Unit 6 - Prelude to War 1845-1860

Ch. 17, 19-20

Objective:

1. In what ways and to what extent did the forces of growth and expansion beginning with the Constitution contribute to disunion?

2. Understand the political and social issues creating increased tensions between the North and the South.

Unit Themes:

    1. Transformation of the Economy and Society in Antebellum America
      • The transportation revolution and creation of a national market economy
      • Beginnings of industrialization and changes in social and class structures
      • Immigration and nativist reaction
      • Planters, yeoman farmers, and slaves in the cotton South
    2. The transformation of Politics in antebellum America
      • Emergence of the second party system
      • Federal authority and its opponents: judicial federalism, the Bank War, tariff controversy, and states' rights debates
      • Jacksonian democracy and its successes and limitations
    3. Religion, Reform, and Renaissance in Antebellum America
      • Evangelical Protestant revivalism
      • Social reforms
      • Ideals of domesticity
      • Transcendentalism and utopian communities
      • American Renaissance: literary and artistic expressions
    4. Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny
      • forced removal of American Indians to the trans-Mississippi West
      • Western migration and cultural interactions
      • Territorial acquisitions
      • Early U.S. imperialism: the Mexican War