Unit 4... The Civil War and Reconstruction
History by Tanya Goldman
In the mid-nineteenth no two issues galvanized the American public like territorial expansion and slavery. As President James Polk maneuvered America over the Rockies via meticulous diplomacy for Oregon and heated warfare for California, few Americans suspected this expansion fervor would soon shatter the very core of America's existence. Following the lead of America's founding fathers, Capital Hill chose to "gag" its politicians rather than tackling the slavery issue head on. By the mid-nineteenth century it was apparent the dynamic lifestyle divisions amongst the North and the South were leading to governmental conundrums.
Slavery had naturally become extinct in the North as the economy had evolved into an industrial powerhouse while the South remained dependent on its agrarian tradition and enslaved Africans. Since its birth, America had maintained a strategic balance between states which both allowed and prohibited slavery. As Manifest Destiny took its hold over America, this delicate stability was continuously tested. When California applied for statehood in 1850, Henry Clay attempted to appease both sides as he had done three decades earlier with the Missouri Compromise. Passed as an omnibus bill, the Compromise of 1850 tipped the scale towards the North, as California entered as a free state alone while a manifold of rights were given to assuage Southern Slave Power. The Compromise of 1850 signified an end to all civilized debates over the slavery question.
Feral violence erupted in the Kansas and Nebraska territories as settlers rushed to fill its borders and decide its fate with popular sovereignty. John Brown and his team of religious zealots left the bloody territories and invaded the Harpers Ferry Arsenal in Virginia which led to an abortive slave insurrection. Tensions reached as high as the federal government where Senators resorted to physical aggression and political parties were divided and re-formed. When Republican Abraham Lincoln and his anti-slavery expansion ticket won the Election of 1860, America's unity dissolved. South Carolina and ten other states seceded, proclaiming themselves the Confederate States of America. In the winter of 1861, the Civil War's first shots rang out at Fort Sumter and the carnage continued until 1865. Despite the armistice, America's wounds would not easily heal.
The Reconstruction era marked solidification in the federal government ascendancy, the first time African-Americans were free to live on their own and a rise of the hate organization Ku Klux Klan. The Reconstruction era continued the string of battles amongst Americans. The American public saw their beloved leader assassinated and his successor stripped of power and defamed by Congress in impeachment trials. African-Americans saw federal amendments passed granting enfranchisement and state level Jim Crow laws to block them. The Reconstruction was an era continuing the struggle of the Civil War. With its official end in 1877 with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, most Americans desperately yearned for a return to halcyon.
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