Us History Essay, Research Paper
US History
Chapter 11
Section 1
1. a.) Civil War-between 1861 and 1865, the southern and northern states clashed with one another in a violent conflict
b.) Union-the unified nation of the US
2. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which started the controversy between North and South.
3. Some historians have suggested that the Civil War could have been avoided. If the US had elected better leaders and established stronger political institution they believe, wild-eyed extremists on both sides would never have been able to force the nation into war. Other historians-especially more recent ones-don’t accept the idea that American society was similar everywhere.
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had great affects on the North. The North saw slavery as a sin against man. They tried pushing northern views on the South, which is later believed to have started the war.
5. George Fitzhugh stated that: “You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave owner-a master, without the obligations of a master. They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master!”
6. The differences between North and South were not simply a product of exaggerated fiction and propaganda. Hard facts also told the story. They showed that the North was becoming still more urban, still more industrial than the South. Its population, two and a half times as large as the population of the South, was becoming even larger and more diverse, as Irish and German immigrants crowded into swelling cities.
7. Northern were exploiting the immigrants coming into the US whom needed labor so badly while the Southern exploited the blacks because the were bought as slaves.
Section 2
1. a.) Compromise of 1850-it was a package of laws designed to balance the interest of the two sections, North and South.
b.) Fugitive Slave Act-this law orders all citizens of the US to assist in the return of enslaved people who had escaped from their owners.
c.) States’ Rights-according to this theory, states have the right to nullify acts of the federal government and even to leave the Union if they wish to do so.
d.) Nativism-this was a movement to ensure that people born in the US, who considered themselves “natives” received better treatment then immigrants.
e.) Naturalization-process resulting in the citizenship of immigrants.
f.) Kansas-Nebraska Act-it proclaimed that the people in a territory should decide whether slavery would be allowed there.
g.) The Slave Power-the South
2. a.) Democratic Party-the descendant of the Jeffersonian Democrat-Republicans and the Jacksonian Democrats.
b.) American Party-nativists who went public by forming this political organization
c.) Know Nothings-the American Party
d.) Stephen Douglas-senator of Illinois
e.) Republican Party-after the Whigs disappeared this party arose in its place
3. The Compromise had established 36 30′N latitude as a permanent boundary between frees and slaves states. The northern was unwilling to accept this boundary after the US acquired a large part of Mexico. Southerners were equally firm in insisting that the national government had no business telling its free citizens they couldn’t take their property to the territories if they wanted to. And property, after all, was what they considered enslaved people to be.
4. Because the second party system was not diverse it couldn’t stand against the Democratic Party and so it broke down in the early 1850’s. The slavery issue badly hurt the Whigs, because many of their northern voters were middle-class evangelicals Protestants who were disgusted with the politicians’ fondness for compromise. Another reason the Whigs faded away was that the old issues that had divided political parties in the 1830’s now seemed largely resolved.
5. Fear about immigrants led in 1849 to the formation of a secret nativist society called the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. Within a few years, its membership totaled around a million. The order insisted on complete secrecy from its members, who used passwords and special handshakes. They always replied to questions about the organization with the answer “I know nothing.” In 1854 nativists went public by forming a political organization, the American party. It pledges to work against Irish Catholic candidates and for laws requiring a longer wait before immigrants could become citizens through the process of naturalization. The party later became know as the Know-Nothings.
6. The Kansas-Nebraska Act proclaimed that the people in a territory should decide whether slavery would be allowed there. What it was saying, basically, was that the nation should forget the boundary of 36 30′N established by the Missouri Compromise and rely on popular sovereignty.
7. The new Republicans drew their support almost entirely from the North and from Protestant middle-class and working class voters. The extremist faction included voters strongly opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act and slavery in the territories. The moderate faction was made up of antislavery voters who wanted to abolish slavery in federal territories but not interfere with the practice where it already existed. Yet another faction was composed of former Whigs still committed to a strong national government that would lead in the development of a national economy.
Section 3
1. a.) Lecompton constitution-In the fall of 1857 a small proslavery group elected members to a convention to write this constitution required for statehood
b.) Panic of 1857-economic depression that struck the North particularly hard before the Civil War and helped persuade the South to cut economic and political ties with the North
2. a.) Free soiler-new settlers looking to make the territories free
b.) Charles Sumner-Senator of Massachusetts
c.) Chief Justice Roger Taney-judge of the Dred Scott case
3.Harpers Ferry is the federal arsenal at Virginia (now West Virginia) where John Brown’s Raid occurred.
4.In 1856 tensions escalated into open violence. The clashes began on May 21 when a group of southerners, with the support of a proslavery federal marshal, looted newspaper offices and homes in Lawrence, Kansas, a center of free-soiler activity.
Bleeding Kansas was next, were John Brown of Connecticut and raised in Ohio led several New Englanders by night to a proslavery settlement near Pottawatomie Creek. He and his men roused five men from their beds, dragged them from their homes, and killed them with swords in front of their families. Then Sumner gave a speech on the crimes of the South accusing a senator and his nephew of these crimes. Which lead to Brooks approaching him and beating the senator with his cane.
5. When Dred Scott tried to sue his owner the suit was brought to court and Taney stated that as an African American, Dred Scott was inferior and without rights. Thus he wasn’t a citizen of the US and could not sue anyone.
6. Lincoln hoped that by confining slavery to the stated in which it already existed, it would eventually die out.
7. Northerners hailed Brown as a martyr to the cause of justice and freedom. Southerners denounced him as a terrorist and a tool of Republican abolitionists. In short, his raid and his trial only deepened the division between North and South.
8. The System Failed in many ways to uphold the rights of man in different cases through this section. The Dred Scott case being one example of obstruction of justice, and the John Brown’s Raid, where justice didn’t prevail until three years after his first assault and the attack on Harpers Ferry.