USA 1850-1880 Flashcards
State reasons for westward expansion.
The Homestead Act, 1862 : This allowed
homesteaders moving to the great plains to claim 160 acres of land free if they lived and worked on it for five years. The prospect of free land was very attractive to people who could never have afforded a farm back home.
Manifest destiny: Politicians felt that it was part of God’s plan to take over the whole country. This belief they felt gave them the right to take land from the Native Americans.
Railroads: The Pacific Railway Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. It provided government support for the building of first railroad to link the east and west coasts of the U.S.A. providing a quick, safe and easy way to travel.
Discovery of gold: In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and soon thousands of prospectors rushed there, hoping to make their fortune. By spring 1849 there were 40,000 miners (the ‘49ers’) in California.
Religious freedom: The Mormon church, a branch of Christianity founded by Joe Smith gained many followers during the westward expansion, but also angered others who accused him of fraud and blasphemy. By 1831 the Mormon Church had more than 1,000 followers, and Smith decided to move them to set up a City of God.
Tall tales: Once the population of an area reached 60,000, it could apply to become a state of the USA. Local governments therefore could benefit from encouraging more settlers to move to their areas. They attracted people using publicity campaigns which claimed, for example, that farmers in the west could grow pumpkins as big as barns and maize as tall as telegraph poles. Many people moved west thinking they would make a fortune.
Who settled in the great plains?
Before 1860, few people moved west to try to settle on the Great Plains. The poor soil and harsh climate discouraged them - along with the fact that the Plains were officially Indian territory - land was expensive to buy, and anybody wanting to go west faced a long, dangerous and uncomfortable journey.
After 1865, thousands of settlers moved onto the Plains.
- Freed slaves went there to start a new life as freemen, or to escape economic problems after the Civil War.
- European immigrants flooded onto the Great Plains, seeking political or religious freedom, or simply to escape poverty in their own country.
- Younger sons from the eastern seaboard - where the population was growing and land was becoming more expensive - went because it was a chance to own their own land.
- They were followed by other Americans - such as tradesmen and government officials - who hoped to make their living from the farmers who had moved onto the Plains.
State the problems for settlers travelling West.
The journey westward was highly dangerous for the early pioneers - conditions were harsh, and the distance was great. An example of pioneers that got in a pickle is, the Donner party.
The Donner party was travelling to California from Missouri, when they became stuck on a mountain in the snow. For four months the party ate first their cattle, then bark and twigs. Finally some turned to cannibalism - eating parts of people who had already died. Many died of starvation.
Weather: Weather was a large danger for the wagon trains. Sandstorms were common crossing the plains. Also thunder storms, flooding or droughts could put a party in danger.
Disease: Wagon trains could also be hit by disease. Cholera or typhus could strike and affected families would be left behind so as to not to spread the disease.
Native Americans: They resented people crossing their sacred lands or hunting grounds. This could result in fatal confrontations. At night wagon trains would camp in a circle as a defensive measure against night time attacks.
Wild life: bears, wolves, jaguars could attack travellers.
Describe problems for homesteaders.
-Building a house, There was little wood to build log cabins.
-Dirt and disease, Outdoor toilets and open wells. The sod houses leaked, and fleas and bedbugs lived in them ‘by the million’. It was impossible to disinfect the floor. As a result the death rate, especially from diphtheria, was high.
-Housework, There was no wood for fuel, and no shops to buy items such as candles and soap. A typical household had only two buckets, some crockery and one cracked cup. There was no water and little food.
-Isolation, No doctors or midwives. No social life ‘because of the distances between farmhouses’. In the winter families were shut in ‘and longed for spring’.
-Law and order, Local government was non-existent, and some early lawmen (such as Henry Plummer) were worse than the bandits.
-Farming - A hard crust on the soil made it hard to start farming. Farmers could not afford a plough or machines. There were not enough workers.
-Drought - There was only 38 cm of rainfall in a year, and the hot summers evaporated dampness from the land. In the 1860s there were terrible droughts, followed by fires.
-Fences - Lack of wood for fencing meant farmers could not keep cattle off their crops. This led to trouble with the cattlemen.
What were attitudes towards slavery like in the south?
The south was Mainly agricultural land with large plantations (farms). On the plantations work was done by enslaved people. Many Southerners saw slavery as essential to their way of life.
What were attitudes towards slavery like in the north?
The north had a mixed economy with factories and farms, Generally, work was done by paid employees, many in the North wanted to see slavery abolished. They didn’t rely on slavery so much.
How did the north and south disagree when it came to slavery and how did they compromise during the early 1800s.
For many years there was an uneasy alliance between the Northern free states and the Southern slave states. This was not to last for long. As more people from both the North and the South were moving west, the issue of slavery started to create problems.
-Settlers from the South wanted to move to the West and take their enslaved workers with them
-Northerners wanted to stop the spread of slavery
As new states were created, the issue of slavery threatened to pull the country apart.
In 1820 the Missouri Compromise was passed to sort out this issue.
This was when the north and the south agreed that in the new western territories slavery was not allowed above north of the latitude 36°30′ north creating a divide between the countries.
Say what Slave life on Southern plantations was like (food, punishments, houses, rules).
-Enslaved people were not regarded as people but as property.
-Some enslaved people were treated well by their owners but many were abused and treated badly.
-Some worked in the homes of their owners but most worked outside in the fields cultivating crops like sugar, cotton and tobacco.
-Enslaved people were seen as the property of the owner to do with as he wished. Enslaved people could be killed or raped without consequence.
They worked long hours in the fields often in very high temperatures.
Accommodation was very basic. Simple wooden huts with earth floors.
-Very harsh punishments: neck rings, beatings, amputation of feet if caught running away, tread mills
-Enslaved people could be sold away from their families
no leaving the plantations without a pass
-Basic food rations
What was the Kansas Nebraska Act 1854
The Democrat politician Stephen Douglas had the idea that the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska would choose for themselves whether they would become slave or free states. This meant the old Missouri Compromise was no longer legal.
-Southerners loved the idea
-Northerners hated it
-Kansas and Nebraska became a battle ground
-Anti-slavery leaders formed the Republican Party with the political aim of opposing slavery
Who was and what happened during John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, 1859.
John Brown was an abolitionist. He led a small group in an attempt to capture a government arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He was going to use the guns to arm a rebellion of enslaved people.
-The raid failed and John Brown was executed
-The South saw this as a sign of what would happen if the Republicans came to power
-The South thought Northerners would be willing to use violence to end slavery
-Most Northerners actually condemned the raid
What was the Dread Scott case?
Dred Scott was an enslaved people who had lived with his “owner” in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. He believed that, as he had lived in a free state, he was a free man. He went to the Supreme Court to prove this:
-He lost the case
-He was not seen as a person but as a piece of property
-Banning slavery above the 36°30′ north line was now illegal as it would deprive a person of their property
-The new territories were now open to slavery and only an individual state could prevent it
What was The 1850 Compromise
After the 1846 war with Mexico, vast areas of land were handed to the USA.
In 1849 California applied for admission as a
free state. However it fell in the middle of the
36°30′ north line. Another compromise had to be worked out.
-California became a free state
-The new lands taken from Mexico were organised as territories – not yet states
-A new fugitive slave law (giving enslaved people who had escaped to Northern free states back to the South) was made. This made the South happy
-Other tensions between the North and South started to appear.
State Causes of the Civil War?
- Election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was born into relative poverty in Kentucky in 1809. His father worked a small farm. In his youth, Lincoln held down a variety of jobs before moving to Illinois and becoming a lawyer.
Lincoln sarted to get involved in local politics. Lincoln’s political views came to the fore after the
Kansas Nebraska Act
where he spoke out against the spread of slavery.
1860 was the presidential election year. In the spring the two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans chose their candidates.
The election campaign of 1860 was unusual. Lincoln only campaigned in the North and Breckinridge in the South. Stephen Douglas (Lincolns competition) exhausted himself by campaigning in all the states.
The result was that Lincoln became President. He won all 17 states in the North but none in the South. The country was now more divided than ever.
- The Confederate States of America
On 20th December 1860 a special meeting called a convention was held in South Carolina. By a unanimous vote, the members of the convention decided that South Carolina should leave, or secede from the United States.
In January and February 1861, six more southern states also seceded from the Union:
-Mississippi
-Florida
-Alabama
-Georgia
-Louisiana
-Texas
At a meeting in the town of Montgomery, Alabama they formed a new government called the Confederate States of America.
They chose Jefferson Davis (a senator from Mississippi) to be their President.
Four of the states on the border between the North and South also seceded and later joined the Confederacy:
-Arkansas
-Tennessee
-Virginia
-North Carolina
- Attack on Fort Sumter and outbreak of the Civil War
The final event before the outbreak of the Civil War took place at Fort Sumter on the 12th April 1861.
Fort Sumter is situated on an island off the coast from the city of Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina was one of the states that had seceded and formed the Confederate.
The Fort however was occupied by troops loyal to the United States. The Fort was running low on supplies so Lincoln ordered supplies to be sent by sea.
On the 12th April Confederate troops opened fire on the Fort. The following day, Fort Sumter surrendered. The Civil War had begun.
What acts an amendments were introduced after the civil war to protect former slaves and eradicate racist views.
-Civil Rights Act 1866 - All former slaves were to be citizens of the US and to have the same rights as white people.
-Reconstruction Act 1867 - The Southern States were divided into military districts under the control of army generals. Elections were to be held under army supervision and former slaves were allowed to vote.
-14th Amendment 1868 - No state shall make any law which shall reduce the rights of citizens of the United States.
-15th Amendment 1870 - The right of the American citizens to vote shall not be denied because of race or colour. These appeared to give black people equal rights to white people.
What was life like for former slaves?
Life for former slaves
Life was often very difficult for former slaves who had little education or savings.
Often the only jobs they could obtain were in agriculture as
sharecroppers or share-tenants.
The former slaves had to rent their farms as well as take out loans for seeds and farming implements. At the end of the year they were often in debt to their white landowners.
Former slaves who worked in towns were not much better off.
Former slaves in skilled jobs such as carpenters and stonemasons found themselves being pushed out by white workers.
It became very difficult to get skilled work. They often ended up in unskilled jobs such as janitors or porters, or having to do work for lower wages than whites would accept.
What was The Freedmen’s Bureau and what were its aims?
The US government was very concerned about helping the freed slaves. Thousands of them were on the move throughout the South: homeless, hungry, poor and suffering from disease. Something had to be done to help them.
In March 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau
Aims of the Bureau:
-The setting up of a health programme and opening hospitals
-Distributing rations
-Setting up schools
-Offering legal assistance to former slaves
settling confiscated or abandoned land
Talk about successes and difficulties of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Successes of the Freedmen’s Bureau
-Established 40 hospitals
-Distributed 21 million rations
-Established over 4000 schools from elementary through to college. Nearly a quarter of a million former slaves benefited from different levels of education
-Helped former slaves legalise marriages, locate lost relatives and assisted black veterans
Difficulties faced by the Freedmen’s Bureau
-white Southerners were strongly opposed to it. Racism was very prevalent and they believed that former slaves should not be educated.
-Andrew Johnson (who became president after Lincoln was assassinated) opposed the Bureau - he thought it interfered with individual states’ government, and that it gave preferential treatment to a particular group of people
-The Bureau was underfunded and understaffed. At its peak it had only 900 agents.
-Bureau agents were often intimated or attacked by terrorist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan who resented the fact that they were helping former slaves.
-Locals resented the Northern Yankee teachers who came to teach the former slaves
-Much of the confiscated or abandoned land had been given back to the planters the land that the Bureau was left with to distribute to former slaves was often inferior and undesirable.
What were the ‘black codes’?
After their defeat in the Civil War many Southerners wanted the old ways back. They did not want former slaves to enjoy the same rights they did.
Leaders of various Southern States decided to pass laws to limit the opportunities for the newly freed slaves. These laws known as the Black Codes were drawn up between 1865 and 1866.
The codes varied from state to state but shared the view that the freed slaves were inferior and that the purpose of the freed slaves was to be a steady supply of cheap labour.
An example of the type of local laws that were put in place can be seen with the Louisiana Black Codes:
Black are not allowed to:
-hold any public meetings or congregations after sunset.
-allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapon, without the special written permission from his employers. (Unless in the military).
-sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise without the special written permission of their employer
Explain the reasons why support for the republican party grew during the 1850s.
-They appeared to be the anti slave party
-They wished to give free grants of land to western settlers
-Lincoln was an able leader
-Because the party helped the north develop
-They were successful at securing majorities at the senate
-The split in democrats along north/south line drove some northern democrats to the republicans
