Historical Discussions for the 19th century

Themes:Creating an American Identity

The Role of SlaveryManifest Destiny

The Two party System in PoliticsThe Industrial revolution

TranscendentalismA country Divided

The 19th Century• Political Changes:

– Enormously important political events transformed America throughout the 19th century.

– The election of 1800 resulted in a Constitutional crisis, and other elections were hotly contested and widely considered fraudulent.

– Political conventions began, political parties came and went, and some great men were elected• The Deadlocked Election of 1800• The Corrupt Bargain: The Election of

1824• The Dirtiest Campaign: The Election of

1828• The Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign

of 1840• Lincoln Goes to the White House: The

Election of 1860

• Industrial Revolution and Transportation Milestones:– In 1800, people traveled as they

always had, on foot or on horseback, and ships crossed the oceans powered only by the wind.

– By 1900 steamships circled the globe, locomotives crossed continents, and bridges spanned great rivers

– The Erie Canal– The National Road– Isambard Kingdom Brunel's

Steamships– The Brooklyn Bridge– The Menai Suspension Bridge

The Election of 1800 and the Electoral College

• The election of 1800 was one of the most controversial in American history– Intrigue– Betrayals– A tie in the electoral college. – The fourth presidential election marked a

philosophical change from the rule of the first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams (e.1796), who were Federalists.

– The First Campaign• mostly consisted of writing letters and articles

expressing their intentions– Alexander Hamilton (Federalist) and Aaron Burr

(Anti-Federalist)– dual to the death - on July 11, 1804. Burr shot Hamilton, who died the next day.

– Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr run together- oppose Adams - Democratic-Republican ticket that would oppose the Federalists. • Jefferson and Burr each received 73 electoral

votes– Federalists John Adams and Charles C. Pinckney

• John Adams received 65 votes, Charles C. Pinckney received 64 votes.

• The original wording of the Constitution didn't distinguish between electoral votes for president and vice president - problematic

• In the event of a tie in the electoral college, the Constitution dictated that the election would be decided by the House of Representatives

• Jefferson and Burr, who had been running mates, were now rivals in the election in the House.

• The Federalists, who still controlled the lame duck Congress, threw their support behind Burr in an effort to defeat Jefferson.

• Burr expressed his loyalty to Jefferson, but wanted the win himself -he worked to win the upcoming election in the House of Representatives.

• Alexander Hamilton – hates Burr - considered Jefferson the lesser of 2 evils – endorsed Jefferson to the Federalists

• Thomas Jefferson was declared the winner. Aaron Burr was declared vice president.

• And it is believed that Alexander Hamilton's influence weighed heavily on the eventual outcome.

• The fractious outcome of the 1800 election led to the passage and ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, which changed the way the electoral college functioned.

Marbury V. Madison• Heard before the Supreme Court,

1803• Midnight Appointments of John

Adams• Established the authority of the

high court to invalidate federal laws deemed unconstitutional

• Setting a precedent for Supreme Court action

• William Marbury – justice of the peace Washington DC – appointed by John Adams

• Thomas Jefferson, new president – not happy about these “midnight Appointments’

• Jeffersonian radicalism• Adams’s last stance at Federalism• Secretary of State James Madison• Supreme Court Justice Marshall – long

legacy

• Judicial Review: – https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TVkeRUvX_U

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjyxgU8ovQ

Events of Change• Manifest Destiny:

– The Louisiana Purchase (1803) - purchased unconstitutionally

– Marcus Whitman Crosses the Continent on the Oregon Trail (1843)

– The United States Annexes Texas (1845)– John O’Sullivan Writes about “Manifest destiny”

(1845)– The Mormons Migrate to Utah (1847-1848)– The Compromise of 1850– The Kansas Nebraska Act 1854– Popular Sovereignty– The Civil war 1861

• Industrial Revolution:– Robert Fulton Launches the Clermont (1807)– The Erie Canal (1817)– The Factory System Arrives in new England

(1823)– Cyrus McCormick Invents a reaper; John Deere

Invents a Steel Plow (1834)– Samuel F. B. Morse Invents the Telegraph (1844)

• Establishing the United States: – The War of 1812– Henry Clay Engineers the Missouri Compromise (1820)– James Monroe Announces a New Doctrine – The Monroe Doctrine

(1823)– John Quincy Adams and the election of 1824– Andrew Jackson – “ol’ Hickory” is elected president 1828– The Two party System is Created– Ralph Waldo Emerson Delivers the “American Scholar” Speech

(1837)– The United States Declares War on Mexico (1846)– Female Suffragists Hold a Conference at Seneca Falls (1849)– The First Women's Rights Convention – Worcester,, Ma (1850)– The Compromise of 1850– The Kansas Nebraska Act 1954– The Republican party Founded 1854– The Civil war 1861

• Indian Removal:– Tecumseh is Slain at the Battle of the Thames– Andrew Jackson Defeats the Creek at Horseshoe Bend (1814)– Congress Passes the Indian removal Act (1830)

• Slavery:– Abolitionists establish the “underground Railroad” (1830)– The Nat Turner Rebellion (1831)– Frederick Douglass Publishes his Autobiography (1845)– The Compromise of 1850– Popular Sovereignty– Dred Scott 1857– Civil war 1861

The First American FactoriesSlater Mill, founded in 1793 by Samuel Slater, is now used as a museum dedicated to textile manufacturing.

• The first factory in the United States - during Washington’s presidency;

• 1790, Samuel Slater, a cotton spinner's apprentice who left England the year before with the secrets of textile machinery, built a factory from memory to produce spindles of yarn.

• The factory had 72 spindles, powered by nine children pushing foot treadles, soon replaced by water power.

• Three years later, John and Arthur Shofield, who also came from England, built the first factory to manufacture woolens in Massachusetts.

• By the Civil War there were over two million spindles in over 1200 cotton factories and 1500 woolen factories in the United States.

Frances Cabot Lowell, Nathan Appleton and Patrick Johnson formed the Boston Manufacturing Company

• The Textile Industry• The Corporation

• In 1813, Frances Cabot Lowell, Nathan Appleton and Patrick Johnson formed the Boston Manufacturing Company to build America's first integrated textile factory, that performed every operation necessary to transform cotton lint into finished cloth.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJwOYagvuI

The Missouri Compromise and the Election of 1824

• The Missouri Compromise– Manifest Density– New Territory– Slave or free– Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave

state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states.

– To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state.• defuse the sectional and political rivalries – POPULAR

SOVERIGNITY WILL EMERGE

– It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was negated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

– For his work on the Missouri Compromise, Senator Henry Clay became known as the “Great Pacificator.“

– The extraordinarily bitter debate over Missouri’s application for admission ran from December 1819 to March 1820. • Northerners, led by Senator Rufus King of New York, argued

that Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in a new state. Southerners like Senator William Pinkney of Maryland held that new states had the same freedom of action as the original thirteen and were thus free to choose slavery if they wished.

• After the Senate and the House passed different bills and deadlock threatened, a compromise bill was worked out with the following provisions:– (1) Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine

(formerly part of Massachusetts) as free, and – (2) except for Missouri, slavery was to be excluded

from the Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30′

• The election of 1824 involved three major figures in American history, and was decided in the House of Representatives; it marked the final collapse of the Republican-Federalist political framework.

• For the first time no candidate ran as a Federalist, while five significant candidates competed as Democratic-Republicans.. One man won, one helped him win, and one stormed out of Washington denouncing the entire affair as “the corrupt bargain.”

• Until the disputed election of 2000, the dubious election of 1824 was the most controversial election in American history.

• The Winner is = John Quincy Adams

Finding an American Identity:Manifest Destiny“Self-Reliance”

• The Jacksonian Era was defined by the issues that dominated the political arena.

• With the growing industrialization of the nation, the widening gap between the north and south, and the constant desire to expand westward, America was in a period of significant change.

• Andrew Jackson, as president, was an essential player in navigating these pivotal issues that characterized his America.

• Andrew Jackson - Good Evil & The Presidency - PBS Document– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGfxyeu

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• Andrew Jackson Video– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNzDj-EP

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• The Underground Railroad• http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/routes.htm• An organized system to assist runaway slaves seems to have begun

towards the end of the 18th century – started by the Quakers?

• A vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person.

• It consisted of many individuals -- many whites but predominantly black -- who knew only of the local efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation.

• It effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.

The system grew, and around 1831 it was dubbed "The Underground Railroad," after the then emerging steam railroads.

• The system even used terms used in railroading: the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next.

• Harriet Tubman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdno2YLm4Ms

The Indian Removal Act and the “Trial of Tears”

• Early in the 19th century

• Rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South

• White settlers faced what they considered an obstacle: – the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations.

• These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress.

• Settlers want to grow cotton – and pressured the federal government to acquire Indian territory.

Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal.

• In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation.

• In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama.

• The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson's troops invaded Spanish Florida.

• From 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west - The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons - They wanted to appease the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment.

• As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands.

In 1823 the Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that Indians could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands.

• This was because their "right of occupancy" was subordinate to the United States' "right of discovery.“

• In response to the great threat this posed, the Creeks, Cherokee, and Chicasaw instituted policies of restricting land sales to the government.

•Although the five Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were non-violent. One method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western education, and slave-holding.

• This earned the nations the designation of the "Five Civilized Tribes."

• They adopted this policy of assimilation in an attempt to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. But it only made whites jealous and resentful.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson protests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2VtHtTrkVA

Nat Turner Rebels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ4PrgXd3pg

• Nat Turner was a 30-year-old slave and a preacher who led a rebellion after receiving what he believed to be a sign from God.

• Nat Turner’s Rebellion occurred on August 22, 1831.

• Turner’s Revolt took place in Southampton County, Virginia.

• In the 19th century, Southern slave owners developed an understanding of their “peculiar institution” of slavery as a benevolent system

• This woodcut was published in an 1831 account of the slave uprising.

Ralph Waldo Emerson• Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose original profession and calling

was as a Unitarian minister, left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking.

• Emerson became one of America's best known and best loved 19th century figures

• The Sage of Concord and the intellectual center of the American Renaissance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, as preacher, philosopher, and poet, embodied the finest spirit and highest ideals of his age.

• A thinker of bold originality, his essays and lectures offer models of clarity, style, and thought, which made him a formidable presence in 19th century American life.

• Emerson believed in:– individualism, non-conformity, and the need for

harmony between man and nature. – He was a proponent of abolition, and spoke out about

the cruel treatment of Native Americans. – Influenced by the Eastern philosophy of unity and a

divine whole, emphasizing God Immanent, to be found in everyone and everything, Emerson sowed the seeds of the American Transcendentalist movement.

– He realized the importance of the spiritual inner self over the material external self through studying Kantianism, Confucianism, Neo-Platonism, Romanticism, and dialectical metaphysics and reading the works of Saint Augustine, Sir Francis Bacon, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Shakespeare among many others.

• During his lifetime and since Emerson has had a profound influence on some of the 19th and 20th century's most prominent figures in the arts, religion, education, and politics.

• THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE & TRANSCENDENTALISM :• "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will

speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

• The term Transcendentalism was derived from the philosopher Kant, who called "all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects.“

• The roots of the American philosophy ran deep into German and English Romanticism.

• In his 1841 address delivered at Boston's Masonic Temple , which was later reprinted in THE DIAL, Emerson attempted to define the philosophy in simple terms as "What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842."

• In reality it was far more complex collection of beliefs:– that the spark of divinity lies within man;– that everything in the world is a microcosm of existence;– that the individual soul is identical to the world soul, or Over-Soul, as

Emerson called it.

• This belief in the Inner Light led to an emphasis on the authority of the Self– to Walt Whitman's I ,– to the Emersonian doctrine of Self-Reliance,– to Thoreau's civil disobedience,– and to the Utopian communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands.

• By meditation, by communing with nature, through work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty and goodness and truth.

“The American Scholar”

• Emerson's "The American Scholar"• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBK3oth9QCw• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ9CBgYf3p8

• The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpPT_-2WuhE

• Has come to be regarded, in Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase, as "America's intellectual declaration of independence," almost did not happen.

• Its occasion was the annual Phi Beta Kappa Society lecture at the Harvard College commencement on 31 August 1837, and Emerson was drafted to speak after the society's original choice, an Episcopalian minister named Jonathan Wainwright, declined.

• The society was probably looking for something more conservative and less provocative than what they got from Emerson, for Wainwright's most recent publication was a tract titled Inequality of Individual Wealth he Ordinance of Providence and Essential to Civilization.

• At the least, most of the audience would have expected to hear praise for the venerable traditions of scholarship and learning at Harvard, not to be told that "books are for the scholar's idle times" or that "instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm" (pp. 91, 89).

• Still, there were eager listeners who caught the drift of Emerson's radical notion that the true sources of learning and culture lay within the individual. At their urging he had five hundred copies of his talk printed, at his own expense, rather blandly titled "An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.“

• The little pamphlet sold out within a month. When Emerson reprinted it for the 1849 collection Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, he changed the title to the more familiar and more accurate "The American Scholar.“

• By "scholar,” he means: a person of learning who by his or her writing plays an active and thoughtful role in society.

• And, by extension, he speaks to every reader's intellectual life and the roles we all play or should play as "Man Thinking." The "American" part of the title needs qualification too, for except in the somewhat formulaic beginning and a brief (but important) section at the end, Emerson is more concerned with the universal elements of the scholar's education and duties than with any national or nationalistic aspects of his subject.

The Age of Emerson• Promotion of America:

– Because Emerson eschewed imitation (as noted under Theme), he urged Americans to avoid mimicking art and ideas from abroad. He writes:

– Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant....Why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

• .......Emerson believed every human being has inborn knowledge that enables him to recognize and understand moral truth without benefit of knowledge obtained through the physical senses.– Using this inborn knowledge, a gift of God, an individual can make

a moral decision without relying on information gained through everyday living, education, and experimentation.

– One may liken this inborn knowledge to conscience or intuition.

• .......Emerson and others who believed that this inborn knowledge served as a moral guiding force were known as transcendentalists—that is, they believed that this inner knowledge was a higher, transcendent form of knowledge than that which came through the senses.– Because Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists trusted their

own inner light as a moral guiding force, they were possessed of a fierce spirit of self-reliance.

– They were individualists; they liked to make decisions for themselves.

– If the government adopted a policy or a law that offended their consciences, they generally reacted strongly.

•.......Transcendentalism, as Emerson’s moral philosophy was called, did not originate with him or his fellow transcendentalists in New England but with the German philosopher Emanuel Kant. – He used the German word for transcendental to refer to intuitive

or innate knowledge—knowledge that is a priori rather than a posteriori.

• Creativity "Self-Reliance" is an essay that urges readers to trust their own intuition and common sense rather than automatically following popular opinion and conforming to the will of the majority.

• "Self-Reliance" was published in 1841 in a collection entitled Essays.

• Trust Your Own Inner Voice – Emerson urges his readers to retain the outspokenness of a small child who freely

speaks his mind because he has not yet been corrupted by adults who tell him to do otherwise.

– He also urges readers to avoid envying or imitating others viewed as models of perfection; instead, he says, readers should take pride in their own individuality and never be afraid to express their own original ideas. In addition, he says, they should refuse to conform to the ways of the popular culture and its shallow ideals; rather they should live up to their own ideals, even if doing so reaps them criticism and denunciation.

• Avoid Consistency as an End in Itself – Being consistent is not always wise.– An idea or regimen to which you stubbornly cling can become outmoded

tomorrow– Notable Quotations From "Self-Reliance“:

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. • Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. • What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. • A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little

statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

• Travelling is a fool's paradise. • Insist on yourself; never imitate. • Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. • The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. • An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. • Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. • Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but

the triumph of principles.

Frederick Douglass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su-4JBEIhXY

• Biography:– Born into slavery, February, 1818, in Maryland– Separated from his mother; raised by his grandmother – Around 6 or 7 becomes aware of his slave situation: His grandmother took

him to the plantation of his master and left him there – left a feeling of abandonment and betrayal

– When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld

– Mistress Auld will teach him how to read – this is a transforming event in his life

– At about the age of twelve or thirteen Douglass purchased a copy of The Columbian Orator, a popular schoolbook of the time, which helped him to gain an understanding and appreciation of the power of the spoken and the written word, as two of the most effective means by which to bring about permanent, positive change.

– 1838, at the age of twenty, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery by impersonating a sailor.

– Headed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he and his new wife Anna Murray began to raise a family.

– Abolitionists: 1841, Douglass became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of William Lloyd Garrison -This work led him into public speaking and writing.

– The North Star: He published his own newspaper, The North Star, participated in the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848, and wrote three autobiographies.

– He was internationally recognized as an uncompromising abolitionist, indefatigable worker for justice and equal opportunity, and an unyielding defender of women's rights.

– He became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln, United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C., and Minister-General to the Republic of Haiti.

• Frederick Douglass died late in the afternoon or early evening, of Tuesday, 20 February 1895, at his home in Anacostia, Washington, DC.

Themes in Douglass’ Autobiography• Chapter 1:

– Stress on the natural cycle– Identification– Backs v. whites– Beatings

• Chapter2:– Songs of slaves– mixture of joy and sadness– Oppression

• Chapter 3:– The two Barneys– Chattel– Horses

• Chapter 4:– Interposition of Providence– Christians– Religion

• Chapter 5:– The abortive reading lessons*****– The two faces of his mistress

• Chapter 6:– The child moved from consciousness of his particular

plight to awareness of generalizations – The ability to go beyond himself– The Columbian Orator

• Chapter 7:– Symbol-maker– Isolation of his grandmother

• Chapter 8:– He finds himself at the mercy of a harsh master

• Chapter 9:– Human obligation to God

• Chapter 10:– The narrative changes– Experience w/ 3 different masters– The “magic root”– The Sabbath school– Baltimore

• Chapter 11:– The escape

The Mormons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmoizY2dFE8

• The Latter Day Saint movement– a religious movement within Christianity (But Christians do not consider

it that)that arose during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century and that led to the set of doctrines, practices, and cultures called Mormonism and to the existence of numerous Latter Day Saint churches.

– Its history is characterized by intense controversy and persecution in reaction to some of the movement's doctrines

– began with the influence of Joseph Smith.• The founder of the movement was Joseph Smith, Jr.,

– Upstate New York.– He claimed that, in response to prayer, he saw God the Father and Jesus

Christ, as well as angels and other visions.– This eventually led him to a restoration of Christian doctrine that, he

said, was lost after the early Christian apostles were killed. – In addition, several early leaders made marked doctrinal and leadership

contributions to the movement Brigham Young.

Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALXPUYWFbGI

Female Suffragists Hold a Conference at Seneca Falls

• Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19, 1848, the convention’s main organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared that the time had come for public action, to inaugurate, as she later recalled, “the greatest rebellion the world has ever seen.”

• When the meeting was over, one hundred people had signed Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments—patterned after the Declaration of Independence—which detailed the “injuries and usurpations” that men had inflicted onto women.

• Asserting “that all men and women are created equal” and including resolutions that a man should not withhold a woman’s rights, take her property, or refuse her the vote, the Declaration was, in the words of the prominent African-American anti-slavery activist, Frederick Douglass, “the grand basis for attending the civil, social, political and religious rights of women.”

• In those of historian Judith Wellman, “the fires of women’s discontent had long been smoldering…the Seneca Falls convention fanned them into bright flames.”

The Declaration of Sentiments• http://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html• Documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNOznB9NV-Y• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kax3Aknlio4

• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXdr7q3jVck

Kansas-Nebraska Act

• The Compromise of 1850 into law, another law—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—gripped the legislative body and renewed pressure to resolve permanently the problems regarding slavery.

• Popular Sovereignty – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQJDR_rX30

• Nebraska Bill – In 1854 Stephen Douglas introduced the Nebraska Bill into Congress to organize the

territory from 36° 30’ to the Canadian border. He knew that the bill would not pass without southern support, so he included a provision that allowed the people of the territories to decide by popular sovereignty if slavery would be allowed in their territory or not. Douglas believed he had outmaneuvered the southerners.

– The Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery north of the 36° 30’ line. It would be impossible for slave owners to establish themselves in the new territory before a vote would take place. Citizens in the territory would most likely vote against slavery.

– But the South recognized Douglas’s ploy, and he made two concessions:• The bill included an amendment to repeal the Missouri Compromise.• Nebraska was divided into two territories: Nebraska and Kansas.

• The bill passed without further discussion. But the North was outraged! The Kansas-Nebraska Bill made it possible for slavery to exist in a territory where it had been prohibited for thirty-four years.

• The South heralded the bill as a clear victory for slavery.

• Northerners condemned Stephen Douglas for supporting the bill, and he was accused of putting the benefits of the railroad for Illinois above the need to end slavery.

• Douglas was a prominent Democrat, and the bill split the party and ended its national prominence as Northerners flocked to the Republican Party

The Kansas – Nebraska Act: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIXmvr4kTEM

• http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/kansas.html– Repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery in the territory north

of the 36° 30´ latitude. – Introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, the Kansas-Nebraska

Act stipulated that the issue of slavery would be decided by the residents of each territory, a concept known as popular sovereignty.

– After the bill passed on May 30, 1854, violence erupted in Kansas between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers, a prelude to the Civil War.

• Primary Source: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=010/llsl010.db&recNum=298

• Kansas Entered the Union as a Free State January 29, 1861

The Republican Party

• The Republican party is popularly known as the GOP, from its earlier nickname of the Grand Old Party.

• Its first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, in 1856

• Lincoln/Net, 1818-1861: Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Rise of the Republican Party 1854-1856 : – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_nOjkyzUrA

The Republican party: http://www.socastee.com/politics/history_gop.html

• The Republican party grew out of the conflicts regarding the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories.

• The stimulus for its founding was provided by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

• That law repealed earlier compromises that had excluded slavery from the territories.

• The passage of this act served as the unifying agent for abolitionists and split the Democrats and the Whig party.

• "Anti-Nebraska" protest meetings spread rapidly through the country.

• Two such meetings were held in Ripon, Wis., on Feb. 28 and Mar. 20, 1854, and were attended by a group of abolitionist Free Soilers, Democrats, and Whigs.

• They decided to call themselves Republicans-because they professed to be political descendants of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party.

• The name was formally adopted by a state convention held in Jackson, Mich., on July 6, 1854.

Supreme Court Case: Dred Scott

• http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/supreme-court-rules-in-dred-scott-case

The Civil War Breaks Out • In the spring of 1861, decades of simmering tensions between the northern and

southern United States over issues including states' rights versus federal authority, westward expansion and slavery exploded into the American Civil War (1861-65).

• The election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede from the Union to form the Confederate States of America; four more joined them after the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Four years of brutal conflict were marked by historic battles at Bull Run (Manassas), Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, among others.

• The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, pitted neighbor against neighbor and in some cases, brother against brother.

• By the time it ended in Confederate surrender in 1865, the Civil War proved to be the costliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and the population and territory of the South devastated.

• http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war