American History Lecture Five

Reminders on exam or homework questions:

• Understand the question first. Students are missing points for not completely understanding the question. Pause a moment after you read a question. Read it twice. Ask yourself, what’s the point of the question?

• Skip the tough questions and answer the other questions first.

• When stuck, use a source other than the lecture. On your written homework, you may use extra resources although the answers are in the lecture, event list, textbook or perhaps a dictionary.

Tips in learning history:

• Beware of over-reliance on authority. Unless we’re talking about the Bible, authority is not always going to be correct. Every book contains mistakes, and it's beneficial to read many sources, because some authors will cover what others miss.

• Learn history in small pieces. I can’t grade all the papers in this course at one time, or even in one day. After about an hour or two, I burn out. But by grading in 45 minute periods each day, it is very enjoyable. The material is easier to digest. Could you eat one and only one meal each day? No, we eat three meals so it’s easier to digest. Same with learning history. 45 minutes each day for 5 days will be much easier than over 4 hours in one day. You’ll retain the material much better if you spread it out.

• On the same note, don't wait until Wednesday night to start your homework. Set a goal for yourself, such as answering three questions each day until you are done. Answering a few questions at a time doesn't take long, but trying to finish homework in one sitting when you are tired is difficult and produces poor results.

Quick question:

• Consider this sequence: 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, ??, ??, ??, ??

• What goes in the question marks?

• The answer is below.

Why are there so many “1” as we approach the Civil War? Imagine riding the raging bull at the rodeo. It's hard to stay on, and 4 or 5 seconds is good.

Before the Civil War, the United States was like the bull, and it was nearly impossible for a president to be reelected amid that turmoil.

Review

This week, practice memorizing all of the presidents we have learned about. Which ones have we covered so far?

Last week we learned about Andrew Jackson, who represented the common man. He was a “Democrat”. The masses elected their military hero. The Whig Party arose just to oppose Jackson.

In accordance with his image as a common man, Jackson was against a national bank. His military background caused him to be cruel to the Indians, heightening conflict there.

Although Jackson was a Democrat, his stance toward the South opposed nullification and secession.

Martin Van Buren

After Jackson had served as President for two terms, his vice president, Martin Van Buren was elected in 1836. Van Buren was the only person of non-British (or non-Irish) descent ever to become president. Then there was the financial panic of 1837, perhaps due to Jackson’s refusal to allow a national bank. This hurt Van Buren's popularity.

In the election of 1840, the anti-Jackson Whig party very was clever. Van Buren was no military hero, and he had been hurt by the economic problems. Historians say that the outcome in virtually every presidential election can be predicted by looking at how the economy is doing. When the economy is struggling, the incumbent loses. When the economy is thriving, the incumbent wins. Van Buren was hurt by a poor economy, with many voters out-of-work. Watch out for all those farmers on election day!

Whigs won in 1840 with a slick campaign strategy. They picked a military hero, William Harrison, who had beaten the Indians in Ohio at Tippecanoe, as their nominee. They chose John Tyler, a Virginian, as their Vice Presidential candidate. Then the Whigs used clever slogans. Van Buren was “Van, van the used up man!” (think the economy). The Whig candidates were “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” Since military heroes had been successful as Democrats, the Whigs tried running a military hero of their own.

Harrison, however, insisted on participating in his inauguration in frigid weather, without a coat or hat. He caught pneumonia and died a month later. The first succession of VP to President then occurred, as Tyler took office. He ruled like a Democrat, vetoing a national bank. The Whigs were angry once again. Tyler was just a one-termer. In fact, every president from Van Buren until the Civil War served only one term.

The Alamo

America was still expanding, and eventually this caused conflict with Mexico, which became free from Spain in 1821. Texas (an area much larger than the modern state) was Mexico's territory.

Mexico began to "steal" America citizens, by giving them land when they became Mexican citizens and encouraged their friends to do the same. Thousands of settlers from the United States became Mexican citizens.

But Mexico was quite lax in controlling its territory in Texas, and the settlers revolted in 1836. They declared that Texas was independent from Mexico and drafted their own constitution.

In the famous Battle of the Alamo, a few thousand soldiers from Mexico defeated just 165 Texans at the Alamo. This battle became famous, as did the cry "Remember the Alamo!".

Shortly thereafter, Texas wrote a formal declaration of independence. Eager to gain land and fame, many Americans moved to Texas and helped defeat the Mexicans. Thus, Texas became the independent "Lone Star Republic".

Many of the citizens in Texas wished to become part of the United States, and Andrew Jackson, who was president at the time, also supported the annexation of Texas. Nevertheless, politics prevented Texas from being annexed.

The Whigs did not want to annex Texas, and Jackson was afraid that if he annexed Texas, his successor, Martin Van Buren, would not be elected. Abolitionists were also upset because Texas would be another slave state - its constitution permitted slavery.

In the end, Tyler was the first president to attempt to annex Texas. Unfortunately, he ruined his chances by declaring that slavery would be good for Texas. When the treaty came to the Senate, it did not pass.

Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion

Manifest Destiny was the concept that westward expansion was part of God's plan for the United States to spread out over the continent. They believed that exploration and expansion was a mission from God.

Settlers began to move westward in large groups, traveling on the Oregon Trail. This trail stretched for 2000 miles and many settlers spent six months traveling along it.

Missionaries came too and sought to minister to the Indians in the region.

The British still controlled about half of the territory in Oregon. In 1846 the Oregon Treaty settled the disputes between America and Britain, giving most of Oregon to the United States.

California also attracted many settlers during the 1830s.

James K. Polk and War with Mexico

The Democrats officially won back the presidency with James Polk. The issue of Texas had become so important to Americans, that Polk won on a platform of annexing Texas to the United States.

Looking at Polk and the issues he worked on will tell you a good deal about America during the 1840s. The South was gaining more and more influence and power. Many people were working against slavery, and formed the Liberty party. This anti-slavery sentiment did not waver and continued to grow toward the Civil War. Manifest Destiny was important, and Polk's support of westward expansion helped him to win the election.

Only nine months after his inauguration, Texas became part of the Union.

Polk, a Democrat supported by the South, wanted more southern territory. In the Slidell Mission, Polk sent an attorney to Mexico to negotiate the border with Texas. He also hoped to buy New Mexico and California. But the Mission failed.

So Polk initiated (debated) a way to ignite a war with Mexico by sending Zachary Taylor down with some soldiers to stand close to the border of Mexico in 1846. He encouraged settlers to move closer and closer to the border.

The Mexicans eventually attacked, and Polk worked up the American people into a frenzy by saying that the Mexicans shed American blood on our soil!

The Whigs opposed the war, hoping the conflict would have end peacefully.

America's troops were strong, and managed to incite a rebellion in California, which was Mexico's territory. When American troops entered Mexico, they easily defeated the opposition. But the Mexicans still refused to negotiate, so Polk sent an army to occupy Mexico City. Again, Mexico would not enter into a treaty for peace, and the wars with Mexico continued for several years.

In the end, Polk also worked himself to death, dying just a few months after leaving office. He used to see every visitor that came to the White House!

Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore

Zachary Taylor was a a general during the Mexican war and a member of the Whig party. He was elected as president in 1848. He encouraged New Mexico and California to become part of the Union as free states. After just one year in office, he died.

Taylor's vice president, Millard Fillmore succeeded him. Fillmore was an average American who had succeeded through hard work. He played a key part in passing the Compromise of 1950.

The Compromise of 1950 admitted California as a state, and established that the South had the right to bring slaves into the United State's South West Territories. The Compromise also abolished the slave trade in DC, although slavery itself was allowed to continue.

Fillmore negotiated with Texas and gave the new state 10 million dollars to pay off its debts. In return, Texas accepted a more restrictive western boundary.

Anti-slavery Sentiments Rise

But real leaders were arising outside of the presidency: Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Douglas was the Jacksonian Democrat, while Lincoln was initially the anti-Jackson Whig. Everything between President Jackson (1836) and the Civil War (1861) can be understood through the eyes of Douglas and Lincoln. Both were from Illinois, a state that was ideologically in the middle between the North and the South.

Illinois was a key state because it was just across the Mississippi river from Missouri, which was a slave state under the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Elijah Lovejoy was a pastor in St. Louis, and in 1837, he started a newspaper called the St. Louis Observer which published articles against slavery. The opposition to his paper was so great that he had to move to Alton, Illinois. There, he kept publishing articles against slavery.

But the opposition didn't cease, and Lovejoy's printing press was thrown into the river three times! The Ohio Anti-Slavery Society gave him a new printing press, and local slave owners decided to destroy it. A mob came over from St. Louis and Lovejoy was killed trying to protect his press. This violence shocked the North.

Franklin Pierce

After the negotiations in the Compromise of 1850, divisive conflict seemed to lull. Although Pierce tried hard to prevent further conflict from breaking out, his policies turned out to be quite divisive.

Historians remember the Kansas-Nebraska Act as the single largest step toward the Civil War. The Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West.

"Bleeding Kansas"

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 in a reaction and opposition to the concept of “popular sovereignty” pushed into law by Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. “Popular sovereignty” meant that each new territory should make its own decision, by popular vote, whether to allow slavery. The new Republican Party took its name from Jefferson’s Republican Party, because like Jefferson the new Republican Party opposed slavery in the new territories. The Party brought in Whigs and members of the small “Free Soil Party,” which had been based on the Wilmot Proviso (which passed the House but not the Senate). The Wilmot Proviso stated that none of the territory acquired from Mexico should be opened to slavery.

Almost immediately after enactment of popular sovereignty in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), it was put to the test in 1855 in Kansas. Civil war in Kansas broke out between free and slave forces. In early 1856, pro-slavery forces burned down the “Free State Hotel” and destroyed the offices and presses of antislavery newspapers. A man was killed. In retaliation, the fanatical white John Brown took four of his sons and two others and went to Pottawatomie in Kansas and executed 5 pro-slavery colonists.

In the “Crime against Kansas” speech, abolitionists senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner described the slave oligarchy and insulted and humiliated the absent and elderly Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. In retaliation, Butler’s nephew, Preston Butler, who was a congressman, went into Sumner’s chambers and beat him senseless with a cane. It took Sumner many years to recover. Preston Butler immediately resigned but was such a hero to the South that he was unanimously reelected by his district.

By the end of his administration, Pierce could claim "a peaceful condition of things in Kansas." But, the Democrats refused to renominate him, turning to the less controversial Buchanan. Pierce returned to New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face the rising fury of the sectional whirlwind. He died in 1869.

Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln

Illinois became the breeding ground for politicians to debate the slavery issue. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were both highly prominent.

They were opposites in every possible way. Lincoln was very tall, while Douglas was very short. Lincoln had lots of dark hair, Douglas had thinning gray hair. Lincoln was initially a Whig, Douglas was a Democrat. Lincoln was a wealthy attorney for the powerful Railroads. Douglas was a government attorney for the State. Both were extremely ambitious, constantly running for public office. Both were smarter than most in politics, and both were good public speakers (unlike, for example, Jefferson, who avoided public speaking). Truth be told, Douglas was really the better speaker: more compelling in style, and funnier.

Douglas quickly became leader of the Illinois Democratic Party, and he was originally inspired by President Andrew Jackson. Douglas was elected at the young age of 22 to be the state’s top attorney. By age 28 he became an Illinois Supreme Court Justice; by age 29 he was elected to the House of Representatives in Congress. At age 34 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and won every reelection until he died in office. In the U.S. Senate, he became very powerful and earned the nickname “Little Giant.” His speeches would attract huge crowds in the galleries of the Senate. Politically, he was almost unbeatable.

As a Jacksonian Democrat, Douglas favored “manifest destiny” and acquiring as much property westward as possible. The Mexican War was a way to obtain more property, so he favored it in the mid-1840s.

At the same time, Abraham Lincoln was rising as a Whig in Illinois. In contrast to Douglas, Lincoln lost virtually every election he entered. But he kept trying, again and again. Unlike Douglas, Lincoln opposed the Mexican War because the Whigs saw it as a way for the South to gain more slave territory. Lincoln disputed the claim that Mexicans had shed American blood on American soil, and introduced the “Spot Resolutions” in Congress disputing where the bloodshed occurred.

Economic views: Lincoln sought economic unity (remember, he represented railroads); Douglas did not care as much, but also wanted to keep the country together.

Which person, Lincoln or Douglas, is going to be more sympathetic to slavery? Is either going to be entirely pro-slave or abolitionist?

Both Lincoln and Douglas looked for ways to avoid the coming Civil War. Many Americans, beginning with Jefferson, started to worry about how slavery was ripping the country apart. Jefferson used to wake up in a cold sweat with a nightmare of where the United States was headed.

Pre-Civil War Division

This is the toughest question of the entire course: Could the Civil War have been avoided? Historians just took a poll on the biggest presidential blunders. At the top of the list is the failure of President James Buchanan for keeping the Union together just prior to the Civil War. What do you think?

The Whig Party broke up over slavery: the northern, abolitionist Whigs founded the Republican Party, and the southern, pro-slavery Whigs (such as wealthy plantation owners) joined the Democratic Party.

James Buchanan

In 1857, the new Democratic President Buchanan deferred to popular sovereignty, and tried to get Kansas admitted as a slave state. The “Dred Scott” decision was the Supreme Court’s attempt to resolve it: the Court held that African-Americans have no rights in the United States. This was an outrageous, shocking decision. Northerners accused Buchanan of agreeing secretly with Supreme Court Justices to render a decision in favor of the South.

In 1858, Lincoln said in a speech before the Republican state convention: “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” quoting the Bible. He copied the application of this concept to slavery from many others who had used it previously.

The Election of 1860

Lincoln became the “Rail Candidate” for president in 1860 because he opposed slavery in the territories but accepted it (as the Constitution did) in the South. He “rode the rail” of that principle right to the White House. As a former attorney for the railroads, the image stuck to him.

Douglas lost the support of both the North and South due to his “Freeport Doctrine,” which was a position he took in a debate with Lincoln at Freeport, Illinois in their contest for U.S. Senate from Illinois (in which Lincoln won the popular vote, but Douglas was chosen by the Illinois legislature to be the Senator, as was the practice then). After the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that a slave is property who cannot be taken away from the slave owner, Lincoln asked Douglas, “Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?” In his answer, Douglas adopted a position in the middle between Lincoln’s view that slavery should not be allowed in territories and the Supreme Court’s view that slavery must be protected everywhere as property. Douglas said that the people in each territory can decide whether to allow slavery, and if they prohibited it then as a practical matter the slave owner could not keep a slave there. This angered the South and also further alienated Douglas from the North. Douglas could then win only one state, Missouri, in the presidential election of 1860. Lincoln coasted to victory in the presidential election. Why did the South think it could win the Civil War?

Development in the South

The South had a feeling of invincibility from its tremendous economy, which was based on high prices for “King Cotton” and other crops, such as tobacco and sugar cane. The South also felt that the North lacked a will to fight and, if it did, Britain and France would recognize and help the South due to their dependence on its exports like cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar cane. The South also had strategic advantages: controlled the mouth of the Mississippi and need only defend rather than conquer. The South considered its men in much better condition to fight. The South had better generals, and would have done far better had its generals like Stonewall Jackson not died in battle.

But the North benefited from the railroad system, heavy immigration and a much more balanced economy. Opposition to immigration in the 1850s had arisen in the North through the American (Know-Nothing) Party, but the greater numbers from the immigration ended up helping the North in the war. The North also had control of the United States Navy, which proved to be useful.

Antebellum State Admissions

1-11. Colonies ratifying the Constitution before George Washington became president
12. North Carolina: November 21, 1789
13. Rhode Island: May 29, 1790
14. Vermont: March 4, 1791
15. Kentucky: June 1, 1792
16. Tennessee: June 1, 1796
17. Ohio: March 1, 1803
18. Louisiana: April 30, 1812
19. Indiana: December 11, 1816
20. Mississippi: December 10, 1817
21. Illinois: December 3, 1818
22. Alabama: December 14, 1819
23. Maine: March 15, 1820
24. Missouri: August 10, 1821
25. Arkansas: June 15, 1836
26. Michigan: Jan 26, 1837
27. Florida: March 3, 1845
28. Texas: December 29, 1845
29. Iowa: December 28, 1846
30. Wisconsin: May 29, 1848
31. California: September 9, 1850
32. Minnesota: May 11, 1858
33. Oregon: February 14, 1859
34. Kansas: January 29, 1861