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• American settlers, initially welcomed by Mexico, poured
into Texas, attracted by the promise of free land.
• They soon became a majority of the population.
• Tensions with the Mexican authorities led to a revolution.
• In 1836 Texas forces defeated the Mexican army sent to
quell the rebellion,
• Texas became an independent republic. Americans in
Texas hoped to be annexed to the United States, but the
Jackson and Van Buren administrations held back, fearful
of sectionalism.
* Lured by the promise of good land and a fresh start
* Overland Trail.
* Wagons
* heavy pressures on families.
* Women -loss of companionship, heavy responsibilities
* Migration on the overland trail also took a heavy toll
on the Plains Indians' way of life.
* Wagon trains scared off game and used up grass and
wood
* Sioux to demand payment for crossing their lands.
Nevertheless, few trains were attacked by Indians.
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* The death of William Henry Harrison, -Tyler
* Tyler, a proponent of states' rights, soon broke with the party over economic
policy.
* Texas issue.
* The Democratic party countered by dropping Martin Van Buren (who opposed
the annexation of Texas) in favor of James K. Polk (who supported it) as the
party's presidential candidate.
* Polk narrowly defeated Henry Clay; Congress responded by annexing Texas.
* Polk entered the White House not only supporting Texas annexation but determined
to expand American boundaries to acquire the best harbors on the Pacific.
* divide the Oregon territory with Britain, gaining control of Puget Sound.
* Unable to buy New Mexico and California from Mexico, he provoked war.
* United States quickly conquered New Mexico and California,
* and when Mexico still stubbornly refused to make peace, American forces occupied
Mexico City and forced Mexico to surrender.
* treaty of peace,
* the U.S. acquired California and New Mexico.
* slavery issue into the controversy by introducing the Wilmot Proviso, which sought
to ban slavery from any territory gained from Mexico. It never passed, but many
northerners by now agreed that slavery, and the political clout of Southerners,
must be confined to the South.
* Kansas-Nebraska Act
* Stephen Douglas
* repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820
* Louisiana Purchase open to slavery-popular sovereignty.
* slavery issue at the center
* old Jacksonian party system crumbled.
* Know-Nothings
* Nativist secret society
* Many Whigs joined and crumbles Whigs
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* Republican party strengthened
* Lawrence Raid
* Attack on Charles Sumner
* Strongest party in north- Dem. Powerful in
nation
* Opposed expansion of slaver-Slave Power
threatened republican government and the
rights of white northerners.
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* James Buchanan-Democrat,
* Dred Scott -Congress could not prohibit slavery from a
territory.
* Republicans were outraged
* Buchanan's effectiveness was further weakened by the
beginning of a depression in 1857, which hurt the North more
than the South.
* Buchanan's tries to force Kansas in under proslavery
Lecompton Constitution
* Legalize slavery in Kansas
* split the Democratic party along sectional lines.
* rejected Lecompton Constitution- returned vote to Kansas
where it was defeated
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* Harpers Ferry.
* suspicions strengthened disunion sentiment.
* The Democratic party split in 1860,
* Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, strength of northern electoral votes, a
sectional antislavery party had elected a president.
* Following Lincoln's election, the seven states of the Deep South, led by South
Carolina, seceded and organized the Confederate States of America.
* Congress defeated all proposals to resolve the crisis;
* No compromise
* Fort Sumter,
* Confederate batteries opened fire and captured the fort.
* four more southern states -- the upper South -- seceded.
* The diverging economies of the two sections
* the acute issue of slavery's status in the West,
* the weaknesses of the nation's political system,
* the ideology of republicanism with its fears of conspiracies against liberty,
the differences between slave and free societies
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