The document discusses key events and figures in American history during the 1850s, focusing on the sectional crisis, the abolition movement, and the expansion of the nation. It highlights significant legislative actions such as the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, alongside cultural milestones like Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Additionally, it explores themes of racial ideology, labor, and individual freedom amidst the growing tensions leading to the Civil War.

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American Portraits: Anthony Burns
“A change has taken place in this community within three weeks
such as the 30 preceding years had not produced.”
Edward Everett on the Burns Affair
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2. “We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative,
Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad
Abolitionists.”
Amos Lawrence on the Burns Affair
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HIST 180 Survey of American History
Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
A House Divided: The 1850s
Timeline: A House Divided: The 1850s
Battles at the Boundaries: Women’s Rights and Antislavery
3. Political Portraits: The Sectional Crisis
Luminism, Landscape, and the Sectional Crisis
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3. Timeline: A House Divided: The 1850s
1846 Wilmot Proviso fuses slavery’s expansion with end of war.
California statehood question leads to Compromise of 1850.
Fugitive Slave Law requires federal agents to recover
escapees.
Zachary Taylor dies; Millard Fillmore becomes president.
1851 Herman Melville writes Moby-Dick.
1852 Democrat Franklin Pierce elected president.
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Kansas-Nebraska Act rekindles sectional controversy over
slavery.
Collapse of Whigs; rise of new Republican Party
Bleeding Kansas; John Brown’s raid at Pottawatomie Creek;
Dem. James Buchanan elected president.
Dred Scott decision.
In Kansas, proslavery Lecompton Constitution ratified.
Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois.
John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.
2. Battles at the Boundaries:
Women’s Rights and Antislavery
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4. “You have seen a man become a slave. You shall see a
slave become a man.”
Frederick Douglass, 1845
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Nathaniel Jocelyn, Cinque, 1839.
Oil on canvas. New Haven Colony Historical Society,
Connecticut.
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Former President, now Mass. Congressman John Quincy Adams,
perennial enemy of the “Gag Order.”
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Contemporary wood engraving depicting the mob attack on
Elijah P. Lovejoy and his press.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (title page), 1852.
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Robert S. Duncanson, Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853.
Oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts.
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Baker and Smith after Hammatt Billings, Little Eva (1852)
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Robert S. Duncanson, Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853.

6. Oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts.
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Mathew Brady, Zachary Taylor 1848. Mathew Brady,
Henry Clay, c. 1850.
3. Political Portraits: The Sectional Crisis
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Mathew Brady, Daniel Webster, c. 1850. Mathew Brady, John
C. Calhoun, c. 1848.
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The Compromise of 1850
1. California admitted as free state
2. New Mexico becomes a territory

7. 3. Texas debt paid
4. Utah becomes territory
5. New Fugitive Slave Law
6. DC slave trade abolished
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Mathew Brady, Franklin Pierce, c. 1852. Mathew Brady,
Stephen Douglas, c. 1854.
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The Missouri Compromise, 1820
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Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854: “Popular Sovereignty”

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“We will before six months roll around have the Devil to
play in Kansas and this State [Missouri], we are organizing to
meet their organization, we will be compelled to shoot, burn &
hang, but the thing will soon be over. We intend to ‘Mormanise’
the abolitionists.”
Sen. David R. Atchison of Missouri, 1854
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854: “Popular Sovereignty”
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Unknown, John Brown, 1846. Mathew
Brady, Charles Sumner, c. 1855
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J.L. Magee, Southern Chivalry, 1856. Cartoon.

9. Mathew Brady, James Buchanan, 1856. Mathew Brady,
Roger B. Taney, 1850.
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Abraham Lincoln, 1858
“’A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect
the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It
will become all one thing or all the other.
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Abraham Lincoln, 1858
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that
it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will
push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new – North as well as South.”
Abraham Lincoln
June 16, 1858
Springfield, Illinois

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Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, 1882-84.
Oil on canvas.
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I
now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much
bloodshed it might be done."
John Brown, Dec. 2, 1859
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Fitz Henry Lane, Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penobscot
Bay, 1860.
Oil on canvas.
4. Luminism, Landscape, and the Sectional Crisis
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Fitz Henry Lane, Approaching Storm, Owl’s Head, 1860.

11. Oil on canvas.
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Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness,1860.
Oil on canvas.
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Martin Johnson Heade, Approaching Thunder Storm,1859.
Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Martin Johnson Heade, Thunder Storm on Narragansett
Bay,1868.
Oil on canvas. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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American Portraits: John Wool in Mexico
Unknown, General Wool and Staff, Calle Real to South, 1847.
Daguerreotype.
Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
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HIST 180 Survey of American History
Unknown, General Wool and Staff, Calle Real to South, 1847.

13. Daguerreotype.
Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
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The Nation Expands: The 1840s
Timeline: The Nation Expands: The 1840s
The New Racial Ideology and Expansion
3. Labor and Freedom in the Early Republic
4. Defending Free Labor
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Timeline: The Nation Expands: The 1840s
1840 Whig William Henry Harrison elected president.
1841 John Tyler becomes president on death of Harrison.
1843 First caravans to Oregon.
Congress rejects Calhoun’s Texas annexation treaty.
Democrat James K. Polk elected president.
Texas enters Union as a slave state. Calhoun
Negotiations to annex New Mexico and California are
unsuccessful.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass published.
War with Mexico begins.
Gen. Zachary Taylor invades Mexico from north.
Treaty with Britain divides Oregon Country along 49th
parallel.

14. 1847 Gen. Winfield Scott captures Mexico City.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends war with Mexico.
Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights held.
Zachary Taylor elected president.
1849 California gold rush. Taylor
2. The New Racial Ideology and Expansion
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The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia
Minstrels, 1843.
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Asher B. Durand, Progress, 1855.
Oil on canvas. The Warner Collection.
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15. Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863.
Oil on canvas.
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Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848.
Oil on canvas.
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Richard Caton Woodville, Old ‘76 and Young ‘48, 1849.
Oil on canvas. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore
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Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851.

16. Oil on canvas.
Emanuel Leutze, Storming of the Teocalli by Cortez and His
Troops, 1848.
Oil on canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its
Way, 1860.
Oil on canvas.
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John Gast, American Progress, 1872.
Oil on canvas. Autry National Center, Los Angeles.
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Elements of 19th Century Expansion:

17. 1. European Americans needed to take the land of Indians
2. They needed to exploit the cheap labor of minorities—
enslaved if they were black—and that system will drive
expansion
3. They needed to annex Mexican land (nonwhite) to make the
physical expansion possible
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Jose Rafael Aragón, San Acacio and San Isidro Labrador, early
nineteenth century.
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Jose Rafael Aragón, Crucifix, early nineteenth century.
Pine, leather, gesso, paints.
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18. 3. Labor and Freedom in the Early Republic
“Freedom is a state of exemption from the power and control of
another.”
Noah Webster
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What was wage slavery?
1. Low Wages
2. Factory Work Rules
3. Union Busting
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G.P.A. Healy, Orestes Brownson, 1863.
Oil on canvas.

19. “[Wages are] a cunning device of the devil for the benefit of
tender consciences who would retain all the advantages of the
slave system without the expense, trouble, and odium of being
slaveholders.”
Orestes Brownson, The Laboring Classes, 1840.
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Robert Owen and his plan for New Harmony, Indiana
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Shaker chair and boxes, mid-19th century.
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"In all social systems one class must do the menial duties. The
Negroes are a mudsill race adapted to the purpose.”
James Henry Hammond, 1858.

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4. Defending Free Labor
David Wilmot, D-Pennsylvania
Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its
Way, 1861-62.
Mural.
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“In America, there aren’t any masters, here everyone is a free
agent, if you don’t like one place you can go to another for
we’re all equal here.”
German miner, California, 1849.

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