AP US History Unit 5: 1844-1877

Overview

• Covers American history from 1844 to 1877.
• Important for AP exams.
• Focuses on westward expansion, manifest destiny, political tensions, and the Civil War.

Manifest Destiny

• Concept that Americans were destined to expand across the continent.
• Reasons for expansion:
  • Land equaled opportunity (resources, fertile soil, gold).
  • Religious groups seeking freedom (e.g., Mormons).
• Government support through the Homestead Act and Pacific Railroad Act.
• Expansion included transnational ambitions to trade with Asia (Treaty with China and Japan).

President James K. Polk and Westward Expansion

• Negotiated Oregon with Britain, avoiding war.
• Mexican-American War:
  • Dispute over Texas border led to war.
  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave US large territories (Mexican Cession).
• Led to questions about slavery in new territories.

Political Tensions Over Slavery

• Wilmot Proviso failed to ban slavery in new territories, increasing sectional tensions.
• Compromise of 1850 attempted to balance free and slave states:
  • California as a free state.
  • Popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico.
  • Stricter Fugitive Slave Act.

Immigration and Abolitionism

• Large influx of immigrants from Ireland and Germany in the 1840s.
• Rise of abolitionist movement:
  • Influential figures: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman.
  • Northern and Southern divide intensified.

Kansas-Nebraska Act and Escalating Tensions

• Allowed states to decide on slavery through popular sovereignty.
• Led to "Bleeding Kansas" and formation of the Republican Party.
• Breakdown of compromises and rising sectional conflict.

Prelude to Civil War

• Weak presidential leadership.
• Increased violence in Congress.
• Dred Scott decision denied citizenship to enslaved people.
• Election of 1860 and Lincoln's victory led to Southern secession.

The Civil War

• Beginning with Fort Sumter in April 1861.
• Union's strengths: population, industry, railroads.
• Confederacy's strengths: military leadership, home advantage.
• Major battles: Bull Run, Gettysburg, Vicksburg.
• Emancipation Proclamation redefined war objectives.

Reconstruction Era

• Lincoln's 10% Plan and Johnson's lenient policies.
• Radical Republican plan aimed to protect black rights and rebuild the South.
• Amendments:
  • 13th (abolished slavery), 14th (citizenship and equal protection), 15th (voting rights).
• Southern resistance and the rise of Black Codes and sharecropping.

End of Reconstruction

• Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction.
• Withdrawal of federal troops from South.
• Rise of Jim Crow laws and suppression of African-American rights.

Legacy

• Reconstruction failed to achieve civil rights goals but laid groundwork for future movements.
• Unit 5 ends with a reflection on the cyclical nature of history and the continuing struggle for equality.