Master List: Growth and Expansion of Sectional Differences

1. The North would embrace Federalism more than the South (many Southern states were staunch state’s rights advocates). The North would produce more federalists (political idealists who wanted effective government) such as Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and John Marshal, while the South would produce more anti-federalists (political idealists who wanted smaller parties, such as individuals or states to have as much freedom as possible) such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.

2. The factory would enjoy promising beginnings in Rhode Island (1790s) and be prominently adopted by Boston. Industry would become established in the North from the 1820s to 1860.

3. “Eli Whitney’s” cotton gin, which enables high-seed cotton to become the new Southern cash crop, establishes cotton as “king.” Cotton would dominate Southern agriculture.

4. Tariffs: Originally the principal source of income for the Federal government before the War of 1812, sections would split over the issue on very basic grounds: the North favored a tariff on imported goods to protect the Northern industry; the South hated tariffs because tariffs prompted the sale of raw products to the North, and the North would sell the processed goods for a profit, meaning that the South was losing money.

5. Missouri Compromise: Drafted primarily to ensure that slave and free states would be equally represented in Congress, this Compromise settled the debate of allowing Missouri into the Union, given that Missouri, a slave state, would give slave states the majority in Congress. The Compromise allowed Missouri into the Union as a slave state along with the admission of free Maine, and mandated that, during future state admission, states north of the 36°30’ latitude would be free and states south of that line would be slave.

6. Compromise of 1850: Disputes arose over the admission of California into the Union, because the state straddled the 36°30’ line, and over the admission of the Arizona and New Mexico territories because slavery would not be economically viable in those states. Henry Clay would settle the debate by instituting popular sovereignty in these territories, among other concessions regarding slavery (slavery was allowed in Washington D.C.; the slave trade was not).

7. Kansas-Nebraska Act: Crafted by Stephen Douglas, this Act divided Nebraska into the states of Kansas and Nebraska and repealed the boundary mandating where slavery could (south of the 36°30’ latitude) and could not exist (north of the 36°30’ latitude) in favor of popular sovereignty. This Act would prompt the migration of extremists on both sides of the slavery issue to these states in order to determine the status of the states, resulting the strife known as “Bleeding Kansas” and John Brown’s murders (see Extremists).

8. Dred Scott Case: Says that blacks are not citizens

9. Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Election: heavily contributed to sectionalist tensions, because the South suspected his integrity regarding his statements about preserving slavery in the South, and also because his republican beliefs opposed allowing slavery in the western territories.

10. Lincoln Calls for 75,000 Volunteers: a reaction to the firing on Fort Sumter, the act incited Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina to secede.

11. Emancipation Proclamation: Even though it did not free a single slave, it did re-focus the North’s motive for winning the war.

12. Harriet Beecher Stowe: wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (a fictional depiction of slaves and slavery), which was based on abolitionist accounts of slavery. Her novel was essentially the first book to portray black slaves as people, and thus her work became very controversial.

13. John Brown: believed that he was sent by God to free slaves and judge their owners. Engaged in murder in Kansas. Was sponsored by a group mostly comprised of Transcendentalists to raid Harper’s Ferry, a raid that was hoped to ignite a rebellion executed by blacks. Though his raid failed and he was hanged, he frightened the South and became a symbol for the North, because of his respect for blacks.