The process through which the English settlers became Americans was twofold: they claimed North America as their home and cut ties with the mother country. First, the Red Indian tribes that existed throughout the lands claimed North America as their home, albeit in separate units. For that reason, confrontations that closely resembled a tug of war ensued because two distinct groups were vying for the same resources. Now, the assimilation of one faction by the other was impossible as their traditions differed greatly. Hence, it is no wonder that David Edmunds’ Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership revolves around the subject’s attempt to preserve the Indian culture in the face of the Caucasians’ assault. In one particular incident, after the mysterious murder of an English settler, Tecumseh and other Indian leaders hasten to reassure the rest of the white community that “the tribesmen werenot hostile” (Edmunds 87). In other words, Tecumseh was not up for a confrontation with the whites and neither was the rest of the tribes. Hence, the English settlers became Americans as they defined the new territories as theirs to do with as they saw fit.
Now, as colonists, the people still retained ties with the mother country as they paid taxes to the English Monarch and recognized its powers in North America. The problems emerged when the King exerted his tyrannical rule on people who already viewed the thirteen colonies as their homes. Notably, the English Empire operated on absolute authority where the commands of the royal family went unopposed by their subjects. Nonetheless, the people who resided outside the borders of Britain were not the traditional kind of royal subjects as the distance from the mother country created ideologies of self-rule and independence for their lot. In the words of Rebecca Dickinson, and as an explanation of the tensions that ended with the American Revolutionary War, Americans recognized “[the] dark implications in England’s new revenue schemes” (Miller 5). In other words, with the theoretical claims of the lands were not enough and an official tactic proved necessary for the colonists to be truly independent. Therefore, the settlers fought the English forces in the War of Independence and became true Americans.
About the mentioned compromises, they both revolved around the expansion of slavery in the United States. In 1820, the Louisiana Purchase propelled Congress to ratify the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to quell tensions between the South and the North. Before the talks of adding Missouri as State, there was a balance between the anti-slavery North and the pro-slavery South with each side boasting eleven States. Now, Missouri’s request to join the Union as Slaveholding State in 1819 threatened the balance by giving the South more representation than the North. Henry Clay’s penning of the Missouri Compromise dealt with the situation by allowing Missouri to join the Union as a slave state and included Maine as a Free State (Foner 382). The terms of agreement prohibited the introduction of slavery to specific territories that came with the Louisiana Purchase: areas north of the 36°30′ parallel were to remain free (Foner 382). However, any lands south of the given area, including Missouri, could be become a Slave State. The conditions quelled tensions in 1820; however between 1850 and the eve of the American Civil War, a series of events launched the abolitionists North against the slavery South.
In 1850, after the United States’ victory in the Mexican-American War of between 1846 and 1848, the Union officially annexed the previously Mexican territory of Texas. At the same, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that the two nations signed to end the war allocated the United States the lands lying to the Southwest and California (Foner 500). Naturally, the two events opened fresh talks on the issue of slavery as again a new region requested to join the Union. Unlike Missouri’s interest in black bondage, California sought statehood as a non-slaveholding state and as a result, caused the Southern officials’ to demand a law that would even the balance. The Compromise of 1850 made up the new solution (Foner 509). California gained statehood as a Free State, and the Compromise made any slave trade past the District of Columbia illegal. Meanwhile, for the South, the agreement endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act as a prohibition against the aid given to runaway slaves and supported popular sovereignty in the territories of Utah and New Mexico. Unlike in the case of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which left both sides satisfied, the second attempt at keeping the peace enraged the Northerners who became part of the force meant to protect slave ownership, the same institution against which they were fighting.
1850 marked the beginning to a downward spiral as far as relations between the North and the South were concerned and they entailed the Southerners breaking the terms of both agreements. First, the vast territories of Kansas and Nebraska sought statehood and as per the conditions of the Missouri Compromise, the two areas were to join the Union as Free for being north of the mentioned parallel line. The South was against such a possibility and proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 to give the inhabitants of the Kansas and Nebraska the right to vote and decide on whether or not they will join the Union as a Free State. Attempts made by Missouri inhabitants to tamper with the voting processes created the grounds for the first slave-related skirmish on American soil, Bleeding Kansas. Secondly, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 further cemented the reality of the Southerners antics in defying the two compromises. Dred Scott, an enslaved man in one of the slaveholding states, sought emancipation before the Supreme Court after his master moved them to a Free State. In yet another refusal to abide the terms of the covered agreements, in the words of Chief Justice Taney, persons of African descent “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” and for that reason, Scott’s case was baseless (Foner 519). Additionally, Taney deemed the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because Congress had no powers to ban slavery in the United States. Hence, alongside Bleeding Kansas, chances of any agreements between the two sides became impossible, and the Civil War ensued.
Accordingly, real Northerners understood democracy as concept applicable to all regardless of race while the Southerners believed every constitutional right, including freedom, was subject to the possession of white skin. Central to the given differences was the issue of enslaving persons of African descent and for that reason, the American Civil War happened because of black slavery.
Works Cited
Edmunds, David. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. New Jersey: Pearson, 2006. Print.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History. 3rd. Vol. I. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print.
Miller, Marla. Rebecca Dickinson: Independence for a New England Woman. Lives of American Women. Colorado: Westview Press, 2013. Print.
Yetman, Norman R., ed. When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection. Dover Thrift Editions. New York: Dover Publications, 2002. Print.
