- California "gold rush" brought more than 80,000 "forty-niners" into the territory
- Compromise of 1850:
- California admitted as free state
- Freedom to choose for New Mexico and Utah
- End of slave-trade in D.C.
- Strengthened Fugitive Slave Act
Aftermath of the
Compromise of 1850:
- The Fugitive Slave Act proved counterproductive for
Southern interest by inflaming abolitionist sentiment in the North
- Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852) - powerfully dramatized the evils of slavery
- Franklin Pierce (Democrat) wins election of 1852
Franklin Pierce in the
White House:
- Gadsden Purchase -
strip of territory running through Arizona and New Mexico that the United
States purchased from Mexico in 1853. President Pierce authorized
this purchase to secure that the southern route of the transcontinental
railroad (between Texas and California) would be in American
territory
- Pierce sent naval expedition commanded by Commodore
Matthew C. Perry to open up trade and diplomatic relations with Japan
- U.S. wants Cuba from Spain (Southerners want more lands
for slavery)
- Whig party failed 1852→Know-Nothing party
- Anti-immigrant feeling
- Large numbers of Irish and German immigrants had
flooded into U.S. during 1840s
- Spurred nativist reaction
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
& "Bleeding Kansas":
- Stephen A. Douglas wants continental railroad, which
required the territories of Kansas and Nebraska being politically
organized
- Pierce signed Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act -
popular sovereignty for slavery
- Free-Soilers (former Whigs and Democrats) joined
launching Republican Party
- Know-Nothings→Democrats
- "Bleeding Kansas"
- Proslavery legislature crafted the "Lecompton
Constitution" that legalized slavery in Kansas→Outraged antislavery
settlers elected their own legislature and wrote a constitution that
banned slavery
- 1856 - band of proslavery gunmen shot up a community
in Kansas with abolotionists→antislavery fanatic John Brown led a gang
that butchered 5 proslavery settlers ("Bleeding Kansas")
- Election of 1856
- Democrat James Buchanan (won)
- Republican John C. Fremont
- Know-Nothing Millard Fillmore
The Dred Scott Decision:
- Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri who went to court
and sued for his freedom. Scott's master had taken him to live for several
years in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin
- 1856 - Supreme Court ruled that Scott was still a slave
in Dred Scott case (African Americans were inherently
inferior, no citizenship, prohibiting slavery was against protected property
rights)
- Kansas entered Union as a free state 1861 (despite
Buchanan's recommendation)
The Lincoln-Douglas
Debates:
- Stephen A. Douglas vs. Abraham Lincoln (Republican) for
Senate
- Debates centered on issue of slavery and the
territories
- Lincoln asked Douglas how he could continue to promote
popular sovereignty after the Dred Scott decision
- Douglas replied with the Freeport Doctrine -
despite the Dred Scott decision, a territory could still
prevent slavery by electing officials who were opposed to it and by
creating laws and regulations that would make slavery impossible to
enforce.
John Brown and Harpers
Ferry:
- October 16, 1859 - Brown and 18 followers attacked
federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
- North saw Brown as martyr
- South saw Brown as terrorist
Election of 1860:
- Democratic party divided
- Stephen A. Douglas - popular sovereignty
- John Breckinridge - slavery
- New Constitutional Union party
- John Bell
- Republican party
- Abraham Lincoln
- Abraham Lincoln elected→secession
- Secession
- South Carolina led way in seceding from Union on
December 20, 1860
- Within 6 weeks, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana followed in February 1861
- Formed Confederate States of America -
elected Jefferson Davis as president
Civil War:
North and South:
- North advantages:
- Most of nation's wealth
- Industrialized and connected by railroads
- Able to manufacture and transport weapons and other
supplies
- Population = 3x South
- Confederates believed:
- Cotton was important to European markets (Great
Britain and France) and they would have their backs→both Britain and France outlawed slavery and were wary of being seen as supporting the "peculiar institution"
- Moral war (they were fighting to protect their homes
and institutions)
- Vast territory
The War:
- The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be.
- Crittenden Plan - Compromise proposal on the slavery issue designed to defuse tension between North and South; would have allowed slavery to continue in the South and would have denied Congress the power to regulate interstate slave trade. On the advice of newly elected President Lincoln, Republicans in Congress voted against it
- Anaconda Plan - General Winfield Scott proposed; critical component of initial Union plans to win the Civil War; called for capture of critical Southern ports and eventual control of the Mississippi River, which would create major economic strategic difficulties for the Confederacy (economically "strangle" Confederacy)
- Some of the major events of the Civil War:
- April 12, 1861- The First Battle of Fort Sumter - When Fort Sumter was resupplied, Confederate troops began bombardment until the Union soldiers surrendered
- July 21, 1861 - First Battle of Bull Run - First major land battle of war. Union attempted to surprise Confederate troops→Confederate victory ("Stonewall" Jackson earned his name)
- February 16, 1862 - Battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee - General Ulysses S. Grant drives back Confederate forces
- March 8, 1862 - Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack - The Battles of Hampton Roads was the most famous and well-known naval battle of the Civil War. It was also the first battle between two ironclad ships, the Monitor (Union) and the Merrimack (Confederate)
- April 13, 1862 - Battle and Capture of New Orleans - Capture of New Orleans by Union forces was major turning point (New Orleans = South's powerful economical port)
- September 17, 1862 - The Battle of Antiedam - First battle on Northern soil. Bloodiest day
- January 1, 1863 - The Emancipation Proclamation - Executive order by Abraham Lincoln. Proclaimed freedom of 3.1 million slaves in Confederate States of America - enraged south and turned into a total war to destroy Old South
- July 1, 1863 - Battle of Gettysburg - bloodiest battle of the war (turning point)
- November 4, 1864 - Abraham Lincoln wins re-election
- April 9, 1865 - Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse
Reconstruction:
"Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others lived during the Reconstruction period"
-Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1903
- Aftermath of the war:
- South completely ruined
- 1/3 of adult white males had been killed or wounded
- White workers feared economic competition from freedmen (former slaves)
- Murder of Abraham Lincoln
- 1863 - Lincoln formulated Ten Percent Plan - Once 10% of registered voters in a seceded state swore allegiance to the U.S., could form new state government loyal to Union
- Radical Republicans were against this plan ^
- Demanded Southern states to take "ironclad" oath proclaiming current and past loyalty to Union (Wade-Davis Act)
- Southern legislatures passed Black Codes - imposed strict regulations of freedmen; denied African Americans free choice in employment, restricted their movements, outlawed interracial marriage (step back toward slavery)
- By 1866, most freed slaves were working on plantations of their former masters as tenant farmers (step up from sharecropping)
- Andrew Johnson
- To enter Union, states needed to acknowledge illegality of secession, repudiate Confederate debt, recognize abolition of slavery
- Johnson was a Southerner himself, turned blind eye to Black Codes
- Efforts to help Freedmen
- Freedman's Bureau - federal agency (passed in 1865 through Radical Republican Congress) to assist freed slaves, helping them get an education and find employment
- Radical Republicans
- Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusettes
- Congressman Thaddeus Stevens
- Civil Rights Act of 1866 - Act that struck down Black Codes and defined the rights of all citizens; also stated that the federal government could act when civil rights were violated at the state level. Passed by Congress over the veto of President Johnson
- Thirteenth Amendment - Ratified December 1865 - freed all slaves living in what had been Union territory
- Fourteenth Amendment - defined national citizenship and gave federal government responsibility to protect equal rights for all Americans
- Fifteenth Amendment - ratified March 1870 - protected African American voting rights
- Reconstruction Act - control the former area of the Confederacy, approved by Congress in March 1867. Former Confederacy was divided into 5 military districts, with each controlled by a military commander (Tennessee exempt). Conventions were to be called to create new state governments (former Confederate officials could not hold office)
- Southern retaliation
- South saw Reconstruction authorities as oppressive and illegitimate
- Called Northerners who moved south carpetbaggers
- Southerners who cooperated with Republicans scalawags
- Ku Klux Klan (founded in Tennessee in 1866)- terrorized freedmen and their white allies, intimidating voters and burning schools ("Force" acts by Congress pursued them)
- Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
- Tenure of Office Act - removed power of president to dismiss a cabinet secretary without Senate - designed to protect position of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (ally of Radical Republicans), Johnson tried to fire Stanton anyways
- Johnson impeached for violating Constitution - escaped conviction by 1 vote
- Election of 1868 - Republican General Ulysses S. Grant won election
- End of Reconstruction
- Civil Rights Act 1875 - called for equal treatment for African Americans in public accommodations, public transportation, on juries
- Presidential election 1876
- Democrat Samuel Tilden vs Republican Rutherford B. Hayes→Hayes barely wins, and Democrats don't like that, so...
- Compromise of 1877 - Political arrangement that ended the contested presidential election of 1876 - Representatives of Southern estates agreed not to oppose official election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president despite massive election irregularities. In return, the Union army stopped enforcing Reconstruction legislation in the South, ending Reconstruction
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