Over the years, sectional conflicts have been going on mainly between the North and South. Issues like slavery and abolitionism were the main problems. For the South, slavery was a huge economic impact for plantation owners, and while the land in the North couldn't be used for agriculture so slaves were not needed, the North saw the cruelty in it. A westward expansion grew, and more states were made, the concern of free an slaves' states arose. The North and South began to argue over which states would be what. If there were more free states than slave states, the North would gain political control of Congress; the South opposed the admission of free states unless they were balanced by the admission of an equal number of
slave states. The North also opposed the admission of slaves’ states, but when Missouri requested admission to the Union in 1818 as a slave state, Henry Clay proposed the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise made Missouri a slave state, and made a state, Maine, separate from Massachusetts that would become a free state. Also, it made slavery prohibited in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36 degree 30' parallel; however, Missouri was an exception. After the
Missouri Compromise, the US had altercations with Mexico. For years, there were conflicts between Mexican and US settlers in Texas based on disagreements over the border of the Louisiana Purchase and Mexico. When the United States settlers requested assistance from the federal government, the government rejected it. The settlers then organized an attack on Mexico and claimed the Rio Grande to be the border. General Sam Houston and the settlers defeated the Mexican leader, Santa Anna, in 1836, and Texas was then given its independence from Mexico and established as a republic. There were many attempts to have Texas join the Union or ally with Britain, but in 1845, Texas was finally admitted as the 28th state of the United States. However, after Texas was admitted, Mexico was angered and starts to fight. The US, led by Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, won a series of battles in Mexico. California was captured under the efforts of Stephen Kearny, John Sloat, and John Fremont. The US ended up paying $15 million to Mexico for the territory. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed in 1848 and provided that the regions of Mexico called New Mexico (present-day Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona) and Upper California were ceded to the United States. The Rio Grande was later fixed as the southern boundary of Texas. At the time of the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso was introduced into the House of Representatives. It focused attention on the question of extension of slavery, it stated that there would be no slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the war, and blocked Southern ideas of expansion. It was passed through the House, but the Senate shot it down. When California applied for statehood in 1849 as a state without slavery, it created a crisis for Congress. The balance of free and slave states would have been thrown off. Again, Henry Clay worked out a compromise, called the Compromise of 1850, which delayed secession and war. The Compromise of 1850 stated that California would enter as a free state, popular sovereignty would be applied to the territories of New Mexico and Utah, the slave trade would be banned in the nation's capital, Congress had no power to end the slave trade between states, it strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law, which made it easier for Southern slave owners to get their escaped slaves return to them, and it settled the border dispute between New Mexico and Texas. Popular sovereignty was a term that was popularized by Stephen Douglas, during the first Lincoln-Douglas debates for Senate. During that time, the political balance of power in the Senate was decided by several compromises, admitting a slave state with a free state so that the South could retain equality in the Senate. Douglas thought it only proper that the residents of the territories decide the question of slavery for themselves, without Federal intervention. This fueled the idea in the South that slavery must expand or perish, as they would eventually be out-voted if they did not add new slave states. The Kansas-Nebraska Act almost follows this idea. In 1854, this act repealed the Missouri Compromise and stated that each new state created from the territory of the Louisiana Purchase would decide whether to be free or slave. Both Northerners and Southerners financed settlers in both the Kansas and Nebraska territories to support their positions on slavery. A small civil war broke out in both areas as they struggled to decide on a slave or a free status. Three years later, there was a slave named Dred Scott who demanded freedom because his master had moved from a slave state (Missouri) to a free state (Illinois), the case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford decided that slaves were property that could be taken anywhere and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. A couple of years later, an Abolitionist, John Brown, led a raid on an arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. He planned to seize arms, distribute them to slaves, and lead them in a revolt for freedom. He was captured, tried, and hanged. Some abolitionists like John Brown organized an "Underground Railroad" that helped slaves escape to the North. Harriet Tubman was one of the famous and effective operators of the railroad. During the 1830's, the term "gag rule" originated when the US House of Representatives barred discussion or referral to committee of antislavery petitions. Such rules are often criticized because they abridge freedom of speech, which is normally given extremely high value when exercised by members of legislative ordecision-making bodies. On the other hand, gag rules are typically defended on the ground that they help preserve consensus by placing potentially divisive controversies "off the table" of debate. Other Abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison, in 1831 wrote about the abolition of slavery. Garrison wrote a paper called the Liberator. The Abolition Movement began a slow but steady growth in the North. Important leaders of the movement were ex-slaves Frederick Douglass, who spoke widely and effectively of the slave experience, and Harriet Tubman, who organized and ran the Underground Railroad. Led by William, Frederick Douglass, and many others, the Abolitionists argued for an end to slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin, a famous novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 awakened Northern sympathy for the slaves. Even though she never witnessed slavery with her own eyes, she heard many things about it and pictures and wrote the novel by trying to show how cruel slavery was. Harper's ferry further polarized an already tense relationship between factions and further solidified Southerner's determination to resist Abolition at any and all costs. Brown quickly became, depending on who is asked, a sacrifice to the Abolitionist cause or a crazy terrorist, despite that he was a murderer. Harper's Ferry was a weapons depot in the southern United States. It had lots of guns and ammunition stored there. John Brown's plan was to provoke a massive slave revolt in the South which would topple the entire institution of slavery in the United States. He planned to do this by first raiding Harper's Ferry for weapons and ammunition and then go liberate slaves and give them the weapons and free more slaves and give them weapons and keep on doing this until he toppled the entire state. Once he toppled the state government, he would move onto the next state and repeat the process until all the slaves were freed. Many parties popped up over the years that each had a view on slavery. The Free-Soil Party opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. Outside of the Slavery Question, they favored a mostly free market, with a tariff to simply create revenue, rather than protectionist. It was only active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. The Liberty Party was a minor political party in the United States in the 1840s (with some offshoots surviving into the 1850s and 1860s). The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) to advocate the view that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document; William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the AASS, held the contrary view that the Constitution should be condemned as an evil pro-slavery document. The party included abolitionists who were willing to work within electoral politics to try to influence people to support their goals; the radical Garrison, by contrast, opposed voting and working within the system. The party was announced in November 1839, and first gathered in Warsaw, New York. Its first national convention took place in Arcade on April 1, 1840.The Liberty Party nominated James G. Birney, a Kentuckian and former slaveholder, for President in 1840 and 1844. The Republican Party, also known as the "Grand Old Party", is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. Eighteen presidents have been Republicans. The most recent Republican president was George W. Bush. Currently the party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S. political spectrum. However, some conflicting views of states' rights and federal authority surfaced. Secession was based on the idea of state rights (or "states rights," a variant that came into use after the Civil War). This exalted the powers of the individual states as opposed to those of the Federal government. It generally rested on the theory of state sovereignty-- that in the United States the ultimate source of political
authority lay in the separate states. Associated with the principle of state rights was a sense of state loyalty that could prevail over a feeling of national patriotism. Before the war, the principle found expression in different ways at different times, in the North as well as in the South. During the war it reappeared in the Confederacy. The disagreements culminated in the succession of Southern states in 1861 and the first shots of the Civil War being fired off the
coast of South Carolina at Fort Sumter. Though often regarded as a war over the question of slavery, the Civil War actually was fought over the age-old argument between advocates for a strong central federal government and southern state leaders who thought of their territories as sovereign in and of themselves. The war tested--and the Union victory solidified--the U.S. Constitution and our nation's viability. During the Election of 1860, the Democratic Party split into two parts over the slavery issue; the northern wing and the southern wing. The northern wing ran Stephen Douglas on a platform of popular sovereignty to determine free or slave status. The southern wing ran John C. Breckenridge on a policy based on the Dred Scott decision that slaves were property protected everywhere by the Constitution. The remnants of the Whig and American parties nominated John Bell on a platform that condemned sectional parties and called for upholding the Constitution and the laws of the land. The recently formed Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln on a platform that allowed Kansas to be admitted as a free state, slaver not being able to extend to the territories, and a high protective tariff that was maintained. In the four-party race no one won a majority. Lincoln was elected by the electoral college system, even though he received no more that 40 percent of the votes cast. With Lincoln's election, eleven southern states, including South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas,
North Carolina, and Tennessee, seceded from the Union. They created The Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as president. Their constitution stated that there would be no Supreme Court, states would have more rights than the central government, and slavery was lawful. Some people even think sectionalism was one of the causes of the war. Disagreement over tariffs and the economic systems of the two areas was a basic cause of the hostility. As new territory was added to the Union, the question of the extension of slavery became crucial to the South for both economic and political
reasons.
slave states. The North also opposed the admission of slaves’ states, but when Missouri requested admission to the Union in 1818 as a slave state, Henry Clay proposed the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise made Missouri a slave state, and made a state, Maine, separate from Massachusetts that would become a free state. Also, it made slavery prohibited in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36 degree 30' parallel; however, Missouri was an exception. After the
Missouri Compromise, the US had altercations with Mexico. For years, there were conflicts between Mexican and US settlers in Texas based on disagreements over the border of the Louisiana Purchase and Mexico. When the United States settlers requested assistance from the federal government, the government rejected it. The settlers then organized an attack on Mexico and claimed the Rio Grande to be the border. General Sam Houston and the settlers defeated the Mexican leader, Santa Anna, in 1836, and Texas was then given its independence from Mexico and established as a republic. There were many attempts to have Texas join the Union or ally with Britain, but in 1845, Texas was finally admitted as the 28th state of the United States. However, after Texas was admitted, Mexico was angered and starts to fight. The US, led by Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, won a series of battles in Mexico. California was captured under the efforts of Stephen Kearny, John Sloat, and John Fremont. The US ended up paying $15 million to Mexico for the territory. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed in 1848 and provided that the regions of Mexico called New Mexico (present-day Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona) and Upper California were ceded to the United States. The Rio Grande was later fixed as the southern boundary of Texas. At the time of the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso was introduced into the House of Representatives. It focused attention on the question of extension of slavery, it stated that there would be no slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the war, and blocked Southern ideas of expansion. It was passed through the House, but the Senate shot it down. When California applied for statehood in 1849 as a state without slavery, it created a crisis for Congress. The balance of free and slave states would have been thrown off. Again, Henry Clay worked out a compromise, called the Compromise of 1850, which delayed secession and war. The Compromise of 1850 stated that California would enter as a free state, popular sovereignty would be applied to the territories of New Mexico and Utah, the slave trade would be banned in the nation's capital, Congress had no power to end the slave trade between states, it strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law, which made it easier for Southern slave owners to get their escaped slaves return to them, and it settled the border dispute between New Mexico and Texas. Popular sovereignty was a term that was popularized by Stephen Douglas, during the first Lincoln-Douglas debates for Senate. During that time, the political balance of power in the Senate was decided by several compromises, admitting a slave state with a free state so that the South could retain equality in the Senate. Douglas thought it only proper that the residents of the territories decide the question of slavery for themselves, without Federal intervention. This fueled the idea in the South that slavery must expand or perish, as they would eventually be out-voted if they did not add new slave states. The Kansas-Nebraska Act almost follows this idea. In 1854, this act repealed the Missouri Compromise and stated that each new state created from the territory of the Louisiana Purchase would decide whether to be free or slave. Both Northerners and Southerners financed settlers in both the Kansas and Nebraska territories to support their positions on slavery. A small civil war broke out in both areas as they struggled to decide on a slave or a free status. Three years later, there was a slave named Dred Scott who demanded freedom because his master had moved from a slave state (Missouri) to a free state (Illinois), the case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford decided that slaves were property that could be taken anywhere and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. A couple of years later, an Abolitionist, John Brown, led a raid on an arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. He planned to seize arms, distribute them to slaves, and lead them in a revolt for freedom. He was captured, tried, and hanged. Some abolitionists like John Brown organized an "Underground Railroad" that helped slaves escape to the North. Harriet Tubman was one of the famous and effective operators of the railroad. During the 1830's, the term "gag rule" originated when the US House of Representatives barred discussion or referral to committee of antislavery petitions. Such rules are often criticized because they abridge freedom of speech, which is normally given extremely high value when exercised by members of legislative ordecision-making bodies. On the other hand, gag rules are typically defended on the ground that they help preserve consensus by placing potentially divisive controversies "off the table" of debate. Other Abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison, in 1831 wrote about the abolition of slavery. Garrison wrote a paper called the Liberator. The Abolition Movement began a slow but steady growth in the North. Important leaders of the movement were ex-slaves Frederick Douglass, who spoke widely and effectively of the slave experience, and Harriet Tubman, who organized and ran the Underground Railroad. Led by William, Frederick Douglass, and many others, the Abolitionists argued for an end to slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin, a famous novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 awakened Northern sympathy for the slaves. Even though she never witnessed slavery with her own eyes, she heard many things about it and pictures and wrote the novel by trying to show how cruel slavery was. Harper's ferry further polarized an already tense relationship between factions and further solidified Southerner's determination to resist Abolition at any and all costs. Brown quickly became, depending on who is asked, a sacrifice to the Abolitionist cause or a crazy terrorist, despite that he was a murderer. Harper's Ferry was a weapons depot in the southern United States. It had lots of guns and ammunition stored there. John Brown's plan was to provoke a massive slave revolt in the South which would topple the entire institution of slavery in the United States. He planned to do this by first raiding Harper's Ferry for weapons and ammunition and then go liberate slaves and give them the weapons and free more slaves and give them weapons and keep on doing this until he toppled the entire state. Once he toppled the state government, he would move onto the next state and repeat the process until all the slaves were freed. Many parties popped up over the years that each had a view on slavery. The Free-Soil Party opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. Outside of the Slavery Question, they favored a mostly free market, with a tariff to simply create revenue, rather than protectionist. It was only active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. The Liberty Party was a minor political party in the United States in the 1840s (with some offshoots surviving into the 1850s and 1860s). The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) to advocate the view that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document; William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the AASS, held the contrary view that the Constitution should be condemned as an evil pro-slavery document. The party included abolitionists who were willing to work within electoral politics to try to influence people to support their goals; the radical Garrison, by contrast, opposed voting and working within the system. The party was announced in November 1839, and first gathered in Warsaw, New York. Its first national convention took place in Arcade on April 1, 1840.The Liberty Party nominated James G. Birney, a Kentuckian and former slaveholder, for President in 1840 and 1844. The Republican Party, also known as the "Grand Old Party", is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. Eighteen presidents have been Republicans. The most recent Republican president was George W. Bush. Currently the party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S. political spectrum. However, some conflicting views of states' rights and federal authority surfaced. Secession was based on the idea of state rights (or "states rights," a variant that came into use after the Civil War). This exalted the powers of the individual states as opposed to those of the Federal government. It generally rested on the theory of state sovereignty-- that in the United States the ultimate source of political
authority lay in the separate states. Associated with the principle of state rights was a sense of state loyalty that could prevail over a feeling of national patriotism. Before the war, the principle found expression in different ways at different times, in the North as well as in the South. During the war it reappeared in the Confederacy. The disagreements culminated in the succession of Southern states in 1861 and the first shots of the Civil War being fired off the
coast of South Carolina at Fort Sumter. Though often regarded as a war over the question of slavery, the Civil War actually was fought over the age-old argument between advocates for a strong central federal government and southern state leaders who thought of their territories as sovereign in and of themselves. The war tested--and the Union victory solidified--the U.S. Constitution and our nation's viability. During the Election of 1860, the Democratic Party split into two parts over the slavery issue; the northern wing and the southern wing. The northern wing ran Stephen Douglas on a platform of popular sovereignty to determine free or slave status. The southern wing ran John C. Breckenridge on a policy based on the Dred Scott decision that slaves were property protected everywhere by the Constitution. The remnants of the Whig and American parties nominated John Bell on a platform that condemned sectional parties and called for upholding the Constitution and the laws of the land. The recently formed Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln on a platform that allowed Kansas to be admitted as a free state, slaver not being able to extend to the territories, and a high protective tariff that was maintained. In the four-party race no one won a majority. Lincoln was elected by the electoral college system, even though he received no more that 40 percent of the votes cast. With Lincoln's election, eleven southern states, including South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas,
North Carolina, and Tennessee, seceded from the Union. They created The Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as president. Their constitution stated that there would be no Supreme Court, states would have more rights than the central government, and slavery was lawful. Some people even think sectionalism was one of the causes of the war. Disagreement over tariffs and the economic systems of the two areas was a basic cause of the hostility. As new territory was added to the Union, the question of the extension of slavery became crucial to the South for both economic and political
reasons.