A Difficult Past - How the Americas ChangeArman Vatanpur

The Americas in the 19th Century Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nearly all the lands of the western hemisphere won their independence from European colonial powers. American peoples then struggled throughout the nineteenth century to shape states. The age of independence for the United States, Canada, and Latin America was a contentious era characterized by continuous mass migration and explosive economic growth, occasionally followed by deep economic stagnation, and punctuated with civil war, ethnic violence, class conflict, and battles for racial and sexual equality. After winning independence from Britain, the United States fashioned a government and began to expand rapidly to the west. By midcentury the new republic had absorbed almost all the temperate lands of North America. Yet the United States was an unstable society composed of varied regions with diverse economic and social structures. Differences over slavery and the rights of individual states as opposed to the federal government sparked a massive civil war in the 1860s. Canada did not fight a war for independence, and in spite of deep regional divisions, it did not experience bloody internal conflict. Instead, Canadian independence came gradually as Canadians and the British government agreed on general principles of autonomy.

The Americas in the 19th Century

Canada was part of Britain and France colony. The colony of New France passed into the British empire after the British victory in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Until the late eighteenth century, however, French Canadians outnumbered British Canadians, so imperial officials made large concessions to their subjects of French descent in order to forestall unnecessary strife. After the War of 1812, Canada experienced an era of rapid growth. Expanded business opportunities drew English-speaking migrants, who swelled the population. This influx threatened the identity of Quebec, and discontent in Canada reached a critical point in the 1830s. The British imperial governors of Canada did not want a repeat of the American revolution, so between 1840 and 1867 they defused tensions by expanding home rule in Canada and permitting the provinces to govern their own internal affairs.

The Little Ice Age In the summer 0f 1653, high in the French Alps a titanic glacier creeps to the unprotected

village of Nautesay Began just seven centuries ago – from the 14th – 19th centuries Two ft. of snow fell on New England in June and July, and some men froze to death in early

September’ The Alpine peasants and priests believed that the glaciers had become possessed by the devil The priests sprinkled holy water and performed exorcisms

“Evidence from mountain glaciers does suggest increased glaciation in a number of widely spread regions outside Europe prior to the 20th century, including Alaska, New Zealand and Patagonia. However, the timing of maximum glacial advances in these regions differs considerably, suggesting that they may represent largely independent regional climate changes, not a globally-synchronous increased glaciation. Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries...”

Frontiers of the Americas

The Louisiana was a purchase by the United State of America of France’s claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. This 828,800 miles property cost 60 million francs for a total sum of 15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory. What was bought was France's claim only, not the actual territory, which belonged to the tribes which inhabited the area. The territory itself was acquired slowly throughout the nineteenth century by purchases to Native American tribes and wars. The purchase was a vital moment in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. At the time, it faced domestic opposition as being possibly unconstitutional. Although he felt that the U.S. Constitution did not contain any provisions for acquiring territory, Jefferson decided to purchase Louisiana because he felt uneasy about France and Spain having the power to block American trade access to the port of New Orleans.

Frontiers of the Americas Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (September 23, 1782 - February 3, 1867)

was a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. Wied was born in Neuwied, Maximilian became friends with two of its major figures: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a major comparative anthropologist under whom he studied biological sciences, and Alexander von Humboldt, who served as Maximilian's mentor. He joined the Prussian army in 1800 during the Napoleonic Wars, rising to the rank of major. He was given a leave of absence from the army in 1815. In 1832 he travelled to the Great Plains region of North America, accompanied by the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer on a journey up the Missouri River, and wrote Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas (1840) on his return. During his travels, he studied the cultures of tribes such as the Mandan and the Hidatsa and collected many specimens of flora and fauna of the area.“Karl Bodmer (6 February 1809 – 30 October 1893) was a Swiss painter of the American West. He accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. He was hired as an artist by Maximilian with the specific intent of traveling through the American West and recording images of the different tribes they saw along the way. A major turning point in Bodmer’s life was his being contracted to the Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. Known popularly to naturalists then and even now as Prince Max, this German aristocrat, having successfully led a scientific expedition to Brazil in 1815–1817, decided to embark on another such venture, this time to North America.By 1828, Bodmer had left his native Switzerland for the German city of Koblenz. It was there that he came to Prince Max’s attention. After delays, Bodmer, in the company of Prince Max and a huntsman and taxidermist, David Dreidoppel, set out for America on 17 May 1832. In a letter bearing that date, Prince Max wrote to his brother that Bodmer “is a lively, very good man and companion, seems well educated, and is very pleasant and very suitable for me; I am glad I picked him. He makes no demands, and in diligence he is never lacking.”

Crossroads of Freedom The eleven states of the Confederacy

established a functioning government at Richmond in May 1861 with its armies in control of virtually all of the 750,000square miles that constituted its national territory.

In June and July of 1861, McClellan led a small army to victories that secured union control of much of the area that became West Virginia.

Almost overnight the Northern mood vaulted from dependency to euphoria and the Southern mood sank from confidence to despair.

Grant’s experience of failure before the war made him willing to take risks , having little to lose.

Lincoln and Stanton also heard ugly rumors that McClellan was really pro-southern and had deliberately left the capital undefended.

Crossroads of Freedom The evacuation of Yorktown forced

Confederates to pull out of Norfolk as well, yielding the most important naval yard in the south to the Yankees.

The capture of Norfolk” was second in importance only to that of New Orleans,” declared the new york times, which led the Northern cheerleading.

Richmond seemed to be seized by panic during the second week of may.

In March 1862, Lee became Davis’s military advisor just in time to receive some of the blame for confederate reverses during the spring.

Some southern newspapers named him “Granny Lee” or “Evacuating Lee.”

Americans were the world’s preeminent newspaper-reading people, with by far the largest per capita circulation of any county. The war vastly increased their insatiable appetite for news and the impulsive response to it.

Crossroads of Freedom On August 6, 1861, congress took a

big step toward legitimizing this concept by passing a confiscation act that authorized the seizure of all property, including slaves, that had been used in aid of rebellion.

In March 1862 Lincoln had made a bid to seize the initiative on the salary issue.

Union forces in Tennessee and northern Mississippi experienced even garater embarrassments.

Panic did indaeed seize many Pennsylvanians during the second week of September. Farmers in southern counties took their families and drove their cattle north of the Susquehanna River.

Crossroads of Freedom The army of Northern Virginia was not

destroyed at Antietam, as Lincoln had hoped.

On October 8, Braxton bragg and Edmund Kirdy Smith gave up their campaign and retreated again to Tennessee.

The battle of Antietam and Emancipation proclamation had a signal impact abroad.

Voters took out their anger by voting against the party in power.

Lincoln did everything he could to prod McClellan into action.

Lincoln had waited until after the electronics to remove McClellan. Those electronics resulted in significant Democratic gains.

To the end of his life McClellan believed that Antietam was his finest hour, when he had saved the Union and earned the gratitude of the republic.

Contemporaries recognized Antietam as the permanent turning point of the war.