Introduction to Sectionalism and Slavery
Arguments over the issue of slavery developed in Congress after Missouri, part of the Louisiana Purchase area, applied in 1818 for admission as a state. Representatives of Southern states objected to a proposal that would keep slavery out of Missouri. This issue was settled, temporarily, by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Slavery was permitted in Missouri, but not in other states to be formed out of the Louisiana Purchase area north of Missouri's southern boundary.
The slavery question kept on festering, but was overshadowed for some years by other issues. During President Monroe's administrations (1817-25) there was a period, called the Era of Good Feeling, when sectionalism and political strife seemed to have disappeared. Long-standing disputes over Florida were settled when it was ceded by Spain through a treaty that was signed in 1819 and ratified in 1821. The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in 1823 to warn European powers against attempts to extend control over territory on the American continents.
Political harmony ended during the administration of John Quincy Adams (1825-29). Under Andrew Jackson, elected President in 1828, the modern Democratic party emerged from the old Jeffersonian Republican party. Much controversy resulted when Jackson vetoed a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States, a private institution that wielded great influence over the country's financial policy. Opposition to Jackson, who appealed to ordinary citizens even more directly than had Jefferson, brought into being the Whig party.The question of a state's right to prevent legislation hostile to its interests came up during Jackson's Presidency. In 1832 South Carolina objected to a tariff act and asserted the right to declare acts of Congress null and void. Jackson's readiness to use force to crush nullification, together with passage of a tariff act less objectionable to South Carolinians, caused the controversy to subside.
Toward the Civil War
The 1840's and 1850's were years of growth for the United States.Texas, which had broken away from Mexico, was admitted to the Union in 1845. The Mexican War followed in 1846. It resulted in California being ceded to the United States, along with the area called New Mexico, which included the later states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. In 1849 gold was discovered in California, and Oregon was organized as a territory.
Westward movement in America by 1840. By 1840, pioneers had settled most of the land east of the Mississippi. Westward expansion had already carried many settlers across the river into Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Captain Robert Gray's ship off the coast of Oregon. Captain Robert Gray visited what is now Oregon in 1792. He sailed into the mouth of a great river that he named after his ship, the Columbia.
The gold rush of 1849. The gold rush of 1849 began after James W. Marshall found gold near Sutter's Mill on the American River. News of his discovery spread rapidly.Territorial expansion was accompanied by heated controversy in Congress over the slavery issue. The Free Soil party, which demanded that slavery be excluded from all the new territories, was formed. Congress adopted the Compromise of 1850, by which California was admitted as a free state, to balance the existence of slavery in Texas. The territories of New Mexico and Utah, however, were permitted to choose their status. In addition, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, making it a federal crime to aid a slave to escape. This law increased antislavery feeling in the North.
1854 Congress adopted the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise by permitting slavery in the Kansas and Nebraska territories if the settlers voted for it. This legislation, which led to civil war in Kansas, was a death blow to the Whig party.
A new party in the North, the Republican, then emerged. It opposed extension of slavery, but did not advocate its abolition. It also stood for a basically Northern economic program. Many Northern Democrats who opposed extension of slavery joined Northern Whigs in the new party. Its first Presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, was defeated in 1856 by the Democrats' James Buchanan.In 1860 the Democratic party was split between North and South, and each faction ran its own candidate. The Republican party, although confined to the North, won the Presidency with Abraham Lincoln. Southern leaders assumed that the Republican victory meant that the South would be treated as an inferior section of the Union.
The Civil War
Before Lincoln was inaugurated, South Carolina and other Southern states seceded. Buchanan failed to act against the seceding states, which soon formed their own confederation. The Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, beginning the Civil War. The main aim of the federal government was to preserve the Union and this was accomplished, after four years of bloody fighting, by the federal triumph in 1865. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in December, 1865.
American Civil War: battles and campaigns in the West. This map shows the location of important early battles and campaigns of the American Civil War (1861-1865) that took place in the West. Fighting in the West centered in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, Lincoln had been reelected President in 1864 on a Union party ticket with Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat who opposed secession, as Vice President. Lincoln died from an assassin's bullet on April 15, 1865, six days after the surrender of the main Confederate forces and only a few weeks after his second inauguration. Johnson became President.
