Expansion, Division, Aftermath
Three claims, and the third contains a limit
- The United States became more connected with the world, pursued an expansionist foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere, and emerged as the destination for many migrants from other countries.
- Intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions, debates over slavery and other economic, cultural, and political issues led the nation into civil war.
- The Union victory in the Civil War and the contested reconstruction of the South settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights.
Select both issues the CED says were settled.
The last two were left unresolved.
'Settled... but left unresolved'
- The third claim is the most important sentence in the unit, because it says exactly what the war did and did not decide.
- Settled: slavery and secession. Left unresolved: federal power and citizenship rights.
- So an answer that treats 1877 as a conclusion contradicts the CED's own summary of the period.
The CED makes territorial growth...
4.13 explained why an expanding institution forces decisions.
Expansion is the cause of the division
- Intensified by expansion — the CED makes territorial growth the mechanism that sharpened the slavery debate.
- 4.13 explained why: an institution that depletes its soil must move, and every new territory forces a decision.
- So unit 5's first thread produces its second, and saying so is the strongest structural point available.
Which of unit 5's threads?
Sort each statement into its thread.
Treating 1877 as a conclusion contradicts the CED's own summary.
Federal power and citizenship rights were left unresolved.
"Settled... but left unresolved" is the most important sentence in the unit. The war and Reconstruction settled the issues of slavery and secession but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights — so treating 1877 as a conclusion contradicts the CED's own summary.
The first thread says the United States emerged as the ____ for many migrants.
5.5 shows it producing both communities and a nativist movement.
And migration is the third element
- Emerged as the destination for many migrants from other countries puts immigration in the unit's opening claim.
- 5.5 will show it producing both ethnic communities and a nativist movement, so it is a source of division too.
- Three sources of conflict, then: territorial, sectional, and immigration-related, all in the first thread's vicinity.
Select all three sources of conflict this lesson names.
All in the first thread's vicinity.
Writing the context
- The objective is the context in which sectional conflict emerged from 1844 to 1877.
- Conditions: an economy already divided by 4.5's uneven networks, an institution required to expand, and a political system that had run out of compromises.
- Name each and what it made possible; the war is what happens when all three arrive together.
A war can answer whether a state may leave and whether a person may be owned, and still leave open what a citizen is owed and who decides. The second pair of questions outlives the first by a century.
Unit 5 opens three claims: the United States became more connected with the world, pursued an expansionist foreign policy... and emerged as the destination for many migrants; intensified by expansion and deepening regional divisions, debates over slavery... led the nation into civil war; and the Union victory and contested reconstruction settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights.