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Exam Study Notes 12-22

Spoils System

  • Jackson introduced the idea of rewarding political party loyalists with government jobs.

Conventions

  • Political parties started nominating candidates in conventions, which was more democratic than previous party caucuses.

Tariff of Abominations

  • High tariff opposed by the South.
  • The South exported many goods but imported finished goods, leading to: Higher consumer product costs and reciprocal tariffs from foreign nations.

Changes in Politics by the Age of Jackson

  • Shift towards a more democratic society.
  • Property qualifications for voting decreased.
  • Politics focused on pleasing the common man.
  • Deference to the elite declined.
  • Conventions allowed more say in nominations.
  • Politics became more about "character" than issues.

Whigs vs. Democrats

  • Whigs: Similar to old Federalists. Advocated for government-built roads, sobriety, economic progress, and Protestant values.
  • Democrats: Similar to old Jeffersonians. Wanted small government, resented banks and commerce, and believed internal improvements were unconstitutional.

Slavery

  • The Liberator: Abolitionist newspaper by Garrison, advocating immediate, uncompensated emancipation.
  • W.L. Garrison: Radical abolitionist; viewed the Constitution as a covenant with death because it tolerated slavery.
  • Nat Turner’s Rebellion: 1831 rebellion in Virginia where 60+ whites were killed. Resulted in harsh crackdowns on slaves' rights.
  • Gang vs. Task Labor:
    • Task labor: Slaves worked until a task was completed, then had free time.
    • Gang labor: Working from sunup to sundown.
    • Slaves preferred task labor for its greater freedom.
  • American Anti-Slavery Society: Advocated abolishing slavery through the system.
  • Liberty Party: Abolitionist political party formed in 1840 to abolish slavery through the political system. Won very few elections.
  • Subtle Resistance by Slaves: Breaking tools, raiding smokehouses, hurting animals, or feigning ignorance.

Manifest Destiny

  • The Texas Question: Should Texas be annexed, considering potential issues with Mexico and the expansion of slavery?

Oregon v. Texas

  • Democrats in 1844 demanded the annexation of Texas and Oregon.
  • Texas was annexed in 1845.
  • Compromise with Britain over Oregon in 1846.
  • Northerners, especially Whigs, saw this as giving in to the Slave Power.

Mexican Cession

  • Land gained from Mexico after the Mexican-American War.
  • The fate of slavery in this land became a major point of contention.

Mexican-American War

  • War with Mexico over a border dispute.
  • Popular in the US, especially the South, due to interest in California.
  • Northern Whigs questioned whether this was an aggressive slave grab.

Texas Revolution

  • Americans in Texas (invited by the Mexican government) rebelled against Mexico.
  • They believed the government was intruding on their liberties.

Compromise of 1850

  • Triggered by California's application for statehood as a free state after the gold rush.
  • Terms:
    • California admitted as a free state.
    • Utah & NM territories: Popular sovereignty.
    • Stricter fugitive slave law.

Fugitive Slave Act

  • Required Northerners to help capture runaway slaves.
  • Resented by Northerners; Southerners angered by Northern resistance.

Mormonism

  • Religion founded by Joseph Smith, facing discrimination.
  • Practiced polygamy.
  • Ended up in Utah.

California Gold Rush

  • Caused rapid growth in 1848.
  • Application for statehood in 1849 led to debates over slavery.

Manifest Destiny - Unity and Division

  • United: Expansion of American values (democracy, Protestantism, capitalism, individualism).
  • Divided: Slavery and Native rights.
  • The spread of slavery was at the heart of the conflict that would become the Civil War.

Mexican-American War - American Imperialism?

  • The US expanded west, desiring Mexican territory, especially California.
  • When Mexico refused to sell the SW, the US used a border dispute as an excuse to go to war and seize the Mexican Cession.

Reform Movements

  • 2nd Great Awakening: Catalyst for many 19th-century reform movements.
  • Emphasized self-perfection in anticipation of Jesus's return.
  • Abolition: Small but vocal movement gaining traction in the North.
  • Temperance: Sought to ban alcohol, which was seen as causing crime, social problems, and harming workers.

Transcendentalism

  • Philosophical movement emphasizing the inherent goodness of people and nature.
  • Promoted self-reliance and independence.

Utopian Societies

  • Founded to escape the fast-paced, competitive capitalistic society of the Market Revolution.
  • Oneida Community: Perfectionist religious communal society that practiced communalism and complex marriage.
  • New Harmony, Indiana: Founded by Robert Owen, based on Bible Socialism.
  • Most failed due to high American wages and internal struggles.

Women’s Rights

  • Women involved in abolition fought for their own rights due to unequal treatment.
  • Education: Horace Mann in Massachusetts led the push for compulsory education.
  • Asylum Movement: Dorothea Dix led the movement to reform treatment of the mentally ill.
  • Seneca Falls Declaration (1848): Called for women’s equality and voting rights.
  • Cult of Domesticity: Women were expected to be domestic, submissive, pure, and pious.

Sectional Tensions: Missouri Compromise

  • Missouri Compromise (1820): Admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
  • Extended a line west, allowing slavery south of it and prohibiting it north of it.
  • Tallmadge Amendment: Proposed gradual abolition of slavery in Missouri as a condition for statehood.

Gage Rule

  • 1836 House resolution halting debate on slavery in Congress.
  • Southerners sought to suppress the growing abolition movement.

Slave Power

  • Northern idea that the South was controlled by a small aristocracy of slave owners.
  • They were willing to crush the rights of northerners to defend slavery.

Compromise of 1850

  • California statehood application led to sectional tension.
  • Terms included Cali as free state, slave trade banned in D.C., and new fugitive slave law.

Wilmot Proviso

  • Proposed that any territory gained from the Mexican-American War would be free of slavery.
  • Outraged Southerners and never passed.

Fugitive Slave Law

  • Part of the Compromise of 1850.
  • Forced Northerners to participate in the slave-catching system.

Americans and Compromise on Slavery

  • Compromises dated back to the Constitution.
  • Examples: 3/5ths clause, ability to abolish the slave trade after 20 years, Missouri Compromise, Nullification, and the Compromise of 1850.
  • Increasingly sectional nature of politics made compromise less likely.

Critical Decade - 1850s

  • Republican Party: Began with abolitionist roots, expanded as a free-soil party.
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Book by H.B. Stowe increased outrage in the North.
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act: Created territories of Kansas & Nebraska; popular sovereignty to decide slavery.
  • Bleeding Kansas: Violence due to the K-N Act as people flocked to Kansas. Sacking of Lawrence, Massacre by John Brown at Pottawatomie Creek.
  • Dred Scott Decision (1857): Ruled that blacks were not citizens and that slavery could not be outlawed in any territory.

Caning of Charles Sumner

  • Preston Brooks caned Charles Sumner in 1856.
  • Seen as evidence of the South's brutality and a threat to free speech.

John Brown’s Raid

  • Attempt to start a slave uprising by storming an arsenal.
  • Failed but seen as dangerous by Southerners.

Fire-eater

  • Southern nationalists who advocated secession.

Know-Nothing Party

  • Anti-immigrant political party.

Compact Theory

  • States delegated powers to the federal government and reserved the rest.
  • States could nullify laws or secede if the federal government violated those powers; justification for Southern secession.

New England Emigrant Aid Society

  • Paid immigrants to settle in Kansas to ensure it became a free state.

LeCompton Constitution

  • Pro-South legislature in Kansas drew up a constitution that would not allow for the abolition of slavery.
  • Rejected by Congress.

Pottawatomie Massacre

  • Murder of a southern sympathizer and his family by John Brown during Bleeding Kansas.

Compromise of 1860 - Immigration and Ethnic Tension

  • Immigration from Ireland and Germany increased, especially in the 1840s.
  • Nativist backlash against immigrants, leading to the rise of the American (Know-Nothing) Party.

Factors that led to the Civil War

  • After Lincoln's election, Southerners felt threatened and that compromise was no longer possible.

Civil War

  • Copperhead: Peace Democrats against the war.
  • War Democrat: Supported the war but not emancipation.
  • Gettysburg: High water mark of the Confederacy; largest battle of the war.
  • Emancipation Proclamation: Issued by Lincoln after Antietam. Applied only to slaves in rebellious areas. A war measure and undermined the Southern labor system. Went into effect 1/1/1863.
  • Confiscation Acts:
    • First Confiscation Act (1861): Confiscated slaves used in the war effort.
    • Second Confiscation Act (1862): Confiscated property of those fighting for the Confederacy.
  • Trent Affair: Two southern diplomats were arrested on a British ship, causing a diplomatic crisis with Britain.
  • King Cotton: Idea that the North couldn't make war on the South because of the importance of cotton.
  • Anaconda Plan: North's plan to blockade Southern ports and cut the Confederacy to pieces.
  • Vicksburg: After Gettysburg, the day that Grant took Vicksburg meant that the North controlled the Mississippi River, cutting the Confederacy in two.
  • Border States: Slave states that remained loyal to the Union.

Civil War - Advantages of Both Sides

  • North: Industrial base, efficient food production, better schools, transportation network, larger population.
  • South: Shorter supply lines, strong military tradition, fighting on home turf.

Civil War - Britain's Role

  • Britain abolished slavery earlier, had no sympathy for the South.
  • Relied on food exports from the North.

Civil War - Lincoln's Record on Civil Liberties

  • Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, shut down newspapers, and arrested draft dodgers, mostly in border states.

Civil War - South's Goals Evolve

  • Originally fought to keep slavery, uphold states' rights, and their agrarian way of life.
  • Later industrialized, consolidated power, and were even willing to arm slaves to win.

Reconstruction

  • 13th Amendment: Abolished slavery in 1865.
  • 14th Amendment: Equal protection, due process, and birthright citizenship in 1868.
  • 15th Amendment: Illegal to discriminate using race for voting in 1970. Southern states circumvented this with poll taxes and literacy tests.
  • Scalawag: Southerner who defected to the Republican Party.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1866: Response to Black Codes; basis for the 14th Amendment.
  • Carpetbagger: Northerners who went South to teach, work, or rebuild.
  • Freedman’s Bureau: Helped freed slaves transition to freedom.
  • Sharecropping: Many freedmen became sharecroppers, burdened with debt.
  • Mississippi Plan: Southern Democrats sought to take back control through violence.
  • Impeachment: Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act.
  • Redeemers: Southern Democrats who sought to re-establish white rule.
  • KKK: Military wing of the Democrat Party in the South.
  • Reconstruction Acts (4), Radical Republicans: Republicans sought to remake the South.
  • Black Codes: State laws that stripped blacks of most of their rights.
  • Panic of 1873: Economic downturn distracted from Reconstruction.
  • Lincoln’s 10% Plan: 10% of Southerners take loyalty oaths.
  • Wade-Davis Bill: Radical Republican response; proposed 50% instead.
  • Compromise of 1877: Southern Democrats agreed to allow the Republican to win the White House in exchange for Hayes pulling federal troops out of the South.

End of Reconstruction

  • Factors: weariness, belief in local control, financial panic, corruption, and racism.
  • Reconstruction set the stage for the Civil Rights movement with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

Industrialization

  • Bessemer Process: Stronger steel led to increased production.
  • New Technology & Inventions: Made production more efficient.
  • Mass Production: Using interchangeable parts, goods were mass-produced.
  • Assembly Line: Increased efficiency but lessened the need for skill.
  • Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890): Attempted to curb corporate power; initially used against labor unions.
  • Standard Oil: J.D. Rockefeller’s oil trust.
  • Robber Barons: Captains of industry who controlled much of American manufacturing.
  • Interstate Commerce Act (1887): Regulated private business; set up the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate RRs.
  • New South: Idea that the South needed to industrialize; mostly remained agricultural.
  • Horizontal & Vertical Integration: Business consolidation strategies.
  • Social Darwinism: Justified wealth and racism.
    • The idea based on evolution applied to society saying that the best and most fit in the human species would naturally rise to the top.

Gospel of Wealth

  • Idea espoused by Andrew Carnegie.
  • Said that Free market capitalism would allow for the best and most talented to rise to the top, and people are obligated to give back to community in charitable ways.

New Forms of Technology and Effect on Everyday People

  • Impacted communication, movement of food, production of clothing, medicine, and travel.

Industrialization Impact on Living Standards

  • US had highest living standards in the 1880s.

Industrialization - Positives and Negatives

  • Positives: More jobs, increased living standards, more technology, greater opportunities, booming cities.
  • Negatives: Pollution & environmental destruction, wealth stratification, child labor, working conditions, urban poverty.

Tariffs - A Hotly Debated Issue

  • Republicans favored higher tariffs to protect US businesses.
  • Democrats favored lower tariffs to reduce consumer prices.
  • Examples: McKinley Tariff (1890) was high; Underwood Tariff (1913) was lower.

Labor and Unions

  • Great RR Strike (1877): Strike in the RR industry after wage cuts that was put down by troops.
  • Haymarket Riot (1886): Violence in Chicago after a bomb was thrown at police. Led to the demise of the Knights of Labor.
  • Homestead Strike (1892): Workers locked out of a Carnegie steel plant. Troops restored order.
  • Pullman Strike (1894): Strike on the Pullman Railcar Company. Federal government intervened.
  • Industrial Workers of the World: Radical, socialist union that gained little traction in America.
  • American Federation of Labor: Craft union for skilled workers; fought for better wages, working conditions, and hours.
  • Knights of Labor: Industrial union that accepted all workers.
  • Samuel Gompers: Founder and president of the AFL; advocated a strike fund.
  • Collective Bargaining: Right to unionize and bargain collectively.
  • Iron Law of Wages: Workers paid according to supply and demand.
  • Socialism: Workers, not owners, should control the means of production.

Labor and Unions - Strike Failure

  • Lack of legal backing for unionization; government protected property rights of business owners.

Labor and Unions - Reason to Unionize

  • Low wages, dangerous conditions, long hours.

Immigration

  • Old Immigrants: From northern and western Europe; primarily Protestant.
  • New Immigrants: From eastern and southern Europe; more diverse.
  • Chinese Exclusion Act: Banned Chinese laborers from entering the US in 1882.
  • Nativism: Backlash against new immigrants by native-born Americans.

Role of Economic downturns on immigration

  • Slow job growth leads to slow immigration growth.

Progressivism

  • DuBois v. Washington:
    • Washington: Gradualism, industrial education.
    • DuBois: Immediate political rights.
  • Jim Crow Laws: State laws that allowed for segregation.
  • NAACP: Founded by DuBois and others to fight for the rights of people of color.
  • Women’s Rights: Suffrage (Susan B. Anthony), temperance, birth control (Margaret Sanger).
  • *The 19th amendment was passed in 1920 because of because women fought in WW1 and deserve the right to vote.
  • Conservation: Protecting the environment from industrialization.
  • Preservation: Setting aside land off limits to human development with movements led by John Muir and the Sierra Club.
  • The Jungle: Book by Upton Sinclair exposed the meatpacking industry.
  • Muckrakers: Journalists who exposed societal ills in order to foster reform and change.
  • Elkins Act (1903): Banned rebates for large shippers on RRs.
  • Hepburn Act (1906): Gave the ICC the power to set maximum RR rates.

Changes in Immigration Patterns

  • Before 1880 most immigrants were “old”, gradually it shifts to new immigrants by 1900.
  • Slow job growth leads to slow immigration growth.