Page 47 - NS-2 Textbook

The Civil War, 1861-1865

By the late 1840s the United States had crossed the North the Senate ·were not maintained, their political pmver
American continent, a result of both the Mexican War would wane and their whole way of life in the South
and the lure of gold and fertile farmlands in the western would be threatened. TIms they pressed for admission of
territories. TIle Canadian botmdaries had been estab- the ne,,,, states as slave states so that their political power
lished in Oregon Territory. The U.s. Navy had beaten the base would relnain strong.
Barbary states in the Mediterranean and the pirates in Conversely, Northern politicians wanted to limit the
the Caribbean. The threat of a foreign attack on U.S. ter- spread of slavery into ne"v territories and states both to
ritory had been eliminated, so American maritin1e inter- restrain Southern political power and to support the
ests concerned themselves with overseas trade. Clippers, moral issue. This led to the passage of the Missouri Com-
whalers, and packet ships loaded with immigrants promise of 1820, which stipulated that a balance between
caught the in1agination of Americans. But one other slave and free states had to be Inaintained as ne,,,, states
thing haunted American life dming the first half of the entered the Union. TIlis state of affairs lasted until the
nineteenth century: slavery. passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which elim-
The issue of slavery was not of prinle in1portance to inated the Missouri ComprOinise and made it possible
the average American of the early 1800s: The majority of for slavery to be introduced into any new territory based
Southerners were small farmers who could not afford on the decision of the residents there.
slaves, and lllost Northerners ·were small fanners or The Kansas-Nebraska Act was of great concern in the
tradesmen "\\Tho had never come into contact vvith any. North because of the danger of the potential spread of
Many influential plantation owners and politicians in the slavery it represented. Moderate politicians such as
South had a vested interest in the issue, however, be- Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists throughout the North
cause the cultivation and harvesting of tobacco, rice, in- began actively working to oppose the act and any further
digo, and, above all, cotton on which most of the South- spread of slavery. ln the South, politicians convinced
ern economy depended would not be profitable without their constituents that the North was threatening their
slavery. By contrast, the Northern economy was based on culture and way of life. This threat was greatly intensi-
commerce and industly far more than agriculture. Con- fied in 1859 when the militant Northern abolitionist Jolm
sequently, many influential politicians and abolitionists Brown raided the Federal arsenal at Harper's FelTY, Vir-
in the North regarded slavery as a moral evil. As tin1e ginia (now West Virginia), and called for a general insur-
progressed, these regional views spread throughout the rection of Southern slaves.
respective populations of the North and South. Extremists on both sides became willing to go to war
In 1800 the population of the country was about to enSlU'e that their views prevailed. This sihmtion was
evenly split between North and South, but over the next exacerbated by a nationalist premise on the part of many
fifty years, immigrants from Europe steadily added to in the South that if the Federal government failed to pro-
the population of the North, while Southern population tect their interests, then Southern states had the right to
growth stagnated. By 1850 only about a third of the na- secede from (leave) the Union. The Unionist response
tional popUlation would live in the South. Southern was that because the Preamble to the Constitution stated
politicians soon became alarmed at the loss of political that the Union derived its power from the people as a
power in the House of Representatives that this trend whole, no state could elect to secede without due process
caused, especially in light of the prospective addition of of Congress.
new states formed from the territories of the Louisiana Against this backdrop of tension the presidential elec-
Purchase of 1803. TIley were concerned that if parity in tion of 1860 took place. The newly formed Republican

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