Prelude to War 1845-1860

Famous People

John Tyler• 10th president of the U.S.• First Vice President to become

president after William Henry Harrison’s death.

• Born in Virginia, served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President in 1840.

• At the Whig convention of 1840, Tyler supported Henry Clay for Presidential candidacy.

• Alliance with the Whig Party.

During his presidency• Webster–Ashburton Treaty with Britain.• a treaty resolving several border issues between the United States and the

British North American colonies.• Treaty of Wanghia with Qing China.• a diplomatic agreement between the Qing China and the United States. • Treaty of peace, amity, and commerce, between the United States of

America and the Chinese Empire.• Annexation of Texas.• Tyler dedicated his last two years in office to the annexation of Texas.• He wanted Texas to join the United States.• Texas became a state (1845)

James K. Polk• 11th president of the United

States.• He was a democrat and served as

the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives.

• Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System.

• Polk's Whig opponent in the 1844 presidential election was Henry Clay of Kentucky.

• youngest man at the time to assume the presidency.

During his presidency• Reestablish the Independent Treasury System.• Reduce tariffs.• Acquire California and New Mexico from Mexico.• He threatened war with Britain over the issue of which nation owned the

Oregon Country, then backed away and split the ownership of the region with Britain.

• Mexican-American War• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo• peace treaty between the U.S. and Mexico that ended the Mexican–

American War.• The Gadsden Purchase• southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by

the United States in a treaty signed by James Gadsden

Harriet Tubman• Tubman was born a slave in

Maryland's Dorchester County around 1820.

• African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War.

• made more than thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves

• Used the Underground Railroad to transport escaped slaves to the North.

• When the South passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she took the escaped slaves as far as Canada.

Major Events

Manifest Destiny• Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United

States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.

• advocate the annexation of Texas and Oregon.• Western migration and cultural interactions • forced removal of American Indians to the trans-Mississippi West• Expand to the west.

California Gold Rush• began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at

Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California.• news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California• San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846

to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852.• first people to rush to the gold fields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were

the residents of California themselves• The largest group of forty-niners in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the

tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes.

• There was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region.• The Gold Rush wealth and population increase led to significantly improved

transportation between California and the East Coast.

Panic of 1857• financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international

economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy.• southern economy suffered little whereas the northern economy took a

significant hit and made a slow recovery.• The area affected the most by the Panic was the Great Lakes region and

the troubles of that region were quickly passed to those enterprises in the East that depended upon western sales.

• Near the end of the Panic tensions between the north and south regarding the issue of slavery were increasing.

• The Panic of 1857 encouraged those in the South who believed the idea that the north needed the south to keep a stabilized economy and southern threats of secession were temporarily quelled.

Kansas-Nebraska Act• created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for

settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory.

• The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.

• Pro-slavery settlers known as Blue Lodges.• Abolitionists known as Jayhawkers.• “Bleeding Kansas”• series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters

and pro-slavery .

Art in the 1850s

Slavery and Sectionalism• Slavery was a huge social issue in America.• Nat Turner’s Rebellion• - slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia during

August 1831 led by Nat Turner. rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55–65 white people

• Compromise of !850• -allows residents of New Mexico and Utah territories to permit or ban

slavery, admits California as a free state(31st), ends the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia, and enacts a stricter fugitive slave law requiring citizens in free states to turn in runaway slaves.

• Underground Railroad• -network of safe houses of white abolitionists used to bring slaves to

freedom

Continued…• Nativism• -anti-immigrant, especially against Irish Catholics• Wage slaves• -northern factory workers who were discarded when too old to work• Wilmot Proviso• slavery to be barred in all territory ceded from Mexico; never fully passed

Congress• Yeoman Farmers• -family farmers who hired out slaves for the harvest season, self-sufficient,

participated in local markets alongside slave owners•

Inventions• Maynard tape primer• -a system designed to allow for more rapid reloading of muskets which

previously relied on small copped caps that were filled with mercury fulminate.• Baseball• Printing telegraph• -a derivative of the electrical telegraph which links two 28-key piano-style

keyboards by electrical wire representing a letter of the alphabet and when pressed causing the corresponding letter to print at the receiving end.

• Electric stove• Jackhammer• Repeating rifle (lever action)• A repeating rifle is a single barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of

ammunition.

Economy• Railroads made a decisive impact on the U.S.• Railroads opened up remote areas, drastically cut the cost of moving

freight as well as passenger travel, and stimulated new industries such as steel and telegraphy, as well as the profession of civil engineering.

• Agriculture was the largest single industry.• In 1860 the Treasury was a small operation that funded the small-scale

operations of the government through the low tariff and land sales.• Transportation Revolution • -Created a national market economy.

Culture• Young America movement• - an American political and cultural attitude in the mid-nineteenth century.• formed as a political organization in 1845 by Edwin de Leon and George H. Evans.• It advocated free trade, social reform, expansion southward into the territories,

and support for republican, anti-aristocratic movements abroad. • Immigrants from Europe came to America seeking for a better life.• The Irish were the largest immigrant group• -Irish faced discrimination as they were Catholic and often very poor • Rapid urbanization created an array of problems • Antiforeignism• Irish and German immigration inflamed the hatred of American "nativists." • Catholics began to construct an entirely separate Catholic educational system. • By 1850, Catholics became the largest religious group in America, outnumbering

the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists.

Environment• Living conditions in urban areas were wery horrible in the 1840s and 1850s• Water pollution in 1855• 1845-Irish Potato famine begins• -Over 1.5 million people die of starvation and associated disease by 1849 and

another million people emigrate from Ireland, mostly for America• 1848-American Medical Association formed with two main initial goals: license

physicians and survey sanitary conditions across the U.S. • 1848-Andrew Jackson Downing, a landscape architect, proposes creation of a

500 acre People's Park in New York. By 1853 land was purchased and by 1857 a board of commissioners was appointed for what became known as Central Park.

• 1848-Gold discovered at Sutter's Mill on California's American River. • 1849-Cholera kills 5,000 in New York City, leading to first serious calls for urban

reform in U.S.

Religion• Third Great Awakening• -a period of religious activism in American history from the late 1850s • affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of

social activism.• By 1850, Catholics had become the country’s largest single denomination.• Native Americans were converted to Catholicism.• Some feared that a person’s allegiance would be to the pope rather than

America• Anti-Catholic publications would come out.

Gender Issues• Black women suffered the most

• They were constantly beaten, tortured, raped or murdered.• In 1848, 300 women and men signed a "Declaration of Sentiments". • -This was a plea to end gender discrimination in all "spheres of society". • Lowell Female Labor Reform Association• -The Association was run completely by the women themselves• - helped organize the city’s female workers, and set up branches in other

mill towns.

Labor Issues• Ten-hour day for federal employees on federal public works projects

without loss of pay.• Lowell Female Labor Reform Association formed.• New Hampshire is first state to establish the ten-hour workday.• Pennsylvania's child labor law establishes the age of 12 as the minimum

age for workers in commercial occupations.• Iron Molders' International Union founded.• -an affiliated trade union of the AFL-CIO.• Typographical Union founded.• - was an industrial union with members involved in many aspects of the

printing trade.

Racial Issues• During the 1840s and 1850s, many Catholic churches were burnt by

Protestant mobs• This anti-Catholicism helped fuel the fear of foreigners that flourished in

the late 19th century.• Black Codes• -These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as

prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.

• n 1945, the two areas where segregation and racism was most obviously applied was in housing and in education.

• In the southern states, the African Americans lived in the poorest areas with the worst facilities.

Diplomacy• 1846 - Oregon crisis ended by compromise that splits the region, with

British Columbia to Great Britain, and Washington, Idaho, and Oregon to America.

• 1845 - Annexation of Republic of Texas• 1848 - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo settled Mexican-American War, Rio

Grande as U.S. border; territory of New Mexico rest of west ceded to America, especially California. U.S. pays Mexico $15,000,000 and assumes $3,250,000 liability against Mexico.

• 1850 - Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. America and Great Britain agreed that both nations were not to colonize or control any Central American republic

• 1853 - Gadsden Purchase: purchase of 30,000 square miles in southern Arizona for $10,000,000 for purpose of railroad connections

• 1857 - Nicaragua; U.S. Navy forces the surrender of filibusterer William Walker, who had tried to seize control of the country.