tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40440429691199214232024-03-05T12:43:03.269+00:00The United States: Revolution to Civil WarA brief history of the United States from the War of Independence to the Civil War.Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-1808524008823571382021-09-27T15:04:00.000+01:002021-09-27T15:04:43.390+01:00Aftermath: post-war Reconstruction<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIv2FC_5DeJHD6gduZWaS9hBAidhQPXsT2wkvVR5-hYWqMVeXubGlGWgOM-0k0hpQxR8xxmWMD9htROOa5Sh06Pt2TIJa_6wKBKuj-GcmKln6v592ABqk8s-wg2swAMoP_ZmCUYLSKEw-/s760/FreedmenVotingInNewOrleans1867.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="760" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIv2FC_5DeJHD6gduZWaS9hBAidhQPXsT2wkvVR5-hYWqMVeXubGlGWgOM-0k0hpQxR8xxmWMD9htROOa5Sh06Pt2TIJa_6wKBKuj-GcmKln6v592ABqk8s-wg2swAMoP_ZmCUYLSKEw-/s320/FreedmenVotingInNewOrleans1867.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The North had won a mighty victory. How could it make it permanent?</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">Reconstruction: the first phase</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One issue was resolved: secession was dead. But the war was also about an idea of democracy and the victory would be hollow if the system of racial oppression were allowed to continue. As one northern newspaper editor wrote</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><blockquote>Canon conquer, but they do not necessarily convert.</blockquote></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">On 3 March 1865, in the closing weeks of the war, Congress set up within the War Department the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (the ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedmen%27s_Bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau’</a>) to feed freedmen, organise hospitals and schools for them and supervise the terms in which they were to be hired as labourers. With the war over, the defeated South would require a fundamental reconstruction - in politics, race relations and the economy.</span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">But Andrew Johnson <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonian_democracy">(a Jacksonian Democrat</a>) and a Southerner from Tennessee, was not the man to oversee the delicate politics required. In May 1865 his Proclamation of Amnesty issued pardons to Southern leaders, enabling some former Confederates to re-enter politics. But though the South seemed to have accepted defeat, racial oppression intensified, and whites used violent intimidation to prevent the blacks achieving equality. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On Christmas Eve 1865, Confederate veterans founded the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan">Ku Klux Klan</a> at Pulaski, Tennessee. It began comparatively innocuously as a drinking society with costumes and secret rituals, but by 1867 it had become a brutal and sinister organisation. Its aims were to prevent blacks from voting and to drive them from their landholdings, and its methods included beatings and lynchings. 1866 saw riots in Memphis and a massacre of blacks in New Orleans. As the Southern legislatures were </span><span font-size:="" style="font-size: large;" x-large="">reconstituted, they passed the ‘Black Codes’, which denied many civil liberties to former slaves. Freedmen were forbidden the use of weapons of any kind, they were required to hire themselves out by the year and were thus denied permanent employment, and no provision was made for black schooling. </span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;"><br /></span></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">The Republicans dominate Congress</span></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">All this outraged Congressmen in the North. In response, a Joint Committee on Reconstruction comprising nine members from the House and six from the Senate, was set up to propose a programme of Reconstruction. It provided that until the programme had been worked out, none of the Southern Congressmen would be allowed to take their seats in state legislatures, a move denounced by Johnson as unconstitutional.</span></h4><p><span style="font-size: large;">In the winter and spring of 1865-6 the huge Republican majority in Congress passed three measures. <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/14th-amendment#:">The Fourteenth Amendment</a> established in law the right of all citizens of the United States to equal protection under the law and declared that anyone ‘born or naturalised’ in the US was an American citizen. (But Indians were excluded.) The Dred Scott decision was thus repealed. Certain classes of ex-Confederates were excluded, which meant that whereas all black men now had the vote, some whites were excluded. Two further laws extended the life of powers of the Freedmen’s Bureau and reinforced the Fourteenth Amendment with a civil rights law. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Johnson vetoed the last two measures, but they were later passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses. His intransigence united the Republican party in support of a radical programme which Lincoln would probably not have allowed. The congressional election of 1866 reinforced their hold on both houses. They <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Andrew_Johnson">unsuccessfully impeached Johnson</a> in 1868, and in the same year, General Ulysses S. Grant was elected president on the Republican ticket. (A bitter Johnson refused to attend Grant’s inauguration and his last act as president was to issue a pardon to Jefferson Davis.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">Radical Reconstruction</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">With their control of the presidency and both houses, the Republicans were able to embark on the programme of Radical Reconstruction. This would involve a fundamental re-ordering not only of race relations, but of the whole Southern economy. Both were to present intractable problems.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">Under the Military Reconstruction Act (March 1867), the South had been divided into five districts, each to be governed by a US army general, who had the duty of enrolling all qualified voters (all adult males) and setting up new state governments. From June 1868 the Southern states began to meet the conditions for readmission and by 1870 every Southern state was represented in Congress. In March 1870 the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">Fifteenth Amendment</a> ordained that the vote could not be denied on grounds of colour. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The mythology of Radical Reconstruction has focused on two groups that emerged to carry out the programme. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalawag">Scalawags</a> were Southerners who were prepared to break ranks and cooperate with Reconstruction. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger">Carpetbagger</a>s were outsiders from the North, many of them former Union soldiers who came south after the war. Both groups have acquired bad reputations.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The programme of Radical Reconstruction has often been seen as a failure, but in fact it achieved some significant reforms. Property qualifications for the vote were abolished and schools were set up for whites as well as blacks. Railroads were renewed and extended. But much of the programme was defeated by Southern intransigence, such as the refusal of Mississippi to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and by mounting violence. (Mississippi finally ratified the Amendment in 2013!)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">The economy of the South</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">With the abolition of slavery, the income of the planters declined, as the freed labourers refused to work the long hours that had been imposed under slavery. The economic situation might have been eased if the blacks had been given land and training, but in practice the land that was given them was of poor quality, often barely able to sustain them. Agricultural production declined - food production was about 50 per cent less than before the war - and race relations were fraught.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the reduced economy of the South, the great estates of the old plantation system were broken up into small farms. Southern agriculture was dominated by debt, and by the system of sharecropping in which tenants agreed to farm the land for a share of the crops they raised. Debt slavery became the norm for poor farmers, black as well as white.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">The Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">By the mid-1870s Reconstruction was running out of steam. The attention of the North shifted from the south to western expansion, to wars with the Indians and to new economic activities. The outrageously rigged election of the Republican <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_B._Hayes">Rutherford B. Hayes</a> for president was won at the cost of an unwritten deal known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877">Compromise of 1877</a>. Under the Compromise, military rule in the South was ended, and as federalist troops withdrew, white supremacists regained control. </span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">The black experience of Reconstruction</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The ending of the Civil War brought immediate gains to the former slaves. They were now free to marry, and by 1870 a majority now lived in two-parent households. For all its problems, sharecropping was preferable to slave labour, and with most blacks becoming tenant farmers, whites began to complain about a servant problem. Blacks also asserted their autonomy in the establishment of independent black churches, the first appearing in Charleston, SC, immediately after the war. By 1890 there were over a million black Baptists in the South. Religion gave the former slaves autonomy and a language in which to protest at their oppression. Blacks also founded their own schools and colleges, and by 1877, some 600,000 black pupils were in school.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, even before the 1877 Compromise, the old planter class, known as the Redeemers, were back in power, and many of the gains won by Radical Reconstruction were eroded. Democratic governors instituted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws">Jim Crow laws</a> officially segregating blacks and whites. New voter registration laws in effect disenfranchised blacks. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments became dead letters in the South and were to remain so until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement">civil rights movement of the 1960s</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h4><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: large;">History is not always written by the victors. Sometimes the romance of a defeat can cast an appealingly melancholy light on events, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy#:~:">‘lost cause of the Confederacy’</a> is one such example, seen most memorably in films such as <i>Birth of a Nation</i>, <i>Gone with the Wind</i> and <i>Gods and Generals</i>, as well as and in the proliferation from the late nineteenth century of statues to Confederate generals. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">'Lost cause' history has involved an exaggeration of the mistakes of the Radical Republicans, who are portrayed not as idealists but as corrupt and vengeful outsiders. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">At the moment, ‘lost cause’ ideology is on the retreat. Contemporary historians are largely agreed that slavery was the prime cause of the Civil War and the previously peerless reputation of Robert E. Lee is being scrutinised, sometimes harshly. The present pulling down of Confederate statues is simply the latest round in a culture war that is now over 150 years old.</span></li></ol><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-20870014010413241522021-05-06T21:50:00.001+01:002021-05-06T21:50:58.332+01:00The Civil War (1) 1861-3<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For this huge topic I am indebted primarily to the Ken Burns TV documentary on the Civil War and to the following books.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Hugh Brogan, <i>The Penguin History of the USA,</i> 2nd edn. (Penguin, 1999) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">David Herbert Donald, <i>Lincoln</i> (Touchstone, New York, 1995)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Amanda Forman, <i>A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided</i> (Penguin, 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", seri;"><span style="font-size: large;">America: A Narrative History, </span></i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">6th end. vol 1(W. Norton, 2004)</span><div><span style="font-family: times, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;">There is also the first episode of Ken Burns' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlseQlnk3R8&t=129s">incomparable series on the Civil War.</a><br /></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert E. Lee<br />
Confederate general</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">What was the war about?</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Although the draft had to be introduced later, men from both sides initially flocked to volunteer. What were they fighting for? From the start Lincoln argued that it was a war for the union and against a rebellion. In August 1862 he was to say: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">‘My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. It is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Jefferson Davis also implicitly denied that the war was about slavery. He asserted that it was a war to protect the right of a state to secede and to defend itself against a tyrannous majority. Yet ‘states rights’ had only evolved as a doctrine because of slavery. Without slavery it is unlikely that Virginia, the state that had done so much to create the Union, would have seceded. Would the war have been fought if slavery had not existed?</span><div><span style="font-family: times, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times, times new roman, serif; font-size: large;">In their <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#South_Carolina">Declarations of Causes</a>, the Confederate states made their reasons for secession perfectly clear. You can access two stirring versions of the Confederate song, <i>The Bonnie Blue Flag</i>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW8S0A--2CM">here</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVeSKwM--1M&feature=emb_err_w">here</a>.<br /></span>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lincoln's war</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">However, Lincoln continued to define the war according to his terms. He called the conflict a rebellion rather than a civil war. He refused to identify the enemy as the Confederate States of America. The prosecution of the war was primarily a function of the Chief Executive, who exercised powers normally belonging to the legislature. He suspended <i>habeas corpus </i>as an executive decision.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The balance of advantage</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In retrospect it is clear that the North had most of the advantages. It had an industrialised economy, good transport links, and a population of 22 million against the South’s 9 million (that included 3. 5 million slaves). Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, was always able to borrow the money he needed to pay for the war. The Confederacy, on the other hand, produced just seven per cent of the nation’s manufacture. Its leaders relied on cotton and hoped for British support, but though British relations with the North were often difficult the British government never recognised the Confederacy. Moreover the North had a better transport infrastructure – more wagons, horses and ships and a superior railroad system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This does not necessarily mean that the North’s victory was inevitable. The South had the advantage of a captive labour force and it was fighting a defensive campaign on familiar territory. It did not have to conquer the North – merely to keep the South free from invasion. And at the start of the war it had better generals notably <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee">Robert E. Lee</a> and 'Stonewall' Jackson. Lincoln predicted that </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">'Man for man the soldier from the south will be a match for the soldier from the North and <i>vice versa</i>.' (Quoted David Herbert Donald, <i>Lincoln, </i>p. 295)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But some revisionist work on Lee suggests that he was greatly over-rated as a general. See <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/05/19/the-truth-about-confederate-gen-robert-e-lee-he-wasnt-very-good-at-his-job/">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The early months</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Partisans on both sides hoped for a quick war that would involve the capture of Washington or Richmond. One of the few people to envisage a long war was the Unionist General Winfield Scott, veteran of the war with Mexico. He proposed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaconda_Plan">'Anaconda Plan' </a>of blockading the Confederate coast and then pushing southward along the great water routes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This was the strategy that was eventually to defeat the Confederacy, but in the early days of the war the United States navy was still small and the North’s immediate aim was to take Richmond. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">First Bull Run</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The first battle of the Civil War was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Bull_Run">Bull Run</a> (First Manassas)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">fought on 21 July at Manassas Junction some twenty-five miles west of Washington. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvin_McDowell">General Irvin McDowell’s</a> inexperienced army of some 37,000 troops was put to flight by P. G. T. Beauregard’s almost equally inexperienced Confederate Army in what was called 'the great skedaddle'. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 'Great Skedaddle'<br />
Unionist troops flee from Bull Run</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">The hero of the day was General <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson">Thomas (‘Stonewall’) Jackson.</a> Bull Run was a devastating blow for the Union army. It put an end to easy optimism and showed the North that there would be no quick victory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Following Bull Run, Lincoln fell back on the long-term ‘Anaconda’ strategy. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Potomac">Army of the Potomac</a> (as it was called after 15 August) had to defend Washington; the navy would blockade the southern coast; the final plan was to divide the Confederacy by invading the South along the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers. The Confederate strategy was to stalemate the Union forces so that the British and French might join their cause or perhaps public sentiment would force a negotiated settlement.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The <i>Trent</i> Affair</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In December 1861 Anglo-American affairs <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Affair">reached a new low</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In October two Confederate envoys, James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana escaped the blockade to Cuba. There they boarded a British mail packet, the <i>Trent</i>, but without orders from Washington, the <i>Trent</i> was stopped by the USS <i>San Jacinto</i> under Captain Charles Wilkes. The vessel was searched and the Confederate agents were taken and imprisoned in Fort Warren in Boston Harbour. This was a violation of international law; identical British actions had led to the War of 1812.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tti0zmKSxy8rDzV3BkEqPkYJUT3H8T_n2xz_J-eQgRz1QYzk9et41RK5vBAQOfN0Sz-ldS3M2K-in-hibkdnuRnT31ViDOC3cgzpkLbTvl9NPWH1S3gJvSUf8LgsRHokymAHEeEX8LlU/s1600/Trent_and_San_Jacinto.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tti0zmKSxy8rDzV3BkEqPkYJUT3H8T_n2xz_J-eQgRz1QYzk9et41RK5vBAQOfN0Sz-ldS3M2K-in-hibkdnuRnT31ViDOC3cgzpkLbTvl9NPWH1S3gJvSUf8LgsRHokymAHEeEX8LlU/s200/Trent_and_San_Jacinto.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The <i>San Jacinto</i> (right)<br />
stopping the <i>Trent</i><br />
Public Domain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">When Britain protested, Seward issued a belligerent response and it looked as if the two countries would go to war. </span><span style="font-size: large;">When Britain protested, Seward issued a belligerent response and it looked for a while as if the two countries would go to war. Eight thousand British troops were prepared to protect Canada. But on 27 December the Americans reluctantly climbed down; they had acted illegally and could not afford another war.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Battle of the Ironclads</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On 8-9 March 1862 the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hampton_Roads">most important naval battle</a> of the Civil War </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">was fought off the Hampton Roads, Virginia, between the USS <i>Monitor</i> and the CSS <i>Virginia </i>(formerly <i>Merrimack</i>). It was the first battle between ironclad ships and it made the whole world’s wooden ships obsolete. The <i>Virginia</i> was forced to creep back to harbour and the Union success meant that the Confederacy was never able to break the Union blockade.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglq8osImtpjQsqCWNbdFxWYm56IZfi4TEmR8aIjr9u6mnXZ3xPNT6NAB80HDeJmgA4rqj1D5rKuV5_090rDCuz402rCL1X4-UCaUVjjvrtO0E5K3yjghF4uGTjgYXYTddu-KPohMXGu2AP/s1600/CSS_Virginia%252C_wash_drawing_by_Clary_Ray_%2528Photo_-_NH_57830%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglq8osImtpjQsqCWNbdFxWYm56IZfi4TEmR8aIjr9u6mnXZ3xPNT6NAB80HDeJmgA4rqj1D5rKuV5_090rDCuz402rCL1X4-UCaUVjjvrtO0E5K3yjghF4uGTjgYXYTddu-KPohMXGu2AP/s200/CSS_Virginia%252C_wash_drawing_by_Clary_Ray_%2528Photo_-_NH_57830%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CSS <i>Virginia</i>, previously <i>Merrimack</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>Shiloh</b> </span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In February the 1862 Union general <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant">Ulysses Simpson Grant</a>, had taken his forces up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers and captured Forts Henry and Donelson, the strategic keys to Tennessee, after which he was promoted to Major General. But on 6 April he and General William Tecumseh Sherman were caught in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh">surprise attack at Shiloh</a> by a force of 44,000 Confederates under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston. The Confederates would have won if Johnston had not been killed and the Union army bolstered by reinforcements. Casualties on both sides totalled over 20,000. It was the costliest battle in which the Americans had ever engaged though worse was to follow. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Shiloh demonstrated what was to become a commonplace in the war – the fact that winning armies were unable to follow up their victories. In this case the victorious Union army was too battered to pursue the fleeing Confederates. On 24 April the Union took New Orleans but after that nothing went right for the North for a long time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The battle brought a temporary halt to Grant’s career. He would have been dismissed but for Lincoln’s support: ‘I can’t spare that man; he fights’.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>The Seven Days’ Battles</b></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">From August 1861 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan">General George B. McClellan</a> had been the head of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Potomac">Army of the Potomac</a>. In November he replaced General Winfield Scott as the head of the US Army.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By the spring of 1862 the Army was well-armed and well-clothed and ready to campaign. In March McClellan invaded Virginia via Chesapeake Bay in an attempt to seize Richmond. He took his army within sixty miles of the city, closer than any Federal general was to manage for the </span><span style="font-size: large;">next three years, but he was defeated by his slowness and indecision. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">On 1 June Davis had put the brilliant Virginian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee">Robert E. Lee</a> in command of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Northern_Virginia">Army of Northern Virginia</a>, a development that changed the course of the war. From 25 June to 1 July both sides fought the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_Battles">Seven Days Battles</a> outside Richmond.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Lee drove the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and though he was unable to follow up his victory, Virginia was secure and the North had been humbled. Lincoln and his Secretary for War, Edwin M. Stanton, hastily put together another army under General John Pope, but it was soundly beaten by Lee at Second Manassas or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Bull_Run">Second Battle of Bull Run </a>on 30 August 1862.</span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><b>Antietam</b></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Union failure to take Richmond emboldened the Confederate generals. In September the Army of Northern Virginia, about 55,000 men strong, led by the brilliant partnership of Lee and Jackson, </span><span style="font-size: large;">advanced through Maryland on its way to Washington. On 17 September they were stopped at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam">Antietam Creek</a> (Sharpsburg) in Maryland </span><span style="font-size: large;">by McClellan’s 75,000 men in the bloodiest day of the war so far. The Union lost 2,108 dead and counted more than 10,000 wounded or missing. Lee’s losses were fewer but they represented a quarter of his entire army. He retreated into Virginia. After his failed advance, there was no chance that foreign powers would recognise the Confederacy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">McClellan had halted the Confederate advance but failed to follow up his victory. On 7 November Lincoln dismissed him in a curt note.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Emancipation Proclamation</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Lincoln had begun the war promising to maintain slavery in the South, a position endorsed by Congress. His caution was intensified by the need to keep the slave-owning border states in the war. But the war changed the issue, and as fugitive slaves began to turn up in the Union army camps, Lincoln decided that the time had come for complete emancipation. This would enable him to make effective use of the fugitive blacks, it would give the war a new moral authority, win over the abolitionists, who were very critical of his leadership, and decisively prevent any foreign recognition of the Confederacy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In September 1862, following Lee's failure at Antietam, he issued his preliminary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation">Emancipation Proclamation</a>, freeing slaves in the areas captured by northern troops (but excluding the four slave states that fought for the Union). It was signed and issued on 1 January 1863. Emancipation was now a war aim. The Proclamation contai</span><span style="font-size: large;">ned the warning that </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward forever free’.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Blacks in the War</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">For all its limitations, the Proclamation changed the nature of the war, making emancipation an explicit war aim. Free blacks were now able to enter the Union army. By mid-1863 black units, such as the 54th Massachusetts, were making a significant contribution to the war. Blacks were paid less than whites and were rarely promoted, but by the end of the war almost 180,000 were serving in the Union Army. They made a substantial contribution to the Unionist victory.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9MJUP1Dr9b4DnjSVQ2R8Hk0iYGEeehQtZlQshy8P30HB1DerMYApa1QSIiCIIPCP9dGpsZfI5xJz53bBgasRcQfMv0zfCTjyo95Qu6riMIsnE1COdO4dVY0Zcso_R6O-x0iF_9rzmZETF/s1600/54th-massachusetts-posing.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9MJUP1Dr9b4DnjSVQ2R8Hk0iYGEeehQtZlQshy8P30HB1DerMYApa1QSIiCIIPCP9dGpsZfI5xJz53bBgasRcQfMv0zfCTjyo95Qu6riMIsnE1COdO4dVY0Zcso_R6O-x0iF_9rzmZETF/s200/54th-massachusetts-posing.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Men from the 54th Massachusetts</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div></div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-49696142508776746542021-05-06T21:45:00.000+01:002021-05-06T21:45:06.740+01:00The Civil War (2) 1863-5<h3>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: large;">Women in the war</span>
</h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6eR_qyvyfJejEuu82xpPSs4MM0YCK3Dhcyouh-HL5zjMK1giNoYqsx9CfbAyij5kirqbLKsxhsPOPmH_ZiOurmsbgBRPdJ0eqF5nBmrL1yhJ-hKGc-N4L8HN6WLbosZQ7X0OL2kYvzkj5/s1600/476px-Dix-Dorothea-LOC.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6eR_qyvyfJejEuu82xpPSs4MM0YCK3Dhcyouh-HL5zjMK1giNoYqsx9CfbAyij5kirqbLKsxhsPOPmH_ZiOurmsbgBRPdJ0eqF5nBmrL1yhJ-hKGc-N4L8HN6WLbosZQ7X0OL2kYvzkj5/s200/476px-Dix-Dorothea-LOC.jpg" width="158" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothea Dix</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Civilians, especially women, <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/female-nurses-during-civil-war">played a large part in the war</a>. Women sewed
uniforms, composed poetry and songs, and raised money and supplies. Southern
women managed plantations and farms in their husbands’ absence. Northern
women organised ‘Sanitary Fairs’ to supply medical and sanitary supplies for
the troops. In the North alone some 20,000 women served as nurses or
health-related volunteers. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix">Dorothea Dix</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> became the Union army’s first Superintendent of Women Nurses.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton">Clara Barton</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> set up field hospitals on the battlefield. On the Confederate
side,
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Louisa_Tompkins">Sally Tompkins</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Richmond nursed wounded men in her private hospital. However the
Confederacy never found enough women to serve as nurses.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In November 1861 Julia Ward Howe wrote the lyrics for ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic">The Battle Hymn of the Republic’</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">It was first published in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> in February 1862. It
became sung to the words of ‘John Brown’s Body.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The draft</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Both armies were originally staffed by volunteers but this had to change.
Faced with a shortage of manpower, the Confederacy on 16 April 1862,
conscripted all white male citizens aged eighteen to thirty-five to serve in
the army for three years. During the course of the war the age limits were
extended. However, many were able to claim exemptions or provide a
substitute. On 3 March 1863 the Union also introduced conscription.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB0jnm-1yzHj_-aaMVJCADPZ3VHnCn7PPA_dAUMkQ0RiHH4opSj3wsZmY_UAO1h0H7Hr07IsekxzJNMc4rNOj22ZCMKgYAwedBsevOvkeakps83LZ4qfvrCDLUrF_wglrhmiqeAAHpuQgm/s1600/632px-New_York_Draft_Riots_-_fighting.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB0jnm-1yzHj_-aaMVJCADPZ3VHnCn7PPA_dAUMkQ0RiHH4opSj3wsZmY_UAO1h0H7Hr07IsekxzJNMc4rNOj22ZCMKgYAwedBsevOvkeakps83LZ4qfvrCDLUrF_wglrhmiqeAAHpuQgm/s200/632px-New_York_Draft_Riots_-_fighting.jpg" width="200" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
Draft riots, New York
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The draft was seen as un-American and was unpopular in both North and
South. In July 1863 the announcement of a draft lottery led to<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots">
a week of rioting in New York City</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">with the blacks the main victims of the violence. Over a hundred people
were killed.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Fredericksburg</span>
</h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the reasons for the increasing unpopularity of the war was the
North's failure to follow up the victory at Antietam. The Confederacy
was far from defeated. Between 11 and 15 December 1862 General Ambrose
Burnside was defeated by Lee at
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fredericksburg">Fredericksburg</a>, a key transportation link between Richmond and
Washington. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In one of the most one-sided battles of the Civil War, 9,000 Union
troops were mown down by the Confederates from behind their ridges and
stone walls. Men froze or bled to death. Lee said: </span></span>
</h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘It is well that war is so terrible – we should grow too fond of
it.’</span>
</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpANUX85nbSBMFvjLvo8eTenlP0mfvC-glr99Iee0zOWIlLa-xpvLSqT_zmwh0BKsPTYdHoAdCNPRij-sINR9lSCiJrvrwxCCMgtFhUQu4WPEyE__er22mSzRkoEbe2GE9VJnhxO9eeMP2/s1600/800px-Fredericksburg_Marye%2527s_Heights_sunken_road.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpANUX85nbSBMFvjLvo8eTenlP0mfvC-glr99Iee0zOWIlLa-xpvLSqT_zmwh0BKsPTYdHoAdCNPRij-sINR9lSCiJrvrwxCCMgtFhUQu4WPEyE__er22mSzRkoEbe2GE9VJnhxO9eeMP2/s200/800px-Fredericksburg_Marye%2527s_Heights_sunken_road.jpg" width="200" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /> 3000 Confederate troops were lined up in multiple ranks <br />
behind this stone wall for about 600 yards, <br />
and another 3000 were atop the slope behind it, <br />
along with their artillery.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">1862 ended with Union morale at a low ebb, with northern Democrats calling
for a negotiated peace. Why be drafted into a war that was going nowhere?
Yet the Federal army was now just under a million men, twice that of the
Confederates. On 26 December a sombre David told the Mississippi legislature
that the South was not going to receive foreign recognition or help. The
advantage lay with the North - even though this was not always apparent at
the time. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Chancellorsville</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Between 30 April and 6 May 1863 Lee again revealed his tactical brilliance
when he
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chancellorsville">defeated the Union Army</a>
under General Joseph E. Hooker at Chancellorsville, </span><span style="font-size: large;">Virginia. Following this victory Lee again marched the Army of
Northern Virginia though the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion
of the north. But there was also a blow for the Confederates, as Stonewall
Jackson was wounded by friendly fire and died on 10 May. Chancellorsville
turned out to be Lee’s last significant victory. The war was now turning in
favour of the Union. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Vicksburg</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 18 May Grant began the siege of Vicksburg on the Mississippi where
30,000 Confederates were pinned down. On 4 July 1863 after a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicksburg_Campaign">long siege</a>
Grant took Vicksburg, 'the Gibraltar of the Mississippi'. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Lincoln said: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.' </span>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Confederacy was now cut in two and the Mississippi had become a Union
highway.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Gettysburg</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 18 June 1863, hoping to divert the Union troops from the siege of
Vicksburg, Lee had moved his army into Maryland. He had come to believe that
he and the Army of Northern Virginia were invincible. On 1-3 July the
key battle of the war was fought at
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg">Gettysburg</a>,
Pennsylvania, when
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Meade">General George Meade’s</a>
Army of the Potomac repelled Lee’s advance in what is seen as the turning
point of the war. </span><span style="font-size: large;">51,000 men were lost and all hope of invading the north was
over. </span><span style="font-size: large;">A distraught Lee said: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘All this has been my fault’.</span>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"> On 4 July the Confederates began their retreat back to
Virginia.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Chattanooga</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 24 November 1863 Grant captured
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Campaign">Chattanooga</a>, the gateway to the eastern Confederacy and the armaments industry of
Georgia, </span><span style="font-size: large;">thus ensuring that the war in the West was over. It also showed Lincoln
that at last he had found a victorious general. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Gettysburg Address</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 20 November Lincoln dedicated the Union cemetery at Gettysburg and
delivered the 272 word long
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address">Gettysburg Address</a>. There is a discussion of this
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07c2w5j">here </a>in Melvyn
Bragg's 'In Our Time' programme.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Grant’s pursuit of Lee</span>
</h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIVftUC2frWWbMD2qAFaPogs2_Z5CcK8ZSASkXkJQ8ASNpoygZqwLEduchhdQ-aIHgHtdAzX0rCNzW2wU5A0KZmzENR1U6KnMfFSx6ye2WkhWDO4xcKBDOjkcwZDidM1sV11-reGQ9krwr/s1600/Grant_crop_of_Cold_Harbor_photo.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIVftUC2frWWbMD2qAFaPogs2_Z5CcK8ZSASkXkJQ8ASNpoygZqwLEduchhdQ-aIHgHtdAzX0rCNzW2wU5A0KZmzENR1U6KnMfFSx6ye2WkhWDO4xcKBDOjkcwZDidM1sV11-reGQ9krwr/s200/Grant_crop_of_Cold_Harbor_photo.png" width="200" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
Grant at Cold Harbor
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1864 Grant’s Army of the Potomac invaded Virginia in the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_Campaign">Overland Campaign</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">His army was held by Lee in the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness">Battle of the Wilderness</a>
(5-7 May). </span><span style="font-size: large;">From 8 to 21 May he fought the indecisive
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Spotsylvania_Court_House">Battle of Spotsylvania</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">At
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cold_Harbor">Cold Harbo</a>r (1-3 June) the Union suffered appalling losses. </span><span style="font-size: large;">From 9 June 1864 to 25 March 1865 he
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Petersburg">laid siege to Petersburg</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The Union army was reinforced by supplies from the James River, while Lee’s
army starved inside the town.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Sherman’s march</span>
</h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fVZsk5xlgvsLkfhRbYAfGFPyi5nWh00uzXALJHS51BwwsoDTulR_x7AH5Bl5X5G46MSh2cXqLswiVGKxZuOzznBi9y081j2gtzM-zghceR77CZ3EefvBqd9jGxlGtIODAHs3qTFyror8/s1600/472px-William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0fVZsk5xlgvsLkfhRbYAfGFPyi5nWh00uzXALJHS51BwwsoDTulR_x7AH5Bl5X5G46MSh2cXqLswiVGKxZuOzznBi9y081j2gtzM-zghceR77CZ3EefvBqd9jGxlGtIODAHs3qTFyror8/s200/472px-William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg" width="157" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
William Tecumseh Sherman
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1864 General
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman">William T. Sherman</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the western theatre of war. On 2
September he captured the railroad hub of
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Campaign">Atlanta</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">a victory which did much to aid Lincoln’s re-election bid. (He was
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1864_United_States_presidential_election#:.">re-elected on 8 November,</a>
beating the Democrat candidate, General George McClellan.) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Sherman's 60,000 mid-Westerners’
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea">march to the sea</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">through central Georgia and the Carolinas was a total war against the
people of the Confederacy. His forces destroyed over $100 million of
property, freed over 40,000 slaves and burned many plantations. This was total war against civilians. You can hear a version of the famous song, <i>Marching Through Georgia</i>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbB0vA1TuZk">here</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> On 21
December he captured Savannah. The Confederacy was now demoralised.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2B56G-dXCiM4Y79sW8ZcBW7CAnhe-4SJBSahQEdbQPD6cLJARYE0haMvhcBsGYVSNE5q0PJPZe1El3BggN5mAfqu0xoipJ7MEngnxxtQpVYd4Mcmx0R17pKs4pILFe4uoPhD8C3GF7qA/s1600/AtlantaDuringCivilWar.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2B56G-dXCiM4Y79sW8ZcBW7CAnhe-4SJBSahQEdbQPD6cLJARYE0haMvhcBsGYVSNE5q0PJPZe1El3BggN5mAfqu0xoipJ7MEngnxxtQpVYd4Mcmx0R17pKs4pILFe4uoPhD8C3GF7qA/s200/AtlantaDuringCivilWar.jpg" width="200" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
The ruins of Atlanta
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Confederacy surrenders</span>
</h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On April 2, 1865, the Union Army finally captured Richmond. About 25 per
cent of the city's buildings were burned in a fire set to destroy supplies
by retreating Confederate soldiers; Union soldiers put out the fires as they
entered the city.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuWt3jy6oEkobTwnbki175BE-6AAAdgfz__1P1Vq0-HSKl-cblMs5LR7xaKB_SoNp5hvmgiorEXY6vPukqKFu3wXn3AxVQMpyje2h0xZ7Slx5gA1RROTf_t0OBH4Wq9UsBKcYdSTiG3MKI/s1600/800px-Richmond_Virginia_damage2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuWt3jy6oEkobTwnbki175BE-6AAAdgfz__1P1Vq0-HSKl-cblMs5LR7xaKB_SoNp5hvmgiorEXY6vPukqKFu3wXn3AxVQMpyje2h0xZ7Slx5gA1RROTf_t0OBH4Wq9UsBKcYdSTiG3MKI/s200/800px-Richmond_Virginia_damage2.jpg" width="200" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
Richmond in ruins
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 9 April Lee surrendered at
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Appomattox_Court_House">Appomattox Court House</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> in Virginia.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 10 May Jefferson Davis was captured.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By this time the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">Thirteenth Amendment</a>
outlawing slavery had passed Congress and had been submitted to the states
for ratification. On 6 December 1865 it became part of the
Constitution. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Before this, however, Lincoln was dead. In his
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_second_inaugural_address">second inaugural address</a>, he had spoken movingly of reconciliation, but on 14 April he was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln">shot by John Wilkes Booth</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">and he died the following morning.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span>
</h3>
<br />
<ol>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;">The cost of the war was enormous. Three million Americans fought. Out
of a total US population of 31.4 million, more than 617,000 died, many
more from disease than from battle. At Shiloh (April 1862) more died in
two days than in all the previous American Wars combined. At the
battle of Cold Harbor (May-June 1864), 7,000 died in twenty
minutes. </span>
</li>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;">It was the first modern war, the first to use ironclad ships and
railways.</span>
</li>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;">It did not necessarily begin as a war about slavery, but the
Emancipation Proclamation made it a key issue. Black regiments played a
significant role in the Union victory.</span>
</li>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;">The war left a le</span><span style="font-size: large;">gacy of bitterness in the South, intensified by the clumsiness of the
post-war
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era">Reconstruction programme</a>.</span>
</li>
</ol>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-72668635774806244342021-04-29T20:15:00.000+01:002021-04-29T20:15:17.677+01:00The coming of the Civil War (2)<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Dred Scott Case</span></h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpq6LNAq_rAjAIl-pUcJXSEG6eJ7NPA0cbJ08q2DFNbCHXwV3tH2_A8Ypmwy2Bq4FwfStwgkV3JRy3kz6Q9D44GpmXfsAX8FwW6nyGxnQDpGRv2fRnc_f1tbPTL9aeRkqL2FSe5epxlu6L/s1600/465px-Dred_Scott_photograph_%2528circa_1857%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpq6LNAq_rAjAIl-pUcJXSEG6eJ7NPA0cbJ08q2DFNbCHXwV3tH2_A8Ypmwy2Bq4FwfStwgkV3JRy3kz6Q9D44GpmXfsAX8FwW6nyGxnQDpGRv2fRnc_f1tbPTL9aeRkqL2FSe5epxlu6L/s200/465px-Dred_Scott_photograph_%2528circa_1857%2529.jpg" width="155" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dred Scott</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott">Dred Scott</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">was born a slave in Virginia in about 1800. In 1830 he was taken to St Louis and sold to an army surgeon, who took him to Illinois, then to Wisconsin Territory (later Minnesota) and finally returned him to St Louis in 1842. His master died in 1843 and in 1846 Scott filed a suit in the Missouri courts claiming that residence in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory made him free. A jury decided in his favour but the state Supreme Court decided <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9BXvtqQKY6e39l7E5pcVtSjDGppsxdVu3Sca058AcQdTmPpUcbPJDcO4AHb_szAlUk5zpq7_hNg6BcIH6BxNe1vbu99D4dTG5TQYi1EtTFYNclY-CJlVfnlrseeXYILR91OsO235qZie/s1600/Roger_Taney_-_Healy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9BXvtqQKY6e39l7E5pcVtSjDGppsxdVu3Sca058AcQdTmPpUcbPJDcO4AHb_szAlUk5zpq7_hNg6BcIH6BxNe1vbu99D4dTG5TQYi1EtTFYNclY-CJlVfnlrseeXYILR91OsO235qZie/s200/Roger_Taney_-_Healy.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chief Justice Taney</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
against him. The case of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford">Scott v. Sandford</a></i> </span><span style="font-size: large;">finally came to the </span><span style="font-size: large;">Supreme Court. On 6 March 1857 the Court delivered its decision. Speaking for his colleagues, the majority of whom were from the South, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland argued that Scott had no legal standing because he lacked citizenship. At the time of the Constitution, he stated, blacks</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">had for more than a century been regarded as …so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Very controversially he also ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional since it deprived citizens of their property in slaves. This meant that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from a territory. As the Missouri Compromise was dead anyway, this was a pointless provocation. The South was delighted, but the North was now convinced that the Supreme Court had been subverted by a slave conspiracy. </span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Panic of 1857</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In August 1857 America experienced a financial crisis brought about by a reduction in the demand for grain following the end of the Crimean War and the failure of an insurance company. The North suffered badly but the South was unaffected. The 1850s were the boom years of the ante-bellum period, as cotton growing became more profitable and the plantation owners built themselves large mansions. This made the South confident that it could ride out any storm. On 4 March 1858 the planter and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Henry_Hammond">Senator James Henry Hammond</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of South Carolina declared in a speech to the Senate: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">You dare not make war on cotton – no power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Lincoln-Douglas debates</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1858 Stephen Douglas faced re-election to the Senate. Many Democrats saw him as their saviour, a man with support from both North and South, but others opposed him because they did not see him as pro-slavery. He faced a tough fight to keep his seat, and to oppose him the Republicans chose the former single-term congressman and former Whig, Abraham Lincoln. In 1849 he had retired from active politics to cultivate his law practice in Springfield, Illinois, but the Kansas-Nebraska debate drew him back in. He was not an abolitionist or a believer in racial equality, but he abhorred slavery and opposed any extension into the new territories. In 1856 he joined the new Republican Party. In June 1858 he was selected to run against Douglas.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWBUZVsqpjbiLACOW5pkEKw9J-MNmvbwlNibeaU7B6slamXLBMWtJB04qzsAz3gsAPnZuV9HDtuxicHqzybC83dwJJPRxG3dSbbD9qFbaIocnkgKdAj5IMPFWl2yyL9WzUp8yMw-zL0kl/s1600/454px-Abraham_Lincoln_by_Byers%252C_1858_-_crop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirWBUZVsqpjbiLACOW5pkEKw9J-MNmvbwlNibeaU7B6slamXLBMWtJB04qzsAz3gsAPnZuV9HDtuxicHqzybC83dwJJPRxG3dSbbD9qFbaIocnkgKdAj5IMPFWl2yyL9WzUp8yMw-zL0kl/s200/454px-Abraham_Lincoln_by_Byers%252C_1858_-_crop.jpg" width="151" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 16 June at what was then the State Capitol at Springfield, he <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_House_Divided_Speech">delivered the speech</a> that would launch his campaign</span><span style="font-size: large;">: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">He then challenged Douglas to a series of debates. These <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debates">debates</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">took place in seven towns in Illinois from 21 August to 15 October 1858 and drew large crowds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">In the <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/251/12.html">first debate</a>, held at Ottawa, Lincoln showed that though he hated slavery, he was no believer in racial equality. (He was a man of his times.)</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favour of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, —the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects, —certainly not in colour, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">When Douglas defended the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln attacked it as 'squatter sovereignty'. Though the debates made Lincoln a national figure, Douglas won the election for the Senate. However, the Republicans did well in the state and Congressional elections and it was clear that it would not take them much to win the presidential election that was due in 1860. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">‘An irrepressible conflict’</span></h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrkLvYtjdtUh_jO6iCsf_yN7oH9d3iQiF5tW8d3410xJdsw8VBcXNN6jK1qsHp1Z7UEcZLjzNasJrHnmYhfJs0-NZ5wfABIJ7wL9dkxAD-1Aoo_ycMRFI0ZxvyuKBxW7OM4FjjR3uwzCz-/s1600/William_Seward_1851.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrkLvYtjdtUh_jO6iCsf_yN7oH9d3iQiF5tW8d3410xJdsw8VBcXNN6jK1qsHp1Z7UEcZLjzNasJrHnmYhfJs0-NZ5wfABIJ7wL9dkxAD-1Aoo_ycMRFI0ZxvyuKBxW7OM4FjjR3uwzCz-/s200/William_Seward_1851.png" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William H. Seward<br />
New York Senator and fervent<br />
abolitionist</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the same Senate campaign, as he fought to keep his New York seat, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Seward">William H. Seward</a> delivered <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/268/9/16.html">a speech</a> on 25 October that became notorious.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice-fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">This was making a similar argument to the one that Lincoln had made in his ‘house divided’ speech but in a far more inflammatory fashion. It harmed Seward politically, making him seem a dangerous extremist</span>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">John Brown’s raid</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)">John Brown</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> had lived a furtive existence in New England raising funds and arms from <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy4g_NnVeVxxRl9H1gsQmXKLW91j9BjPA7p4-9wj90SFytON5z_SHngNgvz0D8ROiv3-lBr9ujiLUGEsEWavaZ7ds3nXrvyALZw6KZnO5O6kglbOy3VV1iVAMoXzOtCiT0Ew-7YLTQX5e/s1600/John_Brown_portrait%252C_1859.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy4g_NnVeVxxRl9H1gsQmXKLW91j9BjPA7p4-9wj90SFytON5z_SHngNgvz0D8ROiv3-lBr9ujiLUGEsEWavaZ7ds3nXrvyALZw6KZnO5O6kglbOy3VV1iVAMoXzOtCiT0Ew-7YLTQX5e/s200/John_Brown_portrait%252C_1859.jpg" width="144" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Brown (1859)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
supporters. On 16 October 1859 he crossed the Potomac River into Virginia with about twenty men, including five blacks. That night he occupied the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to arm the slaves that he assumed would flock to his cause, and set off a series of slave insurrections in the South. He took the arsenal by surprise and then took refuge in the fire-engine house until he was surrounded by militiamen and townspeople. That night Lieutenant-Colonel Robert E. Lee of the US cavalry arrived with his aid, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._E._B._Stuart">Lieutenant J. E. B. ('Jeb') Stuart</a> and a force of marines. On the following morning (18 October) Stuart and his troops broke down the barricaded doors. Brown was wounded. His men had killed four people in the raid and of his own force ten died, including two of his sons.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyVRxYeEy4iDd3Aljw2CyiZXlswDt5fyAiqk4KDJko1vyUZ2abdSi6ohXnRQGyHFjj8mqMEoNNxEz37nGkyHYrlhj0CIfdOcXvVAoGmzdEiy-aOF6aoW9LLMVH_t6vKfDSX6qXby1AtBzg/s1600/800px-JohnBrownFort2007.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyVRxYeEy4iDd3Aljw2CyiZXlswDt5fyAiqk4KDJko1vyUZ2abdSi6ohXnRQGyHFjj8mqMEoNNxEz37nGkyHYrlhj0CIfdOcXvVAoGmzdEiy-aOF6aoW9LLMVH_t6vKfDSX6qXby1AtBzg/s200/800px-JohnBrownFort2007.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fire-engine house where Brown<br />
and his followers took refuge.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Brown was taken to Charlestown, Virginia (later West Virginia), and tried for treason and conspiracy to incite insurrection. He was convicted on 31 October and hanged on 2 December. On his way to the gallows, he handed his tailor a note: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">To Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brown was ‘the new saint’, to Louisa M. Alcott ‘Saint John the Just’. However, Lincoln thought he was justly hanged. Just before the execution, the poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wadsworth_Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a> wrote, 'They are leading old John Brown to execution. This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will soon come.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr6grWR2MOZEyoDEXhKRXCJIszBaZ-PhbFpXY5jxNgumKRjrJRH4s4B1T1BBJ1UiyoPguGfHoyB5ZE_TpztAyObeq1zUVdUYjbamnoVnaqH9t4GgLGKBjlSat9kIzKeQZNjMHwxT5pInRy/s1600/347px-Original-john-brown-words-george-kimball-1890.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr6grWR2MOZEyoDEXhKRXCJIszBaZ-PhbFpXY5jxNgumKRjrJRH4s4B1T1BBJ1UiyoPguGfHoyB5ZE_TpztAyObeq1zUVdUYjbamnoVnaqH9t4GgLGKBjlSat9kIzKeQZNjMHwxT5pInRy/s200/347px-Original-john-brown-words-george-kimball-1890.jpg" width="115" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The cult of John Brown acquired its hymn with ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body">John Brown’s Body</a>’.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By far the most important consequence of the raid was that southerners refused to distinguish between Brown and the Republican Party, even though the party was to denounce the raid in its 1860 platform. The South’s defence of slavery became ever more extreme. The <i>Atlanta Confederacy</i> declared: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">The historian Hugh Brogan writes</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">John Brown’s raid thus marks the point of no return: it began the uncoiling of a terrible chain of events leading to rebellion and war. (<i>The Penguin History of the USA</i>, (1999), p. 309)</span></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The election of 1860</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In April 1860 the Democratic Convention met in Charleston, South Carolina, to choose a candidate. The Northerners wanted to nominate Douglas but the Southerners refused to accept him. The convention broke up. One fragment reassembled at Baltimore on 18 June and nominated Douglas as the official candidate. The others nominated the Vice-President, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Breckinridge">John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky</a>, who was a moderate by southern standards. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #404040; text-indent: 0in;">The southern moderates formed themselves into the
Constitutional Union Party and nominated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_(Tennessee_politician)">John Bell of </a></span><span style="color: #404040; text-indent: 0in;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_(Tennessee_politician)">Tennessee</a>. </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The once national party was now hopelessly fragmented. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The real southern moderates, mostly former Whigs, reorganised into the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The election was now for the Republicans to lose. The nomination at Chicago was a contest between Lincoln and William H. Seward, but Seward was seen as dangerously extreme on the slavery question and Lincoln as the moderate, with the advantage of coming from a key section of the country, the North-West. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A year previously Lincoln had expressed his doubts about his fitness to be president. In a letter to the editor of the Rock Island Register he had written </span><span style="font-size: large;">‘I must in candor say I do not think I am fit for the presidency.’ Yet in the following months he made speaking tours urging abolition of slavery in the territories.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixXd-8xTDmLbYqKiwPDfTtPD_pOGF4b4LTW0TgOWiMmqTIHJ-EhpVo_GZGecUtSm2edtGFO82_NUhV2F_SkZdVI_SILRzBdhFU-2okAiEIv3GnihK_KXLB4XpqcbL1AYSV43-5n-wb7huk/s1600/Abraham_Lincoln_head_on_shoulders_photo_portrait.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixXd-8xTDmLbYqKiwPDfTtPD_pOGF4b4LTW0TgOWiMmqTIHJ-EhpVo_GZGecUtSm2edtGFO82_NUhV2F_SkZdVI_SILRzBdhFU-2okAiEIv3GnihK_KXLB4XpqcbL1AYSV43-5n-wb7huk/s200/Abraham_Lincoln_head_on_shoulders_photo_portrait.jpg" width="151" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Abraham Lincoln<br />
the Republican nominee</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Of the four candidates, not one generated a national following. The campaign became a choice between Lincoln and Douglas in the North, Breckenridge and Bell in the South. Douglas tried heroically to win votes in the South in order to save the Union, but his campaign was doomed. By midnight of 6 November Lincoln’s victory was clear. He had taken the key states of Pennsylvania and Indiana. He had only 39 per cent of the popular vote but a clear majority of 180 votes in the Electoral College. However, he had not won a single state in the South and when the news of his election reached Charleston, the process of secession was immediately set going.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-PoIRtWsd4LMK0cSB4yJRZO1F25TCLt5lKM794BzkQ4kkJGJ6ODeoSxIzr2Qe-F-Mevbr2jEprGbCxKWDMSY81WrU1ZDe4NOFa6EXQAXrqif5hx6hM3UIpQogG0ODi5QFgU0v9VRFxii/s1600/800px-ElectoralCollege1860.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-PoIRtWsd4LMK0cSB4yJRZO1F25TCLt5lKM794BzkQ4kkJGJ6ODeoSxIzr2Qe-F-Mevbr2jEprGbCxKWDMSY81WrU1ZDe4NOFa6EXQAXrqif5hx6hM3UIpQogG0ODi5QFgU0v9VRFxii/s320/800px-ElectoralCollege1860.svg.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Results of the 1860 election</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The secession of the South</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 20 December a convention met Charleston and after twenty-two minutes unanimously endorsed an Ordinance of Secession: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">We the people of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain…that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWVC-jdpLtVDLdHLvqPga-idV3tPMC4kFjJ396yA_Hi715frOry4gERIsCApAi88lrY08Kt_dgXhTHV8bEp4YVsaksnpr4Ygbd9ggqrJBwAkTCn7Ssf0KZkYie-WNkKSg4oHD-v-nL732/s1600/Charleston_Mercury_Secession_Broadside%252C_1860.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWVC-jdpLtVDLdHLvqPga-idV3tPMC4kFjJ396yA_Hi715frOry4gERIsCApAi88lrY08Kt_dgXhTHV8bEp4YVsaksnpr4Ygbd9ggqrJBwAkTCn7Ssf0KZkYie-WNkKSg4oHD-v-nL732/s200/Charleston_Mercury_Secession_Broadside%252C_1860.jpg" width="101" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">With war seemingly imminent the federal government had lost control of all its instillations in Charleston except <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter">Fort Sumter</a>, a massive brick and concrete fortress, forty feet high on an island in the harbour. Within days after South Carolina’s secession, Major Robert Anderson moved his seventy-three soldiers from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Moultrie">Fort Moultrie</a> to Fort Sumter.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By 1 February Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had declared themselves out of the Union. On 7 February at a conference at Montgomery, Alabama, a convention confederation of the seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America. On 18 February Jefferson Davis was elected as president, with Alexander Stephens of Georgia as vice-president.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">According to the US constitution, Lincoln was to take place in March. This meant that the outgoing president, Buchanan, presided helplessly as the country moved to civil war. Lincoln too, was inactive during this period, unwilling to believe that the secessionists were truly in earnest. The result was a period of drift. However Buchanan seemed about to act decisively when, egged on by his much more decisive Attorney-General, he despatched a steamer with reinforcements and provisions to the Federal garrison at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter">Fort Sumter</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">a sea fort located in Charleston harbour. However, batteries from Charleston drove the steamer away. This was an act of war but Buchanan chose to ignore the challenge.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLAtxxEUwKcW5b-s5Ir7_fojgLqDeyvFqb6YetYiQ2AB9weFK-kVnsd2O94FteuncYZJuDbEhVkUK_LDEmwjeg7QMjUXMxLx1quIi_leuMwBtHuuQLanSDzD_j8roH4wuvH8oYxzyX3oVn/s1600/800px-Fort_Sumter_Aerial_View.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLAtxxEUwKcW5b-s5Ir7_fojgLqDeyvFqb6YetYiQ2AB9weFK-kVnsd2O94FteuncYZJuDbEhVkUK_LDEmwjeg7QMjUXMxLx1quIi_leuMwBtHuuQLanSDzD_j8roH4wuvH8oYxzyX3oVn/s200/800px-Fort_Sumter_Aerial_View.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aerial view of Fort Sumter,<br />
now a national monument</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 4 March Lincoln was inaugurated. In his speech he offered to write a guarantee of slavery into the Constitution, but he stuck to his refusal to allow the extension of slavery, and he refused to recognise the right to secede or the independence of the Confederacy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">With Lincoln’s proclamation four more states were swept into the Confederacy. Virginia seceded on 17 April and the Confederate Congress then chose Richmond as its capital. (The government moved there in June.) Arkansas followed on 6 May, Tennessee on 7 May and North Carolina on 20 May. But of the other slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 4 April Lincoln decided to send a supply ship (not a war ship) to provision Fort Sumter. On 9 April Davis and his cabinet in Montgomery, Alabama, decided against permitting Lincoln to resupply the Fort.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">At 4.30 a.m. on 12 April <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._T._Beauregard">General Pierre G. T. Beauregard</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">began to bombard Fort Sumter. After more than thirty hours the fort fell to the Confederacy. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC8vCldj4kmhgADx39E-gibNC2RzzxoMzySTSq0XLXVf76xd5pmWkqMebfL_vwMlO6hvXRsKBbf8wrESdqgihzNwU8kgDLp9chqCJ-YHhyphenhyphenFL7AyMP8JhUV-L69wWeLR1FUdVYRYzlncNvB/s1600/Fort_sumter_1861.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC8vCldj4kmhgADx39E-gibNC2RzzxoMzySTSq0XLXVf76xd5pmWkqMebfL_vwMlO6hvXRsKBbf8wrESdqgihzNwU8kgDLp9chqCJ-YHhyphenhyphenFL7AyMP8JhUV-L69wWeLR1FUdVYRYzlncNvB/s200/Fort_sumter_1861.jpg" width="144" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No-one was killed at the attack<br />
on Fort Sumter but the damage<br />
was considerable.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 15 April, carefully avoiding the word war, Lincoln declared a national insurrection and called for 75,000 volunteers to recapture federal forts, defend Washington and protect the Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The New York lawyer, George Templeton Strong wrote: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">So the Civil War is inaugurated at last. God defend the right. </span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Boykin_Chesnut">Mary Chesnut</a> of South Carolina wrote: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">Woe to those who began this war if they were not in bitter earnest.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">The final secessions</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">With Lincoln’s proclamation four more states were swept into the Confederacy. Virginia seceded on 17 April and the Confederate Congress then chose Richmond as its capital. (The government moved there in June.) Arkansas followed on 6 May, Tennessee on 7 May and North Carolina on 20 May. But of the other slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union. The nation was lined up for war.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLWd_Q1Ylbl_iY01RgMgE7-fjbeBSPfZBP7p-uP585azNVKDLPHo5seh6uB11VIimCIRUmXugVVN5344sTWvb9Vj42SAc1XTCFWHSQeE0sZacCHIZ4EiRGFNIrSr2EtPHndpKmTFYT4Aj/s1600/00000525.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLWd_Q1Ylbl_iY01RgMgE7-fjbeBSPfZBP7p-uP585azNVKDLPHo5seh6uB11VIimCIRUmXugVVN5344sTWvb9Vj42SAc1XTCFWHSQeE0sZacCHIZ4EiRGFNIrSr2EtPHndpKmTFYT4Aj/s320/00000525.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-1315928673742090942021-04-29T20:14:00.000+01:002021-04-29T20:14:10.213+01:00The coming of the Civil War (1)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ-NVos5z-GoBxQB9kebp0udDFCczAK_MIMrFlpjE13iFDUyQF_2-pmIQOXnByPk5mpqIo6RbE_IEKC7Th1fcmGowZ7xdc7OCAogC_o5hnSnS_4zWr6y5FNnE9VZh3hHYxEuQXS3ckWRPY/s1600/United_States_1850-1853-03.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="1000" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ-NVos5z-GoBxQB9kebp0udDFCczAK_MIMrFlpjE13iFDUyQF_2-pmIQOXnByPk5mpqIo6RbE_IEKC7Th1fcmGowZ7xdc7OCAogC_o5hnSnS_4zWr6y5FNnE9VZh3hHYxEuQXS3ckWRPY/s320/United_States_1850-1853-03.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The United States after the Compromise of 1850</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Fugitive Slave Act</span></h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6Wv5ssG7zpS2r-qgmoNTXFWUqurRHtiwRqblBZa2sY3jL2eWVCKA8aywjb9LI9NPoYlwwmDDublwfnSH5MfmezmL43FPRPAA8753M5HPpyaAlm9ZEthN-UTNhfXczN6pAF1m_LmVdzq1/s1600/Slave_kidnap_post_1851_boston.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6Wv5ssG7zpS2r-qgmoNTXFWUqurRHtiwRqblBZa2sY3jL2eWVCKA8aywjb9LI9NPoYlwwmDDublwfnSH5MfmezmL43FPRPAA8753M5HPpyaAlm9ZEthN-UTNhfXczN6pAF1m_LmVdzq1/s200/Slave_kidnap_post_1851_boston.jpg" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slave kidnap poster, Boston 1851</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On 9 September 1850 California became the 31st state of the Union. On 18 September <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Fillmore">President Millard Fillmore</a> signed into law the </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850">Fugitive Slave Act</a>. This deeply controversial provision of the Compromise of 1850 called for </span><span style="font-size: large;">federal jurisdiction over runaway slaves and for their prompt return to their southern owners. The law also denied them a trial by jury or the right to testify on their own behalf. Any white man who attempted to help a slave escape its owner would be subjected to a heavy fine and/or six months’ imprisonment. The federal commissioner who returned a slave to his owner was to receive $10 but only $5 dollars if he did not return the slave. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the North, particularly New England, the Fugitive Slave Act </span><span style="font-size: large;">was bitterly denounced</span><span style="font-size: large;">. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a> wrote: ‘T</span><span style="font-size: large;">his filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century by people who could read and write', and he urged his neighbours to break the law. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One aspect of this law-breaking was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad">Underground Railroad</a> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOkR68OEZNiGp2-d-2J15R9GO4ISWo1_oZBUelUSHOy1dzrPAPrXDEpK8v77SetW_UW79j7gOLKw714xudUsKFPobWswT31KTKADtxbJ99QaGr5ro4OUxQqsI5YjNBhP5ca5VMgZsuG1it/s1600/359px-Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%252C_NPG%252C_c1885.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOkR68OEZNiGp2-d-2J15R9GO4ISWo1_oZBUelUSHOy1dzrPAPrXDEpK8v77SetW_UW79j7gOLKw714xudUsKFPobWswT31KTKADtxbJ99QaGr5ro4OUxQqsI5YjNBhP5ca5VMgZsuG1it/s200/359px-Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%252C_NPG%252C_c1885.jpg" width="119" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harriet Tubman</td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-size: large;">whereby fugitive slaves were hidden and smuggled into Canada. The escaped slave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman">Harriet Tubman</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">was already actively engaged in rescuing slaves. However, in spite of protests, the law seemed to be working. In the first six years of the act only three fugitives were forcibly rescued from the slave-catchers. On the other hand, fewer than two hundred slaves were captured and returned. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC46Bxymx1udkOblBfejnLs0vMR9BQcXx-rdx71EhfV5XJmhwi0w6lk9W87XZiKR_gellljRcVqFSJC3EqOMc8LUkb6_-DSnBeyLHLMi-u1Upuv-B2pWzINzGWwFhNzjqrA56JVRbdxmD4/s1600/452px-Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_c1852.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC46Bxymx1udkOblBfejnLs0vMR9BQcXx-rdx71EhfV5XJmhwi0w6lk9W87XZiKR_gellljRcVqFSJC3EqOMc8LUkb6_-DSnBeyLHLMi-u1Upuv-B2pWzINzGWwFhNzjqrA56JVRbdxmD4/s200/452px-Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_c1852.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harriet Beecher Stowe</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">From June 1851 to April 1852 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe">Harriet Beecher Stowe</a>, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and the wife of a prominent biblical scholar, </span><span style="font-size: large;">published <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a></i> </span><span style="font-size: large;">in serial form in the journal, <i>National Era</i>. It was published in book form on 20 March 1852 and became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Initially, however, it sold better in Britain than America. The country was enjoying a surge of prosperity and the presidential campaign of 1852 showed that neither side wished to raise the issue of slavery.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2XQ6srIGt5nVKoWizXnTZCk83vLXZifGFNEGpcijbCdlkaGliK8TKOgfsIM0L2U3rVRHW3Pqq6HcgHMC_hU5SYRM-2jg2eLpnrs8r-Iu53XYWx6Vcfor-Q92Omr2V15Mc4T-T15i_bicR/s1600/345px-UncleTomsCabinCover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2XQ6srIGt5nVKoWizXnTZCk83vLXZifGFNEGpcijbCdlkaGliK8TKOgfsIM0L2U3rVRHW3Pqq6HcgHMC_hU5SYRM-2jg2eLpnrs8r-Iu53XYWx6Vcfor-Q92Omr2V15Mc4T-T15i_bicR/s200/345px-UncleTomsCabinCover.jpg" width="115" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The 1852 election</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another consequence of the 1850 Compromise was the break-up of the Whig party, with the Southern Whigs abandoning the party for the Democrats. For the election of 1852 the Democrats chose <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce">Franklin Pierce</a> of New Hampshire candidate, in preference to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas">Stephen A. Douglas</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">from Illinois. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Pierce committed his party to adhere to the Compromise, and defeated his Whig rival, General Winfield Scott by 254 electoral votes to 42. But the divisions over slavery were now so deep that his presidency was doomed to failure.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A new generation of politicians was emerging. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Seward">William Henry Seward</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">a ferocious opponent of slavery, was the former governor of New York. He was re-elected as Senator for New York in 1855. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis">Jefferson Davis</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Mississippi, who became Pierce’s Secretary for War in 1853, was the spokesman of the South. The anti-slavery radical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner">Charles Sumner</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Massachusetts, was the most extreme voice of abolition in the Senate. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Kansas-Nebraska Act</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">American commercial interests were increasingly assertive in demanding a project that would bid the East and West together by furthering settlement along the trails to Oregon and California. This ambitious programme would involve granting public land to pioneer families, establishing a telegraph and a transcontinental railroad. Above all, it would mean organising politically the lands between the Missouri river and the Rockies, which bore the Indian name, Nebraska. Settlers were pouring into this territory ever-increasing numbers, but until the area was organised as a territory they had no claim to the land. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Congressmen from the South were reluctant to permit a Nebraska territory because the land lay north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30'. Senator Stephen A. Douglas thought he had a solution to this dilemma. In the winter of 1853-4 he <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/31a.asp">presented a bill to Congress</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;">This proposed the establishment of two new territories, Kansas, west of Missouri, and Nebraska, west of Iowa and Minnesota. But in order to secure the support of the South, Douglas wrote the principle of popular sovereignty into the Bill: the voters in each territory were to decide themselves whether to allow slavery. He believed that this measure was purely symbolic as the new settlers would not be slave-owners. However, the bill meant the end of the Missouri Compromise, and abolitionists fought it relentlessly. But they were outnumbered. The bill passed both Houses and on 30 May 1854 Pierce <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%E2%80%93Nebraska_Act">signed it into law</a>. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQe-4QLyjVLP80LyiYeOem6sByPzrBt5S6i9xC2vGUih0Pc-2vIjUqR281zqJRVfs8RCKNJqEE66BOzTtmf0nen6GB2SCg2Z4zgHGdXN2FD5Cz7CkS0HBquciOxy89qsYaLNf_H7LhIu3X/s1600/00035329.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQe-4QLyjVLP80LyiYeOem6sByPzrBt5S6i9xC2vGUih0Pc-2vIjUqR281zqJRVfs8RCKNJqEE66BOzTtmf0nen6GB2SCg2Z4zgHGdXN2FD5Cz7CkS0HBquciOxy89qsYaLNf_H7LhIu3X/s200/00035329.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Kansas-Nebraska territory (in orange)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Douglas believed that he had pulled off a clever political trick, but <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzb3J7NY2vanwa_3JRIvwQ1WRQeV9fIdLyUyqJ0dRIpv7MWLQFnXK4469izC8NYkDvhODjYM3w5xszLln3RIPGfCcwJGBVHdDJw3eOyaGagDwK_8YPDFhB7xHA9BMx9DCUwygYZJLcyzR/s1600/465px-Stephen_A_Douglas_-_headshot.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzb3J7NY2vanwa_3JRIvwQ1WRQeV9fIdLyUyqJ0dRIpv7MWLQFnXK4469izC8NYkDvhODjYM3w5xszLln3RIPGfCcwJGBVHdDJw3eOyaGagDwK_8YPDFhB7xHA9BMx9DCUwygYZJLcyzR/s200/465px-Stephen_A_Douglas_-_headshot.jpg" width="155" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Stephen A. Douglas - too</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">clever by half?</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
in fact he had made a massive blunder. His great mistake was to underestimate the depth of antislavery feeling in the North. It created the probably the most spontaneous outburst of public indignation since the Stamp Act disturbances of the previous century. Douglas declared that he was burned in effigy from Boston to Chicago and he doubted he would be able to hold his Senate seat. The fiery Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner described him as a </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘human anomaly – A Northern man with Southern principles’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Many in the North argued that if the Missouri Compromise was not a sacred pledge, then neither was the Fugitive Slave Act. On 2 June Boston witnessed a dramatic demonstration against the Act as a fugitive slave, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Burns">Anthony Burns,</a> was despatched to a waiting ship. At the same time a dangerous new opponent was emerging; Abraham Lincoln was provoked by the crisis to re-enter politics.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The emergence of the Republican Party</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The strain of the Kansas-Nebraska Act marked the final destruction of the Whig Party. Northern Whigs moved to two new parties. One was the Know-Nothings, an anti-immigrant (especially anti-Irish) party. Another was to prove longer-lasting. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In February 1854 a group of Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats met at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin (see below), to discuss what action they would take if the Kansas-Nebraska Act should be passed. They resolved that if it became law, they would form a new party, called the Republican Party in honour of Jefferson. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd9_eVkpnoABCgiLMCc2Z2NNHC-ceqwsP10Lm0R5IfL0899tMYbwCz5GU4E9Ka0R6JzOaXx-cNrf7py9qVXUKIyl8DyoMP9pR-J7P_VLVKfayLuHaG945knwJ_HAcsyrBjyZ_b_4QZg-9S/s1600/Birthplace_of_the_US_Republican_Party2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd9_eVkpnoABCgiLMCc2Z2NNHC-ceqwsP10Lm0R5IfL0899tMYbwCz5GU4E9Ka0R6JzOaXx-cNrf7py9qVXUKIyl8DyoMP9pR-J7P_VLVKfayLuHaG945knwJ_HAcsyrBjyZ_b_4QZg-9S/s200/Birthplace_of_the_US_Republican_Party2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 6 July 1854 at Jackson, Michigan, ten thousand anti-Nebraska citizens met and formed themselves into the Republican Party, the name partly chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party. Its guiding principle was opposition to any further expansion of slavery but it also became a Protestant, pro-business party and a formidable enemy for the Democrats of the South</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">‘Bleeding’ Kansas</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act Kansas became a rehearsal for the Civil War as groups from both North and Sough hurried to settle there. The first governor ordered a census and scheduled an election for a territorial legislature in 1855. The election took place in an atmosphere of violence as ‘Border Ruffians’ from Missouri crossed over illegally. The Republican, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, coined the term <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas">‘Bleeding Kansas’</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">to describe the disturbances. To countermand the pro-slavers around 1,200 Northerners emigrated to Kansas. The abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher (the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) armed many of them with Sharps rifles, which, it is alleged, became known as 'Beecher's Bibles' because of their shipment in wooden crates so labelled. Nevertheless the pro-slavers swept the polls, even though the pro-slavers were greatly outnumbered by the free-soilers. The new legislature expelled the few antislavery members, adopted a drastic slave code and made it a capital offence to aid a fugitive slave. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In response free-state advocates held a constitutional convention in Topeka. They passed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topeka_Constitution">Topeka Constitution</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">in December and set up their own government in the territory. Kansas now had two governments.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Y7xWgZZzYm7gb9L8sPMltLaWp_0K4Gr55eMgfRfKQRRYackIpXNgsp8pJAai1e2AvALqw3twoQLluM9KV-scLHtDV1C_DzSwUQ_uI2DCzbG12iCKfBlmx0uBhXwbcGcsVYZiKSnZIvm1/s1600/Topeka+Constitution+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Y7xWgZZzYm7gb9L8sPMltLaWp_0K4Gr55eMgfRfKQRRYackIpXNgsp8pJAai1e2AvALqw3twoQLluM9KV-scLHtDV1C_DzSwUQ_uI2DCzbG12iCKfBlmx0uBhXwbcGcsVYZiKSnZIvm1/s200/Topeka+Constitution+1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In May 1856 a proslavery mob set fire to property in the free-state town of Lawrence. Two days later a fanatical Kansas Free Soiler, John Brown, set out with his four sins and three other men to the proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek, where they dragged five men from their houses and hacked them to death in front of their families.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottawatomie_massacre"> This massacre </a>set off further violence and by the end of 1856 200 people had been killed, and $2 million in property had been destroyed. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDh9WZQStDqTgO0Lc-ZPOGy38P_y713TiNwQ91NQywKptfGVXAh3dxgUZw9oL1wvs9rBMMfh5bBGvbFDPLPbGraPFR5rl4szkfuygPuV1Hg1fAvrWt3KG8eotxJ_BbhLgeGzbJ4mCphZv/s1600/GBgKiM7RjLRUXT7WPfcbmjUb.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJDh9WZQStDqTgO0Lc-ZPOGy38P_y713TiNwQ91NQywKptfGVXAh3dxgUZw9oL1wvs9rBMMfh5bBGvbFDPLPbGraPFR5rl4szkfuygPuV1Hg1fAvrWt3KG8eotxJ_BbhLgeGzbJ4mCphZv/s320/GBgKiM7RjLRUXT7WPfcbmjUb.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Pottawatomie Massacre</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 4 July 1856 the Topeka legislature was dispersed on the orders of President Pierce. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The attack on Sumner</span></h3>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiODb7wHDHuRkzwo4OMSe7_ZqtqUnbpvf6xydwvrQtQCMMBYccEx-KJCDocMUsR6UflWWJjJLXOsNHm22AjtMZIJ7Lv_eV9ir0S5RatEZutQ1qXfXvA7rNJE-Mn9tKt6jSf1H3qCraKiK1G/s1600/Southern_Chivalry.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiODb7wHDHuRkzwo4OMSe7_ZqtqUnbpvf6xydwvrQtQCMMBYccEx-KJCDocMUsR6UflWWJjJLXOsNHm22AjtMZIJ7Lv_eV9ir0S5RatEZutQ1qXfXvA7rNJE-Mn9tKt6jSf1H3qCraKiK1G/s200/Southern_Chivalry.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Northern view of the attack<br />
on Sumner</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 20 May 1856 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner">Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">delivered an extremely inflammatory speech on ‘The Crime against Kansas’. On 22 May the South Carolina Congressman, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks">Preston S. Brooks</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">beat him about the head with a cane in front of the appalled Senators, until Brooks' cane broke and Sumner was unconscious. ‘Bully Brooks’ became a hero to the South. He resigned his seat and was triumphantly re-elected and his southern admirers presented him with new canes. But to the North Sumner was a martyr. Ralph Waldo Emerson wondered </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. We must either get rid of slavery or get rid of freedom’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The election of 1856</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span>The bitterness can be seen in the election of 1856. Stephen Douglas, who was blamed for the turmoil following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, failed to get his party’s nomination. Instead, the Democrats chose </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan">James Buchanan</a><span>, who only got the nomination because he came from Pennsylvania. The Republican candidate, the military hero, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Fr%C3%A9mont">John C. Frémon</a><span>t, carried the northern states, but Buchanan took the South and five free states. In his inauguration address on 4 March 1857 he said: ‘The great object of my administration will be to arrest …the agitation of the slavery question’ in the North ‘and to destroy the sectional parties’. </span></span><br />
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnpx-0BdtImasBGmvanIliL3FTgqb6DMUvwanrg1qgpYw6KjoVAUE-JElh3_Ml7cNrBWye9h_EekwzNOUjQXcOc9rDmduKRKrEvbCtLblXYUM1WoymIwc1APWMpxp5p8xAr-5Z_ZW6kTr/s1600/James_Buchanan_inauguration_1857.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglnpx-0BdtImasBGmvanIliL3FTgqb6DMUvwanrg1qgpYw6KjoVAUE-JElh3_Ml7cNrBWye9h_EekwzNOUjQXcOc9rDmduKRKrEvbCtLblXYUM1WoymIwc1APWMpxp5p8xAr-5Z_ZW6kTr/s200/James_Buchanan_inauguration_1857.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buchanan's inauguration - the first<br />
to be photographed</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
</h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-10784266370875813632021-04-19T14:13:00.001+01:002021-04-19T14:14:57.916+01:00The new politics<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Economic developments</span></h2><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the early nineteenth century, the United States changed rapidly and a distinctive American identity emerged.</span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As settlers poured westwards, the United States developed a transport infrastructure to cope with the movements of population. In 1806 congress authorized <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road">the National Road</a> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(also known as the Cumberland Road), America’s first interstate highway. Construction started at Cumberland, Maryland in 1811, and the road reached Vandalia, Illinois, in 1839. The West was becoming increasingly significant. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Since 1817 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal">the Erie Canal</a> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">had been under construction and was opened in 1825. At 363 miles long and with 83 locks it was the longest canal in the world, and it cost $7 million dollars to build. By linking the Great Lakes with New York City via the Hudson </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">River, it connected the Western interior to the Atlantic. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1828 the cornerstone for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_and_Ohio_Railroad">Baltimore and Ohio railroad</a> <span style="font-size: medium;">wa</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">s laid on 4 July 1828. At the end of 1829 it carried passengers on the first completed 13-mile stretch. By 1850 America had nine thousand miles of track. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnkVJForMSjQc52_YCCNogRxnYbJj1n-aX_BjgpKJoGXZAIqHmMha4V8SbBI1mpUG6W7xWFyWxExzcG-bQiXF6z9jO7EWidsV1byGHib_AQ9sTYlyIdOzPEgHN9qf6V_jxSd5jO3fIZ_t-/s1600/405px-B%2526O_Railroad_cornerstone.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnkVJForMSjQc52_YCCNogRxnYbJj1n-aX_BjgpKJoGXZAIqHmMha4V8SbBI1mpUG6W7xWFyWxExzcG-bQiXF6z9jO7EWidsV1byGHib_AQ9sTYlyIdOzPEgHN9qf6V_jxSd5jO3fIZ_t-/w135-h200/405px-B%2526O_Railroad_cornerstone.jpg" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cornerstone of the B&O, laid July 4, 1828 <br />
by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, <br />
now displayed at the B&O Railroad Museum. <br />Public domain</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Agriculture remained central to the American economy: cotton and tobacco in the South, grains and livestock in the North and West. Industry was also growing, as skilled immigrants brought with them their knowledge of British production technologies. In 1822 Boston investors opened the mechanised <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mills">Lowell cotton mill</a>s along the Merrimack River. However the majority of American towns were commercial rather than manufacturing centres, providing goods and services for the surrounding farms. It was only after the Civil War that industrialization seriously took shape. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Jacksonian Democracy</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824">1824 presidential election</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> John Quincy Adams defeated General Andrew Jackson, the victor of the battle of New Orleans, in an extremely bitter contest. Jackson won the popular vote but not the necessary majority in the electoral college that was needed to win and the result was controversially decided by the House of Representatives. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The election showed that the Federalist party (which Adams had left in 1803) was dead. It had failed to expand beyond its New England base and produce leaders who could appeal to the nation as a whole.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFS9kyJ1pDJgPewNjE4TeSXj_775bktkToW0WnUhhyT1wX1OADqSi3gV1dpjnij_MWJulYOdn6ZaCgNBvkptF_V_uvBpUQlUMz7beZYJF7rfQYyvSCjAWRtYXKu-X9EdKKdjUznG07vlF/s1600/Andrew_Jackson.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJFS9kyJ1pDJgPewNjE4TeSXj_775bktkToW0WnUhhyT1wX1OADqSi3gV1dpjnij_MWJulYOdn6ZaCgNBvkptF_V_uvBpUQlUMz7beZYJF7rfQYyvSCjAWRtYXKu-X9EdKKdjUznG07vlF/s200/Andrew_Jackson.jpg" width="165" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Andrew Jackson<br />
7th President of the<br />
United States (1829-37) <br />Public domain</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">The extremely scurrilous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1828">election of 1828</a> was Jackson’s revenge. The electorate had now increased to comprise all white males in all states except South Carolina. Adams lost the election by a decisive margin. He retained his support in New England, but Jackson won the rest of the states, picking up 178 electoral votes to Adams' 83 votes. Significantly, he picked up votes from the Irish immigrants. Adams and his father were the only U.S. presidents to serve a single term during the first 48 years of the Presidency (1789–1837). </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In March 1829 Jackson entered Washington like a conqueror. On <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Andrew_Jackson">inauguration day</a> (4 March) </span><span style="font-size: large;">the White House was invaded by a triumphant mob. The revellers pushed into the White House, where a reception was scheduled for all who chose to come. They surged through rooms, broke dishes and leaped onto the furniture in an attempt to shake the president’s hand. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwUPeYXWp2x-x18cpd4-8BdH4wI1iKyghEvQMSZeiw_K74zTTKYKyX0AtPLsvyNxxisl7A-TbIgu9fkSsL72P56bc8iEBwX9zy_hRvYtXvzHSpVa3O9VDRu9jPQ8c9qWpsg4fv3ZFA6R-F/s1600/800px-Jackson_inauguration_crop.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="800" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwUPeYXWp2x-x18cpd4-8BdH4wI1iKyghEvQMSZeiw_K74zTTKYKyX0AtPLsvyNxxisl7A-TbIgu9fkSsL72P56bc8iEBwX9zy_hRvYtXvzHSpVa3O9VDRu9jPQ8c9qWpsg4fv3ZFA6R-F/s200/800px-Jackson_inauguration_crop.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The inauguration of Andrew Jackson<br />
From the Library of Congress</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This disorderly behaviour seemed to mark the beginning of the age of the common man. By 1832 Jackson's movement had a name: the Democratic Party. The president governed through his close inner-circle, called his ‘Kitchen Cabinet’, which included newspaper editors as well as politicians. His party was suspicious of elites and vested interest, hostile to high tariffs that kept up prices and bitterly opposed to bankers.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVmuDzAXjV6iyp1MrjxiRq6SeAQIGZJCEjwzuwSsQLwu5_H7Fi-Oon0gGkuaXf_Q2gUJf04wNbZO4Mtr4gAcse-2SJd9bYdQo6vL699Du_mzk6gFhvm6dyA9_p_jgiy1vejfCvZ6eDjHj/s1600/Henry_Clay-headshot.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVmuDzAXjV6iyp1MrjxiRq6SeAQIGZJCEjwzuwSsQLwu5_H7Fi-Oon0gGkuaXf_Q2gUJf04wNbZO4Mtr4gAcse-2SJd9bYdQo6vL699Du_mzk6gFhvm6dyA9_p_jgiy1vejfCvZ6eDjHj/s200/Henry_Clay-headshot.jpg" width="151" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Henry Clay<br />
leader of the Whigs</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1834 the enemies of 'King Andrew' formed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)">Whig Party,</a> a conservative, business-oriented party that copied the Democrats' campaign tactics of mobilised torchlight parades, miniature log cabins, and hard (i.e. alcoholic) cider. The Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favoured a programme of banking and tariffs to stimulate manufacturing. Their pre-eminent leader was Henry Clay. Both parties went out to win the support of the common man, by appealing to his prejudices, libelling the opposition, and addressing large crowds. They had more in common than they cared to admit.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the second quarter of the nineteenth century the patrician republic associated with the Virginia Dynasty gave way to the frontier democracy of the Jacksonians. Europeans noted the change. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1835 the Frenchman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville">Alexis de Tocqueville</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">published his two-volume <i>Democracy in America</i>. He saw the United States as the </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKr4glqqGajDWy_zi3bLytLXb57-nlRQVm558caDpmI8q6LLVOXJ-nOjmVlneTRRHzAhRYAN3du8zb_-gY5zrl0AtSxkvBA-KQ_mcN7OuYSZE1S2dkjAMwrcczE_APKT0nxo0ysCj6pTKQ/s1600/utf06a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKr4glqqGajDWy_zi3bLytLXb57-nlRQVm558caDpmI8q6LLVOXJ-nOjmVlneTRRHzAhRYAN3du8zb_-gY5zrl0AtSxkvBA-KQ_mcN7OuYSZE1S2dkjAMwrcczE_APKT0nxo0ysCj6pTKQ/s200/utf06a.jpg" width="119" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">prototype of an egalitarian democratic order, lacking an aristocracy, governed by majority rule and maintaining order through voluntary associations and strong religious beliefs. In describing this society, he coined a new word – individualism. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<ol><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></ol>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">
</span></span></div></div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-30332910892755700502021-04-19T14:02:00.001+01:002021-04-19T14:13:26.689+01:00The Mexican War and its aftermath<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_hojCRm753mfgDHJbbvAvFthnYNB0HOGT0CHNeuRsCq5IexUK8xSYrY6fhTXkhDWP33lMXKk9_5xYD8r-iI7atjvFMWsQDud3WrYN52-4d0ctYHGUuuGl9X03x-t7LtGimhAw6JMg-uE/s1600/Mexico_nebel.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_hojCRm753mfgDHJbbvAvFthnYNB0HOGT0CHNeuRsCq5IexUK8xSYrY6fhTXkhDWP33lMXKk9_5xYD8r-iI7atjvFMWsQDud3WrYN52-4d0ctYHGUuuGl9X03x-t7LtGimhAw6JMg-uE/s200/Mexico_nebel.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">General Winfield Scott enters Mexico City<br />
13 September 1847<br />Public domain</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">‘Manifest Destiny’</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Andrew Jackson's recognition of the Lone Star Republic exacerbated the already existing tensions over slavery. For the next seven years there was continuous agitation to bring Texas into the Union. Though many American politicians correctly predicted that the annexation of Texas would bring problems, the tide was flowing against their caution. This was the period of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny">‘manifest destiny'</a>. To people like the </span><span style="font-size: large;">Democratic newspaper editor John O’Sullivan, it was ‘manifest destiny’ that the United States would soon possess not only Texas but Oregon and later California. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl2BcMhYv6X1s2Nr_h0_bzQciMIvp11x6_npn_VpMy43WSfIB0_8tdNu6bjnVbelbVo9Wt4Z_KEQxEQe5O0n3osIsYl-77OyNNp45UBxpDH2nlXe7KJMusCyvIx2kd1a6ddYsEf5CXyucX/s1600/800px-Flag_of_Texas.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl2BcMhYv6X1s2Nr_h0_bzQciMIvp11x6_npn_VpMy43WSfIB0_8tdNu6bjnVbelbVo9Wt4Z_KEQxEQe5O0n3osIsYl-77OyNNp45UBxpDH2nlXe7KJMusCyvIx2kd1a6ddYsEf5CXyucX/s200/800px-Flag_of_Texas.svg.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The flag of the Republic of Texas<br />
the 'Lone Star Republic',<br />
officially adopted 1839</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The annexation of Texas</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Even before O’Sullivan had coined the term, the issue of manifest destiny was a live one in politics. In the run-up to the election of 1844 the former President, Martin van Buren, opposed the annexation of Texas because he wanted to stop the expansion of slavery. He was backed by a majority in Congress. Henry Clay spoke for many when he asserted that ‘annexation and war with Mexico were identical’. But as a result, Van Buren lost the Democratic nomination to </span><span style="font-size: large;">to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk#Election_of_1844">James K. Polk</a>, the former Governor of Tennessee, who had gained the support</span><span style="font-size: large;"> of Andrew Jackson. Polk’s win was a victory for manifest destiny. </span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Polk was a fire-breather, but he chose his opponents carefully. In </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj9dIkSXyi5eMfuznV31Vvr3MjPSaeOG8pBvVXtVpEdQjKzW-QGY8OtpFTZeybtyaQg9hOKs6O4zGquDhHle7HGNwXo5h4T7k-xACBhnk7bpdrVYmdy6mSD8bmCJjq3sbWCowiQ35iIDQ9/s1600/Oregoncountry.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj9dIkSXyi5eMfuznV31Vvr3MjPSaeOG8pBvVXtVpEdQjKzW-QGY8OtpFTZeybtyaQg9hOKs6O4zGquDhHle7HGNwXo5h4T7k-xACBhnk7bpdrVYmdy6mSD8bmCJjq3sbWCowiQ35iIDQ9/s200/Oregoncountry.png" width="196" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">June 1846 he was to sign the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Treaty">Oregon Treaty</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">with the British that settled the boundary between Oregon and British Columbia at the 49th parallel, with the exception of Vancouver Island, which remained British. But while Britain was powerful, Mexico was not.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 26 February 1845, six days before Polk took office, Congress approved the annexation of Mexico. This came into effect on 29 December when Polk signed legislation making Texas the 28th state of the Union. It was the decisive step making war with Mexico inevitable.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Mexican-American War</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 23 April 1846 the President of Mexico issued a proclamation declaring Mexico’s intention to fight a defensive war against the United States. On April 25 a 2,000-strong Mexican cavalry detachment attacked a seventy-man U.S. patrol under the command of Captain Seth Thornton, which had been sent into the contested territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River, killing sixteen American soldiers. On May 11, Polk stated to Congress stated that </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Congress approved the declaration of war on May 13, with southern Democrats in strong support. But sixty-seven Whigs voted against the war, a sign of rising opposition, particularly in the North, where people assumed that Polk wanted the war in order to acquire more slave territory. Among the minority voices was that of the former president, John Quincy Adams, who called it ‘a most unrighteous war’. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #073763;">The Wilmot Proviso</span></b>: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War">The war</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">was to last two years. In August 1846 Davis Wilmot, a Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania introduced an amendment to a bill authorising the granting of money in order to facilitate negotiations with Mexico, known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmot_Proviso">Wilmot Proviso</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Early in 1847 the Proviso passed the House with the support among others of the newly elected Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, but it failed in the Senate.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4zL3yi7pcz6uaWIYiy01qED5iRBbvz1cwZvNqhwu8Vxu8Xj9MZCfX0l4mJHIaq05xxo0Nwgi_x2hA3wbGB5-aaIinw_954737mc00QVIfYlQ5Yi4oxCI1wEz2nhhxA-0T2Dq39VS60qO/s1600/Mexican%25E2%2580%2593American_War_%2528without_Scott%2527s_Campaign%2529-en.svg.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4zL3yi7pcz6uaWIYiy01qED5iRBbvz1cwZvNqhwu8Vxu8Xj9MZCfX0l4mJHIaq05xxo0Nwgi_x2hA3wbGB5-aaIinw_954737mc00QVIfYlQ5Yi4oxCI1wEz2nhhxA-0T2Dq39VS60qO/s200/Mexican%25E2%2580%2593American_War_%2528without_Scott%2527s_Campaign%2529-en.svg.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Mexicans were too weak to withstand the enthusiastic American volunteer armies. They were beaten by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_428508680"></span>General Zachary Taylor <span id="goog_428508681"></span></a>('Old Rough and Ready') at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma. In September 1846 he took Monterey. In January 1847 Captain John C. Fremont accepted the surrender of the pro-Mexican resisters in California. On 23 February Santa Anna surrendered to Taylor at Buena Vista. In the spring of that year <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Scott">General Winfield Scott</a> ('Old Fuss and Feathers') began a mopping up operation that culminated in his capture of Mexico City on 13 September 1847. While Scott raised the American flag and entered the 'halls of Montezuma', Santa Anna and the remains of his army retreated to the suburb of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In nearly three years of fighting almost 13, 000 Americans had died, either in combat or from disease, while 4,000 more were wounded.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 2 February 1848 the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo">Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">ended the war. (It was ratified by the Senate on 10 March.) The treaty gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican border of the Rio Grande, and ceded to the United States the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. In return, Mexico received $15,000,000less </span><span style="font-size: large;">than half the amount the U.S. had attempted to offer Mexico for the land before the opening of hostilities and the U.S. agreed to assume $3.25 million in debts that the Mexican government owed to U.S. citizens. By the Treaty, the United States acquired 600 million acres, most of them below the Mason-Dixon Line. It had increased its territory by 33 per cent.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1Ag_eevu37JIQlseClesUnUrQYKBgLYxb_smhfSuLfBw3YvF5MvXaMQo0vaXCsLvniQzq1IwigJr8cZCjIGG2-Ff1kvRZXBE3m-zHzC1J_IYsuNKsMT1dp7vG5lljDYAby-QNB3bAArB/s1600/Mexican_Cession_in_Mexican_View.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl1Ag_eevu37JIQlseClesUnUrQYKBgLYxb_smhfSuLfBw3YvF5MvXaMQo0vaXCsLvniQzq1IwigJr8cZCjIGG2-Ff1kvRZXBE3m-zHzC1J_IYsuNKsMT1dp7vG5lljDYAby-QNB3bAArB/s200/Mexican_Cession_in_Mexican_View.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Mexican Cession</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The results of the war</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the 1848 election the Democrats split on the slavery issue, allowing the successful general and slave-holding Whig, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor">Zachary Taylor</a>,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> to slip through in a narrow victory. (Abraham Lincoln, who had pledged to serve only one term, was out of Congress.) However, though the South seemed to have emerged the victor in the war, the expansion of the United States did not benefit the slave-holders, as the new territories were far more suitable for small farming than for slave plantations. The South had never been more prosperous as cotton production and cotton profits reached a peak, but the Southern economy could not be exported. </span><br />
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The war ensured that slavery was now at the top of the agenda. To <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFElJOhPe3tmdF1NLruz6Twku7FWPANqwuy2vT4myW6TZYyF1zzZWBQbgqg2HXhGarqOSMraaf6JYc1vy1nlTQicXG3x1yEHsoGN25PFhGmhGggrH3Sjnp2BUB6m5Xz2f_zXmU5jXEK9ji/s1600/Benjamin_D._Maxham_-_Henry_David_Thoreau_-_Restored.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFElJOhPe3tmdF1NLruz6Twku7FWPANqwuy2vT4myW6TZYyF1zzZWBQbgqg2HXhGarqOSMraaf6JYc1vy1nlTQicXG3x1yEHsoGN25PFhGmhGggrH3Sjnp2BUB6m5Xz2f_zXmU5jXEK9ji/s200/Benjamin_D._Maxham_-_Henry_David_Thoreau_-_Restored.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry David Thoreau</td></tr>
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the New England moralist, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau">Henry David Thoreau</a> (1817-65) the war was obscene and he had refused to pay the taxes that were to finance it. Far from uniting Americans, the war had divided them as never before.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Compromise of 1850</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 24 January 1848 gold was discovered on the banks of the Sacramento River in California. In December the outgoing President Polk announced that 'there's gold in them thar hills'. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The res</span><span style="font-size: large;">ulting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush">gold rush</a> was t</span><span style="font-size: large;">he greatest mass migration in American history. During 1849 some 80,000 ‘Forty-niners’ reached California. By 1854 the number would top 300,000. Though some brought their slaves with them, most immigrants were not slave-holders and it was clear that California was not going to be a slave state. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZtuO0RxmIlQL_Pp0joH2lZgnNWplkj0UNLyVxTuBRhYLPnCmFeiFOWt2zeZyWYgCT2LFkZhTH4qX0GaTfSKCMWkLlaoz3qlgjv84qp_UzJbqmzqAGk62ggnKk5aijCz8wJCA3aEXuhx6/s1600/California_Clipper_500.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZtuO0RxmIlQL_Pp0joH2lZgnNWplkj0UNLyVxTuBRhYLPnCmFeiFOWt2zeZyWYgCT2LFkZhTH4qX0GaTfSKCMWkLlaoz3qlgjv84qp_UzJbqmzqAGk62ggnKk5aijCz8wJCA3aEXuhx6/s200/California_Clipper_500.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Though a slave-holder himself (born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky) the new President, Zachary Taylor, had his eye on his re-election and he knew he could not win on southern votes alone. He needed to keep his support in New York and began to work closely with William Seward, one of the state’s senators, who was the leader of the Northern anti-slavery Whigs. The South became fearful that he would adopt the Wilmot Proviso. If this became law, they would lose their right to expand into the new territories. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Henry Clay, the great fixer, managed to broker another compromise, the last of his political career. In January 1850 he put forward five proposals: </span><br />
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<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">California was to be admitted to the Union as a free state; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">New Mexico and Utah were to be organized as territories and to settle for themselves whether they should be slave or free; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the boundary dispute between Texas and the United States was to be settled, and the Texas Republic’s debt was to be paid by Congress; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the slave trade to be abolished in the District of Columbia; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">a new and stricter Fugitive Slave Law would replace that of 1793.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The ensuing debate was fierce. John C. Calhoun left his sickbed for the Senate chamber to urge urged the South to stand firm in defence of ‘Southern rights’, whatever the cost. He died on 31 March and President Zachary Taylor on 9 July. The young Illinois Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas">Stephen A. Douglas</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">spoke in favour of Clay’s proposals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In September Millard Fillmore, the new President, signed the last of the five measu</span><span style="font-size: large;">res <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1850">into law</a>. </span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Both Southerners and Northerners were prepared to compromise, and when it was accepted, it seemed as if normality had been restored. But, as subsequent events were to show, the price of this achievement was fearfully high. Those who had predicted that the Mexican War would only exacerbate the debate on slavery were to be proved right.</span><br />
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Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-17646613939866660902021-04-14T10:45:00.001+01:002021-04-14T10:49:34.218+01:00Slavery: 'the peculiar institution'<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmrBLsFyoguGbM9H_zwb4NEZEAOXvLadeIxQ-QEoHQunA1mhdQvim7XSDyFY1Duf0Cn9CO7Qjg2MU_srfPO6J6slPE2aDvc6YImgqO0stSBccdZ7fBZm7gqAcQVrmsn9j9-XcGr7ca4IH/s1600/Crowe-Slaves_Waiting_for_Sale_-_Richmond%252C_Virginia.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmrBLsFyoguGbM9H_zwb4NEZEAOXvLadeIxQ-QEoHQunA1mhdQvim7XSDyFY1Duf0Cn9CO7Qjg2MU_srfPO6J6slPE2aDvc6YImgqO0stSBccdZ7fBZm7gqAcQVrmsn9j9-XcGr7ca4IH/s320/Crowe-Slaves_Waiting_for_Sale_-_Richmond%252C_Virginia.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eyre Crowe, <i>Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia</i> in <br />
<i>Illustrated London News</i>, 1856</td></tr>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The paradox</span></h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Pf4TNzF4Lvy24qvjjZ4ynI3M4gVdmhXFm7kKEKFQjVviw9Hm-tcmlIOpgWI2T8_1hmqSm-_U7HMaX1Tt7DHOT7wUzI7mAt7F1UqKox9LG3io0bJpmFlZ6Tg6fzKFNh8RuwRwZOcugdX7/s1600/484px-ThomasJeffersonStateRoomPortrait.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Pf4TNzF4Lvy24qvjjZ4ynI3M4gVdmhXFm7kKEKFQjVviw9Hm-tcmlIOpgWI2T8_1hmqSm-_U7HMaX1Tt7DHOT7wUzI7mAt7F1UqKox9LG3io0bJpmFlZ6Tg6fzKFNh8RuwRwZOcugdX7/s200/484px-ThomasJeffersonStateRoomPortrait.jpg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thomas Jefferson</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The great paradox of the newly independent United States was that many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave-owners. Slaves comprised 40 per cent of the population of Virginia, and Jefferson owned about two hundred slaves on his estate in Monticello. It is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery">a near certainty</a> that he was the father of the children of his slave, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings">Sally Hemmings</a>. New archaeological discoveries are opening up <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/thomas-jefferson-sally-hemings-living-quarters-found-n771261">more information about her living quarters</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jefferson was acutely aware of the incongruity of his position and he looked forward to a time when slavery could be abolished. However, he was convinced that black people were inferior to whites, and he believed that their lack of intelligence and dark skin rendered them better able than whites to work in the heat of the South. It is not surprising, therefore, that his vision of republican liberty was not realised - it was too full of inconsistencies. In the following generations many of his fellow-southerners came to see slavery not as a necessary evil but as a positive good – so much so that they were prepared to fight a war to preserve what they called their ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States">peculiar institution</a>’.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The establishment of slavery</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The first Africans arrived in North America in August 1619, when a Dutch trading vessel blown off course landed at Jamestown and sold twenty Africans as indentured labour. These were not slaves, but during the seventeenth century the colonists began to develop laws that established slavery. In 1800 one inhabitant in five was a slave. By 1860 4.4 million African Americans lived in the United States, nearly 90 percent of them slaves. But against these numbers there were nearly 27 million free whites. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><h3><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Slavery and the South</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the twenty years following the Revolution, Northerners abandoned slavery. As early as 1784 Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had either outlawed slavery or passed laws for its gradual extinction. The last northern state to abolish slavery was New Jersey in 1804. Slavery, therefore, came to be particularly associated with the South. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Mason-Dixon Line:</span></b> The South had originally been defined by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason%E2%80%93Dixon_line">Mason-Dixon line</a>,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> drawn in 1767 by two British astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremy Dixon, who had been commissioned to settle a border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania. See <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40638673">this BBC site</a> for a fascinating history of the two creators of the line. </span><span style="font-size: large;">This is one of the possible derivations of ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie">Dixie</a>’, </span><span style="font-size: large;">the common name for the South.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3MpSOxBT5W73fbhyphenhyphenq2ir8_Caiyv3looYaTub8PiNBkUWvfYtzFeGxuWfHnd2AoEH8ZGL-sfxVz9_zPGI2DDHGlqRZY3JKIMvRRA7u12fyWtzgilB711d1AlO-jCcE8uOBY-6qxCdf7z2O/s1600/Mason-dixon-line.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3MpSOxBT5W73fbhyphenhyphenq2ir8_Caiyv3looYaTub8PiNBkUWvfYtzFeGxuWfHnd2AoEH8ZGL-sfxVz9_zPGI2DDHGlqRZY3JKIMvRRA7u12fyWtzgilB711d1AlO-jCcE8uOBY-6qxCdf7z2O/s200/Mason-dixon-line.gif" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The original Mason-Dixon line had been only twenty-three miles, but it had come to mean the separation between all the states above and below the 39th parallel. Thanks to slavery it now represented a cultural frontier as well.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">The implications of this cultural frontier can be seen in the archive of <a href="https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/">Georgetown University</a>, now digitized. <br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Cotton:</span></b> The economy of the South was based on slavery. The dramatic rise in the global demand for cotton caused by the textile industries of England and New England expanded southern markets. In 1793 Eli Whitney invented</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnOzBg1qU4sFceur5P2k9PSd-wSW4PUBiy9XhSN9_5MlDvlC2eKuSRTNcILsPRIGqovozO9OEEGSUZD8y9Pltwff6BRtZxqaR7KADxOOS_1Xc2ZnPsaz26Yp2rYR5CR9cx6nL8JHrV1oc/s1600/800px-Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrnOzBg1qU4sFceur5P2k9PSd-wSW4PUBiy9XhSN9_5MlDvlC2eKuSRTNcILsPRIGqovozO9OEEGSUZD8y9Pltwff6BRtZxqaR7KADxOOS_1Xc2ZnPsaz26Yp2rYR5CR9cx6nL8JHrV1oc/s200/800px-Cotton_gin_EWM_2007.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin">cotton gin</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">which permitted the separation of seed from fibre. In 1808 the United States ended the slave trade. This made slaves more economically valuable to their masters as they could not be so easily replaced. In the 1830s a male field hand could fetch £500. By the 1850s his market value had almost quadrupled. By the eve of the Civil War the internal slave market sold approximately 80,000 slaves and was worth some $60 million. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiro_R8BPNmCnThFRkN1xSqiZnh2fw9Ut_gImLBGgtPPiAEGJo9JTfzIX9pJP8pJDaQdPeFU9Vtq95DSgFL6J4ywaPrgYYootjyQNjvpJjCdrYz9GbYn-cjMTi15y0y25x5gsEQc0GV30t/s1600/slave-ad.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiro_R8BPNmCnThFRkN1xSqiZnh2fw9Ut_gImLBGgtPPiAEGJo9JTfzIX9pJP8pJDaQdPeFU9Vtq95DSgFL6J4ywaPrgYYootjyQNjvpJjCdrYz9GbYn-cjMTi15y0y25x5gsEQc0GV30t/s200/slave-ad.jpg" width="124" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The 'Second Middle Passage':</span></b> Because slaves could no longer be imported, they were moved to the parts of the United States where their labour was most valuable. One million people were moved from the Upper South (Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky) to the Deep South and the West for the purpose of producing tobacco, sugar, rice, and, above all, cotton. They were frequently separated from their families and sent south either by steamboat or in coffles accompanied by armed guards along routes such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natchez_Trace">Natchez Trace</a> from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The slaves described this removal as being sold ‘down the river’ –the Mississippi. As a result Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina saw massive increases in their slave population. The expansion of slavery into he Lower South embedded the system into American society. It was impossible to believe now that it would die naturally. By 1860 the black population of the South had risen to 4, 204, 000. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8muFdElC0O9f8teqnZ5WXA_kaIOmkA6hvGP0B5dcowLpbOLpevkknHg62Z1TB-8Db9YuqDrGMg9l3EBib5HsN8PQjReeOuyxcDPnjauLYfGODVSuxusdQC9b9RAdS_awKkUQvwDcvBFOX/s1600/negro-sales-atlanta.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8muFdElC0O9f8teqnZ5WXA_kaIOmkA6hvGP0B5dcowLpbOLpevkknHg62Z1TB-8Db9YuqDrGMg9l3EBib5HsN8PQjReeOuyxcDPnjauLYfGODVSuxusdQC9b9RAdS_awKkUQvwDcvBFOX/s200/negro-sales-atlanta.jpg" width="170" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Auction house, Atlanta, GA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Class divisions: </span></b>The South has always been associated with the planter class, yet this was only a small part of the population of the slave states. The total white population of these states in 1860 was 8,098,000. 385,000 were slaveholders, of whom only 46,000 owned more than twenty slaves. The South was therefore an area of sharp class divisions. The only consolation for many of the poor whites was the belief that they were superior to the blacks. They were therefore among the strongest supporters of slavery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Living conditions</span></h3>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr20nAnHOY3cVMsMcJE5KbH3LhLlQH7XtVVMPKj82Uv8TyoMsSXYkay8YFus1J2TPwZ45NfqkYSughEnSLszdEAaNYtdQdsW9E4RGvjeJFPkC865qOiz3N8cFOsFQPEksJUwq4xDYmU9UC/s1600/slavery-2015.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr20nAnHOY3cVMsMcJE5KbH3LhLlQH7XtVVMPKj82Uv8TyoMsSXYkay8YFus1J2TPwZ45NfqkYSughEnSLszdEAaNYtdQdsW9E4RGvjeJFPkC865qOiz3N8cFOsFQPEksJUwq4xDYmU9UC/s200/slavery-2015.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqslT56La36mR3GonvTliGduFni_60z-nf22ijRo2tuEOobG39xt6bLukAUlYOYmTFDQNS8-VbdK3rYBgmeIyJZnJNYdhlgpCfl_7PLaLTcKdRBD0-rHvVY6nobM3t-DL8iq3HPD-hShm/s1600/contrabands-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyqslT56La36mR3GonvTliGduFni_60z-nf22ijRo2tuEOobG39xt6bLukAUlYOYmTFDQNS8-VbdK3rYBgmeIyJZnJNYdhlgpCfl_7PLaLTcKdRBD0-rHvVY6nobM3t-DL8iq3HPD-hShm/s200/contrabands-2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">With the ending of the slave trade, the living conditions of the slaves might have improved slightly, but their lives remained grim. They worked long hours, they had to accept poor clothing, and they lived in leaky and unhealthy accommodation. The slave diet was chiefly maize and bacon or pork.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Violence was inherent in the system and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States">many cruel punishments</a> were meted out to slaves. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPitKvKWr1NVh1o4racoi3Ums38-ZYC5FyQt6RY0s5OLUb7ID5qfrY_o90_XndZYclzRnDF1o7CEfIvlSXhab_9XqO8x4jZKTHFofkaQooqqH9zemUTFwpvEc6CqNX2OQ4LIDVB3OPVUJS/s1600/1iron0147b.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPitKvKWr1NVh1o4racoi3Ums38-ZYC5FyQt6RY0s5OLUb7ID5qfrY_o90_XndZYclzRnDF1o7CEfIvlSXhab_9XqO8x4jZKTHFofkaQooqqH9zemUTFwpvEc6CqNX2OQ4LIDVB3OPVUJS/s200/1iron0147b.jpg" width="175" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A slave with an iron muzzle<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #330000; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages, <br />Mandeville Special Collections Library, <br />University of California, San Diego</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #330000; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #330000; font-size: medium; text-align: start;">
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Masters or overseers who whipped their slaves to death usually escaped punishment. In 1829 Thomas Ruffin, the chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and a slave-owner, upheld the actions of a white man who shot an enslaved woman: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect.’ </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps the worst aspect of slavery was that husbands could be sold away from their wives and children from their mothers. Marriage was not legally recognised. Even when the master consented to a union, the words ‘till death us to part’ were left out of the marriage service. Slave women belonged to their masters, and ‘yellow’ children were a part of many slave plantations.</span><span style="font-size: large;">The former slave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wells_Brown">William Wells Brown</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">described how one woman threw herself into the Mississippi in despair because she had been taken from her husband and children. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Brown was one of a number of slave autobiographers. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Northup">Solomon Northup's</a> <i>Twelve Years a Slave </i>was made into a successful film. The most famous of the autobiographers, t</span><span style="font-size: large;">he abolitionist campaigner <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass">Frederick Douglass</a> (<i>c.</i>1818-95) </span><span style="font-size: large;">described his early life:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The opinion was ... whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing.... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant.... It [was] common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age…I do not recollect ever seeing my mother by the light of day. ... She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.’</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Most southern states enacted laws to prohibit teaching enslaved people to read or write. They feared literacy because they saw it as connected to unrest. The North Carolina legislation decreed that teaching slaves to read and write </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection and rebellion, to the manifest injury of the citizens of the state’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Legislatures authorised law enforcement officers to break down doors and imprison, whip or fine black people who were learning to read or write, as well as any who taught them. However, some slaves, like Frederick Douglass, braved the risk of punishment and learned to read. It was through reading a newspaper that he learned for the first time of an abolitionist movement in the North.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0K95M3mZvKk4qhsdD5MIX9zgvYymsIhpD4noyQF84Wy_xwWvxusJD4hHYfTbeaNNbJeSl6gSnbhboIavo0Xudt2ZXFs4S3Kgi_4ynqWNGo6PCw2bojSzRO2io3o6hUNgZPgOUktRlVjB/s1600/359px-Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%252C_NPG%252C_c1885.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-0K95M3mZvKk4qhsdD5MIX9zgvYymsIhpD4noyQF84Wy_xwWvxusJD4hHYfTbeaNNbJeSl6gSnbhboIavo0Xudt2ZXFs4S3Kgi_4ynqWNGo6PCw2bojSzRO2io3o6hUNgZPgOUktRlVjB/s200/359px-Harriet_Tubman_by_Squyer%252C_NPG%252C_c1885.jpg" width="119" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harriet Tubman (1822-1913)<br />
the escaped slave who then<br />
returned to Maryland<br />
to rescue her family</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Slave culture</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The slaves developed their own culture, some parts of it brought from Africa, others influenced by the Bible, which was understood as a text about liberation. Slaves held secret services in the woods at night or in cabins far from the owner’s house. They composed spirit</span><span style="font-size: large;">uals such as ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Down_Moses">Go Down Moses</a>’. In their cabins they formed family units even though there was no legally recognised marriage. Frederick Douglass was raised, not by his mother, who</span><span style="font-size: large;"> was a slave on a different plantation, but by his grandparents, his aunt and several young cousins. Such relationships helped make life bearable for the slaves and made them less prone to run away. But this made the grief of being sold away from a family even harder to bear. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">When the Virginia Congressman, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Randolph_of_Roanoke">John Randolph of Roanoke</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">was asked who was the greatest orator he had ever heard, he replied, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘A slave, sir. She was a mother and her rostrum was the auction block.’</span></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Nat Turner’s revolt</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The most deadly slave rebellion took place in Virginia on 22 August 1831 when a literate preacher named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner">Nat Turner</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> led an uprising. He and his fellow rebels planned to kill all white people in their path and to capture Jerusalem the county seat of Southampton County. By midday they had killed fifty-five people in eleven homes. Whites in the county formed a militia of some 3,000 armed men to pursue them. During his flight Turner wrote an autobiography, <i><a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/turner/turner.html">The Confessions of Nat Turner</a>, </i></span><span style="font-size: large;">which was edited by Thomas R. Gray and published in Baltimore. Turner was captured in August and hanged on 11 November. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> I</span><span style="font-size: large;">n the aftermath of the rebellion, the Virginia House of Delegates debated ending slavery but turned this down, and instead passed a law restricting preaching by black people. All meetings of free Negroes for teaching reading and writing were classified as 'unlawful assembly', to be published with up to twenty lashes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The abolitionist movement</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1831, the year of the Turner revolt, anti-slavery emerged as a clear movement in the North when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Garrison">William Lloyd Garrison</a> (1805-79) </span><span style="font-size: large;">founded his journal, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberator_(anti-slavery_newspaper)">The Liberator</a>,</i> in Boston. Its first edition called for the complete and immediate abolition of all the nation's slaves. Its first edition called for complete and immediate emancipation of all the nation’s slaves. His opening editorial stated: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch.’ </span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1eez6LWVX_mhMhPPslqn8C6tXg0ChZtJTsmrrL4qKFhYMznn90E23GOTf5y2ZTqG27SkD3PcDZh6xutgHkqEcAsJbo8Z5XOqz2GenfMICjF28CxfRJXa-6xJmGVtO0wtqGXKJGbrb8YrH/s1600/394px-1831_Liberator.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1eez6LWVX_mhMhPPslqn8C6tXg0ChZtJTsmrrL4qKFhYMznn90E23GOTf5y2ZTqG27SkD3PcDZh6xutgHkqEcAsJbo8Z5XOqz2GenfMICjF28CxfRJXa-6xJmGVtO0wtqGXKJGbrb8YrH/s200/394px-1831_Liberator.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First edition of <i>The Liberator</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">In the following year he founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and for the next thirty years slavery was the major issue in American politics. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Though women were excluded from the executive committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, they were prominent in the movement from the start. Lucretia Mott formed the Female Anti-Slavery Society to do the same work as the male group. The abolitionists included the sisters, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelina_Grimk%C3%A9">Angelina Grimké</a> (1805-79)</span><span style="font-size: large;">, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moore_Grimk%C3%A9">Sarah Moore Grimké,</a> who fled their house in Charleston out of horror of slavery and spoke in public to packed, often hostile audiences. One of the chief male speakers was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Phillips">Wendell Phillips</a> (1811-84), </span><span style="font-size: large;">the most brilliant orator of the age. I</span><span style="font-size: large;">n 1840 the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Anti-Slavery_Convention">World Anti-Slavery Convention</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">met in London, attended by American abolitionists, where they were addressed by Prince Albert.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The abolitionists met with fierce hostility and often violence. The great spokesman for slavery was the South Carolina politician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Calhoun">John C. Calhoun</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">who was Secretary of War 1817-25 and Vice-President 1825-29. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsWGyjDfPVnHYRvmEllo5_h23Y8pfVIzGEuniQwERFT_VXSC0IVnh0NJKpGoLyv0Yv5niv2vmZZBVgWkaGlNgSCkajv0IuS3XWvvazxYAjMUIW3t-DoiD1HObJc3hB4nVdY08IwAXlCxAw/s1600/John_C._Calhoun_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsWGyjDfPVnHYRvmEllo5_h23Y8pfVIzGEuniQwERFT_VXSC0IVnh0NJKpGoLyv0Yv5niv2vmZZBVgWkaGlNgSCkajv0IuS3XWvvazxYAjMUIW3t-DoiD1HObJc3hB4nVdY08IwAXlCxAw/s200/John_C._Calhoun_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John C. Calhoun<br />
champion of slavery</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Calhoun was also a strong supporter of states rights. In 1830 President Jackson had proposed a toast at a dinner: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘Our Union, it must be preserved.’ </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Calhoun replied: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The Union, next to our liberty the most dear’. </span></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: large;">Jackson believed that Calhoun should have been hanged for his treasonous statements and behaviour! </span></p>
<h3><span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><br /></span></h3><h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<br /><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: large;">Slavery has been defined as the 'original sin' of the United States. It was already well-entrenched when the Republic was set up and was implicitly recognised in the Constitution. Its existence made a mockery of the egalitarian language of the Declaration of Independence.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">The issue of slavery was thus bound up with the issue of the rights of the individual states to run their own affairs as they chose.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Calhoun and his followers argued that unless the abolitionists were silenced, it might be necessary, in the defence of its traditions, for the South to secede from the Union.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">As new states came into the Union, the issue of slavery came increasingly to the fore, and the gap between the North and the South could only grow wider.</span></li></ol></div><div><br /></div>
</div><div><ol>
</ol>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><div>
<br /></div>
</div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-60017783782063194282021-03-24T21:29:00.001+00:002021-03-24T21:29:28.230+00:00Creating a nation<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis-p9S9LX7Pw9vpuoZtD7l0vz5XiAQhWZ2OT3-V_-yx4wygHrfgIrZnvqlmuJZ1ybOZHxTfzWW7Tyv4eD89sqyT4xlRmTMUHQohyphenhyphenGBciKvq0xvTwWSAKeu-uJDD0wJKSSrYs7ZGgnRgZlF/s1600/US+1783.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis-p9S9LX7Pw9vpuoZtD7l0vz5XiAQhWZ2OT3-V_-yx4wygHrfgIrZnvqlmuJZ1ybOZHxTfzWW7Tyv4eD89sqyT4xlRmTMUHQohyphenhyphenGBciKvq0xvTwWSAKeu-uJDD0wJKSSrYs7ZGgnRgZlF/s320/US+1783.gif" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Map of the US in 1783</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;">The Philadelphian politician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush">Benjamin Rush</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">stated: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The American war is over, but this I far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new form of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.'</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The future president, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams">John Quincy Adams</a>, was to describe this period as a ‘critical’ – a time when the country was ‘groaning under the intolerable burden… of accumulated evils’. Yet is was also the time when the nation was created.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Americans were faced with the task of devising new political institutions within a republican framework, which was in itself a radical departure in an age when monarchical government was the norm. They engaged in a spate of state constitution-making that remains unique in human history and built a constitution based on four pillars:</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the contract theory of government, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the sovereignty of the people, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the separation of powers, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">natural rights. </span></li>
</ol>
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;"><br /></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Articles of Confederation</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Even before the end of the war there was ambiguity and uncertainty about the shape of the new nation. The only unifying body was the Continental Congress, but its powers were limited and it had no constitutional sanction. In November 1777 the Congress adopted the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation">Articles of Confederation</a>, which stated that America was a confederation of sovereign states. This enabled it to form a government, though the formal ratification by all thirteen states was not completed until March 1781.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The government had three departments, Foreign Affairs, Finance, and War, and this enabled Congress to sign the Treaty of Paris in 1783. But there was no president.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The forging of an American identity</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The war was vital in creating a common American identity. John Marshall, the future chief justice, who served first in the Virginia militia and then in the Continental army later wrote: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘I found myself associated with brave men from different states who were risking life and everything valuable in a common cause. I was confirmed in the habit of considering America as my country and Congress as my government.'</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">A distinctive American identity was beginning to emerge. Independence Day quickly became the most popular and most important ritual in the United States. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another sign of the emergence of a distinctive American identity was the publication of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster">Noah Webster’s spelling book</a> of 1783, which claimed to rescue ‘our native tongue’ from ‘the clamor’ of pedantry that surrounded English spelling and pronunciation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1782 the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States">Great Seal of the United States</a> was first used publicly.</span><br />
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</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvw-h2MludDBQfvSr6_yz3f1rcwcEg_WNQxIf6YEfdIrEwipaGC2pALOd6k_eC17-XV-_eC6-JNLBOobX5P4f-QyGaPc5IkD62XDQE74HXCYKLnE2DiBi2315Htxqikawpv5TqLozc-Wl/s1600/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States_%2528obverse%2529.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvw-h2MludDBQfvSr6_yz3f1rcwcEg_WNQxIf6YEfdIrEwipaGC2pALOd6k_eC17-XV-_eC6-JNLBOobX5P4f-QyGaPc5IkD62XDQE74HXCYKLnE2DiBi2315Htxqikawpv5TqLozc-Wl/s200/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States_%2528obverse%2529.svg.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Seal of the United States<br />
obverse</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkjSe_B9x9TKY9QGEtHt1WkvtqW5gqM7dEQfWTUZEllWIiyFJ36IBu4PgGH3V1dOU1VoXZqYlBqbXifwTDGDA0z7x8moUjZeMrDJPmtRTXD32Melzlk5zEZ3ABHPFURcwk_2l7siK9CNCd/s1600/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States_%2528reverse%2529.svg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkjSe_B9x9TKY9QGEtHt1WkvtqW5gqM7dEQfWTUZEllWIiyFJ36IBu4PgGH3V1dOU1VoXZqYlBqbXifwTDGDA0z7x8moUjZeMrDJPmtRTXD32Melzlk5zEZ3ABHPFURcwk_2l7siK9CNCd/s200/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States_%2528reverse%2529.svg.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Seal of the United States<br />
reverse</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Finance</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In spite of the limits on its powers the Congress began to act like a government. In 1781 the Bank of North America was set up; it would hold government deposits, lend money to the government, and issue bank notes. However, this did not prevent Congress from accumulating huge debts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 8 September 1786 Congress authorised the issue of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_dollar">US dollar</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">based on the Spanish dollar circulating in North America. The currency was backed by the new Bank of North America, which was funded in part by specie loaned from France. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Land Ordinances</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Land was an especially urgent problem as the population was on the move, expanding into the land beyond the Appalachians into the territories of Kentucky and Tennessee. There needed to be some regulation and in 1784 the Land Ordinance, largely drafted by Jefferson, conferred statehood on a territory once its population matched that of any of the original thirteen states (60,000).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Ordinance_of_1785">Land Ordinance of 1785</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Congress began to sell off land, reserving some to war veterans and designating an amount to be set aside for schools. Whenever Indian titles had been extinguished, the Northwest was to be surveyed into townships six miles square along east-west, north-south lines. Each township was to be divided into 36 lots one miles square and the sections were to go at auction for no less than $1 per acre. This set out the distinctive pattern of American towns.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1787 the Congress produced the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance">Northwest Ordinance</a> providing for the surveying, settlement and formation of states in the west – the territory bounded by the Appalachians, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This Northwest Territory was the first organised territory of the United States beyond the thirteen colonies. It provided for education, to be funded through land sales. It prohibited slavery in the region and pledged to honour treaties with the Indians.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTXY_Gp1f8JHPyAaRZNlnvmJ9lpovR-QX9euW-TaLsmMxTFiHO2RDhyphenhyphenzi9ZS7TVbpauqAIgQz-4tbpseI-11C5BVidORX2_3p43pVpx-1_Z6n2DJuM5d6nc_CAV6As1wlgwq2Et2Ocpdw/s1600/Northwest-territory-usa-1787.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTXY_Gp1f8JHPyAaRZNlnvmJ9lpovR-QX9euW-TaLsmMxTFiHO2RDhyphenhyphenzi9ZS7TVbpauqAIgQz-4tbpseI-11C5BVidORX2_3p43pVpx-1_Z6n2DJuM5d6nc_CAV6As1wlgwq2Et2Ocpdw/s200/Northwest-territory-usa-1787.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘The significance of these land ordinances cannot be overestimated. The precedent they established – that the territories were under the control of Congress not the individual states, and that out of them new states “on an equal footing with the original States” would be created rather than individual ones expanded – established the very bedrock on which the nation, its geographic and its political form, would take shape.’ Susan-Mary Grant, <i>A Concise History of the United States of America</i> (Cambridge, 2012), p. 131</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In spite of this, however Congress was weak, lacking all the characteristics needed to form a nation. There was no executive or judiciary. The Congress itself was a single-chamber body elected annually, with one vote per state. It could issue currency, deliver mail and negotiate treaties, but it could not levy taxation or raise an army. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Shays’s Rebellion</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The weakness of the Congress and the economic problems of the new nation were exposed in 1786 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion">Daniel Shays’s rebellion</a> in Massachusetts, a revolt of discontented farmers demanding debt relief.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The rebellion was suppressed by the state militia. It was not a serious threat but it exposed the need to improve the workings of central government and to create a feeling of loyalty to it. Reaction to the rebellion varied. Writing from Paris, where he was US ambassador, Thomas Jefferson wrote: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.’ </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">However, the shock of the rebellion caused Benjamin Rush to argue for the need for a constitution, and it drew Washington back into public life. Many ‘federalists’ now saw the need for a stronger central government.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The drafting of the Constitution</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In February 1787 Congress invited the states to send delegates to Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. All responded except Rhode Island, which feared it would lose its power to impose import duties. The delegates convened on 14 May. At the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)">Philadelphia Convention</a> the delegates quickly abandoned their initial modest aim of revising the Articles, and instead set about creating a new Constitution. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Their task was formidable: to create a central government, while accommodating the interests of the individual states.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">George Washington was unanimously elected the presiding officer of the Convention. The oldest delegate was the eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin. The ablest political philosopher was the Virginian, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison">James Madison</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States">Founding Fathers,</a> as they were to be called, were members of the colonial elite and shared a common set of ideas. Their debates were recorded by the Virginian, James Madison, and provide a fascinating insight into how the Constitution was influenced by the thinkers of the European Enlightenment. From John Locke and the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, they derived the idea that government owes its legitimacy to the consent of the governed. From the thinkers of the Italian Renaissance, notably Machiavelli, they derived the theory of civic humanism – the virtuous man is one who works for the public good. But they also imbibed more pessimistic thinking, from the Christian doctrine of original sin and from Thomas Hobbes’ <i>Leviathan</i>, from which they concluded that strong government was needed to prevent chaos and civil war. From the French Enlightenment thinker, Montesquieu’s <i>Esprit des Lois</i> they derived the idea of the separation of powers as a safeguard against despotism. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5LaZtI8mveW37krm4ls5Qw18reTRlYJQTceKisetLhT1AhWKelApZjDC8kssoB1dYbd8y6LJ5OWNm7Q8Q30OZsQmqC9v-iqThQORH0dijEmV7ApL_lqFqsvuhrwgKL3QuzaFC_-lYGLv4/s1600/394px-James_Madison_Portrait2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5LaZtI8mveW37krm4ls5Qw18reTRlYJQTceKisetLhT1AhWKelApZjDC8kssoB1dYbd8y6LJ5OWNm7Q8Q30OZsQmqC9v-iqThQORH0dijEmV7ApL_lqFqsvuhrwgKL3QuzaFC_-lYGLv4/s200/394px-James_Madison_Portrait2.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Madison<br />
author of the<br />
Virginia Plan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">These principles were embodied in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison">James Madison’s</a> ‘Virginia Plan’. This proposed separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and a truly national government to make laws binding upon individual citizens and states. Congress would be divided into two houses, a lower one chosen by popular vote and an upper house chosen by the lower house from nominees of state legislatures. Under this plan Congress would be the supreme authority. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 15 June delegates submitted the ‘New Jersey Plan’, which proposed to keep the existing structure of equal representation of states in a single-chamber Congress, but to give it power to regulate commerce and authority to name an executive and a Supreme Court.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Congress accepted the main proposals of the Virginia Plan and agreed to work towards a national government. A furious disagreement about the issue of representation was resolved by the ‘Great Compromise’, put forward by the Connecticut lawyer, Roger Sherman. In the lower house, the House of Representatives, the states would be represented according to population, in the upper house, the Senate, the states would be equally represented regardless of population.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Constitution</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Constitution begins with ‘We the people of the United States’, encapsulating in its opening sentence the doctrine of popular sovereignty. It created a federal government but carefully circumscribed its powers, as a defence against tyranny. Its powers were parcelled out among three branches: </span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the bicameral legislature (the Congress, that was divided into the Senate and the House of Representatives); </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the executive, headed by the president, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">the judiciary, the Supreme Court chosen by presidential nomination with Senate approval.</span></li>
</ol>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Senate comprised two senators from each state, regardless of the size of the state. The composition of the House of Representatives was determined by population. It was to be elected every two years and would be according to Virginia’s George Mason, ‘the grand repository of the democratic principle of the government’. However, the Senate revealed the delegates’ suspicion of popular democracy. Senators were elected by state legislatures, not the popular vote. They would serve a six-year-term, expiring biennially by thirds. This fear of the masses is shown even more clearly in the mechanism for electing the president. Citizens could not vote directly for the president or the vice-president, but for an electoral college that would make the decision. Only male property-owners could vote in federal elections.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The President was commander-in-chief of the armed forces and he had a veto over acts of Congress, subject to being overridden by a two-thirds vote in each house. He was instructed to report annually on the state of the nation. Unlike the British monarch he could not declare war or make peace. Unlike the British monarch as well, he could be removed. The House could impeach him on charges of treason, bribery, or ‘other high crimes and misdemeanors’ and the Senate could remove an impeached president by a two-thirds vote upon conviction. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Presidential elections were to be held every four years in November. No limit was set to the number of terms a president might serve. In the same elections the whole of the House and a third of the Senate would be up for re-election. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Convention voted against direct election for the president. Instead the legislatures of each state were to choose presidential electors to form an electoral college. (This did not work out as intended. Before long the electors were to be chosen by popular vote, and to act as agents for the party will.) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Constitution revealed a caution about youth. The president had to be at least thirty-five years old, senators thirty, and representatives twenty-five. The president was to have a vice-president, though the one task given him by the Constitution was the chair the Senate.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Following both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans the Constitution established a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States">Supreme Court</a>, providing for a chief Justice of the United States. Soon the Supreme Court would be declaring laws void when they conflicted with the Constitution, even though this was nowhere implied in the Constitution itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">At the insistence of the slaveholders, slavery was written into the Constitution, though it was not explicitly mentioned. Slaves were ‘all other persons' (Art. I, Sec 2) and ‘Persons held to service or labor' (Art IV, Sec. 2). In apportioning representation in the House of Representatives, slaves counted for three-fifths of a person. As a concession to the opponents of slavery it was decreed that the slave trade should be abolished in 1808. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The most notorious provision was the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Clause">fugitive slave clause</a> (Section II, clause 3):</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"> ‘No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.’</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Benjamin Rush wrote to a correspondent in London: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘No mention was made of negroes or slaves in this constitution, only because it was thought the very words would contaminate the glorious fabric of American liberty and government. Thus you see the cloud which a few years ago was no larger than a man’s hand has descended in plentiful dews and at last cover’d every part of our land.’ </span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJk7rS1qPZNwP93JHuPY1dcxxl24XMGjaK_Ofl6C_yRxSRvhk3_zSyGo4IDsO-BrK3A6nbTjab3bv9-2Fbo2dMvKD4awKEX4jAKYzaTYEp8PVbKlm8VDNpX07k1EQnZDx1BjKS6hWadd6U/s1600/Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJk7rS1qPZNwP93JHuPY1dcxxl24XMGjaK_Ofl6C_yRxSRvhk3_zSyGo4IDsO-BrK3A6nbTjab3bv9-2Fbo2dMvKD4awKEX4jAKYzaTYEp8PVbKlm8VDNpX07k1EQnZDx1BjKS6hWadd6U/s200/Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States</i>,<br />
Howard Chandler Christy<br />
Now on display on the stairwell of the West Wing <br />
of the U.S. Capitol Building.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Ratifying the Constitution</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In September Congress submitted the Constitution to the state legislatures for ratification. The agreement of all thirteen colonies had been required to amend the Articles, but only nine needed to ratify the Constitution for it to come into effect. This proved a difficult process. Pennsylvania and Connecticut ratified it via majority decisions, and New York, New Jersey, and Delaware by unanimous ones. The two most reluctant states were Virginia and New York. Virginia’s Patrick Henry, spoke for all the dissidents when he argued that the Constitution undermined the rights of the individual states. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This proved to be the fundamental issue. Two camps had emerged, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The Federalists included Washington, Franklin, the Virginian James Madison, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton">Alexander Hamilton</a> (Washington’s former aide-de-camp), and the former president of the Continental Congress, John Jay. The Anti-Federalists included Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Richard Henry Lee. But against the states rights supporters was a powerful body of federalist opinion, which argued for the need for a strong central government. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Federalist case was set out in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers"><i>The Federalist</i>,</a> eighty-five essays published in the New York newspapers between the autumn of </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihHDh0d_S4A0blyAc6un4KCc8Kxgx2ZzkBUJVc2NSmHIwRIytYzd89YO-qtfpOQ6ByZarBfwq9I_iLo6bab318Jsn7xSpn6y4bCJnROUJXvvGXYtQGVQoAPY2ZQOCI2GaIN_ZjUNEz03Lt/s1600/Federalist.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihHDh0d_S4A0blyAc6un4KCc8Kxgx2ZzkBUJVc2NSmHIwRIytYzd89YO-qtfpOQ6ByZarBfwq9I_iLo6bab318Jsn7xSpn6y4bCJnROUJXvvGXYtQGVQoAPY2ZQOCI2GaIN_ZjUNEz03Lt/s200/Federalist.jpg" width="123" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">1787 and the summer of 1788 under the pseudonym ‘Publius’. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">They were written mostly by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, with a few by John Jay. Hamilton argued for a strong federal government, while Madison focused on the checks and balances found in the Constitution. In order to accommodate the fears of their opponents, they promised to add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By the summer of 1788 the required nine states had ratified. By the end of 1788 only North Carolina and Rhode Island were holding out. Upon notification that New Hampshire had become the ninth state to ratify, Congress began to draft plans for the transfer of power. New York City was selected as the seat of the new government and 4 March 1789 was the date set for the meeting of the new Congress. On 10 October 1788 the Confederation Congress was wound down.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #351c75; font-size: large;">President Washington</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">George Washington was unanimously elected. On 30 April 1789 he took his oath of office in New York City, wearing a plain brown suit rather than his military uniform. He had rejected any title that sounded royal, and was addressed as ‘Mr President’. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Bill of Rights</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In December 1791 the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights">Bill of Rights</a> promised by the Federalists became law in the form of the first ten amendments. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The First Amendment protected freedom of speech, the press and religion, the Second the right to bear arms. The Fifth Amendment prevented an individual from testifying against himself. Much of this was based on the English Bill of Rights and the presumptions of the English common law, but the strict separation of church and state was a major departure. The Tenth Amendment reserved to the states or to the people all powers not specifically granted to the federal government.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The creation of Washington DC</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution therefore permitted the establishment of a ‘District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States’. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In 1790, Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson came to an agreement that the federal government would pay each state's remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the Southern United States.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In July 9, 1790, Congress approved <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.#History">the creation of a national capital</a> on the Potomac River on land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia. In the meantime the capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790, while the new federal city was under construction. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In March 1791 the French-born engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, arrived in Georgetown and began to plan the layout of the city. On September 9, 1791 the city was named in honour of President Washington. The federal district was named Columbia (a poetic name for the United States). In 1801 Congress passed the Organic Act of 1801, which officially organized the District and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal government. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1792 Washington accepted the design of the Irish architect, James Hoban, for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House#1789.E2.80.931800">President’s house</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On Saturday 1 November 1800 his successor John Adams became the first president to take residence in the building. On 17 November Congress held its first session in Washington. The third president, Thomas Jefferson, became the first president to be inaugurated in the new federal city when he took the oath of office on 4 March 1801.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">Within a remarkably short space of time the Founding Fathers had created a new nation and given it a constitution based on the principles of the Enlightenment.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">The United States was extending beyond the original colonies. Provision had been made for new states to come into the union on existing footing with the original thirteen.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">But two issues remained unresolved: the balance to be drawn between the rights of the states and the powers of the federal government; and how a nation committed to equality and human rights could accommodate the institution of slavery.</span></li>
</ol>
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</div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-17559186301452581562020-11-12T11:42:00.001+00:002020-11-12T11:42:16.327+00:00'A House Divided' (1)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3P789wVutT0XCNMy8fzha-lEYji9htTK6jaJBa8ZXWmjLGigmRnmnJ9MrflDYjyzn_jTcAZ2aTfxrLBGPXz5-ZS7jzxncheggjJwXvW6E9OVQTTslZEEd63wbu-pE-DGInf2LJk6XtjXD/s1600/800px-USA_Territorial_Growth_1820_alt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3P789wVutT0XCNMy8fzha-lEYji9htTK6jaJBa8ZXWmjLGigmRnmnJ9MrflDYjyzn_jTcAZ2aTfxrLBGPXz5-ZS7jzxncheggjJwXvW6E9OVQTTslZEEd63wbu-pE-DGInf2LJk6XtjXD/s320/800px-USA_Territorial_Growth_1820_alt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The United States in 1819<br />
Public domain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Missouri Compromise (1820)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Even before the rise of the abolitionists, the question of slavery was a dominant concern. As a result of the North-West Ordinance and the pattern of migration, new states were coming into the Union. Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), and Illinois (1818) were carved out of the old North-West territory, and they had been set up as free states. The South had balanced this with the creation of Louisiana (1812), Mississippi (1817), and Alabama (1819) so that by 1819 the country had an equal number of free and slave states, eleven of each. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1819 the House of Representatives was asked to approve legislation enabling Missouri Territory to draft a state constitution, its population having passed the minimum of 60,000. In the westward rush of population, settlers had flocked to the area, through the old French town of St Louis and then on to the Mississippi. Most of these settlers came from the South so that the territory now had 10,000 slaves. From December 1819 to March 1820 the House fiercely debated the terms on which Missouri should be given the status of a state. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tallmadge,_Jr.">Congressman James Tallmadge</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of New York proposed that Missouri only be admitted as a state if it undertook to forbid further slave immigration and to provide freedom at the age of twenty-five for those born after admission. This was passionately opposed by the Southern states. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pinkney">Senator William Pinkney of Maryland</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">argued that the new states should have the same freedom as the original thirteen, and be thus free to choose slavery if they wished. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Eventually, in February 1820 Congress accepted the compromise <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5yhTNtAWJVvb0bUqK8L7WgnFyf3E1hDJ7IoG37839WT4eoyGmCGjjXeMCYbKpISlCDU8mVr6ypjsHRDJ7N_NHeW9GqpJi5_mtzVnKCD-o7ner5muMVyHhLJEtYW-D_1UD4x67Pe3WaGYE/s1600/497px-Henry_Clay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5yhTNtAWJVvb0bUqK8L7WgnFyf3E1hDJ7IoG37839WT4eoyGmCGjjXeMCYbKpISlCDU8mVr6ypjsHRDJ7N_NHeW9GqpJi5_mtzVnKCD-o7ner5muMVyHhLJEtYW-D_1UD4x67Pe3WaGYE/s200/497px-Henry_Clay.jpg" width="165" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Clay<br />
'The Great Pacifier'</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
proposed by the Speaker of the House <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay">Henry Clay</a>. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise">The Missouri Compromise</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">decreed that in future slavery would be excluded from all parts of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude </span><span style="font-size: large;">36</span><sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">0</span></sup> <span style="font-size: large;">30/</span><span style="font-size: medium;">, </span><span style="font-size: large;">apart from Missouri. At the same time Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state. The Compromise was signed by President Monroe on 6 March. On 10 August1821 Missouri was admitted as the twenty-fourth state.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtubS8yJsBvX6fCXmdmOq4AfRtPTsQNpIhdWpccdCEUIpjFsFip4noYP-tpH1SrU9SPT2AvRW9NWWpYw6dkUpPCmrpvlN8T2PuQoRaqpvRIA_R6Rd-VXhxDVf3elnBbHFJLuGd2ivBvR7/s1600/missouri-compromise-map.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtubS8yJsBvX6fCXmdmOq4AfRtPTsQNpIhdWpccdCEUIpjFsFip4noYP-tpH1SrU9SPT2AvRW9NWWpYw6dkUpPCmrpvlN8T2PuQoRaqpvRIA_R6Rd-VXhxDVf3elnBbHFJLuGd2ivBvR7/s320/missouri-compromise-map.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Missouri Compromise won for Clay the title of the Great Pacifier. It can be seen as a squalid deal, but it can also be argued that it postponed the war for a generation. Thomas Jefferson wrote: </span><br />
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Nullification Crisis, 1828-33</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">As early as the 1820s parts of the South were teetering on the brink of secession. In 1828, during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, Congress introduced a new tariff imposing heavy duties on British imports. This was a populist move to aid the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, but it was denounced by the southern politicians, who called it the Tariff of Abominations. They argued that it was a threat not merely to the economy of the South but to slavery itself. The Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, returned to his South Carolina plantation to write his ‘South Carolina Exposition and Protest’, in which he proposed the theory of a concurrent majority through the doctrine of nullification—</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">‘the right of a State to interpose, in the last resort, in order to arrest an unconstitutional act of the General Government, within its limits’. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">As a last resort, therefore, a state had the right to secede. His position was opposed by his fellow-southerner, James Madison, who argued that no state had the right to nullify federal law.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHlzh_XYaHxMU1rZuHUjxIEhIxS6TZLTecqe22NbkOI_XfY5Kt2X8AkkxUhHsZi3qmTqCJDkJn5msNIW50eaZEBbdmp4eOWypjIwGoBQsprrwcq7QDH9Q3nKWVIQDhhRNRs9MBfZlq9lp/s1600/John_C._Calhoun_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHlzh_XYaHxMU1rZuHUjxIEhIxS6TZLTecqe22NbkOI_XfY5Kt2X8AkkxUhHsZi3qmTqCJDkJn5msNIW50eaZEBbdmp4eOWypjIwGoBQsprrwcq7QDH9Q3nKWVIQDhhRNRs9MBfZlq9lp/s200/John_C._Calhoun_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John C. Calhoun</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In November 1832 South Carolina <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis">‘nullified’ the tariff</a> and refused to allow US customs officials to enforce it within state boundaries. In December Jackson proclaimed this to be treason, and threatened a march on the state. Once again Henry Clay pushed forward a compromise, and a much-reduced tariff was adopted in March 1833. But with nullification dead, the only option remained secession as a weapon in some future crisis. </span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Texas</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">During the eighteenth century the Spaniards began to colonise Texas and from 1716 Spain established missions in the settlements of San Antonio, Goliad, and Nacodoches. In 1821 Mexico won its independence from Spain, and Mexican Texas became part of the new nation. At the same time <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_F._Austin">Stephen F. Austin</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">a Missouri <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnGJv_vOytECn1pOOBWqm0AddN_PDa9HnI-v3KVSkmCprw9xfQwJezaeBcHkookgDo6pr4TdBzl9D13AWrZ5Q4bA2O3hrZP1b8cVnqqQnXYlFkLPGX2tAYZgvWxgj4bNYu280_PlvZFSAj/s1600/Stephen_f_austin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnGJv_vOytECn1pOOBWqm0AddN_PDa9HnI-v3KVSkmCprw9xfQwJezaeBcHkookgDo6pr4TdBzl9D13AWrZ5Q4bA2O3hrZP1b8cVnqqQnXYlFkLPGX2tAYZgvWxgj4bNYu280_PlvZFSAj/s200/Stephen_f_austin.jpg" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Stephen F. Austin</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">the 'Father of Texas'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Image courtesy of Texas State</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Library and Archives Commission</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
resident, started a colony on the lower Brazos River, which was ratified by a grant from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Mexican_Empire">Mexican emperor in 1823</a>. By 1824 the colony numbered more than 2,000 settlers. However, in 1823 the Mexican emperor was overthrown and replaced by a republic. The land grant was annulled, but Texas was thinly populated and soon the new government encouraged American settlers, many of them in search of gold, into the area. Texas was rapidly turning into an American province. The coastal region had about 20,000 white settlers and 1,000 black slaves. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1830 the Mexican government became alarmed at this development and forbade further emigration into Texas from the United States, though the border proved impossible to police. In 1833 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_L%C3%B3pez_de_Santa_Anna">Antonio López de Santa Anna</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">who was to style himself ‘the Napoleon of the West’, was elected President. In 1834 he abolished the federal system and became a dictator. The stage was set for a series of clashes between Mexicans and ‘Anglos’, also known as 'Texians'. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetk4YG7AnYfCNurrbBwxVPRxPpOIOs3i6liGSsk7Dtlbv8NVD7VCavwopjewFneJnZPGB2lIcdnynMlQJuU-j44odBr-eKRjVgfgE-gmj2lfb_vp6HJ0_B3mBL_XDhhpWt9M84dP0gUmd/s1600/Santaanna1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetk4YG7AnYfCNurrbBwxVPRxPpOIOs3i6liGSsk7Dtlbv8NVD7VCavwopjewFneJnZPGB2lIcdnynMlQJuU-j44odBr-eKRjVgfgE-gmj2lfb_vp6HJ0_B3mBL_XDhhpWt9M84dP0gUmd/s200/Santaanna1.jpg" width="155" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">General Santa Anna</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">On 2 October 1835 the long-simmering conflict erupted when a fight took place between the Texian and Mexican armies at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gonzales">Gonzales</a></span><span style="font-size: large;">. Mexican soldiers came to retrieve the cannon they had given the Texians for protection against Indian attacks. When the Mexicans tried to repossess it, the Texians unfurled a battle flag that said ‘Come and take it!’ </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yS42_K-I6ab5rUlFCEBvFptcf-lExtB8DoaTLm-aOEyQ_77MDJRPvF7B58W4jeDXOSksgnqZ5v9shzMUN-ZxFd_diSsHpb3Gyr6HiMrFalXs7a8lO6lG2-Z8AOXLB6f4lvhrSGkPxc6k/s1600/Gonzales_cannon_2005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yS42_K-I6ab5rUlFCEBvFptcf-lExtB8DoaTLm-aOEyQ_77MDJRPvF7B58W4jeDXOSksgnqZ5v9shzMUN-ZxFd_diSsHpb3Gyr6HiMrFalXs7a8lO6lG2-Z8AOXLB6f4lvhrSGkPxc6k/s200/Gonzales_cannon_2005.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The ‘come and take it’ cannon of the Battle of Gonzales o</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">of the Texas Revolution </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">on display at the Gonzales Memorial Museum, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Gonzales, Texas.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyUwqmr0dnqzVl5bo4TX8J3HBq3boJDZu1HcnKcsqpkmAfFyyrbSvSixwi3aEloR-6Ir6SY4MW3xlIMHdEldwKGArPKJtndrnvxz3aqeN9gg5clpsPKeiHeL87DBEn-dOjy7UcrZQx0n-/s1600/Texas_Declaration_of_Independence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifyUwqmr0dnqzVl5bo4TX8J3HBq3boJDZu1HcnKcsqpkmAfFyyrbSvSixwi3aEloR-6Ir6SY4MW3xlIMHdEldwKGArPKJtndrnvxz3aqeN9gg5clpsPKeiHeL87DBEn-dOjy7UcrZQx0n-/s200/Texas_Declaration_of_Independence.jpg" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Texas Declaration</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">of Independence</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Declaration of Independence:</span></b> On 2 March 1836 at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington-on-the-Brazos,_Texas">Washington-on-the Brazos</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">the Texians signed their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Declaration_of_Independence">Declaration of Independence </a></span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Declaration_of_Independence">from Mexico</a> and named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston">Sam Houston</a>, former Governor of Tennessee, as their commander-in-chief. But Santa Anna was already approaching with an army to suppress them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The Alamo:</span></b> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Facing Santa Anna was a garrison of about a hundred, holed up behind the adobe walls of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Alamo">the Alamo</a>, an abandoned Spanish mission in the town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_San_Antonio_de_B%C3%A9xar">San Antonio de Bexar</a>. From mid-February they had been defended by reinforcements led by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Travis">William B. Travis</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">a young regular soldier from South Carolina.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEq5pgHPQUTfqYVFNfl49CfKt9IiwR-8aU3kGP-8NDFxlsjSxK1kDkSpvI5jMAjGTv00czeKQf_Nh96HDCMhj2o-hKlEBTqmbIcSH_vO4syaeDE0-6lqcdI7xoSb_RsGDi3_sXKbTDcHOf/s1600/800px-1854_Alamo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEq5pgHPQUTfqYVFNfl49CfKt9IiwR-8aU3kGP-8NDFxlsjSxK1kDkSpvI5jMAjGTv00czeKQf_Nh96HDCMhj2o-hKlEBTqmbIcSH_vO4syaeDE0-6lqcdI7xoSb_RsGDi3_sXKbTDcHOf/s200/800px-1854_Alamo.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Alamo, depicted in 1854</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">He faced a formidable task. The Alamo was a difficult site to defend, consisting of three acres of single-storey <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe">adobe</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">buildings grouped round a central plaza. The wall was incomplete and there were no loopholes from which to fire. His problem was compounded when <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSmVGTwCtDAhGPfNZDkc87EabURhd6ngR-UDXxvils3zgLEWrJ5CTrjUmRNprNhjiN-boQoBANr8C1y317BR1nRPtTrSaFgZGd3PxRu5dixkeTW4D7WZPK68p-bMxKgqsFSs6hz1CPVjL-/s1600/399px-Davy_Crockett_by_John_Gadsby_Chapman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSmVGTwCtDAhGPfNZDkc87EabURhd6ngR-UDXxvils3zgLEWrJ5CTrjUmRNprNhjiN-boQoBANr8C1y317BR1nRPtTrSaFgZGd3PxRu5dixkeTW4D7WZPK68p-bMxKgqsFSs6hz1CPVjL-/s200/399px-Davy_Crockett_by_John_Gadsby_Chapman.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Davy Crockett</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">'King of the wild Frontier'</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">
the volunteers refused to serve under him, electing instead the Kentucky-born, hard-drinking knife-fighter, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowie">James Bowie </a></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: medium;">as their leader. In the end, it was agreed that the two men should be joint commanders. Then Bowie fell ill (pneumonia or TB), leaving Travis in command. The defenders included <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett">Davy Crockett</a>, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">the forty-nine-year-old legendary frontiersman and a former </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">member of the Tennessee House of Representatives.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">On 23 February 1,400 Mexicans under Santa Anna marched into San Antonio de Bexar. The thirteen-day <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Alamo">siege of the Alamo</a> had begun. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In the early hours of 6 March the Mexicans advanced on the Alamo. Between 182 and 257 Texians died, Davy Crockett among them, and around 600 Mexicans were killed or wounded.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;"><b><span style="color: #073763;">The Battle of San Jacinto</span></b>:</span> On 21 April 1836 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston#Republic_of_Texas">General Sam Houston</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">defeated Santa Anna at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Jacint">San Jacinto</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> in a fight that lasted eighteen minutes. The battle-cry was ‘Remember the Alamo’. After the battle the Mexicans were expelled from Texas.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMEcyvricvx3uOdPO1ptpDLA7kyNujHUuD5IcpcIl_76THQ2tMV5bpdMmmksSIv7fRHQBprh-9VZURwAtWeu8lhyphenhyphen8oWHdnOO6s6X_qX-5OgC_SbU6lEhROuLdO9576O6AZnYzOpeulW0y/s1600/Sam_Houston_c1850-crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMEcyvricvx3uOdPO1ptpDLA7kyNujHUuD5IcpcIl_76THQ2tMV5bpdMmmksSIv7fRHQBprh-9VZURwAtWeu8lhyphenhyphen8oWHdnOO6s6X_qX-5OgC_SbU6lEhROuLdO9576O6AZnYzOpeulW0y/s200/Sam_Houston_c1850-crop.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sam Houston</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">victor of San Jacinto</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">President of the Lone Star Republic</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile the settlers had set up the Republic of Texas on 1 March. In October Sam Houston was elected the first President of the Lone Star Republic, defeating Stephen F. Austin with a landslide 79 per cent of the vote. On the last day of his presidency, 3 March 1837, Andrew Jackson, an old frontier friend of Houston's, recognised Texan independence. </span><br />
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<h3>
</h3>
Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4044042969119921423.post-41815740240771987202020-09-10T09:03:00.001+01:002020-09-10T09:05:26.480+01:00The Thirteen Colonies<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Spanish explorations</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Spaniards were the first Europeans to reach the New World, and by the sixteenth century they were exploring the territory that became the United States. The earliest known exploration of Florida was made in 1513 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n">Juan Ponce de Léon</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">the governor of Puerto Rico. In 1539 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto">Hernando de Soto</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">landed on the west coast of Florida with 620 men and 220 horses. His expedition travelled north into Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In 1541 they reached the Mississippi River, crossed it and travelled westward through modern day Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0VJ2BFW8C-t2wAE-JbuAqgs9KRz11MFbck80ykxBQDyGMAJwmJXYP91CBnlyA44YfyFOfPEUyoXWuOTRZRvoqBNo8n3HHnl5g96G1YmQTSSJAZvEV0vlmuf9cyoY-9xKuRITdqGn7GADg/s1600/800px-Discovery_of_the_Mississippi.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0VJ2BFW8C-t2wAE-JbuAqgs9KRz11MFbck80ykxBQDyGMAJwmJXYP91CBnlyA44YfyFOfPEUyoXWuOTRZRvoqBNo8n3HHnl5g96G1YmQTSSJAZvEV0vlmuf9cyoY-9xKuRITdqGn7GADg/s200/800px-Discovery_of_the_Mississippi.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br />Discovery of the Mississippi</i> <br />by William Henry Powell (1823–1879)<br />
This fanciful depiction hangs <br />in the United States Capitol rotunda.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">De Soto died on the expedition, which failed in its objective to acquire gold and establish colonies. But in 1565 the Spaniards founded <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida#Founding_of_St._Augustine">St Augustine, Florida</a>, the first European town in the present-day United States. The colony included a fort, church, hospital fish market and over a hundred shops and houses, built decades before the first English settlements. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1609 they founded <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico">Santa Fe</a> in New Mexico. </span><span style="font-size: large;">This became the first centre of mission activity in the south-west. Missionaries, particularly Franciscans and Jesuits, established <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_the_Americas">mission settlements</a> in which the Indians were persuaded to live and to convert to Catholicism. By 1630 there were fifty Catholic churches and friaries in New Mexico and some 3,000 Spaniards. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Other European powers</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">While the Spaniards were establishing their missions, other European powers arrived on the American Continent, notably the French, the Dutch, and the English. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The eventual dominance of British settlements was not inevitable and did not initially seem likely. The Dutch were the first northern European settlers. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English navigator employed by the Dutch East India Company sailed up what became the Hudson river, and in 1625 the Dutch East India Company established <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Amsterdam">Niew Amsterdam</a> on Manhattan Island, purchased from the local Lenape Indians.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">New France</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Initially it was France rather than England that challenged the power of Spain. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec. Until his death in 1635 he governed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonization_of_the_Americas">New France</a> under a trading company that won a profitable monopoly of the fur trade. About 40,000 French colonials came to the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However the French were more interested in trade than settlement and they established trading outposts rather than farms. They were predominantly male and much smaller in number than the English and Spanish settlers. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1663 Louis XIV changed New France into a royal colony, and his minister Colbert sent out new settlers including young women. Following this new policy, French explorers moved south from the Great Lakes. In 1673 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Jolliet">Louis Jolliet</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">and the Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette reached the Arkansas River and discovered that the Mississippi flowed south into the Gulf of Mexico. In 1682 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9-Robert_Cavelier,_Sieur_de_La_Salle">René-Robert Cavelier, de La Salle</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">reached the Gulf of Mexico, and claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France, naming the area Louisiana after the King. In 1718 Jean Baptiste le Moyne, sieur de Bienville founded <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_Orleans">New Orleans</a>, though its sweltering mosquito-infected climate attracted few settlers. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">One historian has written: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">'France in America had two heads, one amid the snows of Canada, the other amid the canebrakes of Louisiana.’ (Quoted Tindall and Shi, <i>America: A Narrative History</i>, p. 167)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the territory, between priests established missions at places like Terre Haute and Des Moines, and scattered settlers established farms. But the vast territory of New France was largely unpopulated. It was a land of wilderness, missionaries and fur traders.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmP_U4dQfbd0y_EQVByW0X3pIPYtN-7bxIa7aILU8otH7uLT4VY-anEzPycvCy875H3X0YIZDMNVr0CQd87RlGZjtjn2gjopWu6FDKZ_JCpTgHMuCUS9Q__1i1RkEbcMiNVOfhsgJ9S_U/s1600/New-France1750.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPmP_U4dQfbd0y_EQVByW0X3pIPYtN-7bxIa7aILU8otH7uLT4VY-anEzPycvCy875H3X0YIZDMNVr0CQd87RlGZjtjn2gjopWu6FDKZ_JCpTgHMuCUS9Q__1i1RkEbcMiNVOfhsgJ9S_U/s320/New-France1750.png" width="314" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Map of New France, c. 1750</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Virginia</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1606 James I chartered the London Company (renamed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Company">Virginia Company</a> in 1609) with the aim of enticing settlers to pool their resources and set up a colony. The company made shares available to ‘adventurers’ and paid their passage – or else it gave shares to those who could pay their own way. The long-term plan was that the resultant profit would fund future settlers, who would work for the Virginia Company for seven years and then be free to make their own fortunes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In April 1607 104 men and boys arrived in three ships, the <i>Susan Constant</i>, the <i>Godspeed</i> and the <i>Discovery</i>, at the southern headland of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay">Chesapeake Bay</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRNVpg3XcN_zjWUV_7pHzYLjXXhIta8kSK6S_p-UWqEDx4p3WhJiPX_scKfmUXkxoqEZTkgp1Nj9ksG1TYB2lTSyEo4JUPlNnFBgpnxhJkl4vdw58752T2eioDmHXgsoPF30sdiDwRmUr/s1600/543px-Chesapeakewatershedmap.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtRNVpg3XcN_zjWUV_7pHzYLjXXhIta8kSK6S_p-UWqEDx4p3WhJiPX_scKfmUXkxoqEZTkgp1Nj9ksG1TYB2lTSyEo4JUPlNnFBgpnxhJkl4vdw58752T2eioDmHXgsoPF30sdiDwRmUr/s200/543px-Chesapeakewatershedmap.png" width="181" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Modern map of Chesapeake Bay, showing<br />
the watershed.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Meeting with an unfriendly reaction from the locals, they sailed sixty miles inland on the newly named James River and called the settlement <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Virginia">Jamestown</a>. There they began trading with Powhatan, the ruler of over 10,000 Algonquians, who realized too late that the newcomers intended to take over his land and subjugate his people. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The colonists suffered great hardships. Of the original 104 settlers only 38 survived the first nine months. The rest were only saved from starvation by the efforts of Captain John Smith, one of the colony’s original councillors appointed by the King. The story of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas">his rescue by Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas</a>, has become a legend. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In 1614 she married another of the colonists, John Rolfe. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Far from being the earthly paradise advertised in the promotional literature, Jamestown turned out to be disease-ridden. There were none of the gold deposits that had been expected and the settlers had arrived with insufficient provisions; moreover their relationship with the Powhatan Confederacy deteriorated. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">From the start the pattern of English colonisation differed significantly from the Spanish. The Spaniards had conquered highly sophisticated peoples and had subdued two great empires, the Aztecs and the Incas. The English settled in a sparsely populated area and brought with them the model they had learned in Ireland of ‘plantations’, fortified settlements surrounded by potentially hostile natives. They brought with them as well their laws and institutions and tried to make their new communities as much like England as possible. The V<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Burgesses">irginia House of Burgesses</a>, the first European-style legislative assembly in America, held its first meeting on 30 July 1619. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The economy of Virginia came to rest on two valuable commodities: tobacco and slaves. By 1616 tobacco had become a profitable export, and it was tobacco that was to pay for the wives (the bride price starting at 120 lbs) after the first women came over in 1619. In 1619 the first Africans were brought to the Chesapeake. New settlers began to arrive, including Slovaks, Poles and Germans. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In spite of this the colony never managed to become self-sufficient and it faced growing threats from the Indians. In 350 they killed a quarter of the settlers, some 350, including John Rolfe. In 1624 the Virginia Company was declared bankrupt and, Virginia became a royal colony, ruled by a governor appointed by the monarch. The Crown now had a direct stake in America.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Maryland</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Maryland, the other Chesapeake colony, had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maryland">very different origins</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was set up in 1634 as a proprietary colony, the land having been granted to a single governor rather than a joint-stock company. Its founder George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, a Catholic convert, applied to Charles I for a royal charter. After he died in April 1632 the charter was granted to his son, the 2nd Baron, who named the colony after Charles I’s Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria. It was intended to be primarily a haven for persecuted Catholics, but also a place where Catholics and Protestants could live peacefully side-by-side. The first legislative assembly met in 1635. Like Virginia, the economy depended on tobacco. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By 1700 the white population on the Chesapeake had reached some 90,000. The great majority of the immigrants were indentured servants who had to work off the cost of their package. Their life-expectancy was in the mid-thirties. The population contained an unusually high number of single men, widows and orphaned children.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">New England</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The foundation of New England in the early seventeenth century, symbolised by the landing of the Mayflower at Cape Cod in November 1620, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_Fathers">founding of the Plymouth settlement,</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">is the most emotionally charged episode in the narrative of the English colonisation of North America. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Pilgrim Fathers, as they were later named, were Puritan separatists who had despaired of bringing about reform in the Church of England. Their initial destination was Virginia but a winter storm landed them much further north. Finding themselves in a territory outside the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company they devised a contract known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact">Mayflower Compact</a>, binding themselves </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of [the] ends aforesaid; and by virtue herof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for [the] general good of [the] Colonie. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">This is the first written document establishing a ‘just and equal’ form of government in America.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The native population of New England was in no fit state to offer resistance to the settlers as their population had been catastrophically depleted by an outbreak of what might have been the bubonic plague. Those that survived enabled the newcomers survive the rigours of the first winter by aiding them in planting. In the following year, natives and newcomers celebrated the success of the first crop by holding a harvest feast shared with the local <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag_people">Wampanoag Indians</a>, </span><span style="font-size: large;">and in 1863 Thanksgiving was made a national holiday.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1629 a new merchant company the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony">Massachusetts Bay Company</a> was established, and a great Puritan exodus from England, known as the Great Migration, began. More than 20,000 migrated to America and arranged themselves over five main areas of settlement, out of which three colonies emerged: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">From the start New England was different from Virginia. For the early Chesapeake settlers, the motivation had been almost entirely economic, and they had been lured there by misleading prospectuses about the fertility of the land and the mildness of the climate. But the Puritans responded to the idea of America as a harsh untamed wilderness, where they could create a godly community. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another difference from Virginia was that from the start the settlers brought their families with them. There was no need to import wives, and women were considered the equals of men – at least spiritually. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4DdNndj88mlSZS4YG8NOE8RScdNuW1W3heltEuzlAk0-xJMR2d5vegDKEhtQHUMCVkf5_tE5hmhyAnwCTMlfscQ6Lo6R1RCEJYKavvyVrChJmTlXxp3q2aT2SsQXlFeztOZTXN3L4Z8y/s1600/JohnWinthropColorPortrait.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4DdNndj88mlSZS4YG8NOE8RScdNuW1W3heltEuzlAk0-xJMR2d5vegDKEhtQHUMCVkf5_tE5hmhyAnwCTMlfscQ6Lo6R1RCEJYKavvyVrChJmTlXxp3q2aT2SsQXlFeztOZTXN3L4Z8y/s200/JohnWinthropColorPortrait.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">John Winthrop, governor of<br />
Massachusetts</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;">In April 1630 the ship <i>Arbella</i>, left the Isle of Wight for Massachusetts, carrying the lawyer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop">John Winthro</a>p </span><span style="font-size: large;">and his two sons. On board the ship, Winthrop wrote a sermon that was either preached then or delivered later, which has been seen as the founding text of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism">American exceptionalism</a>: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">New England was not a crown colony like Virginia, nor a proprietary colony like Maryland. It was run by a General Court, which elected the governor and his assistants. In 1644 Massachusetts set up a two-chamber legislature, with all decisions requiring a majority in both houses. A trading corporation had evolved into the governing body of a commonwealth. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">However, Massachusetts was a theocracy rather than a democracy and it is ironical that people who had come to America to escape from persecution were very soon engaged in persecuting religious dissidents. This intolerance enraged the minister, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams">Roger Williams</a>, who arrived in Boston in 1631. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Williams argued for religious liberty and for what was to become an important American principle - the complete separation of church and state. In 1635 the General Court of Salem convicted him of sedition and heresy. In the spring of 1636 he and his followers began a new settlement, which he called Providence, which became the colony of Rhode Island. It became a haven for religious dissidents of all denominations.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By the middle of the seventeenth century, the original settlement patterns of townships comprising some 50 to 100 square miles of settlement structured round a central meeting house, with common land surrounding it for grazing livestock and growing crops, had given way to individual family holdings of between 100 to 200 acres. With increasing individualism came a more secular outlook.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In both New England and the Chesapeake the distinction between white and native society was increasing. American identity was white, and predicated on the existence of non-white peoples, both ‘Indian’ and African.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">The Middle Colonies</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">By the late seventeenth century Britain’s colonial presence had extended far beyond the Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bay. Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut were Puritan foundations, established by those who had clashed with the Massachusetts hierarchy. In 1643 the New England Confederation (which excluded Rhode Island) was formed to provide for defence against both the Indians and the French and Dutch. A separate New England identity was coming into being.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">With the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s, new colonies were founded, all of them proprietary arrangements. The Carolinas and New Jersey were founded by a group of Charles II’s courtiers. In 1664 the English gained control of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York after the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II. When James assumed the throne in 1685 he made it a royal colony, by which time it had a white population of 20,000. It was an ethnically diverse colony, with a commercial centre and a fertile agricultural hinterland in the Hudson Valley.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The courtiers who founded these colonies saw them simply as investments, and had no intention of settling there. Parts of them could be sold, and in 1682 the eastern part of New Jersey was bought by a Quaker syndicate, headed by William Penn. In the previous year Charles II granted Penn the land that would become known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a>. With its settlement of Philadelphia (‘brotherly love’), Pennsylvania was a ‘holy experiment’, where land would be bought legally from the Indians, and people of all religions could live together in peace. Under Penn’s leadership the colony welcomed persecuted English Quakers, as well as European religious dissenters, including Swiss and German <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite">Mennonites</a>. Penn later expanded the territory by purchasing the Swedish fur-trading settlements on the Delaware River, which in 1703 became <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware#History">a separate colony</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Georgia</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The final settlement was Georgia, founded in 1732 by the philanthropist, General James Oglethorpe, as a refuge for debtors. In 1733 a group of colonists founded Savannah near the mouth of the Savannah River. It was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Savannah,_Georgia">laid out</a> according to a geometrical pattern, with numerous little parks. </span><span style="font-size: large;">In 1734 German Protestants arrived, fleeing persecution in the Holy Roman Empire. With the settlement of Georgia, the British colonies stretched from French Canada down to Spanish Florida. </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGjNVLNY7NjY04VryAX2yS9qGVHRB89202TsD3Er3d9mFK_kPmA2dO-YwXZuzRVBh06N5v9-fUhM9N7iZF5bU_IACg4mGbrTbT3YAVrv5amSBht-Y-ZdOrVU5TV8MJsLE7oKMANEkeNAqE/s1600/749px-A_view_of_Savannah_as_it_stood_the_29th_of_March_1734.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGjNVLNY7NjY04VryAX2yS9qGVHRB89202TsD3Er3d9mFK_kPmA2dO-YwXZuzRVBh06N5v9-fUhM9N7iZF5bU_IACg4mGbrTbT3YAVrv5amSBht-Y-ZdOrVU5TV8MJsLE7oKMANEkeNAqE/s200/749px-A_view_of_Savannah_as_it_stood_the_29th_of_March_1734.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">View of Savannah, 1734</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The native peoples</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">As the colonial population grew, it came under increasing attack from the native peoples. One of the bones of contention was that the Europeans and the Indians had different views of property rights. To native peoples the land was for use and to be shared, while Europeans viewed land ownership as contractual and exclusive. What followed was </span><span style="font-size: large;">a tragic history of war and displacement. By 1800 the native US population was 600,000. In 1500 it had stood at an estimated 2.2 million.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Slavery</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">The era of colonisation also saw the introduction of slavery. The first slave ship arrived in Jamestown in 1619. In 1641 Massachusetts formally recognised slavery in its legal code. Yet it was in Virginia that the institution of slavery became more firmly established, as a solution to the colony’s growing labour needs. In 1622 Virginia established the precedent that slavery would be a matrilineal institution: the children would take the legal status of the mother. In 1667 it was decreed that baptism into the Christian faith would not alter a slave’s legal status. In 1670 it became illegal for any black to purchase a Christian or a white servant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over the next hundred years, slavery would come to be the economic bedrock of large parts of British colonial America. In 1705 the Virginia House of Burgesses ruled that slavery was a perpetual condition, transmitted through the mother, and ‘all negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves’ comprised a form of ‘real estate’ that could be bought and sold like any other.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Religion</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">North America had a thriving, overwhelmingly Protestant, religious culture. It was a diverse culture and there was no single denomination. Anglicans were in a majority in Virginia but not elsewhere. Puritan congregationalism was largely confined to New England. Quakerism was dominant in most of Pennsylvania but in the west of the colony the Presbyterianism of the Scotch-Irish colonists prevailed. Baptists and Methodists were strong in Virginia. The religious culture of the colonies has left an enduring legacy of great religious diversity, with no </span><span style="font-size: large;">denomination allowed to dominate the others, of fervent popular piety, and a s</span><span style="font-size: large;">ense of America’s divine mission: 'a city upon a hill'.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">The thirteen colonies had come into being for different reasons, and within them there were many cultural differences. However</span><span style="font-size: large;">, they were governed in a broadly similar manner. All the colonies had their charters and constitutions, based on English common law. Most were ruled by a governor appointed by the Crown or by the proprietor(s) and had a legislature divided between an upper house, appointed by the governor, and an elected lower house. </span><span style="font-size: large;">This governing arrangement was to have important consequences. While the British government claimed ultimate power, in practice the colonies were managing their own affairs and coming to see themselves less and less as British.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">From the start the colonies were involved in confrontation with the Native Americans and with other Europeans. Fear of attacks helped to bring them together.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">The economies of the colonies, especially in the south, were bound up with black slavery. Racial distinctions were there from the start.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">By the early eighteenth century the English had outstripped the French and the Spanish in the New World. British America was the most prosperous, and powerful region on the continent. But no-one could have anticipated that these very diverse colonies would ever come together to form a single nation.</span></li>
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</div>Anne Stotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18296864856365981820noreply@blogger.com0