5.5: Regional Differences

Question 1

POPULATION CHANGES

Answer 1

• 1840s: English, Black and Native [Protestant majority]
• 1850s: Asians, Irish, Germans and Mexicans [Catholic influx]
• Gold Rush, Industrialization and fast, cheap ocean transport
• famine, oppression and revolutions
• IRISH
• Great Famine and poverty
• poor Catholics
• GERMANS
• economic hardship and failed democratic revolutions
• richer and artisanally skilled
• farms and cities in Midwest
• brought Christmas tree and beer
• CHINESE
• build wealth and return
• Opium wars, growing population, land scarcity and rice shortage

Question 2

CULTURAL ENCLAVES

Answer 2

• Irish NYC: Five Points Neighbourhood
• slums: disease and unemployment
• Germans on coast but migrated inland to farms

Question 3

DISCRIMINATION

Answer 3

• CHINESE
• positively viewed at first: sugar plantation worker shortage in Hawaii and farmer shortage in Cali
• “Coolies”
• white miners = threatened
• 1790: law prohibiting non-white immigrant citizenship
• $3 miners tax
• anti-Catholic Nativist movement

Question 4

KNOW-NOTHING PARTY

Answer 4

• originally American Party
• immigration restrictions, exclusion from voting and holding office and 21 year wait for citizenship
• limiting cultural and political influence of immigrants

Question 5

SLAVERY

Answer 5

• North = free-wage labor in factories
• South = slavery on plantations
• rapid pop growth in North
• North objected slavery via economics: slavery = unfair competition
• Free Soilers supported Wilmot Proviso but didn’t care about Southern slavery
• South = threatened

Question 6

ABOLITIONISTS

Answer 6

• MINORITY
• highly influential
• “The Liberator” by Garrison
• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Beecher Stowe
• Northern leaders exposed to evils of slavery
• South = outraged attempted to ban book
• Douglass’ powerful speeches
• Underground Railroad
• 10,000s escaped
• some went to Canada to escape Fugitive Slave Law
• John Brown = fierce, violent abolitionist
• only way to freedom = slave uprising

Question 7

SLAVERY DEFENCE

Answer 7

• claimed blacks = unaffected by pain, inferior skull size and shape, lower long capacity to be fixed with hard work
• claimed slavery = positive social good to Christianize heathens and shelter, feed and discipline them
• constitutionally protected
• sanctioned by Bible
• North = “wage slaves”

Question 8

1859: RAID AT HARPER’S FERRY VIRGINIA

Answer 8

• Brown’s plan to raid federal arsenal, give weapons to slaves and ignite armed rebellion
• men captured armory
• put down by rival battalion led by Robert E. Lee
• Brown hanged
• Brown = connected to leading Northern abolitionists like Douglass
• South: raid = evidence of Northern plot to destroy Southern life and economy
• South: Abolitionists wanted race war