DBQ: Political Disputes 1820-1860 For forty-four years, the United States of America was a thriving country. We had won our independence from Great Britain and we had started to create a country that would change the world. Yet, in the year 1860, a joined country and political agreement between all states seemed utterly impossible. People fought with each other so deeply about slavery, the country was divided between slave and free states. By the time of 1820 through 1860, political disagreement grew so large, there had been only one answer.
The chapters of our textbook, America: A Narrative History, written by George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, takes us on a historical yet comparative journey of the road to war and what caused the American Revolution, an insight into the war itself, and a perception to what life was like in America after the war was over. The essays of the book, America Compared: American History in International Perspective, collected by Carl J. Guarneri gives us a global context and a comparison between the North and South Americas in the dividing issues of labor, slavery, taxes, politics, economy, liberty, and equality. Part One These chapters in our textbook Tindall describes; the road to the American Revolution, the road to the surrendering of the British, and the road to the American colonists receiving their independence and developing the government which the people of the United States will be governed by. The road to the American Revolution consisted of several events, which escalated to the war that began April 19, 1775, as the tensions between the American colonies and the British Government advanced towards breaking point.
Oakes argues that as America went to war with itself, Lincoln’s antislavery politics and Douglas’s abolitionism gradually converged. James Oakes vivid political analysis chronicles the transformation of two of America’s greatest leaders as Lincoln embraces the role of the “radical” and Douglas embraces the role of the “republican” (104). The Radical and the Republican is set in the Antebellum period when the United States was divided by the great struggle between liberty and slavery in the North and the South. The Antebellum Era in American history was a time of economic, political, and social change.
The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt by the U.S Congress to settle divisive issues between the North and South, including slavery expansion, apprehension in the North of fugitive slaves, and slavery in the District of Columbia. The Compromise of 1850 failed because Senator John C. Calhoun from the South and Senator William Seward from the North could not agree on what Henry Clay was putting down. Part of the compromise was to make California a slavery free state which benefits the North, and enforcing a stricter fugitive slave law which benefits the South. Both the North and South opposed what the other was benefiting from. What sparked the failure of the Compromise was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
The presidency of Thomas Jefferson, taking place between 1801 and 1809, was the third in America and the first with a Democratic-Republican as the head of the executive branch. Many have questioned the morals of Jefferson in his time in office, and to truly find out his virtues, one must analyze multiple media sources ,both written by and about Jefferson, himself, in the early nineteenth century. As a Democratic-Republican, it is clear that Jefferson was in favor of minimizing the power of the federal government, and maximizing the power given to state governments and the citizens who live under them. Although, at certain points in his presidency, Thomas moved away from his morals or, sometimes, abandoned them entirely, Jefferson was, to a larger extent, a principled leader.
There were many important Compromises between the years of 1820 and 1860, some that worked completely and some that didn’t. In the early nineteenth century, people were good at compromising and making things work for everyone. How long did perfect compromising actually last? Slavery began to split the nation apart, causing compromising to become hard to do.
Countless citizens in the 1840s and 1850s, feeling a sense of mission, believed that Almighty God had “manifestly’’ destined the American people for a hemispheric career. They would spread their uplifting and ennobling democratic institutions over at least the entire continent. Land greed and ideals—“empire’’ and “liberty’’—were thus conveniently conjoined. 14. What political party cost Henry Clay the popular vote in the state of New York, & what is ironic about Polk’s election in 1844 regarding this party’s position on Texas?
Both African Americans and women helped to further the American Revolution’s cause with their contributions . Both fought in the war and in certain cases had to lie in order to serve, however, their motives
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind” (Paine 1). With the Revolutionary War beginning in 1775, and the publication of Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, only a year later, this statement was widely recognized and addressed the issue at hand: the fight for independence. According to Paine’s assertion, America’s desire for peace and freedom is a basic necessity of life; it is what all men desire. Despite this innate thirst for liberty, many residents of America’s thirteen colonies were fearful of Great Britain, and because of this fear, complied with Great Britain’s every whim. Consequently, most colonists were hesitant to fight against the mother country for independence.
The government of the United States indirectly suppressed women almost as much as African Americans and other minorities. Throughout the 1700’s and early 1800’s, a woman’s place was in the household and not in the work force. Women remained innocent in the mind of the public, but eventually they used this consensus to their advantage. During the Civil War, as a result of the split in the nation, women were overlooked when it came to their opinion. Women used this alienation to seek information that they wished to give to the side in which they supported.
The Daughters of Liberty The Daughters of Liberty was a group of women activists who fought for the freedom of the colonists from the British Parliament. They were a major factor in protesting against taxes and boycotting British goods. The Daughters of Liberty did whatever it took to free the Patriots from British rule. They accepted women from all ages and all backgrounds.
Undoubtedly, Harriet Tubman was the most influential abolitionist of the early to mid-1800s. Born a slave in 1820, Tubman escaped her plantation in 1849, and returned 19 times to rescue over 300 enslaved people. Tubman was called “Black Moses” because she, like Moses of the Old Testament, led her people out of persecution and into freedom. She had narcolepsy (a mental disorder that causes one to fall asleep randomly) but still served as a nurse, a scout, and a spy for the Union during the Civil War.
According to Chapter one of Major Problems in American History
Andre Fleche’s first-rate study of how the European revolutions of 1848 influenced the American Civil War arrives amidst recent calls by scholars to internationalize the history of America’s great conflict.[1 ] Fleche argues that the legacy of the 1848 revolutions influenced Union and Confederate conceptions of nationalism, as the competing sides participated in the “transatlantic dialogue” (p. 3) over the definition of the modern nation-state. Americans believed that their revolution provided an example for the world, and used the success or failures of subsequent European revolutionary struggles to measure the viability of American republicanism as a world model.
His intentions were pure and all for the positive outcome of his country. Therefore, the quote “The greatest measure of the 19th century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in the world” truly explains the approach that the Thirteenth Amendment costed in order to
