Learn AP® U.S. History - Tyler + Polk 1841 - 1849

Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was intended by God to rule the entirety of North America. Fulfilling this mission was the end goal of the American government during the first half of the 1800s.

Utopia is a state of perfect society on Earth.

During the 1840s, there were several attempts to create utopian communes, including Brook Farm (where Nathaniel Hawthorne resided for a short period), the Oneida Community in New York, and Iowa’s Amana Community.

Walden is a record of Henry David Thoreau’s experience living by himself in a small cabin on Walden Pond. More than a mere autobiography, in Walden, Thoreau describes his attempts to use his observations about the natural world to discover essential truths about life.

Thoreau contended that individuals have a duty to disobey when the government enacts laws that violate one’s conscience.

Thoreau was primarily motivated by the injustice of slavery and his own opposition to the Mexican-American War. Civil Disobedience influenced figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Open marriages were considered scandalous.

The Oneida Community was a commune in upstate New York. Oneidans believed that children should be raised by the community, rather than by individual parents. The Oneida Community’s practice of open marriages (the sharing of marital partners with other members of the community) and free love were considered scandalous.

Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, lived in the Oneida Community for a time, but proved unpopular. While there, he was known as “Charles Get-Out,” due to the usual response to his attempts to find a romantic partner.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne condemned Puritan bigotry in Massachusetts.

Poe specialized in depicting the macabre, dark stories of crime and murder that were designed to thrill his audience.

Melville criticized American optimism. Unlike the Transcendentalists, Melville’s writings convey a belief in original sin and that man was inherently imperfect.

Dix dedicated herself to reforming treatment of the mentally ill. Dix advocated for human treatment and separate asylums (the insane were typically housed with criminals prior to her efforts).

The most prominent prison reform was a change in focus from punishment of the criminal to rehabilitation. The first prison focused on reform was Auburn, built in New York in 1821.

Concerned that the free public schools started by reformers such as Horace Mann would be used to proselytize their children with anti-Catholic teachings, German and Irish Catholics created their own schools.

McGuffey’s Reader

McGuffey’s Reader contained lessons designed to emphasize values such as hard work and punctuality, and attempted to instill social, “American” values in young people.

The Seneca Falls Convention, the first organized women’s rights conference, was called in 1848 by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Every prominent women’s rights advocate (and quite a few men) attended.

Prominent feminists, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, proposed equality for women, including legal, property, and voting rights. Though the Seneca Falls Convention and the women’s movement were overshadowed by abolitionism, the Convention marked the beginning of the women’s rights movement.

The Mexican government had neither the troops nor funds to protect the state from raids by the Comanche Indian Tribe. Mexico hoped that a strong group of settlers along the northern frontier would protect the state.

The American settlers were known as “Texians.”

The response was overwhelming. By 1830, Americans in Texas outnumbered Mexicans by 3 to 1.

Many Americans arrived from the South and brought their enslaved people with them.

Stephen F. Austin

Austin, for whom Texas’ state capital is named, led the first group of 300 settlers to Texas in 1822, where they set up homesteads along the Brazos River. Following independence from Spain, the new Mexican government ratified the land grants to the new settlers.

First, Mexico required anyone already living within Mexican territory to convert to Roman Catholicism. Second, Mexico passed legislation banning the enslavement of people.

Americans simply ignored both laws. Most enslavers simply converted their slaves into “lifetime indentured servants”, a distinction without a difference that only served to irritate Mexican authorities.

The Mexican government banned immigration by Americans, an act Americans simply ignored as they continued to pour over the border.

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, often known as Santa Anna or López de Santa Anna, declared himself dictator in 1834.

When he met with Stephen F. Austin in Mexico, he intercepted a letter that Austin had sent to the government in Texas, urging them to separate and form their own separate state from their present state of Coahuila y Tejas. Santa Anna considered this request treasonous and had Austin arrested.

After spending 1.5 years in jail, Stephen F. Austin went back to Texas.

Suspecting the Texans would rebel once more, Santa Anna marched northwards to Texas with an army of 6,000 men to destroy the suspected insurrection against the Mexican government.

In present-day San Antonio, an old missionary called the Alamo was attacked by Santa Anna and his 6,000 troops since they refused to abandon the city to the Mexican army.

Although it was a technical defeat for the Texans, it was also a moral victory for them, since it unified them in their desire for an independent country, a country that would allow for slavery and Protestantism.

The Mexicans deposed Santa Anna, and continued to consider Texas an official part of Mexico.

This unsettled state would prevent the American annexation for years, and contribute to the Mexican-American War.

Both Presidents were concerned that annexation of the Republic of Texas would lead to war with Mexico. Further, Texas was such a large territory that it was anticipated that the territory would be separated, meaning five separate slave states would come into the Union, engendering fierce political opposition.

A Southerner, President John Tyler had an annexation bill introduced to the Congress, which was rejected despite concerns about growing British influence in the region.

In Maine, Canadian and American lumbermen fought over the proper border between Maine and British Canada, an event known as the Aroostook War.

In 1842, Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton signed a treaty in Washington, fixing the border dispute by signing the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

54-40 or fight

The term 54-40 referred to the parallel 54°40′ North, Russian America's southern border, and significantly farther north than today's border with Canada. Seizing this territory would have resulted in a war with the British.

James K. Polk was a Jacksonian Democrat and ran for president in 1844.

Polk came out strongly in favor of Oregon's boundary being at 54°40′, and supported Texan annexation, appealing to those who supported Manifest Destiny. Because he was new to politics, people believed he would do what he said, and voted for him, making him President.

Before he left, President Tyler had the entire Congress pass a joint resolution for annexation, which required fewer votes than a Senate measure. This joint resolution was a shortcut to annexing Texas.

Once Texas was annexed, all the incoming President Polk had to do was settle the boundary dispute with Great Britain/England over the Oregon Territory.

A boundary was set at the 49th parallel, a reasonable compromise position.

There was some dispute in the Senate over whether to ratify the Oregon Treaty. Still, war with Mexico threatened to break out at any moment, and few had a desire to fight two countries simultaneously, so they ratified the treaty to focus on a war with Mexico.

Polk dispatched John Slidell to:

1. Attempt to buy 1/3 of all of Mexico's land.

2. Negotiate with Mexico over Texas' southern boundary.

Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to lead an army into the disputed area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River.

A minor skirmish with a Mexican patrol led to the death of 11 U.S. soldiers. Claiming that American lives had been shed on American soil, Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war, which Congress quickly approved.

In June 1846, shortly before the American declaration of war against Mexico, a small group of American settlers near Sacramento proclaimed their own republic, which bore a picture of a grizzly bear on its flag.

Frémont took control of the Bear Flag forces.

Frémont, known as the Pathfinder, was in the Army Corps of Engineers. In June 1846, he was surveying overland routes through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once word reached California of the American declaration of war on Mexico, Frémont took command of the small Bear Flag forces.

The Bear Flag Republic lasted only 26 days, before it recognized American sovereignty over California.

The Wilmot Proviso (1846) was a measure introduced in the House of Representatives, which attempted to ban slavery from any territory conquered from Mexico. It never became a law, since the Senate refused to pass it.

The US government, after forcing Mexico to sign the Treaty, gave them 15 million dollars in exchange for 1/3 of the entire country of Mexico.

Mexico would also recognize the Rio Grande River as Texas' southern border, which was the initial American demand before the war.

The Ostend Manifesto was diplomatic correspondence in 1854, relating to the possible purchase of Cuba from Spain, and conveyed a threat of war if Spain refused.

Southerners had long coveted Cuba as a further slave state, and the Ostend Manifesto was one in a long line of attempts to purchase the island.

When it was leaked to the public, the Northern Congressman were outraged and the attempt failed.

It was hoped that a Southern transcontinental railroad would be built through the area.

Named for the diplomat who negotiated the treaty, the Gadsden Purchase comprised much of southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico.

They were known as 49ers.

In their wake came thousands of more permanent settlers, who followed the overland trails that took them to California and Oregon.