The state of Virginia also gives us a list of the information that you will be tested on. They call it the essential knowledge. You will find the essential knowledge for this unit below:

 

Early stages of territorial expansion

• Thomas Jefferson, as president in 1803, purchased from France the huge Louisiana Territory, which doubled the size of the United States. As a result, the United States gained control of the Mississippi River and New Orleans to facilitate western trade. Jefferson authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the new territories that lay west of the Mississippi River. Sacajawea, an American Indian woman, served as their guide and translator.

• American settlers streamed westward from the East Coast through the use of roads, canals, and railroads, which had intended and unintended consequences for American Indians.

 

Impact on the American Indians

• The belief that it was America’s Manifest Destiny to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific provided political support for territorial expansion.

• During this period of westward migration, American Indians were repeatedly defeated in violent conflicts with settlers and soldiers and forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands. They were either forced to march far away from their homes (the Trail of Tears, when several tribes were relocated from Atlantic Coastal states to present-day Oklahoma) or confined to reservations.

 

Following the War of 1812, the United States and Britain agreed, through treaty, to establish the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada along the Louisiana Territory. It was later extended to the Pacific following the acquisition of the Oregon Territory from Britain in 1846. Florida was acquired by the United States through a treaty with Spain in 1819.

 

To protect America’s interests in the Western Hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine was issued. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) stated the following:

• The American continents should not be considered for future colonization by any European powers.

• Nations in the Western Hemisphere were inherently different from those of Europe (i.e., they were republics by nature rather than monarchies).

• The United States would regard as a threat to its own peace and safety any attempt by European powers to impose their system on any independent state in the Western Hemisphere.

• The United States would not interfere in European affairs.

 

American migration into Texas led to an armed revolt against Mexican rule and a battle at the Alamo, in which a band of Texans fought to the last man against a vastly superior Mexican force. The Texans’ eventual victory over Mexican forces subsequently brought Texas into the United States.

 

The American victory in the Mexican War during the 1840s led to the acquisition of an enormous territory that included the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico.

 

War of 1812

• British interference with American shipping and the American desire for western expansionism fueled the call for a declaration of war.

• Federalists, in opposition to Madison’s war resolution and to the war effort, met at the Hartford Convention and discussed secession.

• Following the outcomes of the War of 1812, the Federalists were viewed as unpatriotic and treasonous, which ultimately led to the demise of the political party.

• The war led to the departure of thousands of enslaved African Americans to British forces, resulting in enhanced American efforts to prevent future foreign invasions (e.g., Fort Monroe).

 

Economic impact of the War of 1812

• A market revolution emerged following the War of 1812, which transformed the American economy through

• transportation improvements in canals and railroads

• agricultural improvements such as the cotton gin and mechanical reaper

• industrial innovations, including textile mills

• communication improvements, including the telegraph.

• Many of these internal improvements were funded by tariffs through the American System.

 

The “Age of the Common Man”

• Universal manhood suffrage increased the electorate

• Rise of interest groups including nativists

• Political campaigning

• Spoils System

 

Emergence of new political parties

• Whigs were organized in opposition to the Democratic Party.

• Know-Nothings were organized in opposition to continued immigration by Irish and German immigrants.

 

Cultural changes sparked by the Second Great Awakening

• Temperance movement

• Women’s suffrage movement

• Abolitionist movement

 

Sectional tensions caused by competing economic interests

• The industrial North favored high protective tariffs to protect Northern manufactured goods from foreign competition.

• The agricultural South opposed high tariffs that made the price of imports more expensive.

 

Sectional tensions caused by westward expansion

• As new states entered the Union, compromises were reached that maintained the balance of power in Congress between “free states” and “slave states.”

• The Missouri Compromise (1820) drew an east-west line through the Louisiana Purchase, with slavery prohibited above the line and allowed below, except that slavery was allowed in Missouri, north of the line.

• In the Compromise of 1850, California entered as a free state, while the new Southwestern territories acquired from Mexico would decide on their own.

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise line, giving people in Kansas and Nebraska the choice whether to allow slavery in their states or not (i.e., popular sovereignty). This law produced bloody fighting in Kansas as pro- and antislavery forces battled each other. It also led to the birth of the Republican Party that same year to oppose the spread of slavery.

 

Sectional tensions caused by debates over the nature of the Union

• South Carolinians, in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, argued that sovereign states could nullify the Tariff of 1832 and other acts of Congress. A union that allowed state governments to invalidate acts of the national legislature could be dissolved by states seceding from the Union in defense of slavery (Nullification Crisis).

• President Jackson threatened to send federal troops to collect the tariff revenues and uphold the power of federal law.

 

Sectional tensions caused by the institution of slavery

• Slave revolts in Virginia, led by Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser, fed white Southerners’ fears about slave rebellions and led to harsh laws in the South against fugitive slaves. Southerners who favored abolition were intimidated into silence.

• Northerners, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, increasingly viewed the institution of slavery as a violation of Christian principles and argued for its abolition. Southerners grew alarmed by the growing force of the Northern response to the abolitionists.

• Enslaved African Americans who escaped to free states, many aided by the Underground Railroad, pitted Southern slave owners against outraged Northerners who opposed returning escaped slaves to bondage.

 

The women’s suffrage movement

• At the same time the abolitionist movement grew, another reform movement took root—the movement to give equal rights to women

• Seneca Falls Declaration

• Roles of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who became involved in the women’s suffrage movement before the Civil War and continued with the movement after the war

 

The popular belief that it was America’s Manifest Destiny to stretch across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific provided political support for territorial expansion.

 

President James K. Polk, a Democrat, was elected on a Manifest Destiny platform. During Polk’s presidency, the United States acquired

• the Oregon Territory from Great Britain

• the Mexican Cession from Mexico.

 

This acquisition of land led to renewed controversy concerning the expansion of slavery into new territories. This controversy led to the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the rise of the Republican Party.

 

Causes of the Civil War

• Sectional disagreements and debates over tariffs, extension of slavery into the territories, and the nature of the Union (states’ rights)

• Northern abolitionists vs. Southern defenders of slavery

• Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

• United States Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case

• A series of failed compromises over the expansion of slavery in the territories and the Fugitive Slave Act

 

Major events

• Election of Lincoln as president of the United States (1860), followed by the secession of several Southern states that feared Lincoln would try to abolish slavery

• Fort Sumter: Opening confrontation of the Civil War

• Emancipation Proclamation: Issued after the Battle of Antietam

• Gettysburg: Turning point of the Civil War

• Sherman’s March to the Sea

• Appomattox: Site of Lee’s surrender to Grant

 

Key leaders and their roles

• Jefferson Davis

• United States senator who became president of the Confederate States of America

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Union military commander who won victories over the South after several other Union commanders had failed

• Robert E. Lee

• Confederate general of the Army of Northern Virginia

• Opposed secession, but did not believe the Union should be held together by force

• Frederick Douglass

• Former enslaved African American

• Became a prominent abolitionist

• Urged Lincoln to recruit former enslaved African Americans to fight in the Union army

 

Abraham Lincoln’s leadership

• Believed secession was an illegal act and that the United States was a “nation,” not a collection of sovereign states; Southerners believed the states had freely joined the Union and could freely leave

• First Inaugural Address: “In your hands my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war…”

• Initial goal: Preserve the Union

• Later goal: End slavery and expand citizenship

 

Emancipation Proclamation

• Developed after enslaved African Americans given asylum at Fort Monroe were declared “contraband of war”

• Freed those slaves located in the “rebelling” states (Southern states that had seceded)

• Made the abolition of slavery a Northern war aim

• Discouraged any interference of foreign governments

• Allowed for the enlistment of African American soldiers in the Union Army

 

Gettysburg Address

• Lincoln described the Civil War as a struggle to preserve a nation that was dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” and that was ruled by a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

 

African Americans

• African Americans served in the Union Army and Navy following the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation.

• African Americans served as a part of contraband armies and aboard Union naval ships.

• Enslaved African Americans seized the opportunity presented by the approach of Union troops to achieve freedom.

• Many fought with distinction and were eventually paid salaries that were equal to those of white soldiers.

 

Common soldiers

• Warfare often involved hand-to-hand combat.

• After the war, especially in the South, soldiers returned home to find destroyed homes and poverty. Soldiers on both sides lived with permanent disabilities.

 

Women

• Managed homes and families with scarce resources

• Often faced poverty and hunger as evidenced by Bread Riots in Richmond, Virginia

• Assumed new roles in agriculture, nursing, and war industries

 

10 Percent Plan

• Lincoln believed that since secession was illegal, Confederate governments in the Southern states were illegitimate and the states had never really left the Union. He believed that Reconstruction was a matter of quickly restoring legitimate Southern state governments once 10 percent of the registered voters of that state in 1860 pledged loyalty to the United States government.

• Lincoln also believed that to reunify the nation, the federal government should not punish the South, but act “with malice towards none, with charity for all…to bind up the nation’s wounds….”

• The assassination of Lincoln just a few days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox enabled Radical Republicans to influence the process of Reconstruction in a manner much more punitive towards the former Confederate states.

 

Johnson’s Reconstruction plan

• Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor as president, adopted much of Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan but offered pardons to high-ranking military and political Confederate leaders who personally requested them.

• Johnson’s authority in leading the Reconstruction of the South was challenged by congressional leaders who were angered by the South’s enactment of Black Codes and the election of high-ranking former Southern leaders to Congress.

 

Radical Republicans

• The secessionist states would not be allowed back into the Union immediately, but were put under military occupation.

• Radical Republicans also believed in aggressively guaranteeing voting and other civil rights to African Americans. They clashed repeatedly with Andrew Johnson over the issue of civil rights for freed slaves, eventually impeaching him but failing to remove him from office.

 

Political effects

• The three “Civil War Amendments” to the Constitution were added.

• 13th Amendment: Slavery was abolished permanently in the United States.

• 14th Amendment: States were prohibited from denying equal rights under the law to any American and citizenship was redefined.

• 15th Amendment: Voting rights were guaranteed regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (former slaves).

• Following the end of Reconstruction, former Confederates regained political power in the South. This led to the installation of the era of Jim Crow and the restriction of civil liberties for African Americans in the South.

 

Economic impact

• The Southern states were left embittered and devastated by the war. Farms, railroads, and factories had been destroyed throughout the South. Confederate money was worthless. Many towns and cities such as Richmond and Atlanta lay in ruins, and the source of labor was greatly changed due to the loss of life during the war and the end of slavery. The South would remain an agriculture-based economy and the poorest section of the nation for many decades afterward.

• The North and Midwest emerged with strong and growing industrial economies, laying the foundation for the sweeping industrialization of the nation (other than the South) in the next half-century and the emergence of the United States as a global economic power by the beginning of the twentieth century.

• The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad soon after the war ended intensified the westward movement of settlers into the states between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean.