Period 5: 1844–1877

Period 5 is defined by the Road to War and its aftermath. It begins with the optimism of expansion but quickly turns into a crisis over whether that new land should be slave or free.

The belief that America had a God-given right to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Motivations

• Economic: Access to Asian markets (via California ports) and cheap land for farming.
• Ideological: American exceptionalism—spreading democracy and civilization.
• Migration: Trails (Oregon Trail) brought thousands of settlers West.

President Polk provoked a war with Mexico to acquire California. The U.S. won easily, signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

California wanted to join as a Free State. Henry Clay brokered a complex deal to keep the South from seceding.

Impact: The Fugitive Slave Law backfired. It forced Northerners to help catch slaves, turning many into abolitionists.

The North and South developed into two distinct economic systems.

Abolitionism: Gained steam with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which humanized enslaved people for Northern readers.

In the 1850s, political band-aids could no longer hold the nation together.

1. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Allowed states to vote on slavery (Popular Sovereignty), repealing the Missouri Compromise. Result: "Bleeding Kansas" (Civil war in the territory).

2. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Supreme Court ruled that Black people were property, not citizens, and that Congress could not ban slavery anywhere.

3. John Brown’s Raid (1859)

Radical abolitionist John Brown tried to start a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry. He failed, but the South became convinced the North was plotting to kill them.

Abraham Lincoln (Republican) won without a single Southern vote. His platform was "Free Soil" (stop expansion of slavery), not immediate abolition.

The Spark: South Carolina seceded immediately, believing Lincoln was an existential threat. The Deep South followed, forming the Confederacy.

Turning Points

• Antietam (1862): Tie, but prevented British intervention.
• Gettysburg (1863): Stopped Lee's invasion of the North.
• Vicksburg (1863): Union gained control of the Mississippi River.
• Sherman’s March (1864): "Total War" destroyed Southern infrastructure.

Lincoln expanded presidential power to win the war.

1. Emancipation

• Emancipation Proclamation (1863): Freed slaves in rebel territories only. Changed the war aim from "Union" to "Human Freedom."
• 54th Massachusetts: African American regiment that fought for the Union.

2. Civil Liberties & Acts

• Suspension of Habeas Corpus: Lincoln jailed Southern sympathizers in border states without trial.
• Homestead Act (1862): While the South was gone, Congress passed laws to encourage Western settlement (free land).

The struggle to reintegrate the South and define the status of freedmen.

Reconstruction ended not because it succeeded, but because the North lost the will to enforce it.

• Southern Resistance: The KKK used terror to stop Black voting. Black Codes restricted freedom.
• Sharecropping: A new economic system that tied Black farmers to the land in a cycle of debt (Slavery by another name).
• Compromise of 1877: The Republican Hayes became President in exchange for removing federal troops from the South. Reconstruction officially ended.

Question: Did the Civil War fundamentally transform the South?