Civil WarPart 1 IntroductionPart 2 First total warPart 3.docx

Civil War
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: First total war
Part 3: Impact of Technology
Part 4: Political leadership
Part 5: General Grant in the West
Part 6: Eastern stalemate
Part 7: Theories for Southern defeat
1
Part 1: Introduction
A) April 1861: Fort Sumter falls
B) July 1861: First Battle of Bull Run
2
A) April 1861: Fort Sumter falls
Lincoln re supplied it, after telling Southerners there was no
guns or ammunition in supplies
Confederates still attacked the fort on the Island in harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina
3
Pt.1
(Continued)
Thereafter, four more states from the upper South joined the
Confederacy:
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas
Lincoln held on to Maryland, a border slave state, only by

suspending habeas corpus, there, and arresting Confederate
sympathizers
4
Pt.1
B) July 1861: First Battle of Bull Run
Union army was march towards the Confederates at Manassas
Junction
After a period of battle that had lasted from dawn to midday,
freshly arrived Union troops from Massachusetts excitedly
charged up Henry Hill
Confederate troops broke rank, and exuberant Union troops
shouted, “The war is over!”
5
Pt.1
(Continued)
The Union troops gave way slowly at first, but discipline
dissolved once the commander ordered a retreat, and the army
quickly degenerated into a frightened, stampeding mob
This rout at Bull Run sobered the North. Gone were the dreams
of ending the war with one glorious battle
6
Pt.1
Part 2: First total war
Magnitude: The Civil War on the other hand, was the first war
whose battles routinely involved more than 100,000k troops.
This many combatants could only be:
Equipped through the use of factory produced weaponry
Moved and supplied through the help of railroads,
Sustained only through the concerted efforts of the CIVILIAN
population as a whole.

7
(Continued)
The following were critical to the outcome of the war:
The morale of the population as a whole,
The quality of POLITICAL leadership,
The utilization of the industrial and economic might.
8
Pt.2
Part 3: Impact of Technology
The Telegraph:
9
(Continued)
The Rifle: smooth bore Muskets which had served as the basic
infantry weapon, gave way to the rifle.
Easier to load, and the invention of the percussion cap made the
rifle serviceable in wet weather.
An effective range of 400 yards (5 times greater than the old
muskets)
Magnitude and casualties higher
Emphasize defense over offense
10
Pt.3
Part 4: Political leadership
11
National experience consisted of one term in the House of

Representatives!
Shrewd judge of character and a superb politician
To achieve a common goal, he overlooked withering criticism
and personal slights
Few presidents have better able to communicate to the average
citizen.
Popularity with the troops was called “universal.”
(Continued)
Effective military leader as commander in chief.
Understood that the Union’s superior manpower and materiel
would be decisive only when the Confederacy was threatened
along a broad front.
Knew how to deal with the border-states.
At the beginning of the conflict, Kentucky officially declared
its neutrality.
Kentucky and Missouri gave the Union army access to the major
river systems of the Western theater, down which it launched its
first successful invasion of the Confederacy.
12
Pt.4
Part 5: General grant in the West
A) Personal background
B) Military strategy
C) Shiloh, Tennessee (April 1862)
13
A) Personal background
First decisive Union victory was won by general named Ulysses
S. Grant
An undistinguished student at West Point, Grant eventually
resigned his commission and went back to civilian life

When war broke out he was a store clerk in Illinois & promptly
volunteered, and two months later became a brigadier general
14
Pt.5
B) Military strategy
“The art of war is simple: Find out where your enemy is, and
get at him as soon as you can, and strike him as hard as you can,
AND KEEP MOVING.”
15
Pt.5
Seized any opening, remain extraordinarily calm and clear
headed
Absorbed details on a map almost photographically
Took advantage of the telegraph to track troop movements.
C) Shiloh, Tennessee
April 1862
Grant’s army was surprised, and in a day of fierce fighting his
army was driven back to the Tennessee River, where they
huddled in a cold rain
General Sherman came upon him & was about to suggest to him
a retreat, but he hesitated long enough to hear Grants intention
to continue
16
Pt.5
(Continued)
Sherman complied & brought reinforcements, he ferried his
troops across the river all night and counterattacked in the
morning and drove out the Confederates
Costly in blood to both sides: 23,000 casualties

17
Pt.5
Part 6: Eastern stalemate
Lincoln says, “ If General McClellan does not want to use the
army, I would like to BORROW it!”
On the Confederate side, General Robert E. LEE eventually
realized the South needed a decisive victory.
18
(Continued)
Sept. 1862 Confederate President Jefferson Davis allowed Lee
to invade North, hoping to detach Maryland and isolate
Washington.
But Union soldiers discovered copy of Lee’s orders accidently
left behind at a campsite by a Confederate officer.
From this McClellan learned that his troops greatly
outnumbered Lee’s & launched series of badly coordinated
assaults near Antietam Creek
19
Pt.6
(Continued)
McClellan allowed Confederate Army to escape back to
Virginia, so President Lincoln permanently relieved McClellan
from his command.
General Burnside replaced McClellan, with similar
incompetence.
In 1864 that Lincoln “Found his man,” and brought General
Grant back East to be the head of all the Union Armies.
Grant, with General Sherman, waged total war, &ultimately
divided the East of the Confederacy with Sherman’s march on

Atlanta and then to the sea in November December 1864.
20
Pt.6
Part 7: Theories for Southern Defeat
A) The South had a ‘loss of will’:
B) South failed to gain European support:
C) Died of democracy:
D) North had more manpower and economic resources:
E) Additional ‘colored’ troops:
F) Bifurcation of the War:
21
A) The South had a ‘loss of will’
Counter-argument: They shifted objectives shifted from military
to political means for triumph
Exp: Using black codes instead of slave codes, for example to
control blacks and their labor.
22
Pt.7
B) South failed to gain European support
Counter-argument: England would not have sent soldiers
anyways
23
Pt.7
C) Died of democracy
By seceding in favor of states rights, individual governors
wouldn’t pull together
Counter-argument: 20th century wartime command economy
was too centralized to produce pluralist limitations

24
Pt.7
D) North had more manpower and economic resources
Counter-argument: although raw data supports skewed
resources, no military historian ever found that the South lost a
single battle from this
25
Pt.7
E) Additional ‘colored’ troops
African Americans more than 1/4 of all Union soldiers.
The white South was full of disillusionment, with the system
crumbling around it; and “disloyalty” of the escaping slaves.
26
Pt.7
NY City Draft Riots
1863: Protests against the draft throughout the North, led to
riots and disturbances broke out in many cities.
Three day span (July 13th-16th) killed 105 people.
Anger at the draft for racial prejudice were what most
contemporaries saw as the cause of violence
African American men were the major target of said violence.
Urban growth and tensions also contributed to the riots
27
Pt.7
F) Bifurcation of the War

West was won early by the Union.
All the great Union generals come from West to East
28
Pt.7
Foner Ch 13 The 1850s
Abraham Lincoln’s nickname, “The Railsplitter”
*
Click image to launch video
Q: You’ve introduced a comparative dimension to the
discussion of the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and
early 1850s. What important parallels do you see between that
event and the simultaneous discovery of gold in Australia?
A: Of course it was a coincidence that gold was discovered in
both places at the same time; it was not some global
phenomenon. But in fact, these two gold rushes in the 1840s and
the 1950s did play out in interestingly similar ways. The
discovery of gold in California and part of southern Australia,
first of all, led to an immense influx of population into both
places of people seeking to get rich through gold. From all over
the world, from Europe, from Latin America, from Asia, people

streamed into these countries and in both places you developed
this extraordinarily diverse population. San Francisco was
probably the most racially and ethnically diverse city in the
world in 1850, because everyone in the world had poured in
there, and similarly Melbourne, Australia, had an incredibly
diverse population for the same reason. On the other hand, in
both places you got immediate racial tensions, and in the 1850s,
efforts to push Asians, particularly the Chinese, out of the gold
fields. California became very well-known for its anti-Chinese,
anti-Asian policies, banning what they called foreign miners
and things like that. Similarly in Australia you had efforts to
push Chinese miners out of the gold fields. So I think the
experience of Australia can reflect something back on our
understanding of what happened in the United States to show
how similar tensions and developments take place in this very
hothouse atmosphere of everybody seeking to enrich themselves
through gold.
*
Q: What were the views of both southerners and northerners on
the expansion of slavery into the new territories?
A: Southerners felt that slavery had the same right to expand in
the new territory as any other form of property. Nobody was
telling people they couldn't bring their livestock, their bank
notes, their equipment, whatever it was. Any kind of property
could be brought if somebody wanted. They said, Slaves are
property, they aren't any different. The government doesn't have
any rights to distinguish between forms of property. Moreover,
southerners had fought in the American army in Mexico. They
had died to gain this new territory; what right did the
government have to tell them or their relatives that they could

not bring slaves there? Northerners of course said, No, slavery
is different; it's not just another form of property. Many of them
thought slavery was immoral. Many who didn't care about
morality said, Slavery retards economic growth. It restricts wide
immigration. It creates a hierarchical society that is
undemocratic. It stifles education. We don't want this kind of
society spreading out into the new western territories. So over
this question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand,
there was what William Seward, the governor of New York,
would later call an "irrepressible conflict" between the North
and the South.
*
Q: How did economic development in the period solidify the
ties between the Northeast and the old Northwest, and with what
political effect?
A: Until the 1840s, the old Northwest (and here we are talking
about Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and states like that) was
considerably tied to the South economically. They shipped their
agricultural produce down the Ohio River, down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans, and from there to other markets. Many of
the early settlers in the old Northwest came from southern
states, from Virginia, from Kentucky, etc., like Lincoln himself,
who came from Kentucky and then went to Indiana and then to
Illinois. But in the 1850s this was all reoriented; the railroads
were now built connecting large eastern cities like New York
with centers in the West. The railroads pulled the trade of the
Northwest toward the East. No longer were goods being sent
down the Mississippi River; they were being shipped much
more quickly eastward along the great railroads. Moreover, the
population of the old Northwest was changing. Far more

northerners were moving there. New Englanders, people from
New York, and people from Pennsylvania were now moving in,
and fewer southerners. So the complexion of the population and
the political complexion of the Northwest was changing
radically and becoming much more like the East and much less
like the South.
*
Q: How would you characterize Lincoln's views on slavery and
race at the time he took office as president?
A: Abraham Lincoln once said, "I think I have hated slavery as
much as any abolitionist." Lincoln despised slavery, there's no
question about that, but Lincoln was not an abolitionist.
Abolitionists were willing to see the country broken up, the
Constitution violated in order to attack slavery. Lincoln had too
much reverence for the law, reverence for the Constitution. He
was willing to compromise with the South. He said we must
respect the constitutional arrangements. He said if the
Constitution says they must get their fugitive slaves back, we
must do that. Lincoln identified the westward expansion of
slavery as the key issue. Abolitionists said, No, abolition is the
issue. Lincoln said, No, the issue is whether slavery is allowed
to expand to the West. Lincoln's racial views were typical of the
time. He did not favor equal rights for the blacks in Illinois, he
did not favor black suffrage, and he did not favor black and
white intermarriage. On the other hand, he always said, blacks
may not be equal of rights but they are entitled to the
unalienable rights identified by Jefferson in the Declaration of
Independence: life, liberty (which is why slavery was wrong),
and the pursuit of happiness. They have to have the right to
compete in the marketplace, enjoy the fruits of their labor just

like anyone else. So Lincoln was a creature of his time; he
shared many of its prejudices, but what's interesting about
Lincoln is, he wasn't an abolitionist. His views on slavery and
race were such that it was his election that led the South to fear
that slavery was in danger and leave the Union.
*
Picture of America in 1850
America is by then 2nd only to Britain in industrial output
The South’s powerful national position is undermined.Its the
“Free Labor” North & Midwest vs. “Slave Power” SouthValues
of the new Middle Class predominate.Penny Newspapers,
Magazines
Compromise of 1850
included:
Admission of California as a free state
Abolition of slave trade (not slavery itself) in District of
Columbia
Stronger Fugitive Slave law
In Mexican Cession territories, local white inhabitants would
determine status of slavery.
(“Popular Sovereignty”)
Henry Clay offered a plan with four provisions that came to be
known as the Compromise of 1850: California would enter as a
free state; the slave trade, but not slavery, would be abolished
in Washington, D.C.; a new law would allow southerners to
reclaim fugitive slaves; and slavery’s status in the rest of the
territories taken from Mexico would be decided by local white
inhabitants.

*
A Dose of ArsenicThe Great DebatePowerful leaders spoke for
and against the Compromise:Daniel Webster (for the
Compromise)John C. Calhoun (against the Compromise)Clay,
Calhoun, and Webster’s swan song.
President Taylor, who opposed the Compromise, died in office,
and the new president, Millard Fillmore, secured the adoption of
the Compromise.
Clay’s plan prompted one of the greatest debates in Congress’s
history. While notable senators from both North and South
denounced compromise, Milliard Fillmore, who became
president when an ill President Taylor died, helped secure the
Compromise of 1850.
*
Senator Stephen Douglass
(who beat Lincoln for Senator from Illinois) shepherded the
Compromise
of 1850 through Congress.
A Dose of Arsenic
Fugitive Slave Act allowed special federal commissioners to
determine fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of jury trial
or even testimony by the accused individual.
Though it seemed that national leaders had again succeeded in
removing slavery from national politics, the new Fugitive Slave

Act made further controversy inevitable. It allowed special
federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives
without jury trials or testimony from accused individuals. It
prohibited local authorities from interfering with fugitive
slaves’ capture and required individual citizens to assist in such
capture when called on by federal agents. Thus southern
leaders, usually committed to states’ rights and local autonomy,
supported a law that brought federal agents into northern
communities and allowed them to override local law
enforcement and local judicial procedure.
*
A Dose of ArsenicFugitive Slave Act In a series of dramatic
confrontations, fugitives, aided by abolitionists, violently
resisted capture.The fugitive slave law also led several thousand
northern blacks to flee to safety in Canada.
The fugitive slave issue affected all free states, not just states
bordering the South. The issue drew into politics many who had
been antislavery but now feared that the South was forcing them
to act against their own consciences. In the 1850s, federal
tribunals heard more than 300 cases and ordered the return of
157 fugitive slaves to the South. But the law exacerbated
sectional enmity. In dramatic confrontations, fugitives, helped
by abolitionists, violently resisted recapture, sometimes killing
slave owners and attacking federal authorities. Several thousand
northern blacks, free and fugitive, fled to safety in Canada.
*
Fugitive Slaves

Boston — center of abolitionism
Shadrach — freed by African-Americans, got to Canada
Thomas Sims — shipped back w/ help of 300 fed troops!
Anthony Burns — 1854Anthony Burns’ attempted rescue
failed; one fed killed.Pres Franklin Pierce sent the “Marines,
cavalry & artillery“
Farragher
*
1855 broadside
depicting life of
Anthony Burns
Northerners hated the F S Law;
they were not for social equality,
but thought slavery was wrong.
This, in turn, inflamed the South,
who were agitated by their “fire-eaters”
(those who wanted to secede now
& get it all over with.)
Douglas and Popular SovereigntyFranklin Pierce won 1852

presidential election.
Stephen Douglas introduced bill to establish territorial
governments for Nebraska and Kansas so that a transcontinental
railroad could be constructed.
Slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty (territorial
voters, not Congress, would decide).
The Compromise of 1850 seemed to restore sectional peace and
party unity. Democrat Franklin Pierce bested Whig Winfield
Scott in the 1852 presidential race on a platform recognizing the
Compromise as having settled the slavery question. But under
Pierce the party system established in the era of Jackson
collapsed.
In early 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a
bill to provide territorial governments for Kansas and Nebraska,
part of the Louisiana Purchase. Douglas desired western
economic development, and while he hoped a transcontinental
railroad could be built through Kansas or Nebraska, he did not
think this would happen unless formal governments existed in
these territories. Southerners did not want these new territories
to be free states, which might upset the sectional balance.
Douglas tried to mollify them by proposing that slavery’s status
would be settled by popular sovereignty—by local voters, not
Congress.
*
Stephen A. Douglas
daguerreotype from
around 1853.

Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854Under the Missouri Compromise,
slavery had been prohibited in the Kansas-Nebraska area.
The Appeal of the Independent Democrats was issued by
antislavery congressmen opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill
because it would potentially open the area to slavery.
However, slavery was prohibited in the Kansas and Nebraska
territories by the Missouri Compromise, which Douglas’s bill
would repeal. Anti-slavery Democrats protested Douglas’s bill
as a plot to convert free territory to slavery, and helped
convince many in the North that southerners wanted to extend
slavery throughout the entire West.
*
MAP 14.2 Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854
Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
1854
Indian Territory lay west of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa and
east of Mexican Territory. Most of the Indian peoples who lived
there in the 1830s and the 1840s had been “removed” from east
of the Mississippi River. The southern part (now Oklahoma)
was inhabited by peoples from the Old Southwest: the
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
North of that in what is now Kansas and Nebraska lived peoples
who had been removed from the Old Northwest. All these
Indian peoples had trouble adjusting not only to a new climate

and a new way of life but also to the close proximity of some
Indian tribes who were their traditional enemies.
*
Map 13.6 The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
Had been promised in perpetuity.
In 1854 the northern part was offered by
the govt to whites for settlement.
It was Stephen Douglass who proposed it.
HE wanted the railroad to pass through
his city — Chicago.
Indian Territory?:
Douglas cut a deal with the Southern Senators.
They wanted the new territories of Kansas
& Nebraska to be open to slavery.
Douglass suggested POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.
Figured Slavery wouldn’t work in these
territories.

He made a Big mistake.
Kansas-Nebraska ActKansas-Nebraska Act became law.
Democrats were no longer unified because many northern
Democrats opposed the bill.Whig Party collapsed.The South
became solidly Democratic.Republican Party emerged to
prevent the further expansion of slavery.
Though Douglas secured the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act, the law shattered the Democratic Party. Many northern
Democrats voted against the bill. In the bill’s aftermath, the
Whig Party, unable to forge a response, dissolved. The South
become almost entirely Democratic. Most northern Whigs,
joined by many disaffected northern Democrats, joined a new
organization dedicated to ending slavery’s expansion—the
Republican Party.
*
The Rise of the Republican PartyThe Northern EconomyRise of
the Republican Party reflected underlying economic and social
changes.Railroad networkBy 1860, North had become a
complex, integrated economy.
Two great areas of industrial production had
arisen:Northeastern seaboardGreat Lakes region
Although slavery’s disruption of the political system was an
immediate cause of the Republican Party’s creation, the party
also reflected basic economic and social changes in American

society, namely, the market revolution’s completion and the
beginning of mass immigration from Europe. The American
economy grew rapidly in the late 1840s and early 1850s. The
expansion of a national railroad network did much to hasten
economic growth. By 1860, railroads, and no longer water,
carried most of the crops and goods in the nation. Rail helped
integrate the old Northwest and the Northeast, laying the basis
for political unity in the form of the Republican Party.
By 1860, the North was a complex, integrated economy, with
eastern industrialists marketing manufacturing goods to the
West’s commercial farmers, while these farmers produced the
food urban easterners consumed. The majority of the North’s
population still lived in rural areas and small towns, in which
the ideal of economic independence, of owning a farm or shop,
was still possible. But the majority of northern workers no
longer worked in agriculture. The industrial revolution had
produced two great areas of industrial production, one on the
Atlantic Coast from Boston to Baltimore, and one around the
Great Lakes, from Chicago and Pittsburgh to Buffalo. New York
became the nation’s preeminent financial, commercial, and
manufacturing center. Although the southern economy grew and
cotton’s expansion made great profits for the planters, the South
did not develop a diverse and dynamic economy as did the
North.
*
The railroad
network,
1850s

The Lackawanna Valley
Rise and Fall of the Know-NothingsIn 1854 the American, or
Know-Nothing, Party emerged as a political party appealing to
anti-Catholic and, in North, antislavery sentiments.
Nativism found expression in national politics in the midst of
the political system’s implosion over slavery in the mid-1850s.
This was through the American Know-Nothing Party, a name
deriving from its origins as a secret organization whose
members, when asked about it existence, were supposed to
reply, “I know nothing.” The Know-Nothings wanted to restrict
political office to the native born and resist the Catholic
Church’s influence in politics. In 1854 they gained many seats
in Massachusetts state elections, electing the governor, all the
state’s congressmen and most members of the state legislature.
They also won mayoral races in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San
Francisco. In many places, nativist candidates were a major part
of the “anti-Nebraska” coalition of voters opposed to the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the North, the Know-Nothings
combined anti-Catholicism, antislavery, and a strong dose of
temperance sentiment. Despite the strength of nativism in this
period, relatively little was changed in public policy. All
European immigrants benefited from their whiteness, compared
to free blacks in the North, who faced worsening discrimination
and job opportunities. White immigrants could in a few years
become naturalized and voting citizens, while most American-
born blacks could not.
*

George Catlin’s 1827 painting Five Points
The Rise of the Republican PartyThe Free Labor
IdeologyRepublicans managed to convince most northerners
(antislavery Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-
Nothings) that the “slave power” posed a more immediate threat
to their liberties than Catholics and immigrants.
This appeal rested on the idea of free labor.
By 1856, the Republican Party, a coalition of anti-slavery
Democrats, northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-Nothings
opposed to slavery’s expansion, was clearly the major
alternative to the Democratic Party in the North. Republicans
convinced most northerners that the Slave Power, as they called
the South’s pro-slavery political leadership, was more
dangerous to their liberties and hopes than Catholicism and
immigrants. The Republican appeal rested on the idea of “free
labor” which was at the core of a vision that celebrated the
North as the basis of progress, opportunity, and freedom in
America.
*
The Rise of the Republican PartyThe Free Labor Ideology
Free labor could not compete with slave labor so slavery’s
expansion had to be halted to ensure freedom for the white
laborer.
Republicans as a whole were not abolitionists.
The defining quality of the North, they argued, was the
opportunity each laborer had to become a farmer or independent

craftsman, thus gaining the economic independence essential to
freedom. Slavery, by contrast, created a social order of
degraded slaves, poor whites with no hope of social advance,
and slaveholding aristocrats. They saw the struggle over the
West as a struggle between two antagonistic labor systems, and
believed that slavery, if it dominated the West, would prevent
northern free labor from emigrating and thus would diminish
economic opportunity for northerners. They insisted slavery had
to be prohibited from the territories.
They further argued that the federal government could end its
complicity with slavery. But they were not abolitionists, since
they only wanted to stop slavery’s expansion, not attack it
where it already existed. Yet many party leaders viewed the
nation’s split into incompatible free and slave societies as an
“irrepressible conflict” that would have to be resolved.
*
Bleeding Kansas and the Election of 1856Bleeding Kansas
seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of leaving the decision of
slavery up to the local population—thus aiding the
Republicans.Civil war within KansasAttack on Senator Charles
Sumner
Election of 1856 demonstrated that parties had reoriented
themselves along sectional lines.
Dramatic events in 1855 and 1856 fueled the Republican Party’s
growth. Although proslavery Missourians cast fraudulent ballots
in Kansas elections in 1854 and 1855, President Pierce
recognized the legitimacy of the resulting proslavery legislature
and replaced the territorial governor, a northerner. Settlers from

free states soon established their own rival government, and
civil war erupted. Eventually, 200 people died in “Bleeding
Kansas.” The conflict seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of
popular sovereignty on the slavery question. In 1856, South
Carolina representative Preston Brooks beat antislavery senator
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts unconscious with a cane after
Sumner denounced “The Crime against Kansas.”
In the 1856 election, the Republican Party nominated John C.
Fremont and wrote a platform that strongly opposed slavery’s
further expansion. The Democrats chose James Buchanan, who
had no association with any position on the slavery issue, and
endorsed the principle of popular sovereignty. Fremont won
more votes than Buchanan in the North, but Buchanan won all
southern states and Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, ensuring
victory over Fremont. The 1856 elections showed that parties
had reorganized along sectional lines. The Whigs had
disappeared, the Democrats were seriously weakened, and a new
party had arrived that was devoted completely to northern
interests.
*
A contemporary print denounces attack on Senator Charles
Sumner
Map 13.8 The Presidential Election of 1856

“Opening” JapanU.S. navy’s commodore Matthew Perry sailed
warships into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that Japan negotiate
a trade treaty with United States (1853–1854).
Japan opened two ports to U.S. merchant ships in 1854.
United States was interested in Japan primarily as a refueling
stop on the way to China.
Through the Mexican War, the United States gained possession
of San Diego and San Francisco harbors, excellent ports to
facilitate trade with the Far East. In the 1850s, the United States
initiated the opening of Japan, which for two centuries had
closed itself to almost all foreign contact. In 1853 and 1854,
American warships commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry
sailed into Tokyo harbor. Perry had been sent to negotiate a
trade treaty, and he demanded that the Japanese deal with him.
Alarmed by European intrusions into China and impressed by
Perry’s armaments, they opened two ports to American
shipping. American diplomats persuaded Japan to open more
ports to U.S. ships and establish full diplomatic relations
between the two nations. Thus, the United States acquired
refueling stops on the way to China, seen as the most important
trading partner in Asia. Japan soon launched a modernization
process that made it Asia’s major military power.
*
Transportation of Cargo by Westerners
at the Port of Yokohama
The Dred Scott DecisionAfter having lived in free territories,
the slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom.

The Supreme Court justices addressed three questions:Could a
black person be a citizen and therefore sue in federal court?Did
residence in a free state make Scott free?Did Congress possess
the power to prohibit slavery in a territory?
President James Buchanan, while a staunch defender of the
Union, failed settle the growing sectional tensions. He hoped
that a Supreme Court case would finally resolve the slavery
controversy. During the 1830s, Dred Scott, a Missouri slave,
had accompanied his owner to both Illinois, where slavery was
prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance and state law, and
Wisconsin, where it was barred by the Missouri Compromise.
After returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom, arguing
that residence on free soil had freed him. The Dred Scott
decision was announced in March 1857, shortly after Buchanan
was inaugurated.
*
Dred Scott as painted in 1857
The Dred Scott DecisionSpeaking for the majority, Chief Justice
Roger A. Taney declared that only white persons could be
citizens of United States.
Taney ruled that Congress possessed no power under the
Constitution to bar slavery from a territory, so Scott was still a
slave.
The decision in effect declared unconstitutional Republican
platform of restricting slavery’s expansion.

The court essentially divided 6–3, with Chief Justice Roger B.
Taney speaking for the majority. Taney declared that only white
persons could be citizens of the United States, since the
founders believed blacks “had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect. Blacks, having different ancestors and
lacking a heritage of freedom, could never join the nation’s
political family. Taney and the Court majority ruled that Scott
remained a slave. They ruled that Illinois state law had no effect
on Scott once he returned to Missouri, and that in regards to
Wisconsin, Congress had no constitutional power to bar slavery
from a territory.
This effectively made the Missouri Compromise
unconstitutional, as was any law that interfered with
southerners’ right to bring slave property into the territories.
The decision effectively made unconstitutional the Republican
platform for restricting slavery and undermined the policy of
popular sovereignty: If Congress could not prohibit slavery in a
territory, how could a territorial legislature created by Congress
do so?
*
Emergence of LincolnDecision’s AftermathPresident Buchanan
wanted to admit Kansas as slave state under the Lecompton
Constitution; Stephen Douglas attempted to block the attempt.
Lincoln and SlaveryIn seeking reelection, Douglas faced an
unexpectedly strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.
In the North, the Dred Scott decision sank the reputation of the
Supreme Court, which many now regarded as beholden to the
Slave Power. President Buchanan declared that slavery would

from then on be legal and constitutional in all western
territories. In 1858, Buchanan tried to admit Kansas as a slave
state under the Leocompton Constitution, which had been
drafted by a pro-southern convention and never ratified by
popular vote. Douglas, outraged by this violation of popular
sovereignty, blocked the attempt with Republicans, and Kansas
remained a territory.
Americans’ deepening divisions over slavery were captured in
the Illinois senatorial election in 1858 between Stephen
Douglas, the champion of popular sovereignty, and Abraham
Lincoln, a lawyer of modest origins and Whig, who had served
four terms in the state legislature and one term as a
representative in Congress from 1847 to 1849. Lincoln
reentered national politics in 1854 as a result of the Kansas-
Nebraska Act. While Lincoln hated slavery, unlike the
abolitionists, Lincoln was willing to compromise with the South
to preserve the Union. But he was adamant on halting the
expansion of slavery.
*
The Emergence of LincolnLincoln and SlaveryLincoln’s
speeches combined the moral fervor of the abolitionists with the
respect for order and the Constitution of more conservative
northerners.
The Lincoln-Douglas CampaignLincoln campaigned against
Douglas for Illinois’s Senate seat.
Lincoln’s critique of slavery and its expansion articulated the
basic values of the Republican Party and the millions of
Northerners who voted for it. His life embodied the free labor
ideology and the promise northern society offered to working
men. In 1850s Illinois, property-owning farmers, artisans, and

shopkeepers vastly outnumbered wage earners. Lincoln believed
blacks should own their own labor and have every opportunity
to improve themselves through their labor as whites.
The 1858 campaign against Douglas made Lincoln nationally
known. Lincoln insisted that the nation would not survive
forever half-slave and half-free, and that Americans would have
to make a choice as a nation and reject the idea of popular
sovereignty Douglas advocated. The Lincoln-Douglas debates
are classics of American political oratory. Conflicting
definitions of freedom were at their center. Lincoln argued that
freedom meant opposing slavery, and that the founding fathers
had set the nation on the road to eventual abolition of slavery.
Douglas argued that freedom resided in local self-government
and self-determination, and that each locality had the right to
determine its institutions.
*
Abraham Lincoln in 1858, year of
Lincoln-Douglas debates
The Lincoln-Douglas DebatesEmergence of LincolnThe
Lincoln-Douglas debates remain classics of American political
oratory.To Lincoln, freedom meant opposition to slavery.
Douglas argued that essence of freedom lay in local (white)
self-government and individual self-determination.
Douglas asserted at the Freeport debate that popular sovereignty
was compatible with the Dred Scott decision.
Douglas tried, in the debates, to portray Lincoln as a dangerous

radical whose positions would degrade white Americans by
reducing them to equality with blacks. Douglas argued that the
United States had been created “by white men for the benefit of
white men and their posterity forever.” Lincoln shared many of
the racial prejudices of his day, opposed giving Illinois blacks
the right to vote, and endorsed colonization. But Lincoln did not
appeal to racism to gain votes, and he insisted that blacks were
part of the human family, entitled to the same natural rights the
Declaration of Independence offered to all men everywhere.
*
The Emergence of LincolnThe Lincoln-Douglas Campaign
Lincoln shared many of the racial prejudices of his day.
Douglas was reelected by a narrow margin.
Douglas was only narrowly reelected to the U.S. Senate.
Elsewhere in the North, many Republicans won elections.
The attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia led
by John Brown also increased sectional tensions. Brown, a
deeply religious man, had long been involved in anti-slavery
activities. Highly influenced by the Old Testament of the Bible,
Brown avenged an 1856 attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by
proslavery southerners by murdering five proslavery settlers. In
October 1859, Brown led an interracial group of nearly two
dozen men in the attack at Harpers Ferry. Brown and his men
were soon surrounded and all of them killed or captured by
federal soldiers commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee.
*

John Brown Attack at Harpers FerryArmed assault by
abolitionist John Brown on federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, further heightened sectional tensions.
Placed on trial for treason to the state of Virginia, Brown’s
execution turned him into a martyr to much of the North.
Brown faced a trial for treason and behaved admirably, earning
through his trial the admiration of millions of northerners who
nonetheless disapproved of his violent actions. Brown’s
execution made him a martyr of northern abolitionists, while
northern praise for Brown outraged and further alienated
southerners.
A growing number of southerners began to think their region’s
future looked more favorable outside the Union than within it.
Southerners had many complaints. The increasing price for
slaves made it much harder for small farmers to become planters
and thus economically independent. These secessionists argued
that the North was benefiting from the cotton trade while
southern planters fell deeper into debt. An independent South,
they argued, could build a slave empire incorporating Cuba,
other West Indian islands, Mexico, and parts of Central
America. Some southern planters openly called on the United
States to buy or conquer Cuba to expand slavery, while other
southerners like William Walker led “filibuster” expeditions, in
which they tried and failed to capture Nicaragua and other parts
of Central America in hopes of securing more territory for
American slave owners. Some slave owners called for the
reopening of the foreign slave trade.
*
1835 painting of federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry

John Brown in an 1847
The Rise of Southern NationalismBy the late 1850s, southern
leaders were bending every effort to strengthen the bonds of
slavery.The Democratic SplitThe Democratic Party was split
with its nomination of Douglas in 1860 and the southern
Democrats’ nomination of John Breckinridge.
By early 1860, seven Deep South states were demanding that
the Democratic Platform promise to protect slavery in all
territories not yet made states.
Even though Stephen Douglas and his supporters had a majority
at the Democratic convention of 1860, they did not have the
two-thirds needed for the presidential nomination, and
Douglas’s position on Kansas alienated pro-slavery southerners,
who wanted to make Kansas a slave state. Delegates from seven
states walked out when the platform reaffirmed support for
popular sovereignty, and the remaining Democrats nominated
Douglas. Those who bolted nominated John C. Breckenridge of
Kentucky, who insisted that slavery be protected in western
territories. The Democratic Party had been shattered. Southern
Democrats no longer trusted northern Democrats, and northern
Democrats refused to accept a proslavery platform that would
doom their party’s chances in the North.
*

The Emergence of LincolnNomination of LincolnRepublicans
nominated Lincoln over William Seward.Lincoln appealed to
many voters.
Republican party platform:Denied the validity of the Dred Scott
decisionOpposed slavery’s expansionAdded economic
initiatives
The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for president.
Lincoln’s commitment to preserving the Union appealed to
moderate Republicans, and his moral opposition to slavery
appealed to abolitionists. He wasn’t associated with the nativist,
Know-Nothing wing of the party, so he could win immigrant
votes. And he could ensure Illinois’s votes. The Republicans’
platform declared Dred Scott decision invalid, reaffirmed their
opposition to slavery’s expansion, and added economic plans to
appeal to different northern voters—free homesteads in the
West, a protective tariff, and government aid for a building a
transcontinental railroad.
*
Presidential
Election
of 1860
Emergence of LincolnElection of 1860In effect, two presidential
campaigns took place in 1860.
Most striking thing about election returns was their sectional
character.
Without a single vote in ten southern states, Lincoln was elected
nation’s sixteenth president.

In effect, two presidential campaigns occurred in 1860. In the
North, Lincoln faced off against Douglas. In the South, the
Republicans had no support, and three candidates ran against
each other—Douglas, Breckenridge, and John Bell of
Tennessee, the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party,
made of Unionist former Whigs who pledged only to preserve a
Constitution with existing protections for slavery and to prevent
sectionalism.
The election results were highly sectional. Lincoln won all the
North except New Jersey, receiving 54 percent of the North’s
total votes, 40 percent of the national vote, and 180 electoral
college votes, a clear majority. Breckenridge won most of the
slave states, although Bell carried three Upper South states and
about 40 percent of the South’s total votes. Douglas was second
in the popular vote, behind Lincoln, but he was the only
candidate with votes in all parts of the nation. But his failure to
carry either section showed that a devotion to a Union with
slavery was no longer tenable politically. Lincoln was elected
president without a majority of the national popular vote.
*
1860 engraving of mass meeting in Savannah
Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln
The Impending CrisisThe Secession MovementRather than
accept permanent minority status in a nation governed by their

opponents, Deep South political leaders boldly struck for their
region’s independence.
In the months that followed Lincoln’s election, seven states,
stretching from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the
Union.
For many white southerners, Lincoln’s triumph placed their
future in the hands of a party hostile to their region’s values and
interests. Those who wanted the South to secede did not believe
Lincoln would interfere with slavery in the states, but worried
that his election indicated that Republican administrations in
the future might do so. Southerners in the Deep South, fearing
they would become a permanent minority in a nation ruled by
their political enemies, instead decided to secede from the
Union to save slavery, the basis of their society.
*
The Secession CrisisPresident Buchanan denied that a state
could secede but also insisted that federal government had no
right to use force against such a state.
Lincoln rejected the Crittenden Plan for because it allowed for
the expansion of slavery.
In the months after Lincoln’s election, seven states stretching
from South Carolina to Texas seceded from the United States.
These were the states of the Cotton Kingdom, in which slaves
were a much larger part of the population than in the Upper
South. South Carolina, long extreme in its defense of slavery
and states’ rights, seceded first, claiming it was necessary to
defend slavery against Lincoln and the Republicans.
Secessionists equated their actions with those of the American

revolutionaries, as a blow for liberty against tyranny.
President Buchanan did not confront the crisis. He denied that a
state could secede, but he also declared that the federal
government had no right to use force against states that seceded.
Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky, a slave state, offered a
widely supported compromise plan of constitutional
amendments that would protect slavery in the states where it
existed and extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific
Ocean. Seceding southern states rejected it, as did Lincoln.
Lincoln insisted on no further expansion of slavery.
*
The Secession CrisisConfederate States of America was formed
before Lincoln’s inauguration by the seven states that had
seceded.Jefferson Davis as president
And the War CameLincoln issued a veiled warning: “In your
hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war.”
Before Lincoln assumed office on March 4, 1861, seven
seceding southern states formed the Confederate States of
America (CSA), adopted a constitution, and chose as their
president Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. The Confederate
constitution followed the U.S. Constitution, with some
exceptions. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, however, the CSA’s
constitution explicitly guaranteed slave property in its own
states and any new territories it might acquire. Davis’s vice
president stated that the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy was
the “great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man”
and that slavery “is his natural and normal condition.”
Lincoln did not think war was inevitable. When inaugurated,

eight slave states of the Upper South, where slaves and
slaveholders were fewer in number than in the Deep South and
where fewer whites thought Lincoln’s election justified
secession, were still in the Union. Southern whites were divided
over secession. Lincoln believed secession might collapse from
within. In his inaugural address, Lincoln tried to conciliate the
South. He rejected the right of states to secede, but denied any
plan to interfere with slavery in states where it existed.
Although Confederate forces had already seized federal forts
and arsenals in the South, Lincoln promised only to “hold”
remaining federal property in the South. But he suggested that
the southern states risked “civil war.”
*
And the War CameAfter the Confederates began the Civil War
by firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 Lincoln called for
75,000 troops to suppress the insurrection.
Four Upper South states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Virginia) then seceded and joined the Confederacy rather
than aid Lincoln in suppressing the rebellion.
In his first month as president, Lincoln tried to avoid doing
anything to encourage more states to secede, encouraged
southern Unionists to combat secession within the South, and
tried to quiet growing calls in the North for forceful action.
Lincoln hoped to ensure that if war broke out, the South would
initiate it. This happened when Confederate forces in South
Carolina fired on Fort Sumner in Charleston harbor. Lincoln
quickly proclaimed that an insurrection existed in the South and
called for 75,000 troops to suppress it. Within weeks, Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas seceded and joined the
Confederacy. The Union created by the American Revolution
was shattered and the war to rebuild it would introduce a new

birth of American freedom.
*
Bombardment of Fort Sumter
This concludes the lecture presentation for
For more learning resources, head to our StudySpace at:
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Chapter 13: A House Divided, 1840-1861
Foner Ch 13A The 1840s
*
Chapter Focus Questions What was manifest destiny?
What were the major differences between the Oregon, Texas,
and California frontiers?
What were the most important consequences of the Mexican-
American War?

Q: You’ve introduced a comparative dimension to the
discussion of the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and
early 1850s. What important parallels do you see between that
event and the simultaneous discovery of gold in Australia?
A: Of course it was a coincidence that gold was discovered in
both places at the same time; it was not some global
phenomenon. But in fact, these two gold rushes in the 1840s and
the 1950s did play out in interestingly similar ways. The
discovery of gold in California and part of southern Australia,
first of all, led to an immense influx of population into both
places of people seeking to get rich through gold. From all over
the world, from Europe, from Latin America, from Asia, people
streamed into these countries and in both places you developed
this extraordinarily diverse population. San Francisco was
probably the most racially and ethnically diverse city in the
world in 1850, because everyone in the world had poured in
there, and similarly Melbourne, Australia, had an incredibly
diverse population for the same reason. On the other hand, in
both places you got immediate racial tensions, and in the 1850s,
efforts to push Asians, particularly the Chinese, out of the gold
fields. California became very well-known for its anti-Chinese,
anti-Asian policies, banning what they called foreign miners
and things like that. Similarly in Australia you had efforts to
push Chinese miners out of the gold fields. So I think the
experience of Australia can reflect something back on our
understanding of what happened in the United States to show
how similar tensions and developments take place in this very
hothouse atmosphere of everybody seeking to enrich themselves
through gold.
*

Q: What were the views of both southerners and northerners on
the expansion of slavery into the new territories?
A: Southerners felt that slavery had the same right to expand in
the new territory as any other form of property. Nobody was
telling people they couldn't bring their livestock, their bank
notes, their equipment, whatever it was. Any kind of property
could be brought if somebody wanted. They said, Slaves are
property, they aren't any different. The government doesn't have
any rights to distinguish between forms of property. Moreover,
southerners had fought in the American army in Mexico. They
had died to gain this new territory; what right did the
government have to tell them or their relatives that they could
not bring slaves there? Northerners of course said, No, slavery
is different; it's not just another form of property. Many of them
thought slavery was immoral. Many who didn't care about
morality said, Slavery retards economic growth. It restricts wide
immigration. It creates a hierarchical society that is
undemocratic. It stifles education. We don't want this kind of
society spreading out into the new western territories. So over
this question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand,
there was what William Seward, the governor of New York,
would later call an "irrepressible conflict" between the North
and the South.
*
Q: How did economic development in the period solidify the
ties between the Northeast and the old Northwest, and with what
political effect?

A: Until the 1840s, the old Northwest (and here we are talking
about Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and states like that) was
considerably tied to the South economically. They shipped their
agricultural produce down the Ohio River, down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans, and from there to other markets. Many of
the early settlers in the old Northwest came from southern
states, from Virginia, from Kentucky, etc., like Lincoln himself,
who came from Kentucky and then went to Indiana and then to
Illinois. But in the 1850s this was all reoriented; the railroads
were now built connecting large eastern cities like New York
with centers in the West. The railroads pulled the trade of the
Northwest toward the East. No longer were goods being sent
down the Mississippi River; they were being shipped much
more quickly eastward along the great railroads. Moreover, the
population of the old Northwest was changing. Far more
northerners were moving there. New Englanders, people from
New York, and people from Pennsylvania were now moving in,
and fewer southerners. So the complexion of the population and
the political complexion of the Northwest was changing
radically and becoming much more like the East and much less
like the South.
*
Q: How would you characterize Lincoln's views on slavery and
race at the time he took office as president?
A: Abraham Lincoln once said, "I think I have hated slavery as
much as any abolitionist." Lincoln despised slavery, there's no
question about that, but Lincoln was not an abolitionist.
Abolitionists were willing to see the country broken up, the
Constitution violated in order to attack slavery. Lincoln had too
much reverence for the law, reverence for the Constitution. He

was willing to compromise with the South. He said we must
respect the constitutional arrangements. He said if the
Constitution says they must get their fugitive slaves back, we
must do that. Lincoln identified the westward expansion of
slavery as the key issue. Abolitionists said, No, abolition is the
issue. Lincoln said, No, the issue is whether slavery is allowed
to expand to the West. Lincoln's racial views were typical of the
time. He did not favor equal rights for the blacks in Illinois, he
did not favor black suffrage, and he did not favor black and
white intermarriage. On the other hand, he always said, blacks
may not be equal of rights but they are entitled to the
unalienable rights identified by Jefferson in the Declaration of
Independence: life, liberty (which is why slavery was wrong),
and the pursuit of happiness. They have to have the right to
compete in the marketplace, enjoy the fruits of their labor just
like anyone else. So Lincoln was a creature of his time; he
shared many of its prejudices, but what's interesting about
Lincoln is, he wasn't an abolitionist. His views on slavery and
race were such that it was his election that led the South to fear
that slavery was in danger and leave the Union.
*
The original and final designs for Thomas Crawford’s
Statue of Freedom Jefferson Davis, Sec of War, had liberty cap
changed.
The Fur TradeGreatest spur to exploration in North America
Not until 1820s could American companies challenge the
British. Trappers known as mountain men:accommodated
themselves to local Indians,rarely came in contact with whites
and,might be viewed as advance guard of market revolution.

The Fur Trade (cont'd)By the 1840s, however, the beaver was
virtually trapped out.
Government-Sponsored Exploration Federal government
promoted western expansion by sending out exploratory &
scientific expeditions that mapped the West and brought back
artists’ re-creations.
Easterners avidly followed the explorations and the books and
maps they published, fueling national pride and expansionism.
1854
Indian Territory before the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
1854
Indian Territory lay west of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa and
east of Mexican Territory. Most of the Indian peoples who lived
there in the 1830s and the 1840s had been “removed” from east
of the Mississippi River. The southern part (now Oklahoma)
was inhabited by peoples from the Old Southwest: the
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
North of that in what is now Kansas and Nebraska lived peoples
who had been removed from the Old Northwest. All these
Indian peoples had trouble adjusting not only to a new climate
and a new way of life but also to the close proximity of some
Indian tribes who were their traditional enemies.
*

Expansion and Indian Policy Government policy West as a
refuge for removed eastern Indians
Encroachment on new Indian territory
Further land concessions from western tribes, though tribes in
Oklahoma held on to their lands until after Civil War
Expansion and Indian PolicyThe major battles between whites
and Indians in the West occurred after Civil War.
Manifest Destiny,
an Expansionist Ideology 1845: journalist John O’Sullivan
“manifest destiny”—Americans had a God-given right to spread
across the continent and conquer.
Manifest Destiny, an Expansionist IdeologyDemocrats saw
expansion as cure for national ills by providing new
opportunities in West.
Whigs feared expansion would bring up slavery issue.
The Overland TrailsThe great trails started at the Missouri
River.The Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails followed the
Platte River into Wyoming.
The 2,000-mile Overland Trail was a long, expensive, and
hazardous journey.

Pioneers traveled in groups and often hired a pilot who knew
the terrain.
OregonThe mid-1840s “Oregon Fever”—promise of free land.
1846: Canadian border redrawn to current location
MAP 14.3 The Overland Trails, 1840
MAP 14.3 The Overland Trails, 1840
All the great trails west started at the Missouri River. The
Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails followed the Platte
River into Wyoming, crossed South Pass, and divided in
western Wyoming. The much harsher Santa Fé Trail stretched
900 miles southwest across the Great Plains. All of the trails
crossed Indian Territory and, to greater or lesser extent,
Mexican possessions as well.
*
Fruits of Manifest DestinyContinental Expansion1840s - slavery
moved to center stage of American politics because of territorial
expansion.
Mexico won its independence from Spain
in 1821.The northern frontier of Mexico was California, New
Mexico, and Texas.
Slavery moved to the center of national politics in the 1840s

because of territorial expansion. By the 1840s, nearly all land
east of the Mississippi was in white hands, and economic crisis
pushed many settlers west. Several thousand traveled nearly
2,000 miles to Oregon in the far northwest. During the 1840s,
the United States and Great Britain jointly administered Oregon.
Nearby Utah was part of Mexico. But national boundaries
mattered little to Americans who settled these regions. The idea
that Americans had a divine mission to settle the continent,
known by the end of the 1840s as “manifest destiny,”
intensified in these years.
America’s acquisition of part of Mexico directly raised the issue
of slavery. When Mexico achieved independence from Spain in
1821, it was almost as large as the United States in territory and
population.
*
The Santa Fé Trade After independence, Mexico welcomed
American trade along Santa Fé Trail.
American trappers and traders assimilated into local
population.Society of mixed race and culture was typical of
early frontier.Profits were high.
A watercolor of a scene on a ranch near Monterey
Map 13.1 The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s

Texas: From Mexican
Province to U.S. State
MAP 14.4 Texas: From Mexican Province to U.S. State
In the space of twenty years, Texas changed shape three times.
Initially part of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Tejas, it
became the Republic of Texas in 1836, following the Texas
Revolt, and was annexed to the United States in that form in
1845. Finally, in the Compromise of 1850 following the
Mexican-American War, it took its present shape.
*
Mexican TexasIn Texas, multiethnic settlements revolved
around the presidio, mission, and rancho.
Vaqueros, often mixed-race mestizos, were model for American
“cowboy.”
Mexican authorities sought American settlement as way of
providing buffer between its heartland and the Comanche.
Americans in TexasStarting in 1821, Mexico granted land to
American settlers.Stephen F. Austin promoted American
emigration.
Generally, slaveholders came to grow cotton in their self-
contained enclaves.
Americans viewed Texas as extension of Mississippi and
Louisiana.

Americans in Texas (cont’d)For brief period Texas was big
enough to hold Comanche, Mexican, and American
communities:
Mexicans maintained ranches and missions in the
South.Americans farmed eastern and south central
sections.Comanche held their hunting grounds on the frontier.
Commanche Village Life
Painted by George Catlin in about 1834, this scene, Commanche
Village Life, shows how the everyday life of the Comanches
was tied to buffalo. The women in the foreground are scraping
buffalo hide, and buffalo meat can be seen drying on racks. The
men and boys may be planning their next buffalo hunt.
*
Mexican Frontier:
New Mexico & CaliforniaIndians vastly outnumbered non-
Indians in California in 1821.
The Texas RevoltFirst part of Mexico to be settled by
significant numbers of Americans was Texas.Moses Austin
But Mexico’s northern provinces of California, New Mexico,
and Texas were remote, sparsely populated, and bordered by
Indian country. In New Mexico and California, a minority of
Mexican landowners and church officials lived among larger
Indian populations, sometimes compelling them to work. By the
1840s, California was linked to the United States by American

ships that traded in the region.
Texas was the first region of northern Mexico to be settled by
significant numbers of Americans. The Mexican government,
hoping to develop the area, accepted an offer by Moses Austin
to colonize the area with Americans. He received a large land
grant in 1820 which his son, Stephen Austin, sold to American
settlers.
*
Texans and Tejanos
Alliance between Americans and Tejanos
Tejano elite welcomed U.S. entrepreneurs and shared power
with them.
The Mexican state was unstable and the conservative centralists
decided Americans had too much power and tried to crack down
on local autonomy.
The Texas RevoltAlarmed that its grip on the area was
weakening, in 1830 the Mexican government annulled existing
land contracts and barred future emigration from the United
States.
Stephen Austin led call from American settlers demanding
greater autonomy within Mexico.
General Santa Anna sent an army in 1835 to impose central
authority.
By 1830, when Americans outnumbered the Tejanos, the
Mexican and Indian peoples of the area, Mexico annulled
existing land contracts and prohibited future American
immigration to Texas. Led by Stephen Austin, American settlers

demanded autonomy within Mexico. Slavery exacerbated
tensions. Mexico had abolished slavery, but in Texas local
authorities had allowed American settlers to bring slaves with
them.
Mexico’s ruler, General Antonio de Lopez Santa Ana, sent an
army in 1835 to impose the central government’s authority on
the region, causing rebels there to form a provisional
government and call for Texan independence.
*
Texans and TejanosTejanos played key roles in the Texas
Revolution, though once independence was secured they were
excluded from positions of power.
Frontier pattern of dealing with native people was:first,
blending with themsecond, occupying the landthird, excluding
or removing native settlers.
The Texas RevoltRebels formed a provisional government that
soon called for Texan independence.
Texas desired annexation by the United States, but neither
Jackson nor Van Buren took action because of political
concerns about adding another slave state.
In March 1836, Santa Ana’s army stormed the Alamo in San
Antonio and killed all its defenders. But soon forces under Sam
Houston routed Santa Ana’s army and forced him to recognize
Texan independence. In 1837, the Texas government called for
the U.S. to annex the territory, but President Andrew Jackson
and Martin Van Buren rejected the offer, fearing addition of a
slave state would spark sectional conflict.

*
Americans in Texas (cont’d)War broke out in 1835. The
Mexican army overwhelmed Americans at the Alamo.
At San Jacinto River, Sam Houston’s victory led to a treaty
granting independence to Republic of Texas and fixing southern
boundary at the Rio Grande.
Americans in Texas (cont’d)BUT the Mexican Congress refused
to ratify the treaty and continued to claim Texas.
Republic of TexasThe Texas Republic developed after the
United States rejected admission for fear of rekindling slave
state/free state conflicts.
Within the republic, conflicts between Anglos and Tejanos grew
as Americans assumed themselves to be racially and culturally
superior.
Election of 1844
James Polk, a Tennessee slaveholder and friend of Jackson,
received the Democratic nomination instead of Van Buren.
Supported Texas annexationSupported “reoccupation” of all of
Oregon
Clay received the Whig nomination, but at the Democratic
convention southerners bent on annexation dumped Van Buren

for James K. Polk, a former Tennessee governor and ardent
annexationist. Polk was a slave holder. The Democrats’
platform called for the “reannexation” of Texas, which wrongly
implied that Texas had been part of the Louisiana Purchase, and
the reoccupation of Oregon.
Polk narrowly defeated Clay in the election. If Liberty Party
candidate James G. Birney had not received 16,000 votes in
New York, Clay would have been elected. In March 1845, right
after Polk’s inauguration, Congress annexed Texas.
*
Polk Elected 1844President Tyler raised issue of annexation in
early 1844 with hopes of re-election—debate over the
ramifications of annexation ensued.
Polk won 1844 election after calling for “the re-occupation of
Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest
practicable period.”
1844 Election1844 election was widely interpreted as a mandate
for expansion.
Texas became a state in 1845, becoming twenty-eighth state of
the Union and fifteenth slave state.
The plaza in San Antonio not long after the
United States annexed Texas in 1845

The Road to WarPolk had four clearly defined goals:Reduce the
tariffReestablish the Independent Treasury systemSettle the
Oregon disputeBring California into the Union
Polk initiated war with Mexico to get California.
Polk had four goals: reduce the tariff, reestablish the
Independent Treasury, settle the Oregon dispute, and bring
California into the United States. Congress enacted the first two
goals, and the third was secured through an agreement with
Britain dividing up Oregon. Polk offered to buy California from
Mexico, but Mexico refused to negotiate. By early 1846, Polk
planned for war. In April, U.S. soldiers sent into the disputed
area between Texas and Mexico inevitably came to blows with
Mexican troops. Polk claimed that Mexicans had shed blood on
American soil, and he called for a declaration of war.
*
The Mexican-American War
Origins of the WarJames K. Polk was committed to expanding
U.S. territory.
He peacefully settled the Oregon controversy.
Increasing tensions with Mexico led that nation to break
diplomatic relations with the United States.
Origins of the War (cont'd)Polk wanted to extend U.S. territory
to the Pacific and encouraged takeover of California.
A border dispute led Polk to order troops to defend Texas.

Mr. Polk’s WarThe dispute with Mexico erupted into war after
that nation refused to receive Polk’s envoy and a brief skirmish
occurred on Texas-Mexico border.
The war was politically divisive, particularly among opponents
of slavery and northerners.
Mass and individual protests occurred.
MAP 14.5 The Mexican-American War, 1846–48
MAP 14.5 The Mexican-American War, 1846–48
The Mexican-American War began with an advance by U.S.
forces into the disputed area between the Nueces River and the
Rio Grande in Texas. The war’s major battles were fought by
General Zachary Taylor in northern Mexico and General
Winfield Scott in Veracruz and Mexico City. Meanwhile
Colonel Stephen Kearny secured New Mexico and, with the help
of the U.S. Navy and John C. Frémont’s troops, California.
*
Map 13.2 The Mexican War, 1846–1848
General Winfield Scott’s amphibious attack on the Mexican
coastal city of Veracruz in March 1847

General Winfield Scott’s amphibious attack on the Mexican
coastal city of Veracruz in March 1847 was greeted with wide
popular acclaim in the United States. It was the first successful
amphibious attack in U.S. military history. Popular interest in
the battles of the Mexican-American War was fed by
illustrations such as this in newspapers and magazines.
*
Mr. Polk’s War (cont’d)Polk planned the war strategy, sending
troops into northern provinces of Mexico, conquering New
Mexico and California. Victories in Mexico came hard.Fierce
Mexican resistance was met by American brutality against
Mexican citizens. When General Scott captured Mexico City,
war ended.
Mr. Polk’s War (cont'd)Polk had ambitions of taking more
territory, but strong opposition made him accept the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo.
MAP 14.6 Territory Added, 1845–53
MAP 14.6 Territory Added, 1845–53
James K. Polk was elected president in 1844 on an expansionist
platform. He lived up to most of his campaign rhetoric by
gaining the Oregon Country (to the 49th parallel) peacefully
from the British, Texas by the presidential action of his

predecessor John Tyler, and present-day California, Arizona,
Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and part of Colorado by war with
Mexico. In the short space of three years, the size of the United
States grew by 70 percent. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase added
another 30,000 square miles.
*
The Press and Popular War Enthusiasm Mexican-American War
was first conflict featuring regular, on-the-scene reporting made
possible by the telegraph.
War reports united Americans into a temporary, emotional
community.
Popular war heroes like Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott later
became presidential candidates.
War News from Mexico
Are you surprised at the extent of political commentary in this
painting? Are paintings an appropriate media for political
opinion?
War News from Mexico
SOURCE: Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico,
Oil on canvas. Manovgian Foundation on loan to the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. © Board of Trustees, National
Gallery of Art, Washington.
*
The War and Its CriticsAlthough majority of Americans

supported the war, vocal minority feared the only aim of war
was to acquire new land for expansion of slavery.
Henry David Thoreau wrote “On Civil Disobedience.”
Abraham Lincoln questioned Polk’s right to declare war.
The Mexican War was the first American war fought largely on
foreign soil, and most Americans, believing America was a
selfless guardian of freedom, supported the war. But a large
minority of northerners opposed it, believing that the Polk
administration hoped to secure new lands for slavery and slave
states. Henry David Thoreau was jailed in Massachusetts for
refusing to pay taxes, and he wrote an essay, “On Civil
Disobedience,” defending his actions, which later inspired
Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Abraham Lincoln, a Whig
representative from Illinois, also opposed the war.
*
Combat in MexicoCombat took place on three fronts:California
and the “bear flag republic”General Stephen Kearney and Santa
FeWinfield Scott and central Mexico
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848
In June 1846, American rebels in California declared
independence from Mexico, and American troops soon occupied
that region. American forces secured New Mexico at the same
time. Most of the fighting occurred in central Mexico. In early
1847, after defeating Santa Ana’s army at Buena Vista, and
following Mexico’s refusal to negotiate, American forces
marched to and captured the capital, Mexico City. In February,
1848, the two governments agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, which confirmed the annexation of Texas and ceded
California and present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and

Utah to the United States. The United States paid Mexico $15
million for the land. This established the nation’s present
territorial boundaries, except for the Gadsden Purchase, bought
from Mexico in 1852, and Alaska, purchased from Russia in
1867.
*
Race and Manifest DestinyA region that for centuries had been
united was suddenly split in two, dividing families and severing
trade routes.
“Male citizens” were guaranteed American rights.Indians were
described as “savage tribes.”
Territorial expansion gave a new stridency to ideas about racial
superiority.
America’s absorption of one-third of Mexico’s total territory
split in two a region that had been united for centuries, and
incorporated into the nation nearly 100,000 Spanish-speaking
Mexicans and even more Indians. The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo guaranteed male citizens their liberty, property, and all
the rights of American citizens, while regarding Indians only as
“savage tribes.” Manifest destiny invigorated American notions
of white racial supremacy. In the 1840s, territorial expansion
began to be seen as showing the inherent superiority of the
“Anglo-Saxon race,” a mythical identity defined by its
opposites: blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Catholics.
Nineteenth-century concepts of race drew together ideas about
color, culture, national origin, class, and religion. American
writers linked American freedom and the allegedly natural
freedom-loving characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Protestants. For
many Americans, Texas’s annexation and the conquest of
Mexico were victories of civilization, progress, and liberty over
the Catholic Church’s tyranny and the natural incapacity of

“mongrel races.” Some opposed expansion because they feared
the nation could not assimilate the large non-white Catholic
population, whom they believed unfit for citizenship in a
republic.
*
Redefining RaceMexico had abolished slavery and declared
persons of Spanish, Indian, and African origin equal before the
law.
Texas constitution adopted after independence not only included
protections for slavery but denied civil rights to Indians and
persons of African origin.
American racial relations harmed many in the new American
territories. While Mexico had abolished slavery, Texas gave it
constitutional protections and denied civil rights to Indians and
blacks. In Texas, only whites could buy land, and free blacks
were barred from entering the state. Residents of Indian and
Mexican origin in New Mexico were held to be “too Mexican”
to be allowed democratic self-government; the territory was not
allowed to become a state until it had enough whites, in 1912.
*
Gold-Rush CaliforniaCalifornia’s gold-rush population was
incredibly diverse.
Explosive population growth and fierce competition for gold
worsened conflicts among California’s many racial and ethnic
groups.

California had few non-Indians and Americans in the 1840s
until 1848, when gold was discovered in the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains. A gold craze spread throughout the
world, and tens of thousands of migrants swarmed to California
by sea and land. By 1860, California’s non-Indian population
had risen to 360,000. The gold-rush population was very
diverse, with migrants coming from Mexico, South America,
Europe, Australia, and Asia, including 25,000 Chinese who
signed long-term labor contracts and were hired out to mining,
railroad, and other employers. San Francisco became a
boomtown and one of the world’s most racially and ethnically
diverse cities.
The transition from surface mining to underground mining
required large capital investments and exacerbated conflicts
between diverse California gold-hunting groups. Occasionally
vigilantes seized San Francisco, established courts, and
executed accused criminals. White miners organized extralegal
groups that expelled “foreign miners,” such as Mexicans,
Chileans, Chinese, French, and American Indians.
*
Map 13.4 Continental Expansion through 1853
Russian-Californio TradeIn 1841 Russia gave up Ft. Ross and
abandoned the California trade.
Fruits of Manifest DestinyCalifornia and the Boundaries of
FreedomThe boundaries of freedom in California were tightly

drawn.
Indians, Asians, and blacks were all prohibited basic rights.
Thousands of Indian children, declared orphans, were bought
and sold as slaves.
While California long symbolized opportunity, for many the
state restricted freedoms. The state constitution limited rights to
vote and testify in court to whites. The Indian population was
devastated by the miners, ranchers, and vigilantes of the gold
rush era, and the state government paid bounties to private
militias to attack the natives. Although California was a free
state, thousands of Indian children were bought and sold into
slavery. A simultaneous gold rush occurred in Australia in the
1850s, bringing many of the same dynamics, and Australian
whites even modeled their racial policies on those of California.
*
Gold!January 1848 discoveryTriggered massive gold rush of
white Americans, Mexicans, Chinese Few miners struck it
richEntry port and supply point, San Francisco grew from
village of 1,000 in 1848 to city of 35,000 in 1850.
Gold! (cont'd)California’s white population grew by nearly
tenfold.
California gained enough residents to become a state in 1850.
FIGURE 14.2 Where the Forty-Niners Came From
Where the Forty-Niners Came From

FIGURE 14.2 Where the Forty-Niners Came From
Americans drawn to the California gold rush of 1849
encountered a more diverse population than most had previously
known. Nearly as novel to them as the 20 percent from foreign
countries was the regional variety from within the United States
itself.
*
Gold! (cont'd)Chinese first came to California in 1849.
They were often forced off their claims.
The Chinese worked as servants and in other menial
occupations.Shunned by whites, Chinese retreated to
“Chinatown” ethnic enclaves, especially in San Francisco.
Chinese first came to California in 1849 attracted by the gold
rush.
Chinese first came to California in 1849 attracted by the gold
rush. Frequently, however, they were forced off their claims by
intolerant whites. Rather than enjoy an equal chance in the
goldfields, they were often forced to work as servants or in
other menial occupations.
*
Mining CampsMining camps were generally miserable, squalid,
temporary communities where racism was widespread.

Most of the miners were young, unmarried, and unsuccessful.
Mining Camps
Much more reliable way to earn wealth was to supply the
miners.
Levi Strauss (Blue jeans, etc., profited from supplying miners
Mining Camps In the quest for gold, California Indians and
Hispanics were shoved aside.
MAP 14.7 California in the Gold Rush
MAP 14.7 California in the Gold Rush
This map shows the major gold camps along the mother lode in
the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Gold
seekers reached the camps by crossing the Sierra Nevada near
Placerville on the Overland Trail or by sea via San Francisco.
The main area of Spanish-Mexican settlement, the coastal
region between Monterey and Los Angeles, was remote from the
goldfields.
SOURCE: From The Historical Atlas of California by Warren
A. Beck and Ynez Hasse. Copyright 1974 University of
Oklahoma Press. Reprinted by permission.
*

A Dose of ArsenicThe Wilmot ProvisoIn 1846 Congressman
David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed a resolution
prohibiting slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico.
In 1848 opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the Free
Soil Party.
The acquisition of the vast Mexico territory raised a fatal issue
that would disrupt America’s political system and drive the
nation to Civil War—whether slavery would expand into the
West. Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that if the United States
took part of Mexico, “it will be as the man who swallows
arsenic . . . Mexico will poison us.” Events proved him right.
Before 1846, the status of slavery throughout the United States
had been settled by state law or the Missouri Compromise. But
the conquest of Mexico reignited the question of slavery’s
expansion. In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot
introduced a bill prohibiting slavery from the territory acquired
from Mexico. Party lines collapsed. Every northerner, Whig and
Democrat, supported the Wilmot Proviso. Almost all
southerners opposed it. The measure passed the House, which
had a northern majority, but stalled in the Senate, which was
evenly split between free and slave states. In 1848, opponents
of slave expansion organized the Free Soil Party and nominated
Martin Van Buren for president. Democrats that year nominated
Lewis Cass, who suggested that settlers in new territories be
allowed to vote on the slavery question (an idea later called
“popular sovereignty”). Van Buren received 14 percent of the
North’s total votes. Whig candidate and Mexican War hero
Zachary Taylor won the presidential election. But the Free Soil
Party made anti-slavery a political force to be reckoned with.
*

The Wilmot ProvisoNorthern Whigs opposed expansion on
antislavery grounds. The Wilmot Proviso caused a controversy
by seeking to ban slavery in the new territories. A bitter debate
on the Proviso raised serious sectional issues and caused the
first breakdown of the national party system.
The Free Soil PartyThe Free Soil position had a popular appeal
in the North because it would limit southern power in the
federal government.
The Free Soil platform of 1848 called for barring slavery from
western territories and for the federal government to provide
homesteads to settlers without cost.
The Free Soil position was far more popular in the North than
abolitionist demands for immediate emancipation and equal
rights for blacks. While Congress had no constitutional power
to abolish slavery within a state, precedents existed for keeping
territories free of slavery, such as the Northwest Ordinance and
the Missouri Compromise. Many in the North long resented
what they saw as southern domination of the federal
government. Preventing the creation of new slave states
appealed to those who wanted policies, such as the tariff and
government aid to internal improvements, which most southern
political leaders opposed.
For many northerners, western territories promised economic
advancement and prosperity. Economic crisis in the 1840s
reinforced the old link between land ownership and economic
freedom. Some in the labor movement saw access to western
land as a means of fighting unemployment and low wages in the
East. If slave plantations took up western lands, free northern
migration would be blocked. “Free soil” had a double meaning.
The Free Soil platform of 1848 called on the federal government

to both bar slavery from western lands and offer free
homesteads to settlers in the new territories. Unlike
abolitionism, “free soil” did not challenge widespread northern
racism.
*
A Dose of ArsenicThe Free Soil AppealMany southerners
considered singling out slavery as the one form of property
barred from the West to be an affront to them and their way of
life.
Admission of new free states would overturn the delicate
political balance between the sections and make the South a
permanent minority.
To many in the white south, barring slavery from the territories
seemed a violation of the equal rights of southerners, some of
whom had fought and died in the Mexican War. They
complained that the federal government had no right to keep
them from bringing one kind of property—their human
property—into the territories. With older slave states suffering
from soil exhaustion, southern leaders believed that slavery
needed to expand to survive. They opposed the admission of
new free states that would overturn the balance between
sections in Congress and make free states a permanent majority.
*
The Politics of Manifest DestinyBetween 1845 and 1848, the
U.S. expanded by 70 percent.
These new territories led directly to sectional debates and
brought slavery to the forefront of national politics.

Campaign poster
In 1848, the Whigs nominated a hero of the Mexican-American
War, General Zachary Taylor, who ran on his military exploits.
In this campaign poster, every letter of Taylor’s name is
decorated with scenes from the recent war, which had seized the
popular imagination in a way no previous conflict had done.
*
The Free-Soil MovementThe growth of the Liberty Party
indicated northern public opinion was shifting toward an
antislavery position. The Free-Soil Party offered a compromise
for northern voters by focusing on stopping the spread of
slavery.
The Free-Soil MovementFree-Soilers appealed to northern
values of freedom and individualism, as well as racism, for they
would ban all African Americans from the new territories.
The Election of 1848 (cont'd)In election of 1848, candidates had
to discuss their views on the slavery expansion.
Taylor won the election.Taylor died in office.

Conclusion
Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1830s-1850s
The national expansion of the 1840s seemed to confirm the
promise of manifest destiny but, as the election of 1848
revealed, also revealed political problems that, unresolved,
would lead to civil war.
Expansion, rather than uniting the nation, nearly destroyed the
one community all Americans shared in the federal Union.
Foner Ch 12
An Age of Reform 1820-1840
Introduction: Abby Kelley
An abolitionist banner
*
Abolitionism was one of many antebellum efforts to reform
American society. Lacking a powerful national government,
Americans’ political and social activities were organized
through tens of thousands of voluntary associations, such as
churches, fraternal orders, and political clubs. Americans
established groups to prevent the making and selling of liquor,
end public entertainments and mail delivery on Sunday, improve
prisons, expand public education, improve working conditions,

and reorganize society on a cooperative rather than competitive
basis.
Most of these groups worked to convert public opinion in their
favor. They lectured, petitioned, and published pamphlets.
Many reformers confronted more than one issue. While some
reform campaigns flourished throughout the nation, others, like
labor reform and abolitionism, never took hold in the South.
Reform was international, and many groups created ties with
reformers in Europe.
Reformers tried a variety of tactics, from “moral suasion” to
using government power to force changes in others’ behavior.
Some reformers withdrew from society altogether and
established their own communities. While never a majority,
reformers significantly influenced American politics and
society.
Q: In what ways did abolitionism lend vision to the anti-slavery
movement? How did the abolitionists expand the idea of
American freedom and American citizenship at the same time?
A: The abolitionists in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s were a very
small number of men and women. They certainly were nowhere
remotely near a majority of northern public opinion.
Nonetheless, they had a powerful enduring impact on ideas of
freedom and citizenship because the abolitionists were the first
organized group to really put forward the idea of equal rights
before the law for all persons regardless of race. That didn't
exist; we take that for granted today, but that didn't exist. There
was no place in the United States at that time where black
people enjoyed equality before the law, not even in

Massachusetts, where they came close. But more to the point,
the abolitionists insisted that African-Americans had to be
recognized as part of the American people, part of the American
nation, citizens to be given the same rights as everybody else.
The slaves should be freed and incorporated into American life.
Now most people at that time when the abolitionist movement
began who were against slavery were colonizationists, like
Jefferson, and like Lincoln for much of his life. They believed
slaves should become free, but they should then be sent out of
the country to Africa, to the Caribbean, to Central America.
They could not conceive of an interracial society of equals. The
abolitionists were the first ones to put forward that ideal as a
goal, freeing the slaves and also incorporating them as equals,
and therefore redefining American liberty so that it could exist
without a racial boundary.
*
Q: What was the significance of the Seneca Falls convention of
1848?
A: Seneca Falls, the 1848 convention in upstate New York, is
remembered as the first time that the right to vote for women
was publicly demanded by a political gathering. People had
talked about the right to vote for women individually before
then, but this was the first organized women's suffrage
gathering and really the beginning, therefore, of a long struggle,
which lasted until 1920, for the right to vote for women. So it
showed how the abolitionist movement was expanding the idea
of freedom for everybody, because most of the women who met
there, and there were some men too, were abolitionists.
Frederick Douglass was there, Elizabeth Stanton was an
abolitionist, Susan Anthony was an abolitionist, but the

prospect or the experience of working in the abolitionist
movement had made them much more conscious of the right that
they also didn't enjoy, and so they extended the abolitionist
vision of equality to themselves and that is what really launched
feminism as an organized movement in the United States.
*
Q: To what degree were the antebellum social reform
movements the expression of a primarily Protestant American
culture?
A: The Protestant Great Awakening, the second Great
Awakening, and the religious revivals of the first part of the
nineteenth century had a tremendous impact on the Reform
movement of that era. Out of the revivals came an impulse to
improve society, to cleanse society of sin, the idea of what they
called "perfectionism"—that both individual persons and society
as a whole could have a new birth and cleanse themselves of
past sins and really operate on a moral basis. Roman Catholics,
of whom there weren't that many at that time but their numbers
were increasing due to immigration from Ireland, didn't hold to
this view at all. They believed that sin was endemic in
American, in human life. Man was born in original sin; the best
you could do was to ameliorate sin. You could assist the poor,
you could make slavery less oppressive, but you couldn't talk
about a society that cleansed itself of sin altogether. So there
was this Protestant ethos in the Reform movements, which was
not surprising in an overwhelmingly Protestant country that was
going through these religious revivals at that very time.
*

Q: What brought slavery to center stage in American politics in
the 1840s and with what effects?
A: Slavery entered the center stage of politics because of
territorial expansion. There had been debates about slavery off
and on in the past. The Missouri debates, the nullification
crisis, had a lot to do with slavery, but then the issue would
fade away. But in the middle 1840s, because of the Mexican
War, because of the acquisition of a large new area of territory
from Mexico, the question immediately arose: Will slavery be
allowed to spread into this new area? This is the area today
consisting of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and
Nevada. There was a big debate, a bitter debate, about whether
this area should be kept for free settlers or slavery should be
allowed to go into it, and that question of course involved not
only the morality of slavery but sectional political power.
Which region will gain more representation in Congress and
votes because of the status of slavery in that area? That
propelled slavery to the center of politics, which it did not leave
until the Civil War.
*
Q: How did the Lincoln administration respond to dissent
during the Civil War, and could you comment specifically on
Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus?
A: Well, as in all other wars, the Lincoln administration
sometimes found civil liberties an inconvenience. Lincoln was
much more careful and cautious about suspending basic civil

liberties than some other wartime presidents have been in our
history. But, nonetheless, there were certainly violations of
civil liberties during the Civil War. Habeas corpus—that is,
basically, the right, if you're arrested, to have a charge lodged
against you and to have a trial—was suspended a number of
times during the war by the Lincoln administration. Suspending
habeas corpus means you can just round people up, put them in
jail, and throw away the key, and that's it. Lincoln did that first
in Maryland right at the beginning of the war, but that was a
military scene. There were riots in Maryland, there were people
blowing up bridges to prevent Union troops from coming
through Maryland, to protect Washington D.C., and Lincoln
ordered the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus along the
railroad line so that people who the military thought were
saboteurs could just be rounded up. Later on, Lincoln will
suspend the writ of habeas corpus throughout the whole North.
Lincoln was cautious, but nonetheless, certainly there were
people arrested who were not a danger to anybody, but who
were critics of the administration; probably the most famous
case was Congressman Clement Valandingham of Ohio, who,
after giving a fiery speech criticizing the Lincoln administration
and the war in 1863, was arrested by General Burnside in Ohio.
Lincoln didn't specifically order his arrest, but he defended it
and justified it. Certain newspapers were suppressed
temporarily in the North—the Chicago Times, for example,
which criticized the administration strongly. Burnside again
suppressed it; Lincoln eventually ordered that the Times be
allowed to resume printing. There were arbitrary arrests in the
North, but it's worth pointing out, of course, that, generally
speaking, the press was free, there was tremendous criticism of
the Lincoln administration all through the war. Lincoln
never considered suspending elections, even in 1864, when at
one point he thought he was really going to lose, he never
thought of canceling the election in order to keep the war going.
There were violations, but what's different between Lincoln and
some of our more recent presidents is that Lincoln discussed

this intelligently and candidly in messages to Congress. He
didn't just say, I have the right to do whatever I feel like
because I'm the president, or because we're at war. He said,
look, here's our dilemma: we have these liberties; on the other
hand, the exercise of some of these liberties is endangering the
whole structure of government. Do we recognize every single
liberty and let the government fall, or do we violate one in order
to save the government? Now, there are different answers to
that question, but Lincoln at least put it out there as a legitimate
point of debate, whereas subsequent or more recent
governments have basically just said, look, we're just going to
arrest people we don't like and that's tough without any
philosophical discussion of what this means in a democracy or
in a system of the rule of law.
*
The Reform ImpulseUtopian CommunitiesAbout 100 reform
communities were established in the decades before the Civil
War.
Nearly all the communities set out to reorganize society on a
cooperative basis, hoping both to restore social harmony to a
world of excessive individualism and to narrow widening gap
between rich and poor.
Socialism and communism entered the language.
About 100 reform communities were established before the
Civil War. These “utopian” communities varied in structure and
motivation. Some were governed by a charismatic leader, others
were democratic. Most were religiously motivated, but some
had secular origins in desires to reverse social and economic
changes unleashed by the market revolution. Nearly all of these
communities sought to make society cooperative, restoring
social harmony in an increasingly individualistic society, and

closing the widening gap between rich and poor. Their efforts to
own productive property communally rather than as private
individuals introduced “socialism” and “communism” into
America’s political language. Most utopian communities also
attempted in some way to transform traditional gender roles and
marriage patterns, insisting that the abolition of private
property must be matched by the abolition of man’s “property”
in women.
*
Rare photograph of an abolitionist meeting in New York State
around 1850
Utopian Communities, Mid 19th Century
The Reform ImpulseThe ShakersThe Shakers were the most
successful of the religious communities and had a significant
impact on the outside world.
Shakers believed men and women were spiritually equal.
They abandoned private property and traditional family life.
The Shakers were the most successful of the religious utopians,
and at their height in the 1840s they had settlements from Maine
to Kentucky totaling 5,000 members. Founded in the late
eighteenth century by Mother Ann Lee, a British emigrant
claiming to be directed by God, the Shakers believed that men
and women were spiritual equals and that their work was
equally important. They eschewed traditional families; men and

women abstained from sex and lived separately in communal
dorms. They were called Shakers for their religious services,
which included frenzied dancing. Though they rejected private
property, the Shakers found economic success by marketing
plant seeds, breeding cattle, and making furniture.
*
An engraving of a Shaker dance
The Mormons’ TrekThe Mormons were founded in the 1820s by
Joseph Smith.
The absolute authority Smith exercised over his followers, the
refusal of the Mormons to separate church and state, and their
practice of polygamy alarmed many neighbors.
Mormons faced persecution in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and
Illinois; Smith was murdered.
Another influential group was the Mormons, the members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Joseph Smith,
claiming to have found ancient tablets, which he transcribed as
the Book of Mormon, founded the church in the late 1820s in
upstate New York. His absolute authority over his followers and
Mormons’ refusal to separate church and state alarmed many, as
did their practice of polygamous marriage, in which one man
could have more than one wife.
*
The Reform ImpulseThe Mormons’ TrekSmith’s successor,

Civil WarPart 1 IntroductionPart 2 First total warPart 3.docx

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