Compromise of 1850 - The Compromise of 1850 was a major effort at quieting sectional conflict in pre-Civil War American politics. In terms of expansion, its most important clauses were those admitting California to statehood as a free state and dividing the remainder of the Mexican cession after the Mexican War into two sections, New Mexico and Utah, neither of which would be subject to restrictions on slavery.

Dawes Severalty Act - Passed in 1887, the Dawes Act called for the breakup of the reservations and the treatment of Indians as individuals rather than tribes. It provided for the distribution of 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land to any Indian who accepted the act's terms, who would then become a US citizen in 25 years. The act was intended to help the Indians to integrate into white society, but in reality helped to create a class of federally dependent Indians.

Donner Party - The exploits of the Donner Party exemplified the difficulties of the overland journey to the Far West. Led astray by the erred advice of a guidebook, the Donner Party found itself snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and arrived at its destination in California only after turning to cannibalism.

Empresarios - In efforts to attract American settlers and trade to Texas during the 1820s, the Mexican government gave large land grants to agents called empresarios in return for their efforts to encourage colonization.

Erie Canal - The first canal project of the 1820s, the 363-mile Erie Canal was completed in 1825, connecting Buffalo, New York, on the Great Lakes, with Albany, on the Hudson River. The Erie Canal made cost effective shipping possible via waterways from New York City to the West by way of the Great Lakes. The North and Northwest were soon crisscrossed by an extensive canal system which greatly improved domestic transportation and trade.

Ghost Dance - The Ghost Dance was seen as the final attempt of the Plains Indians to maintain their culture and land. The prophet Wovoka convinced the Sioux that they could only save their land and return to dominance if they performed the Ghost Dance. The dance soon became a reaffirmation of culture and a source of inspiration to renew the struggle against US forces of expansion. This renewed inspiration, however, was crushed before it could get off of the ground.

Indian Removal Act - The Indian Removal Act, passed in 1830, granted President Andrew Jackson funds and authority to remove the Indians by force if necessary. He pursued a determined effort to coerce the Indians into expulsion.

Manifest Destiny - Journalist John L. O'Sullivan coined the phrase "Manifest Destiny" in 1845. He wrote of "our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of our continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty." Manifest Destiny referred to the belief of many Americans that it was the nation's destiny and duty to expand and conquer the West in the name of God, nature, civilization, and progress.

Mission - The mission was the main tool in Spanish and Mexican colonization of the Far West. Missions were established all along the California coast and into the interior of Texas and New Mexico. The Franciscan missionaries tried to convert the region's Indians, and built towns around their missions. By 1823, over 20,000 Indians had converted and were living in the missions of California.

Oregon Trail - Perhaps the most well known of the overland trails to the Far West, the Oregon trail led many settlers to Oregon's Willamette Valley between 1840 and 1848 and was representative of the hardships of overland travel.

Santa Fe Trail - Southwestern travelers more often than not used the Santa Fe Trail to move westward. The trail linked St. Louis and Santa Fe, leading to the establishment of strong economic connections between the regions surrounding the endpoints of the trail.

Trail of Tears - In 1835, federal agents persuaded a pro-removal Cherokee chief to sign the Treaty of New Echota, which ceded all Cherokee land for $5.6 million and free transportation west. Most Cherokees rejected the treaty, but resistance was futile. Between 1835 and 1838 bands of Cherokee Indians moved west of the Mississippi along the so-called Trail of Tears. Between 2,000 and 4,000 of the 16,000 migrating Cherokees died. The Trail of Tears became a symbol for the harsh treatment of the Indians at the hands of the federal government.

Transcontinental Railroad - On May 10, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was completed when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads joined their tracks at Promontory Point, Utah. The railroad rapidly affected the ease of western settlement, shortening the journey from coast to coast, which took six to eight months by wagon, to a mere one week's trip.

Wilmot Proviso - The Wilmot proviso was an amendment proposed to an appropriations bill regarding the West, which proposed that slavery be prohibited in all of the Mexican cession other than Texas. The proviso passed the House but stalled in the Senate, where it was the cause of further arguments between northern and southern politicians.

Worcester v. Georgia - In the case of Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokees comprised a "domestic dependent nation" within Georgia and thus deserved protection from harassment. However, the vehemently anti-Indian Andrew Jackson refused to abide by the decision, sneering "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

People

Stephen F. Austin - The most successful of all Texan empresarios, Stephen Austin became an influential political leader in Texas. He did not support independence at first, and his misgivings restrained any major move towards independence among the Texan people. However, once he threw his support behind the Texas Rebellion in 1835, it benefited greatly from his leadership and support.

George Armstrong Custer - Custer, a Civil War hero, was dispatched to the hills of South Dakota in 1874. When gold was discovered in the region, the federal government announced that Custer's forces would hunt down all Sioux not in reservations after January 31, 1876. Many Sioux refused to comply, and Custer began to mobilize his troops. At the battle of Little Bighorn, in June 1876, Custer unwisely divided his troops, and a numerically superior force of Indians wiped out him and all of his men. This battle, known as "Custer's Last Stand," convinced the army that the Sioux were a powerful force, after which a war of attrition, rather than direct confrontation, was begun.

Robert Fulton - Fulton is credited with the invention of the first effective steamboat, which he unveiled with his business partner, Robert Livingston, in New York in 1807. The Steamboat revolutionized river travel because it could move rapidly upstream, a feat no other type of watercraft could match.

Andrew Jackson - Andrew Jackson was President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, and thus oversaw much of the nation's expansion. Jackson's most prominent role in westward expansion was his continuing struggle to eject the Indians East of the Mississippi from their lands to free up land for American settlers. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 granted Jackson the funding and authority to accomplish this goal, which he pursued determinedly throughout his presidency.

James K. Polk - Polk was President of the United States from 1845 to 1849. He oversaw the annexation of Oregon and of Texas, and is credited with beginning the Mexican War in earnest. Polk was a firm believer in expansion and pursued his goals with vigor. However, many northerners saw him as an agent of southern will, expanding the nation as part of a plan to extend slavery into the West.

John Tyler - Tyler became President of the United States in 1841, when William Henry Harrison died after a month in office. Tyler and his secretary of state, John Calhoun, a fierce advocate for slavery, tried by dishonest and manipulative means to gain support for the annexation of Texas. The treaty they presented to the Senate for annexation was voted down, but the issue of annexation had risen to the fore of American politics.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, organized a mass purge of Mexican liberals from his government in 1834. This accomplished, he began to place restrictions on the governments of the Mexican territories to the North. Fearing tyrannical rule, Stephen F. Austin and other American settlers in Texas sparked the Texas Rebellion to win independence. Santa Anna was captured during the rebellion and forced to sign a treaty giving Texas its independence, and was shortly ousted from the Mexican government.

Events

Panic of 1819 - The state banks that had risen up to financially support speculation and expansion had issued notes far in excess of what they could realistically redeem. In reaction to this situation, the Bank of the United States insisted that the state banks redeem all notes that had passed into the hands of the Bank of the US. In order to pay the Bank of the US, the state banks had to demand payment of debts by the farmers of the Midwest. The result was a vast restriction in the amount of circulating money, and a substantial cutback in the amount of credit offered farmers and speculators, dramatically slowing the economy. The Panic of 1819 punctured the land rush and the agricultural boom that had been underway since 1815, and alerted farmers to the need for more effective transportation to distant markets.

Texas Rebellion - As the population of American settlers in Texas had grown, relations with the Mexican government had steadily soured. When, in 1834, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna purged the liberals from the government and began restricting the independence of the Mexican territories, many Texans decided it was time for a clean break. Texan leaders met and declared independence, soon beginning a series of battles that culminated with the April 1836 capture of Santa Anna himself. Though the Texans forced him to sign a treaty declaring Texas independent, the Mexican government never officially recognized the treaty, and the status of Texas remained in question, to be decided by the Mexican War.

Wounded Knee - After an excited Native American fired a rifle shot in a non-combat situation, US Army troops massacred 300 Indians, including seven children. The massacre was the symbolic final step in the war for the West, and after Wounded Knee the Indians succumbed to the wishes of the federal government, resigning themselves to reservation life.

Settling the West

In the mid-1800s, Americans surged westward past the Mississippi River, the previously drawn boundary of the frontier. As settlers migrated toward the Pacific coast in their overloaded wagons, the West became the fastest growing area of the country. Despite fierce resistance from Native Americans, Mexicans, and the British, Americans eventually claimed the entire region west of the Mississippi. However, westward expansion had its costs: settlers, Native Americans, and the integrity of the Union suffered at its hands.

Manifest Destiny

Fueling the expansion westward was the popular belief that it was America’s manifest destiny to expand across Texas, toward the Pacific coast. In 1845, a New York journalist wrote of “our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of our continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty.” Manifest destiny tapped into America’s nationalist spirit, which had been growing since the War of 1812, and echoed Protestant beliefs that America was a “called nation”—that is, chosen by God as a haven where Protestants could spread their faith.

Texas and the Mexican War

During the 1820s, Americans streamed into Texas, then a Mexican territory, often receiving land grants from the Mexican government. Mexico gave these grants in the hopes of promoting the region’s trade and development. By 1830, about 7,000 Americans lived in Texas, outnumbering Hispanic settlers two to one and alarming the Mexican government. In 1834, rebel Texan leaders, most of them American, declared their independence from the Mexican dictatorship. After two years of fighting, Texas became an independent republic, although the Mexican government refused to officially acknowledge its independence.

Because most Texan settlers were American, the question immediately arose of Texas’s potential statehood. President John Tyler, who became president in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died in office, favored the annexation of Texas and its admission to the Union. In 1844, Democrat James K. Polk won the presidential election on a platform determined to “re-annex Texas and re-occupy Oregon.” One month into his presidency, Congress voted to annex Texas. In 1845, Texas was admitted into the Union as the twenty-eighth state. Mexico, still refusing to recognize Texas’ independence, threatened war over the annexation.

War erupted a year later over the new state’s borders: the U.S. argued that the southern Texas border lay along the Rio Grande River, while Mexico insisted that the border lay much farther north. After trying unsuccessfully to buy the New Mexican and Californian territories from Mexico, the U.S. found a pretense to declare war against Mexico in 1846, when Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande. The Mexican War spread throughout Texas, New Mexico, and California, and into the Mexican interior, finally ending in U.S. victory. With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, Mexico ceded Texas, New Mexico, and California to the U.S. for $15 million. (Note that this ceded territory encompassed present-day Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.) The treaty secured the West for American settlement, and American land now stretched continuously from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Oregon

Polk’s presidential campaign slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight,” referred to the latitude coordinates of northwest territory claimed by both the U.S. and Great Britain. The area included present-day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho; parts of Montana and Wyoming; and much of western Canada. Northerners also pushed for acquisition, since the admission of Oregon, a free state, would balance the annexation of slave-holding Texas. However, Polk, once in office, could not commit to “fight” for the territory—already caught up in border disputes with Mexico, he did not wish to engage in further conflict and instead proposed a compromise with Britain. The 1846 compromise divided the Oregon territory along the forty-ninth parallel. South of this line lay U.S.-owned Oregon, and north lay the British-owned Washington territories. Oregon was admitted as a state in 1859.

California Gold Rush

In January 1848, an American carpenter struck gold in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. As news of this discovery drifted east, a gold rush began, drawing hordes to the West Coast in search of their fortunes. California attracted about 100,000 immigrants in a single year, including Mexicans, Europeans, and Americans from the East coast. This influx of settlers led to the growth of numerous cities and mining towns, and pressure grew for California to organize its own government, either independent of the Union or as a state.

Removal of Native Americans

A central aspect of the opening of the West was the removal of the Native Americans who already occupied the land. Removal started during Andrew Jackson’s presidency with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the president to force the removal of Midwestern tribes to reservations in Oklahoma and elsewhere. By the early 1860s, the U.S. government had systematized this “Indian territory” into small reservations and, in 1867 set aside two large tracts of land—one north of Nebraska and one south of Kansas—for tribal resettlement. The threat of force convinced many tribes to comply with resettlement. But some tribes, the Sioux in particular, fiercely resisted. In 1874, the U.S. Army sent Colonel George Armstrong Custer into South Dakota to fight the Sioux. At the Battle of Little Bighorn, in 1876, the Sioux crushed Custer and his men. After this defeat, the Army adopted a different tactic by launching a war of attrition, persistently harassing the Sioux and gradually weakening their will to resist. U.S. forces finally vanquished the Sioux in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. Over the next decade, the Sioux relocated to reservations.

Not all Americans supported such aggressive removal tactics. Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881, attempted to raise public awareness of the Native American plight. Some hoped to “save” the Native Americans through religion, or to “civilize” them by teaching them white ways. Other humanitarians suggested that the best approach would be to fully integrate the tribes into white society.

These latter concerns were expressed in the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act (or simply the Dawes Act), which called for the breakup of the reservation system and the treatment of Native Americans as individuals rather than as tribes. Congressman Henry Dawes believed that private land ownership would help Native Americans become “civilized” and assimilated. Under the act, formally communal land from the reservations was distributed to individuals in 160-acre allotments, and these individuals were guaranteed U.S. citizenship after twenty-five years. The surplus land that remained of the reservations after these allotments had been made was sold to white settlers and land speculators. In practice, much of the land parceled out to Native Americans wound up in white hands after poverty forced many Native Americans to sell their plots. As a result, many Native Americans were left homeless, destitute, and dependent on federal aid for survival. Though passed with good intent, the Dawes Act had disastrous effects: it disintegrated tribal communities and deprived Native Americans of millions of acres of land, clearing the way for American settlement in the process.

Another factor impairing the Native American way of life was the mass slaughter of buffalo. Many Plains tribes depended on buffalo for food, leather, and other material needs. But by the 1870s the buffalo population hovered near extinction, as white hunters killed 9 million buffalo between 1872 and 1875. American hunters often killed the animals solely for their hide, leaving the carcass to rot, while Army generals killed the buffalo in deliberate attempts to drive Native Americans off of desired lands.

The Homestead Act and the Transcontinental Railroad

To promote settlement of the West, Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, which offered 160 acres to anyone who would cultivate and improve the land. Much of this western land, however, was ill-suited to farming, so ranchers and railroad builders ended up owning most of it.

Another way Congress spurred settlement was by extending the railroad network into the West. In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, which chartered the Union Pacific Railroad company and authorized the building of the transcontinental railroad. While the Union Pacific Railroad Company built tracks westward from Iowa, the Central Pacific Railroad Company built tracks eastward from California. The two tracks converged on May 10, 1869 in Promontory, Utah. This historic moment marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, and by 1884, there were four such lines. Whereas just fifty years earlier it had taken pioneers many grueling months to cross the nation, Americans could now travel from coast to coast in a week’s time. Railroads attracted many new settlers to the newly accessible West by offering free transportation and long-term loans to travelers.

Effects of Expansion: Sectional Tension Intensified

The expansion of the U.S. into the West reopened a controversy that had been temporarily settled by the 1821 Missouri Compromise: the balance of slave-holding versus free lands. Regional passions flared as the nation debated the extension of slavery into the new territories. In 1844, Congress repealed the 1836 gag rule, which had suppressed all debates on slavery, and disputed the status of the newly acquired territories. Texas entered the Union as a slave state in 1845 because the territory was already slave-holding when it sought admission. But the other lands ceded by Mexico—including California and New Mexico—were undecided, so Northern and Southern interests rallied to recruit these lands to their side.

In 1846, Democratic congressman David Wilmot attempted to preempt the debates that would erupt when the U.S. gained additional western lands by proposing the Wilmot Proviso, which stipulated that slavery be prohibited in any territory gained from Mexico. With strong support from the North, the proviso passed through the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, where it was repeatedly reintroduced without success. The issue sparked intense sectional debate. In the debates, four main arguments emerged:

Before the 1848 election, antislavery advocates united to form the Free-Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren for president. The Free-Soil Party consisted of antislavery Whigs, members of the abolitionist Liberty Party, and a faction of the Democratic Party (known as the Barnburners) that supported the Wilmot Proviso. Although the Free-Soil Party did not win any electoral votes, it did earn 10 percent of the national popular vote. Van Buren lost the election to Whig candidate Zachary Taylor.

The New Politics of Sectionalism

The Whig Party, which was an anti-Jackson alliance between Southern Republicans and Northern Democrats, disintegrated in the 1850s over the increasingly contentious issue of slavery. In its place, the Republican Party arose as the chief political opposition to the Democrats. The Republican Party crystallized in opposition to slavery, while the Democrats supported the institution.

From Whigs to Republicans

The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided the Whigs Southern pro-slavery and Northern antislavery components. The fractures ran so deep that even Northern Whigs were divided, between antislavery “Conscience Whigs” and conservatives who supported the Compromise of 1850. This split forced many antislavery Whigs to look for a political alternative less muddied by internal conflict.

One alternative was the American Party, which became known as the Know-Nothing Party because the members met secretly and refused to identify themselves. This party was a nativist organization (anti-foreigner) that spread anti-German, anti-Irish, and anti-Catholic propaganda. Most members also favored temperance and opposed slavery. It seemed the Know-Nothings would form the primary opposition party to the Democrats until, in 1855, they also succumbed to sectional conflict when the party’s Southern branch made acceptance of the Kansas-Nebraska Act part of the Know-Nothing platform. The Know-Nothing party found itself weakened and near ruin.

In its place, a new Republican Party emerged as the premier antislavery coalition. The Republicans originally formed in the North between 1854 and 1855, as Northern Democrats, antislavery Whigs, and former Free Soil party members united to oppose the Democratic Party. Although all Republicans disapproved of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, some Republicans merely wanted to restore the Missouri Compromise. Others were middleground free-soilers, and still others were adamant abolitionists. Nevertheless, opposition to slavery’s extension united these disparate groups.

The Whig Party disintegrated during the mid-1850s, throwing Northern Whigs into the Know-Nothing Party and the Republican Party. By 1856, the Republican Party had risen to national prominence as the main opposition to the Democrats.

Republicans and Democrats Face Off: Lincoln-Douglas Debates

In the 1858 midterm elections, Republicans and Democrats faced off for the first time. The most visible of these battles took place in Illinois, where prominent Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas faced a reelection challenge in the form of Republican Abraham Lincoln. This campaign pitted the Republican Party’s rising star, Lincoln, against the Democratic Party’s leading senator. In a series of seven debates known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Douglas advocated popular sovereignty while Lincoln espoused the free-soil argument.

Douglas painted a picture of his opponent as an abolitionist and an advocate of racial equality and racial mixing, positions that were still very unpopular at the time. Lincoln countered that he was not an abolitionist—that he simply opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, but did not aim to abolish slavery where it already existed, in the South. He further claimed, “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races ,” but still argued that “notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.” In attack of his opponent, Lincoln challenged that Douglas’s belief in popular sovereignty, in particular his “Freeport Doctrine,” was incompatible with the Dred Scott decision. In this doctrine, Douglas stated that territorial governments could effectively forbid slavery by refusing to enact slave codes, even though the Dred Scott decision had explicitly deprived Congress of the authority to restrict slavery in the territories.

In the end, neither candidate emerged from the debates as the clear victor. Although Douglas won the Senate seat, he alienated Southern supporters by encouraging disobedience of the Dred Scott decision with his Freeport Doctrine. Lincoln, meanwhile, lost the election, but emerged with national prominence as a spokesman for antislavery interests.

Republican Ascendancy: The Election of 1860

In 1860, Buchanan announced he would not run for reelection. The Democratic Party ruptured over whom to nominate in Buchanan’s place. While Northern Democrats defended the doctrine of popular sovereignty and nominated Stephen Douglas for president, Southern Democrats opposed popular sovereignty in favor of the Dred Scott decision—which provided absolute protection of slavery in all territories—and nominated vice president John Breckenridge for president. Southern moderates from the lower South walked out of the Democratic Convention and formed their own party, the Constitutional Party, which nominated John C. Bell for president. These three candidates faced Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln emerged with a majority of the electoral votes, 180 in total. He carried all eighteen free states, but had not even appeared on the ballots of a number of slave states, and in 10 slave states, had not received a single popular vote. Lincoln’s election so alienated the South that secession seemed imminent. While South Carolina had threatened earlier to secede from the Union over the Tariff of Abominations in 1828, the current threat was much more dire.

In the election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated three challengers representing the country’s varying pro-slavery political positions—Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats, and Southern moderates.

The Compromise of 1850

Although he held slaves himself, President Taylor opposed the extension of slavery into the territories of California and New Mexico. In 1849, California requested admission as a free state, which frightened the South because the admission of another free state into the Union would make slave-holding interests a minority in Congress. Southern Congressmen tried to block California’s admission. With the national government in gridlock, Henry Clay stepped forward in May 1850 to present a compromise, much as he had thirty years earlier when Missouri sought statehood. Clay’s 1850 proposals included five points:

Clay’s proposal threw Congress into an eight-month discussion known as the “Great Debate.” Proponents of each side—the North and the South—criticized Clay’s compromise for being too lenient on the other. Most prominent among the debaters were Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. Eventually, the bill passed. Two events in particular facilitated its passage: first, when President Taylor died in July 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore took over and adopted a pro-compromise position. Second, Stephen A. Douglas took over for Henry Clay as speaker of the house and divided the compromise bill up into separate components, each of which passed. Together, the separate bills became known as the Compromise of 1850.

The Compromise of 1850 called for the admission of California as a free state; the strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Law; popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico concerning the question of slavery; the abolition of the slave trade in D.C.; and the federal assumption of Texas’s debt.

Compromise Undermined: A Divided Nation

During the Great Debate, one particular point of contention was the strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Fugitive Slave Act denied alleged fugitives the right to a trial and did not allow them to testify in their own defense. It further granted court-appointed commissioners greater payment if they ruled in favor of the slaveholder. In addition, the law authorized federal marshals and southern posses to enter the North and target runaway slaves who had escaped decades earlier. The Fugitive Slave Act reminded Northerners of their complicity with the institution of slavery.

Some Northerners worked vigorously to undermine the Fugitive Slave Act, whether through legal tactics, organized social protest, or violent resistance. During the 1850s, nine Northern states passed personal liberty laws to counteract the Fugitive Slave Act. These state laws guaranteed all alleged fugitives the right to a trial by jury and to a lawyer, and they prohibited state jails from holding alleged fugitives. In terms of social resistance, Northern Vigilance Committees worked hard to protect escaped slaves, at times in conjunction with the Underground Railroad—a network of safe houses and escorts throughout the North that helped escaped slaves to freedom. Harriet Tubman, a former slave, was instrumental in forming this network, and was sometimes referred to as “Moses.” (In the Bible, Moses led the Israelites to freedom.) Less systematic resistance came in the form of violent protest. In 1854, a Boston mob broke into a courthouse and killed a guard in a failed attempt to free a fugitive slave.

Controversial provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act prompted Northerners to resist its enforcement through violent protest, clandestine efforts to aid escaped slaves, and legal tactics such as personal liberty laws.

Such strong-armed resistance against the Fugitive Slave Act revealed that Northern abolitionist sentiment was rising. No event did more to encourage Northern abolitionism and sympathy for runaway slaves than the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe wrote about slavery with grim reality, telling the story of a black slave who is torn from his family, sold from place to place, and eventually whipped to death. Three hundred thousand copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were sold in 1852, and 1.2 million had been sold by the summer of 1853. Dramatized versions of the story were produced at playhouses throughout the North, attracting audience members from all segments of society.

Election of 1852

As a symptom of the national division, the Whig party disintegrated during the 1850s along North and South lines, and its 1852 presidential candidate fared badly. The Free Soil Party’s candidate also won little support. The winner was Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce.

Compromise Collapses

President Franklin Pierce sought to avoid the controversial slave issue and instead focused on territorially expanding into Mexico and Cuba and on opening up international trade. However, he could not keep the slavery issue at bay for long. Beginning with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the tenuous stalemate of the Compromise of 1850 dissolved. Regional passions soon exploded into violence that foreshadowed the coming Civil War.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In January 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposed a bill to organize Nebraska (part of the Louisiana Purchase) as a territory, in order to facilitate the building of a transcontinental railroad along a northern route from Chicago to the West. Because the Nebraska Territory lay above the 36º30' line, set by the Missouri Compromise to disallow slavery, Nebraska would automatically become a candidate for admission as a free state. Southerners therefore planned to oppose the bill unless Douglas made some concessions.

To ensure passage of the bill, Douglas yielded to Southerners who desired to void the Missouri Compromise’s 36º30' line. He inserted in his Nebraska bill an explicit repeal of the Missouri Compromise so that no territory would be automatically designated non-slaveholding. As an alternative, the bill declared that the slavery issue in the Nebraska region would be decided by popular sovereignty, thus extending the Compromise of 1850’s concept of popular sovereignty to territories outside New Mexico and Utah. Douglas further divided the Nebraska Territory into two parts: Nebraska to the west of Iowa, and Kansas to the west of Missouri. Many assumed that this meant Kansas would be reserved for slavery and Nebraska for free soil. With these concessions attached, the bill passed through Congress and became law in May 1854.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, did not stave off sectional conflict. Because Nebraska was likely to prohibit slavery, as a territory above the 36º30' line, Kansas became a battleground for sectional interests. Both Northern abolitionist groups and Southern interests rushed into the territory to try to control the local elections. In March 1855, during the first election of the territorial legislature, thousands of pro-slavery inhabitants of Western Missouri crossed into Kansas to tilt the vote in favor of slaveholding interests. Because of the election fraud perpetrated by these “border ruffians,” a pro-slavery government swept into power. This new government immediately ousted antislavery legislators and set up a pro-slavery constitution known as the Lecompton Constitution.

In opposition to the new legislature, abolitionist John Brown led a massacre of five men at a pro-slavery camp, setting off an outbreak of violence. More than 200 people died in the ensuing months of violence, earning the territory the nickname Bleeding Kansas. Three years later, in 1859, Brown led an even larger antislavery revolt in Virginia, when he attempted to seize federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in order to arm a massive slave uprising. His raid was unsuccessful, however, and he was caught and hanged.

Radical Reconstruction

After sweeping the elections of 1866, the Radical Republicans gained almost complete control over policymaking in Congress. Along with their more moderate Republican allies, they gained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and thus gained sufficient power to override any potential vetoes by President Andrew Johnson. This political ascension, which occurred in early 1867, marked the beginning of Radical Reconstruction (also known as Congressional Reconstruction).

The First and Second Reconstruction Acts

Congress began the task of Reconstruction by passing the First Reconstruction Act in March 1867. Also known as the Military Reconstruction Act or simply the Reconstruction Act, the bill reduced the secessionist states to little more than conquered territory, dividing them into five military districts, each governed by a Union general. Congress declared martial law in the territories, dispatching troops to keep the peace and protect former slaves.

Congress also declared that southern states needed to redraft their constitutions, ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and provide suffrage to blacks in order to seek readmission into the Union. To further safeguard voting rights for former slaves, Republicans passed the Second Reconstruction Act, placing Union troops in charge of voter registration. Congress overrode two presidential vetoes from Johnson to pass the bills.

Reestablishing Order in the South

The murderous Memphis and New Orleans race riots of 1866 proved that Reconstruction needed to be declared and enforced, and the Military Reconstruction Act jump-started this process. Congress chose to send the military, creating “radical regimes” throughout the secessionist states. Radical Republicans hoped that by declaring martial law in the South and passing the Second Reconstruction Act, they would be able to create a Republican political base in the seceded states to facilitate their plans for Radical Reconstruction. Though most southern whites hated the “regimes” that Congress established, they proved successful in speeding up Reconstruction. Indeed, by 1870 all of the southern states had been readmitted to the Union.

Radical Reconstruction’s Effect on Blacks

Though Radical Reconstruction was an improvement on President Johnson’s laissez-faire Reconstructionism, it had its ups and downs. The daily lives of blacks and poor whites changed little. While Radicals in Congress successfully passed rights legislation, southerners all but ignored these laws. The newly formed southern governments established public schools, but they were still segregated and did not receive enough funding. Black literacy rates did improve, but marginally at best.

The Tenure of Office Act

In addition to the Reconstruction Acts, Congress also passed a series of bills in 1867 to limit President Johnson’s power, one of which was the Tenure of Office Act. The bill sought to protect prominent Republicans in the Johnson administration by forbidding their removal without congressional consent. Although the act applied to all officeholders whose appointment required congressional approval, Republicans were specifically aiming to keep Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in office, because Stanton was the Republicans’ conduit for controlling the U.S. military. Defiantly, Johnson ignored the act, fired Stanton in the summer of 1867 (while Congress was in recess), and replaced him with Union general Ulysses S. Grant. Afraid that Johnson would end Military Reconstruction in the South, Congress ordered him to reinstate Stanton when it reconvened in 1868. Johnson refused, but Grant resigned, and Congress put Edwin M. Stanton back in office over the president’s objections.

Johnson’s Impeachment

House Republicans, tired of presidential vetoes that blocked Military Reconstruction, impeached Johnson by a vote of 126–47 for violating the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate then tried Johnson in May 1868 in front of a gallery of spectators. However, the prosecutors, two Radical Republicans from the House, were unable to convince a majority of senators to convict the president. Seven Republican senators sided with Senate Democrats, and the Republicans fell one vote shy of convicting Johnson.

The Politics of Johnson’s Impeachment

Although Johnson did technically violate the Tenure of Office Act, the bill was passed primarily as a means to provoke Johnson and give Radical Republicans in Congress an excuse to get rid of him. Indeed, Johnson’s trial in Congress exposed the real reason that House Republicans impeached the president: he had ignored them in the process of crafting Reconstruction policies, and they wanted retaliation.

The Senate, however, acquitted Johnson, aware that a frivolous impeachment would have set a dangerous precedent. If Congress had removed a president from office simply on the basis of a power struggle between the president and Congress, they might have endangered the system of separation of powers—an integral part of U.S. government. Although Johnson had stubbornly opposed Congress, he had not violated the Constitution and was not guilty of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In addition, another factor was the fact that, because Johnson had no vice president, the president pro tempore of the Senate was next in line for the presidency should Johnson be impeached. This man was a rather liberal Republican named Benjamin Wade, whose politics did not sit well with certain other senate Republicans. Some of these Republicans deemed the prospect of a Wade presidency just as unpalatable as the dangerous precedent of impeachment and thus voted with the Democrats to acquit Johnson.

The Fifteenth Amendment

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments had abolished slavery and granted blacks citizenship, but blacks still did not have the right to vote. Radical Republicans feared that black suffrage might be revoked in the future, so they decided to amend the Constitution to solidify this right. They also believed that giving blacks the right to vote would weaken southern elites, who had regained political power in the South. In 1869, therefore, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, granting all American males the right to vote. Congress also required secessionist states that had not yet reentered the Union to ratify the amendment in order to rejoin. By 1870, three-quarters of the Union had ratified the amendment, and it became law.

Black Voters

After the amendment’s ratification, southern blacks flocked to the polls. By the beginning of 1868, more than 700,000 blacks (and nearly the same number of poor landless whites) had registered to vote. Not surprisingly, virtually all of them declared themselves Republicans, associating the Democratic Party with secession and slavery. Black civic societies and grassroots political organizations began to sprout up across the South, most led by prominent blacks who had been freedmen since before the Civil War.

Soon, black voters gained majorities in South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi and were able to facilitate Republican plans for Reconstruction. These voters elected many black politicians in the majority states and throughout the South: fourteen black politicians were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and two to the Mississippi State Senate. These new state governments funded the creation of roads, hospitals, prisons, and free public schools.

The Fifteenth Amendment in Perspective

Prior to 1866, most Republicans had opposed black suffrage. Even the “Great Emancipator” himself, Abraham Lincoln, considered giving the right to vote only to blacks who were freedmen before the Civil War and those who had served in the Union Army. Most moderate Republicans saw freedmen suffrage as unnecessary until they realized that the Republican Party would never gain influence in the South unless blacks had the right to vote. Blacks would support the Republican Party en masse, so ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed Republicans this support.

Ironically, the Fifteenth Amendment also forced reluctant northern states to give blacks the right to vote. Even though most of the new postwar state constitutions in the South gave blacks the right to vote, many northern states refused to follow suit, because they considered universal manhood suffrage a solution unique to the South that was unnecessary in the North.

The amendment also granted voting rights to poor whites, especially in the South. Prior to the Civil War, landowners were the only social group who had the privilege to vote, excluding the majority of poor, landless whites from active political participation. The Fifteenth Amendment thus brought sweeping changes for blacks, poor whites, and politics in general in the United States.

Reaction from Suffragettes

The Fifteenth Amendment did not secure the right to vote for all Americans: women still did not have the right to vote, and leaders in the women’s suffrage movement felt betrayed by their exclusion from the amendment. Prior to the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement and the abolition movement had been closely related: both groups strived to achieve political and civil rights for the underrepresented in society.

After the Union victory, prominent women in the movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, saw a window of opportunity: they believed that with progressive, Unionist support in Congress, blacks and women would achieve enfranchisement. Radical Republicans in Congress believed otherwise. Republicans assumed that if Congress granted all men and women the right to vote, their party would lose support in both the South and North. As it turned out, women would have to wait almost fifty more years for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted them the right to vote.

Reconstruction

More Americans died in the Civil War than in any other conflict before or since. The war was particularly disastrous for the South, where one in twenty white men were killed or wounded, and the land lay in ruins. After the Union victory, the nation faced the complex tasks of reintegrating the damaged South into the Union and helping heal the nation’s wounds.

Presidential Reconstruction Under Lincoln

Unlike the Radical Republicans in Congress who wanted to severely punish the Confederate states, Lincoln proposed a more forgiving and flexible plan for Reconstruction. In December 1863, before the war had ended, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, also known as the “Ten Percent Plan,” which offered pardon to any former Confederates who would take an oath to support the Constitution. This pardon was not extended to officers in the Confederate armed forces above certain ranks, or to those who had resigned Union government posts to aid in the rebellion. When one-tenth of a state’s voting population had taken the oath of loyalty to the Union and established a new government, Lincoln would recognize that government.

Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction, known as the “Ten Percent Plan,” allowed a state to reenter the Union when 10 percent of its voters pledged allegiance to the Union.

Radical Republicans in Congress denounced the plan for being too lenient on the South and for not securing any rights for freed slaves. Moreover, these Republicans believed that Congress, not the president, should dictate the terms by which the nation would reunite. In July 1864, Congress proposed its own plan for Reconstruction by passing the Wade-Davis Bill, which declared that each Confederate state would be run by a military governor. After half of each state’s eligible voters took an oath of allegiance to the Union, a state convention could be called to overturn secession and outlaw slavery. Lincoln, however, vetoed the bill by leaving it unsigned for more than ten days after the adjournment of Congress. With Congress and the president in a deadlock over the terms of the Confederate states’ readmission, reconstruction stalled.

Radical Republicans opposed Lincoln’s “Ten Percent Plan,” and instead proposed a more stringent and punitive plan calling for military rule of the South.

The Radical Republicans in Congress did succeed in dictating some terms of Reconstruction. To help former slaves adjust to their new lives, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau, which offered education, employment, economic relief, and legal aid to freed slaves. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped build hospitals and supervised the founding of black schools throughout the South, including Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to the Freedmen’s Bureau, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. The Amendment was ratified by twenty-seven states in December 1865, though Lincoln did not live to see that day.

In April 1865, soon after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and supporter of the Confederacy. Vice President Andrew Johnson became president.

Presidential Reconstruction Under Johnson

A Southern Democrat who opposed secession, Johnson had been added to the presidential ticket in 1864 to broaden Lincoln’s support. When Johnson became president, Congress was in recess, so Johnson forged ahead with a slight modification of Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan without facing any opposition from Congress.

Under Johnson’s plan, nearly all Southerners would be pardoned who took an oath of allegiance to the Union, with the exception of high-ranking Confederate officials and powerful plantation owners, who would be forever barred from government. His plan further required reconstructed state governments to denounce secession and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Even so, Johnson pardoned many powerful ex-Confederates and allowed reconstructed Southern governments to be dominated by pro-slavery forces—by Confederate army officers, plantation owners, and former government officials.

Governed by these Confederate forces, many of the “reconstructed” Southern governments refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and further enforced black codes in an attempt to create a subjugated black workforce. Most states outlawed interracial marriage and jury service by blacks, and banned blacks from the right to testify against whites. Most codes also imposed a curfew on blacks and limited their access to public institutions. South Carolina further required licenses for blacks wishing to enter nonagricultural employment. When Radical Republicans attacked the black codes, Johnson defended the codes along with his overall plan for reconstruction.

Andrew Johnson presented a weak plan for Reconstruction, liberally pardoning ex-Confederates and allowing reconstructed governments to be dominated by pro-slavery forces, which passed black codes to keep the freedmen subjugated.

Congressional Reconstruction

Congress reconvened in December 1865 and immediately expressed displeasure with Johnson’s Reconstruction plan. Radical Republicans, led by Senator Charles Sumner and Representative Thaddeus Stevens, set out to dismantle Johnson’s Reconstruction plan and to dictate Reconstruction on Congress’s terms. They called for black voting rights, confiscation of Confederate estates, and military occupation of the South.

Congress then passed two bills by overriding Johnson’s veto: the Civil Rights Act, which granted blacks full citizenship and civil rights, and an act to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Johnson’s attempt to veto these two bills prompted many moderates to ally themselves with the Radicals against his plan.

To give the Civil Rights Act constitutional protection, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, which declared all persons born or naturalized in the United States to be citizens of their states and of the nation, and prohibited states from denying citizens equal protection and due process of the law. Congress thus reversed the Dred Scott decision, which had denied blacks citizenship. Not surprisingly, Johnson opposed the amendment and every Southern state except Tennessee rejected it, leaving the radicals without enough support to ratify the amendment.

After an overwhelming victory in the 1866 Congressional election, Radicals gained the power they needed to push for passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and military occupation of the South. With a two-thirds majority in the House and a four-fifths majority in the Senate, Republicans charged ahead with Reconstruction on their own terms. In March 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 over Johnson’s veto, which invalidated state governments formed under presidential Reconstruction and imposed martial law on the ex-Confederate states. Only Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, escaped invalidation and military subjugation. The other ten states were reorganized into five military districts run by Union generals. The act also expedited passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by requiring that Southern states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to be eligible for readmission into the Union. In June 1868, seven ex-Confederate states voted to ratify the amendment, and the amendment finally passed.

Under the stringent terms of congressional Reconstruction, ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was made a condition of readmission to the Union.

Impeachment Crisis

In March 1867, the same month Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, Congress passed two bills to limit President Johnson’s authority. The Tenure of Office Act prohibited the president from removing civil officers without Senate approval, while the Command of the Army Act prevented the president from issuing military orders except through the commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant (who could not be removed without the Senate’s approval). In August 1867, with Congress out of session, Johnson suspended Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replaced him with Grant. Republicans in Congress refused to approve Johnson’s change, and called for impeachment on the grounds that Johnson had violated the Tenure of Office Act. In truth, Johnson’s violation served as a mere excuse for Congress to launch impeachment proceedings; Congress’s real motivation was to remove a president hostile to Reconstruction.

Johnson’s impeachment trial began in March 1868 and lasted nearly three months. Johnson escaped impeachment by one vote but was left effectively powerless. His acquittal set a precedent against impeachment based on political rivalry, lasting until the Clinton impeachment crisis of the late 1990’s.

Congressional Reconstruction Continues

The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in 1869 and passed in 1870, guaranteed the right to vote to any citizen regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The amendment aimed to promote black suffrage in the South, and to guarantee it in the North and West. (Much of the North had not yet extended suffrage to blacks, even though the South had been required to do so by Congress.) The last Southern states awaiting readmission—Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia—were required to ratify the new amendment as a precondition for readmission.

Working to undermine the Fifteenth Amendment was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), founded in 1866 in Tennessee and operating in all Southern states by 1868. The Klan conducted raids to intimidate black voters as part of its campaign to assert white supremacy in the South. Along with these raids, the Klan orchestrated lynchings and floggings of blacks. In May 1870, to counter the Klan’s impairment of black suffrage and to bolster the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, which protected black voters. Congress also passed the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to authorize the president to use federal troops and emergency measures to overthrow the Klan. Although incidences of vigilantism declined, the Klan maintained a strong presence in many areas.

Reconstructed Governments in the New South

Because of the enfranchisement of blacks, the disfranchisement of ex-Confederates, and the influx of Northern opportunists, the Republican Party dominated Reconstruction governments in the South. All Southern Reconstruction constitutions guaranteed universal male suffrage, and Louisiana and South Carolina even opened public schools to blacks. To fund these schools and other new social programs, state governments raised state taxes and accumulated exorbitant debt.

Opponents of Reconstruction accused these new governments of being unsound and corrupt—and, indeed, many involved in these new governments did take bribes and exchanged favors for votes. Democrats called the Southern moderates who cooperated with Republicans scalawags, and labeled the Northern opportunists carpetbaggers (an unsavory title meant to suggest that the Northerners came to the South just to gain easy political power and wealth through bribes). Led by Democratic politicians, the Ku Klux Klan attacked and even murdered many of these “scalawags,” “carpetbaggers,” and other political leaders.

Reconstruction Wanes

During the 1870s, the Radical Republicans lost influence in Congress when two key leaders, Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, died, and many others turned moderate. The Radicals’ demise, along with reports of corruption in “reconstructed” governments, sapped Northerners’ enthusiasm for Reconstruction. At the same time, economic panic and political scandal diverted the nation’s attention. Another factor contributing to the end of Reconstruction were the rulings of the Supreme Court. In a series of decisions, the Court reversed many of the trends the Radicals had begun.

The Supreme Court Repudiates Reconstruction

In a series of cases in the 1860s and 1870s, the Supreme Court established a narrow reading of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment only protected the rights of national citizenship, not state citizenship, and therefore allowed for a number of restrictions on state voting privileges. In the years following this decision, many Southern states imposed literacy tests, poll taxes, property requirements, and grandfather clauses (which allowed only those men to vote whose grandfathers had voted) in an effort to limit voting among blacks. Since many blacks were poor and uneducated, and their grandfathers had not voted, they could not pass these new voting requirements. The Court also limited the scope of the Fifteenth Amendment, ruling that the amendment did not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone, but merely prohibited the barring of suffrage based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Since the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 served to reinforce the Fifteenth Amendment, the Court declared key parts of the acts invalid.

Corruption and Dissent in the Grant Administration

In 1868, the Union Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Democratic candidate for president, Horatio Seymour. Grant’s two terms in office were laden with scandal, including the 1869 “Black Friday” scandal, the 1875 “Whiskey Ring,” and the 1876 “Belknap scandal.” In “Black Friday,” Grant’s brother-in-law conspired with two powerful industrialists to corner the gold market; in the “Whiskey Ring,” Grant’s personal secretary was proven to have taken bribes from a group of distillers seeking to evade millions of dollars in taxes; and in the “Belknap scandal,” Grant’s secretary of war, William E. Belknap, was impeached for accepting bribes to sell Native American trading posts in Oklahoma. The widespread corruption in Grant’s administration weakened the Republican Party and diverted the nation’s attention from Reconstruction.

Approaching the election of 1872, dissident Republicans split off from the party in protest of Grant’s corruption and formed a new political party called the Liberal Republicans. Liberal Republicans opposed corruption and favored sectional harmony. The new party joined with the Democrats and nominated Horace Greeley for president. Greeley, though a determined campaigner, lost convincingly to Grant. Despite Grant’s victory, the division in the Republican Party was a clear sign of the loss of momentum for Congressional Reconstruction.

The division of the Republican Party during the election of 1872 demonstrated the weakening of support for Reconstruction. The solid core in Congress, which had pushed Reconstruction measures through, disintegrated in the wake of the Grant administration’s corruption.

The Panic of 1873

In Grant’s second term in office, the nation faced serious economic woes. As a result of over-expansion by railroad builders and businessmen, the nation’s economy collapsed, in what is known as the Panic of 1873. The stock market crashed, the largest bank in the nation failed—as did many smaller banks and firms—and 25 percent of railroads shut down. This economic panic, coupled with Grant’s many political scandals, distracted the nation from Reconstruction.

The End of Reconstruction

The 1872 split in the Republican Party hastened the collapse of Republican rule in the South. Moderates in Congress pushed through Amnesty Acts allowing almost all ex-Confederate officials to return to politics and hold office. Using tactics such as promising tax cuts and engaging in outright violence and intimidation, Democrats took control of one state after another. Some Republicans gave up and moved back North, while others defected to the Democratic Party. By 1877, Democrats gained enough votes to win state elections in every one of the former Confederate states.

Democrats called their return to power Redemption. Once under Democratic control, every state in the South cut expenses, ended social programs, and revised their tax systems to grant relief to landowners. Many blacks migrated northward to escape the discriminatory policies of the Redeemed South. In 1879, 4,000 blacks from Mississippi and Louisiana reached Kansas to settle on land outside the grasp of southern Democrats.

In the 1876 presidential election, Republicans nominated the moderate Rutherford B. Hayes, and Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden. Although Tilden won the popular vote, Republicans challenged the election returns from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Republicans still controlled the political machinery in these states, and threw out enough votes to ensure Hayes’s victory. To prevent Democrats from obstructing Hayes’s path to the White House, Republicans promised that in return for the Presidency, Hayes would remove federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. After he assumed office, Hayes abided by this so-called Hayes-Tilden Compromise, and removed federal troops from the last two occupied states in the South. By January 1877, Democrats had won control of all Southern state governments and Redemption was complete. Southern governments, under Democratic rule, reimposed laws severely restricting black suffrage and civil rights. Reconstruction was officially over.

dis is someone hacking into jin's xanga. man is he a dork! wat's he up to? i have no idea but just know he been cursing a lot and makin them big buck...im out!

Guess I havent updated for a while, nothing much in my life since the last entry. I found out that the beginners could play against other beginners in another school. Woot ! Happy April Fools day. Yup, spring break almost coming up, need to work on science fair project during the whole ordeal.

- Jin

My aim is messed up again in my own comp, be on a little bit from now. Shoudve went early to the tennis courts to get a free one, slept till 9 and listen to music for an whole hour doing absolutly nothing. Ate breakfast quick and rush with Davis to see if theres court and there wasnt at all same thing happen when i went back again. Still need to finish the rest of my homework, so bye people.

- Jin