Unification and Sectionalism in 19th-Century America

Introduction: Two Americas in the Early 19th Century

While the United States enjoyed a tremendous period of domestic unification in the early nineteenth century, this unification was primarily cultural and technological in character. Beneath the surface of national progress, however, deeper divisions were forming that would ultimately pull the country apart.

Industrialization, Cotton, and the Roots of Sectionalism

As the North industrialized and the West was being settled, the industrial revolution brought about the expansion of cotton farming. This labor-intensive crop needed to be harvested by hand. In response to the growing demands of textile factories in Britain and the northeastern United States, efforts to plant and harvest cotton proceeded with great enthusiasm. While slavery functioned effectively in cotton agriculture, it was not suited to the increasingly technological base that undergirded the rest of American agriculture and industry. As a result, there was strong resistance to the spread of slavery out of the old South and into the West. Slavery was dying out in the North and the West alike.

In addition, the old system of chattel slavery conflicted with the emerging system of wage labor, which was becoming the foundation of the industrial revolution. Compromises such as Henry Clay's "Omnibus Bill" of 1850 papered over these differences temporarily (Maier, Smith, Keyssar, & Kevles, 2005, p. 417). With these factors in the background, the South became increasingly isolated from the rapidly developing rest of the nation, accentuating differences that would eventually lead to open conflict (ibid., pp. 419–420).

The acquisition of Texas especially accelerated this looming sectional conflict over slavery. The annexation of Texas, and later the acquisition of new land throughout the West as a result of the Mexican War, opened territories to the spread of slavery where its penetration had not been possible before. This threatened to overturn the delicate balance of power that had previously existed between northerners who disapproved of slavery and its southern supporters.

Westward Expansion and the Intensification of Sectional Conflict

Even with the passage of the Clay bill, the free soil movement continued to grow, as expansion of slavery into new territories was resisted by "free soilers" in the North who opposed extending the reach of the institution. If slavery expanded, so did the political power of the South, thereby upsetting the delicate balance between North and South in the federal government. Manifest Destiny, which had once been a rallying cry for the entire nation, now divided it along sectional lines: the South became an advocate of expanding into Western lands in the hope of extending slavery, while northerners hesitated over the free soil question as it applied to former Mexican territory.

Expansion may not have deterred people from heading west to mine gold in California, but it certainly raised serious questions about the kind of society that would develop out of the Western territories. Racial controversies were complicated even further in California by the influx of Chinese immigrants and the marginalization of native Mexicans in the newly acquired territories (ibid., pp. 415–416).

The expansion of the United States challenged not only domestic politics, but also its international relations. As noted above, it led to war with Mexico. The dispute over Oregon generated significant controversy between Britain and the United States, as northerners who worried about southern expansion showed little concern over their own expansionist ambitions (ibid., pp. 401–402). Once again, the Clay Compromise papered over these differences, but it was little more than a temporary bandage on a far deeper wound.