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Discuss the concept of popular sovereignty What was the significance of Abraham Lincoln'selection?

Let'stake this question backwards, and start with Abraham Lincoln's elections andparticular his success in the last two. At 23 Lincoln was a young Whig who ran8^th in a lengthy list of 13 candidates for a seat in IllinoisGeneral Assembly. Soon after, he was elected Captain of his local IlinoisMilittia company during the BlackHawk war. Though he never saw combat hevisited one battle scene after hostilities to bury dead militia men. Two yearsafter his loss our Whig won a seat tto 1835 State Legislature. Re-electedthree times he became a member of the new Republican Party in 1854. While Lincoln left politics to practice law after the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska act repealed thelimits of the extent of slavery determined in 1820's Missouri Compromise, heran for the US Senate in 1858. Winning that Senate seat over the slavery issuein the Lincoln-Douglas debate didn't get him a US Senate Seat, for thedemocratic legislature who re-elected Douglas to the Senate. In the RepublicanState Convention of 1860 the Illinois Republicans endorsed him as a favoriteson. The significance of Lincoln's 1860 win was that the Republicans onlycampaigned in two border cities in the South, rarely running any candidates foroffice there. Lincoln beat (northen) Democrat Douglas, southern DemocratBreckinridge, and Constitutional Union candidate Bell.

Duringthe campaign secessionists were emphatic that they would leave the Union if Lincoln won. Six more deep southern states followed South Carolina out of the Union. A number of states decided to stay in the Union but warned Lincoln that they wouldoppose any invasion through their lands. However most of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and all but eastern Tennessee joined the Confederacy after Lincoln took office. Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky stayed in the Union.

Lincoln had backed a Constitutional amendment to protect slavery in states where it existed,a sop to these crucial borderland states, however he opposed a southerndesigned compromise to permit slavery in the territories. While Buchanan'slame duck administration refused to accept secession it was an accomplishedfact, Lincoln and the Republicans accepted the reality upon taking control. TheSouthern reaction was simple enough, South Carolinian militia attacked theUnion first in April, beginning the Civil War that would ruin the South andleave South Carolina's capital one of several leveled in the Confederacy. Soonthere after 18,000 Rebel leaders in the border states were arrested and held. Lincoln would have one more election to win, and this exam question really didn't specifywhich election was key.

At theRepublican Party convention of before the 1864 election, the party wasconcerned that it needed a more moderate face to ensure Lincoln's re-election.They named Tennessee War-Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate to uniteRepublicans and War-Democrats to form a broader coalition ticket. Runningagainst Democratic pacifists who called the war a failure they lost control oftheir candidate General McClellan who mocked their platform and loudlysupported the war. Lincoln won the election when Sherman leveled Atlanta a few weeks before the election. With Grant's victory at Vicksburg knocked out by Sherman's capture of Georgia, Lincoln won re-election by a landslide. Had theConfederacy held eastern Tennessee, thus retaining Atlanta, the election wouldhave been a good deal closer, but people like to vote for a winner.

A keyfactor in this was Squatter Sovereignty, the right claimed by landless newarrivals to an American Federal territory to accept or reject slavery. ThisPopular Sovereignty was Stephen Douglas's lame excuse to avoid dealing withthe issue of slave vs. free territories. It was certainly a key feature in theKansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and remained Douglas's evasion tactic in the 1858and 1860 election. American politicians would have to redefine sovereigntyafter the Civil War began.

(4) How and whydid abolitionism become the dominant American reform movement? Identify atleast two key individuals associated with the abolitionist movement. Why werewomen attracted to abolitionism?

TheLibrary of Congress houses a 1791 pamphlet encouraging believers in propertyrights to oppose abolitionists like Jonathon Edwards efforts to stop the slavetrade and help escaped slaves remain free. Many of the abolitionist societiesfirst formed in Quaker and Unitarian strongholds in North Eastern coastalstates. Abolitionists held a convention in Philedelphia in 1794 with a numberof female activists present. Groups like the American Anti-Slavery Societyformed to deal with the horrors of slavery and the need for evacuation ofrunaway slaves. As a social movement it began in churches and colleges with New York's Jonathon Edwards, President of Union College, a particularly early figure.

Themovement drew different opponents in both North and South. In the South publicabolitionism was rare. In the North, it was far more common in inland areasthan in port cities because the slave trade was a great source of New EnglandRevenue. A triangular trade brought slaves to the West Indies and DeepSouthern American Colonies, in exchange for sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Fromthe beginning, the sugar was made into rum and exported along with tobacco tothe Eastern Hemisphere to buy more slaves. (cities like Salem Massachusetts particularly prospered from this trade).

Forwomen who hardly enjoyed universal gender equality in the new American Republic, this represented a movement they could work for. Female abolitionistsplayed a particularly important role in the underground railroad, and exportedescaped slaves from the west to Ontario and from the Eastern Seaboard to Cape Britain Island's new coal mines in Nova Scotia. As southern insistence on recoveringfreed slaves from the Northern states grew, the British Navy started switchingfrom sail to coal; which developed a massive need for Nova Scotian Coal andminers to be trained to unearth it. The British Empire abolished slavery in1833 freeing large numbers of Caribbean slaves, the word spread rapidly in America, increasing the number of escaped slaves that needed protection and the number ofabolitionists to aid them in a country that seemed to have little intention toduplicate London's new legislation. Among the more prominent abolitionistswere authors Henry David Thoreau and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Detective AlanPinkerton, and William Lloyd Garrison. They followed the fine tradition of thePennsylvania Abolition Society which included such stars as Benjamin Franklynand Thomas Paine.

LaborUnion movements had not yet really begun in the textile mills of Eastern New England The Manifest Destiny movement peaked after the Mexican-American War,even though two states in a number of territories were yet to be acquired.This lead abolitionism as a movement of choice for Quakers, black Christians,and to lesser extents Unitarians and Congregationalists.

(5) What was the concept of Manifest Destiny? Identify the majorcauses of the Mexican War and results of the war.

After John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824 as a Federalist, aNational Republican, and Democratic-Republican; American political partiesbecame local state by state organizations. The Federalist Party simply died;the Democratic-Republicans were gradually reduced to ashes and Adams' ownNational Republican coalition of 1828 lost to Jackson. The NationalRepublicans, including Adams became Whigs to battle it out with JacksonianDemocrats across the country. Jackson's land grabbing policies would becomeManifest Destiny, expanding westward and evicting five entire First Nationsfrom their settlements in the future Confederacy to he barren Oklahoma Territory.

Jacksonian dreams were both economic and geographical. Endingthe bank of the United States and other questionable policies led to the worsteconomic depression in the history of the Republic in 1837. The JacksonianPresidents that followed believed in this new doctrine of Manifest Destiny. While Jackson had evicted south eastern Indians from all but the swampy southern tipof Florida, it would be up to his Democratic successors to make ManifestDestiny a reality. Martin Van Buren, (former Whig) John Tyler, and staunchManifest Destiny support James Polk would follow. From John Quincy Adams'administration on, Southeastern Americans began settling in Texas. By 1836,they proclaimed a republic, and were soon invaded by Mexico who beat the Texansin San Antonio. At the same time, Americans began following Lewis and Clarkinto Oregon and northern California, where they discovered a Russian Post innorthern California, and British traders in what would become British Columbia.

In 1845 the United States annexed Texas and Mexico objected, leading to war. In 1845 an Amy Captain with five dozen troops has entered California on their way to Oregon, when they heard the following summer thatthe US and Mexico were at war, they began bearflag revolt and seized a smallMexican garrison in Sonoma. The original California lasted a motnh untilCapain Freemont took over on behalf of the US army. Soon thereafter the USNavy seized as the police in the combined forces captured the Mexican capitalof Alta California and Monterey. Added fighting in southern California assuredAmerican occupation of California.

In Texas (lead by General Taylor), US troops swept Texas, crossedthe Rio Grand, and beat the Mexicans at Monterey and Saltillo. After thebattle of Buena Vista, Taylor had seized control of northern Mexico. General Scott led America's first amphibious landing on the outskirts of Mexico's largest port city Vera Cruz. US Naval guns combined with Scott's artillery toforce the Mexicans to surrender. Scott led his troops against Santanna and theMexicans were routed. After Scott captured Puebla (then Mexico's 2^nd largest city, Mexico City fell after the battle of Chapultepec, andoccupied. Scott was named Military Governor of occupied Mexico City.

America was very generous to Mexico in the Treaty ofGuadalupe Hidalgo, giving it back most of its populated land and much of isundeveloped wilderness. The United States only seized California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and slivers (wealready had Texas). The US agreed to assume over three million dollars indebts the Mexican Government owed US citizens, and another 15 million dollarsfor lands seized without hostilities (to be increased by several million morein he Gasden purchase that followed.)

TheUnited States Senate altered the treaty to strike out the legitimacy of anyland grants made by the Mexican Government in a language which guaranteedMexicans living in the ceded territories the automatic right to become UScitizens.

(1)How did industrialization affect theeconomy? How did the rise of factories affect the social structure?

The industrialization began with the Slater Mill, Rhode Island'sfirst textile mill in North Smithfield Rhode Island, in 1803. Samuel Slater'sorganizational methods were adopted by the entire textile industry as othermills opened in New England. Entire families were hired, and those over theage of seven worked. The Blackstone River's steep drop and numerous fallswere ideal for creating lots of local mills in Worcester County Massachusettsand North Western Rhode Island. Larger rivers like New Hampshire's Merrimachad waterfalls that could support much lager mills. And under the leadership of Boston's Lowells, such cities as Manchester NH, and Nashua NH, Lowell MA, Lawrence MA, and Haverhill MA became major mill towns. They would shortly bejoined by Fall River in southern MA and Lewiston ME and Waterville ME allneeded labor.

At first younger sons and daughters of New England Farmers joinedthe mills realizing that their family farms were too small for furtherdivision. From 1845-1849 British negligence destroyed the potato industry thatsupported their Irish colony. The famine that followed sent over a million tothe United and Canada. Many ended up in the new mills. Wave after wave ofEuropean immigration followed to increase the labor pools of a variety ofAmerican industry and construction, led by these textile mills.

The development of upstate New York's Erie Canal created massiveconstruction employment leading to new factories near its banks. But thedevelopment of an American railway system (particularly in the northeasternstates) opened up a vast variety of construction and industrial jobs.

In 1800 the American economy was largely agrarian, withship building as its single major industrial effort. By the 1840's textilesand industrial machinery were the major employers in many northern states,sharpening the differences with the slave owning farmers of he southeast. WihJackson's expulsion of most of five Native American Tribes from the South East,the South East became largely white, Anglo-Saxon citizens, with scatteredpockets of French in Louisiana, and Hispanics in Texas, supplemented bynon-citizen slaves who didn't count as whole people in the US Census anyway.

Just as the plantations of the deep south created an upper class ofplantation nobility, so the new mills and factories of the North East, helpedcreate a new industrial mobility, particularly in the major cities comfortablyremoved from the smelly or smokey mills and factories. In the North theunderclass were largely illiterate immigrants learning American English, and thesouth most of the underclass were simply black slaves.

Economically, the industrialization that started with Samuel Slaterproved a boon for America until globalization's cheaper labor upset the applecart in recent decades.

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