chapter 13 study guide

Lucero Castaneda AP US History Ms.Lampley

Chapter 13: Expansion, War, & Sectional Crisis, 1844-1860

I. Manifest Destiny: South And North

A. The Push To The Pacific1. Oregon2. California

B. The Plains IndiansC. The Fateful Election Of 1844

II. War, Expansion, & Slavery, 1846-1850A. The War With Mexico, 1846-1848

1. Polk’s Expansionist Program2. American Military Successes

B. A Divisive Victory1. The Wilmot Provision2. Free Soil3. The Election Of 1848

C. California Gold And Racial Welfare1. The Forty-Niners2. Racial Welfare And Land Rights

D. 1850: Crisis And Compromise1. Constitutional Conflict 2. A Complex Compromise

III. The End Of The Second Party System 1850-1858A. Resistance To The Fugitive Slave ActB. The Political System In DeclineC. The Kansas-Nebraska Act And The Rise Of New Parties

1. The American And Republican Parties2. Bleeding Kansas

D. Buchanan’s Failed Presidency1. The Election Of 18562. Dred Scott: Petitioner For Freedom

IV. Abraham Lincoln And The Republican Triumph, 1858-1860A. Lincoln’s Political Career

1. An Ambitious Politician 2. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

B. The Union Under Siege1. The Rise Of Radicalism2. The Election Of 1860

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I. Manifest Destiny: South And North

A. The Push To The Pacific

In 1845 John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny & felt that Americans had a right to develop the entire continent as they saw fit, which implied a sense of cultural & racial superiority. There was an ambition to spread everywhere & develop the economy for success.

1. Oregona) The Oregon country stretched along the Pacific coast from the border with Mexican-

Californian to the border with Russian Alaska & was claimed by both Great Britain & the United States.

b) Many people wanted Oregon because of the fertile valleys of the Oregon country. “Oregon Fever” was in 1843 as thousands, attracted by reports of fine ports, mild climate, & fertile soil, traveled for months across the continent to the Willamette Valley.

c) By 1860 about 350,000 Americans were in the Oregon Trail, however many died on the way from disease & exposure, although quite few died from Indian attacks.

d) Some pioneers left the Oregon Trail & traveled south along the California Trail, settling along the Sacramento River in the Mexican province of California.

2. Californiaa) To help California’s development, the Mexican government took over the California

missions & freed the 20,000 Indians who worked on them, many of which intermarried with mestizos & worked as laborers & cowboys on large cattle ranches.

b) The rise of cattle ranching created a new society & economy as agents from New England firms integrated to Mexican life & married into the families.

c) Many American migrants in California had no desire to integrate into Mexican society & hoped for eventual capture to the United States. However, at that time American settlers in California were too few.

d) Thomas Oliver Larkin: a successful merchant in the coastal town of Monterrey. Larkin worked closely with Mexican ranchers, but her remained American in outlook & eventually fostered California’s capture to the US. He didn’t want to adapt into Mexican society, just like the American migrants in the Sacramento River Valley.

B. The Plains Indians

a) A large amount of grass was in North from Texas to Saskatchewan in Canada, & West from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.

b) A line of military forts that was stretching from Fort Jesup in Louisiana to Fort Snelling in Minnesota policed the boundary between white American & what Congress in 1854 designated as Permanent Indian Territory.

c) There were social changes, not just upper classes people, but also in the Indian tribes & population.

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d) A devastating smallpox epidemic spread Northward from New Spain in 1779-1781, taking the lives of half of the Plains Indians .After many years, the smallpox outbreak left deserted villages along the Missouri River. Smallpox struck the Northern plains again from 1837 to 1840, killing half of the Assiniboines & Blackfeet & nearly a third of the Crows & Pawnees.

e) Buffalo was what most of the people ate & used as clothes in the 19th century.

C. The Fateful Election Of 1844

a) The election of 1844 determined the American government’s Western policy. To prevent rumored British schemes of North American expansion, Southern expansionists demanded the instant seizure of Texas.

b) “Oregon fever” & Manifest Destiny were also altering the political & diplomatic land in the North. Replying to “Oregon Conventions” that called for an end to combined work of the region, in 1843 a Two-Party national convention demanded that the United States had to take hold of Oregon all the way to 54°40' North latitude. Texas & Oregon became the central issues in the election of 1844. Then, Democrats selected James K. Polk, a slave owner & expansionist who favored annexation of both Texas & Oregon. Polk’s strategy of linking the issues of Texas & Oregon was successful; immediately after Polk’s victory, Democrats in Congress approved annexation of Texas by a joint resolution to bring it into the Union.

c) The Southern had the support of President John Tyler, a proslavery zealot & disliked by the Whig party because he didn’t agree to Henry Clay’s nationalist economic program. He hoped to win reelection in1844 as a Democrat & proposed to seize all of Oregon. In April 1844, Tyler & John C. Calhoun sent the Senate a treaty to bring Texas into the Union, but the two major presidential hopefuls, Democrats Martin Van Buren & Whig Henry clay, opposed his initiative & persuaded the Senate to reject the treaty.

d) The Whigs nominated Henry Clay, who again defended his American System of internal developments, high tariffs, & national banking.

II. War, Expansion, & Slavery, 1846-1850

A. The War With Mexico, 1846-1848

1. Polk’s Expansionist Programa) President Polk saw Texas as just the start & Sought American control over all Mexican

territory between Texas & the Pacific Ocean & was ready to go to war to get it. However, Mexico wanted to keep its territories, & when the Texas Republic accepted American state in 1845, Mexico broke off political associations with the U.S.

b) To threaten the Mexican government, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy the doubtful lands between the Nueces River & the Rio Grande. Polk also sent John Slidell to Mexico City on a secret political initiative to secure Mexican approval of the Rio Grande border & to buy Mexico & California, but the Mexican officials refused.

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c) Polk’s alternative plan was to foment a revolution in California that & Texas, would lead to an independent republic & a request for a takeover.

d) In October 1845, at Polk’s request, Thomas O. Larkin helped the important Mexican residents of Monterey, California, to declare freedom & support peaceful takeover. Polk also ordered marine leaders to seize California’s coastal towns in case of war, & posted Captain John C. Frémont’s armed troops deep into Mexican territory. Hoping to provoke an armed Mexican response, Polk ordered General Taylor to the Rio Grande & when a fight arose, Polk blamed the Mexicans for the violence & called for war.

2. American Military Successesa) Ignoring Whig appeals for a sold settlement, the Democratic majority in Congress

voted for war with Mexico. But to avoid immediate war with Britain, the president accepted a British proposal to divide the Oregon Country at the Forty-Ninth parallel.

b) By the end of 1846, the United States controlled much of Northeastern Mexico, & American forces protected control of California in 1847.

c) Santa Anna went violent, attacking Zachary Taylor’s units at Buena Vista in 1847, & only larger weaponry allowed a small American victory.

d) General Winfield Scott’s troops seized Mexico City in September 1847 & Santa Anna was conquered & the new Mexican government decided to make peace.

B. A Divisive Victory

1. The Wilmot Provisiona) “Conscience Whigs” viewed the Mexican War as a scheme to add new slave states in

the West, & Polk’s colonialist policy split the Democrats into functional groups.

b) The Wilmot Proviso in 1846 was intended to prohibit slavery in any new territories acquired from Mexico, but the Senate stopped the proviso.

c) To reunite Democrats before the election, Polk & Buchanan ended their expansionist hopes for Mexico & agreed to take only California & New Mexico.

d) In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 the United States agreed to pay Mexico $15 million for Texas, North of the Rio Grande, New Mexico, & California.

2. Free Soila) Many northerners joined a new “Free-Soil” movement, viewing slavery as a threat to

republicanism & the Yeoman Farmers.

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b) The Wilmot Proviso’s call for Free-Soil was the first Antislavery proposal to attract broad popular support. Frederick Douglass, the foremost black abolitionist, recognized the Free-Soil movement, & began to talk for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society.

3. The Election Of 1848a) Democrats nominated Lewis Cass as their presidential candidate for the election of

1848. Lewis Cass was an avid expansionist who proposed resident dominion & was unclear on the issue of slavery in the West.

b) The Free-Soilers nominated Martin Van Buren for president & the Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor, a slave owner who had not taken a position on slavery in the territories. Taylor & his running mate Millard Fillmore won the election.

C. California Gold And Racial Welfare

1. The Forty-Ninersa) It started when the news of the discovery at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 spread around the

world that was built on the South Fork of the American River. It was people who went to California seeking gold found in 1849 on Johann Sutter's far.

b) The miners were mostly young males. And other Americans crossed the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin Desert, & Sierra Nevada Mountains to reach the land of gold.

2. Racial Welfare And Land Rightsa) 150,000 in California in 1848 & by 1861 there was about 30,000

b) There was a great amount of diseases that took the lives of thousands of Natives & other people.

c) Some settlers murdered Indians to push them off Non-Reservation Lands.

d) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed that the land grants made by Spanish & Mexican authorities would be un-respected

e) The gold rush turned into a wheat boom

D. 1850: Crisis And Compromise

1. Constitutional Conflict a) In 1848, gold were found in the Sierra Nevada foothills, & by 1849 “Forty-Niners” were

in California searching for gold.

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b) The arrival of settlers revived the national debate over Free-Soil & in November 1849 Californians ratified a state constitution that banned slavery. The admission of California as a state endangered the kept balance of slave states versus non-slave states in the Senate. Southern leaders decided to block California’s entry unless the federal government assured the future of slavery.

c) John C. Calhoun warned of possible withdrawal by slave states & advanced the policy that Congress had no constitutional authority to regulate slavery in the grounds. Many Southerners & some Northern Democrats were eager to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, promising slave owners some Western territory.

d) A third choice (resident dominion) placed decisions about slavery in the hands of local settlers & their regional governments. Antislavery advocates were reluctant to accept any plan for California that might involve the expansion of slavery in the territories & insisted state authorities to restrict slavery in state limits.

2. A Complex Compromisea) Whigs & Democrats desperately sought a compromise to preserve the Union; Whigs

organized the Compromise of 1850.

b) The Compromise included a Fugitive Slave Act to mollify the South, it admitted California as a free state & abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C., to mollify the North, & it organized the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico into the territories of New Mexico & Utah on the basis of popular sovereignty.

c) The Compromise averted a secession crisis in 1850, but resulted in special conventions in the South; in exchange for support of the Compromise, moderate Southern politicians agreed to support secession in the future if Congress abolished slavery anywhere or refused to grant statehood to a territory with a proslavery constitution.

III. The End Of The Second Party System 1850-1858

A. Resistance To The Fugitive Slave Act

a) Under the Fugitive Slave Act, federal judges in the Northern states determined the status of unproven escaped slaves. The law denied blamed blacks a Jury Trial & even the right to state & it allowed the re-enslavement, even Northern blacks.

b) The dilemma of escaped slaves & the arrival of slave catchers stimulated popular anger in the North & Midwest, & free blacks & opponents resisted the new law.

c) Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) suggested understanding for slaves & crime against slaves.

d) Northern governments passed personal liberty laws, & in Ableman v. Booth in 1857, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said the act violated the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme

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Court in 1859 supported the rights of the Fugitive Slave Act, but by then the act had become a “Dead Letter.”

B. The Political System In Decline

a) The conflict over slavery split both major political parties along sectional lines & confused political leadership.

b) The Whig Party chose General Winfield Scott, but many Southern Whigs refused to support Scott because Northern Whigs refused to support slavery. Democrats were divided at their agreement & no candidate could secure the necessary 2/3 majority, so they settled on a compromise candidate named Franklin Pierce.

c) The Democrats swept the election, & their party was reunited, however, the Whig Party split into partial groups & it would never again pay a national campaign.

d) Pierce chased an imperialist foreign policy to help Northern merchants, secured railroad rights in Northern Mexico with the Gadsden Purchase, & tried to grab Cuba, issuing the Ostend Manifesto in1854. Disagreement to the manifesto forced Pierce to stop Cuban takeover, but it revived the Northern fears of a “Slave Power” scheme.

C. The Kansas-Nebraska Act And The Rise Of New Parties

1. The American And Republican Partiesa) The Kansas-Nebraska Act, made by Democrat Stephen Douglas, divided the Northern

Louisiana Purchase into two territories, Kansas & Nebraska, & canceled the Missouri Compromise line by opening the area to slavery through the principle of popular sovereignty.

2. Bleeding Kansasa) The Kansas-Nebraska Act barely passed in 1854 through support & persuasion by

President Pierce, & proved to be the end of the Second Party System.

b) Antislavery Northern Whigs & Anti- Nebraska Democrats formed a new party, the Republicans, which stood for resistance to slavery & a celebration of the moral virtues of a society based on “The Middling Classes.”

c) The American, or “Know-Nothing” Party, had its origins in the Anti-Immigrant & Anti-Catholic organizations of the 1840s. It hoped to unite Native-Born Protestants against the “Alien Menace” of Irish & German Catholics.

d) In 1855 the Pierce management accepted the territorial legislature in Lecompton, Kansas.

e) Free-Soilers rejected the legitimacy of the territorial government & proslavery & antislavery sides turned to violence, including the “Pottawatomie massacre,” led by John Brown.

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D. Buchanan’s Failed Presidency

1. The Election Of 1856a) The Republican Party counted on anger over “Bleeding Kansas” to boost its fortunes &

nominated Colonel James C. Frémont, a Free-Soiler, as its presidential candidate. The American Party split into partial groups, the Northern group permitted Frémont & the Southern group nominated Millard Fillmore.

b) The Democrats reiterated their support for popular sovereignty & the Kansas- Nebraska Act & nominated James Buchanan. Republicans had no support in the South. It seemed to President Buchanan to devise a way of protecting Free-Soil in the West & slavery in the South. James Buchanan won, & the Republicans replaced the Whigs as the Second Major Party.

2. Dred Scott: Petitioner For Freedoma) In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court preached that a slave’s

residence in a free state did not make him a free man & that African Americans were not citizens & could not sue in a federal court.

b) Chief Justice Taney declared the requirements of the Northwest Ordinance & the Missouri Compromise that forbidden slavery had never been constitutional, & that Congress could not give to territorial governments any powers that Congress itself did not possess. So Taney permitted Calhoun’s description of popular sovereignty.

c) The Democrat dominated Supreme Court had declared the Republicans’ antislavery stage to be illegal. Republicans opposed by accusing the Supreme Court & President Buchanan of contributing in the “Slave Power” scheme.

d) In 1858 Buchanan recommended the admission of Kansas as a slave state & by following a proslavery agenda he had helped to split his party & the nation, first with Dred Scott & then in Kansas.

IV. Abraham Lincoln And The Republican Triumph, 1858-1860

A. Lincoln’s Political Career

1. An Ambitious Politician a) Abraham Lincoln came from a needy Yeoman farming family in Illinois & in 1831 he

rejected the farmer’s life & became a store clerk. Lincoln was an ambitious man. He was admitted to the bar in 1837, married the more socially prominent Mary Todd in 1842, & served four terms as a Whig in the Illinois assembly.

b) In 1846 Lincoln won election to Congress, where he had to take a stand on the issue of slavery & felt that slavery was unfair but did not believe that the federal government had the lawful authority to interfere with it. Lincoln claimed that elimination of

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slavery, slow freedom, & the colonization of freed slaves was the only practical ways to report the problem.

c) Both abolitionists & proslavery activists mocked Lincoln’s practical policies, he lost his bid for reelection, & for a while he removed from politics in order to dedicate his time to law.

2. The Lincoln-Douglas Debatesa) Lincoln returned to politics after the passage of Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska

Act where he attacked the policy of popular sovereignty & said he would leave slavery where it was but not spread it.

b) Lincoln left the Whig Party & joined the Republicans & emerged as their leader in Illinois. In Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, he preferred a constitutional mess over slavery.

c) In the 1858 duel for the U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas declared his support for white supremacy, while Lincoln advocated economic chance for blacks but not equal political rights.

d) Douglas’s “Freeport Doctrine” declared that settlers could reject slavery by not accepting local law to protect it. This upsets proslavery activists & abolitionists. Douglas was elected to the Senate, but Lincoln had a recognized a national reputation.

B. The Union Under Siege

1. The Rise Of Radicalisma) Southern Democrats divided into two groups: the “Moderates” (Southern Rights

Democrats) followed safety of slavery in the territories, & the “Radicals” vigorously endorsed withdrawal.

b) In October 1859 John Brown led a raid that briefly held the federal store at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and his purpose was to supply the arms for a slave rebellion & establish a separate African American state in the South.

c) Brown was charged with treason, sentenced to death, & hanged. He was a victim to abolitionists, which horrified Southerners.

2. The Election Of 1860a) In 1860 Northern Democrats rejected Jefferson Davis’s program to protect slavery in

the territories, so the delegates from eight Southern states quit the meeting & nominated as their candidate John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Northern & Western delegates nominated Stephen Douglas.

b) The Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for his reasonable position on slavery.

c) The fourth candidate was John Bell, a former Tennessee Whig, who was the nominee of the compromise-seeking Constitutional Union Party.

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d) Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but won a majority in the Electoral College by carrying every Northern & Western state except New Jersey; Douglas won electoral votes only in Missouri & New Jersey; Breckinridge captured every state in the Deep South as well as Delaware, Maryland, & North Carolina; John Bell carried the Upper South states.

e) The Republicans had united the Northeast, the Midwest, & the Far West behind Free-Soil & seized national power & to many Southerners it seemed their constitutional order of slavery was an order now under siege.

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chapter 13 study guide

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