Timeline

• 1800: Election of Thomas Jefferson

• 1803: Louisiana Purchase

  • Marbury v. Madison

• 1804: Reelection of Jefferson

• 1807: Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

  • Embargo Act

• 1808: Election of James Madison

• 1810: Fletcher v. Peck

• 1811: Battle of Tippecanoe

• 1812: Beginning of War of

• 1812: Reelection of Madison

• 1814: The burning of Washington, D.C., by British forces

  • Hartford Convention

  • Treaty of Ghent

• 1815: Battle of New Orleans

• 1816: Election of James Monroe

  • Chartering of the Second Bank of the United States

• 1817: Construction of Erie Canal begins

• 1819: Panic of 1819

  • Dartmouth College v. Woodward

  • McCulloch v. Maryland

• 1820: Missouri Compromise

  • Reelection of Monroe

• 1821: Opening of the Lowell factories

  • Cohens v. Virginia

• 1822: Stephen Austin establishes first American settlement in Texas

• 1824: Gibbons v. Ogden

  • Election of John Quincy Adams

• 1825: Opening of the Erie Canal

• 1827: Public school movement begins in Boston

• 1828: Passage of the “Tariff of Abominations”

  • Election of Andrew Jackson

• 1829: Publication of “David Walkerʼs Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”

• 1830: Opening of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

  • Passage of the Indian Removal Act

  • Founding of Mormonism

• 1831: William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the Liberator

• 1832: Beginning of Nullification Crisis

  • Jackson vetoes renewal of Second Bank of the United States

  • Worcester v. Georgia

  • Reelection of Jackson

• 1833: Founding of the American Anti-slavery Society

• 1834: Whig Party organized

  • First strike by the “Lowell girls”

• 1835: Publication of Alexis de Tocquevilleʼs Democracy in America

• 1836: Congress passes the “gag rule”

  • Jackson issues Specie Circular

  • Battle of the Alamo

  • Texas independence

• 1837: Elijah Lovejoy murdered by proslavery mob

• 1838: “Trail of Tears”

• 1840: Election of William Henry Harrison

  • Formation of the Liberty Party

• 1841: John Tyler assumes presidency upon Harrisonʼs death

  • Brook Farm founded

• 1843: Dorothea Dix organizes movement for asylum reform

• 1844: Samuel Morse invents the telegraph

  • Election of James Polk

• 1845: Texas annexation and statehood

  • Beginning of Irish “potato famine”

• 1846: Creation of the Independent Treasury

  • Resolution of dispute with Great Britain over Oregon Territory

  • Beginning of Mexican War

• 1848: Seneca Falls Convention

  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican War

  • Gold found in California

• 1851: Herman Melville writes Moby Dick

The Rise of Political Parties and the Era of Jefferson

Political Parties and the Rise of The First TwoParty System

• The Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, and the “Revolution” of 1800

  • In the 1790s, the first two-party system emerged, pitting Democratic-Republicans against Federalists.

  • During the 1800 presidential election, the two parties engaged in a vicious campaign, with supporters of President John Adams and of Thomas Jefferson used unscrupulous methods to portray the opposing candidate in a poor light.

  • A voting error in the electoral college led in a tie between Jefferson and his vice presidential nominee, Aaron Burr.

  • The selection of the president was then delegated to the House of Representatives, which was dominated by Federalists.

  • Hamilton urged his Federalist allies to vote for Jefferson, who ultimately won the president with enough electoral votes.

  • This transition of power was referred to by Jefferson as the "Revolution of 1800" because he believed his government would return the United States to its original principles.

• The Decline of the Federalist Party and the “Era of Good Feelings”

  • In 1800, the Democratic-Republicans took power peacefully from the Federalists.

  • The Federalist Party lost strength as Republican-leaning agricultural areas grew faster than Northeast commercial hubs.

  • This led to the "Era of Good Feelings" in the 1810s and 1820s, when only one major party contended for national votes.

  • James Monroe, the Democratic-Republican Party nominee, handily won the 1816 election.

  • Monroe was a throwback to eighteenth-century presidents, wearing silk stockings, knee breeches, and powdered wigs and following George Washington's practice of hiring men of different ideologies.

  • Monroe's "internal reforms" and other Federalist policies survived in the Supreme Court, which was unaffected by elections.

  • Hamilton's program was preserved through Henry Clay's "American System."

The Supreme Court Asserts Federal Power and the Power of the Judiciary

• Marbury v. Madison (1803) and the Principle of Judicial Review

  • The most important decision of the Marshall Court was Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review.

  • The case involved the seating of judges who had been appointed in the last days of the John Adams administration.

  • When Thomas Jefferson assumed office, he ordered his secretary of state, James Madison, to not deliver them.

  • William Marbury sued to have his commission delivered, but the Supreme Court ruled that Marbury was not entitled to his seat because the law he was basing his argument on was unconstitutional.

  • This decision gave the Supreme Court the right to evaluate laws and determine if they are constitutional, which has been its principal duty since then and has helped balance the three coequal parts of government.

• The Marshall Court and Federal Power

  • The Marshall Court decisions strengthened federal power over state power, such as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Cohens v. Virginia (1821), and Worcester v. Georgia (1832).

  • In the latter case, the Court held that any dealings with American Indian nations should be carried out by the federal government, not by state governments, and upheld the autonomy of American Indian communities.

  • This decision was largely ignored by the United States government under Andrew Jackson.

The Louisiana Purchase and Territorial Expansion

• The Louisiana Purchase

  • The Louisiana Purchase was the most significant act of Thomas Jefferson's presidency, as it doubled the territory of the United States, added the fertile Great Plains, and gained full control of the port of New Orleans.

  • The impact of the Louisiana Purchase on economic growth was remarkable, as the value of produce from the interior of the US went up more than tenfold between the 1810s and the 1850s.

• The Lewis and Clark Expedition

  • This increased understanding of the region included in the Louisiana Purchase.

  • President Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, army officers, to explore the territory.

  • They explored and mapped the region, seeking practical routes through the mountains, and established the presence of the United States in the West.

Politics and Regional Interests

The Persistence of Regional Priorities

• The growth of the national economy in the first half of the 19th century caused regional loyalties to shift, with industrialization in the northern states and slavery in the South.

• In some ways, the regions became more interlinked, but the issue of free versus slave labor divided the country.

The American System and Sectionalism

• Henry Clayʼs “American System”

  • Henry Clay, a leading member of the House of Representatives, proposed the "American System" to promote economic growth.

  • He believed that America needed "internal improvements" in transportation and high tariffs on imported goods to promote American manufacturing.

  • He also proposed chartering the Second Bank of the United States to stabilize the economy and make credit more readily available.

  • By the end of the Monroe Administration, Congress had rechartered the Second Bank and passed a protective tariff.

• The Growing Isolation of the South

  • Henry Clay attempted to foster unity among the regions of the country, but the South became increasingly isolated from both the North and the Midwest due to roads and railroads, patterns of migration, and cultural isolation.

  • Farmers, artisans, and laborers in New England, New York, or Pennsylvania were more likely to venture to Ohio or Illinois in the first half of the nineteenth century, isolating the South culturally and politically.

A Temporary Truce on the Slavery Question in the Pre–Civil War Period

• The Missouri Compromise

  • There were conflicts and sectional competition during the "Era of Good Feelings" (1816-1825).

  • When Missouri sought for statehood as a slave state in 1818, it sparked a debate between the slave-holding states and the free states.

  • In an 1820 letter, Thomas Jefferson warned that the intense debate for Missouri's admittance was "like a fire bell in the night," and that the issue of slavery could threaten the union itself.

  • In 1820, a solution was struck by permitting the admission of two new states to maintain the balance between free and slave states.

  • The Missouri Compromise also divided the remaining territory of Louisiana at 36°30' north latitude.

  • Slavery arguments would continue to roil the country for the next several decades.

• The “Gag Rule” in the House of Representatives

  • In the 1830s, abolitionists pressed congressmen to introduce and debate antislavery resolutions on the floor of the House.

  • Representative John Quincy Adams was a key figure in attempting to bring such resolutions to the floor, but southern politicians pushed for a series of resolutions that automatically "table" any such resolutions, preventing them from being read or debated.

  • These "gag rules" were in effect from 1836 to 1844.

America on the World Stage

Trade, Diplomacy, and the Expansion of American Influence

• The Barbary Wars (1801–1805, 1815)

  • President Thomas Jefferson's first foreign policy crisis involved U.S. trade with the Middle East, which was controlled by four seafaring North African states.

  • Tripoli demanded a steep increase in payment from the United States, leading to the First Barbary War.

  • Jefferson sent warships to the region to engage in fighting and protect American shipping.

  • The slogan "Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute" became popular in America, but the United States did not achieve a decisive victory.

  • In the peace treaty, Tripoli agreed to release hostages in exchange for $60,000 and promised to stop raiding American ships.

  • Critics of the treaty saw the payment as a form of tribute, but the war boosted America's profile on the world stage and demonstrated the cohesion of American forces fighting far from home.

  • It took a Second Barbary War (1815) to finally bring an end to the American practice of paying tribute to the Barbary states.

• Ongoing Troubles with European Nations

  • During the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, hostilities between the United Kingdom and France resurfaced.

  • When Napoleon launched war on the United Kingdom in 1803, the United States gained from trade with both warring parties.

  • Between 1803 and 1812, Great Britain was more aggressive in its efforts to intercept American ships, and the practice of kidnapping American seamen and "pressing" them into service in the British Navy touched 6,000 American seamen.

  • The Chesapeake-Leopard incident happened in 1807, when the British vessel HMS Leopard fired on the unprepared thirty-eight-gun American Navy frigate USS Chesapeake, killing three Americans and kidnapping four others.

• “Peaceful Coercion” and Free Trade

  • The Embargo Act of 1807, passed by Presidents Jefferson and Madison, cut off U.S. trade to all foreign ports.

  • This had a major effect on America's mercantile sector, especially in New England.

  • In the waning days of President Jefferson's administration, Congress replaced the Embargo Act with the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, opening trade with all nations except for Great Britain and France.

  • This act proved to be unpopular, as these two nations were two of America's biggest trading partners.

• Maconʼs Bill No. 2 (1810)

  • Congress passed Macon's Bill No. 2 in 1810, which stipulated that if either Great Britain or France agreed to respect America's rights as a neutral nation at sea, the United States would prohibit trade with that nation's enemy.

  • However, Napoleon did not honor his commitment and France continued to seize American ships, leading to the US cutting off trade with Britain and pushing the two nations to the brink of war.

• The War of 1812

  • The War of 1812 was a two-year conflict between the United States and Great Britain that began in 1812.

  • It was divided along sectional lines, with New England and some Middle Atlantic states opposed and the South and Midwest voting for it.

  • Britain achieved several early victories, but the Federalists, who were critical of the war effort, made a strong showing.

  • By 1813, the United States had achieved key victories in battle, including the Battle of York (now Toronto) and the Battle of the Thames in Canada.

  • In 1814, British forces seized Washington, D.C., and burned public buildings.

  • The United States achieved a major victory at New Orleans in early 1815, led by General Andrew Jackson, and signed a peace treaty in late 1814.

• The Hartford Convention and Opposition to the War of 1812

  • The first major challenges to federal policy in the nineteenth century came from Federalist politicians in New England, who were unhappy with the War of 1812.

  • As diplomats were negotiating an end to the war in December 1814, Federalists from New England convened in Hartford, Connecticut, to express their displeasure.

  • Some of the more radical delegates suggested that New England secede from the union, but this proposal was rejected.

  • The Hartford Convention did pass a resolution calling for a two-thirds vote in Congress for future declarations of war.

• The Treaty of Ghent (1814)

  • It ended the War of 1812.

  • After fighting Napoleon for a decade and the US for two, Britain was fed up with warfare.

  • The US understood it could not defeat Britain.

  • The two sides agreed to halt fighting, return any territory taken in the conflict, and recognize the pre-war US-Canada border.

  • British aid to American Indians, interference with American shipping, and impressment of American seamen were not included in the treaty.

• “Old China Trade”

  • United States merchants opened a lucrative trade with China following the American Revolution, known as the "Old China Trade".

  • This trade, driven by American demand for Chinese products, opened new markets to the United States, but also brought to the fore cultural differences between the two countries.

  • From the American perspective, trade was seen as a basic right and a means to expand national and personal wealth, while in traditional Chinese thought, commerce was looked down upon.

  • Trade increased in the nineteenth century as the United States found that furs were in demand in China.

  • In 1844, the United States and China signed the Treaty of Wanghia, which extended the same trading privileges that had been extended to Great Britain.

• Nationalist Sentiment and the Monroe Doctrine (1823)

  • President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to limit European influence in the Western Hemisphere.

  • The United States did not have the military might to enforce this pronouncement, but it was an important statement of intent and became the cornerstone of America's isolationist foreign policy.

• The Adams-Onís Treaty (1819)

  • This transferred control of Florida to the United States, accepted Spain's claims to Texas, and settled the boundary between Louisiana and Spanish-held territory.

  • This treaty was negotiated by John Quincy Adams, who was then secretary of state under President James Monroe.

  • The status of Florida became a concern for the United States as it had become a destination for escaped slaves.

  • During the First Seminole War, General Andrew Jackson organized the capture of the Negro Fort, which became a goal of United States diplomats.

• The Caroline Incident, the “Aroostook War,” and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty

  • The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 settled a dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the border between Maine and British-ruled Canada.

  • The border had been vaguely drawn by the Treaty of Paris (1783) following the American Revolution.

  • In 1838 and 1839, Americans and Canadians began moving into the area around the Aroostook River, leading to the "Aroostook War".

  • The treaty roughly split the disputed territory and established a firm boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.

  • It also addressed the Caroline incident, in which British authorities burned an American vessel and threatened to execute a Canadian sheriff.

  • Both sides admitted wrongdoing in the treaty negotiations.

• “Fifty-four Forty or Fight”: Negotiating the Oregon Border

  • Both Great Britain and the United States laid claim to the lands of the Pacific Northwest in 1818.

  • In the 1830s and 1840s, adventurous Americans began traveling west along the Oregon Trail and settling in the Willamette River.

  • In 1844, politicians pushed for sole U.S. ownership of the entire Oregon Country, the northern boundary of which was the north latitude line at 54°40'.

  • Great Britain balked at giving up all the territory, and in 1846, the administration of President James Polk reached a compromise with Britain, establishing the border at the 49th parallel.

  • This line is the current boundary between the western United States and Canada.

The Market Revolution: Economic Transformations

The Market Revolution

• The Expansion of Banking

  • Banking and credit played an important role in economic expansion in the early 1800s, with the Second Bank of the United States extending credit and many "wildcat" banks issuing currency in excess of assets held.

  • These banks provided easy access to credit, but also created economic instability, as seen in the Panic of 1819.

• “The Panic of 1819”

  • The "Panic of 1819" was caused by the growing role of the United States as an exporter of farm goods and the fevered speculation in western lands.

  • This led to a land boom in the West, fueled by easy access to credit.

  • However, the remarkable growth of the economy following the panic demonstrated the vitality of the new economy.

• The Incorporation of America

  • The market revolution was facilitated by changes in laws that made it easier to create and expand a corporate entity.

  • In the late 1700s and early 1800s, corporate charters were granted to groups of individuals, but mainly for a public-oriented purpose.

  • By the 1830s and 1840s, states began rewriting corporate laws allowing for the chartering of businesses. Incorporation laws provided investors with "limited liability" and allowed them to invest their money.

  • In the following decades, the number of corporations and investors grew dramatically.

• The Supreme Court and the Market Economy

  • Supreme Court decisions in the first half of the nineteenth century upheld the sanctity of contracts, such as the decision of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819).

  • When the state of New Hampshire attempted to rescind Dartmouth's charter, the Court ruled that the original charter was valid and must stand.

  • In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Court upheld a corrupt land deal between the state of Georgia and private individuals.

Advances in Technology

• Agricultural Efficiency

  • The antebellum period was characterized by hand-operated tools or animal-assisted implements.

  • The steel plow, developed by John Deere in 1847, proved to be more durable and efficient than the cast-iron plow.

  • Manufacturers developed more efficient grain drills, mowers, hay rakes, and harrows.

  • Two significant inventions allowed for greater efficiency in grain production: the automatic reaper and the thresher.

  • The first automatic reaper, developed by Cyrus McCormack in 1831, cut and stacked wheat and other grains.

    • The machine, operated by one farmer and pulled by horses, could harvest as much wheat as five men.

  • These machines were used on farms of the "Old Northwest" and pointed the way toward the mechanized agriculture of the post-Civil War period.

• Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts

  • In the 1850s, mass-production techniques spread beyond the textile industry, leading to the use of interchangeable parts.

  • This technique was proposed by Eli Whitney in the production of small firearms, and spread to other manufacturing operations by the time of the Civil War.

• The Development of Steam Power

  • The most important technological developments in the first half of the nineteenth century were the harnessing of steam power.

  • Developments in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century led to high-pressure steam engines that could be used for powering ships and locomotives.

  • Robert Fulton developed a functioning steamboat, the Clermont, in 1807, and within twenty years, steamboats were dominating commercial shipping.

  • Soon, similar technologies were used by steam-powered locomotives, and in the years leading up to the Civil War, steam power was used in factories.

• Advances in Communication

  • The telegraph was a major advance in communications in the antebellum period.

  • Samuel Morse developed and patented the telegraph in 1844, and the first telegraph line was from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore.

  • Telegraph messages were transmitted in long and short electrical impulses, called Morse code.

  • By 1850, telegraph lines connected the country, facilitating the development of a national market for products and services.

Improvements in Transportation and Regional Interdependence

• Canals and Roads

  • The first set of improvements between 1800 and 1830 included the expansion and improvement of roads and canals and the development of the steamboat.

  • The construction of canals and roads, called internal improvements, did much to expand trade, especially between the Midwest (then known as the West) and eastern cities.

  • Most significant was the Erie Canal, which connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, reducing the cost of moving a ton of freight from Buffalo to New York City by 90%.

  • The most important road project was the National Road (also called Cumberland Road), which stretched from Maryland to the Ohio River Valley from 1811 to 1853.

• Railroads

  • Railroads were laid in 1829 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, connecting the far reaches of the country east of the Mississippi River and expanding markets.

  • By 1860, the cost of moving a ton of wheat by wagon had dropped to 1.2 cents, increasing the nation's economic vitality.

Regional Specialization

• Commerce, Trade, and Manufacturing in the North

  • Manufacturing expanded in the North in the 1820s and 1830s, with more than 40,000 women working in textile mills in New England and the Waltham-Lowell System spreading to other industries and other parts of the country.

  • The use of interchangeable parts, a key component of mass-production, spread to other processes, such as agricultural implements, tools, clocks, and ironware.

• The Growth of Cotton Production in the South

  • Cotton was the most profitable crop in the South in the first half of the nineteenth century, leading to a dramatic growth in slavery and an expansion of the internal slave trade.

  • The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney allowed for the rapid processing of cotton, leading to more and more acres being put under cultivation.

  • By 1860, 58% of American exports consisted of cotton, and production increased from 700,000 bales in 1830 to nearly five million bales on the eve of the Civil War.

  • As cotton production increased, the number of slaves in the South also increased.

Market Revolution: Society and Culture

Migrations and New Communities in the Age of the Market Revolution

• Irish Immigration

  • The largest immigrant group into the United States during the antebellum period was from Ireland, due to crop failures at home that led to mass starvation.

  • The "potato famine" was partly a natural phenomenon and partly the result of British policies, which pushed potato farming to marginal land.

  • It is estimated that one million Irish starved to death between 1845 and 1852, while another two million fled to the US and other countries.

  • Four-fifths of the Irish immigrants settled in port cities such as New York and Boston and in other cities and towns of the Northeast.

• German Immigration

  • German immigrants to the United States were financially better off than Irish immigrants, and many were skilled crasmen and entrepreneurs who immigrated to escape political repression.

  • They were more likely to have the resources to continue their journeys beyond their initial city, and settled in the "German triangle" of western cities.

• The Movement to the West

  • The West grew rapidly in the antebellum period, especially after the War of 1812, as improvements in transportation opened new areas for settlement.

  • More than four million Americans crossed the Appalachian Mountains between 1800 and 1840 to settle in the West.

  • New communities grew quickly, with migrants depending on one another to clear land, construct dwellings and barns, and create a sense of community.

  • Southern planters moved into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, while small-scale farmers hoped to recreate the Cotton Kingdom of the old South.

  • New England and New York farm families settled in northern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as Wisconsin and Michigan.

  • New England towns and churches and Old South plantations and slave-labor systems influenced newly colonized places.

The Market Revolutionʼs Impact on Economic Class

• Social Mobility, Class, and the “Free Labor” Ideology

  • The economy of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century provided for a degree of social mobility for many ordinary Americans.

  • This was reflected in the "free labor" ideology, which upheld the dignity of work and led Northerners to see their society as superior to that of the South.

  • However, the benefits of the growing economy were not equally distributed, with the lion's share of the benefits going to a small percentage of Americans.

  • On the eve of the Civil War, approximately 5 percent of the population controlled half of the country's wealth.

  • At the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor grew, with the growth of a middle class of lawyers, clerks, bank workers, accountants, customs officials, and other white-collar professionals.

• The Development of Unions

  • The growth of manufacturing operations in the antebellum period undermined the autonomy of workers and notions of a selfgoverning citizenry.

  • As individual autonomy declined, workers increasingly turned to the idea of forming unions to advance their goals and improve their working conditions.

  • In the 1830s, mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, organized as the Factory Girls Association, staged two strikes.

  • The 1842 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Hunt set an important precedent by declaring that unions were lawful organizations as long as they used legal means to achieve their goals.

  • Successes for organized labor were limited in the pre-Civil War period, but several organizations of skilled workers, including the National Typographical Union (1852) and the Stone Cutters (1853), achieved a greater degree of success in achieving their goals.

  • The rise of the union movement signaled a shift away from the face-to-face relationships that characterized workplace settings in the eighteenth century.

Workers and New Methods of Production

• The “Putting-out System”

  • In the first decades of the nineteenth century, a system of manufacturing developed in which workers performed piecework at home and were paid by the piece produced.

  • This system was suited to small-town and rural communities, where families might be simultaneously involved in semi-subsistence agriculture and in the putting-out system.

  • It was a bridge between the crawork of the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century.

• Slater Mill and the Development of the Factory System

  • America began to industrialize before the Civil War, with the textile industry being the first field to industrialize.

  • Samuel Slater built the first factory in the US in 1790s, spinning cotton and wool into yarn or thread, powered by the Blackstone River.

  • Water, human, and animal power characterized industry in the pre-Civil War era.

• The Lowell System

  • Early elements of industrialization emerged in rural New England in the 1820s and 1830s, with extensive water-powered textile factories in Lowell, Massachusetts.

  • By 1830, 8 Lowell mills employed more than 6,000 women, many of whom were told they would be working in a "factory in the garden".

  • The women lived in closely supervised boarding houses and the work was monitored, but they experienced a degree of freedom and autonomy.

  • They demonstrated their solidarity and assertiveness by going on strike in 1834 and again in 1836, following announced wage cuts.

  • By the 1840s, they were being replaced by Irish immigrants who were in dire need and ready to work for lower wages.

Gender and Family Roles in the Age of the Market Revolution

• Gentility, Domesticity, and the Middle-class

  • The first half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new set of cultural ideas centered around the middle class, built around the home, nostalgia, sentimentality, and a watered-down Christian piety.

  • This ideal assigned women a dependent role as the "weaker sex" in an increasingly market-oriented society, with timidity and disdain for competition.

  • This culture was manifested in sermons by Protestant ministers and female authors of popular fiction.

• The “Cult of Domesticity” and the “Proper” Role for Women

  • Antebellum society underwent a redefinition of women's "proper" role in society, with the ideas of "republican motherhood" giving way to a less public-minded conception of a middle-class woman's "place".

  • Commentators saw women as intellectually inferior and insisted that their proper role was maintaining the house and caring for children.

  • This ideal discouraged women from participating in public life, and the legal structure of the United States already relegated women to a second-class status.

  • Women could not vote or sit on juries, and any property they owned became the property of their husbands.

  • All in all, under the legal doctrine of feme covert, wives had no independent legal or political standing.

Expanding Democracy

Participatory Democracy and an Expanding Electorate

• The Growth of Popular Politics and the Elimination of Property Qualifications

  • After the "Era of Good Feelings," most states eliminated property requirements for voting, with newly added Western states leading the way.

  • In 1803, Ohio abolished property requirements and allowed any voter to run for office.

  • Six new states also had more democratic constitutions than those from the Revolutionary War.

  • In the 1820s, popular movements pressured older governments to remove barriers to white male suffrage, but many still limited voting to taxpayers.

  • By 1840, almost 90% of adult white men were eligible to vote, forcing candidates to campaign harder and broaden their appeal.

• The Dorr Rebellion and Resistance to the Expansion of Democracy

  • In many states, conservative politicians opposed the enactment of reforms designed to broaden the electorate.

  • Daniel Webster led conservative opponents of democratic reform in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820–1821, arguing that "power naturally and necessarily follows property."

  • Federalist political leaders in Massachusetts were able to block several of the more egalitarian proposals of the convention.

  • In Rhode Island, conflict over the expansion of democracy resulted in a short-lived rebellion.

  • In 1841, democratic reformers organized a People's Convention, which wrote a new, more democratic, state constitution.

  • They then tried to put this constitution into effect and inaugurate a new governor, Thomas Dorr, but none of these moves had official state approval.

  • Federal troops were sent by President John Tyler and Dorr was briefly imprisoned and the "Dorr Rebellion" was quickly put down.

  • This incident illustrated the strong popular desire for a more democratic governing structure.

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

  • Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831 with Gustave de Beaumont to study the American prison system.

  • His travels and observations led him to produce Democracy in America, a classic account of democracy and an insightful description of the United States at the time.

  • He noted that democracy in the United States meant more than access to voting, and that it was rooted in American culture.

  • He also noted the belief in equality, active participation in voluntary civic organizations, and the perception that individual initiative determined success in the public sphere.

Jackson and Federal Power

The Second Two-Party System: The Democrats and the Whigs

• Jacksonian Democracy

  • A period of political divisions during the administration of President Andrew Jackson, known as the Age of Jacksonian Democracy.

  • Andrew Jackson and his supporters were bitter at the results of the 1824 election, when none of the four candidates reached the required number of electoral votes to be declared president.

  • In the election of 1828, Jackson's supporters painted John Quincy Adams as out-of-touch and elitist, while Adams' supporters portrayed Jackson as ill-tempered.

  • Jackson's backwoods, populist appeal helped him win the election, making it the first modern election.

  • The electorate was much broader than in previous elections, and candidates had to campaign more aggressively and tailor their appeal to reach a broader audience.

  • Additionally, there was an increased focus on character and personality.

• The “Tariff of Abominations”

  • Tariff rates became an important issue in the first half of the 19th century due to the Tariff Act of 1828.

  • This act dramatically raised tariff rates on many items, leading to a reduction in trade between the US and Europe, hitting South Carolina particularly hard.

• John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis

  • In the 1830s, debates over tariff rates pitted many southern politicians against federal policy.

  • John C. Calhoun asserted the right of states to nullify federal legislation, but courts upheld the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

  • The South Carolina legislature voted to hold a Constitutional Convention in 1832, which declared the tariff acts of both 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and unenforcible in South Carolina.

  • President Jackson challenged the move and pushed through the 1833 Force Bill, which authorized military force against South Carolina for committing treason.

  • Congress revised tariff rates once again, providing relief for South Carolina.

  • The Force Bill and the new tariff rates, passed by Congress on the same day, amounted to a face-saving compromise, but the issue of statesʼ rights versus federal power would emerge again in the coming decades in relation to the issue of slavery.

• Destruction of the Second Bank of the United States

  • Andrew Jackson and his political opponents fought over the Second Bank of the United States, a national bank that had been part of the national discourse since Alexander Hamilton proposed it in 1791.

  • Jackson vetoed the rechartering of the bank in 1832, but his veto message played well with the voters and he won reelection.

  • Jackson was not satisfied to let the bank die, so he moved federal deposits from the bank to state banks in Democratic-leaning states.

• The Specie Circular and the Panic of 1837

  • President Andrew Jackson issued the Specie Circular (1836), mandating that government-held land be sold only for hard currency.

  • This led to the economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837, which lasted five years and caused many canal and railroad projects to halt, hundreds of banks and businesses folding, and high unemployment.

  • Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren, did little to address the crisis and lost the election of 1840 to the Whig Party candidate, William Henry Harrison.

• Whigs and Democrats

  • The Whig Party was founded in 1833 by opponents of President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party.

  • It was composed of Northerners and southerners, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and evangelical Protestants.

  • Whigs supported government programs aimed at economic modernization, while the Democratic Party argued that high tariffs would "fatten" urban commercial interests.

  • Issues were less important in this period, as both parties focused on winning elections and holding on to power.

Contention between Whites and American Indians over Western Lands

• American Indians and the West

  • Westward settlers were pushing into the interior of the continent, antagonizing native peoples.

  • In the early 1800s, white settlers were pouring into the region of the Ohio River and its northern tributaries, which included the state of Ohio (1803) and the Indiana Territory (1809).

  • Federal and state officials had extracted land agreements from the American Indian tribes for years, but it was never clear if the Indian leaders had the authority to do so.

  • In 1809, the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne, in which Indians agreed to cede three million acres for a nominal fee.

  • Tecumseh, the most important regional native leader, was not present for this agreement, as he was on a trip recruiting followers to resist encroachments by white settlers.

  • Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, was organizing a spiritual and political front to unite all the Indian nations east of the Mississippi River.

• Battle of Tippecanoe and the War Hawks

  • Settlers in the Indiana Territory persuaded Governor William Henry Harrison to wage war against Tecumseh's confederation, resulting in the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811).

  • Western congressmen, led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, became convinced that Britain was encouraging and funding the confederation.

  • This pro-war sentiment in the West and South was one of the causes of the War of 1812.

• Indian Removal Act (1830)

  • President Andrew Jackson adopted a policy of Indian removal in response to market pressures and the call of white southerners to expand.

  • This policy applied to the American Indians of the South as well as the Old Northwest and, to a lesser degree, New England and New York.

  • Jackson argued that this was in the best interests of the Indians, who were being forced off their traditional lands by the encroachment of white settlers.

  • He pushed for the Removal Act of 1830.

• The “Trail of Tears” (1838)

  • The state of Georgia, with the cooperation of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, began the process of relocating American Indians to the West not withstanding the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) proclaiming that American Indian tribes were subject to federal treaties.

  • By 1838, the Cherokee had exhausted all legal and political objections to removal, and under the leadership of John Ross, the majority chose a policy of quiet resistance in order to remain on their territory.

  • Federal forces were ordered to implement Georgia's removal policy, resulting in the deportation of 18,000 American Indians and the "Trail of Tears", which resulted in the deaths of around a quarter of the travelers.

• American Indians and Florida

  • Americans had a long history of conflict with American Indians in Florida, which had long been Spanish territory.

  • In the late 1700s and early 1800s, white southerners grew frustrated with the number of escaped slaves who made their way into Florida, leading to raids by southern whites into Florida and counterraids by the Seminole and other American Indians on communities in Georgia and Alabama.

  • This led to the First Seminole War, which began during the War of 1812 and continued to the end of the decade.

  • Florida had come into American hands as a result of the Adams-Onís Treaty, and the Seminole were being pressured by the federal government to relocate to the West.

  • In the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), native warriors fought U.S. troops to a standstill in the Everglades, leading to the capture of the Seminole leader, Chief Osceola.

• “Indian Territory”

  • The Indian Territory of Oklahoma was established by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 as part of the government's American Indian removal policy.

  • Many Indian groups resisted relocation through legal and armed resistance, leading to conflicts. Eventually, the territory was reduced in size and folded into the Oklahoma Territory in 1907.

The Development of an American Culture

The Emergence of a National Culture

• The antebellum period saw a renaissance in literature, with Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

• This literature grappled with religious and existential questions, focusing on the promise and contradictions of America's experiment in building a democratic nation in the New World.

European Romanticism and American Culture

• The Romantic Perspective

  • Romanticism was a reaction to industrialization and the market revolution, and harkened back to a simpler, more authentic past.

  • It was both radical and reactionary, embracing a pure, uncorrupted sense of national community.

• Hudson River School

  • The "Hudson River School" of painting, which flourished from the 1820s to the 1870s, is best represented by three artists: Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Church.

  • These artists were inspired by the European tradition of romantic paintings of dramatic landscapes, often featuring the ruins of ancient castles or temples.

  • Many of the paintings hinted at the impending hand of civilization and emphasized emotion and sentiment over accuracy.

  • Several of the works focused on the Hudson River, a waterway that generated new interest in the opening of the Erie Canal (1825).

• Romanticism in American Literature

  • Sir Walter Scott's novels epitomized romanticism in literature, and American authors began to create literature that drew on Scott's romanticism but was distinctly American.

  • James Fenimore Cooper was the most successful American romantic writer, with his "Leatherstocking Tales" capturing the danger and fascination of the frontier experience.

  • Washington Irving also captured the spirit of romanticism with his humorous short stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and invented the fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker.

  • Both Cooper and Irving were internationally popular and set the stage for the more serious-minded authors of the American renaissance.

The Second Great Awakening

Religious and Spiritual Movements in Antebellum America

• The “Second Great Awakening”

  • It was a religious revival in the first decades of the 19th century that sought to revive religious sentiment among the American people.

  • It began in Kentucky and spread to other states, especially in upstate New York and western Pennsylvania.

  • It was particularly strong in the "burned-over district" along the Erie Canal, where ministers such as Charles Grandison Finney argued that a person could determine their own eternal life.

  • This approach to the afterlife was different from the old Puritan notion of predestination, which held that one's eternal life was planned out by God.

  • This sense that redemption was in one's own hands not only encouraged individual redemption, but also societal reformation.

  • The Second Great Awakening acted as a springboard for a variety of reform movements.

• Mormonism

  • The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, known as the Mormons, was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith in upstate New York.

  • It was one of many sects that developed during the Second Great Awakening, and was met with hostility for its unorthodox teachings and practices.

  • The most controversial practice was polygamy, which was renounced by the Mormon church in 1890.

  • The group journeyed from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, and then to Illinois, where Smith was killed by an anti-Mormon mob.

  • Brigham Young led the majority of the Mormons to Utah in 1847.

• Transcendentalism

  • It was a spiritual and intellectual movement critical of the materialist direction the United States was taking in the first half of the nineteenth century.

  • The transcendentalist movement was a movement that put more stock in intuition than in empirical observation.

  • Henry David Thoreau wrote about the importance of nature and lived in isolation at Walden Pond for two years.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote philosophical essays such as "On Self-Reliance" and "Resistance to Civil Government".

  • Some transcendentalists separated themselves from mainstream society and started utopian communities.

• Utopian Communities

  • Utopian communities were experiments in communal living, usually in rural settings, and structured around a guiding principle.

  • Brook Farm, established outside of Boston in 1841 by transcendentalist George Ripley, was based on the idea that all residents would share equally in the labor of the community and partake equally in leisure.

  • Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the original participants in the commune but grew disillusioned with the experiment.

  • Inspiration for utopian communities came from thinkers such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, such as the New Harmony community in Indiana founded by Owen himself in 1825.

• Spiritual Developments in American Indian Communities

  • In the wake of the defeat and dispossession of the Iroquois Confederacy, a Seneca named Handsome Lake developed a set of spiritual practices that came to be known as the “Longhouse Religion.”

  • He denounced factionalism and alcohol consumption, and spoke out against alcohol consumption and the breakdown of the family.

  • Despite resistance from both Christian missionaries and native traditionalists, he offered many American Indians a sense of hope in the face of staggering setbacks.

An Age of Reform

Reform Movements in the Antebellum Period

• The Temperance Movement

  • The temperance movement was the largest reform movement of the first half of the nineteenth century.

  • It was especially popular among women due to the large amount of alcohol their husbands and sons drank.

  • Lyman Beecher's Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance (1827) was a guiding text of the movement, which was successful in gaining recruits.

  • The American Temperance Society claimed 1.5 million members by 1835, and alcohol consumption per person in the United States dropped by about half from 1830 to 1840.

  • The "prohibitionist" impulse within the movement had successes in the 1850s, with Maine becoming a "dry" state in 1851, completely banning the sale or manufacture of all alcoholic beverages.

  • The 1840s and 1850s proved to be the high point of the movement in the nineteenth century, but by the 1870s, the movement had lost some of its intensity.

• The Asylum and Penitentiary Movement

  • In early America, people with mental illness were often treated as common criminals, spending years behind bars.

  • In the 1840s, activists, including many women, spearheaded a movement to improve treatment for those with mental illness.

  • One of the main organizers was Dorothea Dix, whose efforts led to the creation of the first generation of psychiatric asylums in the United States.

• Public Education

  • The campaign for free public education gained a large following in the 1840s.

  • Horace Mann was among the most vocal advocates during this period.

  • Mann was secretary of education in Massachusetts in the 1840s and 1850s, and served in the U.S. House of Representatives.

  • The movement saw education as essential to democratic participation.

Debating the Future of Slavery in America

• Abolitionism

  • It was a minority opinion among northern whites in the antebellum period, but it had a major impact on America, opening up sectional divisions that contributed to the Civil War.

• William Lloyd Garrison and “Immediate Emancipation”

  • William Lloyd Garrison, a white abolitionist, published The Liberator in 1831, becoming the key figure in the movement for the immediate and uncompensated abolition of slavery.

  • Antislavery sentiment had existed before that, but most antislavery groups advocated a more gradual approach to ending slavery.

  • Garrison broke with both of these approaches, saying all slaves should be immediately freed, that there should be no compensation to their owners, and that freed slaves were entitled to the same rights as white people.

• American Colonization Society

  • The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817 with the goal of transporting African Americans to Africa.

  • The motives of the founders varied, with some sympathizing with African Americans and others wanting to rid America of them.

  • The society purchased land in West Africa and began a colony they called Liberia, but only 12,000 African Americans went to Africa between 1820 and the Civil War.

  • Most African Americans, free or slave, showed little interest in leaving their country to live in Africa, and Frederick Douglass was critical of colonization proposals.

Growing Tensions Over Slavery

• Abolitionism and Electoral Politics

  • The Liberty Party formed in 1840 to argue that the Constitution was an antislavery document and that the United States should live up to its ideals.

  • This differed from William Lloyd Garrison, who argued that the Constitution protected slavery and should be condemned.

  • The Liberty Party hoped to influence public opinion through the electoral arena, while Garrison rejected participating in electoral politics.

• Racism and Resistance to the Antislavery

  • Movement Slavery shaped southern views of race in distinct ways.

  • In the North, white supremacist ideas were not central to the culture, but in the South, white supremacy became central to southern white culture in the first half of the nineteenth century.

  • Most white southerners held that African Americans were inferior beings, justifying slavery as an institution both necessary and proper.

  • White supremacy and slavery allowed the main divide in the South to be race rather than class, allowing even the poorest whites to believe they were part of the superior caste and to feel they had something in common with the wealthiest plantation owners.

• The Lovejoy Incident

  • The abolitionist movement faced opposition in the North as well as from white southerners.

  • A violent incident in 1837 sent a chill over the abolitionist movement.

  • Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper publisher in Illinois, was killed by a proslavery mob.

  • He had been the subject of harassment; mobs had destroyed his printing press three times before they killed him.

The Womenʼs Rights Movement

• Women in the Public Sphere

  • The "cult of domesticity" had a powerful influence on middleclass society in the antebellum period, but many women challenged it.

  • Dorothea Dix led the movement for more humane treatment for those with mental illness, and the Female Moral Reform Society urged women not to engage in prostitution.

  • Two important orators and activists in the movement were the Grimké sisters, Angelina and Sarah, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who were barred from attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London due to their gender.

  • These movements allowed women, who otherwise were excluded from politics and government, to participate in the public sphere.

• Seneca Falls Convention

  • In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott led a group of women to challenge the cultural and legal restrictions on women in the antebellum period.

  • The Seneca Falls Convention was the first public gathering to raise the issue of women's suffrage, but it also called attention to the entire structure of gender inequality, including property rights, education, wages, child custody, divorce, and the overall legal status of women.

  • The convention issued a Declaration of Sentiments modeled after the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men and women are created equal.

African Americans in the Early Republic

Slave Rebellions—The Limits of Antislavery Efforts in the South

• Gabriel's Rebellion

  • Gabriel, a Virginia slave, attempted to organize a rebellion in 1800.

  • He adopted the anti-elitist ideas of Virginia Democratic-Republicans and recruited as many as a thousand men to participate in the rebellion.

  • However, the rebellion was quashed by the Virginia militia before it began due to a major rain storm and two slaves alerting their owners.

  • Twenty-seven supposed participants were hanged, including Gabriel himself.

• The Denmark Vesey Conspiracy

  • Denmark Vesey, a free Black man in Charleston, South Carolina, was tried for plotting a slave rebellion in 1822.

  • He was charged with organizing a plot to destroy Charleston and instigate a broad slave uprising.

  • He and thirty-five others were hanged as punishment for the alleged conspiracy.

• Nat Turner's Rebellion

  • Nat Turner, a slave preacher, organized a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831 that resulted in the deaths of five African Americans.

  • More than a hundred African Americans were executed by authorities and more were attacked and killed by angry mobs.

  • Turner's rebellion was the largest rebellion in the nineteenth century, leading to increased fears of slave rebellions and stricter laws governing the behavior of slaves.

The Cultures of African-American Communities— Free and Slave

• David Walker

  • He was an important early figure in the antislavery movement, issuing a pamphlet called "David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" in 1829.

  • His praise of self-defense angered southern legislatures, who declared the pamphlet seditious and enacted penalties against anyone caught distributing it.

• Frederick Douglass

  • He was a towering figure in the abolitionist movement, born into slavery in 1818 and escaping to the North in 1838.

  • He became a powerful speaker in the antislavery movement and wrote three autobiographies.

  • His most famous speech is "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" which is critical of the United States for not abiding by its founding principles.

  • He remained an important figure before, during, and after the Civil War until his death in 1895.

• The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church

  • It was founded by Richard Allen in 1816 to give free African-Americans greater autonomy and tailor religious services to their needs.

  • It borrowed elements from the mainstream Methodist church, but emphasized race in its understanding of scripture and history.

• Cultural Resistance to Slavery

  • Slaves developed cultural practices that attempted to carve out autonomy in the face of near total control, such as making their own fiddles and banjos, passing on fanciful stories, and creating music that combined African traditions with the traditions of the South.

The Society of the South in the Early Republic

Slavery and the Southern “Way of Life”

• Southern Defense of Slavery

  • The abolitionist movement attacked the system of slavery, but southern public figures emerged to defend it.

  • Arguments took a variety of approaches, such as contrasting the factory system of the North with the slave system of the South.

  • George Fitzhugh was the most prominent defender of slavery in the 1850s, arguing that it provided slaves with skills, discipline, and "civilization."

• Biblical Defense of Slavery

  • The southern defense of slavery often invoked biblical passages to justify the institution, such as the "curse of Ham" to justify the submission of the inferior classes to the superior classes.

  • The story of Noah cast out Ham's son Canaan with the words "a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers" is open to many interpretations, but remained central to the biblical defense of slavery.

• The “Mudsill Theory”

  • Southern defenders of slavery argued that civilization depended on slavery, and that a lower class of people needed to do the menial work to enable a higher class to engage in more elevated pursuits.

  • This theory was popularized by South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond in 1858, who warned that landless people could threaten social harmony and undermine civilization.

Cotton, Slavery, and the Southern Exception

• Cotton and Slavery

  • Slavery became dominant in the South just as it was becoming unpopular in the world.

  • In 1807, Great Britain outlawed the international slave trade and the United States followed suit in 1808.

  • All of the northern states had voted to abolish slavery outright or gradually, and slavery and cotton were the main engines of American economic growth in the first half of the nineteenth century.

• Slavery and the Culture of the South

  • The main source of the distinctiveness of the South was slavery, which grew rapidly in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

  • By 1850, nearly a third of the southern population was African American, and by 1860, African Americans were the majority of the population.

  • This presence of such a large African-American population shaped southern culture, language, food, music, and dialect, as well as the commitment of white southerners to white supremacy.

  • This belief in the racial inferiority of Blacks, mixed with fear and hatred, shaped white southern views of African Americans.

  • Although many white northerners also held racist notions of African Americans, the white supremacist outlook lacked the intensity it held in the South.

Westward Expansion and the Politics of Slavery

• Expansion into Texas—From Settlement to Independence

  • White Americans began moving into the Mexican territory of Texas in the 1820s, many of them southern whites who hoped to duplicate the plantation model from the Old South.

  • Led by Stephen Austin, settlers were attracted to Texas because of its abundance of affordable land for cotton cultivation.

  • However, tensions began to develop in the 1830s, as the Texas settlers routinely flouted Mexican law.

  • In 1835, the Texans rebelled, led by Spanish-speaking "Tejanos" who objected to being ruled from Mexico City.

  • Almost 200 died defending the Alamo in San Antonio, and almost 400 were killed by Mexican forces near the town of Goliad.

  • Under the leadership of General Sam Houston, the rebels regrouped and emerged victorious, winning independence from Mexico in 1836.

• Annexation of Texas and the Politics of Slavery

  • The Republic of Texas was eager to join the United States, but President Andrew Jackson blocked annexation.

  • Presidents Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison avoided the issue.

  • President John Tyler supported Texas annexation, but did not have the political support to make it a reality.

  • He contemplated a third-party run, but when the Democrats nominated James K. Polk in 1844, Tyler dropped out of the race.

  • After Polk won the election, Tyler was able to push Texas annexation through Congress in early 1845.

Period 5: 1844-1877 Slavery, Civil War, and the Transformation of American Society