Themes in U.S. History
Chapter 19
American Diversity
American Identity
Culture
Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was white, published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 as an attempt to show the North the horrors of slavery. The novel was published abroad, including France and Britain. It helped to start the Civil War and to end it.
Demographic Changes
Most of the people who came into Kansas were just westward-moving pioneers. A minority of the people moving to Kansas was financed by groups of northern abolitionists who wanted to see Kansas a free state. The New England Emigrant Aid Company was one of these groups.
Economic Transformations
Environment
Northerners came up with the idea of the government giving 160-acre plots of farming land to pioneers for free. Two groups opposed the idea: Eastern industrialists feared that the free land would drain its supply of workers and the South feared that the West would fill up with free-soilers who would form anti-slavery states, unbalancing the Senate even more.
Congress passed a homestead act in 1860, making public lands available at $0.25/acre, but it was vetoed by President Buchanan.
Globalization
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