An outline, era by era

United States

westward expansion, Civil War (1861 – 1865), industrial rise

Late Modern Era / 19th Century · ~1800 – 1914

In the nineteenth century the United States grew from a young republic along the Atlantic coast into a continental nation and a major industrial power. Through purchase, treaty, war and settlement it spread west to the Pacific, displacing many Native American peoples and extending the reach of slavery as well as of free farming. These years of westward expansion are the first thread of the entry.

The dispute over slavery in the new territories helped bring on the Civil War (1861 to 1865), which preserved the Union and ended slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment. The war killed several hundred thousand people and reshaped the federal government. After it, railroads, steel, oil, mass immigration and big cities drove an industrial rise. By 1900 the American economy was among the largest in the world, and the country was beginning to act as a world power.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Louisiana Purchase

    Event

    What happened

    In 1803 the United States buys the Louisiana Territory from Napoleonic France for about 15 million dollars. The treaty is signed in Paris in April and ratified by the Senate that October. The land stretches from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and roughly doubles the size of the country.

    The rest is history

    The purchase opened the interior to American settlement and set the stage for later expansion. It also raised the question of whether slavery would spread into the new lands, which became a central quarrel of the following decades. Native nations who lived there were not consulted. Lewis and Clark set out to explore the territory in 1804.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryTreaty between the United States of America and the French Republic (Louisiana Purchase Treaty). Signed at Paris, 30 April 1803.
    2. BookKastor, Peter J. The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

  2. The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears

    Event

    What happened

    In 1830 Congress passes the Indian Removal Act, under President Andrew Jackson, allowing the government to negotiate the exchange of Native lands in the South for land west of the Mississippi. In the 1830s the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee are forced west. Thousands die on the journeys, including the Cherokee removal of 1838 to 1839, known as the Trail of Tears.

    The rest is history

    Removal opened millions of acres in the South to white settlers and cotton planters, many of them slaveholders. The Cherokee had won a Supreme Court case, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), but the federal government did not enforce it. The Cherokee removal followed a treaty signed by a minority faction in 1835 and opposed by most of the nation. The Indian Territory where these peoples were sent was itself later reduced by further settlement.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryIndian Removal Act. United States statute, 28 May 1830.
    2. BookPerdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1995.

  3. Texas, the Mexican Cession and the Oregon country

    Event

    What happened

    In 1845 the United States annexes Texas, which had broken away from Mexico in 1836. In 1846 a treaty with Britain fixes the Oregon boundary at the 49th parallel. The war with Mexico ends in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which the United States gains California and most of the present Southwest.

    The rest is history

    Within about three years the country reached the Pacific. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought a rush of settlers in 1849. The question of slavery in the new lands led to the Compromise of 1850 and then to sharper conflict. The Mexican war itself belongs to the Mexico entry.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Treaty between the United States and Mexico, signed 2 February 1848.
    2. BookMerry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.

  4. Cotton, slavery and the sectional crisis

    Event

    What happened

    After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton planting and slavery spread across the Deep South, and the enslaved population grew to about four million by 1860. Disputes over slavery in new territories lead to the Missouri Compromise (1820), the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). In 1857 the Dred Scott decision rules that Black Americans cannot be citizens.

    The rest is history

    These fights split the political parties and brought the Republican Party into being in the 1850s. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican opposed to the spread of slavery, won the presidency in November 1860. Seven Southern states then voted to secede before he took office. Historians widely agree that slavery was the central cause of the secession.

    Sources

    1. BookMcPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
    2. BookFehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

  5. Secession and the Civil War

    Event

    What happened

    Between December 1860 and June 1861 eleven Southern states leave the Union and form the Confederate States of America. Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina on 12 April 1861, and the war begins. It ends with Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865.

    The rest is history

    The war killed roughly 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers, by recent estimates, and was the deadliest conflict in American history. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect on 1 January 1863, and Black men served in the Union army. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery. The Union was preserved and national power grew.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryLincoln, Abraham. Emancipation Proclamation. Executive proclamation, 1 January 1863.
    2. BookMcPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

  6. Reconstruction

    Event

    What happened

    After the war the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) grants citizenship to those born in the United States, and the Fifteenth (1870) protects the right of male citizens to vote regardless of race. Federal troops oversee Southern governments, and Black men are elected to office. The disputed presidential election of 1876 is followed in 1877 by the withdrawal of the remaining federal troops from the South.

    The rest is history

    Violence by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the return of white Democratic control weakened these gains. By the 1890s Southern states were passing laws that segregated and disfranchised Black citizens. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal. The Reconstruction amendments were later the basis of the civil rights laws of the 1960s.

    Sources

    1. BookFoner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

  7. The transcontinental railroad

    Event

    What happened

    Congress passes the Pacific Railway Act in 1862 and the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies build toward each other. Many Irish and Chinese immigrants do the labour. The two lines meet at Promontory Summit, Utah, on 10 May 1869.

    The rest is history

    The railroad cut the journey from coast to coast from months to about a week. It accelerated settlement of the Plains, the destruction of the bison herds on which Plains peoples depended, and the growth of national markets. By 1900 the country had around 190,000 miles of track. Railroad finance and building were also tied to corruption scandals such as Crédit Mobilier.

    Sources

    1. BookAmbrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
    2. BookWhite, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

  8. Industrialization and the Gilded Age

    Event

    What happened

    From the 1870s, steel, oil, and electrical and other industries expand quickly, and large corporations such as Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil emerge. Millions of immigrants arrive, and cities like Chicago and New York grow rapidly. Strikes such as the Pullman strike of 1894 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 show the conflicts and the first federal limits on business combination.

    The rest is history

    By about 1900 the United States produced more manufactured goods than any other nation. Wealth was concentrated in few hands, while many workers faced long hours and low pay. These tensions fed the labour movement and the Progressive reforms of the early twentieth century. The war with Spain in 1898 then brought overseas territories.

    Sources

    1. BookChandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
    2. BookSummers, Mark Wahlgren. The Gilded Age, or, The Hazard of New Functions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.

  9. Manifest Destiny

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Americans of the 1840s are said to have shared one belief, that God had given them the whole continent, and that this idea called Manifest Destiny drove all expansion. The phrase is told as an official national doctrine.

    The rest is history

    The phrase was coined in 1845 by the journalist John L. O'Sullivan in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, in writing about Texas. It was a slogan rather than a policy, and Americans disagreed over it. Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln opposed the Mexican war, and many opposed expansion that would extend slavery. Historians treat it as a rationale used to justify expansion, which also took in the displacement of Native peoples.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryO'Sullivan, John L. "Annexation." United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no. 1 (July-August 1845): 5-10.
    2. BookMerk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History. New York: Knopf, 1963.

  10. Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation

    Popular belief

    The legend

    It is often said that Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed all enslaved people in the United States at a stroke.

    The rest is history

    The proclamation applied only to areas in rebellion, not to the loyal border states or to Confederate areas already under Union control. Its practical effect depended on Union armies advancing, and it also allowed Black men to join the army. It made ending slavery a Union war aim. Slavery was abolished across the whole country only by the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryLincoln, Abraham. Emancipation Proclamation. Executive proclamation, 1 January 1863.
    2. BookGuelzo, Allen C. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

  11. The Civil War was fought over states' rights, not slavery

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common claim holds that the Southern states left the Union mainly to defend states' rights or tariffs, and that slavery was a minor issue.

    The rest is history

    The secession declarations of Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas name the defence of slavery as their chief reason. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said in his Cornerstone Speech of March 1861 that the new government rested on the idea that Black people were not equal to whites. Some Southerners also cited states' rights, but largely as a means to protect slavery. Most historians therefore regard slavery as the central cause. The claim itself became popular in the postwar years among defenders of the Confederate cause.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryMississippi. A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. January 1861.
    2. BookDew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

  12. Lincoln and the log cabin

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Abraham Lincoln is said to have been a poor backwoods boy who studied by firelight and split rails, rising from a log cabin to the presidency by his own effort alone.

    The rest is history

    Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky in 1809 and had little formal schooling, and he did read widely on his own. The rail-splitter image was promoted in the 1860 campaign. By the 1850s he was a prosperous lawyer who had represented railroads. The story contains truth but was shaped for political appeal.

    Sources

    1. BookDonald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

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