Term
How did the views of Stephen Austin and Sam Houston on
the future of Texas originally differ? Why? What or who brought their thinking
into alignment? |
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Definition
Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, both fled to the United States and went to Texas in search for new opportunities, though for very contradicting reasons. Sam Houston decided he would go and liberate Texas from Mexico's clutches to win favor from Andrew Jackson, he wanted Texas to become part of the Union. Whereas Stephen F. Austin went to Mexico to live in a foreign country and he encouraged that Texas remain part of Mexico. His family owed a very large debt in America and he came up with the idea of being of service to newcomers from America and aid them in settling in Mexico; Austin shuddered at the thought of secession, if Texas remained with Mexico, he was indispensable. Houston began to conduct polls throughout Texas to see how many supporters he would have and he discovered that there were more Americans than Mexicans in Texas. All Mexican citizens, including Americans, had to be baptized and conformed to Catholicism. Mexican law also emancipated Mexican slaves and forbade Americans from importing slaves. These were some of the things Americans were unhappy with and by 1835, the number of Americans greatly outnumbered the number of Mexicans in Texas; this spurred the drive towards independence, to Houston's delight.
Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin finally saw eye to eye when a dictator emerged in Mexico. Santa Anna dissolved the legislature in place, provoking Texas into rebellion. Americans believed they would lose their belief of self-government if they allowed this dictatorship to grow, so they took up arms against Santa Anna. In 1836, Texas wrote and adopted a Declaration of Independence, the document condemned the actions of Santa Anna and contended that Texas should be free. The two distinct and differing views of Austin and Houston melded into one as Texas went into war with Mexico to not only overthrow Santa Anna, but declare independence. |
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Term
How did the California gold rush contribute to the coming
of the Civil War? |
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Definition
The gold rush began in 1848, James Marshall was building a saw mill for an employer when he stumbled across a golden nugget. During this time a treaty to end the Mexican-American war was being drawn up, the Mexican government was completely oblivious to Marshall's discovery and signed over extremely valuable land to the Union. The nature of slow communication during this era caused Mexico's error and the delayed reaction by the rest of the world; it was not until 11 months after Marshall's discovery that people began to swarm to California. California filled up much faster than anyone imagined, Oregon was left depopulated because of the gold rush, and when California began to lobby to join the Union, the American government fretted whether it would be a free state or a slave state. The balance between the North and the South was set by the Missouri Compromise, whenever a slave state was added, a free state also joined to balance the new addition. The South worried it would not be able to protect its interest if California joined as a free state, the HoR would turn to the North, leaving their peculiar institution defenseless. California's constitution stated that it would join the Union as a free state and the South was in an uproar, there was no other state to join at that time to counterbalance California's admittance. When the Union hesitated, California threatened to become its own country unless allowed admittance to the Union. The Compromise of 1850 was created to appease both California and the reluctant South. In exchange for California entering the Union as a free state, there would be a harsher and more enforced Fugitive Slave Act. The newly empowered act allowed slave hunters to capture any black person, free or escaping, and involved the Northerners in helping to return these supposed escaped slaves. The sectional crisis only deepened as northern abolitionists rallied against the new Fugitive Slave Act and the South's disdain for the North grew.
The Compromise of 1850 also led to the downfall of the Whig Party, causing it to split and disintegrate, leaving room for the Republican Party to take its place. The Republican party was borne on a specific position on slavery, they wanted to abolish it and end the spread to newly founded territory. This new party stirred up the South and thoughts of secession began to bloom at the thought of a Republican president, deepening the sectional divide. |
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Term
What prompted the secession of South Carolina and the
other states that joined the Confederacy? How did they justify secession? |
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Definition
Beginning in the 1820s and continuing until the 1850s, beliefs and values had diverged significantly in the North and the South. These differences in the economic and social development of each region transformed a common culture into two conflicting cultures, which was further prompted by a geographic divide. In the 1850s, the question of whether slavery should be contained or extended cropped up as Young America began to expand its borders. Key events throughout the 1840s and 1850s continually caused the sectional divide to deepen. The Missouri Compromise was becoming faulty, there was not always a free state to counterbalance the possible addition of a slave state and vice versa. The Compromise of 1850 attempted to patch up the problem, but it only further angered the abolitionists in the North due to the enhanced Fugitive Slave Act and the South did not feel rightly compensated with the addition of a free state. The compromise also caused the Whig Party to split and allowed the Republican Party to rise with the particular purpose to stop the spread of slavery, it became the first sectionally based party; the South felt as if it was being personally victimized by this new party. To further the divide between the two regions, the Harper's Ferry incident caused southerners to fear slave rebellion and become even more suspicious of northern abolitionists. In 1859, John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia, he attempted to gather support among the slave and arouse the
The election of 1860 was the event that caused South Carolina and other southern states to secede and form the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln, a key member of the Republican party, decisively won the electorate vote and was to become the next president of the United States. In the South, his name was not even placed on the ballots and southerners rioted, claiming that Lincoln was not their president. Lincoln's very presence in the White House signaled the looming end of the South's precious peculiar institution, fearing this adamantly, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded. Many southern states followed suit justifying secession by claiming that the Union was created through an alliance of independent states coming together to form a central government. Whereas in the perspective of the Union, the United States was a single country, not a multitude of sovereign states. The seceding states claimed that the states made the Union and they alone had the power to undo it. Their stance made the Civil War not only a fight against the spread of slavery, but a battle between states' rights and the supremacy of the Union. |
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Term
Why did Lincoln resist secession? What arguments did he
use to justify war against the South? |
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Definition
When South Carolina seceded in 1860, and many other southern states followed suit, senators and congressmen scrambled to find a solution that would mollify the seceding states and preserve the Union. Senator John Crittenden drafted the Crittenden Compromise, which advocated the extension of Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific to protect slavery in the southwestern territories; it went so far as to suggest the addition of a constitutional amendment that would forever prohibit the federal government from abolishing slavery in the states. Abraham Lincoln adamantly opposed the compromise and refused to make any form of territorial concession. He believed that the secession movement was a conspiracy that reflected only a minority opinion in the South and that a strong stand would rally southern Unionists and moderates. Lincoln was also convinced that backing down to pressure of the secessionists would undermine the democratic principle of majority rule.
To gain supplies and an upper-hand, the Confederacy decided to take control of the Union forts that resided in its territories and focused its attentions on Fort Sumter. Lincoln sent a relief expedition to aid Unionists, this was seen as a hostile attack by the Confederacy, and the South began to the bombing of Fort Sumter. Lincoln proclaimed that an insurrection against federal authority existed in the Deep South and declared secession unconstitutional, making it the duty of the President to oppose such a rebellion. Lincoln summoned an army, claiming that the Union was acting in self-defense. Lincoln believed that the only way to restore the Union was by defeating the South so thoroughly that its separatist government would collapse. Preserving the Union became the primary objective, until 1862, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the rebellious states of the Confederacy. The war became a fight for the freedom of slaves and the abolishment of the peculiar institution, shifting the cause from mere political reasons to a fight for human liberty. |
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Term
| Why did the North win the Civil War? |
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Definition
The Civil War was a total war involving every aspect of society, it was a test of economies and political systems. The Confederacy fought until it exhausted all of its resources, but it could not hold its defenses against the Union in the long run. The North's economy was strong at the core, which allowed its factories and farms to produce more than enough provisions for the troops without lowering the living standards of the civilian populations. The southern economy was less adaptable to the needs of a total war. The Confederacy had to rely on a government-sponsored crash program to produce war materials and southern agriculture failed to meet the challenge of supplying food to its troops, which caused Confederate soldiers to be increasingly undernourished. This was due to the South's inadequate internal transportation system, which was designed to link plantation regions to port cities rather than linking them to centers of population, the way the North's was.
Both governments, to finance the war, inflated the currency by printing vast amounts of paper money. The problem of increasing inflation was less severe in the North because its economy was stronger, war taxes on income were easier to collect, and bond issues were more successful than in the South. Also, the administrations handled the war extremely differently. Abraham Lincoln declared martial law, which enabled the military to arrest civilians suspected of aiding the enemy, decreasing the amount of conspiracy within the Union's borders. He also accommodated factions and defined party issues in a way that would encourage unity and dedication to the cause. Lincoln held the Republican Party together by persuasion, patronage, and flexible policymaking. Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy's president, lacked initiative and devoted little attention to an economic situation that caused great hardship and sapped Confederate morale. Davis's support eroded and his authority was further undermined because he did not have an organized party behind him, which made it difficult to mobilize the support hard decisions required. The tide of the war turned when Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Confederacy. Masters lost control of their slaves and African Americans made a vital contribution to the North's victory when they joined the Union Army's rank. The North had a great advantage in the war due to its economy, transportation, and administration which gave it the ability to win the war and restore the United States. |
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