Manifest Destiny set up the stage for the coming Civil War. American’s began moving west for unsettled land; with this expansion, the north and the south started debating about slavery. The debate was if slavery should be allowed in the newly established territories. The territories where composed of the land that the United States received by the Missouri compromise 1820, the Mexican Cession in 1848, the Compromise of 1850 with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase of 1852 (Kennedy 388). The controversy over how slavery would be extended into these new territories as they petitioned to become states were the major political crisis’ that eventually lead to the Civil War.
Popular sovereignty participated in building the tension between the north and the south; popular sovereignty was a doctrine that stated that the sovereign people of a territory should themselves determine the status of slavery (Kennedy 378), the new doctrine, the Kansa Nebraska act, undid the Missouri compromise which stated that no states could enter as slave states pass the 36030. With this new act Kansas was allowed to determine, itself if it was going to enter the Union as a free or slave state. Fearing that the balance of power in the senate would be thrown off, if Kansas entered at a free state, southerners started moving into the territory to try and dominate the vote to be for slavery. However, at the same time northern settlers were moving to the territory to try and keep it a free state. Although Kansas was closer to the north and was more likely to enter as a free state it was next to Missouri, a slave state. Since Kansas was next to a slave state the south thought that it had a chance to enter as a slave state. With popular sovereignty being the new pol...
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...m, while the south, pro slavery, thought the federal government was controlling them and limiting their states’ rights.
The addition of the western territories into the United States played a large role in the coming civil war at the time. The addition of slavery in the territories threatened the balance in congress. Even with the compromises that the government where trying to make to keep peace between the north and the south they didn’t solve the underlying problem. The undoing of the Missouri compromise with the Kansan Nebraska act was supposed to be a better compromise, however this action back fired on the government and led to the first bloody battle that eventually led to a gruesome Civil War.
Works Cited
Kennedy, David M., and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant: A History of the
American People. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.
The United States began to dissatisfy some of its citizens and so the concerns of sectionalism, or the split of the country began to arise. There was a continuous riff between the south and the north over a few issues, a major one being slavery. The south argued that the slaves were necessary to support the southern economy. According to document A, the south were angry that the north was creating taxes that hurt the southern economy, thus increasing the need for slavery since they had to make up for the expense of the taxes. The south felt that the north was able...
The Northern states believed that we should remain as one under the union, while the southern states wanted to secede from the union. In document E John C. Calhoun claims that the states have the right to secede from the Union. The southern states believed that since they voluntarily joined the United States, they should be able to voluntarily leave. But at President Lincoln's “First Inaugural Address”, he claims that secession is illegal and unconstitutional, and that the union was perpetual (Document F). Lincoln also claimed that the constitution binds the states together and that the country cannot legally be broken up.
As the country began to grow and expand we continued to see disagreements between the North and South; the Missouri Territory applied for statehood the South wanted them admitted as a slave state and the North as a free state. Henry Clay eventually came up with the Missouri Compromise, making Missouri a slave state and making Maine it’s own state entering the union as a free state. After this compromise any state admitted to the union south of the 36° 30’ latitude would be a slave state and a state north of it would be free. The country was very much sectionalized during this time. Thomas Jefferson felt this was a threat to the Union. In 1821, he wrote, ”All, I fear, do not see the speck on our horizon which is to burst on us as a tornado, sooner or later. The line of division lately marked out between the different portions of our confederacy is such...
The civil war, a devastating conflict amongst the American North and South in the mid to late 1800s, was caused by growing tension between the opposing sides for many reasons but also because of territorial expansion of America. In determining the impact of territorial expansion in the mid 1800’s on the sectionalism that led to the civil war, one would first have to look at the tactics for territorial expansion in America. Americans began to entertain the idea of heading west in the early 1800’s, which then brought forth the acts and events of the United States spreading its boundaries from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Historical events involving the expansion of America such as Manifest Destiny, the War with Mexico, and popular sovereignty in the west, all contributed to the growing tension between the North and the South, ultimately starting the Civil War.
In the early 1800’s slavery was a very big issue. Southern farmers and plantation owners believed it was their right to own slaves. Northern abolitionists felt that slavery should have been illegal everywhere. The North and South fought over if and where slavery should be legal. A man named James Tallmadge proposed an amendment that would have ended slavery. This bill was opposed by the south and ultimately failed. Then a man by the name of John Taylor tried to pass a similar bill to end slavery as a whole only to meet the same result. Both bills failed and with the north and south at each others throats, it looked as if it was going to separate the nation and cause a war between the North and South. But then a senator by the name of Henry Clay thought of an idea. By taking advantage of his position he influenced the house to accept a compromise created by Jesse B. Thomas between what the North and South wanted. This was called the Missouri Compromise. During the late year of 1819, Missouri wanted to be recognized as a state. This however scared the north as they wanted to be a slave state. Missouri becoming a slave state would have disrupted the balance and caused the number of slaves state to be higher than that of the free states. The north feared this because that meant that slaves states would be dominant over free states and give the south the advantage in congress. With the North being represented by senator Rufus King and the South represented by William Pinkney, congress debated from December 1819 to March 1820. Luckily around the same time that Missouri applied for statehood, so did Maine. The north saw this opportunity and quickly used it to keep the balance and please the war ready south. It was implemented in 1...
North and South The United States of America, the great democratic experiment, was just that. Not since the great Greek culture had a government of, for, and by the people existed. The entire world felt, that on a large scale, democracy would inevitably lead to anarchy; our founding fathers were determined to prove them wrong. But as the political stand off with the British became a secession issue, a great issue split the future nation. Slavery, a southern necessity, both social and economic, threatened the unity of our nation. A nation that would one day be the greatest the world had ever known. During the development of the thirteen colonies, diversity set in early. In the south the temperate climate made the growth of tobacco a suitable and very profitable business. Cultivation of this crop required a lot of land, and therefore settlers lived far apart. Northern Colonies, though, were much more dependent on small farms, with closely knit communities. These differences were the seed of a sectional division that would plague the nation for a century. During the late seventeenth century, this fissure in the ideals of the colonies became apparent. Following the constant political irreverence from Britain, a majority of colonial representatives felt the need for independence. The Declaration of Independence was the document written to do this. It called for an abolition of slavery as well as freedom from British rule. Unfortunately, the South would hear nothing of it. Being strong defenders of states rights, most of the Southern states adhered to their believe in a government less like a supreme authority and more like a dominion of independent states. They would rather stay loyal to their oppressive government than participate in one that shunned their way of life. In order to keep their dreams of independence, they North was forced to make the one cession they did not wish to make. In order to keep a unified nation, the slavery issue was deliberately absent from the Declaration. Some of the Northern delegates were outraged, but none more than John Adams. A renowned proponent of equal rights, he was one of few that saw the irony in establishing a free society without freeing those in bondage. John Adams seems now more like Nostrodamus when he voiced his concern about the slavery issue for future generations. He did not know it, but the couldn’t have been more right.
The new territories and the discussion of whether they would be admitted to the Union free or slave-holding stirred up animosity. The Compromise of 1850 which offered stricter fugitive slave laws, admitted California as a free state, allowed slavery in Washington D.C., and allowed new territories to choose whether they wanted to be slave-holding or free was supposed to help ease tension between the North and South. Yet Southern states wanted more new territories to be slave-holders so the institution of it would continue to grow. They believed slavery was a way of life and as Larrabee said in his senate speech, “You cannot break apart this organization and this system that has intertwined itself into every social and political fiber of that great people who inhabit one-half of the Union.” (“There is a Conflict of Races”).
As previously mentioned, slavery was at the root of most tensions that arose between the North and the South, and the annexation of new land created much conflict concerning the status of slavery. Missouri Compromise dictated that the lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36¢ª30¡¯ parallel were to be free of slavery. Democratic senator Douglas, introduced a bill in early 1854 which proposed the division of the Nebraska Territory into two units, Kansas and Nebraska, and the application of his idea of ¡°popular sovereignty¡± which would allow the territorial vote to decide the area¡¯s status concerning slavery. This proposal would, in effect, repeal the Missouri Compromise, which greatly angered abolitionists and Northerners. Douglas and Southern supporters won a congressional debate and shortly after, the bill was signed. With the passage of this bill, many conflicts arose. Much personal turmoil erupted in the territories with almost immediate tragic results in ¡°Bleeding Kansas.¡± Also, the bill resulted in a complete realignment of the major political parties: The Democrats lost influence in the North and were to become the regional proslavery party of the South, the Whig Party, which had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, died in the South and was weakened in the North, and a new Republican Party ...
Although some people believe that the Missouri Compromise delayed the Civil War, it actually is one of the main causes of the war. This is due to the fact that the Missouri Compromise did not solve the issue of slavery in any way, but merely delayed actually taking care of it. Instead of actually trying to come up with a real solution to the fact that the North and South had such different principles and morals regarding slavery, the compromise just attempted to ignore what the real problems were. Then, the compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 because Kansas and Nebraska decided whether or not to allow slavery by a vote of popular sovereignty, which made the Missouri Compromise void (Researchers). The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the final straw in dividing the country, and causing turmoil over the issue of slavery. If the federal government had
...h and the South wanted the territory for themselves. The North wanted to expand its industrial fingers to better their economy, but the South wanted more land for plantations to also better their economy. First, the Wilmot Proviso established popular sovereignty as the new factor that decided what side was going to obtain the land. This angered the South because they were frightened that their voice would be lost, and subsequently slavery would be demolished. However, the North felt anger after Stephen Douglass proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed any white male settler to decide if the new territory would be slave or free. With Southern white men trying to make the territories slave territories, the North were furious and started bleeding Kansas, which arguably was the spark that ignited the Civil War.
...e new territories, and these debates led to a sectional crisis between the states. The Missouri Compromise was the started debates about slavery in the new territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to further extending sectionalism by allowing popular sovereignty to choose whether a state has slavery or not. The Compromise of 1850 spread the idea of popular sovereignty to more territories, while increasing sectionalism and the conflict within congress. By the 1850's, there was a great tension between the states. In 1860, Lincoln, a Republican, was elected. The South feared the ideals of the Republicans, and also feared what Lincoln would do to the Southern states. The South went to war with the North over slavery. Manifest Destiny added to the existing sectional crises by introducing the problems of slavery in the new territories, thereby leading the country to war.
There were lots of possible causes for the civil war, the westward expansions being one of them. 1 Some of the problems with the westward expansion were that the settlers found life hard. The Government promised all those who could pay a $10 registration fee, 160 acres of land would be theirs in the West. The aim of the Homestead Act in 1862 was to encourage people to take up farming and help sustain the settler communities. The problem was that many settlers didn’t know how to farm and they found that the conditions and climate was too harsh to work in. It was also hard to farm with the lack of vegetation and the hot weather. There were also problems with where the boundaries should be drawn for the expansion. They also didn’t know how large the population of a territory should be before Statehood could be granted. These were the questions that the Government had to ask themselves about the expansion. Therefore thi...
From it’s colonization, America had seemed to be a willingful advocate of slavery. As the 19th century began, it became apparent that Southern States, economically dependant on agricultural business and “King Cotton” continued to work enslaved Africans while the Northern States turned the other cheek. As time went on, Northern citizens and Southern citizens in a once-unified country came into conflict in several different ways. The three main causes (Infringement of civil liberties, infringement of states’ rights, and the economic and moral issues of slavery) made the conflict between the South and the North impossible to resolve, resulting in the inevitable Civil War.
The North’s opposing views led to attack on the system of the South and showed opposition to slavery’s spreading into new territories. Because it was difficult to decided what the status of states would be the North took action and passed the Missouri Comprimise. This comprimise stated that the status of a state of free or slave would depend if it was above or below 36 degree Latitude. States above the line would be free states and states south of that point would be Slave states. This Compromise created a balance of 11 free states and 11 slave states, it settled conflicts between the North and the South for almost a generation. This all changed when Mexico had been admitted into the Union and people began getting upset. Many compromises were created but they proved to be unsuccessful they resulted in gradual intensification of hostility between the free and slave states. In 1854, another law was passed it was the Kansas an...
Between the years of 1830 and 1860, the United States of America faced sectional tension numerous times. Three main divisive concerns led to this sectional tension including the issues of states’ rights, the economy, and slavery.