AP U.S. History 5.12: Comparison in Period 5

To compare the significance of two effects, first choose what you are measuring: how many people a change reached, how deep it went, or how long it lasted. Then set evidence about each one side by side, on that same measure.

Try it on the two acts that moved the country from slavery to freedom. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared that "all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free." He issued it "as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion." The National Archives notes that it "only applied to areas of the Confederacy currently in a state of rebellion," and that Lincoln saw it "would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment."

The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and ratified on December 6, 1865, reached much further: slavery would not exist "within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Measured by reach and permanence, the amendment is the larger change. Measured by immediate effect on the war, the proclamation matters more: it made the end of slavery a purpose of the war, and it said freed people would be received into the Union's armed service. Both answers are defensible, because each names its yardstick.

Sources: Emancipation Proclamation (Avalon Project); 13th Amendment (National Archives).

Before the war, the Union itself was in dispute. South Carolina's declaration of December 24, 1860 claimed "the right of a State to govern itself" in defense of slavery: Northern states, it said, "have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States" and elected a president "whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery." Northern abolitionists, a visible minority, called slavery a moral wrong; many other Northerners opposed its spread to protect free labor; Southern defenders called it a positive good the Constitution protected. Lincoln answered in March 1861 that "the Union of these States is perpetual" and "Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy."

The North's greater manpower and industry, the leadership of Lincoln and others, and emancipation brought Union victory, and the war settled the issue of secession.

The amendments then shifted power toward the federal government. The 13th and the 15th end: "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation," and the 14th gives Congress the same power. The 14th also says: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

Before the war, Americans argued over what a state could do to resist the federal government. After it, the Constitution named things a state could not do to its own people.

Sources: South Carolina's declaration (Avalon Project); Lincoln's first inaugural (Avalon Project); 14th Amendment (National Archives).

In the Dred Scott case of March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney asked: "Can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States"? The Court said no, for Black Americans "whether emancipated or not." The test was race and ancestry. The 1848 treaty with Mexico left it to Congress to say when Mexicans in the ceded lands would enjoy "all the rights of citizens of the United States."

The 14th Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, made birth in the country the test for those born here: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Not everyone was included: Section 2 counts each state's people "excluding Indians not taxed," and most American Indians in tribal nations were left out. The 15th, ratified on February 3, 1870, barred denying the vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Section 2 also penalized a state only for denying the vote to "male inhabitants," and the 15th named race but not sex, so the women's rights movement was both emboldened and divided.

Sources: Dred Scott v. Sandford (National Archives); Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Avalon Project); 14th and 15th Amendments (National Archives).

Before the war, expansion in the Western Hemisphere fed the sectional crisis: from Texas and Oregon to the Mexican Cession to Kansas, each new territory reopened the question of whether slavery could spread there.

During the war, the Homestead Act of May 20, 1862, "An Act to Secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public Domain," offered public land to any head of a family or person of twenty-one who "is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such," and "who has never borne arms against the United States Government."

Before 1861, the question attached to new land was whether enslaved labor would follow settlers west. The 1862 law offered land to free settlers, including immigrants who had begun the path to citizenship, and shut out anyone who had fought for the Confederacy. The Pacific Railway Act, passed on July 1, 1862, "provided Federal subsidies in land and loans for the construction of a transcontinental railroad."

The course framework names what ran through the whole period: popular enthusiasm for expansion, bolstered by economic and security interests, brought new territories, substantial migration westward and new overseas initiatives, such as Perry's 1854 treaty with Japan. Laws like these two boosted westward migration during and after the war, and many migrants kept arriving, mainly from Ireland and Germany.

Sources: Homestead Act (Avalon Project); Pacific Railway Act (National Archives); Avalon Project index of 19th century documents.