Civil War Prompt

        Slavery, and it’s associated struggle for power, intensified sectionalism having effects in the United States. One of those effects was the Ostend Manifesto. In 1854, the U.S. tried to buy Cuba from Spain, but Spain refused to sell it; thus, the Ostend Manifesto was written. It is a document, written in Ostend, Belgium, that described the United States’ rationale for taking Cuba by force. At this time, the number of free and slave states in the House of Representatives was equal, and both the North and South had equal power in government. The United States bringing Cuba into the Union would upset this balance and bring more power to the South, would have more representation than the other. When the public heard of the plan mentioned in the Ostend Manifesto, anti-slavery northerners were angered and accused their government of plotting to bring a new slave state into the Union. This reveals how sectionalism was intensified because the North no longer trusted their own government to act in their best interest as the states had before. They felt betrayed by the government, and because of this, people’s loyalty to the federal government decreased. Meanwhile, states in the North, because they shared the same ideology about slavery, increased their loyalty to their Northen region.

        Another effect that intensified sectionalism in the U.S. even more would be “Bleeding Kansas” which included a series of events that occurred right after Kansas separated from Nebraska and became its own territory. The question of whether or not slavery should be allowed in this state or not was raised by the Union. In 1855, elections were held, people from Missouri flooded Kansas and, because they were the majority,  they were able to make Kansas a pro-slavery territory. This angered Northerners in Kansas who held a convention in the territory’s capital and drafted a Constitution which excluded slavery in their territory. It was with this Constitution that they applied to become a state; however, because President Pierce endorsed the anti-abolitionists, Kansas was not given the statehood it requested. In response to this, John Brown, an abolitionist angry at the government for rejecting the Constitution, gathered six of his followers and killed five anti-abolitionists. These killings later became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. “Bleeding Kansas” intensified sectionalism because people’s lives were taken because of a simple disagreement. A year before the events of “Bleeding Kansas”, at the time of the Ostend Manifesto, sectionalism was powerful but it only led to the Northern region becoming closer and not trusting the Southern region or their government. In this case, Northerners and Southerners were so loyal to their own region’s ideologies regarding slavery and so against their opposing region’s ideas about the practice that, not only did violence occur but, five people paid the ultimate consequence and lost their lives. Sectionalism was also intensified because, instead of just disagreeing with and feeling threatened by one another as they had in the past, each region was actively placing blame on their opposite region for the events that happened in Kansas. Because they couldn’t trust each other, states were forced to trust other states in their region and not the U.S. as a whole.  

        Slavery that was spread as states were expanding westward made the North and South’s different ideologies on the practice prominent and intensified friction between the regions.