American History Final

The original intentions of the First Amendment

• To restrain the power of the new national government in the realm of religion

• To prevent the new national government from establishing an official state church

• To protect the religious liberty of American citizens

  • It was NOT the intention of the amendment to remove religion from the public sphere of from national life

Were there church establishment in the states after the First Amendment?

Yes, individual states maintained established churches after the First Amendment was ratified

Christian elements present in the new nation

Christian moral principles influenced many founding documents and public life

Father of the Bill of Rights

James Madison

First Amendment

Freedom of RAPPS (Religion, Press, Petition, and Speech)

Second Amendment

The right to bear arms

Third Amendment

No quartering soliders

Fourth Amendment

Protection from unlawful searches and seizures

Fifth Amendment

Freedom from self-incrimination

Tenth Amendment

The powers not expressly delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states

First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

John Jay

Members of Washington’s First Cabinet

• Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State)

• Alexander Hamilton (Secretary of Treasury)

• Henry Knox (Secretary of War)

Domestic Policy during Washington’s Administration (Hamilton’s Plan)

Included the assumption of state debts, tariffs and excise taxes, and establishing a national bank

Whiskey Rebellion

A rebellion in 1794 against the excise tax on whiskey; it was crushed by Washington, demonstrating federal authority

Foreign Policy during Washington’s Administration

• Washington’s Response to the French Revolution and European Wars: Neutrality

• Citizen Genet’s threat to undercut the American government

• The Jay Treaty: War with Britain kept away

First political parties

• Federalists (Hamiltonians)

• Democratic-Republicans (Jeffersonians)

Washington’s Farewell Address warnings

• Against parties

• Against sectionalism

• Against Fiscal irresponsibility

• Against permanent foreign alliance

Was Washington’s election to the presidency decided by a wide section of the population?

No

Who was elected as the first vice president?

John Adams

Visions of Federalists

• Aristocratic Sympathies

• Favored to urbanization, industrialization, a diversified economy, tariff, and favor to business

• Centralization of wealth and banking

• Favorable to a strong central government and strong executive

• Distrust of people’s ability to govern themselves

• Favored the British

• Favored a broad construction of the Constitution

• Prominent in the New England and Middle Colonies

Visions of Democratic-Republicans

• Democratic Sympathies (the people know what’s best)

• Favorable to Agrarianism and opposed special favored to business and the tariff

• Broad diffusion of wealth

• Distrust of centralized government

• Idyllic belief in the perfectibility of man and the ideal of minimal government with individuals governing themselves

• Favored the French and the French Revolution

• Favored strict construction of the constitution

• Prominent in the south

What political parties were in the first election?

There were no political parties

Main leaders of Federalists

• Hamilton

• Adams

• Pinckney

Main leaders of Democratic-Republicans

• Jefferson

• Madison

• Burr

• Monroe

Adams’ term and vice president

John Adams served one term

• His Vice President was Thomas Jefferson

XYZ Affair

A diplomatic scandal where French agents demanded bribes from American diplomats, leading to outrage (Quasi-War)

The Quasi-War with France and the Creation of the Navy

An undeclared (not full scale), defensive naval war fought between the U.S. and France to protect U.S. ships at sea

• Full war with France avoided

Alien and Sedition Acts

• Sought to restrain potential harm caused by immigrants

• Criminalized certain forms of speech against the government

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

• Written by Jefferson and Madison

• Assertions and Implications:

  • The A & S Acts were unconstitutional and would not be enforced

  • States have the right to declare acts unconstitutional

  • States have the right to nullify such acts

  • States are joined by compact and retain sovereignty

Adam’s last acts as president

• The Judicial Act of 1801

• Adams’ Midnight Appointments

The importance of John Marshall for the Federalists

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:

• Adams’ appointment of Marshall to the SC was one of his most important decisions

• His most important ruling: Marbury v. Madison

• Other important cases were decided in favor of capitalism, free enterprise, and open markets

Marbury v. Madison

This case set the precedent for the Supreme Court to rule on questions of the Constitutionality of government action

• Important principle: Judicial Review

Jefferson’s Presidency

• Change in the Tone of Government

• The Barbary Wars

• The Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves

• Neutrality toward England and France & the Embargo Act

• The Louisiana Purchase

• The Lewis and Clark Expedition & its Objectives

Barbary Wars

Wars fought against North African pirates attacking American ships; showcased Jefferson’s use of force

Embargo Act

1807 law that banned all American exports to pressure Britain and France; it backfired economically

• Jefferson’s response to British and French interference with American trade

Louisiana Purchase

1803 land purchase from France that doubled the size of the United States

Lewis and Clark Expedition

Sent to explore the Louisiana Territory; objectives included mapping the area and finding a water route to the Pacific

Madison’s Presidency

• The War of 1812

• Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans

War of 1812

War between the U.S. and Britain over issues including trade restrictions and British support of Native Americans

• Results:

  • New England threatened secession

  • The burning of the Capitol

  • The Star Spangled Banner

  • The rise of Andrew Jackson

Battle of New Orleans

Major American victory in the War of 1812 led by Andrew Jackson, fought after the peace treaty was signed; Boosted American morale and Andrew Jackson’s national fame

The Era of Good Feeling

Period during Monroe’s presidency marked by national unity and a lack of partisan political conflict

Missouri Compromise

• Missouri’s Admission as a Slave State

• Maine’s Admission as a Slave State

• Slavery Prohibited North of the 36’30” Parallel

Monroe Doctrine

1823 statement declaring that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization and interference

• You stay on your side of the Atlantic and we’ll stay on ours!

Election of 1824 ("Corrupt Bargain")

John Quincy Adams was elected president by the House of Representatives despite losing the popular vote; Henry Clay allegedly influenced the outcome in exchange for becoming Secretary of State

John Quincy Adams’ Presidency

Frustration and failure

• The charge of corruption hung over Adam’s presidency

• In response, Adams refused to appoint loyalists and fire opponents

• Adams had grand visions for his presidency

• Adams’ lack of political skill and personal charisma fated his presidency to failure

The Election of 1828: The First Modern Political Election

• The rise of Jacksonian Democracy

• The bitterness of the campaign

  • Andrew Jackson

Rise of Jacksonian Democracy

A political movement toward greater democracy for the common man symbolized by Andrew Jackson’s election

Andrew Jackson’s Presidency

• The Beginning of the Democratic Party

• The Expansion of the Power of the Presidency

• The Indian Removal Act

• Conflict with Calhoun: The Nullification Crisis

• The closing of the National Bank

Indian Removal Act

1830 law signed by Jackson that authorized the forced relocation of Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi.

Nullification Crisis

Conflict between South Carolina and the federal government over tariffs; South Carolina threatened secession

The Second Great Awakening in the Northeast

• A revival in the east broke out in the early 1800s on the campus of Yale University under the leadership of Timothy Dwight

• Yale became the center for the 2nd GA in the east in the early 1800s

• Dwight’s students like Lyman Beecher carried forward the 2nd GA in the Northeast

• Beecher encouraged fellow revivalists to be deeply concerned with social reform

Timothy Dwight

President of Yale who led a revival among students during the 2nd Great Awakening

Lyman Beecher

A leading preacher during the 2nd Great Awakening emphasized moral reform

The Second Great Awakening in the west

• A revival in the west broke out in 1801 at a “camo meeting” in Cane Ridge, Kentucky

• At Cane Ridge, instances of emotional hysteria and accompanying physical effects were not discouraged

• The meeting was initiated by the leadership of James McGready and Barton Stone

• Stone became one of the founders of the Restoration Movement, along with Alexander Campbell

Cane Ridge Revival

A major revival meeting in Kentucky during the Second Great Awakening marked by mass religious enthusiasm

Stone-Campbell (Restoration) Movement

• Rejection of Denominational labels— Preferred to be called “Disciples of Christ” or “Christians” only

• Primitivism (i.e., “Back to the book of Acts”)

• Independent, Congregational, No Denominational ties

• Rejection of theological language

• Rejection of Creeds, Confessions, Doctrinal statements

• Populist and Democratic

• Imminent Post-Millennialism (“A golden age is at hand!”)

• The necessity of baptism for salvation

Shifts in American Religion under the Second Great Awakening

• Populism

• Social Reform

• Voluntary Societies

• Arminianism

• Finneyism

Charles Finney’s understanding of conversion and revival

• Viewed conversion as a decision and act of the will

• Believed revival was not a miracle but the result of proper methods

• New Measures:

  • Protracted meetings

  • Altar calls

  • “Mourner’s Bench”

  • “Anxious Seat”

The Fragmentation of American religion

• Edwardians and divisions over “New Divinity”

• Disciples of Christ/Christian church

• Adventists (Millerites)

• Holiness movement (Phoebe Palmer)

Edwardsian fragmentation in New England

The division of churches over theological differences after the Second Great Awakening

Millerites

Followers of William Miller who predicted Christ’s return; eventual formation of the Seventh Day Adventist movement

Ellen G. White and Seventh-Day Adventism

She was a key figure in founding the Seventh-Day Adventist Church after Millerite failures

Phoebe Palmer and the Holiness Movement

Leader who emphasized Christian perfection and sparked the Holiness Movement, leading toward Pentecostalism

Alternatives to traditional Christianity

• Shakers

• Christian Science (Mary Baker Eddy)

• Mormons (Joseph Smith)

• Transendentalists

• Utopian Socialists (Robert Owen and Charles Fourier)

Joseph Smith’s claims and teachings

Claimed to be Christian tradition but also a new, angelic revelation. Said he was a testament of Jesus Christ

• The Book of Mormon

Old Princeton and the Preservation of Orthodoxy (Alexander, Miller, and Hodge)

Defended reformed orthodoxy against liberal theology; led by men like Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge

De Tocqueville’s Assessment of American Religion

Observed that religion was central to American democracy and moral life.

Romanticism

An overall approach to life that emphasizes feelings, emotions, intuition, and imagination

• It de-emphasized logic and reason and instead tended toward mysticism

• It idealized nature and embraced notions of pantheism

European Romanticism Figures

• John Jacques Rousseau - Godfather of Romanticism

• Immanuel Kant - Transitional philosopher from the Enlightenment to Romanticism

• Fredrich Schleirmacher - Theologian of Romanticism

• G.W.F. Hegel - Philosopher of Romanticism

• Ludwig Van Beethoven - Father of Romantic Music

• British Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Blake

Noah Webster motive

• He believed that an independent nation needs an independent language and literature

• To have a strong nation we must have a strong national culture!

• He wanted to replace cultural obsession with Britain and create a new type of American culture— one purged from all the pretensions of the Old World

Noah Webster publications

A Grammatical Institute of the English Language

• The Blue-Backed Speller

• Grammar

• Reader

The American Dictionary

• Colour → Color

• Apologise → Apologize

• Centre → Center

• Catalogue → Catalog

The Copyright Act of 1831

Washington Irving importance

First American internationally recognized literary figure

Washington Irving key publications and contributions

• The History of New York by Dietrich Knickerbacker

• Perfected the American Short Story: “Rip Van Winkle” & “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

• Idealized the America West: Tour on the Prairie and Astoria

• Published F.S. Key’s “Defense of Ft. McHenry”

• Gotham, Knicks, and Santa Claus

James Fenimore Cooper

Romanticized American frontier life and Indian life

• The Leatherstocking Tales:

  • The Pioneers

  • The Last of the Mohicans

  • The Prairie

  • The Pathfinder

  • The Deerslayer

• William Gilmore Simms: The “Cooper” of the South

The Transcendentalists

Movement grew out of New England Unitarianism

• Promoted Pantheistic mysticism, the inherent goodness of man, intuition, self-reliance, nature

• Protested contemporary society and sought to escape from it

Transcendentalist leaders

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Henry David Thoreau

• Margaret Fuller

• Amos Bronson Alcott

Dark Romanticism

Rejected the idealism of the Transcendentalists and dwelt on the themes of good and evil:

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Herman Melville

• Edgar Allen Poe

The Hudson River School of American Painting

• Thomas Cole

• Frederic Edwin Church

• Albert Bierstadt

The Wide Variety of Social Reform Movements

• Christian Social Reform Efforts

• Temperance Movement

• Prison Reform

• Treatment of the Mentally Ill

• Women’s Equality

Women’s equality

• Lucretia Mott

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Susan B. Anthony

Abolitionism

Many early abolitionists were connected with the 2nd GA in New England

• William Lloyd Garrison, the Anti-Slavery Society (The Liberator)

• Frederick Douglas

• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

Colonial Abolitionism Setbacks

• French Revolution

• The invention of the Cotton Gin

Public School Movement

• Education before public schools: needed to be self-taught

• The great obstacle to government-funded schools: religious & the Bible

• Horace Mann’s (Father of public schools) vision of public school education and morality: teach kids basic morality without mentioning religious topics

Religious Communalism

• Shakers

• Rappites

• John Humphrey Noyes’s Oneida Colony

Utopian Socialists

• Robert Owen

• Francis Wright

• Charles Fourier

Robert Owen’s “Trinity of Evils”

1. Private property

2. Religion

3. Marriage

Robert Owen’s New Model Community and Ideals

• A shared communal where the families are disolved and there is a community of workers that worked for one another

• Envisioned a utopian society based on communal ownership, the elimination of poverty, universal education, and the rejection of traditional religion and marriage as oppressive institutions

The New Harmony (Indiana Experiment)

First Owenite Communal

What gave birth to the Whig Party?

Formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson’s policies

• Promoted congressional supermacy and economic modernization

The Antebellum Triumvirate in the Senate (also Whig party leaders)

• Henry Clay

  • Kentucky Nationalist, The Great Compromiser, “Internal Improvements”

• Daniel Webster

  • New England Nationalist

• John C. Calhoun

  • Southern Defender of Secession and States’ Rights

Whig party outlook

• Mainly: Opposition to Andrew Jackson

• Morality, education, & propriety

• Expansion of the National Government

• Desire for a National Bank

• Desire for “Internal Improvements”

The eight presidents before Lincoln

• Martin Van Buren (Jackson’s Third Term)

• William Henry Harrison (Strong Whig, Long Speech, Short Presidency)

• John Tyler (Abandonment of Whig Principles and Texas Annexation)

• James Polk (Expansionism: Acquisition of Oregon Territory and the Mexican War)

• Zachary Taylor (CA Gold Rush, War Hero, and Untimely Death)

• Millard Fillmore (Bookish and Amiable, Compromise of 1850)

• Franklin Pierce (Kansas-Nebraska Act, Family Tragedy and Heavy Drinking)

• James Buchanan (Dred Scott Decision, John Brown’s Raid, Initial Southern Secession)

The Annexation of Texas

• 1822 - Official American settlement begins

• 1835 - Americans resist Mexican gov. oppression

• 1836 - Alamo defenders captured and killed

• 1836 - Texans declare independence

• 1836 - Sam Houston elected first president of the Republic of Texas

• 1845 - Congress votes for the Annexation of Texas

The Mexican War

• Beginning: President James Polk called for war to secure the Texans’ land claim to the Rio Grande border

• Final outcome: Zachary Taylor dispatched to secure the border, War expanded to subjugate all of Mexican territory, Mexico conquered, including Mexico City, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• Established Rio Grande as the boundary of TX

• Ceded NM, UT, & CA territories to the U.S.

• U.S. pays Mexico $15 million for land acquired

Key events in Westward Expansion

• Annexation of Texas

• Oregon territory acquired

• Mormon exodus to Utah

• Mexican Cession of territory

• California Gold Rush

• Gadsden purchase

• Colorado Gold Rush

Issues leading to separation of the North and South

1. Two different economies

2. Two different political outlooks

   • E.g., Tariff, National Bank, Slavery

3. Two different religious outlooks

4. Result: Two different cultures

5. The Main Cause: The unsettled question of states’ rights, nullification, constitutional union, secession

   • Kentucky and Virginia Resolution

   • New England Secessionism

   • Webster-Hayne Debate

   • Nullification Crisis

6. Debate over the legal and moral status of slavery

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

At least 50 whites and hundreds of blacks were killed when Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia

• As a result, slave laws became more oppressive and slave owners began to live in fear

Division and conflict over tariffs

• The so-called “Tariff of Abominations” passed

• A New Tariff provokes the Nullification Crisis

• Henry Clay secures a Compromise Tariff

• The Webster-Hayne Debate

The Compromise of 1850

• California Admitted as a Free State

• Texas Surrenders New Mexico Territory and received compensation

• Popular Sovereignty for Utah and New Mexico Territories

• Domestic Slave Trade Banned in DC

• Fugitive Slave Law Enacted