AMSCO US History Topic 5.

1 - Contextualizing Period 5

Learning Objective: Explain the context in which sectional conflict emerged from 1844 to 1877

Between 1844 and 1877, the United States:

1. Expanded territory to the Pacific Ocean

2. Suffered rising sectionalism over the issue of slavery
3. Fought a bloody Civil War that claimed 750,000 people while also expanding the power of
federal government
4. Ended slavery, but racism remained

First half of the 19th century included many advances in the young nation:

1. Right to vote expanded political participation

2. New technology supported a Market Revolution that changed people’s relationships between
peoples in different regions
3. Reforms in education and other areas improved life
4. New expressions of art and literature signified an emergent American culture

Yet these advancements were not share by everyone and challenges, specifically over foreign affairs and
slavery, remained.

- Growth in Land and Population

o US expanded westward with many citizens believing it had a destiny to control all the
land to the Pacific Ocean
 Added land through:
 Negotiations
 Purchases
 War
 Mexican War – largest acquisition
 US established its southern border
 Claimed ports on the Pacific
o Rapid expansion attracted new immigrants
 People left Europe over
 Famine (hambruna)
 Poverty
 Political turbine
 In response to immigration, particularly of people from Ireland and China, some
native-born Americans argued against citizenship for new residents
 Resulted in forming of political organizations to restrict immigration and
citizenship
- Political Conflicts over Slavery
o Expansion and sectionalism intensified differences over
 Politics
 Economics
 Slavery
 o How each group felt:
 Slaveowners - insistent on right to own enslaved people and argued for stronger
federal laws to return escaped enslaved people who escaped bondage
 Abolitionists – more insistent on ending slavery
 Free-Soilers – argued institution should not be allowed in the territories
o Opponents of slavery organized an “underground railroad” to help fugitives escape from
slavery
o Congress passed a series of compromises attempting to settle the issue of whether
slavery could be expanded into new territories
- The Civil War and Reconstruction
o 1860 – Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln
 Opposed to slavery
 Also opposed to immediate abolition
 Election scared slaveholders
 Feared his opposition to expansion of slavery would lead to its end
 Although Lincoln was committed to allowing slavery to continue where
it existed
o 11 states left the Union and a four-year civil war occurred to which the Union won
 Ended slavery
 Power was transferred to the federal government and out of the states.
o Reconstruction – 12 years following the Civil War
 Intense confrontations between executive and legislative branches, as well as
federal and state governments
 Confrontations reshaped how people thought about federalism and separation
of powers among the branches of government
- Racism and Discrimination
o The country suffered from tremendous racial conflict

As the freed African Americans worked to established new lives, White-dominated

legislatures passed:

 Black Codes
 Sharecropping
 White Americans killed thousands of Black citizens to maintain racial supremacy
o While the Civil War preserved the Union, historians vigorously debate the success and
failures of Reconstruction
 Nation survived a civil war and continued to grow, expand, and industrialize
 Still struggled achieving equal treatment for all of its people