What up, APUSH people? Today we're going to take a look at APUSH Period 5, Key Concept 5.2. And we have a bunch of key things you need to keep in mind for this key concept. It's huge.
The North and the South will continue to develop into two distinct societies that will have difficulty trusting one another. The idea of Manifest Destiny and the Movement West will once again bring up the divisive issue of slavery in the territories. Sectionalism will increasingly become a problem in the 1840s and 1850s and this thing's going to end in a civil war and efforts at compromise will ultimately fail to decrease sectional tension. And so where we last left off in 5.1 was a whole lot of territorial expansion taking place. This idea of manifest destiny we had Oregon enter the Union with the treaty in 1846 thanks to James K Polk Texas was annexed in 1845 creating beef with Mexico and of course ultimately the Mexican-American War beginning in 1846 Controversial war, Whigs in the north were against it and Mexico ultimately loses about half of its territory And the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 gives the United States a huge chunk of land about half of Mexico and Many people including Polk were very excited about this huge expansion of American territory.
However, new territories were brought into the Union which forced the issue of slavery into the center of national politics. And throughout the 1840s and 1850s you're going to see a tremendous rise in sectional tension between the North and the South. And conflict was caused by territorial expansion.
For instance, the impact of the Mexican-American War. In fact, as soon as the war began, Northerners tried to pass the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. And this attempt to ban slavery in this new territory was rejected by Southerners in the Senate, and it doesn't go into effect. When the war is finally over and California attempts to enter the Union as a free state, this causes a whole outcry from the South because it would tip the balance in favor of the United States. of the North.
And ultimately that was solved by the Compromise of 1850 where 1. California was entered into the Union as a free state giving the free states more power in Congress 2. No slave trade in Washington DC 3. The issue of slavery in the rest of the territory would be decided by the idea of popular sovereignty where the people in that territory would vote on whether or not to allow slavery and the fourth piece is a strict new Fugitive Slave Law. So compromise was able to calm sectional tensions following the war temporarily. However, in the 1850s challenges to territorial expansion became increasingly common.
For instance, when a group of Southerners created the Austin Manifesto, which was a secret plan by Southerners to buy Cuba from Spain and turn it into slave states, it was opposed by Free Soilers in Congress and many Northerners, and President Pierce had to back the idea. down on this idea. Even something as simple as the Gadsden Purchase, which land was purchased in the southwest from Mexico in 1853 for the building of a railroad present-day New Mexico and Arizona, that provoked a little bit of controversy as well between North and South.
And attempts at compromise over slavery ultimately failed to reduce tensions. An example of this can be seen with the Compromise of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act really provokes a huge controversy in the North because Northerners suddenly now have to deal with the issue of slavery right in their own backyard and they resist the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act which angers Southerners with things such as personal liberty laws where they did not allow the use of local jails for housing fugitive slaves. Vigilance committees were created with the goal of protecting fugitive slaves from the federal slave marshals. And what you see is a huge firestorm erupting in 1854 when Stephen Douglas introduces the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
And under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, slavery would be decided in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska based on the idea of popular sovereignty. And ultimately, this act, this proposal by Stephen Douglas, repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by potentially opening up slavery. north of the 3630 line. And many people in the North, including Democrats in some cases, oppose this act.
It is passed in Congress, but there's a huge opposition, and the Republican Party is formed, and the Whig Party ultimately disappears over the division whether or not to support the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Because for Northerners, this is seen as giving the South an opportunity to expand slavery into an area it was pre... previously closed off to.
In fact, throughout the 1850s you're going to see sectional tension increasing. As a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, you get something called Bleeding Kansas, where pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces engage in a mini-civil war in the territory of Kansas. And you get events like the Sack of Lawrence, where pro-slavery supporters attack free-soilers in the town of Lawrence.
Potawatomi Creek, where John Brown and his followers hacked to death pro-slavery supporters. And you have two rival governments in the territory, Topeka, the free-soil government, and Lecompton, the pro-slavery government in Kansas. Popular sovereignty was an utter failure.
In fact, the violence of Kansas spread to the halls of Congress when Northern Republican Charles Sumner was brutally beaten by a Southerner, Preston Brooks. The big kind of firestorm erupts again with Dred Scott versus Sanford, where in 1857, Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Justice you see at the top, rules in the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott you see right there. And he rules a couple of things, him and the court. One, African Americans are not citizens.
Two, slaves are property, and therefore, under the Fifth Amendment, cannot be taken away without due process. And ultimately, what the Dred Scott decision is. decision says is Congress could not ban slavery from the territories so therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and therefore slavery potentially could be opened up anywhere in the nation and this creates a huge outcry from the north. In fact over and over again you're gonna see the breakdown of compromise once again in 1859 another crisis hits the Union when John Brown The guy from Potawatomi Creek hopes to spark a slave revolt in Virginia by seizing the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Ultimately, he fails and is hung, but the South is outraged, and it is one of the immediate causes of secession because Southerners feel the North is supporting this man, John Brown.
In fact, the big kind of key moment happens in 1860 where Lincoln... Not winning a single state in the South is elected president and for southerners he is seen as a sectional president and this is a key turning point in the relationship between the North and South and will compel seven states to leave the Union before he even takes office. And one of the other things you see happening in this period is the end of the second party system.
The Whig party and the Know Nothing party, that nativist party, collapse over the division surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act. You get the formation of a new party, the Republican Party, which is truly a sectional party in that it only has support in the North. And their whole platform in the beginning is opposed to Kansas-Nebraska Act, and they're opposed to the expansion of slavery in the territories.
And they're going to increasingly grow in numbers throughout the 1850s as events such as Bleeding Kansas, and the Dred Scott case bring people to the Republican Party in the North. And ultimately, with the election of 1860, the Republican Party, their platform was no extension of slavery in the territories. They adopt a free-soil platform, and with Lincoln's election, you get the cause, the immediate cause of secession.
Because for Southerners, the election of Lincoln was seen as the election of a sectional Northern president hostile to slavery. And one of the other things you should keep in mind when studying this time is the North and the South continue to develop distinct from one another and sectionalism increases as a result of regional economic changes, demographic changes, and cultural differences. So let me break that down for you. Economically, the North was industrializing based upon manufacturing, free labor.
Their demographic reality was very different than the South. They had a large population growth, a huge amount of immigration. We saw that in Key Concept 5.1 with the Irish and the German immigrants coming in.
There is a rise of nativism as seen in the Know Nothing Party, but there's this huge population growth in the North. This nativism is going to be anti-Catholic, and we've explored that a little bit already. But ultimately, culturally, the North is different than the South.
And abolitionists, although a small minority in the North, they are going to be growing in the 1840s and 1850s. And for Southerners, their economy is very different. It's based upon agricultural, plantation economy, and slave labor. Now keep in mind, only 25% of Southerners actually own slaves, but slavery is a key.
key part of the Southern way of life. Demographics are not favorable for the South. They have slow population growth, little to no immigrants coming in, and as a result, you have a very, not a very diverse society in the South. And culturally, they are going to increasingly seek to defend the institution of slavery and the Southern way of life.
And you see that over and over again, especially in the 1830s and 1840s. where southerners are increasingly defending slavery as a positive good. Two great examples of this is George Fitzhugh and John C. Calhoun, who are really kind of the developers of a pro-slavery argument.
And they talk about slaves as family, as members of the family, as opposed to, you see in the political cartoon, what happens to the poor workers in the North. They get carted off to the poorhouse while slaves are cared for as a member of the family. They talk about slavery as better than wage slavery in the North, and they talk about this kind of idea that slaves are civilized.
It is civilizing inferior people. And this is the kind of core part of their argument to justify the institution of slavery. You also see racial stereotyping famously in the minstrel shows, where very often white actors would paint themselves in blackface and act in very stereotypical racist ways.
The kind of issue of slavery, you can really see how controversial it was and how they tried to avoid it with the gag resolution, which, you know, from 1836 to 1844, there was a ban on anti-slavery petitions being discussed in Congress, and eventually it will be overturned in 1844 by John Quincy Adams. However, tensions with the Union will mount. There is an emphasis amongst Southerners, especially of state rights. And this idea of nullification where states could void or nullify a federal law. And this was not unique necessarily to the South, but it became increasingly discussed.
We saw this during the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798, where Jefferson and Madison said that they could ignore the Sedition, the Alien and Sedition Acts. We saw this in 1828 with the Tariff of Abominations when South Carolina sought to nullify the tariff. And if you click that, You can learn a little bit more about that crisis. But what happens is the southerners in the 1840s and 1850s are talking about state rights, secession, and nullification more and more frequently. In the North, there is a growing abolitionist movement that you should be aware about.
And know their different tactics and strategies. Even though that's the case, in the 1840s and 1850s, abolitionists remained a minority in the North. Lincoln himself was not an abolitionist and he was against the extension of slavery in the territories. Although it is a minority movement, it's becoming increasingly vocal and visible in the 40s and 50s.
You get individuals like William Lloyd Garrison, one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, which calls for immediate, uncompensated emancipation and publishes anti-slavery newsletters. such as the Liberator. Uncle Tob's Cabin is a hugely important piece of work by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, and it has a huge role in increasing support for the abolitionist movement in the North. The Underground Railroad continues to operate, helping slaves escape to the North, the most famous kind of person in this movement, Harriet Tubman. But you also get calls for violence.
And you get in some rare cases, very few examples of actual outbreaks of violence. David Walker famously in 1829 had the appeal to the colored citizens of the world where he called for a violent uprising to end slavery. Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 was the only rebellion that actually led to the death of white people in Virginia. And as a result you have this huge crackdown on...
the movement of African Americans throughout the South. And of course you have John Brown's raid in 1859 which strikes a huge amount of fear in the minds of southerners and they perceive John Brown as supported by northerners, sent by northerners to undo their southern institution of slavery. And a big idea is to understand how the North and the South increasingly distrusted one another. And we've already kind of covered these topics, but it's worth reviewing. For instance, the northern distrust of the South can be seen in the Fugitive Slave Act.
They didn't like this federal marshals running through the North looking for runaway slaves. Uncle Tom's cabin provoked a huge anti-slavery sentiment amongst Northerners who normally never thought about the issue. The events of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the repeal of previous compromise in the Missouri Compromise were a major blow to the South's political and economic development. caused a lot of distrust amongst northerners towards the south. The fraudulent government of Lecompton where they were seeing pro-slavery people from Missouri crossing the border, that caused distrust.
The Austin Manifesto where it seemed like southerners were seeking new territory even abroad to expand their slavocracy as they called it. The events of Bleeding Sumner where a southerner had beat one of the northern... representatives Charles Sumner and Dred Scott were a predominantly southern court made a decision with huge consequences about Congress's ability or inability to ban slavery anywhere.
For southerners they also had a distrust of the North. For them they felt the North was attacking their southern way of life. They saw the Wilmot proviso as an attempt to try to chip away at slavery in any territory that they had.
won in the Mexican-American War. The northern resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act was seen as northern hostility to the southern way of life. The growth of the abolitionist movement threatened southerners even though it remained a minority movement.
They they reacted to it with their own defense of slavery and the perceived northern support for people like John Brown and the events at Harper's Ferry and ultimately the election in 1860 of a sectional Republican Party candidate, Lincoln, on a free soil platform are all going to create the conditions where compromise was no longer possible and trust was at an all-time low. In Key Concept 5.3, we're going to take a look at the Civil War, which will begin shortly after Lincoln's election. And if you click that pink hat, you will be sent to that video as soon as we put it up. And as always, thanks for watching.
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