1607 Jamestown,
the first permanent British settlement in America, is founded on the Chesapeake.
1619 John Rolfe brings African slaves to Jamestown
… to harvest tobacco along with indentured Whites.
(In 1614 Indian chief Powhatan signed a formal treaty with the settlers and sealed the deal in traditional fashion by marrying his daughter Pocahontas to John Rolfe, one of the English colonists most prominent residents.)
1620 Mayflower arrives at Cape Cod.
Sectionalism: the opposition North/South
1776 Declaration of IndependEnce
1777 - THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION (March 1, 1781/ March 4,1789) (see glossary DUBAN accueil)
The first Constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation, but right from the start it was obvious that they could not work and keep the new nation united. Why?
1) There was no chief executive, no president of the U.S. There was a “Committee of States“ made up of one delegate from each state (13). This committee existed only during the intervals between the sessions of the Congress. This committee could in the absence of Congress perform routine governmental functions only.
2) There was no real judicial department. There was no court to handle disputes between the states.
3) A majority of 9 votes was required to pass important laws.
4) Congress could requisition taxes from the States but could not force the collection of taxes. It goes without saying that the states didn't pay the amount requisitioned.
5) Congress could not enlist troops. It could not draft men, only requisition them into the armed forces.
6) The members of Congress were paid by the states and a state could recall any delegate at any time. It's obvious then that the first, essential function of the delegates was to protect and advance the interests of their own states and cooperate for the welfare of the United States when possible and when it coincided with their states' interests.
7) Congress was not given real power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. Each state set its own import duties and soon each state tried to protect its own internal trade by levying tariffs against goods from other states. Trade agreements between the United States and a foreign nation were nearly impossible. As a consequence, inter-state trade—internal trade across state borders—was very low.
8) Congress was not given the exclusive power to issue paper money. The paper money situation soon became chaotic.
10) Amending the Articles of Confederation required the unanimous vote of the 13 states, which was difficult to obtain.
The Articles of Confederation would become effective only when ratified by all of the 13 states. All states ratified them quickly except Maryland who held out until March 1781. Why? Many large states at the time had claims to western lands, across the Alleghenies and into the Mississippi River valley. Maryland was a small state and was afraid of union with so many large states.... So Maryland ratified the Articles of Confederation only when the larger states relinquished their claims to western lands. This attitude had very important consequences in that it induced the states to cede their western lands to the United States. The acquisition of these lands by the central government set the stage for the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 . It opened the settlement of the West under federal control and avoided later conflicts between the first 13 states.
1787 The Constitution is completed. (Ratified 1788-89)
On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was completed in Philadelphia… The new government it prescribed came into existence on March 4, 1789, after fierce fights over ratification in many of the states.
Article Seven of the constitution of the United States describes the process by which the entire document was to become effective. It required that nine of the thirteen original States ratify the constitution through legislative approval. With eleven states having done so, the Congress of the Confederation passed a resolution on September 13, 1788 to put the new Constitution into operation. Wikipedia
1791 The Bill Of Rights
(first ten amendments) was added to the Constitution which was ratified by all states before 1791.
The first ten amendments to the US Constitution, were described by Jefferson as “what the people are entitled to against every government on earth.“ They are
(1) freedom of press, speech, and religion;
(2) the right to bear arms;
(3) prohibition of quartering of troops;
(4) protection against unlawful search and seizure;
(5) the right of due process of law;
(6) the right to a fair and public trial;
(7) the right to a trial by jury;
(8) prohibition of cruel punishments;
(9) protection of non enumerated rights; and
(10) reservation of powers, i.e. powers not reserved for the federal government reside in the states.
http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~walters/web%20103/Missouri%20Compromise%20map.jpg
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Missouri was to enter the Union (= the United States) as a full state but the question was to know whether it would enter the Union as a free state or as a slave state: no political solution could be found until Henry Clay arranged a compromise: Missouri would be admitted as a slave state. Maine would be cut loose from Massachusetts as a free state, and Congress decreed that slavery would be excluded north of the parallel 36° 30'. The Missouri Compromise excluded slavery from Louisiana Purchase lands. |
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/territorialacquisition.html
1850 Compromise of 1850 - Fugitive Slave Act -
Also called the Omnibus bill, the compromise of 1850, pushed by Kentucky's Henry Clay and Illinois's Stephen A. Douglas, provided for the admission of California as a free state the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah which were free to choose slavery or not—the principle of popular sovereignty as it was later Free states were obliged to arrest runaway slaves and return them to their home states, as stated in the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Many Northerners opposed it and organized “the underground railroad“ to help fugitive slaves to reach Canada and freedom.
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act - (P. O. Ray)
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and put forward the idea that the settlers of each territory, not the Missouri Compromise nor the Congress should determine the future status of slavery in each new state to be created out of each territory. This was the famous principle now called popular sovereignty which had been enunciated four years earlier in the Compromise of 1850. From the beginning of the republic the law had operated on the assumption that the federal government controlled the territories, that it would dictate the organization of government, and that self-rule would come gradually.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river countries west of Iowa and Missouri was overdue. As an isolated issue, territorial organization of this area was no problem. It was, however, irrevocably bound to the bitter sectional controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories and was further complicated by conflict over the location of the projected transcontinental railroad. Under no circumstances did proslavery Congressmen want a free territory (Kansas) west of Missouri. Because the West was expanding rapidly, territorial organization, despite these difficulties, could no longer be postponed. Four attempts to organize a single territory for this area had already been defeated in Congress, largely because of Southern opposition to the Missouri Compromise. Although the last of these attempts to organize the area had nearly been successful, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, decided to offer territorial legislation making concessions to the South. Douglas's motives have remained largely a matter of speculation. Various historians have emphasized Douglas's desire for the Presidency, his wish to cement the bonds of the Democratic party, his interest in expansion and railroad building, or his desire to activate the unimpressive Pierce administration. The bill he reported in Jan., 1854, contained the provision that the question of slavery should be left to the decision of the territorial settlers themselves. This was the famous principle that Douglas now called popular sovereignty, though actually it had been enunciated four years earlier in the Compromise of 1850. In its final form Douglas's bill provided for the creation of two new territories—Kansas and Nebraska—instead of one. The obvious inference—at least to Missourians—was that the first would be slave, the second free. The Kansas-Nebraska Act flatly contradicted the provisions of the Missouri Compromise (under which slavery would have been barred from both territories); indeed, an amendment was added specifically repealing that compromise. This aspect of the bill in particular enraged the antislavery forces, but after three months of bitter debate in Congress, Douglas, backed by President Pierce and the Southerners, saw it adopted. Its effects were anything but reassuring to those who had hoped for a peaceful solution. The popular sovereignty provision caused both proslavery and antislavery forces to marshal strength and exert full pressure to determine the “popular” decision in Kansas in their own favor, using groups such as the Emigrant Aid Company. The result was the tragedy of “bleeding” Kansas. Northerners and Southerners were aroused to such passions that sectional division reached a point that precluded reconciliation. A new political organization, the Republican party, was founded by opponents of the bill, and the United States was propelled toward the Civil War. (P. O. Ray, The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (1909, repr. 1965).
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act - (encarta)
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761555881¶=28#p28
Saturday 5 October 2002
If the Ostend Manifesto severely damaged Pierce's popularity, the Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed it. Senator Douglas introduced the bill, proposing the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska territories between the Missouri River and the Continental Divide. In each territory the slavery issue was to be decided by vote of the residents. Because both territories lay north of parallel 36° 30', this was an exception to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which barred the creation of new slavery states north of that line. Douglas told Congress that the organization of these territories was essential to a major national objective, the construction of a transcontinental railroad. Southerners in Congress began maneuvering when the bill was introduced. If they supported Douglas, they would be giving up their long-held dream of a southern route for the transcontinental railroad. In return they demanded that the bill include an outright repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Since the Southerners belonged to the Democratic Party and Douglas was also a Democrat, it was up to the Democratic president to provide leadership. Democratic President Pierce was no friend of the compromise because of his belief that any federal restriction on slavery was unconstitutional. He not only yielded to Southern demands, he wrote the repeal clause himself, declaring that the Missouri Compromise was ‚“inoperative and void.“
The repeal clause brought a storm of protest from Northerners in Congress, but once more Pierce helped bring his party into line. In May 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law. To make certain that Kansas would vote for slavery, people from Missouri, a slavery state, streamed into Kansas to pack the ballot boxes in favor of a proslavery legislature. The proslavery forces won, but the North countered with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which sent Northern settlers into Kansas to help organize a rival free-soil (antislavery) government. The two Kansas governments occupied separate capitals, those favoring slavery at Lecompton and the free-soilers at Topeka, and both appealed to Washington for recognition. Pierce recognized the Lecompton group, over the bitter opposition of many congressmen who charged that it was elected through fraud, and condemned the Topeka group as rebels. Meanwhile, bands from both sides made armed raids on each other in a virtual civil war that was known as the Border War, or Bleeding Kansas. The conflict was a recurring nightmare throughout Pierce's administration.
1857 Dred Scott Decision
Chief Justice Taney and a majority of the Supreme Court declared that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories. The Supreme Court denied citizenship to U.S. Blacks and Congress’s right to exclude slavery from the territories. The ruling made slavery legal in all the territories, thereby adding fuel to the sectional controversy and pushing the nation along the road to civil war. The decision was a clear victory for the slaveholding South.
1860 Abraham Lincoln elected president.
1860 The first state to secede was South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860
1861 Lincoln is inaugurated (March 4, 1861)
1861 Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861)
What conclusions do you draw from this short chronology?
…
Right from colonial times, a strong environmental, cultural and economic opposition between North and South (sectionalism).
Right from the times of the birth of the nation, there existed a contradiction between the principles of the Declaration (“All men are created equal …“) and the grim fact of slavery.
The Constitution had tried to evade this contradiction by resorting to compromise.
The one issue that perverted American political life from the Declaration of Independence until the Civil War was the issue of slavery and its extension to the West.