Summary
This era was most notably marked by hunger for land in the west. While new opportunites arised in the west economically, politically, it had caused major tension over the extension of slavery into these new territories. This failure to unify the rapidly expanding country led the United States into extreme regional alliances, culminating in the Civil War. Both sides of the war, the Northern Union and Southern Confederacy, had rapidly mobilized their populations and economies. However, the North's material advantage and the lack of foreign support for the Southern cause ended in Union victory under the leadership of General Grant, General Sherman, and President Lincoln. After the war, the country strived to bring changes to different regions of the country, most notably reconstructing the South to share more similar sentiments with the North. However, Southern resistance and the North's waning resolve to reconstruct the South had ended the era with three distinctly different regions that had huge economic and functional differences.
Key Concepts
- 5.1 - The United States became more connected with the world, pursued an expansionist foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, and emerged as the destination for many migrants from other countries.
- 5.2 - Intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions, debates over slavery and other economic, cultural, and political issues led the nation into a civil war.
- 5.3 - The Union victory in the Civil War and the contested reconstruction of the South settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights.
Big Events
- Civil War
- Mexican-American War
- Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson
- Reconstruction Era
Big Players
- Stephen Douglass
- Abraham Lincoln
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Robert E. Lee
- Jefferson Davis
- Rutherford B. Hayes
- John Brown
- Harriet Tubman
Key Terms
- Manifest Destiny
- Nativism
- California Gold Rush
- Homestead Act
- Free-soil Party
- Wilmot Proviso
- Dred Scott vs Sanford
- Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Compromise of 1850
- Republican Party
- Lincoln's Election / Election of 1860
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Suspension of Habeas Corpus
- Gettysburg Address
- Sherman's March to the Sea
- 13th Amendment
- 14th Amendment
- 15th Amendment
- Jim Crow
- Ku Klux Klan
- Compromise of 1877