chapter 13-15 american pageant apush
The Democrat party emerged in 1828.
The "Corrupt Bargain" of 1824
Well-organized parties had not yet emerged, and there were 4 main "Republican" candidates in the election of 1824: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.
No candidate won the majority of the electoral votes, so, according to the Constitution, the House of Representatives had to choose the winner out of the top 3 candidates. Henry Clay was eliminated because he received the 4th most votes. Being the Speaker of the House, though, he did have much say in who became president. Clay convinced the House to elect John Quincy Adams as president. Adams agreed to make Clay the Secretary of State for getting him into office. The public felt that a "corrupt bargain" had taken place because Andrew Jackson had received the popular vote.
A Yankee Misfit in the White House
John Quincy Adams was a strong nationalist and he supported the building of national roads and canals. He also supported education.
Going "Whole Hog" for Jackson in 1828
Before the election of 1824, two parties had formed: National Republicans and Democratic-Republicans (also referred to as just "Democrat"). Adams and Clay were the figures of the National Republicans and Jackson was with the Democratic-Republicans.
Andrew Jackson beat Adams to win the election of 1828. The majority of his support came from the South, while Adams's support came from the North.
"Old Hickory" as President
Jackson was the first president from the West and the second president without a college education.
The Spoils System
When the Democrats took control of the White House, they replaced most public officials with their own people (the common man). These people were illiterate and incompetent. This system of rewarding political supporters with jobs in the government was known as the "spoils system."
The Tricky "Tariff of Abominations"
In 1824, Congress significantly increased the tariff on imports.
The Tariff of 1828: called the "Black Tariff" or the "Tariff of Abominations"; also called the "Yankee Tariff". It was hated by Southerners because it was an extremely high tariff and they felt it discriminated against them. The South was having economic struggles and they used the tariff as a scapegoat for their problems.
In 1822, Denmark Vesey led a slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina.
The South Carolina Exposition, made by John C. Calhoun, was published in 1828. It was a pamphlet that denounced the Tariff of 1828 as unjust and unconstitutional.
"Nullies" in the South
In an attempt to meet the South's demands, Congress passed the Tariff of 1832, a slightly lower tariff compared to the Tariff of 1828. It fell short of the South's demands.
The state legislature of South Carolina called for the Columbia Convention. The delegates of the convention called for the tariff to be void in South Carolina. The convention threatened to take South Carolina out of the Union if the Federal government attempted to collect the customs duties by force.
Henry Clay introduced the Tariff of 1833. It gradually reduced the Tariff of 1832 by about 10% over 8 years. By 1842, the rates would be back at the level of 1816.
The compromise Tariff of 1833 ended the dispute over the Tariff of 1832 between the South and the White House. The compromise was supported by South Carolina but not much by the other southern states.
Prior to the compromise, Congress had passed the Force Bill, which authorized the Federal government to use force to collect the tariffs.
The Trail of Tears
Jackson's Democrats were committed to western expansion, but such expansion meant confrontation with the Indians who inhabited the land east of the Mississippi.
The Society for Propagating the Gospel Among Indians was founded in 1787 to Christianize Indians.
The "Five Civilized Tribes" were the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. These tribes made efforts to assimilate into white culture. President Jackson wanted to move the Indians so Americans could expand.
Despite Supreme Court rulings that consistently favored the Indians' land rights, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. It moved more than 100,000 Indians living east of the Mississippi to reservations west of the Mississippi. Many Indians died on forced marches along the Trail of Tears.
Black Hawk led Indians to fight against the relocation in the Black Hawk War of 1832. The Indians were defeated.
The Seminoles in Florida retreated to the Everglades, fighting for several years until they retreated deeper into the Everglades or were moved to the Oklahoma area.
The Bank War
President Andrew Jackson despised the Bank of the United States because he felt it was very monopolistic.
The Bank of the United States was a private institution that was not accountable to the people; it was only accountable to its investors. The bank minted gold and silver coins. Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank of the United States, held an immense and possibly unconstitutional amount of power over the nation's financial affairs.
The Bank War erupted in 1832 when Daniel Webster and Henry Clay presented Congress with a bill to renew the Bank's charter. Clay wanted to make it an issue for the election of 1832. He felt that if Jackson signed off on the bill, then Jackson would alienate the people of the West who hated the Bank. If Jackson vetoed the bill, then he would alienate the wealthy class of the East who supported the Bank. Clay did not account for the fact that the wealthy class was now a minority. Jackson vetoed the bill, calling the Bank unconstitutional.
The veto showed that Jackson felt that the Executive Branch had more power than the Judicial Branch in determining the Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. This was despite the fact that the Supreme Court had already ruled that the Bank was constitutional in McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819).
"Old Hickory" Wallops Clay in 1833
A third party entered the election in the election of 1832: The Anti-Masonic party. The party hated the Masonic Order, a secret society, because it thought the Order was comprised of privileged, elite people. Although Jackson was supported egalitarianism and "the common man", he was a Mason himself; therefore the Anti-Masons were an anti-Jackson party. It gained support from evangelical Protestant groups.
The Jacksonians (Democrats) were opposed to government involvement in social and economic life.
Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832.
Burying Biddle's Bank
The Bank of the United States's charter expired in 1836. Jackson wanted to make sure that the Bank was destroyed.
In 1833, 3 years before the Bank's charter expired, Jackson decided to remove federal deposits from its vaults. Jackson proposed depositing no more funds in the bank and he gradually shrunk existing deposits by using the funds to pay for day-to-day expenditures of the government.
The death of the Bank of the United States left a financial vacuum in the American economy. Surplus federal funds were placed in several dozen state banks that were politically supportive of Jackson ("pet banks").
Smaller, wildcat banks in the west had begun to issue their own currency. But this "wildcat" currency was extremely unreliable because its value was based upon the value of the bank from which it was issued. In 1836, "wildcat" currency had become so unreliable that Jackson told the Treasury to issue a Specie Circular, a decree that required all public lands to be purchased with metallic money. This drastic step contributed greatly to the financial panic of 1837.
The Birth of the Whigs
The Whigs were conservatives who supported government programs, reforms, and public schools. They called for internal improvements like canals, railroads, and telegraph lines.
The Whigs claimed to be defenders of the common man and declared the Democrats the party of corruption. They absorbed the Anti-Masonic Party.
The Election of 1836
Martin Van Buren was Andrew Jackson's choice as his successor in the election of 1836. He won the election. General William Henry Harrison was one of the Whig's many presidential nominees. The Whigs did not win because they did not unite behind just one candidate.
Depression Doldrums and the Independent Treasury
The basic cause of the panic of 1837 was rampant speculation by banks. (Banks gave a lot of loans to people/businesses who, in the end, could not afford to repay the loans.) Jacksonian's financial policies also contributed to the panic. In 1836, the failure of two British banks caused British investors to call in foreign loans. These loans were the beginning of the panic.
The panic of 1837 caused hundreds of banks to collapse, commodity prices to drop, sales of public to fall, and the loss of jobs.
The Whigs proposed government policies to fix the economic downturn: expansion of bank credit, higher tariffs, subsidies for internal improvement. Van Buren rejected these proposals because he wanted to keep government involvement out of the economy.
Van Buren proposed the Divorce Bill. Not passed by Congress, it called for separating the government and banking.
The Independent Treasury Bill was passed in 1840. An independent treasury would be established and government funds would be locked in vaults.
Gone to Texas
Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. Because of this, ownership of Texas passed from Spain to Mexico. Mexico gave a large chunk of Texas land to Stephen Austin, who promised to bring families into Texas.
Texans differed in many ways from the Mexicans, including the fact that Mexicans were against slavery, while the Texans supported it.
Santa Anna: dictator of Mexico; in 1835, he removed Texans' local rights and started to raise army to suppress the rebelling Texans.
The Lone Star Rebellion
Texas declared its independence in 1836. Sam Houston: commander in chief for Texas army.
General Houston forced Santa Anna to sign a treaty in 1836 after Houston had captured Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto. The treaty defined the Rio Grande as the southwestern boundary of an independent Texas.
The Texans wanted to become a state in the United States, but the northerners did not want this because of the issue of slavery: admitting Texas would mean one more slave state.
Log Cabins and Hard Cider of 1840
William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren to win the election of 1840 for the Whigs.
Politics for the People
There were 2 major changes in politics after the Era of Good Feelings that were highlighted by the election of 1840:
1) Politicians who were too clean, too well dressed, too grammatical, and too intellectual were not liked. Aristocracy was not liked by the American people. The common man was moving to the center of the national political stage.
The Two-Party System
2) There was a formation of a two-party system. The two parties consisted of the Democrats and the Whigs (the National Republican Party had died out). Jacksonian Democrats supported individual liberties, states' rights, and federal restraint in social and economic affairs. The Whigs supported the natural harmony of society and the value of community, a renewed national bank, protective tariffs, internal improvements, public schools, and moral reforms, such as the prohibition of liquor and the abolition of slavery.
The Westward Movement
The life as a western pioneer was very grim. Pioneers were poor and stricken with disease and loneliness.
Shaping the Western Landscape
Fur trapping was a large industry in the Rocky Mountain area. Each summer, fur trappers would meet with traders from the East to exchange beaver pelts for manufactured goods ("rendezvous" system).
George Caitlin: painter and student of Native American life who was one of the first Americans to advocate the preservation of nature; proposed the idea of a national park.
The March of Millions
By the mid-1800s, the population was doubling every 25 years. By 1860, there were 33 states and the U.S. was the 4th most populous country in the western world.
The increased population and larger cities brought about disease and decreased living standards.
In the 1840s and 1850s, more European immigrants came to the Americas because Europe seemed to be running out of room. Immigrants also came to America to escape the aristocratic caste and state church, and there was more opportunity to improve one's life. Transoceanic steamboats also reduced ocean travel times.
The Emerald Isle Moves West
In the 1840s, the "Black Forties," many Irish came to America because of a potato rot that induced a famine through Ireland. Most of the Irish were Roman-Catholic. They were politically powerful because they bonded together as one large voting body. They increased competition for jobs, so they were hated by native workers. The Irish hated the blacks and the British.
The German Forty-Eighters
Between 1830 and 1860, many Germans came to America because of crop failures and other hardships (collapse of German democratic revolutions).
Unlike the Irish, the Germans possessed a modest amount of material goods when they came to America. The Germans moved west into the Middle West (Wisconsin).
The Germans were more educated than the Americans, and they were opposed to slavery.
Flare-ups of Antiforeignism
The massive immigration of the Europeans to America inflamed the prejudices of American nativists. The Roman Catholics created an entirely separate Catholic educational system to avoid the American Protestant educational system.
The American party (Know-Nothing party) was created by native Americans who opposed the immigrants.
Many people died in riots and attacks between the American natives and the immigrants.
Creeping Mechanization
In 1750, steam was used with machines to take the place of human labor. This enabled the Industrial Revolution in England.
It took a while for the Industrial Revolution to spread to America because soil in America was cheap and peasants preferred to grow crops as opposed to working in factories. Because of this, labor was scarce until the immigrants came to America in the 1840s. There was also a lack of investment money available in America. The large British factories also had a monopoly on the textile industry, with which American companies could not compete.
Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine
Samuel Slater: "Father of the Factory System" in America; escaped Britain with memorized plans for textile machinery; put into operation the first machine to spin cotton thread in 1791.
Eli Whitney: built the first cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was much more effective than slaves at separating the cotton seed from the cotton fiber. Its development affected the entire world. Because of the cotton gin, the South's production of cotton greatly increased and demand for cotton revived the demand for slavery.
New England became the industrial center of the Industrial Revolution in America because it had poor soil for farming; it had a dense population for labor; shipping brought in capital; seaports enabled the import of raw materials and the export of the finished products.
Marvels in Manufacturing
The War of 1812 created a boom of American factories and the use of American products as opposed to British imports.
The surplus in American manufacturing dropped following the Treaty of Ghent in 1815. The British manufacturers sold their products to Americans at very low prices. Congress passed the Tariff of 1816 to protect the American manufacturers.
In 1798, Eli Whitney came up with the idea of using machines (instead of people) to make each part of the musket. This meant that the musket's components would be consistently manufactured, and thus, could be interchanged. The principle of interchangeable parts caught on by 1850 and it became the basis for mass-production.
Elias Howe: invented the sewing machine in 1846. The sewing machine boosted northern industrialization. It became the foundation of the ready-made clothing industry.
Limited Liability: an individual investor only risks his personal investment in a company in the event of a bankruptcy.
Laws of "free incorporation": first passed in New York in 1848; enabled businessmen to create corporations without applying for individual charters from the legislature.
Samuel F. B. Morse: invented the telegraph.
Workers and "Wage Slaves"
Impersonal relationships replaced the personal relationships that were once held between workers.
Factory workers were forbidden by law to form labor unions to raise wages. In the 1820s, many children were used as laborers in factories. Jacksonian democracy brought about the voting rights of the laboring man.
President Van Buren established the ten-hour work day in 1840 (for federal employees on public projects).
Commonwealth vs. Hunt: Supreme Court ruled that labor unions were not illegal conspiracies, provided that their methods were honorable and peaceful.
Women and the Economy
Farm women and girls had an important place in the pre-industrial economy: spinning yarn, weaving cloth, and making candles, soap, butter, and cheese.
Women were forbidden to form unions and they had few opportunities to share dissatisfactions over their harsh working conditions.
Catharine Beecher: urged women to enter the teaching profession.
The vast majority of working women were single.
Cult of Domesticity: a widespread cultural creed that glorified the customary functions of the homemaker.
During the Industrial Revolution, families were small, affectionate, and child-centered, which provided a special place for women.
Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields
The trans-Allegheny region, especially Indiana and Illinois, became the nation's breadbasket.
Liquor and hogs became the early western farmer's staple market items because both of these items were supported by corn.
John Deere: produced a steel plow in 1837 which broke through the thick soil of the West.
McCormick Reaper: a horse-drawn mechanical reaper that could cut and gather crops much faster than with previous methods (i.e. hand-picking). This enabled larger-scale farming.
Highways and Steamboats
Lancaster Turnpike: hard-surfaced highway that ran from Philadelphia to Lancaster; drivers had to pay a toll to use it.
In 1811, the federal government began to construct the National Road, or Cumberland Road. It went from Cumberland, in western Maryland, to Illinois. Its construction was halted during the War of 1812, but the road was completed in 1852.
Robert Fulton: installed a steam engine on a boat and thus, created the first steamboat. The steamboat played a vital role in the economic expansion of the West and South, via their extensive waterways.
"Clinton's Big Ditch" in New York
Governor DeWitt Clinton: governor of New York who lead the building of the Erie Canal that connected the Great Lakes with the Hudson River in 1825; the canal lowered shipping prices and decreased passenger transit time.
The Iron Horse
The most significant contribution to the expansion of the American economy was the railroad. The first one appeared in 1828.
Railroads were initially opposed because of safety flaws and because they took away money from the Erie Canal investors.
Cables (Telegraphs), Clippers, and Pony Riders
In the 1840s and 1850s, American navel yards began to produce new ships called clipper ships. These ships sacrificed cargo room for speed and were able to transport small amounts of goods in short amounts of time. These ships were eventually superseded by steamboats after steamboats were improved.
The Pony Express was established in 1860 to carry mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. The mail service collapsed after 18 months due to lack of profit.
The Transport Web Binds the Union
The transportation revolution was created because people in the east wanted to move west.
The South raised cotton for export to New England and Britain. The West grew grain and livestock to feed factory workers in the East and in Europe. The East made machines and textiles for the South and the West. All of these products were transported using the railroad; the railroad linked America.
The Market Revolution
The market revolution transformed the American economy from one in which people subsisted on things they grew/created to one in which people purchased goods that were produced all over the country.
Reviving Religion
Thomas Paine promoted the doctrines of Deism. Deists relied on science rather than the Bible and they denied the divinity of Christ. They did believe in a Supreme Being who had created a universe and endowed human beings with a capacity for moral behavior.
Unitarianism was derived from Deism. Unitarians believed that God existed in only one person, and not the Trinity. It appealed to mostly intellectuals.
The Second Great Awakening began in 1800. A wave of religious fervor swept over the country. Women became more involved in religion during the Second Great Awakening.
Peter Cartwright: a revivalist, traveling preacher who converted thousands to Christianity.
Charles Grandison Finney: one of the greatest revivalist preachers.
Denominational Diversity
The Second Great Awakening widened the gap between the societal classes and regions. The more prosperous and conservative denominations in the East were little touched by revivalism. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians derived its members from the wealthier parts of society, while Methodists and Baptists came from less prosperous communities in the South and West.
The issue of slavery split the churches apart.
A Desert Zion in Utah
Joseph Smith: formed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in 1830 when he deciphered the Book of Mormon from some golden plates given to him by an angel; led the Mormons to Illinois.
After Joseph Smith was killed 1844, Brigham Young led the Mormons to Utah to avoid persecution.
Free Schools for a Free People
Tax-supported public education came about between 1825-1850. Americans eventually saw they had to educate their children because the children were the future. The teachers of the schools were mostly men and did not know how to teach. There were not very many schools in the U.S. because of their high costs to communities.
Horace Mann: campaigned effectively for a better school system.
Higher Goals for Higher Learning
The first state-supported universities showed up in the South in 1795.
The University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson.
Women's schools at the secondary level came in the 1820s because of Emma Willard. At the time, it was still widely believed that a women's place is in the home.
An Age of Reform
States gradually abolished debtors' prisons due to public demand. Criminal codes in the states were being softened. The number of capital offenses was being reduced. Society began to think that prisons should reform as well as punish.
Dorothy Dix: traveled the country, visiting different asylums; released a report on insanity and asylums; her protests resulted in improved conditions for the mentally ill.
In 1828, the American Peace Society was formed. It was led by William Ladd.
Demon Rum - The "Old Deluder"
In the early 1800s, many people developed drinking problems due to social norms and hard/monotonous life. This included women, clergymen, and members of Congress. The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826. Its members persuaded people to stop drinking.
Drinking decreased worker efficiency and threatened the family structure.
Neal S. Dow: thought that alcohol should be outlawed; "Father of Prohibition"; supported the Maine Law of 1851 which banned the manufacture and sale of liquor in Maine. (The country banned the sale of alcohol with the 18th amendment in 1918.)
Women in Revolt
In the early 19th century, the role of women was to stay at home and be subordinate to her husband. Women could not vote and when married, she could not retain her property. Because of these things, women actually started to avoid marriage.
Gender differences were emphasized in the 19th century because the market economy was separating women and men into distinct economic roles (women were viewed as artistic and the keepers of society's conscience, while men were viewed as strong but crude).
Feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York in a Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 to rewrite the Declaration of Independence to include women.
Wilderness Utopians
Several utopian communities were created in the early 1800s, but all of them ultimately failed.
Robert Owen: founded a communal society in New Harmony, Indiana in 1825 to seek human betterment.
The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
Americans were more interested in practical gadgets than in pure science. Americans invented practical gadgets, but they borrowed and adapted scientific findings from the Europeans.
Medicine in America was still primitive by modern standards. In the early 1840s, several American doctors and dentists successfully used laughing gas and ether as anaesthetics.
Artistic Achievements
Early American architects used a Federal Style that emphasized symmetry, balance, and restraint (columns, domes, pediments).
Between 1820 and 1850, a Greek revival in architecture came to America. Most of the ideas of art and painting were taken from Europe.
"Dixie" was the battle hymn of the Confederates and was written in 1859.
The Blossoming of a National Literature
Before the mid-1800s, most literature in America was imported from Britain.
Following the War of 1812, American literature received a boost from the wave of nationalism and the arrival of romanticism to America.
Washington Irving: the first American to win international recognition as a literary figure.
James Fenimore Cooper: the first American novelist to gain world fame.
Trumpeters of Transcendentalism
The transcendentalist movement came about in the 1830s. The transcendentalists believed that knowledge transcends the senses and can't be found just by observation; knowledge comes from within the person. Associated traits included self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: transcendentalist poet and philosopher; urged American writers to forget European traditions and write about American interests; wrote "The American Scholar," which was an intellectual declaration of independence.
Henry David Thoreau: transcendentalist who believed that people should ignore bodily desires and pursue truth through study and meditation.
Glowing Literary Lights
Not all poets and writers of the time were transcendentalists.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: one of the most famous poets to come from America; wrote for the wealthy class; was adopted by the less-cultured class.
Literary Individuals and Dissenters
Edgar Allan Poe: wrote with a pessimistic tone, unlike the literature at the time.
Herman Melville: wrote the novel Moby Dick.
Portrayers of the Past
In the mid-1800s, American historians began to emerge.