Manifest Destiny Definition

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as president as a selectional candidate with the support of the northern Republican party because of his plan to abolish slavery. Slavery was one of the main issues in the Southern states, but once Lincoln entered office, his initial plan to do away with slavery changed. With the hope that Lincoln would execute his plan, the southerners were exceptionally threatened to find out that Lincoln decided to control slavery in the south, rather than abolish it. War was moderately considered by Lincoln regarding slavery, which brought on dissension among the North and South. Slavery was a controversial topic among the U.S. citizens during this era.

This is because the north and south had different opinions on slavery, if you used the Dred Scott decision for slavery, you will receive no support from the north. So Dred Scott and slavery had a big impact on the north vs the south. When the Republican party was formed most people believe that it was formed because of the Dred Scott decision. This is because its ideas on slavery convinced them they had to form it.

An example of this would be abolitionism and the opposition to slavery. In the 1800’s, slavery was widespread, but there were certain people who began to realize and vocalize that slavery was immoral and downright horrifying. These people were definitely a minority, who were thought of as crazy and bizarre. As the movement became stronger, the South portion of the United States of America formed the Confederate States of America, which started the civil war. In 1865, the civil war ended, adding the South back to the U.S., and abolishing slavery in America.

(a) The Compromise of 1850 - The compromise increased tensions between the North and the South because it introduced popular sovereignty which allowed the new territories to decide whether or not to allow slavery. It also included the Fugitive Slave Law and popular sovereignty which for northerners were unacceptable and they ignored it and this just caused anger and fear in the South. (b) The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 - Stirred up a storm of opposition in the North. Northerners who aided the slave to escape were liable to heavy fines and jail sentences.

The Mexicans were Catholic and anti-slavery while the Americans were Protestant and pro-slavery. In 1848, the two countries went to war. Also, America wanted the territory, but so did Mexico, so they fought about that. The United States was justified in going to war with Mexico because of Manifest Destiny, the fact that the Mexicans shot first, and their commitment to an economic road map. First and foremost, the war was justified because America was trying to realize its belief in Manifest Destiny: “The fulfillment of our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence [God] for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (Document A).

He says that this is often avoided and many people say it is over reasons such as states’ rights, which is true, but he makes it very clear that the primary reason for the war was because of the heated debate over slavery. He says that southern leaders, such as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens claimed that slavery was the “heart of conflict.” The Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed the capture and return of fugitive slaves to their rightful owners, was pushed by Southerners, but was “a slap in the face of state rights” because when a slave escaped his owner and entered a state that was considered a “free state,” that slave should considered free, right? Wrong. According to this Act, no matter where the slave was in the United States, a slaveholder had the right to retrieve his slave.

In “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” by Frederick Douglass, it states “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States…” (Doc. G). Frederick Douglass hates how the United States celebrate Independence Day even though everyone not everyone is free, slaves. Slavery captivates the human from his or her rights and caused an uprise for the end of slavery. In a Republican nomination speech by Abraham Lincoln, it states “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Doc. M).

After the efforts to gain independence from Britain and the creation of the United States of America, eighty years later this union was not so united. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, it was the first time that Americans fought Americans. Among many reasons, the Civil War is known to be a result of the arguments over the delineation of the States’ Rights or the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln. In actuality, the Civil War, the most deadly war in American history, was due to disputes over slavery in the American territories. Therefore, the Civil War was inevitable because of the consequences that occurred one being slavery.

For Northerners, empathy was easier to practice. As the notion of emancipation became more widely discussed by politicians during the abolitionist movement tensions between the North and the South rose. The idea that the nation could eradicate the lifeblood of the southern plantations was deemed unacceptable and the southern states felt helpless. The South fought for state’s rights which is synonymous with slavery as that was the most important right they were fighting for, and the North fought to keep the South from seceding, largely due to South’s interest in maintaining slavery as

The reason Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation was to free the slaves of the Southern States. He not only thought that a person being owned by another person was awful but also wanted the former slaves to be able to join the Union and fight against the Confederates during the civil war. Lincoln also wanted to stop the years of African Americans being treated as property which many thought was morally wrong. He first just used the Proclamation as a threat to make the Confederates surrender on September 22, 1862 but when that didn 't work he issued the Proclamation on January 1, 1863. To get his cabinet on board with the Proclamation, since they thought it was too radical, Lincoln became very committed to making it happen.

Americans in search of land cooperated with Mexican Authorities to gain lands. But Jackson despised Mexicans he still wanted Texas apart of the Union. Texas remained independent for years and it

The institution of slavery was a major cause for the Civil War, since “free states” and Slave states” were vying for land and voting rights in Congress in the new territories in the west that were recently acquired by the United States. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was meant to evenly divided free states and slaves states in the hopes that either side would be satiated, and the two sides could reach a compromise on this issue. However, free states politicians, such as Senator Lincoln, defined the underlying basis of perpetual conflict in the speech “A House Divided”, which would set the tone for a larger military conflict between the North and the South. More so, Lincoln’s presidency shows a massive increase in presidential powers, which allowed Lincoln to unconstitutionally declare war against the Confederacy for seceding from the Union. In addition to this military power, Lincoln also suspended the writ of habeas corpus to deny a trial for soldiers and officers caught in the battles that ensued during the war.

For example, in the cartoon is state “no, he didn’t this fight, called “the battle of Black Jack, is consider by some historians the first battle of the civil war. This demonstrate that the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case affected Kansas, which was becoming a tuning place of battles and fights between pro-slavery and anti-slavery people. In conclusion, Kansas, after the declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, became a place of tension and conflict between people from Kansas who were against of slavery, and people from others states that were in favor of slavery and wanted slavery in order to increase their wealth as it was demonstrated in the cartoon “Bleeding Kansas”. Finally, the Dred Scott Decision was of great importance to the United States because it let to the end of slavery in the United

Even during its infancy, America was divided on the important issue of slavery. Divisions became ever more acute as the practice first died out and then was abolished in most of the North, while the South –in particular the cotton belt of the Deep South- it became an inseparable part of the section’s economy and society. This and the belief of many Americans in the western and southern states in a limited federal government was largely glazed over until the 1840s as more free states were admitted into the union. Southern states became increasingly concerned because they believed that the North might try to abolish slavery and further limit the powers of the state governments once they had a majority in congress. A series of compromises were

Therefore the Southern states should have been allowed to secede from the union as the government of the Union did not protect some of their given rights. First of all, the Southern states had the right to secede because the North had too much power over them. “In all the non-slave-holding States…the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party…based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States” (Document I). Based on this quote, the Northern states started to believe in the abolitionist movement too much; so much that they started to consider the slave states as their enemies. As shown in the quote “By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding states