, combining with allies among the Know-Nothings, to organize the House of Representatives.
What two plans were the most debated when it came to the territories?
As the sectional debate intensified, President Polk supported a proposal to extend the Missouri compromise line through the new territories to the Pacific coast, banning slavery North of the line and permitting it South of the line. Other supported a plan, originally known as "squatter sovereignty" and later by a more dignified phrase" popular sovereignty," which would allow the people of each territory (acting through their legislature) to decide the status of slavery there. The debate over these various proposals dragged on for many months, and the issue remained unresolved when Polk left office in 1849.
What did the presidential election if 1852 look like?
Both major parties endorsed the compromise of 1850 in 1852, and both nominated presidential candidates unidentified with sectional passions. The democrats chose the obscure New Hampshire politician Franklin Pierce and the whigs the military hero general Winfield Scott, a man of entirely unknown political views. But the sectional question was a divisive influence in the election anyway, and the Whigs were the principal victims. They suffer a massive defections from antislavery members angered by the parties evasiveness on the issue. Many of them flocked to the free soil party, whose antislavery presidential candidate, John P Hale, repudiated the compromise of 1850. The divisions among the Whigs helped produce a victory for the Democrats in 1852.
How did the idea of Manifest Destiny vary?
By the 1840s, the idea of manifest destiny had spread throughout the nation, publicized by the new penny press, and fanned by the rhetoric of nationalist politicians. Advocates of manifest destiny disagreed, however, about how far and by what means the nation should expand. Some had relatively limited territory or goals; others unvisioned a vast new "Empire of liberty" that would include Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Pacific islands, and ultimately, a few dreamed, much of the rest of the world. Some believed America should use force to achieve its expansionist goals, while others felt that the nation should expand peacefully or not at all.
What triggered the gold rush?
By the time Taylor took office, the pressure to resolve the question of slavery in the far Western territories had become more urgent as a result of dramatic events in California. In January 1848, James Marshall, a carpenter working on one of John Sutter's sawmills, found traces of gold and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Sutter tried to suppress the news, fearing a gold rush would destroy his own substantial empire in the region. But by May, word of the discovery had reached San Francisco; by late summer, it had reached the East Coast of the United States and much of the rest of the world. Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world begin flocking to California in a frantic search for gold. The non-Indian population increased nearly twentyfold in 4 years: from 14,000 and 1848 to over 220,000 in 1852.
What did Oregon Country look like intially?
Control of what was known as Oregon country, in the Pacific Northwest, was another major political issue in the 1840s. Its half million square miles included the present States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, parts of Montana and Wyoming, half of British Columbia. Both Britain and the United States claimed sovereignty in the region - to the British on the basis of explorations in the 1790s by George Vancouver, a naval officer; the Americans on the basis of simultaneous claims by Robert Gray, a fur trader. Unable to resolve their conflicting claims diplomatically, they agreed in an 1818 treaty to allow citizens of each country equal access to the territory. This arrangement, known as joint occupation, continued for 20 years in fact, by the time of the treaty neither Britain nor the United States had established much of a presence in the in Oregon country. White settlement in the region consisted largely of American and Canadian fur traders; and the most significant white settlements were the fur trading post established by John Jacob Astor's company at Astoria and other posts built by the British Hudson Bay Company North of the Columbia river - where residents combined fur trading with farming and recruited Indian labor to compensate for their small numbers.
What did the Presidental election of 1856 look like?
Democratic Party leaders wanted a candidate who, unlike president Pierce, was not closely associated with the explosive question of "bleeding Kansas." They chose James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a reliable party stalwart who as minister to England had been safely out of the country during the recent controversies. The republicans, participating in their 1st presidential contest, denounced the Kansas Nebraska act and the expansion of slavery but also endorsed a Whiggish program of internal improvements, thus combining the idealism of antislavery with the economic aspirations of the North. As eager as the democrats to present a safe candidate, the republicans nominated John C. Frémont, who had made a national reputation as an Explorer of the far West and who had no political record. The Native American, or know nothing, party was beginning to break apart, but it nominated former president Millard Fillmore commonweal so received the endorsement of a sad remnant of the Whig party. After a heated, even frenzied campaign, Buchanan won a narrow victory over Frémont and Fillmore. A slight shift of votes in Pennsylvania and Illinois would have elected the Republican candidate. Particularly ominous was that Frémont had attracted virtually no votes at all on the south while out polling all other candidates in the North. At the time of his inauguration, Buchanan was, at age 65, the oldest president, except for William Henry Harrison, ever to have taken office. Whether because of age and physical infirmities or because of a more fundamental weakness of character, he was a painfully timid and indecisive president at a critical moment in history. And the year Buchanan took office, a financial panic struck the country, followed by a depression the lasted several years. And the North, the depression strengthened the Republican party because distressed manufacturers, workers, and farmers came to believe that hard times were the result of be unsound policies of Southern-controlled democratic administrations. They expressed their frustrations by moving into an alliance with antislavery elements and thus into the Republican party.
What happened after Kansas became a territory?
Events in Kansas itself in the next 2 years increase the political turmoil in the North. White settlers from both the North and the South began moving into the territory almost immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act. And the Spring of 1855, elections were held for a territorial legislature. There were only about 1,500 legal voters in Kansas by then, but thousands of Missourians, some traveling in armed bands into Kansas, swelled the votes over 6,000. The result was that proslavery forces elected a majority to the legislature, which immediately legalize slavery. Outraged freestaters elected their own delegates to a constitutional convention, which menat Topeka and adopted a constitution excluding slavery. They then chose their own governor and legislature and petitioned Congress for statehood. President Pierce denounced them as traitors and threw the full support of the federal government behind the proslavery territorial legislation. A few months later a pro slavery federal Marshal assembled a large posse, consisting mostly of Missourians, to arrest the free state leaders, who had set up their headquarters and Lawrence. The posse sacked the town, burned the "governor's" house, and destroyed several printing presses. Retribution came quickly.
What was Clay's proposed solution to the slavery issue in the territories?
Faced with this mounting crisis, moderates and uniqueness spent the winter of 1849 through 1850 trying to frame a great compromise. The aging Henry Clay, who was spearheading the effort, believed that no compromise could last unless it settled all the issues in dispute between the sections. As a result, he took several measures that had been proposed separately, combine them into a single piece of legislation, and presented it to the senate on January 29, 1850. Among this bill's provisions were the admission of California as a free state; the formation of territorial governments in the rest of lands acquired from Mexico, without restrictions on slavery; the abolition of the slave trade, but not slavery itself, in the District of Columbia; and a new and more effective fugitive slave law. These resolutions launched a debate that raged for 7 months - both in Congress and throughout the nation. The debate occurred in 2 phases, the differences between which revealed much of about how American politics were changing in the 1850s.
What actions were taken against the fugitive slave act?
Franklin Pierce, a charming, amiable man of no particular distinction, attempted to maintain party - and national - harmony by avoiding divisive issues, and particularly by avoiding the issue of slavery. But it was an impossible task. Northern opposition to the fugitive slave act intensified quickly after 1850, when southerners began appearing occasionly in northern States to pursue people they claimed were fugitives. Mobs formed in some northern cities to prevent enforcement of the law, and several northern States also passed their own laws barring the deportation of fugitive slaves. White southerners watched with growing anger and alarm as the one element of the compromise of 1850 that they considered a victory seemed to become meaningless as a result of northern defiance.
Why were there tensions between the Mexican government and the Americans in Texas?
Friction between the American settlers and the Mexican government continued to grow, in part, from the continuing cultural and economic ties of the immigrants to the United States and their desire to create stronger bonds with their former home. It arose, too, from their desire to legalize slavery, which the Mexican government had made illegal in Texas (as it was in Mexico) in 1830. But the Americans were divided over how to address their unhappiness with Mexican rule. Austin and his followers wanted to reach a peaceful settlement that would give Texas more autonomy within the Mexican Republic. Others wanted to fight for independence.
When did Lincoln gain a following?
Given the gravity of the sectional crisis, the congressional elections of 1858 took on a special importance. Of particular note was the United States Senate election in Illinois, which pitted Stephen A. Douglas, the most prominent northern Democrat, against Abraham Lincoln, who was largely unknown outside Illinois but who quickly emerged as one of the most skillful politicians in the Republican party. Lincoln was a successful lawyer who had long been involved in state politics. He had served several terms and the Illinois legislature and one undistinguished term in Congress. But he was not a national figure like Douglas, and so he tried to increase his visibility but engageing Douglas in a series of debates. The Lincoln-Douglas debates attracted enormous crowds and received wide attention. By the time they ended, Lincoln's increasingly eloquent and passionate attacks on slavery had made him nationally prominent. At the heart of the debate was a basic difference on the issue of slavery. Douglas appeared to have no moral position on the issue and, Lincoln claimed, did not care whether slavery was "voted up, or voted down." Lincoln's opposition to slavery was more fundamental. If the nation could accept that blacks were not entitled to basic human rights, he argued, then it could accept that other groups - immigrant laborers, for example - could be deprived of rights, too. If slavery were to extend into the Western territories, he argued, opportunities for poor white laborers to better their lots there would be lost. The nation's future, he argued, rested on the spread of free labor. Lincoln believes believed slavery was morally wrong, but he was not an abolitionist. This was in part because he was could he could not envision an easy alternative to slavery in the areas where it already existed. He shared the prevailing views among northern whites that the black race was not prepared (perhaps never would be) to live on equal terms with whites. He and his party would "arrest the further spread" of slavery - that is, prevent its expansion into the territories; they would not directly challenge it where it already existed, but would trust that the institution would gradually die out there of its own accord. Douglas's position satisfied his followers sufficiently to win him reelection to the Senate, but it aroused little enthusiasm and did nothing to enhance his national political ambitions. Lincoln, by contrast, lost the election but emerged with a growing following both in and beyond the state. And outside Illinois, the elections went heavily against the democrats, who lost ground in almost every northern state. The party retained control of the senate but lost its majority in the house, with the result that the congressional sessions of 1858 and 1859 were bitterly deadlocked.
Why did Indian Slavery take place in California?
Gold rush created a serious labor shortage in California, as many male workers left their jobs and flocked to the gold fields. The shortage created opportunities for many people who needed work (including Chinese immigrants). It also led to an over exploitation of Indians that resembled slavery in all but name. At the same time that white vigilantes, who called themselves "Indian hunters," were hunting down and killing thousands of Indians (contributing to the process by which the Native American population of California decline from 150,000 to 30,000 between the 1850s and 1870), a state law permitted the arrest of "loitering" or orphaned Indians and their assignment to a term of "indentured" labor.
What events led up to war with Mexico?
Having appeared to prepare for war, Polk turned to diplomacy and dispatched a special minister, John Slidell, to try to buy off Mexicans. The Mexican leaders rejected Slidell's offered to purchase the disputed territories. On January 13th, 1846, as soon as he heard the news, Polk ordered Taylor's army in Texas to move across the Nueces River, where it had been stationed, to the Rio Grande. For months, the Mexicans refuse to fight. But finally, according to disputed American accounts, some Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande and artacked a unit of American soldiers. Polk now told Congress: "war exist by the act of Mexico herself." On May 13th, 1846, Congress declared war by votes of 40 to 2 in the senate and 174 to 14 in the house.
What was the Free-Soil Ideology?
In the North assumptions about the proper structure of society came to center on the belief in "free soil" and" free labor. Alrhough a abolitionists generated some support for their argument that slavery was a moral evil and must be eliminated, most white northerners came 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. At the heart of the American democracy, they argued, was the right of all citizens to own property, to control their own labor, and to have access to opportunities for advancement. According to this vision, the South was the antithesis of democracy - a closed, static society, in which slavery presented an entrance to aristocracy and in which common whites had no opportunity to improve themselves. While the North was growing and prospering, the South was stagnating, rejecting the values of end of individualism and progress. The South was, northern free-laborites further maintained, 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, aristocratic system of the South. The only solution to this "slave power conspiracy" was to fight the spread of slavery and extend the nation's democracy ideals to all sections of the country. This ideology, which lay at the heart of the new Republican party, also strengthen the commitment of Republicans to the Union. Since the idea of continued growth and progress with central to the free labor vision, the prospect of dismemberment of the nation - a diminution of America size and economic power - was unthinkable.
What was the Pro-Slavery argument?
In the South a very different ideology - entirely incompatible with the free labor ideology - was emerging out of a rapidly hardening of position among Southern whites on the issue of slavery. It was result of many things: the Nat Turner uprising in 1831, which terrified Southern whites and made them more determined than ever to make slavery secure; the expansion of the cotton economy into the deep South, which made slavery unprecedently lucrative; and the growth of the Garrisonian abolitionists movement movement, with it strident attacks and Southern society. The popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin was perhaps the most glaring evidence of the success of those attacks, but other abolitionist writings had been antagonizing white southerners for years. In response to these pressures, a number of white southerners produced a new intellectual defense of slavery. Professor Thomas R. Dew of the college of William and Mary helped begin that effort in 1832. 20 years later, apologist for slavery summarize their views in an anthology that gave their ideology its name: the pro slavery argument. John C. Calhoun stated the essence of the case in 1837: southerners should stop apologizing for slavery as a necessary evil and defended as "a good - a positive good." It was good for the slaves, the Southern apologist argued, because they enjoyed better conditions than industrial workers in the North. Slavery was good for Southern society as a whole because it was the only way for the 2 races could live together in peace. It was good for the entire country because the Southern economy, based on slavery, was key to the prosperity of the nation. Above all, Southern apologist argued, slavery was good because it served as a basis for the Southern way of life- a way of life superiors any other in the United States, perhaps in the world. White southerners looking at the North saw a spirit of greed, debauchery, and destructiveness. "The masses of the North are venal, corrupt, covetous, mean and selfish," wrote one Southerner. Others wrote with horror of the factory systems and the crowded, pestilential cities filled with unruly immigrants. But the South, they believed, was a stable, orderly society operating a slow and human pace. It was free from the feuds between capital and labor plaguing the North. It protect the welfare of its workers. And it allowed the aristocracy to enjoy a refind and accomplished cultural life. It was, in short, an ideal social order in which all elements of the population were secure and content. That defense of slavery rested, too, on increasingly elaborate arguments about the biological inferiority of African Americans, who were, white southerners claimed, inherently unfit to take care of themselves, let alone exercise the rights of citizen ship. And just as abolitionist arguments drew strength from protestant theology in the North, pro slavery defense mobilize the protestant clergy in the South to give the institution a religious and biblical justification.
Why were there Americans in Texas?
In the early 1820s, the Mexican government lodged an ill advised experiment that would eventually cause it to lose its great northern Providence: it encouraged American immigration into Texas. The Mexicans hope to strengthen the economy of the territory and increased their own tax revenues. They also like the idea of the American sitting between Mexican settlement and the large and sometimes militant Indian tribes to the North. They convince themselves, too, that settlers in Texas would serve as an efficient buffer against United States expansion into the region; the Americans, they thought, would soon become loyal to the Mexican government. After 1824 colonization law designed to attract American settlers promise the newcomers cheap land and a 4 year exemption from taxes. Thousands of Americans, attracted by the rich soil in Texas, took advantage of Mexico's welcome. Since much of the available land was suitable for growing cotton, the great majority of the immigrants were southerners, many of whom brought slaves with them. By 1830, there were about 7,000 Americans living in Texas, more than twice the number of Mexicans there. The Mexican government offered land directly to immigrants, but most of the settlers came to Texas through the efforts of American intermediaries, who received sizable land grants from mexico in return for promising to bring settlers into the region. The most successful of them was Stephan F. Austin, a young immigrant from Missouri who had established the first legal American settlement in Texas in 1822. Austin and other intermediaries were effective in recruiting American immigrants to Texas, but they also created centers of power in the region that competed with the Mexican government. In 1826, one of these American intermediaries let a revolts to establish Texas as an independent nation. The Mexicans quickly crush the revolt in, 4 years later, passed new laws barring any farther American immigration to the region. They were too late. Americans kept flowing into the territory. And in 1833 Mexico dropped the futile immigration ban. By 1835 over 30,000 Americans, white and black, had settled in Texas.
What happened in John Brown's Raid?
In the fall of 1859, John Brown, the anti slavery zealot whose bloody actions in Kansas had inflamed the crisis there, staged an even more dramatic episode, this time in the South it's self. With private encouragement and financial aid from some prominent Eastern abolitionists, he made elaborate plans to seize a mountain fortress in Virginia from which, he believed, he could foment a slave insurrection in the South. On October 16th, he and a group of 18 followers attacked and seize control of w United States aesenal in Harper Ferry, Virginia. But the slave uprising Brown hope to inspire did not occur, and he quickly found himself besieged in the arsenal by citizens, local militia companies, and before long United States troops under the command of Robert E. Lee. After 10 of his men were killed, Brown surrendered. He was promptly tried in a Virginia court for treason against the state, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He and 6 of his followers were hanged. No other single event did more than the Harpers Ferry raid to convince white southerners that they could not live safely in the Union. John Brown's raid, many southerners believed (incorrectly) had the support of the Republican party, and it suggested to them the North was now committed to producing a slave insurrection.
What happened in the first phase of the debate over Clay's proposed solution?
In the first phase of the debate, the dominant voices in Congress were those of old men - national leaders who still remembered Jefferson, Adams, and other founders - who argued for or against the compromise on the basis of broad ideals. Clay himself, 73 years old in 1850, appealed to share national sentiments of nationalism. Early in March, another of the older leaders - John C. Calhoun, 68 years old and so ill that he had to sit grimly in his seat while a colleague read his speech for him - joined the debate. He insisted that the North grant the South equal rights in the territory's, that and agree to observe the laws concerning fugitive slaves, that it cease attacking slavery, and that amend the Constitution to create dual presidents, one from the North and one from the South, each with a veto. Calhoun was making radical demands that had no chance of passage but like Clay, he was offering what he considered a comprehensive, perminent solution to the sectional problem that would, he believed save the Union. After Calhoun came the third of elder statesman, 68 year old Daniel Webster, one of the great orators of his time. Still nourishing presidential ambition, he delivered an eloquent address in the senate, trying to rally northern moderates to support Clay's compromise.
What caused American settlers in Texas to declare independence from Mexico?
In the mid-1830s, instability in Mexico itself drove general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to seize power as a dictator and impose a new, more conservative and autocratic regimen on the nation and its territories. A new law increase the powers of the national government of Mexico at the expense of the state governments, a measure the Texans from the United States assumed Santa Anna was aiming specifically at them. The Mexicans even imprisoned Stephen Austin in Mexico City for a time, claiming that he was encouraging revolts among his fellow Americans in Texas. Sporadic fighting between Americans and Mexicans and 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.
What did encounters with Indians look like along the trails?
In the years before the Civil War, fewer than 400 migrants (about 1/10 of 1%) died in conflicts with the tribes. And fact, Indians were usually more helpful than dangerous to the white migrants. They often served as guides through difficult terrain or aid travelers in crossing streams or herding livestock. They maintained an extensive trade with the white travelers in horses, clothing, and fresh food. But stories of the occasional conflicts between migrants and Indians on the trails created widespread fear among white travelers, even though more Indians than white people (and relatively few of either) died in those conflicts.
How were tasks divided on the wagon trains?
Life on the trail was obviously very different from life on a farm or in a town. But the society of the trail recreated many of the patterns of conventional American society. Families divided tasks along gender lines: the men driving and, when necessary, repairing the wagons or hunting game;the women cooking, washing clothes, and caring for children. Almost everyone, male or female, walked the great majority of the time, to lighten the load for the horses drawing the wagons; and so the women, many of whose chores came at the end of the day, generally worked much harder than the men, who usually rested when the caravan halted. Despite the traditional image of westward migrants as rugged individualists, most travelers found the journey a highly collective experience. That was partly because many expeditions consisted of groups of friends, neighbors, or relatives who had decided to pull up stakes and move West together. And it was partly because of the intensity of the experience: many weeks of difficult travel with no other human contacts except, occasionally, with Indians. Indeed, one of the most frequent causes of disaster for travel travelers was the breakdown of the necessarily communal character of the migratory companies. Even so, it was a rare expedition in which there was not some internal conflicts before the trip was over.
What fact did race play in Manifest Destiny?
Manifest destiny represented more than pride in the nation's political system. Running throughout many of the arguments for expansion was an explicitly racial justification. Throughout the 1840s, many Americans defended the idea of westward expansion by setting the superiority of the "American race" - white people of northern European origins. The people of territories into which American civilization was destined to spread, these advocates of manifest destiny argued, could not be absorbed into the republican system. The Indians, the Mexicans, and others in the Western regions were racially unfit to be part of an "American" community. Westward expansion was, therefore, a movement to spread both a political system and a racially defined society.
What were common stops and trails west?
Most migrants - about 300,000 between 1840 and 1860 - traveled West along the great overland trails. They generally gathered at one of several major depots in Iowa and Missouri (Independence, Saint Joseph, or Council Bluffs close), joined a wagon train led by hired guides, and set off with their belongings piled in covered wagons, livestock trailing behind. The major route West was the 2,000 mile Oregon trail, which stretched from Independence across the great plains and through the South pass of the Rocky mountains period from there, migrants moved North into Oregon or South (along the California trail) to the northern California coast. Other migrants moved along the Santa Fe trail, Southwest from Independence into New Mexico.
What occurred during the dispute over Texas's border?
One of the reasons the senate and the President had agreed so readily to the British offered to settle the Oregon question was that new tensions were emerging in the Southwest - tensions that ultimately led to a war with Mexico. As soon as the United States admitted Texas to statehood in 1845, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with Washington. Mexican-American relations grew worse still when a dispute developed over the boundary between Texas and Mexico. Texans claimed the Rio Grande as that it Western and Southern border, a claim that would have added much of what is now New Mexico to Texas. Mexico, although still not conceding the loss of Texas, argued nevertheless that the border had always been the Nueces River, to the North of the Rio Grande. Polk excepted the Texas claim, and in the summer of 1845 he sent a small army under General Zachary Taylor to Texas to protected against a possible Mexican invasion. Part of the area in dispute was New Mexico, whose Spanish and Indian residents lived in a multiracial society that had by the 1840s existed for nearly a century and a half. In the 1820s, the Mexican government had invited American traders into the region (just as it invited American settlers into Texas), hoping to speed development of the province. And New Mexico, like Texas, soon begin to become more American than Mexican. A flourishing commerce soon developed between Santa Fe and Independence, Missouri.
What was the "Young America" Movement?
One of the ways Franklin Pierce hope to dampen sectional controversy was through his support of a movement in the Democratic Party known as "young America." its adherents saw the expansion of American democracy throughout the world as a way to divert attention from the controversies over slavery. The great liberal and nationalist revolutions of 1848 in Europe stirred them to dream of a Republican Europe with governments based on the model of the United States. They dreamed as well of expanding American commerce in the Pacific and acquiring new territories in the Western hemisphere. But efforts to extend the national nations domain could not avoid becoming entangled with the sectional crisis. Pierce had been pursuing unsuccessful diplomatic attempts to buy Cuba from Spain (efforts begun in 1848 by Polk). In 1854, however, a group of his envoy sent him a private document from Ostend, Belgium, making the case for seizing Cuba by force. When the Ostend manifesto, as it became known, was leaked to the public, it enrange many antislavery northerners who charged the administration with conspiring to bring a new slave state into the Union. The South for its part, opposed all efforts to acquire new territory that would not support a slave system. The Kingdom of Hawaii agreed to join the United States in 1854, but the treaty died in the senate because it contained a clause forbidding slavery in the islands. A powerful movement to annex Canada to the United States - a movement that had the support of many Canadians eager for access to American markets - somewhere similarly founded, at least in part because of slavery.
What did Polk immediately set out to accomplish when he took office?
Polk entered office with a clear set of goals and with plans for attaining them. John Tyler accomplished the 1st of Polk's goals for him. Interpreting the election returns as a mandate for the annexation of Texas, the outgoing president won congressional approval for it in February 1845. That December, Texas became a state. Polk himself resolve the Oregon question. The British minister in Washington brusquely rejected a compromise Polk offered that would establish the United States-Canadian border at the 49th parallel; he did not even refer the proposal to London. Incensed, Polk asserted the American claims to all of Oregon. There was loose talk of war on both sides of the Atlantic - talk that in the United States often took the form of the bellicose slogan Fifty-four forty or fight (a reference to where the Americans hoped to draw the northern boundary of their part of Oregon). But neither country really wanted war. Finally, the British government accepted Polk's original proposal. On June 15th, 1846, the British government approved a treaty that fixed the boundary at the 49th parallel, where it remains today.
What was the Bear Flag Revolution?
Polk ordered other offensives against New Mexico and California. In the summer of 1846, a small army under colonel Stephen W. Kearny captured Santa Fe with no opposition. Then Kearney proceeded to California, where he joined a conflict already in progress that was being staged jointly by American settlers, a well-armed exploring party led by John C. Frémont, and the American navy: the so called Bear Flag Revolution. Kearney brought the disparate American forces together under his command, and by the autumn of 1846 he had completed the conquest of California.
What was the deadlock over Kansas?
President Buchanan timidly endorsed the Dred Scott decision. At the same time, he tried to resolve the controversy over Kansas by supporting its admit admission to the Union as a slave state. And response, the pro slavery territorial legislation called an election for delegates to a constitutional convention. The free state residents refused to participate, claiming that the legislation had discriminated against them and drawing district lines. As result, the proslavery forces won control of the convention, which met in 1857 at Lecumpton, framed a constitution legalizing slavery, and refused to give voters a chance to reject it. When election for a new territorial legislation was called, the antislavery groups turned out to vote and won a majority. The new legislature promptly submitted the Lecompton constitution to the voters, who rejected it by more than 10,000 votes. Both sides had resorted to fraud and violence, but it was clear nonetheless the majority of the people of Kansas opposed slavery. Buchanan, however, pressured Congress to admit Kansas under the Lecumpton constitution. Stephen A. Douglas and other Western democrats refused to support the president's proposal, which died in the House of Representatives. Finally, in April 1858, Congress approved a compromise: the Lecompton constitution would be submitted to the voters of Kansas again. If it was approved, Kansas would be admitted to the Union; if it was rejected, statehood would be postponed. Again, Kansas voters decisively rejected the Lecompton constitution. Not until the closing months of Buchanon's administration and 1861, after several Southern States had already withdrawn from the Union, did Kansas enter the Union - as a free state.
What conflicts led up to Texas's independence?
Santa Anna led a large army into Texas, where the American settlers were having enormous difficulties organizing an effective defense of their new "nation." Several different factions claim to be the legitimate government of Texas, and American soldiers could not even agree on who their commanders were. Mexican forces annihilated an American Garrison at the Alamo mission in San Antonio after infamous, if futile, defense by a group of Texas "patriots", a group that included, among others, the renowned frontiersmen and former Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett. Another garrison at Goliad suffered substantially the same fate when the Mexicans executed most of the forces after it had surrendered. By the end of 1836, the rebellion appeared to have collapse. Americans were fleeing East towards Louisiana to escape since Anna's army. But general Sam Houston managed to keep a small force together. And on April 23rd, 1836, at the battle of San Jacinto (near the present day city of Houston), he defeated the Mexican army and took Santa Anna prisoner. American troops then killed many of the Mexican soldiers in retribution for the executions in Goliad. Santa Anna, under pressure from his captor signed a treaty giving Texas independence. And whilw the Mexican government repudiated the treaty, there was no further military efforts to win Texas back.
What caused conflicts between Indians and Americans in Oregon?
Significant numbers of white Americans began emigrating to Oregon in the early 1840s, and they soon substantially outnumbered the British settlers there. They also devastated much of the Indian population, in part through a measles epidemic that spread through the cayuses. The tribe blamed the Whitman mission for the plague, and in 1847 they attacked and killed 13 whites, including Marcus and Narcissa. But such resistance did little to stem the white immigration. By the mid 1840s, American settlements had spread up-and-down the Pacific coast; and the new settlements (along with advocates of manifest destiny in the East) were urguing the United States government to take possession of the disputed Oregon territory.
Who were the forty-niners?
The California migrants that threw caution to the winds. They abandoned farms, jobs, homes, families; they piled on to ships and flooded the overland trails - many carrying only what they could pack on their backs. The overwhelming majority of the 49ers were men, and the society they created on their arrival in California was unusually fluid and volatile because of the total absence of women, children, or families. The gold rush also attracted some of the first Chinese migrants to the Western United States. News of the discoveries created great excitement in China, particularly in impoverished areas, where letters from Chinese already in California and reports from Americans visiting in China spread the word. It was, of course, extremely difficult for a poor Chinese peasants to get to America; but many young, adventurous people (mostly men) decided to go anyway - believing that they could quickly become rich and then returned to China. emigration brokers loaned many migrants money for passage to California, which the migrants paid off out of their earnings there. The migration was almost entirely voluntary. The Chinese in California were, therefore, free laborers and merchants, looking for gold or, more often, more hoping to profit from other economic opportunities the gold boom was creating.
What was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
The US now controlled the two territories for which it had gone to war. But Mexico still refused to concede defeat. At this point, Polk and General Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the army and its finest soldier, launched a bold new campaign. Scott assembled an army at Tampico, which the navy transported down the Mexican coast to Veracruz. With an army that never numbered more than 14,000, Scott advanced 260 miles along the Mexican national highway towards Mexico City, kept American casualties low, and never lost a battle before finally seizing the Mexican capital. A new Mexican government took power and announced its willingness to negotiate a peace treaty. President Polk was now growing thoroughly unclear about his objectives. He continued to encourage those who demanded the United States annex much of Mexico itself. At the same time, concerned about the approaching presidential election, he was growing anxious to get the war finished quickly. Polk had sent special presidential envoy, Nicholas Trist, to negotiate a settlement. On February 2nd, 1848, he reached agreement with the new Mexican government on the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which Mexico agreed to cede California and New Mexico its than United States and acknowledge the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas. In return, the United States promised to assume any financial claims its new citizens had against Mexico and to pay the Mexicans $15 million. Trist had obtained most of Polk's original demands, but he had not satisfied the new, more expansive dreams of acquiring additional territory in Mexico itself. Polk angrily claimed that Trist had violated his instructions, but he soon realized that he had no choice but to accept the treaty to silence a bitter battle growing between ardent expansionist demanding the annexation of all mexico and antislavery leaders charging the expansionist were conspiring to extend slavery to new realms. The president submitted the Trist treaty to the senate, which approved it by a vote of 38 to 14. The war was over, and America had gained a vast new territory. But it had also acquired a new set of troubling and divisive issues.
What made up the US by the 1840s?
The United States acquired more than a million square miles new territory in the 1840s - the greatest wave of expansion since the Louisiana purchase nearly 40 years before. By the end of the decade, the nation possessed all the territory of the present day United States except Alaska, Hawaii, and a few relatively small areas acquired later through border adjustments. Many factors accounted for this great new wave of expansion-the most important of which were the hopes and ambitions of the many thousands of Americans who moved into or invested in these new territories. Advocates of the expansion justified their goals with a carefully articulated set of ideas - and ideology known as manifest destiny, which itself became one of the factors driving white Americans to look to the West.
What lasting impact did the gold rush have on California?
The gold rush was of critical importance to the growth of California, but not for the reasons most of the migrants hoped. There was substantial gold in the hills of the Sierra Nevada, and many people got rich from it. But only a tiny fraction of the 49ers ever found gold, or even managed to stake a claim to land on which they could look for gold. Some disappointed migrants returned home after a while. But many stayed in California and swelled both the agricultural and urban populations of the territory. By 1856, for example, San Francisco - whose population had been 1,000 before the gold rush (and at 1 point decline to about 100 as people left for the mines) - was the home of over 50,000 people. By the early 1850s, California, which had always been a diverse population, had become remarkably heterogeneous. The gold rush had attracted not just white Americans, but Europeans, Chinese, South Americans, Mexicans, free blacks, and slaves who accompanied Southern migrants. Conflicts over gold intersected with racial and ethnic tensions to make the territory and unusually turbulent place. As a result, pressure grew to create a more stable and effective government. The gold rush, therefore, became another factor putting pressure on the United States to resolve the status of the territories - and of slavery within them.
How did people travel westward?
The migrations into Texas and Oregon were part of a larger movement that took hundreds of thousands of white and black Americans into the far Western regions of the continent between 1840 and 1860. Southerners flocked mainly to Texas. But the largest number of migrants came from the old Northwest - white men and women, and a few blacks, who undertook arduous journeys in search of new opportunities. Most traveled in family groups, until the early 1850s, when the great gold rush attracted many single men. Most were relatively young people. Most had undertaken earlier, if usually shorter, migrations in the past. Few were wealthy, but many were relatively prosperous. Poor people could not afford the expensive trip and the cost of new land. Those without money who wished to migrate usually had to do so by joining more established families or groups as laborers - men as farmers or ranch hands, women as domestic servants, teachers, or, in some cases, prostitutes. The character of the migrations varied according to the destination of the migrants. Groups headed for areas where mining or lumbering was the principal economic activity consisted mostly of men. Those heading for farming regions traveled mainly as families. All the migrants were in search of a new life, but they harbored many different visions of what the new life would bring. Some - particularly after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 - hoped for quick riches. Others planned to take advantage of the vast public lands the federal government was selling at modest prices to acquire property for farming or speculation. Still others hope to establish themselves as merchants and serve the new white communities developing in the West. Some were on religious missions or attempting to escape the epidemic diseases that were plaguing many cities in the East. But the vast majority of migrants were looking for economic opportunities. They formed a vanguard for the expanding capitalist economy of the United States. Perhaps not surprisingly, migrations were largely during boom times in the United States and dwindled during recessions.
What did the presidential election of 1848 look like?
The presidential campaign of 1848 dampened the controversy for a time as both democrats and whigs tried to avoid the slavery question. When Polk, in poor health, declined to run again, the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, a dull, aging party regular. The Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, hero of the Mexican war but a man with no political experience whatsoever. Opponents of slavery found the choice of candidates unsatisfying, and out of their discontent emerged the new Free-soil party, which drew from the existing Liberty party and the antislavery wings of the Whig and democratic parties and which endorse the Wilmot Proviso. Its candidate was former president Martin Van Buren. Taylor won a narrow victory. But while Van Buren failed to carry a single state, he polled an impressive 291,000 votes (10% of the total close parentheses, and the free soilers elected 10 members to Congress. The emergence of the free soil party as an important political force, like the emergence of the know nothing and liberty parties before it, signaled the inability of existing party is to contain the political passions slavery was creating. It was an important part of a process that would lead to a collapse of the 2nd party system in the 1850s.
What did the presidential election of 1860 look like?
The presidential election of 1860 had the most momentous consequences of any in American history. It was also among the most complex. The Democratic Party was torn apart by a battle between southerners, who demanded a strong endorsement of slavery, and westerners, who supported the idea of popular sovereignty. The party convention met in April in Charleston, South Carolina. When the convention endorsed popular sovereignty, delegates from 8 States in the lower south walked out. The remaining delegates could not agree on a presidential candidate and finally adjourned after agreeing to met again in Baltimore in June. The decimated convention at Baltimore nominated Stephen Douglas for president. In the meantime, disenchanted Southern democrats met in Richmond and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Later, a group of conservative ex-Whigs met in Baltimore to form the Constitutional Union Party, with John Bell of Tennessee as their presidential candidate. They endorsed the Union and remained silent on slavery. The Republican leaders, in the mean time, were trying to broaden their appeal so as to attract every major interest group in the North that feared the south was blocking its economic aspirations. The platform endorsed such traditional Whig measures as a high tarrif, internal improvements, a homestead bill, and a Pacific railroad to be built with federal financial assistance. It supported the right of each state to decide the status of slavery within its borders. But it also insisted that neither Congress nor territorial legislations could legalize slavery in the territories. The Republican convention chose Abraham Lincoln as the party's presidential nominee. Lincoln was appealing because of his growing reputation for eloquence, because of his firm but moderate position on slavery, and because his relative obscurity ensured that he would have none of the drawbacks of other, more prominent (and therefore more controversial) Republicans. He was a representative of the West, considerable asset in a race against Douglas. In the November election, lincoln won the presidency with a majority of the electoral votes but only about 2/5 of the fragmented popular vote. The Republicans, moreover, failed to win a majority in Congress. Even so, the election of Lincoln became the final signal to many white southerners that their position in the Union was hopeless. And within a few weeks of Lincoln's victory, the process of disunion began - a process that would quickly lead to a prolonged and bloody war between 2 groups of Americans, each heir to more than a century of struggling towards nationhood, each now convinced that it shared no common ground with the other.
Why was there opposition to the war with Mexico?
The war had many opponents in the United States. Whig critics charged from the beginning (and not without some justification) that Polk had deliberately maneuvered the country into the conflict and and had staged the border incident that had precipitated the declaration. Many argued that the hostilities with Mexico were draining resources and attention away from the more important issues of the Pacific Northwest; and when the United States finally reached its agreement with Britain on the Oregon question, opponents claim that Polk had settled for less than he should have because he was preoccupied of Mexico. Opposition intensified as the war continued and as the public became aware of the casualties and expense.
How was slavery linked to the transcontinental railroad?
What fully revived the sectional crisis, however, was the same issue that had produced it in the 1st place: slavery in the territories. By the 1850s, the line of substantial white settlement had move beyond the boundaries of Mississippi, Iowa, and what is now Minnesota into a great expanse of plains, which many white Americans had once believed was unfit for cultivation. Now it was becoming apparent that large sections of this region were, in fact, suitable for farming. And the States of the old Northwest, therefore, perspective settlers urged the government to open the area to them, provide territorial governments, and - despite the solemn assurance the United States had earlier given the Indians of the sanctity of their reservations - dislodge the tribes located there so as to make room for white settlers. There was relatively little opposition from any segment of white society to this proposed violation of Indian rights. But the interests in farther settlement raised 2 issues that did prove highly divisive and that gradually became entertwined with each other: railroads and slavery. As the nation expanded westward, the problem of communication between the older States and the areas West of the Mississippi river became more and more critical. As a result, broad support began to emerge for building a transcontinental railroad. The problem was where to locate it - and in particular, where to locate the railroads Eastern terminus, where the line could connect with the existing rail network East of the Mississippi northerners favored Chicago, the rapidly growing capital of the free States of the Northwest. Southerners supported Saint Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans - all located in slave States. The transcontinental railroad, in other words, had become part of the struggle between the North and the South. Pierce's secretary of war, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, removed one obstacle to aSouthern route. Surveys indicated the a railroad with a Southern terminus would have to pass through an area in Mexican territory. But in 1853 Davis sent James Gadsden, a Southern railroad builder, to Mexico, where he persuaded the Mexican government to accept $ 10 million in exchange for a strip of land the today comprises part of Arizona and New Mexico. The so called Gadsden purchase only accented sectional rivalry.
What was President Taylor's belief about resolving the slavery issue in the territories? And what was Congress's response?
Zachary Taylor believed statehood could become the solution to the issue of slavery in the territories. As long as a new lands remained territories, the federal government was responsible for deciding the fate of slavery within them. But once they became States, he thought, their own governments would be able to settle the slavery question. At Taylor's urging, California quickly adopted a constitution that prohibited slavery, and in December 1849 Taylor asked Congress to admits California as a free state. New Mexico, he added, should also be granted statehood as soon as it was ready and should, like California be permitted to decide for itself what it wanted to do about slavery. Congress bulked, in part because of several other controversies concerning slavery that were complicating the debate. One was the effort of antislavery forces to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, a movement bitterly resisted by southerners. Another was the emergence of personal liberty laws in northern States, which barred the courts and police officers from helping to return runaway slaves to their owners. And response southerners demanded a stringent law that would require northern States to return fugitive slaves to their owners. But the biggest obstacles of the president's program was the white South's fear that two new free States would be added to the northern majority. The number of free and slave States was equal in 1849 - 15 each. But the admission of California would upset the balance; and New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah might upset it further, leaving the south in a minority in the Senate, as it already was in the House. Tempers were now rising to dangerous levels. Even many otherwise moderate Southern leaders were beginning to talk about succession from the Union. In the North, every state legislature but one adopted a resolution demanding the prohibition of slavery in the territories.
