Little study guide for chapter 9 for US History so I can remember what happened in the book...
The marquis de lafayette
The region northward of the Ohio River had a large concentration of people from southern ancestry and would make Indiana and Illinois key political backgrounds in the developing controversy over slavery. From 1800-1860, around 1 million slaves were shifted to the deep south
A new economy
Improvements of transportation lowered costs and linked farmers to markets. Improved water transportation. Railroads opened the frontier to settlement and linked markets. Made the west a powerful self conscious region. The Ohio river became a boundary between free and slave societies.
Market society
The north became a region with an integrated economy of commercial farms and manufacturing cities. Cities formed part of the western frontier. Textile mills largely relied on women and child labor.
Irish and German new comers
The Irish were refugees from disaster, fleeing the Irish potato famine. They filled many low wage jobs in America. Many Germans established themselves in the west.
Nativists
People who feared the impact of immigration on American political and social life. They blamed immigrants for:
Urban crime
Political corruption
Alcohol abuses
Undercutting wages
The free individual
Westward migration and urban development created a mobile population. American freedom had been long linked to the availability of land in the west. American’s came to realize that no one person or government had the right to interfere with the realm of the self.
The second great awakening
This added a religious underpinning to the celebration of personal self improvement, self reliance, and self determination. It democratized American christianity. It promoted the doctrine of free will
The emergence of mormanism
Competition among religious groups kept religions vibrant. The book of mormon was seen as a holy book. It states that native americans evolved from three families from the middle east.
The limits of prosperity
Free blacks were excluded from the new economic opportunities. Free blacks laboriously constructed their own institutional life. They were confined to the lowest ranks of the labor market. Women were closed off from most market revolution opportunities. Only low paying jobs were available for women. Wage workers evoked ‘liberty’ when calling for improvements in the workplace. Some described wage labor as the very essence of slavery. Wealth and labor were at war and workers problems were institutional not individual.