Introduction to Expansion to the Mississippi (1801–1861)

In the decades before the Civil War, the United States was rapidly growing in size and strength. Frontier settlements spread west of the Appalachian Mountains and across the Mississippi River as the nation acquired territory through purchase, diplomacy, and conquest. The U.S. military, which was barely capable of defending itself from Great Britain in 1812, grew mighty enough to project power southward and win the Mexican-American War in 1847. By 1860 the spirit of “Manifest Destiny” had prevailed, and the nation stretched across the continent.

American political life was gradually becoming more democratic. Little by little, elite fears of the multitude—and common people’s deference toward the upper classes—subsided as new groups clamored for participation in local, state, and federal affairs. States slowly edged toward universal white male suffrage and granted voter participation in presidential elections, which grew increasingly full of campaign hullabaloo and partisan propaganda. Thomas Jefferson’s (1743–1826) vision of an agrarian democracy seemed to take shape in Andrew Jackson’s (1767–1845) coalition of the lower classes. Reform movements, including abolitionists, feminists, and labor activists, exposed flaws in the nation’s social structure, and the Massachusetts dissident Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) proposed “civil disobedience” as a means of achieving social reform.

The economic development of the nation took place fitfully. Severe recessions called “panics” occurred in 1819, 1837, and 1857 as the nation’s financial system struggled to support the economy’s explosive growth. Investment in road building and other “internal improvements” by the federal government was politically controversial for decades. States took the lead, as New York did in building the Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes waterways to the Hudson River and the northeastern economy. The Supreme Court decision in Gibbons vs. Ogden that authority over interstate navigation resides in the federal government cleared the way for nationwide systems of transportation and commerce.

The nation’s growth rested on the forced resettlement of Native Americans and the forced labor of African slaves. Federal lawmakers generally supported compulsory migration beyond the Mississippi as the necessary solution to the “Indian problem.” The problem of slavery created conflicts that were not easily contained. While the Northern states gradually emancipated their slaves, Southern leaders such as John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) of South Carolina steadfastly defended their “peculiar institution.” As cotton production boomed, so did the Southern slave population—from less than one million in 1800 to four million by 1860.

The rancorous debate over Missouri’s application for statehood and slavery’s expansion into western territories revealed the intense divide between Northern and Southern states. The “Missouri Compromise” brokered in 1820 by legislative leader Henry Clay (1777–1852) of Kentucky proved to be only a temporary solution to a dispute capable of tearing the union apart. Politicians endeavored to avoid disagreement by passing a “gag rule” that banned discussion of slavery in the Congress. However, the issue roared back into national politics during the 1850s, culminating in the election of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the secession of the Southern states, and the outbreak of civil war.