5.1 Context: Sectional Conflict

During Period 4, the westward expansion of the United States continued, spurred on by ideas of Manifest Destiny (see 5.2). Period 4 also saw the Market Revolution and the Antebellum Reform Movements that profoundly changed the US. The Market Revolution increased the connectedness of the North and West through communication and transportation innovations like the telegraph and railroad. 

The Antebellum Reform Movements changed the US after the Second Great Awakening by urging Americans to change their society for the better through movements like Temperance, Women’s Rights, and, most consequentially for Period 5, abolitionism. 

These changes were not uniform throughout the US, however, and sectional tensions began to develop between the North and South as they grew increasing apart on a variety of issues: the North was changing far faster than the South thanks to the Market Revolution and Antebellum Reform Movements. The South grew increasingly protective of its more traditional way of life. Tensions mounted as the 1840s continued...