Nationalism & Sectionalism
The America of 1800 was predominantly agricultural. Although some people lived in
small cities along the eastern seaboard, the great majority of Americans lived on farms.
But by 1850, this life was being changed by America's entry into the Industrial
Revolution. This great period of change was a time when new power-driven machines
changed the way products were made. As the Industrial Revolution proceeded, fewer
products were handmade at home and more were machine-made in factories.
The American Northeast was the first section of the country to use the technology of
the Industrial Revolution. Huge textile mills, with water-powered spinning and weaving
machines, were built along New England's swift flowing streams. The demand for mill
workers caused many rural Americans to leave the farms and move to factory towns. The
demand for labor also caused increased immigration. The need for access to raw
materials and markets led to improvements in transportation. Canals were dug and
steam-powered ships and railroads were built. This economic expansion led to the rapid
growth of cities, especially those in the Northeast.
Economic activity also bustled in the West. As the U.S. acquired Western lands,
trappers, miners, and farmers moved into these regions. Meanwhile the old South
remained mainly agricultural. Inventions such as the cotton gin and cloth-making
machines increased the demand for Southern cotton.
The early-to-mid 1800s was also a time of reform. A stronger sense of the dignity and
equality of people led to democratic reforms such as the elimination of property
qualifications for voting. This period was also a time of reform in education as well as in
the treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill. Women began their effort to gain political
equality. Abolitionists started a determined effort to abolish slavery in America. Their
effort became one of the causes of the Civil War (1861-1865).
The 1840s were years of territorial growth. During this decade, America realized its
Manifest Destiny by expanding to the Pacific Ocean. But the addition of new lands
reopened the question of whether slavery would extend into these territories.
Controversy over slavery intensified during the 1850s and finally led to the Civil War.
Territorial expansion of the 1840s began when the U.S. finally accepted the Republic
of Texas's request for statehood. Texas, which had been a province of Mexico, won its
war of independence in 1836. Texas then asked to be admitted to the U.S. as a state.
Northerners, however, were opposed to the admission of Texas because it sought
admission as a slave state. Over the next eight years Congress repeatedly denied Texas's
request for statehood. Finally in 1845, after Texas hinted that it might enter into an
alliance with Britain, Congress voted to admit Texas to the Union.
After annexing Texas, the U.S. found itself in a dispute with Mexico on the location of
the Texas-Mexican border. The argument led to the Mexican War (1846-1848). As a
result of the war, the U.S. acquired a huge area of land (called the Mexican Cession) for
$15 million. This territory included what is now California, Nevada, Utah, and portions
of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, American settlers had been pouring into the Oregon Country which had
been jointly occupied by the U.S. and Britain since 1818. By the mid-1840s, Americans
were insisting that the U.S. should claim exclusive ownership of Oregon even if it meant
war with Britain. But when the Mexican War started, the U.S. decided that another
Anglo-American war was out of the question. In 1846 the U.S. and Britain decided to
divide the Oregon Country along the 49th parallel. The British portion was renamed
British Columbia and the American portion became what are now the states of
Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, with a small portion becoming part of Montana.
While expansion to the Pacific was a source of national pride, it also intensified the
debate over slavery in the new lands. At first a compromise seemed to settle the problem
-- the Compromise of 1850 divided the Western territories into free and slave sections.
But this solution was short-lived. In the Dred Scott decision (1857), the Supreme Court
declared that Congress had violated the Constitution when it banned slavery in U.S.
territories. In other words, the Court ruled that slave-owners could take their slaves into
any U.S. territory.
Northerners were outraged by the Dred Scott decision. They reasoned that if slaves
could be taken into territories, those territories would later join the U.S. as slave states.
That would weaken the North's position in Congress. Abolitionists were also furious that
slavery would be spreading. The Underground Railroad intensified its efforts to help
slaves escape. The abolitionist leader John Brown resorted to violence in "Bleeding
Kansas" and the raid on Harpers Ferry. Meanwhile, Northerners created a new political
party, the Republican Party, whose main goal was to prevent slavery from spreading into
the Western territories.
The actions of the Northerners, especially the radicalism of John Brown, convinced
Southerners that the North was "fanatically" opposed to the South and its way of life.
The election of 1860 was, for many Southerners, the last straw. The Republican
candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president. Although Lincoln was willing to
tolerate slavery in states where it already existed, he was opposed to its continued spread
into the territories. Many Southerners saw Lincoln as their enemy. Led by South
Carolina, the Southern states began to secede from the Union.