Existing comment:
1830 Indian Removal Act:
Congress forces the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole to leave their homelands east of the Mississippi River and move to the Great Plains. Once the Indians are pushed out, white settlers occupy these lands.
Mid-1800s Exclusion Laws:
A series of laws keep free blacks from entering states where slavery is illegal. Unlike whites, free blacks are unable to take advantage of the economic opportunities in these areas.
1848 Spoils of the US-Mexican War:
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the US-Mexican War, calls for Mexico to give up just under half of its territory, including present-day California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado. The US pays Mexico $15 million to compensate for these lost lands.
"Could these Mexicans have seen into my heart at that moment, they would have known... my feeling of shame as an American... For though it would not have done for me to say so there, that was a thing for every right minded American to be ashamed of, and I was ashamed of it, most cordially and intensely ashamed of it."
-- Nicholas P Trist, US negotiator of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848, as reported by his wife, Virginia. From Trist Papers, University of North Carolina.
1854 People v Hall:
The California Supreme Court rules that the testimony of Chinese man who witnessed a murder by a white man is not admissible in a court of law.
"The same rule which would admit them to testify, would admit them to all the equal rights of citizenship, and we might soon see them at the polls, in the jury box, upon the bench, and in our legislative halls."
-- California Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray, majority opinion ,1854
1857 Scott v Sandford:
Dred Scott, a fugitive slave, sues for his freedom on the grounds that he has lived in a territory where slavery was illegal. The US Supreme Court rules against him, asserting that blacks have no rights as American citizens and therefore no standing in court.
"We think they [blacks] are not.. included and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides..."
-- Chief Justice Roger B Taney, majority opinion, 1857
1861-65 The Civil War:
Among the causes of the Civil War is the belief in the South that the states -- not the federal government -- have the right to make their own laws about matters such as slavery. |