1. Analyze the causes and events leading to the American Civil War including the
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Question
1. Analyze the causes and events leading to the American Civil War including the question of slavery, sectionalism, and how westward expansion exacerbated the situation. 2. Analyze the history of the Democratic, Republican, and Whig parties, as well as the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (or Know-Nothings"). 3. Analyze the different religious groups that came about in the nineteenth century, especially during the Second Great Awakening, and how they interacted with the established churches. 4. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner said that the Westward movement defined America. Was he right? Analyze the westward expansion, and include the Gold Rush, race relations, American Indians, violence and the construction of the railroads.Explanation / Answer
1)A common assumption to explain the cause of the American Civil War was that the North was no longer willing to tolerate slavery as being part of the fabric of US society and that the political power brokers in Washington were planning to abolish slavery throughout the Union. Therefore for many people slavery is the key issue to explain the causes of the American Civil War. However, it is not as simple as this and slavery, while a major issue, was not the only issue that pushed American into the ‘Great American Tragedy’. By April 1861, slavery had become inextricably entwined with state rights, the power of the federal government over the states, the South’s ‘way of life’ etc. – all of which made a major contribution to the causes of the American Civil War.
By 1860 America could not be seen as being a homogenous society. Clearly defined areas could be identified that had different outlooks and different values. This was later to be seen in the North versus South divide that created the two sides in the war.
Slavery was simply seen as part of the southern way of life. Without slavery, the economic clout of these premier families would have been seriously dented and those they employed and paid – local people who would have recognised how important the local plantation owner was to their own well-being – simply accepted this as ‘how it is’. When the dark clouds of war gathered in 1860-61, many in the South saw their very way of life being threatened.
2)The origin of Democratic and Whig parties were in the presidential election in 1824. The Federalist Party had collapsed after the War of 1812, and so five Democratic-Republican candidates separately ran for president.The democratic party opposed the peresonal freedom and liberity.
The Whigs party opposed the democrants and varied in their ideals on the role of government. They called for higher tariffs and taxes and a strong national bank in order to improve infrastructure.The Whig party supported the idea of government funded expansion, reform, and modernization.
The Democrats and Whigs were sharply divided over the slavery issue, and their power struggles cleared the way for the rise of a new political party, the Republican Party, which was formed in 1854 and stood united in their determination to prevent the spread of slavery into the territories and preserve the Union.
3)The story of religious diversity in the nineteenth century is tied inextricably to immigration. The arrival of nonprotestant immigrants, especially Roman Catholics and Jews, threatened Protestant hegemony, many Protestants resisted. A good topic for discussion here might be what role the cities played in bringing about religious accommodation. With the massive urbanization of American society late in the nineteenth century, various religious and ethnic groups Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe, Roman Catholics from Ireland and Italy were thrown together into the cauldron of urban life. Despite inevitable differences and conflict, these groups eventually learned to coexist in the cities.
Religious diversity in the nineteenth century took many forms, and it met with spirited opposition from Nativists, those who opposed new immigrants.Internal diversity also marks other religious movements too often seen, by outsiders, as homogeneous.African-Americans have faced their own peculiar struggles in expressing their religious life.The Nation of Islam remains one of most striking examples of religious diversity.
4)In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health,He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms.In order to provide enough land to sustain this ideal population of virtuous yeomen, the United States would have to continue to expand.The westward expansion of the United States is one of the defining themes of 19th-century American history, but it is not just the story of Jefferson’s expanding “empire of liberty.” On the contrary, as one historian writes, in the six decades after the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion “very nearly destroyed the republic.”
A decade later, the civil war in Kansas over the expansion of slavery was followed by a national civil war over the same issue. As Thomas Jefferson had predicted, it was the question of slavery in the West a place that seemed to be the emblem of American freedom that proved to be “the knell of the union.”
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