Manifest destiny

​Manifest Destiny to A Divided Country

​American Progress, John Gast, 1872

​Westward the Course of Empire

Manifest Destiny

America enjoyed amazing growth, in size, population, & wealth; 1800-40

For expansionists, this was a sign that God favored the virtuous republic

• They argued that it was our “Manifest Destiny” to seize the continent

  • And in the process remove those who occupied “our” lands

​Trails to the West

Beginning in 1842 “Oregon fever” led thousands to trek west

• A half million cross a half continent in 25 years

• Oregon, Utah (Mormons), and California

• Settlement added over a million square miles to the U.S.

​The Lone Star Republic

Stephen F. Austin deals with Mexico for Anglo settlement of Texas, 1823

Texans quickly clash with Mexican government

• Local rights – Texans used to self-government; Mexico with dictator

• Culture– too many Anglos; break promise to become Mexican

• Slavery– Texans maintain slaves; but abolished by Mexico in 1830

​Eventually, General Santa Anna moves to crush rebellious Texans, 1835

​Goliad -400 Texans surrender executed as “pirates”

​San Jacinto, 1836

General Sam Houston uses time to build an army

• Catches Mexicans “napping” at San Jacinto

• Victory and independence for Texas

• Texas Quickly push for Annexation to The United States

​The Alamo

187 Texans hold off 6000 Mexicans for 13 days

“I shall never surrender nor retreat…. Victory or death” -- COLONEL W.B. TRAVIS

• Slaughtered by Mexicans 

​Expansionism and the Mexican War

Acquisition of Texas and Oregon

Election of 1844 becomes mandate on annexation

• Rejected by Whigs who feared slave expansion & sectional dissension

• Democrat James K. Polk favors expansion & annexation

  • Focuses campaign on Manifest Destiny (not slavery)

  • Annexation of Texas

  • Determined to wrest Oregon from Britain (54 40’ or fight)

  • Promise to acquire California (esp. San Francisco)

​Polk defeats Clay in extremely close election

• Texas brought in as state, 1845

• Oregon territory split at 49th parallel in 1846

​Mexican War (1846-48)

Mexico rejects U.S. intimidation efforts to force a sale of California

Polk manipulates war with Mexico over disputed South Texas (1846)

​Well-prepared Americans grab California & New Mexico with ease

• Zachary Taylor & Winfield Scott lead victorious invasion of Mexico (1847)

  • More numerous Mexicans hampered by inner political intrigues

  • Taylor becomes a war hero for underdog victory at Buena Vista 

  • Scott leads brilliant campaign that ends in capture of Mexico City

​The Election of 1848

Central issue: what to do about slavery in the new territories?

​Democrats try to dodge the issue by calling for Popular Sovereignty

• People of a territory should determine for themselves whether to be slave or free

​Free Soil Party stands against slavery in the territories

• Because slavery immoral and unfair competition for white settlers

​Whigs try no platform, and run war hero & slave holder

Zachary Taylor 12th President

• Wins election, but party weakened by internal dissension

​ California Gold Rush

California gold discoveries 🡆 frenzied settlement (1849)

• In need of government, California seeks admission as FREE STATE

  • Would swing balance of senate in favor of North

​Southern Fears

As long as Senate balanced, able to withstand efforts to attack slavery

• Afraid of being controlled by the Northern majority

• Furious over northern assistance to runaway slaves

  • Only 1000 per year; but principle of property protection key

• Southerners, led by John Calhoun, threaten secession ove

​Brutal Fugitive Slave Law (no safeguards against false identification or outright kidnapping of free blacks) acted as catalyst for sectional split 

• Moderate northerners angered by law, turn toward abolition

  • Many refuse to enforce slave law

• Southerners bitter about Northern refusal to obey law

​Compromise of 1850

Clay & Webster make tremendous arguments in Congress to stall secession

• President Taylor, who fought compromise, dies

• VP Millard Fillmore, who favored compromise, takes over

  • Compromise is narrowly sold to North & South

​The Limits of Manifest Destiny

A Southern Slave Empire?

Democratic nonentity Franklin Pierce elected in 1852

• Continues Democratic support for expansion

• Southern ‘Fillibusterers’ incite rebellions in Central America

• Southerners manipulate for war with Spain to get Cuba

Northerners block efforts 🡆 avoid expansion of slavery

​Into the Pacific

Commodore Matthew Perry opens Japan to trade, 1854

• Japanese isolation ended by clever diplomacy

• Begins rapid modernization of Japan

​A House Divided

Cultural Sectionalism

Throughout the decade, sectionalism became more ideological and emotional

• Leaders focused on sectional difference rather than national character

• Organized churches became driving forces of sectional discord

  • They turned political questions in to moral issues, reducing the prospects of compromise

​Millions sold throughout the North and Europe

• Catalyst for dramatic growth of abolition movement

• Would provide fervor to Union troops in coming war

• Critical in swaying British and French opinion against intervention in the Civil War

• South bitter at LIES against their ‘noble’ way of life

​Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

Harriet Beecher Stowe determined to awaken the North to the evil of slavery

Her book contained the 1st realistic portrayal of slavery

• Violence, oppression, and (espec.) separation of families

​Kansas & Political Realignment

Douglas & the Nebraska Territory

Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas pushes settlement of Nebraska territory

​Inspired by Manifest Destiny

• Supports a transcontinental train route to run from Chicago to San Francisco

(owns Chicago real estate and railroad stock!)

​Douglas, however, knows South will block settlement of free Nebraska 

• Want transcontinental route to run from New Orleans to LA

• No more free states

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

Douglas (working with Southern Senators) gets Nebraska open

• End of Missouri Compromise – all territories to use popular sovereignty

• Territory split into Kansas & Nebraska

  • Kansas due west of slave-holding Missouri, likely to become a slave state 

​Creates a national uproar! – spirit of compromise shattered

1. Northerners outraged at opening of northern territory to slavery 

   • Fugitive Slave Law now unenforceable across the North  

   • Millions turn toward abolition 

1. ​Whig Party, already fractured by Compromise of 1850, disintegrates 

2. Democratic party, final national party begins to splinter

3. REPUBLICAN PARTY springs up to organize opposition to slave expansion

Quickly becomes largest party, even though only found in the North

​Immigration and Nativism

Dynamic increase in immigration rate (1845-55) shakes up American

​The Irish

Millions flee 1840s Potato Famine

Many to Boston & NYC

• Poor & uneducated, stuck as urban manual labor

Despised by Americans (mostly anti-Catholic), create own political machines

​The Germans

Liberals and socialists fleeing failed revolutions, 1848

• Middle Class, purchase American farmland

• Educated, would push for social reforms across Midwest

​Nativists & the “Know-Nothings”

Many Americans resented the “non-English” immigrants

The American Party (“Know-Nothings”) organized prejudice against immigrants

• Block immigration

• Deny (or delay) voting rights

​Crooked Voting A bitter “nativist” cartoon charging Irish

and German immigrants with “stealing” elections.

​The Failure of Popular Sovereignty

• Free Soil & Southern groups finance “settlers” moving to Kansas to sway territorial decision on Slavery

  • Southerners furious that Northerners challenging slave status of Kansas

​Fraudulent pro-slavery legislature tries to rule over Free Soil majority, 1855

• Free Soilers set up rival government, take up arms

​From Politics to Violence, 1856

• Small-scale civil war breaks out between rival regimes

  • Pro-slaveryites raid free-state capital of Lawrence

  • John Brown leads abolitionists in revenge raid on Pottawatomie Creek

    • Butcher five pro-slavery settlers

​The Election of 1856

Republicans offer war hero John Fremont

Democrats choose bland (& Southern acceptable) James Buchanan of Penn.

• Dems win by appealing to white supremacy and fear of secession

​The Lecompton Controversy

In 1857 Kansas moves for statehood

Pro-slavery forces (now a definite minority of Kansans) resort to political trickery to send the slave state Lecompton Constitution to Washington

​President James Buchanan (worst president in U.S. history) bows to Southern support and pushes fraudulent Constitution

• Senator Stephen Douglas, fights fraud, blocks statehood vote

  • Democratic Party splits north and south between Buchanan & Douglas

​During Congressional arguments Senator Sumner (Mass.) is severely beaten by Congressman Brooks (S. C.) in the senate for disparaging the south.

​Symbolic of nation’s growing inability to reach compromise on any issue related to slavery

• Constitution resubmitted to Kansas for re-vote – killed by 6 to 1 margin

​The Impending Crisis, 1857-60

​The Dred Scott Case

Scott, a slave, had lived in Wisconsin Territory for five years (where Congress had outlawed slavery in the Missouri Compromise) before returning to the South

• He sued in federal court for his freedom

​Chief Justice Taney (slave owner) rules for the Supreme Court

Dred Scott loses and remains a slave

1. Blacks cannot be citizens 🡆 can’t sue in Federal Court

2. Congress cannot block slavery from territories because Constitution protects property (including slavery)

   • Thus, Missouri Compromise unconstitutional

​Horrible decision based on bias and personal politics

– both arguments were legally wrong

​Blacks already citizens in 4 northern states, thus capable of being citizens of the U.S.

• Constitution specifically grants Congress power over territories to make “all needful  rules and regulations”

• Taney actually contradicted some of his own earlier opinions on point 2

Taney lived until 1864, a commentator said: “The Hon. Old Roger B. Taney has earned the gratitude of his country by dying at last. Better late than never.”

​Northerners appalled at the obvious miscarriage of justice

• Many Northerners claim they will ignore the rulings of the Court

• Giant lift to the Republican Party (stop the ‘slave power conspiracy’)

• Southerners appalled that northerners would defy the Supreme Court

​Debating the Morality of Slavery

Abraham Lincoln challenges Stephen Douglas over Senate seat in Illinois, 1858

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates center on the existence of slavery

• Lincoln proposes that slavery or freedom must die

​Douglas’s neutral position on slavery would lead to its expansion

• Dred Scott ruling could easily be applied to states as well as territories

• Restricting slavery’s growth would lead eventually to its moral demise

• Blacks, while not equal to whites, were entitled to equal rights

• Tyranny over any is poison to democracy

​Lincoln and Douglas Debate, 1858 Thousands attended each of the seven Lincoln-

Douglas debates. Douglas is shown here sitting to Lincoln’s right in the debate at

Charleston, Illinois, in September. On one occasion Lincoln quipped that Douglas’s logic

would prove that a horse chestnut was a chestnut horse.

​Douglas appeals to white supremacy and fear of secession

• Freeport Doctrine: Forced to admit that slave expansion can be stopped by not passing slave codes – ending his little remaining Southern support

Douglas wins the election; but Democratic Party fully splits North & South

​The South’s Crisis of Fear

Further events led Southern slaveholders to fear for their safety and dominance

​John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, Oct. 1859

Brown hatches crazy scheme to start slave revolt in South

• Seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia

​Brown captured and executed; but speaks eloquently and dies bravely – a martyr for abolition

​Northerners grieve over his death

• Southerners shocked by northern support for terrorism against the South

  • Increases the South’s greatest fear: slave rebellion

​Hinton Helper’s Impending Crisis of the South

• Helper’s book pointed out the limited economic growth of the South, and called on poor whites to vote out the planter aristocracy and abolish slavery

  • Banned in the South, used by Republicans as a campaign document

• Southerners feared a Republican gov’t would foster “Helperism” in the South