Sunday, November 24, 2019
Question 2 Essay Example
Question 2 Essay Example Question 2 Essay Question 2 Essay Between 1803 and 1853, the area of the United States more than tripled. As the nation expanded westward, the different parts of the country grew apart. The people of the North, the South and the West all developed different ways of life because of the different climates, kinds of land and natural resources in the three sections. Each section had its own problems and people wanted the national government to pass only such laws as would help their section. This attitude is known as sectionalism and it would cause great harm to the unity of the country.In the past, people of the different areas had worked together because they all wanted the same things. Thus, the generations of Americans from the 1770s to the 1840s achieved great successes in territorial expansion. However, from 1820 to 1860, national unity lessened as sectional interests came first and people argued among themselves about tariffs, money, the building of roads and railroads and were divided over slavery (Kurth, 1996).T he social, economic and political conditions between the sections had diverged by 1850. In the North, factories were being built and were producing a wide variety of articles. There was a movement of the immigrant population to the West where fertile farms were made out of the wilderness and acres of wheat and crop were grown. In the South, cotton was king. The cotton economy of the South was based on the labor of the Negro slaves. As the cotton was milled, it was usually sent by ship to the textile factories in the North or to Europe. As the nation expanded in population and size, better transportation facilities were needed. The most important were the railroad, the steamboat and to a lesser extent, the canals. Most of them went from east to west, allowing the agricultural products of the West to be sent east and the manufactured products of the East to be went west. To a certain extent, this shut off the South from the rest of the country (Morris, 1965).As more and more settlers moved west, more and more portions of land were organized as territories. The Southerners wanted to have slavery in at least some of the new territories because new farmland was need and since the plantation system was based on slavery, they sought this new land where slavery was permitted. Also, the Southerners wanted to keep the balance of power in the Senate.In 1819 when Missouri, a territory allowing slavery applied for admission as a state, the balance between slave and free states was threatened. If Missouri was accepted, there will then be eleven free states and twelve slave states. The North proposed that for Missouri to be accepted, the following conditions should apply that no additional slaves are to enter Missouri and the children of the slaves who are already there are to be freed at the age of 25. The Southerners resent the intrusion and this was not passed in the Senate. Instead, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was passed with the admission of Maine as a free state, M issouri as a slave state and slavery is barred from the Louisiana territory north of latitude 36o 30’ (â€Å"An Outline of American History†, 1994).When California and New Mexico were seized soon after war with Mexico was declared in mid-19th century, the problem of slavery once again became an issue. In January 1850, Henry Clay proposed a compromise to solve the problem of slavery in the territories on five points:1.            that California be admitted as a free state as it had requested;2.            that territorial governments be set up in New Mexico and Utah;3.            that a new and stricter fugitive slave law be passed to provide for returning runaway slaves to their owners;4.            that the slave trade in District of Columbia be entirely stopped;5.            that the boundary between Texas and New Mexico be settled and that the U.S. government will pay any debts that Texas had.After much debate and inevitable dissatisfaction by the extremists in the North and South, it passed as law and became known as the Compromise of 1850 (Smith, 1906).A decade later, a compromise can no longer be reached and due to sectional differences, slavery issue and issues against territorial management of the country’s expansion, several Southern states seceded from the Union setting the stage for the Civil War.Referencesâ€Å"Extension of Slavery, Chapter 5.†(1994). An outline of American history. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994/ch8_p1.htm.
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