APUSH UNIT 4.5-11

What caused population growth and migration between 1800–1860?

U.S. population grew from 4 million to 31 million; land area expanded; internal migration increased, though enslaved people were moved only part-way westward.

What is sectionalism?

The division of the U.S. into distinct economic and cultural regions: the industrial North, plantation South, and agrarian West.

What was the main significance of canals?

They lowered transportation costs and connected regional markets, often funded by states or private companies.

What was the Erie Canal?

Completed in 1825; connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River; championed by Gov. DeWitt Clinton; built partly by African American labor; boosted NYC trade.

What were turnpikes and the Cumberland Road?

Turnpikes were toll roads built by states/private groups; the Cumberland (National) Road (1811–1850) linked the East to the West.

What impact did steamboats have?

Robert Fulton’s Clermont (1807) cut upstream shipping costs by 90%.

How did railroads change transportation?

By the 1830s they competed with canals; by the 1850s they dominated. Less common in the South, which relied on rivers.

How did the federal government support transportation networks?

Provided subsidies, land grants, and constitutional support for interstate commerce.

What are interchangeable parts?

Uniform machine-made parts that allowed mass production and easier repairs.

What is a corporation?

A business structure allowing investors to buy stock, raising capital for large ventures.

What enabled the rise of the factory system?

War of 1812, embargoes, and British industrial models encouraged U.S. manufacturing growth.

What was the Lowell System?

Textile factories hiring young women, providing housing; harsh, long hours; women organized strikes and gained independence and skills.

Why did unions form, and what obstacles did they face?

Formed over poor working conditions; obstacles included immigrant replacement, anti-union laws, and depressions.

What promoted commercial agriculture?

Cheap western land, easy credit, new technology, and improved transportation to eastern markets.

How were the North and South economically connected?

South produced cotton; North manufactured goods; railroads/canals linked trading networks.

What was the Cult of Domesticity?

Belief that middle- and upper-class women should embody piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.

How did the Cult of Domesticity affect society?

Restricted women to the home; working-class women rejected it because they needed wages; reinforced gender roles.

What were characteristics of the American family in the industrial era?

Work left the household; men in public sphere, women in private sphere; children no longer central to family labor.

What pushed Irish immigrants to the U.S.?

Potato famine, British oppression, disease, starvation.

What challenges did Irish immigrants face?

Urban poverty, discrimination, dangerous jobs, hostility from native-born workers.

What were German immigrant motivations?

Escaped crop failures and failed democratic revolutions; attracted by U.S. economic and political freedom.

What were German settlement patterns?

Moved midwest to buy farmland; more money than Irish; more spread out.

Who made up the new working class?

Low-wage laborers in factories; long hours; overcrowded housing; unsafe conditions.

Who made up the new middle class?

Managers, clerks, shopkeepers; better income and stability.

Who made up the business elite?

Industrialists, bankers, merchants with major political and economic power.

How did new jobs affect working-class families?

Men became wage laborers; women entered factories; children worked in dangerous conditions.

What were the core beliefs of Transcendentalism?

Finding truth through intuition, nature, self-reliance, and rejecting materialism.

What was a Utopian Community?

An ideal society created to promote equality, cooperation, and moral perfection.

Examples of utopian experiments (Brook Farm, New Harmony, Oneida)?

Brook Farm: Transcendental living/labor.

New Harmony: Socialist equality; failed.

Oneida: Shared property and partners; successful silverware industry.

What themes appeared in American art and literature?

Nationalism, romantic nature themes (Hudson River School), folk culture, democratic ideals.

Causes of the Second Great Awakening?

Democratic ideals, reaction to rationalism, fear of industrialization’s moral decline, mobility/dislocation of Market Revolution.

New denominations from the Second Great Awakening?

Millerites/Adventists (Second Coming), Mormons under Joseph Smith/Brigham Young.

Differences between Northern and Southern abolitionism?

North: organized, stronger, immediate abolition.

South: suppressed, illegal, dangerous to support.

What was King Cotton and its economic impact?

Cotton dominated Southern economy; cotton gin increased demand; expanded slavery westward; fueled global textile markets.

Burned-Over District

Popular name for Western New York, a region particularly swept up in the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening.

Market revolution

Starting in the early 19th century, produced vast economic growth, mass produced goods.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A women's rights reformer. She was not allowed to speak at an antislavery convention, and in response organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

cotton gin

This machine was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793. It removed seeds from plant fibers. It expanded the institution of slavery

Eli Whitney; interchangeable parts

mass production employing interchangeable parts; Whitney first put it into practice, who was known for his cotton gin; wanted to be able to produce great numbers of muskets quickly; made it possible for owners of damaged objects to send away to a factory for the needed part, confident that the new one would precisely substitute for the old

William Lloyd Garrison

Advocated the immediate emancipation of slaves without compensation to their owners. He was also the writer of the "Liberator."

Frederick Douglass

(1817-1895) American abolitionist and writer, he escaped slavery and became a leading African American spokesman and writer. He published his biography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

Lucretia Mott

Early feminist who advocated for women's rights and against slavery. Co-organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Dorthea Dix

Tireless reformer, who worked mightily to improve the treatment of the mentally ill. Appointed superintendant of women nurses for the Union forces.

Sectionalism: Industrial Northeast

Largely urban population that worked in factories; favored tariffs, manufacture, bankers. Laborers: immigrants, young girls in factories Initially centered on the textile industry, by the 1830s it was producing many different products

Sectionalism: Agricultural Northwest

Connected to the east by new transportation systems. Agricultural economy grew by expanding the area of settlement and adopting new agricultural techniques: reduced labor needs, farmers cultivated new varieties of seeds, imported better breeds of animals, improved tools and machines. Dependent on the Eastern consumers and manufacturers.

Sectionalism: The South

Largely agricultural, mostly cotton from 1830-1850.

Sectionalism: The West

Largely trapping and hunting, citizens lived a secluded life away from others.

Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848 women's rights movement wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments", which declared all men and women equal and listed grievances. Essentially copied Declaration of Independence.

Henry David Thoreau

American transcendentalist who questioned a government that supported slavery. He started the movement of civil-disobedience (On Civil Disobedience) when he refused to pay the toll-tax to support him Mexican War. He lived in a cabin on Walden Pond for two years and authored Walden.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author of Self-Reliance. American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom.

Margaret Fuller

Social reformer, leader in women's movement and a transcendentalist. Edited "The Dial" which was the publication of the transcendentalists. It appealed to people who wanted "perfect freedom" "progress in philosophy and theology and hope that the future will not always be as the past".

Horace Mann

Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education; "Father of the public school system"; a prominent proponent of public school reform, & set the standard for public schools throughout the nation; lengthened academic year; pro training & higher salaries to teachers

Rev. Charles Finney

One of the most important leaders of the Second Great Awakening. He was against alcohol and supported women's involvement including preaching.

Temperance Movement

A social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Joseph Smith

Founded Mormonism in New York in 1830 with the guidance of an angel. 1843, Smith's announcement that God sanctioned polygamy split the Mormons and let to an uprising against Mormons in 1844; translated the Book of Mormon. He was murdered by an angry mob who was persecuting him for his beliefs.

Steel plow and mechanical reaper

inventions that encouraged farmers to build larger farms in the West

Cottage industry

Manufacturing based in homes rather than in a factory, commonly found before the Industrial Revolution.

Asylum Movement

reformers proposed setting up new public institutions such as state-supported prisons, mental hospitals, and poorhouses; hope was that the inmates of these institutions would be cured of their antisocial behavior by being treated to a disciplined pattern of life in some rural setting

Abolition

The movement to make slavery and the slave trade illegal.

Angelina Grimke

Daughter of a South Carolina slaveholder that were antislavery. Controversial because they spoke to audiences of both men and women at a time when it was thought indelicate to address male audiences. Womens' rights advocates as well.

Neal Dow

Father of Prohibition; he made a law in Maine that would disallow lethal alcohol to be sold.

Sylvester Graham

American clergyman whose advocacy of health regimen emphasizing temperance and vegetarianism found lasting expression in graham cracker

Maria Stewart

The first black woman to lecture on women's rights and slavery in public in the early 1830s in Boston. Encountered vocal opposition and violence. Garrison published some of her lecture's in The Liberator.

Washington Irving

American writer remembered for the stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Originally a transcendentalist; later rejected them and became a leading anti-transcendentalist. He was a descendant of Puritan settlers. The Scarlet Letter shows the hypocrisy and insensitivity of New England puritans by showing their cruelty to a woman who has committed adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet "A".

The Hudson School

School of art that emphasized the beauty of American landscapes, the magnitude of nature, and man's insignificant place in the natural world

Genre painting

a style of painting depicting scenes from ordinary life, especially domestic situations.

The Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull

Famous painting that depicts an idealized version of the signing of the Declaration. Illustrates the increasing nationalism and the desire to tell American stories in the new nation.