american civil war?

Question

"Since slavery was unadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which eventually would be admitted as free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. "

what do they mean by unadaptable?
what are some examples of territorial land?
what has the territorial lands become free state got to do with the Southerners position in the Union?
I thought the Southerners seceded and formed the Confederacy?

Answer 1

unadaptable - not being made suitable to the ideal of free states
being admitted to the Union.

examples of territorial land

The Louisiana Purchase, completed 1803, was negotiated by Robert Livingston during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson; the territory was acquired from France. A small portion of this land was ceded to the United Kingdom in 1818 in exchange for the Red River Basin. More of this land was ceded to Spain in 1819 with the Florida Purchase, but was later reacquired through Texas annexation and Mexican Cession.

Red River Basin, acquired in 1818 by treaty from the United Kingdom, namely the Anglo-American Convention of 1818.
The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 with Spain resulted in Spain's cession of East Florida and the Sabine Free State and Spain's surrender of any claims to the Oregon Country. Article III of the treaty, when properly surveyed, resulted in the acquisition of a small part of central Colorado.

Texas Annexation of 1845: In 1836 the Republic of Texas voted to be annexed by the United States. Despite the fact that Mexican leader Antonio López de Santa Anna warned that this would be "equivalent to a declaration of war against the Mexican Republic," President John Tyler signed a treaty of annexation with Texas in April 1844, causing the Mexican-American War. After James Polk, a strong supporter of territorial expansion, won the presidency, but before he took office, Congress approved the annexation of Texas on February 28, 1845. On December 29, 1845, Texas became the 28th state.

The area of North America west of the Rockies to the Pacific, was jointly controlled by the U.S. and the United Kingdom following the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 until 1846 when the Oregon Treaty divided the territory at the 49th parallel (see Oregon boundary dispute). The San Juan Islands were claimed and jointly occupied by the U.S. and the U.K. from 1846-1872 due to ambiguities in the treaty (see Northwestern Boundary Dispute). Arbitration led to the sole US possession of the San Juan Islands since 1872.

Mexican Cession lands were a product of the Mexican-American War and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 2, 1848. In this treaty, Mexico gave the U.S. parts of what is Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming, and the whole of California, Nevada and Utah and recognized the Rio Grande as Texas' Southern border. The United States paid Mexico $15 million. In addition, the United States agreed to pay claims made by American citizens against Mexico, which amounted to more than $3 million.

Gadsden Purchase of 1853, United States purchased a strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border for $10 million, now in New Mexico and Arizona. This territory was later used for the southern transcontinental railroad.

The Guano Islands Act of 1856 provided for U.S. claims to unoccupied islands. Baker Island, Howland Island, and Navassa Island were annexed in under its provisions in 1857. Today ownership of Navassa is disputed between the U.S. and Haiti. Johnston Atoll was claimed by the US and Hawaii in 1858; the US claim became undisputed in 1898 after the annexation of Hawaii. Midway Atoll was discovered and claimed in 1859 and formally annexed 1867. Kingman Reef was annexed in 1922.

The working class in the south supported anyone willing to keep slaves, get rid or kill Indians and promote their slave plantation trade dominance over the manufacturing north. The Democrats, the party of Indian haters, slave keepers and champion of the under representative people ( Haha, that is what they claim) become strong when the east allows non-land holding persons to take part in the American political process.

Answer 2

Slavery was used in laborious agricultural endeavors such as growing cotton, tobacco, and rice which the less fertile western territories couldn't support.

The territories were US lands open for settlement, but not yet organized with state governments that would have voting rights in the Union. New Mexico Territory, Kansas Territory, and Nebraska Territory were among territories that existed in 1859 on the eve of the civil war. As these territories were organized into states it was a point of contention between the North and the South as to whether the new states would allow slavery or not.

The balance of free versus slave states in the Union up to that point had been equal. The Southern states feared that if new free states were admitted to the Union that they would be out voted on any slave related issues brought before the legislature and that slavery could eventually be abolished altogether.

The question seems to make the assumption that since the land was not adaptable to slavery that these areas would eventually be free states, but that was not necessarily the case. New states had to be approved by the legislature and southern lawmakers fought hard to maintain an equal number of slave states.

These were among the issues that caused most of the slave states to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America in the winter of 1861.

Answer 3

"I think "adaptable" means that slavery couldn't be condoned because it conflicted with the basic principles that America was founded on. All men are not equal if you have a slave class. "

If this were true, then how did the United States get formed in the first place? Slavery existed long before the US Constitution was drafted, and existed in the North up until the 1830's. The Founding Fathers used the phrase "all men are created equal," but they obviously didn't think of slaves as "men" since they left the issue of slavery alone.

"Territories are states just under a different name. Territories, however didn't have "States rights" That's why the south wanted to be admitted as States so they would be represented equally in the union."

Absolutely wrong. How about the US Virgin Islands? Are you saying that they are states? What about Puerto Rico? That's a US territory also; are you saying it's not a territory but a state?

A territory has NO say in the workings of the US government, has NO representatives in the Congress, has NO vote in national elections, and is NOT supported financially by the United States.

There is a HUGE difference between a territory and a state.

Answer 4

Okay ... this is an interesting question.

The southern economy was largly agrarian. This means that cotton and tobacco was HUGE. The more industrial North was as wealthy as the South, however cotton can damage the soil.

Not all of the territorial lands could support cotton.

According to Wikipedia, "Territories are, at times, organized with a separate legislature under a Territorial governor and officers appointed by the President and approved by the Senate of the United States. Territory has been historically divided into organized territories and unorganized territories. Unorganized territory was generally either unpopulated or set aside for Native Americans and other indigenous peoples in the United States by the U.S. federal government until such time as the growing and restless population encroached into the areas. In recent times, unorganized refers to the degree of self-governmental authority exercised by the territory." Effectively, if the territories are under the jurisdiction of the Federal US government and if the Federal government banned slavery ... well ... you could see that the South would panic.

Also, just as demand for slaves was increasing, supply was restricted. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. On January 1, 1808, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones that were currently in the U.S. However, the internal U.S. slave trade, and the involvement in the international slave trade or the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens, were not banned. Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining; the overland 'slave trade' from Tidewater, Virginia, and the Carolinas to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas continued for another half-century.

The Midwestern states (also known as territorial states) decided in the 1820s not to allow slavery and because most Northeastern states became free states through local emancipation, a Northern bloc of free states solidified into one contiguous geographic area. The dividing line was the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon line (between slave-state Maryland and free-state Pennsylvania). A further threat to the Southern position.

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, border wars broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state was left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." At the same time, fears that the Slave Power was seizing full control of the national government swept anti-slavery Republicans into office.

Lincoln, the Republican, won with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states: thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many slave owners in the South feared that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of 4 million slaves would be problematic for the slave owners and for the economy that drew its greatest profits from the labor of people who were not paid.

They also argued that banning slavery in new states would upset what they saw as a delicate balance of free states and slave states. They feared that ending this balance could lead to the domination of the industrial North with its preference for high tariffs on imported goods. The combination of these factors led the South to secede from the Union and thus began the American Civil War.

Southerners did secede and formed the Confederacy.

Answer 5

I think "adaptable" means that slavery couldn't be condoned because it conflicted with the basic principles that America was founded on. All men are not equal if you have a slave class.

Territories are states just under a different name. Territories, however didn't have "States rights" That's why the south wanted to be admitted as States so they would be represented equally in the union.
I'm curious as to who's quote this is?

Answer 6

It wasn't very practical to adapt slavery in the Western Territories (basically the western third of the country), because it was mostly unihabited (nobody lived out on the frontier), and those that did, for the most part, couldn't afford to buy them.
The Southern States saw this as the "shape of things to come" in their states, which wanted to retain slavery.
The Southern States did secede due to the fact that, historically, the government was formed with the understanding that the individual states would mostly rule themselves without Federal government intervention. The Southern states began to feel as if the Federal government was beginning to trend towards telling the states what they could do, how they could govern, what laws they could have.
So, they seceded...

Answer 7

unadaptable - slavery was used for labor in agriculture, primarily cotton and sugar cane. the territories were not suitable for that type of agriculture, so slavery was not needed there.

the territorial lands were the new states our west. as the new states joined the union, there would be more free states than slave states, and they could eventually outvote the slave states in congress and outlaw slavery.

Answer 8

Slavery become the overriding concern. States' rights become smoke and mirrors, an excuse, no longer a reason to insurrection. The South wanted to evade making slavery their reported reason. It become considered as undesirable P.R. They knew that they could pick help from Europe, probable Britain. Many eu international places might want to have favourite that the U.S. be fractured. States had ceded their authority, even as they ratified the structure. The structure become designed to position the federal authority over the states, because the unique plan. of a weaker federal authorities had failed, below the Articles of Confederation. Newspaper articles, from the time of the ratification votes, entreated ratification because of the reality that it would want to avert states from secession.