In this lecture we examine the United States's political and social life in the years leading up to the American Civil War of 1861-1865. Seen from the outside, America was not just growing in size and population, but managing its growth responsibly. On the other hand, there were cracks in America's political system and social fabric which very nearly tore the nation apart.
In segment 05b: Our Manifest Destiny, the American nation's success leads its people to a growing sense of mission. North America was meant to be civilized from sea to shining sea and the United States was the country to do it. As Americans saw it, this civilizing mission extended not just westward, but southward into Mexico and northward into the so-called Oregon Country. President James K. Polk, the Napoleon of the Stump, first got the economy going by adjusting the nation's tariffs and by helping bring about an independent treasury. In foreign policy, Polk resolved the Oregon question by negotiating with Great Britain. On the other hand, he addressed relations with Mexico by starting a war. Among other critics of Polk's war the young Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln had harsh words for the President's actions. Yet nobody can deny that the Mexican War - whatever its true causes - was the key to America's westward development.
Segment 05c: Life in the Good Old Days examines American life on the eve of the Civil War - in the North, the South, and the rapidly growing Midwest. By roughly 1850, the industrialized North and agricultural South were on two different economic paths. The North's factories made the Northern upper class wealthy, and the workers sometimes shared in the prosperity too. The North also managed to build close ties, physically and financially with the rural economy of the fast-growing Midwest. Meanwhile, the worldwide demand for Southern cotton grew, making Southern planters wealthy. But "King Cotton," as the industry was called was severely limited. King Cotton depended on plentiful slave labor and its tendency to wear out the soil meant it always required more farmland. The stage was thus set for free-soilers and slaveowners to fight over western territory. Socially, the American people were becoming more advanced, with more care paid to poorer people, and to public services. But not, unfortunately, so advanced that slavery was abolished, or that women were given a right to choose their own paths in life (or even the right to vote).
In segment 05d: Of Human Bondage, the United States at last confronts the evil which nearly defeated it - human slavery. Half-hearted attempts were made to postpone the impending catastrophe - the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1853. But the slave-state supporters fought violently for what they saw as economic and social survival. Meanwhile, the abolitionists (who were in fact on the side of justice) alienated even Northerners with their self-righteous zeal and equal taste for violence. At one point, the Kansas Territory - also known as "Bleeding Kansas" - had two separate capitals, one slave and one free-soil, each with its own legislature and its own government. The election of Abraham Lincoln, a self-avowed "Unionist", to the Presidency in 1860 prompted 11 Southern states to secede from the Union. These Southern states later formed the Confederate States of America. President Lincoln considered these secessions a mere "rebellion" and moved to preserve the Union by force. On April 12, 1861 Confederate troops fired upon Fort Sumter, off of Charleston, South Carolina. The American Civil War was on.
