American HistoryPart 2, Chapters 4 – 6

Manifest Destiny

In the 19th century United States, Manifest Destiny

was the widely held belief that American settlers

were destined to expand throughout the continent.

This concept, born out of "A sense of mission to

redeem the Old World by high example ... generated

by the potentialities of a new earth for building a

new heaven”.1

1 Merk, Frederick; Bannister, Lois (1963). Manifest destiny and Mission in American History. Harvard University Press.

Manifest Destiny

The phrase itself meant different things to different

people, and was rejected by many people.

Manifest destiny was always a very general notion

rather than a specific policy. There was never a set

of principles defining Manifest destiny.

American Territorial Acquisition

Immigration 1790 to 1849

There was relatively little immigration from 1770 to

1830; indeed there was significant emigration to

Canada, including about 75,000 Loyalists as well as

Germans and other looking for better farms in what

is now Ontario.

Large scale immigration resumed in the 1830s from

Britain, Ireland, Germany and other parts of Central

Europe as well as Scandinavia1. Most were

attracted by the cheap farm land.

1Norway, Sweden, Denmark (sometimes Finland and Iceland)

Population and Foreign Born 1790 to 1849

Population Immigrants1 Foreign Born %

1790 3,918,000 60,000

1800 5,236,000 60,000

1810 7,036,000 60,000

1820 10,086,000 60,000

1830 12,785,000 143,000 200,000 2 1.6%

1840 17,018,000 599,000 800,000 2 4.7%

1850 23,054,000 1,713,000 2,244,000 9.7%

1 The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are

estimates.2 The number foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations.

Immigration 1850 to 1930

Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans

immigrated to the United States with a peak in the

years between 1881 and 1885, when a million

Germans left Germany and settled mostly in the

Midwest.

Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5

million Irish entered America.

Immigration 1850 to 1930

After 1870 steam powered larger and faster ships,

with lower fares. This led to a new wave of migration.

This constituted the third episode in the history of

U.S. immigration. It could better be referred to as a

flood of immigrants, as nearly 25 million Europeans

made the voyage.

Conestoga (Covered) Wagon

Conestoga (Covered) Wagon

• From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas.

• Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States.

• By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to 4 million.

Slavery in America

• Slaves resisted the institution through rebellions and non-compliance.

• They sometimes escaped through travel to non-slave states and Canada.

• Escape was facilitated by the Underground Railroad.

Slavery in America

Slavery in America

• Between 1776 and 1804, slavery was outlawed in every state north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line1.

• By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in the North were free.

• By 1840, virtually all blacks in the North were free.

• In Democracy in America (1835), Alexis de Tocqueville noted that "the colonies in which there were no slaves became more populous and more rich than those in which slavery flourished.

1The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, taken as the northern limit of the slave-owning states before the abolition of slavery.

Slavery in America

Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.

•The best-selling novel of the 19th century.

•The 2nd best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.

•Credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.

Slavery in America

Uncle Tom's Cabin featured the character of Uncle Tom, a

long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other

characters revolve.

The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while

also asserting that Christian love can overcome something

as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings

Slavery in America

Reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin has exerted an influence equaled by few

other novels in history.

Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of

protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of

books in response to the novel) while the book elicited

praise from abolitionists.

As a best-seller, the novel heavily influenced later protest

literature.

Slavery in America

By 1857, Uncle Tom's Cabin had been translated into 20

languages.

Later, it was translated into almost every language, including

Chinese – with translator Lin Shu 林紓 creating the first

Chinese translation of an American novel in 1901.

Slavery in America

The Civil War, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865

between the United States (the "Union" or the "North") and

several Southern slave states that had declared their

secession and formed the Confederate States of America

(the "Confederacy" or the "South").

The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, and

after four years of bloody combat (mostly in the South), the

Confederacy was defeated, slavery was abolished, and the

difficult Reconstruction process of restoring unity and

guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.

The American Civil War

The Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars.

Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced

weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of

civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation

and food supplies all foreshadowed World War I.

It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in

the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an

undetermined number of civilian casualties.

The American Civil War

• State and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965.

• They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy

• A supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans.

• The separation led to treatment, financial support and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans.

Jim Crow laws

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law

signed by Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, allowing the

U.S. to suspend Chinese immigration, a ban that was

intended to last 10 years.

This law was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December

17, 1943.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

The first significant Chinese immigration to America began

with the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, and continued

with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of

the First Transcontinental Railroad.

During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold

was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well received.

As gold became harder to find and competition increased,

animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners

increased.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

After being forcibly driven from the mines, most Chinese

settled in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took

up low end wage labor such as restaurant and laundry work.

With the post-Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s,

anti-Chinese animosity became politicized, with people

blaming Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

On June 18, 2012, the United States House of

Representatives passed a resolution introduced by

Congresswoman Judy Chu, that formally expresses the

regret of the House of Representatives for the Chinese

Exclusion Act, which imposed almost total restrictions on

Chinese immigration and naturalization and denied Chinese-

Americans basic freedoms because of their ethnicity.

This was only the fourth time that the U.S. Congress issued

an apology to a group of people.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

For next week, please prepare for a short quiz

(10 questions) covering all of Part 1 Geography

and the first six chapters of Part 2 History.

Also, read Part 2 History,

Ch. 7,

pages 116 to 132