American Expansion and the Civil War: A Journey Through Transformation

Expansion: in 1840 slavery moved to center stage of american politics, but as a result of the nation’s territorial expansion (5000 emigrants). The californios, land ended up in the hands of new class of Mexican cattle ranchers, who defined their own identity in large measure against the surrounding Indian population. They referred to themselves as gente the razón. The Mexican War was the fist America conflict to be fought primarily on foreign soil and the first in which America troops occupied foreign capital, inspired by the expansionist fervor of manifest destiny, majority of Americans support. Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau, 1846, Jailed, Massachusetts) which inspired such later advocates of nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. In February 1848, the two governments agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which confirmed the annexation of Texas and ceded California and present day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah to the U.S. Gold Rush discovered in Sierra Nevada mountains, the non Indian population rose to 200,000 by 1852 and more than 360,000 18 years later. In 1853/54, American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry(younger brother of Oliver, a hero of the war 1812) sailed into Tokyo Harbor, he negotiated a trade treaty. The new Fugitive Slave act made further controversy, law, jury trial, issue affected all the free states. Nothing party(called because it began as a secret organization whose members) trumpeted its dedication to reserving political office for native born americans and resist the aggresions of the catholic church.The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, buchanan became aware of an impending Suprem court decision, during 1830s, Scott had accompanied his owner, Dr. John Emerson of Missouri, to Illinois, where slavery had been prohibited . The Lecompton Constitution,  whcih had been drafted by a pro/southern convention and never submitted to a popular vote. Democratic Split, Douglas’s supporters majority but no the two-thirds required for presidential nomination, because of his fight against Kansas’s Lecompton C, he became unacceptable. Fort Sumter, april 12,1861.An enclave of union control in the harbor of Charleston, S carolina. 14. Union and Confederacy seemed to favor the Union, the North and the loyal border states 22m in 1860, whyle only 9m persons lived in the Confederancy, 3.5m slaves. Battle between the Union vessel Monitor and the confederate Merrima in 1862 was the first demostration of the superiority of ironclads over wooden ships, revolutionizing naval warfare. The Death toll in the Civil War exceeds the total number of americans who died in all the nation’s other wars, from the revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Genral Robert e. Lee the leading southern commander, was a briliant battlefiled tactician who felt confident of his ability to fend off atacks by larger Union forces. The Firts Battle o Bull Run, took place in northern VIrginia on July 21, 1861. It ended with the chaotic retreat of the union soldiers, along with the sightseers and politicians who had come to watch the battle, almost 800 men died. Battle of Antietam, in maryland, McClellan and the army of the Potomac repelled Lee’s advance. In 1 day of fighting nearly 4000 men were killed and 18000 wounded. The Contrabands, were escaping slaves. They were housed by the army in Contraban Camps and educated in new contrabands schools. Abraham Lincoln and policies, concluded that emancipation had become a political and military necessity, his decision lack of military success, hope that emancipated slaves might help meet the army’s growing manpower needs. Emancipation Proclamantion, on january 1, 1863, lincoln retired to his study to sign the Emancipa… The document did not liberate all the slaves– indeed, on the day it was issued, it applied to very few.  54th Massachusetts Volunteers, a company of free blacks from throughout the north commanded by Robert Gould Shaw, a young reformer from a prominent Boston family, the bravery of the 54 in the july 1863 attack on fort wagner, south carolina, where nearly half the unit (the exploits of Shaw and the 54 massa… Were popularized in the 1989 film Glory.) Print money called Greenbacks declared to be legal tender that is, money must be accepted for nearly all public and private payments and debts. Captains of industry, iron and steel Andrew Carnegie, oil John D. Rockerfeller, finaciers Jay Gould and J.P Morgan, and Philip D. Armour, they managed to escape the military service. Northern Women, the conflic opened new doors of opportunity. Women took advantage of the wartime labor shortage to move into jobs in factories and into certain largely male professions, particularly nursing, they find a permanet place in the workforce. Copperheads, republicans labeled those opposed to the war Copper.. By 1865, the Sea Islands experiment was widely held to be a success, The most famous rehearsal for Reconstruction took place on the Sea… Ulysses S, Grant a modern day hero. On January 31, 1865, congress approved the 13 amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the entire Union, and introduced the word slavery into the constitution. The Anaconda Plan, military strategy proposed by Union general Winfield Scott early in the american Civil War. The plan called for a naval blockade of the strangulation of the south by union land and naval forces. Battle of Gettysburg, with 165,000 troops involved, remains the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. Batttle of Vicksburg dealt a heavy blow to southern morale. 15. Sherman responded to the black delegation by issuing Special Field Order, this sset aside the Sea Island and a large area along the  S carolina and Georgia coast for the settlement of black families on forty-acre plots of land. Black families were strengthened, expanded, and freed from whites supervision, the family was central. Blacks and church, they abandoned white religious institutions to creat their own churches, with methodists and baptists commanding the largest following. Reconstruction also witnessed the creation of the nation’s first black colleges, incluiding Howard university in the nation’s capital. The Bureau was an experiment in goverment social policy that seems to belong more comfortably to the new deal of the 1930s or the great society of the 1960s. Before the war, most small farmers had concentrated on raisinf food for their families and grew little cotton. Black Codes, laws passed by the news southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. Civil right bill of 1866, described as one of the most important bills ever present to the House its action. It defined all persons born in the U.S as citizens. 14 Amendment, which placed in the constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the U.S, and which empowered the federal government to protect the rights of all americans, it also prohibited the states from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens or denying any person of the equal protection of the laws. IMpeachment present charges against Johnson to the senate, which had to decide whether to remove him from office. In February 1869, it approved the 15 amendment, which prohibited the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the Democratic party, it was ratified in 1870. The Whiskey Ring, which involved high officials of the Grant administration, and by New York’s Tweed ring, controlled by democrats, the rising taxes needed to pay for schools, many whites initially supported republican party turned against it. Second reconstruction, violence was mostly local and unorganized, black were assaulted and murdered for refusing to give way to whites on city sidewalks… In 1870 and 71, congress adopted three Enforcement acts, outlawing terrorist societies and allowing the president to use the army against them. These laws continued the expansion of national authority during Reconstr..  Waving the Bloody shirt was a phrase used to ridicule opposing politicians who made emotional calls to avenge the blood of the northerm soldiers that died in the Civil War. Sharecropping: initially arose as a compromise between blacks desire for land and planters’ demand for labor discipline. The systemn allow each black family to rent a part of a plantation, with the crop divided between worker and owner at the end of the year. Share… Guaranteed the planters a stable resident labor force.