The fight over slavery — and what came after.
Westward expansion forces the question the founders ducked. The political system breaks. Half a million Americans die. And the Reconstruction that should have remade the South is allowed, by 1877, to fail.
The Mexican Cession (1848) puts a continent of new territory on the table — and the question of whether slavery follows the flag becomes unavoidable. Compromise of 1850, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Kansas-Nebraska (1854), Dred Scott (1857), Lincoln-Douglas (1858), Harpers Ferry (1859), Lincoln’s election (1860), secession (1860–61), and a four-year war whose body count exceeded all other American wars combined. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war’s purpose. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments wrote a new constitutional order. Reconstruction (1865–1877) tried to enforce it — federal troops, Black political participation, the first public schools in the South — and was systematically rolled back by terror (Klan), Supreme Court retreat (Slaughter-House, Cruikshank), and finally the Compromise of 1877.
The CED, topic by topic.
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5.1
Contextualizing Period 5
Sectional crisis on the eve of Polk’s war.
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5.2
Manifest Destiny
The Mexican-American War, the cession, the Wilmot Proviso.
MIG · NAT -
5.3
The Mexican-American War
How the U.S. acquired Texas, California, and the Southwest — and what it cost morally.
WOR · MIG -
5.4
The Compromise of 1850
Clay’s last act, Fugitive Slave Act, a peace that wouldn’t hold.
PCE -
5.5
Sectional Conflict: Regional Differences
Three economies on a collision course.
SOC · WXT -
5.6
Failure of Compromise
Kansas-Nebraska, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, the Republican Party.
PCE -
5.7
Election of 1860 and Secession
Why a man who’d never visited the South triggered seven states to leave.
PCE · NAT -
5.8
Military Conflict in the Civil War
Bull Run to Appomattox; total war and the grim arithmetic of attrition.
WOR · WXT -
5.9
Government Policies during the Civil War
Emancipation, 13th Amendment, Homestead, transcontinental railroad — federal power expands permanently.
PCE · WXT -
5.10
Reconstruction
Presidential vs. Congressional, the 14th and 15th, Black officeholding, the violent Southern response.
PCE · SOC · NAT -
5.11
Failure of Reconstruction
Klan, Compromise of 1877, Slaughter-House, Cruikshank, the start of Jim Crow.
SOC · NAT · PCE
Connect to the bigger picture
Era: World of Empires / Modern World
APWH cross-links: 6.4 Global Economic Development; 6.7 Effects of Migration
Next: Period 6 — Industrial America
