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Period 1

Native American Societies Before European Contact

Societies of Southwest

• Depend on maize

• Spread from Mexico to North America

• Fostered economic development and social diversification among Native Americans

• Pueblo people (Anasazi)

  • Lived in small towns - pueblos starting from year 900

  • Four corners - Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

  • 13th-14th century - volcano + drought - dispersed and led to conflict

  • Some joined with Zunis and Hopis in NewMexico, others joined communities in the Rio Grande

  • Great Migration 

Societies of the Great Basin and Great Plains

• Mobile lifestyles - lack of natural resources

• Shoshone, Paiute, and Ute Peoples of the Great Basin

  • Great Basin - area between Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada Mountains

  • Desert, arid conditions, drought

  • “Desert culture” - made baskets as opposed to sedentary groups that made pottery

• American Indians of the Great Plains

  • Great Plains - Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains

  • Plains Indians are stereotype Native Americans

  • Most hunted on foot and maintained a mobile lifestyle

  • Some who were closer to the Mississippi developed more sedentary, agrarian lifestyles

Societies of the East

• Atlantic = mix of agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies 

• Fostered the development of permanent settlements

• Algonquian Peoples

  • Atlantic coast - hunted, fished, grew corn

  • Those in the upper Great Lakes/New England - cold = no agriculture, relied on hunting and fishing

• Iroquois Great League of Peace

  • A group of Iroquoian-speaking people formed the Iroquois League

  • Formed in order to end fighting among is groups

  • They lived in permanent villages

  • Relied on farming, gathering, hunting, and fishing - mostly farming however

  • Three sisters - corn, beans, squash

  • Traditionally matrilineal society - inheritance and descent pass through the mother’s line

Societies of the Pacific Northwest

• In areas of present day California - foraging + hunting + resources of the Pacific Ocean and rivers

• Chinook People of the Pacific Northwest

  • The Chinook people lived in Washington and Oregon

  • High degree of economic development and social stratification

  • A higher caste of people - shamans, warriors, wealthy merchants - lived separate from the commoners

• Many Chinook people lived in longhouses - 50 ppl

European Exploration in the Americas

Factors contributing to European Exploration

• Explain why the age of exploration took place when it did

• The Crusades and the Revival of Trade

  • Trade routes and international economic activity shifted power

  • Became interested in finding new trade routes with the east

• Black Death and the Decline of Feudalism

  • Black Death played a role in the decline of feudalism

  • Opened up opportunities for survivors - work was in high demand and food and land were more plentiful

• Renaissance

  • Spirit of exploration

  • Scholarly spirit to map new areas

  • Gutenberg’s printing press

• Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation

  • Puritans flee to North America

  • Jesuits devote themselves to spreading their gospel throughout the world

Columbian Exchange, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest

The Impact of Exploration and Conquest on Europe

• New sources of wealth helped the transition from feudalism to capitalism

• New crops + livestock = population growth in Europe

• The Impact of the Columbian Exchange on Europe

  • Revolutionized agriculture

  • Supplemented the meager diets of the peasants

  • Introduction of tobacco

• Economic Impact of Conquest

  • Conquest did not necessarily bring improvements to Spain

  • The influx of gold and silver caused inflation

  • Taxes went up fivefold to pay for military expenditure

  • Spain went into debt and borrowed money from European banks, eventually ending in a depression on the Spanish economy

Technological Advances and New Economic Structures

• Technological Advances and a Revolution in Navigation

  • Compass

  • Astrolabe

  • Quadrant

  • Hourglass

  • Portolani - detailed maps

• Joint-stock company

  • Important engine for exploration and colonization

  • Investors propelled expeditions to the New World

  • Risks were spread out across multiple shareholders

Spanish and Portuguese Models

• First expeditions were by the Spanish and Portuguese

• Portugal and Spain Lead the Way

  • Prince Henry the Navigator searched for new trade routes to Asia that avoided the Mediterranean

  • Eventually sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and reached India

  • Spain sent Columbus and reached the Carribean

• Spanish and Portuguese Ambitions

  • Treaty of Tordesillas

  • Spaniards later established the first permanent European settlement at St. Augustine, Florida

• Conquistadores and the Defeat of Native Peoples

  • Defeat of the Aztecs by Cortes and defeat of the Incas by Pizarro

• Disease and Death

  • No immunities to European diseases

  • 90% of them died

Labor, Slavery, and Caste in the Spanish Colonial System

Spanish Exploitation of New World Resources

• Spain created the encomienda system to extract gold and silver and ship it to Spain

• Spain soon became the wealthiest country in Europe with the influx of precious metals

• Silver and the Encomienda System

  • Spanish settlers were granted tracts of land and the right to extract labor from natives

  • Old World Feudalism

  • Bartholomew de Las Casas

Spain and the African Slave Trade

• Impact of the Slave Trade

• Slavery existed in Europe even before the discovery of the New World

• Destabilized African communities by taking out strong, young people

• Introduction of European goods undermined the African economy

• Resistance to Slavery and the Development of Maroon Communities

  • Africans developed cultural resistance that attempted to preserve traditional cultural patterns and maintain autonomy

  • Maroons were Africans who escaped slavery in the New World and established independent communities - many in Carribean and Brazil

  • Preserve African traditions using medicinal herbs, special drumming and dancing as part of healing rituals

  • Most significant Maroon communities - Palmares - 30,000 residents independent until conquered by Portuguese in 1694

Social Structure of Spanish America

• Spanish Caste system

• The Casta System

  • Spaniards were always outnumbered by natives

  • Spanish men outnumbered spanish women → intermarriage

  • Caste:

    • Peninsulares - born in Spain

    • Creoles - born in the New World of Spanish Parents

    • Mestizos - children of Spanish men and Indian women - 4-5% of Spain’s New World Empire

    • Mulattos - children of Spanish men and African women

    • Native Americans

    • Africans

Cultural Interactions between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans

Interactions, Trade, and Cultural Adaptations in the New World

• Each side adopted some useful aspects of the other’s culture

• Cultural Misunderstandings

  • Conflict between Indians and Europeans as both groups tried to make sense of each other

  • Matrilineal vs. Patrilineal

  • Indians did not understand individual ownership of land - it was seen as a community resource

• Religious Adaptation in the New World

  • Some Native Americans adopted Christianity

  • Some adopted Catholicism completely while others incorporated some aspects into traditional practices

Resistance by American Indians and Africans

• Native American Resistance in Spain’s New World Colonies

  • Some fled from Spaniards

  • Some Guale Indians led a revolt against the mission at St. Augustine - Juanillo’s Revolt - resulting in the death of several missionaries

• Juan de Onate and the Acoma Pueblo People

  • New Mexico

  • Juan de Onate and his soldiers occupied held by the Acoma Pueblo people

  • The Acoma attacked the Spanish occupiers, killing 15

  • Onate responded by firing cannons and killing over 800 natives

  • The remaining 500 were enslaved

Debates around Perceptions of American Indians

• Development of the Belief of White Superiority

  • As mixing of races occurred → pure blood

  • European control of Natives and Africans → white supremacy

    • Justified the Spanish belief that they were at the top of the hierarchy

• Debates over Spain’s Actions in the New World

  • Encomienda System → Bartholomew de Las Casas

  • Juan Gines de Sepulveda - asserted that Indians were beings of an inferior order

  • Natural slaves according to natural law

The Nature of Spanish Conquest and Colonization

• “Black Legend” was a term coined in 1914 to describe the anti-Spanish propaganda written by the English, Italian, Dutch, and other European writers

• English writers may have been trying to demonize the Spanish to portray English behavior in the New World in a more favorable light

• Look at the source of the documents in question

Period 2

European Colonization

Spain’s New World Colonies

• Maintained tight control over its colonial empire in the new world

• Evolution of Spanish America

  • Encomienda System

  • Replaced by the repartimiento system - mandated that natives be paid wages

  • Many times, the work of natives was supplemented by black slave labor

  • Still highly exploitative

  • North part was the Viceroyalty of New Spain, south was Viceroyalty of Peru

French and Dutch Colonies

• Few French or Dutch people actually settled

• Their colonies served as trading outposts

• Intermarried with natives, promoting trade, acquiring furs and other valuable goods for export

• France’s New World Empire

  • New France stretched from Quebec, encompassed Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, and the Great Basin

  • Port Royal

  • Quebec

• French-American Indian Diplomacy

  • Had few colonists - had to rely on diplomacy

  • Accommodation and adaptation to American Indian Ways

• The Metis of the French Colonies

  • Intermarriage = children who were known as Metis - mixed blood

  • Metis communities combined Catholic and indigenous religious practices

• The Dutch Presence in the Americas

  • Forts and small settlements in Guyana

  • Island settlements in the Carribean

  • Focused on sugar production

• Dutch New Amsterdam

  • Dutch East India Company

    • Northwest passage to Asia

  • Delaware to Cape Cod

• Economy of New Amsterdam

  • Few Dutch settlers initially came

  • The company provided land incentives

  • New Amsterdam was attacked by King Charles II of England, and was surrendered to the British - who renamed it New York

English Colonial Patterns

• Not few colonists - English migrated in substantial numbers

• Population Pressures and English Colonization

  • Enclosure Acts in England created a food crisis and a population surplus

• The English Merchant Class and the Expansion of Trade

  • Merchants were growing wealthy, formed joint-stock companies

  • Mercantilism - formed companies such as the East India Company

  • New World Colonization - diminish population and provide new markets

• Colonization of Ireland

The Regions of British Colonies

The Chesapeake and the Upper South

• Came to rely on labor-intensive tobacco, using white indentured servants and slaves

• Founding of Jamestown and the “Starving Time”

  • Chartered by King James I and funded by the Virginia Company

  • Mostly hoped to find gold and silver

  • Were not prepared to establish permanent colonies

  • 3 years later, only 60 of the original 500 survived

• Jamestown and its American Indian Neighbors

  • Relations deteriorated rapidly

  • Powhatan and the local Alogonquians traded corn

  • When they could not supply enough, the English raided them

  • Whites consistently encroached on American Indian lands and defeated them 

• A Tobacco Economy

  • John Rolfe experimented with growing tobacco

  • Most important crop of the Chesapeake region

  • ¾ of exports from the region

    • Shaped the development of Virginia + Carolina

    • Required large tracts of land → quickly exhausted the nutrients in the soil

    • Led them to seek territory that belonged to the natives

    • Pattern of large crop production continued with cotton in the 1800s

    • Required a large number of laborers → indentured servants → slaves

• Labor and Tobacco

  • Head-right system → new immigrants were offered a 50 acre incentive

  • Indentured servitude

    • Potential immigrant would agree to work for a certain amount of years in exchange for free passage

• Maryland

  • Similar to Virginia in that in exported tobacco and used indentured servants and slaves

  • First proprietary colony - instead of joint-stock

  • Owner was George Calvert, Lord Baltimore

    • Wanted to created refuge for Catholics

  • Son took over when he died - Cecelius Calvert

  • Protestants actually outnumbered Catholics, but Catholicism was tolerated

• North Carolina

  • Carolina was founded by wealthy plantation owners from Barbados

  • They created an economy in the South of Carolina that resembled Barbados’ sugar economy

  • The English made the North resemble Chesapeake colonies’ economy

  • Tensions between the two groups led to a split

The New England Colonies

• Driven by religious reasons

• Origins of Puritanism

  • Protestant Reformation

  • Those who wanted to purify the Church of England of Catholic practices

• Puritan Beliefs and Practices

  • Took inspiration from Calvinism

  • Predestination, Protestant work ethic, community

• Plymouth and the Mayflower Compact

  • A group of separatists, known as the “Pilgrims”

  • Founded Plymouth, but failed to attract large numbers of mainline Puritans from England

• Massachusetts Bay Colony - “A City Set Upon a Hill”

  • King Charles I sought to suppress the religious practices of Puritans

  • Granted a charter to Massachusetts Bay Company

  • Led by John Winthrop

  • Was a much more successful haven for Puritans than Plymouth

• The “Great Migration” and the Growth of New England

  • Had a difficult first year

  • By 1640, however, a “great migration” of 20,000 settlers came to Massachusetts

  • They were farmers, carpenters, etc. not aristocrats

  • Attracted families

  • Eager to build permanent, cohesive communities

• New Hampshire

  • Originally settled by the English fishing villages

  • Massachusetts soon claimed the region and an agreement in 1641 gave it jurisdiction over New Hampshire

  • A royal decree separated the two colonies in 1679

• Roger Williams and the Founding of Rhode Island

  • Roger Williams was a devout Puritan minister

  • Concerned about the mistreatment of the natives

  • Worried that civil government would distract ministers from godly matters

  • Founded Rhode Island

    • Separation of church and state

• The Banishment of Anne Hutchinson

  • Argued that ministers were not needed to interpret and convey teachings of the Bible - God could communicate directly to true believers

  • Accused Puritan leaders of resorting to the idea that salvation was determined solely by God’s divine plan, not by the actions of individuals

  • In 1638, Winthrop and other leaders banished her

  • She and her supporters established a settlement in Rhode Island

• The Founding of Connecticut

  • Winthrop insisted that new members be able to demonstrate to the church that they had a conversion experience

  • Thomas Hooker argued that they only had to live a godly life

  • Founded Hartford in the Connecticut River Valley

  • Fundamental Orders of Connecticut adopted in 1639

• Splintering of Puritanism

  • Second and third generation Puritans did not have the same zeal

  • Decline in church membership

• Halfway Covenant (1662)

  • Concerns about the decline of Puritan zeal led to the establishment of the Halfway Covenant

  • Allowed for partial church membership for children of church members

  • Did not have to demonstrate a conversion experience - extremely difficult - could be baptized and become partial, non-voting members of the church

• Salem Witch Trials (1692)

  • People were ready to turn on each other

  • Fractured community

The Middle Colonies

• Most diverse colonies - religion, ethnicity, and social class

• Thriving export economy based on cultivation of cereal crops

• Pennsylvania

  • King Charles II granted tract of land to William Penn 

• Quakerism and the “Holy Experiment”

  • Saw each other as equals in the eyes of God, called each other “friend”

  • Practiced religious toleration and frowned upong slavery

• New Jersey and Delaware

  • Initially settled by the Dutch

  • Duke of York gave land to friends, George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who established New Jersey

  • Delaware’s initial Dutch settlers were killed by Natives

  • Taken over by New Amsterdam → New York → gifted to Penn → eventually became Delaware in 1704

• New York

  • Commercial port

  • Slave population greater than North Carolina (but less than other southern states)

• Negro Plot of 1741

  • Tensions between whites and slaves

  • It was believed that there was a slave conspiracy → slaves executed

The Lower South and Colonies of the West Indies

• Longer growing seasons, exporting staple crops, depend on slave labor

• Black slaves were population majority

• Sugar and slavery in the West Indies

  • Barbados was most profitable British colony

  • Based on agriculture and slavery

  • Barbados sugar plantation owner 4x wealthier than Virginia plantation owner

  • Also owned more slaves

• Carolina

  • Could not find a crop as profitable as sugar - grew rice instead

  • Split from North Carolina, South continued to operate like Barbados - thousands of slaves controlled by a few elite planters

• Georgia

  • James Oglethorpe

  • Colony for debtors

  • Mandatory military service

  • Buffer state between the colonies and Spanish Florida

The Development of Self-Government in Britain’s New World Colonies

• Attempts at early democracy

• The Evolution of Governance in Colonial North America

  • Britain did no create an extensive governing structure

  • Ruled by royal governors, but were easily leveraged because they depended on tax revenue to run the colony

  • Instilled many colonists the sense of ability to self-govern

• Town Meetings in New England

  • Decision making assemblies open to all free male residents

  • Selected a group of representatives - selectmen - who carried out governing functions until the next meeting

• The House of Burgesses in Virginia

  • Created by the Virginia Company

  • Free men could vote for representatives - later restricted to wealthy men

    • Over time become less powerful and more exclusive

  • King transferred governance from Virginia Company to the Crown in 1624, but allowed the House to remain

Transatlantic Trade

The Atlantic Economy and Evolution of Colonial Economies

• Triangular trade

  • Brought manufactured items from England to Africa and Americas

  • Slaves were sold

  • New World colonies produced raw materials

• The African Slave Trade

  • Destabilized the regions in Africa where it occurred

  • Mostly young and male

  • Middle Passage - horrid journey from Africa to the Americas

• Tobacco, Indigo, Rice, Sugar, and Slavery in the South and the West Indies

  • Virginians exported tobacco

  • Colonies of the Lower South specialized in indigo and rice

  • Southern colonies supplied 90% of the exports from British North America

  • Most profitable were the sugar plantations in the West Indies

• Fur Trade in the North American Interior

  • Drew Europeans to the Ohio River Valley/Great Lakes

  • Destabilized Indian communities by pushing native peoples to extend their traditional territory to get more furs

  • Conflict between neighboring Indian groups, allied with and armed by competing Europeans

• Wheat, Indentured Servants, and Redemptioners in the Middle COlonies

  • Middle colonies - Pennsylvania and New Woyk - developed cultivation of wheat/cereal crops

  • Relied on indentured servants and redemptioners - promised to pay for passage by borrowing money from a friend or servitude - most got stuck with a terrible contract without ability to negotiate

• Fish and Lumber in New England

  • Salted fish, livestock, timber were big exports from New England

  • Molasses → rum

  • Many left New England and new immigrants would rather settle in the middle colonies

Trade, Disease, and Demographic Changes for American Indians

• Contact, Disease, Warfare, and the Collapse of the Huron

  • Many of the Huron people died after contact with the french due to measles and smallpox

  • More died in the Beaver Wars - killed by the Iroquois who were supplied weapons by the Dutch

• The Catawba - Contact, Trade and Cultural Adaptation

  • Catawba tried to survive by making themselves useful

  • Sold goods such as pottery, baskets, and moccasins

  • Eventually exposed to alcohol, which increased instability

British Imperial Policies

• Attempted to exert greater control over the colonies, but failed due to colonial resistance

• “Salutary neglect” allowed colonies to develop without much oversight

• Mercantilism

  • Nations increase power by increasing wealth

  • Exports exceed imports

  • Need a steady and inexpensive source for raw materials - colonies

• Navigation Acts and Mercantilism

  • Navigation Acts

    • Enumerated good - from colonies could only be shipped to Britain

    • Profitable staple crops could only be shipped to Britain

    • They were sold within England and at a profit to other countries

  • Wool act, Hat Act, Iron Act restricted colonial manufacturing

    • Guaranteed manufacturers steady low price raw materials and protected them from colonial competition

• Greater Imperial Control

  • All charter and proprietary colonies became royal colonies

• Dominion of New England

  • Charles II resented New England because Puritans executed his father during the English Civil War

  • Revoked charters of all colonies north of Delaware River

  • Formed one massive colony called the Dominion of New England

  • Met with resistance

• Glorious Revolution and the Restoration of Colonial Charters

  • When William of Orange took over the throne, New Englanders arrested Sir Edmund Andros and got rid of the Dominion

• Lax Enforcement of Mercantilist Policies

  • Robert Walpole - “salutary neglect”

    • Urged the Crown to not excessively interfere with the profitable trade

  • Colonists routinely smuggled banned good into and out of the colonies

Interactions between American Indians and Europeans

Imperial Conflicts and North American Political Instability

• Rivalries between European countries drew natives into their conflicts

• Introduction of firearms to the natives

• Beaver Wars (1640-1701)

  • French aligned themselves with Algonquian-speaking tribes along the St. Lawrence River

  • Dutch established a post at Albany and allied with the Iroquois

  • Iroquois wanted to expand their trading network, but the Huron (Algonqui) stood in their way

    • Exploded into open warfare

  • Dutch rule superseded by British who took control of New Netherland, allied themselves with the Iroquois - who were able to expand, but Huron suffered

• French and Indian Wars and Control of North America (1688-1763)

  • Four conflicts for control of North America, the fourth was the most decisive - called the French and Indian War

  • Similar:

    • Grew out of conflicts in Europe between Great Britain and France

    • Wars involved and intensified rivalries between tribes

      • As long as there was no victor, tribes got to maintain control of most of their land

    • Increased bonds between colonists and British government

      • With the threat of enemies, colonists felt the need of British military

      • Would not remain after the defeat of the French in 1763

• King William’s War (1688-1697)

  • Nine Years’ War

  • Iroquois allied with British colonists

  • French and Indian tribes (Wabanaki Confederation) challenged Iroquois domination of the fur trade as well as British expansion north 

  • After the Grand Settlement of 1701, Iroquois were primarily neutral

• Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713)

  • Border of Canada

    • Wabanaki Confederacy joined French in trying to stop the northern advance of British colonists

    • Raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts - destroying town, killing colonists, and taking captives

  • South:

    • Chickasaw + British, Choctaw + French fought over the claims to fur trade in the Mississippi River

    • French + Spanish + Apalachee, Britain fought over the Southern border of Florida and Carolina

    • The war did not settle boundary issues

    • Weakened Spanish presence in Florida, devastated American Indians in Spanish Florida

    • Fighting between the Chickasaw and the Choctaw did not cease until the defeat of the French in the French and Indian War in 1763

      • Both groups stood their ground

• King George’s War (1744-1748)

  • Fought in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia

  • Successful siege on French Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia

  • French and Indian forces destroyed Saratoga, New York

  • In peace treaty - returned the fort for the return of Madras in India

British Colonial Expansion and Conflicts with American Indians

• These were conflicts carried out by colonists themselves

• The Pequot War (1634-1638)

  • Massachusetts Bay + Plymouth + Narragansett + Mohegan to defeat Pequots

  • Needed land for Puritans to settle

• King Philip’s War (1675-1678)

  • Wampanoags alliance with Pilgrims in 1621

  • 1670 - English encroaching on their land + execution of three wampanoags who killed a christianized wampanoag

  • Metacomet - chief of the Wampanoag - known as King Philip, launched an attack on Massachusetts towns

  • New Englanders + Mohawks → 40% of Wampanoags dead

• Praying Indians in Puritan New England

  • Most native people in New England could not maintain traditional culture

  • Praying towns made for natives to abandon their culture and adopt European clothing and Christianity and settle on farms

• Racial Hierarchy and American Indians

  • In the beginning, maintaining relations was important

  • Later, desire grew to acquire their land

  • Believed the natives were savage and gave them justification to exploit them

Spain and American Indians in North America

• Spanish colonial efforts more readily made accommodations to American Indian culture

• Pueblo Revolt

  • Pueblo Indians in New Mexico were resentful of Spanish rule

  • Encomienda system undermined their traditional economy

  • Pueblo religion was banned

  • Pueblo Revolt, Pope’s Rebellion, attacks on Spanish Franciscan priests and Spaniards

  • 300+ spanish killed

  • Spanish agreed to allow them to continue their culture, each family granted land

Slavery in the British Colonies

The Development of British Slavery

• Slavery was more efficient and provided more workers at a lower cost than indentured servitude

• Bacon’s Rebellion and the Development of Slavery in Virginia

  • Former indentured servants grew resentful of taxes they were required to pay and their lack of representation in the House of Burgesses

  • Violence intensified between them and the natives

  • Bacon’s Rebellion - Nathaniel Bacon - wanted to attack the natives

  • Governor Berkeley refused because they engaged in profitable trade with the Indians

  • Bacon burned homes of elite planters and the capital building in Jamestown

  • Virginians turned to slaves instead of unreliable indentured servants

Ideas About Race and the Development of Slavery in British North America

• Origins of Racial Hierarchy

  • Britain did not tolerate intermarriage

  • Divided humanity into civilized and barbaric, Christian and heathen

• Nature of Slavery in British North America

  • An indentured black servant John Casor was declared by a court to be a slave for life

  • Partus Sequitur Ventrum - a child of a slave mother would also be a slave

  • Sanctioned the rape of slave women by their white owners

  • Black and slave were almost synonymous terms

Resistance to Slavery

• Stono Rebellion

  • Main fear of slave owners was violent rebellion

  • Most famous one was Stono, South Carolina (1739)

  • Initiated by 20 slaves → death of 20 slave owners 

  • Lesser forms of resistance:

    • Working slowly

    • Breaking tools

    • Retaining cultural connections to Africa

Colonial Society and Culture

Religious Pluralism in Colonial America

• The “Great Awakening”

  • In the face of declining church membership and religious zeal, with the rise of Enlightenment philosophy and deism, Protestant leaders took action

  • Great Awakening started in Britain

  • Most well known preacher was George Whitefield - held revival meetings

  • They took more emotional, less cerebral, approach to religion

  • Jonathon Edwards - “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

  • Core message: anyone could be saved and people could make choices in their life that would affect their afterlife

    • Against original sin and predestination

• Immigration and Dissenting Denominations

  • Most churches in the 1600s were Anglican or Congregational

  • Recognized by colonial administrations (not Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania - separated government from religion)

  • Baptist + Methodist grew out of Great Awakening

  • Immigration from Germany settled in Pennsylvania, New York, and the South

    • Lutheran, Calvinist, Mennonites, Moravians, Dunkers

  • New York - Sephardic Jews

• Deism and the Enlightenment

  • Deism: God created the world and left it alone

  • Natural Laws - clockwork

Anglicization of British North America

• Emulating the British

  • Colonists attempted to model their lives based on British culture

    • Sent children to Britain for schooling

    • Purchased British goods

  • British culture connection = status

    • Consumerism

• Trans-Atlantic Print Culture

  • High degree of literacy = demand for printed materials

  • Newspapers reprinted items from British press, covered European and local affairs

  • Ben Franklin - Pennsylvania Gazette (not founder)

• Anglicanism and Enlightenment Thinking - from Great Britain to North America

  • Anglican Church

    • Conservative and ritualistic High Church 

    • Reform-minded, liberal Low Church (Enlightenment)

      • Latitudinarians

      • Gained a foothold in the colonies

      • Harvard University moved in this direction

• Religious Toleration

  • Locke, Voltaire

  • 1649 Maryland Act of Religious Toleration

    • Did not apply to Jews, Muslims, or Christian sects that did not believe in the trinity

Diverging Interests - British Policies and Colonial Dissatisfaction

• Tensions over Imperial Control

  • The Dominion of New England ended with the Glorious Revolution

  • Colonists responded to tighter control by rejecting governors’ requests for funding

The Background to Colonial Resistance to Imperial Control

• Enlightenment Thinking and Resistance to British Rule

  • John Locke - role of government was to protect natural rights - life, liberty, property

• Influence of the Country Party and “Cato’s Letters”

  • Country Party - critical of the British government for corruption, wastefulness, and tyranny

  • Court Party - opposite, members operated within the inner sanctum of power in London

  • Country Party - aka Commonwealth men - accused political figures of upsetting the constitutions and endangering individual liberties

  • Popular among North American  colonists

  • Country Party essayist - “Cato” - frequently reprinted in the colonies - condemned corruption in the British political system

• American Legal Procedures and Freedom of the Press

  • Lack of British-trained lawyers

  • Less imprisonment and more whipping, branding, and public shaming

  • Criticisms of public officials not illegal if truthful

Subject to Debate

• Regional Differences in British North America

  • Whether differences between regions are more important than the commonalities (between colonies)

• Slavery and the Development of Racism

  • Did slavery develop because of preconceived notions of racial hierarchies?

  • Or did these notions develop over time to justify the enslavement?

• How Oppressed were the British Colonies?

  • Colonists were oppressed? Or they were ignoring the mercantilist laws?

Period 3

The Seven Years’ War (The French and Indian War)

Expansion and War

• Expansion and overlapping land claims led to a war between Britain and France

• Britain won and eliminated France from North America

• This war was a turning point in relations between Britain and the colonies because the government attempted to assert greater control over the colonies

• Origins of the War

  • Land disputes in the Ohio River Valley led to forts being build and skirmishes, which led to the French and Indian War

• British Victory

  • Three distinct phases

    • Local affair - continuation of skirmishes between British and French colonists

    • Full takeover of the war by Britain, seizing supplies and forcing colonists to join the war - the colonists resisted

    • British government tried to work with the colonies and reinforced the troops with British soldiers → French surrendered in 1761

  • Treaty of Paris (1763)

    • France surrendered its North American empire - Canada and east of Mississippi to Britain and West of Mississippi River to Spain

Debt and Taxation Following the French and Indian War

• British wanted the colonists to pay the war debt through increased taxation as they were the major beneficiaries of the British victory

• The Sugar Act

  • Mainly sought to crack down on smuggling and enforcing taxes

• The Stamp Act

  • Faced the most intense colonial opposition - other acts were seen as trade regulations, however, this was a direct tax designed purely to raise revenue

• Quartering of British Troops

  • Colonists were expected to house British soldiers if there were no spaces in barracks and cover the costs of feeding them

American Indian Resistance and Colonial Settlement Following the French and Indian War

• Indians wanted to maintain lucrative fur trade, but at the same time they wanted to resist encroachment by British colonists

• Clashing Cultures in the Great Lakes Region

  • The French developed harmonious relationships with the Indians, however, the British did not believe in gift-giving and diplomacy

• Pontiac’s Rebellion

  • Britain occupied Ottawa land, and the chief Pontiac organized resistance to British troops

  • They attacked Fort Detroit and struck 6 other forts

  • The attacks were initially successful with 400 British soldiers and 2000 colonists killed or captured, however, when Thomas Gage took over as general, the rebellion was broken

• The Proclamation Act (1763)

  • Great Britain ordered colonists not to settle beyond the Appalachian Mountains, however, many colonists had already migrated west and felt that they deserved the land because of the sacrifices they made during the French and Indian War

  • The British government did not want to provoke any more bloodshed and wanted to profit off of the fur trade

• Conflict in the Interior of the Continent Following the French and Indian War

  • After the American Revolution, colonists continued to move westward which caused Indians to be displaced and was challenged by the presence of Spain and Britain just outside the US’s borders

• The Scots-Irish

  • The middle colonies received many immigrants, particularly the Scots-Irish who were Presbytterians from Scotland, due to difficult economic conditions

• Economic Opportunity in Pennsylvania

  • PA attracted immigrants because of the land and need for workers, other states were not so hospitable - south was dominated by slavery and the north by Puritanism

• The Paxton Boys

  • A vigilante group of Scots-Irish organized raids against American Indians, and presented their grievances to the PA legislature - bitterness to Indians and the Quaker elite for being lenient towards Indians

Taxation Without Representation

Colonial Resistance to British Policies in the Aftermath of the French and Indian War

• Colonists began to unite and organize around threats posed by changing British policies → resistance and independence movement

• The Stamp Act Congress

  • Delegates from nine colonies in 1765 wrote a list of grievances

  • No taxation without representation

  • British Parliament responded to this idea with “virtual representation”, that even though they did not vote for representatives, members of Parliament represented the entire British empire

• Committees of Correspondence

  • These committees spread information and coordinated resistance actions

  • Basically became shadow governments that assumed powers and challenged the legitimacy of legislative assemblies and royal governors

• Crowd Actions

  • The Sons of Liberty groups harassed Stamp Act agents, and stores were ransacked if they did not boycott British goods

  • The Stamp Act was rescinded in 1766

• The Townshend Acts (1767)

  • New taxes on paint, paper, lead, tea, and other goods were external taxes on imports, not on the items themselves

  • By 1768, colonial leaders called for boycotts - homespun clothing was produced and Americans sought locally produced goods

• The Boston Massacre

  • Britain deployed royal troops to Boston because of the rioting - but their presence angered Bostonians; they disagreed with military in times of peace

  • Colonists heckled British sentries and eventually the British fired, killing 5 citizens and leading to the Boston Massacre

• Gaspee Affair

  • Colonial protestors boarded the ship, the Gaspee, and looted and torched it

• The Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party

  • To bolster the British East India Company, whose stock value had collapsed, Britain passed the Tea Act, eliminating British tariffs from tea sold in the colonies and making the price so low to beat out local merchants and smugglers

  • The colonists were angered, not because of low prices, but because the British government was showing favoritism towards a large company

  • The colonists responded by dumping $2 million of tea in the harbor

• The Coercive/Intolerable Acts

  • The Massachusetts Government Act put Massachusetts under direct British control, limiting the power of town meetings and allowing the royal governor to appoint officials who had previously been elected

  • The Administration of Justice Act allowed trials to be moved from Massachusetts to Britain - removing the ability to be judged by one’s own countrymen

  • Boston Port Act closed the port of Boston to trade

  • The Quartering Act expanded the 1765 Quartering Act and required colonists to house British troops upn command

  • The Quebec Act let Catholics in Quebec freely practice their religion, which Protestant Bostonians saw as an attack on their faith

• Formation of the Continental Congress

  • Britain hoped to isolate Massachusetts through the Intolerable Acts, but colonists throughout America resented Britain

  • After the Virginia legislature was dissolved by Britain, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774 with representatives from all colonies except Georgia

  • They passed resolutions on nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption to cut off all trade with Britain

  • Committees of Safety were created to enforce these agreements and recommended the colonies to make military preparations

The Resistance Movement From Above and Below

• The Role of Women in the Resistance Movement

  • They made clothing, formed groups such as the Daughters of Liberty who organized boycotts and public protests

  • During the Tea Act crisis, they produced local tea

• Artisans and Laborers and the American Revolution

  • Craftsmen and laborers made up the bulk of both local militias and the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War

  • Artisans formed legal committees and militia groups in support of revolution

Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution

Protestant Evangelicalism and Enlightenment Philosophy

• Protestant Evangelicalism and the American Revolution

  • A more intense and radical form of Protestantism, more focused on individual conversion and less on established churches

  • Many ministers spread ideas of republicanism, and projected the American Revolution as a struggle against godless tyranny

• Enlightenment Thinking in the Age of Revolutions

  • The American Revolution started a series of revolutions that kept with Enlightenment thinking but also articulated a new set of ideas about governance, individual liberty, and reason

• The Ideas of John Locke

  • Basic rights are life, liberty, and property

Common Sense, The Declaration of Independence, and Republican Self-Government

• Divided Loyalties

  • In the colonies, a third called the Patriots wanted independence, another third Loyalists did not, and the rest remained neutral

• The Olive Branch Petition

  • The Continental Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition to the King, proposing a structure where the colonies would exercise greater autonomy, but it was rejected

• Common Sense

  • Paine advocated that colonies declare independence, and put the blame of the crisis on King George III

• The Declaration of Independence

  • On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence, with a list of grievances and containing key elements of Locke’s natural rights theory

• Visions of Republicanism

  • America would be the first republic since Ancient Rome, with no central authority

  • Competing theories on republicanism emerged - the idea that citizens led simple lives and were virtuous, or Adam Smith’s view that rational self-interest and competition can lead to greater prosperity for all

The American Revolution

The War for Independence - Factors in the Victory of the Patriot CAuse

• Lexington and Concord

  • First battle of the war in April 1775

• Factors in the Outcome of the War

  • The British had a highly trained, professional army, the strongest navy, and substantial financial resources, and also had the support of the Loyalists in the colonies

  • They offered freedom to slaves who joined Britain, and could count on many Indian tribes for support

  • However, they had the French as enemies, and were fighting far away from home

  • Many Patriot soldiers believed firmly in their cause, and they had the leadership of George Washington, Nathanael Green, and Henry Knox

• The Three Phases of the American Revolution

  • At first, the British thought that the revolution was started by a minority, and suffered heavy losses (although they won) in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and retreated from New England

  • Second, the British tried to gain control of New York to isolate New England and drove Washington and his troops out of New York in 1776

    • However, they were defeated at the Battle of Saratoga, which showed France that the colonists could mount formidable forces for battle

    • France agreed to supply military assistance in 1778 due to its animosity towards Britain

  • The third phase was in the South, where Britain hoped to rally Loyalist sentiments and tap into the resentment of the slaves, but the aid of the French led Cornwallis to surrender at the Battle of Yorktown

    • In the North, fighting had reached a stalemate

Funding the War Effort

• Currency, Inflation, and Financial Difficulties

  • The Continental Army was constantly underfunded and short of basic supplies because Congress did not have the ability to levy taxes and had to ask states for funds

  • They attempted to solve this by printing money which only led to inflation, and instead turned to printing certificates for frontier land

The Influence of Revolutionary Ideas

The Call for Egalitarianism

• The justification for the revolution inspired others to change society

• Moves to abolish slavery

  • Slaves petitioned state legislatures to grant them their natural rights

  • Petitions for emancipation were rejected, but some cases in Massachusetts where slaves sued for “all men are born free and equal” ended up in ending slavery in Massachusetts

  • Vermont and Pennsylvania both outlawed slavery as well

Evolving Ideas on Gender

• The importance of women during the Revolution set the stage for the evolution of ideas around gender

• The idea of “republican motherhood” emerged in the decades after the American Revolution

• Remember the Ladies

  • This phrase was sent by Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams in hopes that issues in gender inequality might be resolved - many women found analogies in tyranny of a king to tyranny of a husband over his wife

• Republican Motherhood

  • It was the concept that women had civic responsibilities in the evolving culture of the new nation - John Locke asserted that marriage should involve a greater degree of consent

  • The experience that many women gained from participating in the struggle for independence empowered them

  • Republican motherhood did not mean political equality between men and women, but simply asserted that women had a role to play in civic life - that women were active agents in maintaining public virtue

  • These ideas expanded the possibilities for women to gain an education, to teach their children and raise the next generation of republican leaders

The Impact of the American Revolution Abroad

• Revolution in France

  • Six years after the American Revolution ended, the French Revolution began - where the overthrowing of the king was supported by a majority of the American citizens, but abandoned when Robespierre began the reign of terror

• Rebellion in Haiti

  • The white colonists resisted French rule because of the American and French Revolutions

  • Then the mixed-race planters rebelled, challenging their second-class status

  • Finally, the slaves rebelled, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and aided by Spanish troops - which led many in the US to fear a slave rebellion of their own

• Independence Struggles in Latin America

  • Several nations of Spain’s New World empire rebelled against Spanish rule, inspired by a combination of ideology, geopolitics, and material interests

The Articles of Confederation

Governance on the State Level

• State Constitutions

  • By 1778, ten states had drawn up constitutions and the others had updated their colonial charters

  • They created republics, some with direct democracy and legislatures

The Articles of Confederation and the Critical Period

• The Articles of Confederation

  • They were written in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, however, it was not well written, lacked philosophy, and created a firm league of friendship rather than a strong centralized nation

  • This was mainly due to the fear of state leaders in created a centralized authority, and the fact that many state leaders were loyal to their states

• Structure of Government Under the Articles of Confederation

  • Congress would be a unicameral legislature with delegations from each state, each state getting one vote

  • Major decisions required nine votes and changes and amendments to the Articles required an unanimous vote

• Raising Revenue

  • The national government did not have the power to tax the people directly and depended on voluntary contributions from the states

  • Congress agreed that states would contribute revenue in proportion to their population, but the states were often tardy or resistant

• Inflation, Debt, and the Rejection of the Impost

  • There was the problem of inflation due to printing money, and the remaining war debt the government struggled to pay off

  • Morris proposed a 5% import tax to raise revenues, but RI and NY both rejected the necessary unanimous because of their thriving harbors

• Shays’s Rebellion

  • Many farmers were unable to pay taxes in Massachusetts and were losing their farms to banks

  • They petitioned, but were ignored by the Massachusetts legislature

  • Frustrated, Shays led a rebellion which closed down several courts and freed debtors from prison which was eventually stopped by 4,000 armed men

• Towards a New Framework for Governance

  • Shays’s Rebellion occurred right before the Philadelphia convention, and the delegates were ready to scrap the Articles and write something new

Organizing the Northwest Territory

• The Northwest Territory

  • After US independence, there was a debate about the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River

  • In the end, states gave up individual claims to the land and it became national land

• Land Ordinances and the Northwest Ordinance

  • The Land Ordinance of 1784 divided the Northwest Territory into 10 potential new states, and the Land Ordinance of 1785 reduced the states to 5

  • In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, setting up a process by which areas could become territories, and then states

  • Once the population of a territory reached 60,000, it could write a constitution and apply for statehood

  • It also banned slavery north of the Ohio River

• Moving into the Northwest Territory

  • Future president William Henry Harrison passed the Harrison Land Law, making it easier for ordinary settlers to buy land

  • The Northwest Territory eventually became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin

The Constitutional Convention and Debates Over Ratification

Compromise and the Framing of the Constitution

• The Great Compromise

  • The Virginia Plan advocated for a bicameral legislature with representatives proportional to the population whereas the New Jersey Plan called for a unicameral legislature with each state having one vote

  • The Great Compromise created a house of representatives and a senate

The Constitution and Slavery - Compromise and Postponement

• The Three-Fifths Compromise

  • Slaves would be counted as ⅗ of a person when determining the population for delegates to the House

• Tacit Approval of Slavery

  • The delegates voted to protect the international slave trade for 20 years and provided a way for the return of fugitive slaves

Federalists, Anti-Federalists, and the Adoption of the Bill of Rights

• The Federalists

  • The supporters of the Constitution were the Federalists, including Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

  • They wrote a series of essays titled The Federalist arguing in favor of and defending the constitution

• Anti-Federalism

  • They worried the new government would be controlled by members of the elite and saw the Constitution as favoring the creation of a powerful, aristocratic ruling class - Patrick Henry and George Mason

  • They worried that individual rights were not adequately protected, and voiced that many colonists were eager to see power be exercised locally

• Ratification

  • They ratified :)

• The Bill of Rights

  • Seven states voted to ratify only if there would be a Bill of Rights

  • Much of the language written by James Madison, comes from various states’ constitutions

• Amendments 1-4: Basic Rights of the People

  • Freedom of expressions

  • Right to bear arms

  • Right against quartering soldiers

  • Protection against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause

• Amendments 5-8: Rights of the Accused

  • Grand jury indictments, prohibits authorities from trying a suspect twice for the same crime, and from forcing a suspect to testify against themselves, and from seizing someone’s property

  • Right to a speedy and public trial with a jury, and a right to be informed of the charges and questions witnesses

  • Right to trial by jury

  • Prevents government from cruel and unusual punishments and prevents excessive bail

• Amendments 9-10

  • Additional rights not mentioned shall be protected from government infringement

  • Powers not delegated to the federal government or prohibited by the Constitution will be retained by the states and people

• The Right to Vote

  • The government left it to states to form rules for voting until the 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments

The Constitution

The Structure of Government Under the Constitution

• The Three Branches of Government, Separations of Powers, and Checks and Balances

  • The legislative branch, Congress, has the power to levy taxes, regulate trade, coin money, establish post offices, declare war, and approve treaties

  • The Constitution also allowed Congress to created laws it deemed necessary and proper

  • The executive branch, the president, is to suggest legislation, command armed forces, and nominate judges

  • The powers of the judiciary branch, the Supreme Court, are to hear cases involving people or entities from different states and to hear cases involving federal law, and judicial review, the power to nullify laws that it deems inconsistent with the Constitution

  • Framers built a system of checks and balances

• Federalism - the National Government and the States

  • Federalism is the evolving relationship between the national government and the states

  • States hold on to reserved powers and the expanded national government is given many new powers (delegated powers)

Shaping the New Republic

Spain and Britain Challenge American Growth

• British and American Indians

  • Americans were frustrated by British attempts to prevent westward movement

  • They did not evacuate forts in the western territories and maintained fur trade with Indian groups in the area; they refused to leave until the US had paid its war debts

• Conflicts with Spain and Pinckney's Treaty

  • Although the US was granted territory south to the northern boundary of Spanish Florida, that border was not clearly defined

  • Moreover, Spain attempted to limit American shipping on the Mississippi RIver

  • Negotiations between Pinckney and Don Manyel de Godoy resulted in a treaty that allowed American shipping on the Mississippi, and defined the border between the US and Florida

• Conflicts with Great Britain and Jay’s Treaty

  • Britain was not pleased with US trade with France when Britain was in a war against France so they began intercepting ships, southern planters wanted reimbursement from the british for slaves that had fled because of British promises, and settlers were angry because of the British forces in forts in the Northwest, and Americans accused the British of aiding the Indians in US-Indian skirmishes

  • John Jay was sent to Britain and came back with a treaty where Britain agreed to withdraw from the West after 18 months without any compensation to shippers or planters for lost slaves

    • American planters would also be forced to repay debts to the British that dated from the colonial era, but the British allowed the US to trade in the West Indies

  • Hamilton saw the treaty as the best they could do, but Jefferson saw this as pro-British sympathy

Role of the United States in the Aftermath of the French Revolution

• The Question of Alliances

  • When France went to war with Britain in 1793, many American felt the US had an obligation to help France and because of a treaty they had signed with France

  • However, others felt that the treaty was null because it was signed with the previous government, and they harbored warm feelings for the British system

• Conflict with France and the XYZ Affair

  • In 1797, France began to seize American ships, to which Adams sent negotiators to Paris to attempt a peaceful settlement

  • They were not allowed to meet with the foreign affairs minister, and were approached by agents who asked for money in order to meet with Talleyrand

  • Congress allocated money and allowed ships to fight French ships in the Carribean, leading to America’s first undeclared war, the Quasi War

  • This helped instill respect for America’s navy, which had just been formed

Spanish missions in California

• The Expansion of the Mission System

  • Junipero Serra was instrumental in founding the 21 missions in California - both religious missions and military outposts

  • The Spanish extracted labor from the Indian people, and for the natives, disease wiped out their populations and were brutally treated by the missionaries

American Indian Policy in the New Nation

• American Indians and the Constitution

  • The Constitution did not clarify the status of Indian tribes, and therefore, they did not have status as foreign nations, neither did Indians have citizenship to the US nor representation in Congress

Putting the Constitution into Practice

• The Judiciary Act of 1789

  • It created 13 federal judicial districts which had district and circuit courts

  • The Supreme Court could hear appeals from circuit courts and had the final say, and had the last word on constitutional interpretation

• Washington and the Unwritten Constitution

  • Washington established several traditions and customs that came to be known as the Unwritten Constitution

  • The presidential cabinet was made up of three men running departments of state, war, and treasury

  • He chose an attorney general and a chief justice of the Supreme Court as well

  • He served no more than two terms

Policy Debates in the New Nation

• Federalists and Democratic-Republicans

  • Federalists tended to be more pro-British, more critical of the French Revolution, more friendly to urban, commercial interest, more critical of the French Revolution, and more ready to use the power of the federal government to influence economic activity

  • Democratic-Republicans tended to be more critical of the British, more supportive of the French Revolution, more critical of centralized authority, and more favorable to agricultural interests

  • Hamilton vs. Jefferson

• Hamilton’s Economic Program and the National Bank

  • Hamilton proposed a national bank, which would hold the government’s tax revenues and act as a stabilizing force on the economy - 20% publicly and 80% privately controlled

    • He thought it was important to have wealthy investors financial invested in the new government

  • Jefferson argued that this was against the Constitution, but Hamilton used the elastic clause to deem it was necessary and proper, and was signed into law in 1791

• Dealing with Debt

  • He insisted that national war debt be paid back in full to enhance the bank’s legitimacy, and that state debts be assumed by the government and paid back

  • This was met with opposition by states that did not have a large debt or had already paid back their debts

• Encouragement to Manufacturing

  • Hamilton encouraged manufacturing by imposing tariffs on foreign-made goods and subsidizing American industry

  • He believed that industrial development was key to a balanced and self-reliant economy

• The Excise Tax and the Whiskey Rebellion (1794)

  • To help raise revenue for his plans, Hamilton raised taxes, one of those being an excise (sales) tax on whiskey

  • This hit grain farmers hard, who were barely able to make ends meet by distilling grain into whiskey

  • In 1794, 7,000 men marched to Pittsburgh but were quickly put down by 13,000 militiamen in contrast to Shays’s Rebellion

• The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)

  • They were passed by a Federalist-dominated Congress in order to limit criticism from the opposition Republican Party

  • Naturalization Act - made it more difficult for foreigners to achieve American citizenship

  • Sedition Act - made it a crime to defame the president or Congress (seemed to challenge free-speech guarantees of the recently ratified First Amendment)

  • Alien Friends/Alien Enemies Act - allowed president to imprison and deport noncitizens

  • Jeffersonians were troubled by the expansion of federal p[ower that the acts represented

• The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

  • Jefferson and Madison were so opposed to the Alien and Sedition Acts that they proposed the idea that a state could nullify a law it found to be inconsistent with the Constitution

The Struggle for Neutrality in the 1790s

• Washington and Neutrality

  • Issued the Neutrality Act and urged the United states to avoid permanent alliances with foreign powers

Developing an American Identity

Culture and Identity in the Early National Period

• American Education

  • Noah Webster saw the US as a tolerant, rational, democratic nation, and published a speller, grammar, and reader for American schoolchildren - with Americanized spellings such as theater instead of theatre

  • Jedidiah Morse insisted American schoolchildren use American textbooks

• American History

  • Mercy Otis Warren wrote a three volume History of the Revolution

  • Mason Weems wrote The Life of Washington

  • Intended to instill nationalist spirit in Americans

• American Architecture

  • Bulfinch brought the Federal style to the US - a style imbued with Greek and Roman elements

Movement in the Early Republic

Migrations, American Indians, and Shifting Alliances

• The Status of American Indian Lands after the American Revolution

  • The land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi had been set aside as an Indian Reserve by the British, but the Treaty of Paris failed to address Indians’ status

  • As more Americans moved to the area, the status of Indians became more precarious

• Treaty of Fort Stanwix

  • The government negotiated with the Iroquois Confederacy in 1784 and they agreed to cede the land north of the Ohio River, however, they did not own the land and the Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami who the land belonged to protested

  • Additional treaties ceded lands to the US, but none resolved the issue, with the powerful Shawnee not being part of the negotiations and the presence of the British

• American Defeat at the Wabash River

  • 600 American troops were killed by forces led by Miami warrior Little Turtle in present-day Ohio

• The Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty Greenville

  • Washington was determined to regain control north of the Ohio, defeating the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timber in 1794, and native groups gave up claims to most of Ohio in the Treaty of Greenville

Internal Migrations, Frontier Cultures, and Tensions in the Backcountry

• The Dynamics of Backcountry Settlements

  • Tensions have existed since the 1600s between backcountry settlers and elite policymakers, ex. Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

    • Backcountry Virginians were resentful of Governor William Berkeley and the House of Burgesses, arguing that they paid a disproportionate amount of taxes and were not represented in the House, and that government was not taking sufficient action against natives

  • Similarly, in the second half of the 1700s, the Carolina Regulators movement, made up of backcountry farmers in North and South Carolina, challenged the policies and practices of merchants, bankers, officials, and the colonial government

  • War of the Regulation - a catalyst for which was the collection of debts and the reliance of many farmers on bankers’ credit and loans which was full of corruption - was an uprising in an attempt to challenge the system of officials and sheriffs and the political infrastructure surrounding it

The Expansion of Slavery and Divergent Regional Attitudes Towards Slavery

• The North Moves Toward a Free-Labor System

  • Many northerners saw unfree labor as inconsistent with the republican ideas of the American Revolution, and even indentured servitude would disappear by 1800

  • Northern states passed gradual emancipation laws which did not free existing slaves but provided the freedom of future children of slave women

  • Free-black communities developed in many northern states

• The Growth of Slavery in the South

  • Slavery became increasingly important in the South due to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin

  • The number of slaves in the United States grew despite emancipation laws

Subject to Debate

• Debating the Causes and Nature of the American Revolution

  • No taxation without representation is only one of the issues that led to the Revolution

  • Perhaps it was a new set of ideas about politics and democracy

  • Or maybe it was a class conflict in colonial America, between the colonial elites who wanted to maintain the colonial social structure, but without the British overlords, and the common people who wanted a real break with the hierarchies of the past

• The Effectiveness of the Articles of Confederation

  • The Articles are not necessarily bad - the colonies won the American Revolution with the Articles and they did an excellent job in dealing with new western lands

  • Although the national government was weak, this can be seen as a positive as the Articles effectively protected the traditional rights of the states

• The Nature of the Constitution

  • Is the Constitution simply a way for the men who wrote it to protect their economic interests?

Period 4

The Rise of Political Parties and the Era of Jefferson

Political Parties and the Rise of the First Two-Party System

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

  • The Federalists in the 1790s promoted Hamilton’s economic plans, and embraced a broader national agenda for industrialization

  • Democratic-Republicans, following Jefferson, sought to limit the power of the national government and reserve greater authority at the state level

  • Election of 1800 - Adams (Federalist) vs. Jefferson (Democratic-Republican)

  • The votes ended up being tied between Burr and Jefferson, Hamilton advocated for Jefferson and he ended up winning the election

  • Jefferson labeled this transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans the “revolution of 1800” because he believed he would return the US to its founding principles

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

  • Despite fears of turmoil, power peacefully changed hands in 1800

  • The Federalists lost support because the Republican agricultural areas grew more rapidly than commercial centers of the north, and because of their opposition to the War of 1812

  • The “Era of Good Feelings” marked a time in the 1810s and 20s where only the Democratic-Republicans competed for votes, making it so that Monroe easily won the election of 1816

  • However, the Supreme Court kept alive alive many elements of the Federalist agenda

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

• Chief Justice John Marshall issued a series of decisions that extended the power of the federal government over state laws, as well as establishing that the Supreme Court was the final say in interpreting the Constitution

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

  • Judicial Review - review of the constitutionality of an act or law

  • Adams tried to fill seats of judges during the last days of his presidency, but some were blocked by Jefferson

  • Marbury, a potential judge, sued to have his commission, but SCOTUS ruled that Marbury was not entitled to his seat because the Adams’s law was unconstitutional

  • This established SCOTUS’s power to review laws and determine whether they are consistent with the Constitution

• The Marshall Court and Federal Power

  • McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) prohibited Maryland from taxing the Second Bank of the United States

  • Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) invalidated a monopoly on ferry transportation between NY and NJ, asserting that only the USFG could regulate interstate trade

  • Cohens v. Virginia (1821) affirmed the right of SCOTUS to receive appeals from state courts

  • Worcester v. Georgia (1832) held that any dealings with American Indians be carried out by the USFG, upholding the autonomy of American Indian communities

The Louisiana Purchase and Territorial Expansion

• The Louisiana Purchase

  • France, under Napoleon, sold the Louisiana Territory (land beyond the Mississippi) to the United States for $15 million

  • Although it was unconstitutional to acquire new lands, Jefferson went against his strict constructionist view of the Constitution and made the purchase

  • It doubled the territory of the United States, and the US gained full control of the port of New Orleans at the Mississippi River, skyrocketing US economic growth

• The Lewis and Clark Expedition

  • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored and mapped the Louisiana territory, seeking practical routes, and established the presence of the US in the West

Politics and Regional Interests

The Persistence of Regional Priorities

• Regional economic interests often trumped national interest

• The Market Economy and Regional Loyalties

  • Industry in the northern states and slavery in the south, although some regions became more interlinked as local economies were transformed into national markets, the issue of free vs. slavery divided the country

The American System and Sectionalism

• Henry Clay’s “American System”

  • In the nationalist mood that followed the War of 1812, Clay put forth a series of economic proposals

    • Internal improvements - better transportation and infrastructure

    • High tariffs on imported goods to promote American Manufacturing

    • Chartering the Second Bank of the United States in order to stabilize the economy and make credit more readily available

• The Growing Isolation of the South

  • Roads and railroads tended to connect the North and ignore the South, and settlers tended to move westward instead of South, eventually isolating the South politically

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

• Missouri Compromise

  • If Missouri was admitted into the US, it would have upset the balance of 11 free and 11 slave states, and so Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state

  • It also divided the remaining area of the Louisiana Territory at the 36*30’ north latitude, where above that line slavery was not permitted

• The “Gag Rule” in the House of Representatives

  • Abolitionists pressed congressmen to introduce and debate antislavery laws, and in response, southern politicians successfully pushed for resolutions that would table antislavery propositions, preventing them from being debated, “gagging” them

America on the World Stage

Trade, Diplomacy, and the Expansion of American Influence

• The Barbary Wars (1801-1805, 1815)

  • Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, collectively known as the Barbary Coast, controlled trade in the Mediterranean, and demanded large payments from trading nations as tribute, otherwise they were subject to plundering by pirates

  • In 1801, Tripoli demanded a steep increase in payment and Jefferson refused, leading to the First Barbary War - where in the end, Tripoli agreed to release hostages and stop raiding American ships for $60,000

  • However, raiding did not stop, leading to the Second Barbary War, bringing an end to the American practice of paying tribute

• Ongoing Troubles with European Nations

  • Although the US attempted to remain neutral and trade with both France and Britain while they were at war, Britain impressed American sailors

  • In 1807, British warship Leopard fired on the USS Chesapeake, where 4 Americans were abducted and 3 were killed

• “Peaceful Coercion” and Free Trade

  • As Britain continued to interfere with American shipping, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act (1807), which cut off US trade to all foregin ports in hopes that this would persuade other nations to leave US ships alone

  • However, all this did was cripple America’s mercantile sector, and it was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 which only prohibited trade with France and Britain - which was just as unpopular because they were the US’s 2 biggest trading partners

• Macon’s Bill No. 2 (1810)

  • In an attempt to revive trade, this bill was passed that said the US would prohibit trade with the enemy of the nation that agreed to respect America’s rights as a neutral nation at sea - Napoleon agreed and the US cut trade to Britain in 1811

  • However, France continued to seize American ships and the cutting of trade with Britain worsened relations and pushed the two nations to war

• The War of 1812

  • Trade conflicts and pressure from the War Hawks pushed President Madison to declare war against Britain in 1812

  • The war lasted 2 ½ years - Britain won early battles at Fort Dearborn and Fort Detroit, but in 1813, the US burned the city of York, won the Battle of the Thames in Canada where they defeated British and Indian forces and killed the Indian leader Tecumseh

  • The British burned down the White House and the Capitol in one incident

  • A peace treaty was signed in 1814, but without realizing it, Andrew Jackson achieved a major victory at New Orleans in 1815

• The Hartford Convention and Opposition to the War of 1812

  • The War of 1812 was unpopular with New England merchants who saw their trade with Britain disappear, and Federalists met in Hartford to express their displeasure, and ended in a resolution calling for a ⅔ Congress majority for declarations of war

• The Treaty of Ghent (1814)

  • Ended the war of 1812, the two sides agreed to stop fighting, give back territory seized in the war, and recognize the boundary between US and Canada

  • It did not mention Britain arming American Indians, interference with American shipping, or impressment of American seamen

• “Old China Trade”

  • US merchants opened lucrative trade with China, not officially sanctioned by the USFG, known as “Old China Trade”

  • Driven by American demand for Chinese products, opened new markets to the US

  • Recognizing the growing power of Britain in China, the US signed the Treaty of Wanghia in 1844 in which China extended to the US the same trading privileges as Britain

• Nationalist Sentiment and the Monroe Doctrine (1823)

  • President Monroe was alarmed at threats by the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia, and Austria to restore Spain’s lost American colonies

  • He issued the Monroe Doctrine as a statement warning European nations to keep their hands off the Americas, an important statement of intent, rather than actual ability to enforce this

• The Adams-Onis Treaty (1819)

  • The US gained control over Florida with the Adams-Onis Treaty, it transferred control of Florida, accepted Spain’s claims to Texas, and settled the boundary between Louisiana and Spanish territory

  • The US wanted to gain control of Florida because it was a destination for escaped slaves

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

  • The Webster-Ashburton Treaty split the disputed territory between Maine and British Canada, and settled a disagreement over the border between Minnesota and Canada

  • This border, although roughly drawn by the Treaty Paris, led to conflicts as more Canadians and Americans moved in to the area around Maine, and the brawling between the two groups was coined the “Aroostook War”

  • The Caroline incident was where British authorities burned an American vessel on the border of Minnesota and Canada which was being used by anti-British Canadian rebels to transport supplies. In response, New York officials had arrested a Canadian sheriff and threatened to execute him for participating in the murder of an American crew member

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

  • Both Britain and the US laid claim to the Pacific Northwest, and in 1818, the two nations agreed on a “joint occupation” of the Oregon Country

  • Fifty-four Forty or Fight was the cry of Americans who wanted to own all the territory, and instead, a line was drawn at the 49th parallel - the current border between US and Canada

Market Revolution: Economic Transformations

The Market Revolution

• The Expansion of Banking

  • Banking and credit were increasingly important, especially after the Panic of 1819 which demonstrated the volatility of the new market economy

  • The Second Bank of the US and newly chartered state banks extended credit, issuing bank notes, but valuations of currency were different in each states - but the ability of banks to put currency into the economy fueled economic growth

• The Incorporation of America

  • States started writing incorporation laws allowing for the chartering of businesses, which provided investors with limited liability - investors could only lose the amount they invested and could not be held liable in civil suits

• SCOTUS and the Market Economy

  • Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) - SCOTUS ruled that Dartmouth’s colonial charter was still valid and could not be made a state college

  • Fletcher v. Peck (1810) - SCOTUS upheld a corrupt land deal between Georgia and individuals - they maintained that a contract should be upheld, although it might not have been in the public interest

Advances in Technology

• Agricultural Efficiency

  • The steel plow, invented in 1847, was more durable and efficient than the cast-iron plow

  • The automatic reaper in 1831 cut and stacked wheat and other grains

  • The thresher loosened the grain kernels from the inedible husk

• Eli Whiteney and Interchangeable Parts

  • Many industrial processes came to rely on interchangeable parts - parts of a specific item were  made and could be rapidly assembled into finished products - an idea promoted by Eli Whitney

• The Development of Steam Power

  • As steam power was developed in Britain, Fulton in the US developed a functioning steamboat, and steamboats dominated commercial shipping in the 20 years after 1807

  • Steam power also replaced water wheels at factories

• Advances in Communication

  • Morse invented the first telegraph in 1844, and in 1850, telegraph lines were built around the country

Improvements in Transportation and Regional Interdependence

• Canals and Roads

  • The construction of canals and roads, called internal improvements, expanded trade, and were usually built by private entities with subsidies from the government

  • The Erie Canal connected the hudson to the Great Lakes, New York to the interior of the country, dropping shipping costs by 90%

  • The National Road (Cumberland Road) stretched from Maryland to the Ohio River Valley 

• Railroads

  • The first tracks were laid in 1829 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and by 1860, they connected the country

  • It dropped costs of transportation significantly

Regional Specialization

• Commerce, Trade, and Manufacturing in the North

  • The Waltham-Lowell system brought all stages of textile production under one roof by having employees live in company housing, and this system spread rapidly

  • The use of interchangeable parts was widespread to manufacturers of agricultural implements, tools, clocks, and ironware

• The Growth of Cotton Production in the South

  • In the first half of the 1800s, cotton replaced other crops as the most profitable crop in the South as the North needed it for textile production

  • The cotton gin combined with the insatiable demand in the North and Britain for cotton led to 58% of American exports being cotton by 1860, and thereby the number of slaves as well

Market Revolution: Society and Culture

Migrations and New Communities in the Age of the Market Revolution

• Irish Immigration

  • The potato famine led to many Irish immigrants to the US

• German Immigration

  • Many German immigrants were skilled craftsmen and entrepreneurs who immigrated to the US to escape political repression following the failed revolution of 1848 in the German states

• The Movement to the West

  • The West grew rapidly after the War of 1812 with expansion in roads, canals, and railroads

  • More than 4 million Americans settled in the west from 1800-1840

  • Many southern planters hoped to recreate the Cotton Kingdom in the less expensive lands of the west

  • Some migrants “squatted” on their new land, lacking legal title or deed

  • The towns of the Old Northwest resembled New England while the plantations and the slave labor system of the new lower South resembled the Old South

The Market Revolution’s Impact on Economic Class

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

  • The material wealth of the US grew dramatically in the market revolution; the average income and standard of living increased

  • It provided hope of social mobility - ability to move up the social ladder

  • It bolstered the “free labor” ideology, that it was possible for wage earners to actually own land and become independent of others - led Northerners to see their society as superior to that of the South

  • However, many workers were stuck in low-wage factory work, and there was wealth inequality with entrepreneurs and aristocrats holding the majority of the benefits and fortune

  • There was a growth of a middle class as well, and a growth of occupations such as lawyers, clerks, bank workers, etc.

• The Development of Unions

  • A labor union allowed workers in a firm to bargain “collectively” with their employer

  • Mill workers in Lowell, MA organized as the Factory Girls Association staged two strikes, but had limited success by the Panic of 1837 and large scale Irish immigration

  • In Commonwealth v. Hunt, SCOTUS ruled that unions were legal, and several organizations such as the National Typographical Union and the Stone Cutters achieved success

Workers and New Methods of Production

• The Putting Out System

  • Men and women performed a task arranged by an agent at home, which was usually part of a larger operation such as cutting leather which would later be turned into shoes

  • This provided jobs for people at various times of the year

• Slater Mill and the Development of the Factory System

  • The first to industrialize was the textile industry

  • As early as the 1790s, Slater built the first factory in the US that spun cotton 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

  • Textile factories in Lowell Massachusetts drew in young women because they thought they could pay them less and that they would only be temporary because they would eventually get married

  • Many of these women experienced freedom and autonomy unheard of for young women at the time, and demonstrated this by going on strike following wage cuts, but were eventually replaced by Irish immigrants

Gender and Family Roles in the Age of the Market Revolution

• Gentility, Domesticity, and the Middle-class Ideal

  • A new culture surrounded the middle class - one where women were seen as the weaker sex, in a world outside the world of money and politics

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

• The ideas of republican motherhood gave way to the conception of a middle-class woman’s place, seen as intellectually inferior and whose role was to maintain the house and care for children

• The cult of domesticity insisted that women keep a proper Christian home in a separate sphere from men

• The legal structure of the US already considered women second-class, they could not vote or sit on juries or were not entitled to protection against physical abuse by their husbands, and property they owned would become their husband’s if they married

• This was under the legal doctrine of feme covert, where 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

  •  Following the Era of Good Feelings, most states removed property qualifications for voting so that most free white males had the right to vote

  • This impulse to expand democratic participation was strongest in the new western states, and the old eastern states followed suit

• The Dorr Rebellion and Resistance to the Expansion of Democracy

  • Webster led conservative opposition to democratic reform in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820-21 arguing that power naturally and necessarily follows property

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

  • In RI, democratic reformers organized a People’s Convention in 1841 which wrote a new, more democratic, state constitution which most people agreed with

  • They tried to inaugurate a new governor, Thomas Dorr, but President Tyler put the Dorr Rebellion down with federal troops, but this reflected a popular desire for a more democratic governing structure

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

  • French writer Tocqueville, upon visiting the US, wrote Democracy in America describing how democracy in the US meant more than voting, that there was a belief in equality, active participation in voluntary civic organization, and the belief that individual initiative and note birth determined one’s success

Jackson and Federal Power

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

• The Era of Good Feelings broke apart as the Jacksonian branch of the Democratic-Republicans became known as the Democratic Party, while their opponents were the Whigs, organized by Clay

• Jacksonian Democracy

  • Jackson and his supporters were bitter because of the election of 1824 as although he had the largest number of electoral votes (no candidate reached the required number of electoral votes to be declared president), the House elected John Quincy Adams to become president

  • It was believed that Clay as the Speaker of the House convinced representatives to tilt the election towards Adams, and Adams named Clay his secretary of state, causing Jackson’s supporters to label it as a corrupt bargain

  • In the election of 1828, Jackson’s supporters painted Adams as elist, and his populist appeal helped him 

  • This election was considered the first modern election, in the sense that because of the elimination of property qualifications for voting

• The “Tariff of Abominations” 

  • The Tariff Act of 1828, known as the Tariff of Abominations, dramatically raised tariff rates on many items and led to a reduction in trade between the US and Europe

  • This hit SC, which depended on cotton exports, especially hard

• John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis

  • The Tariff Act of 1828 especially angered southern politicians in SC - led by Calhoun, and although Jackson signed a new act to lower tariffs, they were not satisfied

  • These politicians upheld the theory that states had the right to nullify federal legislation, but SCOTUS ruled this invalid

  • Jackson was alarmed at the flouting of federal authority and passed the Force Bill in 1833 which authorized military force against SC, and Congress revised tariff rates again, providing relief for SC - both helped alleviate the crisis

• Destruction of the Second Bank of the United States

  • Jackson argued that the bank put too much power into the hands of a small elite

  • He vetoed the rechartering of the bank and killed it - a move that played well with his voters and he won reelection

  • The federal deposits from the national bank to state banks

• The Specie Circular and the Panic of 1837

  • Jackson’s suspicion of bankers and credit led him to issue the Specie Circular mandating that government land be sold only for hard currency (gold/silver)

  • This led to falling land prices and a shortage of government funds 

  • Both the destruction of the national bank and the Specie Circular led to the Panic of 1837

  • Worst economic crisis that brought many canal and railroad projects to a halt, led to the collapse of banks and businesses, and led to high unemployment

  • The Panic also damaged the political fortunes of the Democrats, Van Buren did not address the economic crisis and so he lost to the Whig Party in the election of 1840 to Harrison

• Whigs and Democrats

  • The Whigs were formed in 1833, and many supported government programs aimed at economic modernization, such as Clay’s American system

  • Issues tended to be less important/pressing in this period of American history, and both parties focused intently on winning elections and holding on to power

Contention Between Whites and American Indians Over Western Lands

• American Indians and the West

  • In the early 1800s, white settlers were pouring into the Ohio River and it was never clear if the Indians who made agreements with whites did so with the authority of their people

  • Harrison, governor of Indiana at the time, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne where Indians agreed to cede 3 million acres for a fee

  • However, the most important leader at the time, Tecumseh, was not present for this

  • He and his brother Tenskwatawa, “the Prophet”, were trying to unite all Indian nations east of the Mississippi River

• Battle of Tippecanoe and the War Hawks

  • Settlers persuaded Harrison to wage war against Temcumseh’s confederation

  • The Battle of Tippecanoe ousted members of the confederacy and was an American victory

  • The War Hawks, led by Clay and Calhoun, accused Britain of encouraging and funding Temcumseh’s confederation, and pushed for military action against the British

  • This would allow the US to eliminate the Indian threat and perhaps invade Canada

• Indian Removal Act (1830)

  • Many whites wanted to push into the interior of the South, which were the traditional lands of the “Five Civilized Tribes” - Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Seminole

  • Federal policy had been to respect the rights of Indians to inhabit the land, however, Jackson adopted a policy of Indian removal

  • He pushed for the Removal Act of 1830

• The “Trail of Tears”

  • Jackson and Buren pushed for Georgia to move Indians to the West despite Worcester v. Georgia, which declared that Indian tribes were subject to federal treaties, not to actions of states

  • Although some gave up their land willingly, many resisted under Cherokee’s principal chief John Ross, and federal troops were dispatched to move 18,000 Indians to the Oklahoma Territory, the trek labeled as the Trail of Tears (1838), and resulted in the deaths of approx. ¼ of the people

• American Indians and Florida

  • Whites grew concerned that slaves were escaping to FL and raided FL, this was followed by counterraids by the Seminole and other Indians on communities in Georgia and Alabama

  • This led to the First Seminole War during the War of 1812, and a second Seminole War, and eventually FL coming into America’s hands

• Indian Territory

  • As part of Indian removal policy, many tribes from east of the Mississippi were relocated to Indian Territory in OK

  • The establishment of an Indian Territory was part of the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834

  • Once in the territory, conflicts broke out between Indian groups indigenous to the area and those relocated there

The Development of an American Culture

The Emergence of a National Culture

• This culture developed after the War of 1812 along with nationalist sentiment that borrowed elements of European culture but also sought to create something uniquely American

• The American Renaissance

  • In the decades before the civil war, there was a high literary spirit

  • Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and Walden were hallmarks of American literature grappling with questions raised by the Puritans and focusing on the American democratic dream

European Romanticism and American Culture

• The Romantic Perspective

  • Romanticism was a reaction to industrialization

  • Was deeply nationalistic and reactionary in its embrace of pure national community

  • Challenged rationality and embraced emotion over accuracy

• Hudson River School

  • The Hudson River School of Painting represented by Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Church painted the Hudson River in a way as to emphasize emotion and the feeling of the moment rather than the accuracy of the image

• Romanticism in American Literature

  • Many Americans were captivated by British writer Sir Walter Scott, with his larger-than-life heroic figures, who epitomized romanticism in literature 

  • In America, Cooper with his “Leatherstocking Tales” including the Last of the Mohicans (1826), captured the danger and fascination of the frontier experienceIrving also published short stories such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which portrayed a fanciful version of America

The Second Great Awakening

Religious and Spiritual Movements in Antebellum America

• The Second Great Awakening

  • At beginning of the 1800s, many clergy members worried that Americans were more captivated by politics than God and Salvation, and Americans felt a yearning for a more immediate religious experience

  • A movement of large camp meetings began in Kentucky and spread to other states - the growing towns along the Erie Canal came to be known as the burned over district because of the intensity of the religious revival

  • Second Great Awakening ministers such as Finney told people they could control their eternal life, much different from predestination, which encouraged individual redemption and even societal reformation

  • It acted as a springboard for a variety of reform movements

• Mormonism

  • Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in the 1830s growing out of the Second Great Awakening

  • They were a sect that separated themselves from community, and were met with hostility for their unorthodox teachings such as rejecting the trinity or allowing polygamy

  • The group was forced to move from place to place

• Transcendentalism

  • It was a spiritual and intellectual movement critical of materialism in the US

  • Thoreau wrote about the importance of nature in finding meaning and wrote “Civil Disobedience”, urging people not to acquiesce to unfair and unjust government dictates

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a series of philosophical essays, including “On Self-Reliance”

• Utopian Communities

  • They were experiments in communal living, structured around a guiding principle and were critical of materialism

  • However, whereas transcendentalists focused on cultivation of the self, utopian communities sought a more collective alternative to society

  • The most well known community was Brook Farm outside of Boston in 1841, started by the transcendentalist George Ripley, and was based on the idea that all people would share equally in the labor and leisure of the community

• Spiritual Developments in American Indian Communities

  • In the wake of the defeat of the Iroquois Confederacy, a Seneca named Handsome Lake developed a set of spiritual practices that was known as the Longhouse Religion - he spoke out against Indian factionalism, alcohol consumption, and offered many Indians a sense of hope in the face of setbacks

An Age of Reform

Reform Movements in the Antebellum Period

• The Temperance Movement

  • The goal was to limit or ban the sale/consumption of alcohol

  • It attracted a large following for many reasons; many women were troubled by the large amount of alcohol consumed by their sons and husbands - not only did husbands come back to their house drunk, they also spent all their money on alcohol and abused their wives and children

  • The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, was guided by Lyman Beecher’s Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance

  • It claimed 1.5 million members by 1835 and alcohol consumption in the US dropped by about half from 1830-40

  • However, by the 1870s, most “dry states”, states that banned the sale of alcohol, had repealed their prohibition laws

• The Asylum and Penitentiary Movement

  • Dorothea Dix advocated for the rights of the mentally ill, and created the first mental asylums in the US

• Public Education

  • Horace Mann, the secretary of the education, led a movement for free public education, which was seen as essential to democratic participation

Debating the Future of Slavery in America

• Abolitionism

  • The reform spirit of the Second Great Awakening inspired the movement, and although it was a minority opinion among northern whites, it had a major impact on America

• William Lloyd Garrison and “Immediate Emancipation”

  • In 1831, Garrison began publishing The Liberator, and led the movement for the immediate and uncompensated abolition of slavery, as opposed to gradual emancipation laws

  • Garrison broke with all previous antislavery sentiment in arguing that there should be no compensation for owners, that slaves should be immediately freed, and that they were entitled to the same rights as white people

• American Colonization Society

  • Founded in 1817 with the goal of transporting Afircan Americans to Africa

  • Some wanted blacks to escape to Africa to escape racism and others wanted them gone because they perceived them as a lower social caste

  • Advocates thought that slaves should not receive treatments as equals in the US, so a colony in Africa called Liberia was created, and 12,000 African Americans were sent there in the antebellum period

  • Some were slaves freed under the condition they leave, and others were free blacks who believed they could succeed in Liberia

  • Frederick Douglass was critical of colonization, and saw it as accommodating slavery instead of ending it

Growing Tensions over Slavery

• Abolitionism and Electoral Politics

  • The Liberty Party was founded in 1840 by abolitionists, and pushed the idea that the Constitution was against slavery and that the US should live up to its ideals, opposed to Garrison who condemned the Constitution as being pro-slavery

• Racism and Resistance to the Antislavery Movement

  • White supremacy was central to southern culture, and caused them to believe slavery was necessary and proper

  • It allowed even the poorest whites to feel superior and feel they had something in common to wealthy plantation owners

• The Lovejoy Incident

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

The Women’s Rights Movement

• Women in the Public Sphere

  • Women challenged the idea of a cult of domesticity and the private sphere, following the reforms of Dorothea Dix to push for a variety of reforms

  • They formed the Female Moral Reform Society to urge women not to engage in prostitution

  • The Grimke sisters, daughters of prominent SC slave owner, were leaders in the abolitionist cause

  • Mott and Stanton were abolitionists who were banned from the World Anti-Slavery Convention because of their gender, and started rethinking the conditions of women in the US

• Seneca Falls Convention

  • Stanton and Mott led a group of women in the Seneca Falls Convention to raise the issue of women’s suffrage, and also the structure of gender inequality - property rights, education, wages, child custody, divorce, and overall legal status of women

  • Declaration of Sentiments was issued - “all men and women are created equal”

African Americans in the Early Republic

Slave Rebellions - The Limits of Anti-Slavery Efforts in the South

• Unlike plantations in the Carribean, slaves were outnumbered by whites and the whites were well armed

• Gabriel’s Rebellion

  • In 1800, a blacksmith named Gabriel who was introduced to ideas about republicanism and democracy, planned out a rebellion of 1000 men

  • However, the rebellion was quashed by the Virginia militia before it began due to slaves alerting their owners about the rebellion, and 27 participants were hanged

• The Denmark Vesey Conspiracy

  • Vesey was charged by local authorities with organizing a plot to destroy Charleston and instigate a broad slave uprising

  • Historians question if a rebellion was in the works at all, but Vesey and 35 others were hanged

• Nat Turner’s Rebellion

  • Turner, a slave preacher, led a rebellion in Southampton County, VA, a band of blacks armed with guns and axes that resulted in the deaths of 55 people

  • The revolt was put down with federal troops, with 100 African Americans being executed by authorities and more were attacked and killed by angry mobs

  • It was the largest rebellion in the 1800s and led to increased fear of slave rebellions and stricter slave laws

The Cultures of African American Communities - Free and Slave

• David Walker

  • A black who in 1829 issued a pamphlet called “David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” which called for blacks to resist slavery by any and every means - this pamphlet caused some southern legislatures to enact penalities against anyone caught reading it

• Frederick Douglass

  • A powerful speaker in the antislavery movement, he wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and gave the speech”What ot the Slave is the Fourth of July”, criticizing the US for not adhering to its founding principles

• The African Methodist Episopal (AME) Church

  • Richard Allen in PA in 1816 founded the AME, reflecting the desire of the free black communities to have greater autonomy and tailor the sermons to the experiences of the black community

• Cultural Resistance to Slavery

  • Slaves developed subtle resistance tactics - passing on stories with the message that the weak often got the better of the strong and creating music to create relief from the work of slavery

The Society of the South in the Early Republic

Slavery and the Southern “Way of Life”

• Southern Defense of Slavery

  • Some contrasted slavery with harsh factories in the north and the lack of care for their employees

  • George Fitshugh was critical of the free labor ideology, the idea that workers of the north could earn money to buy land and become independent of others, and said that it masked a heartless approach to the world

  • Others said the Bible sanctioned slavery, or that it was a positive good for slavery because it provided them with skills, discipline, and civilization

• Biblical Defense of Slavery

  • Cited passages that said slaves should be submissive to their masters

  • The Curse of Ham was central to the biblical defense of slavery, where Noah told Ham that his descendants would be slaves

• The “Mudsill Theory”

  • Some argued that the existence of slaves was necessary, such as a mudsill supports a house, the institution of slavery prevented a class of poor, landless people undermining civilization

Cotton, Slavery, and the Southern Exception

• Cotton and Slavery

  • In 1807, Britain outlawed international slave trade and the US followed suit in the year after

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

• Slavery and the Culture of the South

  • A large slave population had an impact on shaping southern culture - the language, food, music, and dialect

  • White supremacy took a strong hold in the South, more than in the North where, although there was white supremacy, it lacked the intensity of the South without any black population in the North

Westward Expansion and the Politics of Slavery

• Expansion into Texas - From Settlement to Independence

  • Mexico was eager to attract settlers to provide a buffer from Indian raiding parties

  • Led by Sephen Austin, settlers were attracted to Texas because of the abundance of land that could be sued for cotton cultivations

  • Mexico allowed these settlers a degree of self government, but tensions grew in the 1830s as a result of Texans bringing slaves, which was banned in Mexico

  • General Santa Anna sought to bring them into Mexican law and custom, and in 1835, the Texans rebelled - many of whom were Spanish speaking Tejanos who objected to being ruled by Mexico City

  • Although the rebels almost lost 200 defending the Alamo and 400 in the Goliad, under the General Houston, they were able to win independence from Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas in 1836

• Annexation of Texas and the Politics of Slavery

  • Many Texans were eager for the Lone Star Republic to join the United States

  • However, Jackson, not wanting to add to tensions by admitting a large slave state, blocked annexation, and this was continued by Van Buren and Harrison

  • President Tyler supported the annexation but did not have the support to make this a reality, but managed to push it through to Congress at the end of his presidency

Subject to Debate

• Was it an Era of Good Feelings

  • Some note the beginnings of divisions ofer the issue of slavery, and others on class divisions that emerged when the master-apprentice system gave way to the wage-labor system

• The Legacy of President Jacksoin

  • In the latter 1800s, he was scoffed at by historians who came from elite New England - he seemed arrogant, ignorant, and authoritarian

  • By the early 1900s, Progressive-era historians saw Jackson as a man of the pioneer era who brought the democratic, frontier spirit with him to the White House

  • More recently, historians draw parallels between Jackson’s expansionist impulses and American foreign adventures from Vietnam to Iraq

    • The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears left a permanent stain on his legacy 

• The Antebellum Period and the Advent of Social History

  • Social history has become more prominent, and the focus on what life was like for ordinary Americans

• Reform Movements - Democratic or Restrictive?

  • The temperance movement reflects the more restrictive aspect of reform movements

  • The women’s rights movement and abolitionist movement were democratic

  • The push for public education can be seen in both lights - a prerequisite for meaningful participation in the democratic process, but also an opportunity for learning to impose a rigid set of middle class Protestant values on a diverse working class

• The Impact of Westward Expansion

  • The era of manifest destiny is often shrouded in the language of idealism, democracy, adventure, and optimism, but if carried out in other countries, would be seen in a negative light such as Napoleon’s conquest or the brutality of Japanese conquest

• Historians and the Brutality of Slavery

  • Time on the Cross, published in 1974, asserts that while slavery was immoral, it was an efficient business model that was less brutal towards slaves than history would make it out to be

  • However, their data and methods are often challenged by other historians

Period 5

Manifest Destiny

Westward Migrations

• Americans Respond to the Call of Manifest Destiny

  • Manifest destiny refers to the movement of individuals to the west and to the political extension of United States territory - it was the destiny of the United States to expand westward and its power in the Western Hemisphere

  • Coined by John O’Sullivan - it was God’s plan that the US take over and populate the land from coast to coast - but most Americans moved west out of economic desires rather than a desire to fulfill a divine plan

• Overland Trails

  • Most famous trail to the west was the Oregon Trail - a 2,000 mile route from Missouri to the Pacific

  • Santa Fe Trail, California Trail

  • Approx. 300,000 people traveled these trails

  • Story of the Donner Party (1846-7) is often repeated - a wagon train of 87 migrants became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains, of which 48 were rescued

  • However, the death rate on these trails was only slightly higher than average death rates, with Indians more likely to work as guides and trade than be bandits

• The California Gold Rush

  • Discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in CA in 1848 - the year that California became a US territory

  • Many migrated in 1849, termed the 49ers, however, very few common people could make profit with gold which required heavy machinery to strike

• The Mormon Exodus

  • The Mormons, who had migrated to Utah as a result of religious persecution, arrived in Utah during the Mexican War and Utah became US territory

The Ideological Foundations of Manifest Destiny

• Manifest Destiny and Race

  • Americans came to believe that other people that inhabited North America were incapable of establishing a democratic government which justified their westward expansion

  • This came from European Romanticism and scientific racialism which held that whites were superior to other races, fueling the American belief that they were superior to the savage tribes of the west

• The Spread of Democratic Civilization

  • Justified manifest destiny by asserting the superiority of American democratic practices - conquest of Mexico was seen as a victory of liberty-loving Protestants over tyrannical and anti-republican Catholics

Government Promotion of Western Expansion

•  The Morrill Land Grant Act (1826)

  • Promoted secondary public education in the West - the USFG transferred substantial tracts of its lands to the states so they could build public colleges or sell the land to fund the building of educational facilities

• Pacific Railroad Act (1862)

  • Extended government bonds and tracts of land to companies engaged in building transcontinental railroads

• The Homestead Act (1862)

  • Provided free land in the region to settlers who were willing to farm it - passed with the absence of Democrats from Congress during the Civil War

  • Many people applied for and were granted homesteads, however, many did not have farming skills and went bankrupt, and it became increasingly difficult for ordinary farmers to compete with large-scale agricultural operations

Economic Expansion Beyond the Western Hemisphere: The United States and Asia

• Opening Trade with Japan

  • Commodore Matthew C. Perry used gunboat diplomacy to open up Japan and secure a treaty that made American trade with Japan possible

The Mexican-American War

The Mexican War and Westward Expansion

• The Election of 1844 and the Annexation of Texas

  • Polk wanted to push for Texas annexation, and even before he became president, Tyler passed a Texas’s annexation to Congress before he left

  • It joined the US as the 15th slave state in 1845

• Origins of the War with Mexico

  • Polk and other expansionists were eager to incorporate the remainder of Mexico’s northern provinces into the US, and tensions brought the two nations to a dispute over the southern border of Texas

  • In 1846, skirmishes in the disputed area led to war between US and Mexico

• Victory over Mexico on the Battlefield

  • The US won early battles in the Mexican-American War (1846-48), and although Mexico was determined to win, they surrendered when the US captured Mexico City

• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

  • Mexico signed this treaty, giving up the disputed territory in Texas and giving up California and New Mexico in the Mexican Cession for $15 million - including modern-day CA, NE, UT, AZ, NM, CO, WY

• Gadsden Purchase

  • Acquired from Mexico in 1853, 5 years after the Mexican war, it added more area ot the US and was sought by the US as a possible southern route for a transcontinental railroad

• The Acquisition of the Mexican Cession and the Slavery Question

  • The question of whether slavery would exist in the new territories continued to generate national controversy

Conflict on the Frontier Following the Mexican-American War

• Expansion and Violence on the Frontier

  • The trails that took settlers west to the Oregon territory passed straight through Indian lands and the Indian Territory where Indians had been relocated

  • This caused the government to begin taking control of Indian lands and restrict them to reservations

• The Growth of the Reservation System

  • The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 established reservations in present-day OK, and the goal of the reservation system was to keep American Indians off lands that white settlers wanted to settle

  • In exchange, Indians were promised a degree of autonomy as well as annuities

  • The system reduced Indian land from 15 to 1.5 million acres, and the land was incapable of farming, reducing many to poverty

• The Treaty of Fort Laramie

  • Indians resisted further encroachments into the Great Plains, so in 1851, US representatives and 10,000 Plain Indians convened in Fort Laramie where they agreed that Indians provide a way for wagons to reach the far west in exchange for the promise that remaining Indian lands would be untouched

• The Great Sioux Uprising (1862)

  • When settlers refused to honor the Treaty of Fort Laramie, Sioux Indians led by Chief Little Crow killed a thousand settlers before being put down by the military

• The Colorado War and the Sand Creek Massacre (1864)

  • The migration west continued during the civil war

  • The Colorado War (1864-65) was fought between the US/Colorado militia, against the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brule and Oglala Sioux (Lakota) people in Colorado

  • Included the Sand Creek Massacre - after a settler family was killed by Indians, Colonel Chivington led an attack on a peaceful Cheyenne village killing 150-50 women and children

• American Indians in the Mexican Cession

  • Disease took lives of thousands

  • Systematic campaigns of extermination against Indians caused a genocide, and as the 1850s progressed, thousands of Indians were either murdered or enslaved

The Compromise of 1850

Territorial Acquisition and the Slavery Question

• The Wilmot Proviso

  • Americans reached an uneasy truce on slavery with the Missouri Compromise in 1820 

  • Northern politicians put forth the Wilmot Proviso (1846), which would ban slavery in territories that would be gained in the Mexican American War

  • The proposal failed to pass the Senate

• The Election of 1848 and the Free-Soil Party

  • Both the Whigs and Democrats avoided taking strong stands on the issue of slavery

  • Antislavery men in both parties founded the Free-Soil Party in 1848 which only got about 5-10% of the vote, but many of its members would later join the Republican Party (1854)

• Popular Sovereignty

  • Senator Lewis Cass proposed the idea that slavery should be left to the people of that territory

  • Southerners wanted the vote on slavery to happen later, as it would give slavery more time to develop, whereas Northerners wanted it to happen earlier

• Cuba and the Ostend Manifesto

  • Polk offered to purchase Cuba from Spain, but Spain refused

  • Later, American diplomats were sent to Belgium by President Pierce to secretly buy Cuba - their goals, written up as the Ostend Manifesto, provoked anger from northern politicians who saw this as an attempt to expand the slavery empire beyond the ConUS

California Application for Statehood

• California and the Compromise of 1850

  • Californians wrote up a constitution in which slavery would be illegal, which the Southern senators objected to - Clay and the Senate worked out the Compromise of 1850 in which CA would be admitted as a free state and there would be a harsher fugitive slave law

  • Although they did not pass as an omnibus (jumbo) bill, bills allowing NM and UT to decide slavery based on popular sovereignty, accepting a new boundary between Texas and Mexico, and banning the slave trade (but not slavery) in Washington all passed individually

Sectional Conflict: Regional Differences

The North and Immigration

• Irish Immigration and the Five Points 

  • The largest destination for Irish immigrants was the Five Points neighborhood of NYC

  • It was the worst in terms of density, disease, child mortality, unemployment, prostitution, and violent crime, but it was the original American melting pot, combining elements of the black commmunity and the Irish community

  • Mulatto was a term coined for intermarriage between the blacks and Irish 

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the Antebellum Period 

• A strong anti-Catholic nativist movement developed in the US to limit the rights, political power and cultural influence of newly arrived immigrants

• Nativism

  • Many Americans thought that the new immigrants who were mostly non-Protestnat, lacked the self-control of proper middle-class Protestant Americans - evidenced by excessive drinking culture

• The Know Nothings

  • The Know-Nothing Party was a political wing of an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish movement, and achieved electoral success in mainly the Northeast

Differing Economic Models: The Free Labor Ideal Versus the Slave System

• The economy of the North was increasingly focused on a free-labor model with manufacturing industries, whereas the economy of the South was increasingly dependent on a slave-labor, agricultural economy

• North population grew fast while South population was slow

Abolitionism in the North - Strategies and Tactics

• The Fugitive Slave Act and Personal Liberty Laws

  • Many northerners grew alarmed at the enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in the Compromise of 1850 which allowed slave catchers to bring the brutality of the slave system to northern cities

  • In response, northern states passed personal liberty laws, offering protection to fugitives

  • Prigg v. Pennsylvania - SCOTUS overturned the conviction of slave catcher Edward Prigg on the grounds that federal law was superior to state law

  • Ableman v. Booth - SCOTUS affirmed the legality of the Fugitive Slave Act

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  • Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe depicted the brutality of slavery - this caused northerners to humanize slaves

• John Brown and the Raid on Harper’s Ferry

  • In 1859, Brown carried out a raid to acquire weapons from a federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, VA, with intention to distribute the weapons to slaves, which would cause a massive slave rebellion

  • They were stopped with reinforcements led by Robert E. Lee

  • This convinced southerners that there was a northern conspiracy to overthrow slavery, although in reality, Brown’s act was condemned by northern politicians

The Southern Response to the Slavery Question

• Racism and the Defense of Slavery

  • In the first half of the 1800s, the defense of slavery shifted

  • It went from a necessary evil to a positive good

• Racism and Culture

  • There was a growing popularity of minstrel shows, where whites would perform variety shows in blackface - portraying blacks as lazy, shiftless, dim-witted, and happy-go-lucky

  • Southern slave-owners became increasingly interested in the religious practices of their slaves, and they built churches on their plantations - ministers would point out that Hebrews owned slaves or that slavery was not condemned by Jesus

Failure to Compromise

The Deterioration of Relations Between the North and the South

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • In 1854, Senator Douglass introduced this Act to the Senate - calling for dividing the Northern section of the Louisiana Purchase into Kansas and Nebraska and allowing for slavery there - however those areas were closed by the Missouri Compromise and they ended up being left to popular sovereignty

  • Many were upset at the act and at Douglass

• Bleeding Kansas

  • Violence erupted as pro and anti-slavery men fought for control of the state

  • Thousands of pro-slavery Missourians came over the border to vote for Kansas to be a slave state

  • In response, each side wrote up a constitution for Kansas - anti-slavery with the Topeka Constitution and pro-slavery with the Lecompton Constitution

  • President Pierce recognized the pro-slavery government

  • A pro-slavery group of Missourians attakced the anti-slavery town of Lawrence in 1856

  • John Brown, a deeply religious anti-slavery activist, along with his sons and several followers, killed five pro-slavery men with swords along the Pottawatomie Creek

  • This was a precursor to the Civil War

• The Beating of Senator Charles Sumner

  • He gave a pointed anti-slavery speech called Crimes against Kansas, where he singled out Senator Butler of SC, and when Butler’s nephew heard the news, he beat Sumner with a cane - Northerners saw this as a sign of southern barbarity, southerners made his nephew a hero

• The Dred Scott Decision

  • Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) - Dred Scott had been living in Illinois/Wisconsin where slavery was banned by the Northwest Ordinance, however upon returning to Missouri, they were to return to slavery

  • He sued on the basis that they were free because they had once lived in free areas - however, SCOTUS ruled that Scott was still a slave and could not initiate a lawsuit, and they ruled that Congress did not have the authority to declare the northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase free

  • The decision, therefore, invalidated the Missouri Compromise

  • SCOTUS also declared that no blacks, even if they were free, could be citizens because they were beings of an inferior order - this indicated to northerners that slavery was a national, rathern than sectional, institution, and that Congress could do little to stop it

The Death of the Second Two-Party System

• Party Realignment 

  • The Whigs were divided between proslavery Cotton Whigs and anti-slavery Conscience Whigs

  • The Democratic Party became increasingly a regional southern, proslavery party

• The Republican Party and the Free-Labor Ideal

  • In 1854, former members of the Know-Nothing Party, Conscience Whigs, abolitionists, and former Democrats formed the Republican Party to uphold the free labor ideology - upheld civic virtue and the dignity of labor with an emphasis on economic growth and social mobility

  • It defended a system that allowed hard-working individuals to achieve independence and property

  • Though the party was critical of slavery, it did not advocate abolition but simply that slavery should not be allowed to spread to new territories

• The Election of 1856

  • This made it clear that the two-party system was over, and the Republican party emerged as a major party over the Whig Party dissolved

  • The Democratic Party won the election by picking a northern candidate who had southern sympathies, James Buchanan, who could get both northern and southern supporters

Election of 1860 and Secession

The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis

• The Election of 1860

  • The Democratic Party was divided between a northern wing and a southern wing

  • The northern Democrats rallied around popular sovereignty whereas the southern Democrats strongly endorsed slavery

  • The Constitutional Union endorsed maintaining the Union and avoiding the slavery issue

  • The Republican Party chose Abraham Lincoln

• Lincoln’s Electoral Victory in 1860

  • His debates with Stephen Douglas for the Illinois Senate seat popularized him and he asked Douglas whether he favored the spread of slavery - to which he responded that he would put forth popular sovereignty

  • When he ran for president, he indicated that he could not tamper with slavery where it already existed, but promised to block slavery’s expansion to the West

  • When he won presidency, southern slaveholders were unsatisfied because slavery needed to expand to remain economically viable, and even before he was inagurated, 7 southern states seceded

• The Onset of War

  • Lincoln did not permit southern secession, but did not want to start a war

  • The presence of US troops at Fort Sumter was the spark of the war - the Confederacy decided they would not tolerate the US flag at Fort Sumter, and in 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis ordered the bombardment of the fort

  • Lincoln rallied 75,000 troops after the surrender of Fort Sumter, and the two sides were at war

Military Conflict in the Civil War

Mobilizing for War

• Industrialization

  • The Civil War spurred rapid industrialization of the North as the Union required a large amount of war materials - guns, bullets, boots, uniforms

  • Manufacturers rapidly began modernizing production, and industrialization stimulated a long period of economic growth, turning the US into a world economic power

  • People like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, JP Morgan, and Armour began their economic rise through supplying the Union war effort

• Funding the war

  • The US funded the war in 3 ways - issuing currency, borrowing money, and levying taxes - which greatly expanded the scope of the federal government

  • Congress issued 3 Legal Tender Acts in 1862 and 1863 which allowed the government to issue paper currency, “greenbacks” - money that was not backed by gold or silver but by the people’s faith in the government

  • Congress passed a series of National Bank Acts which created a national banking system - allowing existing banks to join the system and issue US Treasury notes as currency - providing stability to the banking/currency system when there was no national bank (the Federal Reserve was not created until 1913)

  • The government appealed to the public to purchase bonds, being lent about $400 million by the people and loaned $2.6 billion during the war by banks and other financial institutions

  • The government created a wide array of taxes, and for the first time, an income tax - tax rates remained modest during the war in the face of widespread public opposition

• NYC Draft Riots

  • Protests broke out against the wartime draft in NYC in 1863

  • People were especially upset about a law that allowed draftees to be able to pay $300 to escape serving

  • Blacks were frequently a scapegoat, accused of taking jobs from whites

• Civil Liberties and Home Front Opposition

  • Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, authorizing the arrest of rebels and traitors without due process in order to respond to riots and threats of militia action in the border state of Maryland

  • In 1863, Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act to support this move by the president

Turning the Tide: Factors in the Union victory

• Strengths and Weaknesses of the Two Sides

  • Union advantages:

    • Greater population (much of the southern population was slaves)

    • Greater military capacity

    • More diverse economy

    • Extensive railroad network

    • This allowed the Union to resupply its troops and bring reinforcements as the war dragged on

  • Confederacy advantages:

    • Fighting a defensive war

    • Did not have to invade the North to win, just had to fight on home soil

    • South’s rich military tradition - had able generals and a cohort of military men to draw from

• Fighting the Civil War

  • Union’s 3 part strategy

    • The navy would blockade southern ports - the Anaconda Plan - to prevent supplies from reaching the South and blockade southern products from being shipped abroad

    • Divide Confederate territory in half by taking control of the Mississippi River

    • Then, troops would march on the confederate capital of Richmond, VA to achieve victory

  • The Union believed the war would be quick and easy, but these illusions were shattered at the First Battle of Bull Run where Confederate troops forced Union troops to retreat

  • Lincoln went through many generals before settling on Ulysses S. Grant

  • The Union suffered defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and other battles

  • The 1862 Battle of Antietam repelled a Confederate invasion and was considered a slight Union Victory

  • A fight broke out between two ships, the Confederate Merrimac and the US Monitor which ended in a draw, but pointed at the future of naval battles

  • The Union managed successfully blockade the South, and the South attempted to use King Cotton Diplomacy, putting an embargo on shipping cotton to Britain in hopes that it might force British factories to come to a halt and for Britain to aid the Confederacy, however, this only hurt the Confederacy

  • The Union blockade prevented the Confederacy from selling surplus cotton on the world market, and a negotiation with Britain ensured the Union that they would stay on the sidelines

  • Turning point in the war was the Battle of Gettysburg, after which, the Confederacy was now on the retreat

  • The Union victory at Vicksburg, MS, allowed the Union to gain control of the Mississippi river

  • In 1864, General Sherman’s March to the Sea from Atlanta to Charleston was a military campaign designed to destroy the morale of Southern civilians through burning houses, raiding and looting villages, and making life so unpleasant for Georgia’s civilians that they would plead to end the war

  • Confederate general Robert E. Lee finally surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse, VA in 1865

Government Policies During the Civil War

The Focus of the War: From Union to Emancipation

• President Lincoln and Slavery

  • Lincoln, with the help of abolitionists, Radical Republicans, and free blacks and slaves helped to issue emancipation while guiding the country through a devastating war

  • He was able to convince a reluctant country that ending slavery was consistent with basic American values

• The Confiscation Acts (1861)

  • Congress passed them in 1861 and 1862 - the first declared that any slaves working for the Confederacy could be taken as contraband of war, and the second allowed for the seizure of slaves owned by Confederate officials

• The Emancipation Proclamation (1862)

  • He waited until the Union had achieved victory on the battlefield, and when the Union repelled an invasion at Antietam, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 1862

  • This ordered the freeing of all slaves in Confederate territory

  • It did not free slaves in Union territory, but it made it clear that this was just as much a war for the liberation of the slaves as it was a war to preserve the Union

Lincoln and the Meaning of the Civil War

• The Gettysburg Address and the Transition Toward a Modern Nation

  • His address at Gettysburg framed the Civil War in the larger context of fulfilling the US’s democratic goals

  • He stated that the US was conceived in Liberty and that all men are created equal

  • The Civil War, to Lincoln, was a test of whether a nation conceived around the principles of liberty and equality could last

  • The war made it clear that the states did not have the autonomy to secede - and after the war, the US was increasingly referred to as a nation, rather than just a union of states

Reconstruction

The Expansion of Citizenship Following the Civil War

• The 13th Amendment (1865)

  • By the end of the Civil War, some slaves were not freed, especially in KY and TX

  • This freed the remaining slaves and put in the Constitution that slavery was illegal in America

• The 14th Amendment (1868)

  • Asserted that all people born in the US are citizens

  • Stated that no citizens shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law

  • The southern states were forced to accept this before they could regain representation in Congress

  • The amendment undid long-held custom and the Dred-Scott decision, putting blacks on an equal footing with whites and providing a guarantee of equality before the law, and although it did not guarantee blacks the right to vote, for every male who was denied the vote, the state would be forced to deduct a person from its total population count

• The 15th Amendment (1869)

  • Granted black men voting rights, stating that the vote may not be denied to someone based on race color or previous condition of servitude

The Women’s Rights Movement and the Constitution

• Debates over the 15th Amendment

  • Many were upset that the 14th Amendment specifically included the word male as before, suffragists could argue that the Constitution did not say anything about women not being able to vote

  • Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support the 15th Amendment because it did not include women

  • Others, led by Lucy Stone and husband Henry Blackwell, although disappointed, argued that it was important to support the Reconstruction and the Republican Party

  • Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association and Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, both of which merged in 1890 to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association

The Limited Successes of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction refers to the process of reuniting the national following the Civil War

• It resulted in some short term successes, a shift in power from the executive branch to Congress, but the successes were short lived

• Approaches to Reconstruction

  • What accommodations would be made for freed slaves?

  • How would the South be reintegrated?

  • Would there be any punishments for secessionists?

• Wartime Reconstruction

  • In 1863, he announced the ten percent plan which if 10% of the voting population in a southern state took an oath of allegiance to the US, they could establish a new government and send representatives to Congress

  • He vetoed the Wade-Davis bill which would’ve raised the bar to 50%

  • In his second inaugural address, he announced the wanted to reunite the country with malice toward none, with charity for all - he wanted to end the war as soon as possible

• Presidential Reconstruction

  • After Lincoln’s assassination, his VP Andrew Johnson assumed power

  • He had no affinity for the Republican Party, nor emancipation and black equality

  • He quickly recognized the new southern state governments as legitimate after they ratified the new Amendments

  • In the South, many members of the old slave-owning class were now back in power who tried to pass the Black Codes, and southern postwar conditions were so similar to prewar conditions that many northerners wondered if they had “won the war but lost the peace”

• Black Codes

  • These were a set of laws passed by Southern states to regulate blacks and recreate the conditions of slavery

  • They forbade blacks from owning land or businesses, and vagrancy laws allowed for the arrest of blacks for infractions such as not having a certain amount of money while being on a public road

  • Punishments for violations of Black Codes included forcing blacks to labor on a plantation for a period of time

• Congress and the President Clash over Reconstruction 

  • In 1866, tensions increased between Johnson and congressional Republicans

  • Johnson vetoed an extension of Freedman’s Bureau and a Civil Rights Act that were designed to overturn the Black Codes

    • Freedman’s Bureau was established by Congress to provide practical aid to 4,000,000 newly freed black slaves in their transition from slavery to freedom

  • The biggest fight was over the Fourteenth Amendment - Johnson took an active role in urging Southerners to reject the amendment which he saw as further congressional interference in Reconstruction

• Radical Reconstruction

  • Johnson tried to mobilize white voters against the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1866 midterms, however, the strategy backfired and Republicans won a resounding victory

  • They embarked on more sweeping measures, and this phase of Reconstruction (Radical Reconstruction) showed the potential of a biracial democracy in the US 

• Reconstruction Acts of 1867

  • These divided the South into 5 military districts which could rejoin the US only if they guaranteed basic rights to blacks and accept the 14th Amendment, however, they could not fully carry out their program

  • Rep. Stevens introduced a bill that would grant freed men 40 acres of land, however, this went against the Republican value of protecting private property and died in the summer of the year it was introduced (1867)

• The Impeachment of President Johnson

  • The tensions grew so large that the House impeached Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act

  • Although he was eventually found not guilty, it rendered him powerless to stop Congress’s Reconstruction plans

• The Composition of Reconstruction Governments

  • Democrats still served in state legislatures, often in the minority

  • The Republicans were made up of different groups - Southern whites who joined were termed scalawags by their Democratic opponents, and they were former Whigs who sought to promote economic progress for the South

  • Many northerners came to the South to participate in Reconstruction, some for economic reasons termed carpetbaggers, but some to help freed slaves adjust to free life

  • Many Republican legislatures were African Americans, and in the 1870s, 2 blacks were elected to the Senate with more than a dozen in the House

• The Record of Reconstruction Governments

  • White southerners accused the Reconstruction government of corruption and ineptitude, however, modern historians pointed out that they accomplished a great deal against all odds

  • They established schools for African Americans such as Howard University and Morehouse College, and they established hospitals that served the black community, rewrote constitutions, updated penal codes, and began the physical rebuilding of the war-torn South

• The Waning of the Reconstruction

  • Southern conservative Democrats called redeemers aggressively sought to regain power - aided by networks of white terrorist organizations that used violence to silence African Americans and intimidate them from participating in public life

  • In Colfax, LA, both a Democratic and Republican candidate claimed victory, and in early 1873, the Republican candidate and his slate of appointees occupied a courthouse in Colfax, defended by armed blacks

  • A large group of white insurgents, including Klan members, attacked the courthouse, killing over 100 blacks and taking over the building

  • The violence was legally challenged in United States v. Cruikshank, SCOTUS ruled that the Enforcement Act of 1870, which enabled the constitutional rights of blacks to be protected, was unconstitutional, a decision that weakened Reconstruction

  • This caused many northern whites to lose interest in reforming the South and redirected their interest to the industrial development of the North

• The Formal End of Reconstruction: The Election of 1876

  • Although Tilden won the majority of the popular vote, neither him nor Rutherford B. Hayes were able to claim enough electoral votes to be declared the winner

  • A special electoral commission declared Hayes the winner in three contested states which was protested by Democrats

  • The Compromise of 1877 allowed Hayes to win the presidency, but Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction, paving the way for rule by Democratic Party in the South

Failure of Reconstruction

From Slavery to Sharecropping

• The Development of the Sharecropping System

  • Plantation owners wanted to hire groups of blacks to work for them, but blacks wanted their own plot - “forty acres and a mule”

  • Blacks began to rent land by paying half of their yearly crop to the land owner - this sharecropping system was a compromise - blacks did not have to work under supervision while white plantation owners acquired cotton to be sold on the open market

  • After paying back loans, black farmers were left very little, creating a cycle of debt which prevented blacks from acquiring wealth and owning land

Conflicts Over Notions of Citizenship and American Identity

• Segregation in the South

  • Jim Crow laws were a series of segregation laws passed in the southern states, segregating public facilities such as railroad cars, bathrooms, and schools, relegating blacks to second-class status 

• The Supreme Court and the Narrowing of the 14th Amendment

  • Advocates for black civil rights hoped that the 14th Amendment would prevent the implementation of Jim Crow laws

  • However, SCOTUS interpreted privileges or immunities in a broad language that it allowed for Jim Crow laws

  • In the Slaughterhouse cases, the Court made a distinction between national citizenship and state citizenship

  • In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), SCOTUS asserted that racial segregation did not violate equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment

• The Exclusion of African Americans from Political Process

  • Literacy tests and poll taxes limited their ability to vote

  • Poor whites got around these rules with the grandfather clause - guaranteeing a man the right to vote if he or his father or grandfather had the right to vote before the Civil War

  • Moreover, the Democratic Party often held whites only primaries, and African Americans who spoke out against this were targets of violence and murder - KKK formed in 1866

• A Second Reconstruction

  • Reconstruction lasted only a decade and many of its accomplishments were short lived, however, these failures prompted a second reconstruction with civil rights activists in the 20th century

Subject to Debate

• Slavery and the Question of Civil War Causation

• What are the causes of the Civil War?

  • Southern partisans blame the North for interfering with their domestic institutions

  • Northern partisans blame the Dred Scott decision, the beating of Senator Sumner, and the defense of slavery as inflexibility on the part of the South

• Historians saw the war as an irrepressible conflict - inevitable because of slavery and conflicts because of free labor ideology

• Was this even a war around slavery? Or was it just between a capitalist industrial North and an agrarian, almost feudal south?

• The Myth of the “Lost Cause”

• It holds that the Confederate cause was a noble and honorable one, and that the south only lost because of the overwhelming forces of the north

• However, this ignores the centrality of the slavery question

• Viewing the Reconstruction Period in Context

• Traditional historians criticize the Republican Party for imposing crushing burdens on the South, occupying it with troops, and saddling it with inept and corrupt government

• However, recent historians emphasize the progress made by blacks under Reconstruction, helping to inspire civil rights activists in the 20th century

*Roosevelt = Theodore Roosevelt, FDR = Franklin Roosevelt, LBJ = Lyndon B. Johnson

Period 6

Westward Expansion: Economic Development

Mechanization and the Transformation of American Agriculture

• The Impact of Mechanization

  • During the decades following the Civil War, machines such as the mechanical reaper and the combine harvester replaced hand-held tools

  • Production of corn and wheat more than doubled between 1870-1900

  • Undermined small-scale family farms as mechanization lowered the prices farmers received per bushel of corn or wheat, and most farmers could not afford the new equipment

  • Agriculture changed from small-scale farms with laborers → large scale mechanized operations

  • Many smaller farms went out of business

Agrarian Resistance in the Face of Structural Change

• Debt and Dependence in the Gilded Age

  • Farmers struggled in all areas

  • Railroad companies were overcharging farmers for carrying produce to Chicago and other destination

  • Tight supply of currency in the US made it hard for farmers to pay off debt, and it drove down the prices they received for their crops

  • Banks were foreclosing (take possession of a mortgaged property as a result of failure to keep up their mortgage payments) on farms

• The Greenback Party

  • A political formation that sought an expansion of the currency supply

  • Founded in 1878, following the Panic of 1873, they advocated for paper money not backed by gold or silver, but public trust in the government like how it was done during the Civil War

  • Although the party disbanded, the call for expanding the money supply was taken up again in the panic of 1893

• The Grange and Granger Laws

  • National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (Grange), is a farmers’ organization that pushed for state laws to protect farmers’ interests

  • Founded in 1867, it led the fight to pass laws that regulated railroad freight rates and made certain abusive corporate practices illegal - Granger Laws

  • Munn v. Illinois (1877), SCOTUS asserted it was within the government’s powers to regulate private industry

  • Wabash v. Illinois (1886), SCOTUS reversed itself and ruled that states could not regulate railroads because they cross state lines

• Protecting Communal Lands of the Southwestern Hispanos

  • Clashes occurred in the 1880s-90s between recently arriving settlers from older states and long-time Mexican and American Indian occupants of the land

  • Large portions of these lands were used communally by the local Hispano population (the name given to people of colonial Spanish descent)

  • By the 1890s, the Hispanos and Indians had lost more than 90% of their land and began organizing resistance

  • Groups such as Las Gorras Blancas and Las Manos Negras led raids on settler land - cutting fences and burning property

  • Ultimately, varied tactics of the movement failed to regain lost lands

Transportation, Communication, and the Opening of New Markets in the West

• Land Grants to Railroads

  • In the second half of the 1800s, the USFG encouraged economic growth by subsidizing improvements in transportation and communications, encouraging the building of railroad lines

  • Cost of goods came down and standard of living of Americans rose

  • The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 caused land grants given by the government for new rail lines to be built to go straight to railroad corporations rather than to states

  • 175 million acres - generated huge profits for railroad companies, bringing in about $435 million

• The Telegraph and the Telephone

  • The telegraph network (developed before the Civil War) continued to spread throughout the Gilded Age

  • First transatlantic cable was laid in 1858

  • Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone in 1876 and established the Bell Telephone Company

  • By the end of 1880, almost 50,000 telephones were in use in the United States

Promoting Westward Expansion - Government Policies, Railroads, and Mining Operations

• Government Policies and Westward Expansion

  • Congress continued the Homestead Act of 1862, but they discovered that the land it granted - 160 acres - was too small

  • So Congress passed the Timber Culture Act (1873) to allow homesteaders to receive additional lands if they agreed to plant trees on a portion of it and the Desert Land Act (1877), offering acreage for a discounted price if the recipients agreed to irrigate the land

• Government Support for Transcontinental Railroads

  • The Pacific Railroad Acts, passed in 1860s, promoted government bonds and land grants to railroad companies to complete rail lines to the Pacific Ocean

  • The completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, UT in 1869 was a milestone in connecting the country

  • Four additional transcontinental lines were completed in the coming decades, the last one, the Great Northern Railway (1893), was privately build without the benefit of federal land grants

  • Western railroad companies relentlessly promoted land sales (from the land grants they had) to the populations of the overcrowded cities of the East

• Mining Operations in the West

  • Gold in CA (1848), silver in Nevada’s Comstock Lode (1859) → Virginia City was established as a result, gold at Pikes Peak (1869) → Denver City and Boulder City

  • Similar rushes occurred in ND, SD, MO, AZ, UT, ID

  • While a few did cash in on the precious metal, most did not

  • Most of the mining was done by large mining firms with expensive equipment → investors enjoying substantial profits, shares being traded on international markets, and wage workers replacing prospectors

Westward Expansion: Social and Cultural Development

Settling the West

• Chinese Communities in the West

  • Chinese immigrants were initially drawn to North America by the gold rush in CA

  • By 1865, 20,000 Chinese immigrants had moved; by 1870, over 63,000 lived in America

  • White Californians pushed for laws to exclude them from mining - 1852 Foreign Miners’ License Tax

  • Discrimination, legal obstacles, and changes in the economics of mining pushed most Chinese immigrants away from mining and towards other jobs

  • They made up 90% of the workforce who helped complete the first transcontinental railroad

• Anti-Asian Sentiment and the Chinese Exclusion Act

  • 1854 California Supreme Court the People of the State of California v. George W. Hall ruled the Chinese Americans could not testify against whites in court → impossible to prosecute crimes of whites against Chinese Americans

  • Many californians blamed the Chinese for the Panic of 1873, and Chinese residents were labeled “coolie labor”

  • Workingmen's Party (formed 1876) argued that the presence of Chinese laborers depressed wages, pushing for legislation excluding Chinese immigrants from the US

  • 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act - first discriminatory federal laws that targeted a particular national group - banned chinese immigration

    • It was renewed and made permanent in 1902; repealed in 1943

• Mining Boomtowns in the West

  • Towns grew rapidly, often populated by prospectors

  • Boomtown - Virginia City in NV

  • Many boomtowns were extremely ethnically diverse, and as mining operations became more elaborate and industrial, the towns more closely resembled the industrial cities of the East

• Ranching and the Era of the Cowboy in the West 

  • From the mid 1860s-80s, cowboys drove large herds of cattle across the open plains

  • However, several factors ended the era of open-range grazing by the mid 1880s

  • Large ranchers began to enclose grazing areas with newly-invented barbed wire, and severe blizzards in the late 1880s decimated the cattle population of the Great Plains - after which cowboys were replaced by wage-earning hired hands, working under managers

• Farming on the Great Plains

  • The first generation of pioneers drawn to the Great Plains were nicknamed “sodbusters” because they had to cut through the thick layer of sod to get to the topsoil necessary for farming

    • Sod was also used to build their houses

  • Although some farmers obtained land directly from the government through the Homestead Act, but most purchased land from railroads, or speculators who obtained land from unsuccessful homesteaders

  • As the century progressed, this dream of land ownership proved to be beyond the means of many people

  • The family farms of the prairie gave way to large-scale agribusinesses

  • By the late 1800s, as farmers went into debt from the boom of large-scale farming, increasing numbers of residents of the West were migrant farmers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and hired employees as land was consolidated into fewer and fewer hands

Violence on the Frontier

• Destruction of the Buffalo

  • Railroad workers and passengers went on a killing spree, shooting buffalo for food and (mostly) sport

  • Industrial uses for their hides put pressure on their numbers

  • In a matter of decades, the buffalo herds on the Plains were virtually exterminated, which weakened the Plains people, who depended on the buffalo

• Red Cloud’s War and the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie

  • The Homestead Act and development of railroad lines brought a wave of settlers into the Great Plains region

  • Between 1866 and 1868, fighting occurred in the WY and MO territories between US troops and the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho

  • Known as Red Cloud’s War, it included a major defeat for US forces in a battle (Fetterman’s Fight), it ended with the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, in which the US allowed the Lakota to maintain much of the disputed territory and close the Bozeman Trail

• The Indian Peace Commission (1867)

  • Congress tried to negotiate an end of warring on the Great Plains by establishing the Indian Peace Commission

  • The commission met in St.Louis, Missouri with a number of Plains Indian

  • Although several treaties were negotiated, Congress did not consistently fund or enforce agreements made by the commission

  • Congress wanted to confine Indian groups to reservations and pursue a policy of assimilation, but the commission ultimately failed as fighting on the Plains continued

• The Battle of Little Big Horn and Custer’s Last Stand (1876)

  • Discovery of gold in the Black HIlls of the Dakota Territory in 1874 brought more settlers and brought tensions to a peak

  • Great Sioux War (1876) - Sioux warriors, along with Cheyenne allies, achieved a major victory over American forces at the Battle of Little Big Horn

  • The episode, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, resulted in the death of George Custer + 225 men

  • After, US forces led by General Sheridan defeated Indian forces → Lakota Sioux were confined to a reservation in the Dakota Territory

  • The defeat of the largest and most warlike Plains Indian tribes was a major turning point in the long campaign by the government of controlling the Plains Indians

Government Policies and the Fate of American Indians

• President Grant and the “Peace Policy”

  • In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant announced that the government would pursue a peace policy in regard to Indians with assimilation as its goal

  • The goal was that eventually, individual Indians would become “wards of the state” and be civilized by emissaries, then become citizens with individual ownership of plots of land, rather than reservations owned by groups

  • It did not initially gain many adherents

• Helen Hunt Jackson and the Call for Reform

  • By the 1880s, sympathizers of American Indians pushed for a change - Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor (1882) which chronicled the abuses of the USFG against the natives

  • It was seen as the duty of white middle-class women to civilize people - these women were successful in lobbying for the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act

• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

  • Aka General Allotment Act - abandoned the reservation system and divided tribal lands into individually owned plots (severalty refers to lands that are owned by individuals) 

  • The goal was to make Indians assimilate into white culture - norms of white middle-class culture

  • This reform was as damaging to Indians as was the earlier reservation policy

• Indian Boarding Schools

  • Late 1870s - Bureau of Indian Affairs established a series of Indian boarding schools that were designed to assimilate Indian children by stripping them of their culture

  • Ex. Carlisle Institute in PA (est. 1879) - students were forced to cut their hair, rid themselves of traditional clothing, practice christianity, trained in menial tasks

  • “Kill the Indian in him, save the man”

American Indian Resistance

• The Ghost Dance Movement

  • Some tribes, among the great losses they suffered, adopted a spiritual practice known as the Ghost Dance

  • Developed by a prophet named Wovoka, he emphasized cooperation among tribes and clean living and honesty

• Wounded Knee and the End of Autonomous American Indian Groups

  • The last battle of the Indian Wars was at Wounded Knee Creek in SD (1890) - US troops attempted to peacefully disarm a group of Lakota Indians but soon opened fire on the Lakota men, women, and children (200+ people died)

The “New South”

The Limited Success of Calls for a “New South”

• The Persistence of Tradition in the “New South”

  • Henry Grady argued for a mixed economy in the South that would include industrialization

  • He wanted to move away from single-crop plantation agriculture

  • However, this promised remained hollow - blacks continued to toil in sharecropping systems (paying with a share of their yearly crop) or tenant farming (owned his own tools and rented the land at a fixed rate)

Segregation in the “New South”

• The Proliferation of the “Jim Crow” System

  • Jim Crow laws segregated public facilities such as railroad cars, restrooms, and schools

  • Relegated blacks to second-class status in the South

  • SCOTUS ruled that the 14th Amendment did not protect blacks from Jim Crow laws

• Plessy v. Ferguson and the “Separate but Equal” Doctrine

  • Opponents argued that the 14th Amendment stated no person shall be denied equal protection of the laws, however, the Court stated that segregation was acceptable as long as the facilities for both races were of equal quality

• Challenging Jim Crow in the Gilded Age

  • Ida B. Wells was a black woman who sued the Memphis and Charleston Railroad for denying her a seat in the ladies’ car

  • She won the case initially, but the railroad ultimately won on appeal

  • After 3 friends of hers were lynched, she wrote against the practice of lynching, and that it was a tactice to suppress black political activism and re-assert white supremacy

  • Booker T. Washington encouraged blacks to gain training in vocational skills and argued that confrontation with whites would end badly for blacks, instead counseling cooperation with supportive whites

Technological Innovation

The Raw Materials of Industrialization

• Steel and the Bessemer Process

  • Steel production was the key to the industrialization of the US

  • Although iron production grew and was used extensively in the railroads, steel - an alloy of iron - was found to be more durable, versatile, and useful than iron

  • Before the middle of the 1800s, it was too expensive to be commercially useful

  • The development of the Bessemer process greatly reduced the cost of steel and made it available to a wide variety of industrial operations, and by the 1860s, a more efficient production method, called the open-hearth process, replaced the Besssemer process

• Coal and Oil

  • Most practical fuel went from hard coal (anthracite) and softer coal (bituminous) → oil (George Bissel demonstrated that oil could be refined and used for a variety of processes)

  • Its most industrial use was lubricating machinery

  • Later in the century, the demand for oil increased as it came to be refined into gasoline

The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

The Rise of the Corporation and Mass Production

• The Evolution of the Corporation and the Managerial Revolution

  • Before the Civil War, many states made it easy for an entity to incorporate

    • Incorporation: the formation of individuals into an organized entity with legally defined privileges and responsibilities

  • The Pennsylvania Railroad incorporated in 1846 and many entities followed suit after the Civil War

  • Large corporations developed management systems that separated top executives from managers 

  • This led to the managerial revolution, which included modern cost-accounting procedures and the division of responsibilities

  • A new class of middle managers evolved in the post-Civil War period, supervising purchasing, accounting, marketing, sales, etc.

  • This also created the need for secretaries and other office workers, opening up new opportunities for women in the workforce

• Advances in Marketing and Distribution

  • During the late 1800s, industrial capitalism devised methods to distribute the large quantities of good produced by growing factories

  • Patterns of consumption began to change: many products, mostly clothing, went from home → commercial production

    • Home grown produce → canned foods

• Chain Outlets and Department Stores

  • Retail outlets began to replace small-scale local stores

  • Chains such as Atlantic and Pacific (A&P) Tea Company (groceries) and F.W. Woolworth (manufactured dry goods) opened outlets in cities and towns throughout the US

  • Department stores such as Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia and Macy’s in NYC catered towards middle-class residents

  • Sears, Roebuck, and Montgomery ward printed catalogs and created a system of installment payment plans

  • One no longer had to be near a metropolitan center or the actual stores because of mail-order catalogs

• The Labor Force in the Industrial Era

  • Before the Civil War, immigrants were primarily from northern and western Europe, but by the 1870s, new sources of immigration included southern and eastern Europe, Mexico, and China

  • Employers hired recruiters to pay for the passage of European immigrants → this was made illegal in 1885

Economic Consolidation

• The Rise of the Major Industries

  • The 3 major industries were railroads, steel, and oil

  • The corporate model spread to many industrial processes such as bicycles, clothing, shoes, and paper

• The “Robber Barons”

  • Term given to the men who controlled the major industries in the US

  • Means to call attention to their cutthroat business activities and attempts to control governments

• Andrew Carnegie and Vertical Integration

  • Andrew Carnegie came to dominate the steel industry by investing in all aspects of steel production

  • Carnegie Steel Company controlled the mills where steel was made, the coal mines that supplied the coal, and iron ore mines that supplied the base of the steel

  • He also controlled the transportation lines - ships that transported iron and railroads that transported the coal to the factory

  • Vertical integration - all key aspects of the business are performed by the company itself

• Rockefeller and Horizontal Integration (or Consolidation)

  • Horizontal integration - merging of companies that create the same or similar products

  • This can lead to a monopoly → a common way that corporations gained monopoly control of an industry was by establishing trusts

  • A trust consisted of trustees from several companies in the same industry acting together rather than against each other

  • Rockefeller organized the most well known trust in the oil-processing industry: Standard Oil

• Other “Robber Barons”

  • Among Carnegie and Rockefeller were railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, coal and iron merchant Mark Hanna, meat processing giant Philip Armour, and mining and railroad Stephen Elkins

  • J.P. Morgan, a financier, gained leverage through control of various industries, including several railroad companies, into dominance of the entire US economy

Corporations Look Abroad

• The Growth of Multinational Corporations

  • Foreign trade was rapidly expanding in the Gilded Age: $400 million in the 1870s → $1.4 billion in 1900

  • Several companies like Standard Oil, Eastman Kodak, and American Tobacco established branches in other countries

  • The Panic of 1893 further encouraged business men to seek new markets abroad

  • Moreover, because the American frontier was closed - nothing more West to explore - the next logical step for many Americans was to expand into foreign territory

Labor in the Gilded Age

Poverty and Wealth in Industrializing America

• The Wealthy Class

  • The Gilded Age saw the growth of a wealthy class that far surpassed the wealth inequality of the past → building mansions in exclusive urban neighborhoods and summer cottages

  • Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption” to describe the lavish spending habits of the wealthy

• The Working Class

  • Wage for workers rose slightly, but were still way below minimum levels today

  • Wages would be cut in the Panics of 1873 and 1893

  • However, families who moved to big industrial cities had amounts of spending money that were unimaginable in the small towns they came from

  • And although they did not receive much wages, the prices of goods were falling due to industrialization

An Expanding Workforce

• Women and Children in the Labor Force

  • Skilled craftsmanship → unskilled tasks in a mass-production system = children and women enter the paid workforce in large numbers as wages for working-class men remained low

  • The influx of women and children into the workforce depressed overall wages

  • From 1870s-WWI, child labor grew each decade

  • By 1900, children made up 18% and women made up 17% of the workforce

Conflict at the Work Site

• The Declining Status of Work in the Age of Industrialization

  • Fierce industrial competition worsened working conditions

  • Wages rose incrementally at times only to be erased by downturns in the economy

  • The increased reliance on child labor + immigrants further eroded wages

  • Production = loss of control over processes of production, as processes were broken down and “de-skilled” → led to a loss of sense of pride in one’s work and an increase in unsafe and unsanitary conditions

  • The loss of control of the work process was a root cause of worker grievances, responded to by labor organizations and unions through bargaining and striking

• An Era of Pitched Battles in the Workplace

  • The labor battles of the Gilded Age were almost exclusively won by management with its near monopoly on weaponry, support of government and courts, and vast numbers of poor, working-class men willing to serve as strikebreakers

  • These battles happened during economic downturns

• The Knights of Labor

  • A significant early union was the Knights of Labor (est. 1869)

  • Welcomed all members w/o discrimination, and led by Terence V. Powderly in the late 1880s, they wanted to improve wage and hours for workers and implement better safety rules and end child labor

  • Although gaining 800,000 members by 1886, by 1890, organizational problems led to their numbers and influence declining

  • Ethnic, linguistic, and racial barriers made united action difficult, and government repression in the wake of the Haymarket bombing in Chicago weakened the organization

• The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

  • In 1877, a strike at McCormick Reaper Works led to the jobs of striking workers being given to scabs (replacement workers)

  • The striking workers attacked the scabs, and the police opened fire on the strikers, killing/injuring 6 men 

  • The strikers called for a rally in Haymarket Square, and towards the end, a bomb exploded in the police ranks; the police responded by opening fire on the rally

  • This caused many Americans to shy away from the labor movement

• The American Federation of Labor (AFL) (1886)

  • It only allowed skilled workers to join and did not allow blacks or women to join

  • Its only goal was getting higher wages and better conditions for its members, not working for broader social reform

• The Homestead Strike (1892)

  • Carnegie was determined to break the union known as the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (under the AFL umbrella)

  • He announced in 1892 that he would not renew their contract, leaving the country in the summer and leaving his plant in the hands of his manager Frick

  • Frick hired Pinkerton guards to make sure the union workers could not get in, and a battle ensued between workers and “Pinks”

  • Although the workers temporarily gained control of the plant, 8,000 National Guard troops were called to retake it

• The Pullman Strike: Strife in a Company Town (1893)

  • Occurred during the Panic of 1893 where the Pullman Company, which built railroad cars, cut wages several times

  • The town of Pullman was built by the company as a company town, providing decent housing but also control over its workers - eg. denying housing to troublemakers (pro-union workers)

  • When wages were cut in 1893 and 1894, the rent remained the same, so workers appealed to the American Railway Union

  • Three union organizers were fired, and in response, most of the 3,300 workers went on strike → leading to railroad traffic coming to a standstill

  • President Cleveland called federal troops to put the strike down, killing 25 workers

  • SCOTUS in In re Debs (1895) ruled that the government was justified in stopping the strike

Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age

Migrations and a Diverse Workforce

• The “New Immigration”

  • There was a new wave of immigrants in addition to the Irish and German immigrants of pre-Civil War years

  • They came from southern and eastern Europe and Asia - labeled “new immigrants”

• The Exoduster Movement

  • Because of the rise of the KKK, Jim Crow laws, and the nature of blacks as second class citizens, approx. 40,000 blacks departed from Southern States, crossing the Mississippi to settle in Kansas

  • Black activists and white philanthropists established organizations such as Colored Relief Board and the Kansas Freedmen’s Aid Society to help them make their journey

The New Culture of Immigrant City

• A Divided City

  • The Gilded Age is characterized by a division between the working-class districts and wealthy enclaves

  • Ex. in NYC, the wealthy moved uptown, away from the urban core where the working class districts were

• Living Conditions for the Working Class and the Poor

  • Despite small increases in wages, the working class and poor were crammed into neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side of New York

  • Substandard tenement buildings, lack of ventilation and light, horse dung, and a lack of basic municipal services, such as sewer lines, running water, and garbage removal

• Working-Class Culture and Urban Life

  • City life, modest increases in wages, and slightly shorter workday provided more time for leisure activities for the masses of urban residents

  • Saloons were often part social hall, part political club, and part community hub - a place for recreation

  • Therefore, the reformist attacks on drinking were seen as an attack on saloons and working-class immigrant culture

Responses to Immigration in the Gilded Age

Debates Over Identity and Immigration

• The Persistence of Ethnicity in the Gilded Age City

  • Immigrants felt both a need to assimilate to American culture, but also a desire to maintain ethnic solidarity

  • In NY, Chicago, foreign language papers emerged such as Jewish Daily Forward and Il Progresso Italo-Americano

  • There formed Little Italy and Jewish neighborhoods - these ethnic enclaves provided grocery stores so that immigrants could purchase foods reminiscent of their countries of origin

  • Millions of immigrants worked for part of the year in the US and then spent the rest in their home country - called “birds of passage”

• Immigration and Nativism

  • The new immigrants heightened fears among conservative, Protestant public figures such as Henry Cabot Lodge and Madison grant, who feared that whites were committing race suicide by allowing inferior races to enter America in large numbers

Justifying the Inequities of the Gilded Age

• The Waning of the Free Labor Ideal

  • Originally it put forth the idea that working for another person was a temporary condition, and that every employee would accumulate enough money to start his own farm or shop

  • However, with the army of unskilled workers flooding into the massive firms of the late 19th century

  • The notion of free labor was challenged, and some embraced the new corporate order

• Social Darwinism

  • Popularized by William Graham Sumner who argued against government intervention, and argued that the inequalities of wealth of the late 1800s were part of the “survival of the fittest”

• Horatio Alger and the Myth of the Self-made Man

  • Alger wrote a series of cheap novels that depicted a poor boy who achieved success

  • These rags to riches stories put forth a much different idea that the reality of Gilded Age America

The Settlement House Movement

• Jane Addams and Hull House

  • Settlement houses existed to aid immigrants, especially immigrant women

  • They offered classes, set up employment bureaus, provided childcare facilities, and helped victims of domestic abuse

  • Addams founded and ran Hull House in Chicago, and is considered one of the founders of the field of social work in the US 

Development of the Middle Class

The Growth of the Urban Middle Class and the Expansion of Consumer Culture

• Rise of the Middle Class

  • A class of white-collar employees became essential to the functioning of industrial capitalism

  • Their wages rose faster, and workday was shorter than the working-class (blue-collar)

  • Women filled many of the lower-level white collar jobs, and as the typewriter came into use, literate women learned the skill and were hired to perform office duties

  • Women were also hired as school teachers

• The Commercialization of Leisure

  • The growth of the middle class went hand in hand with the commercialization of leisure time activities

  • Ex. amusement park - Coney Island, “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West show, and P.T. Barnum’s circus

• Newspapers

  • Joseph Pultizer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal gained readership through exaggerated, sensationalistic coverage of events

  • This “yellow journalism” played a role in pushing public opinion toward support for the 1898 Spanish-American War

• The Health of the City and Parks Movement

  • As germ theory developed, public parks were part of a strategy to provide an alternative to dirty streets and alleyways for healthful recreation

• Frederick Law Olmsted and New York’s Central Park

  • The design competition was won by Olmsted and Calvert Vaux

  • On one hand, Olmsted sought to create a democratic meeting place where the city’s different classes could congregate and enjoy the benefits of nature, however, working class advocates wondered why the park was built so far from the working-class districts of the city

• Recreation and Spectator Sports

  • Baseball: the national pastime developed in 1845

  • Tennis: Lawn tennis was developed in Great Britain (1873) as mainly a women’s sport, but gained popularity with both men and women in the Gilded Age

  • Croquet: Popular activity in public parks in the late nineteenth century, often played by mixed gender groups

  • Cycling: bicycles were popular especially among women who enjoyed the freedom from male supervision that bicycle riding offered

  • Football: college football became popular during the Gilded Age

The Moral Obligations of the Wealthy Class

• Andrew Carnegie and “The Gospel of Wealth”

  • He asserted that the rich have a duty to live responsible, modest lives and give back to society

  • Successful entrepreneurs should distribute their wealth so that it could be put to good use, rather than frivolously wasted

  • He believed in laissez faire economics and urged millionaires to take action on behalf of the community so the government would not have to

Reform in the Gilded Age

Challenges to the Dominant Corporate Ethic

• Henry George and the “Single Tax” on Land

  • In his book Progress and Poverty (1879), he criticized the vast resources, especially land, controlled by the wealthy elite. He argued for a “single tax” on land values, which he believed would create a more equitable society

• Socialism and Anarchism

  • Many began to question the basic assumptions of capitalism and embraced alternative ideologies

  • After the failure of the Pullman Strike, Eugene V. Debs became one of the founders of the Socialist Party of America in 1901

• Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887

  • This novel imagined a man who falls asleep in 1887 and awakens in 2000 to find a socialist utopia in which the inequities and poverty of the Gilded Age have been eradicated 

• Coxey’s Army

  • A group of workers, many recently laid off by railroad companies (1894), marched from Ohio to DC to demand that the government take action to address the economic crisis

  • Cleveland ignored their please for government relief - there were other similar armies 

Gender, Voluntary Organizations, and Social Reform

• Challenging Notions of Domesticity

  • Many women began to challenge the cult of domesticity

  • In the 1880s and 90s, women’s clubs began to emerge, and investigated and advocated around issues of poverty, working conditions, and pollution

  • They organized an umbrella organization - the General Federation of Women’s Clubs

  • Tried to curb alcohol consumption - the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and pressed for voting rights - the National American Woman Suffrage Association

Controversies Over the Role of Government in the Gilded Age

Laissez Faire Policies vs. Reform

• Resistance to Regulation

  • 1866 SCOTUS St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois limited ability of states to regulate railroads, asserting that states could not impose direct burdens on interstate commerce

  • The Interstate Commerce Commission was created to regulate railroads, however, it was underfunded and ineffective

  • In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed to break up trusts, however, it failed to regulate manufacturing

Debates Around Pursuing an Imperialist Policy

• Industry and Empire

  • Many Americans resisted the idea of the US embarking on overseas possessions, however, the desire for new markets led the country to look abroad

Politics in the Gilded Age

Farmers and the Populist Party

• The Populist Party was formed by activists to challenge the growth of corporate power over the agricultural sector; they sought a radical redistribution of power in the US and pushed for stronger government intervention in the economy 

• Organizing the Populist Party 

  • Born in 1893, it was able to harness the discontent after the Panic of 1893 and gave voice to a radical program for change that included increased democracy, a graduated income tax, regulation of the railroads, and currency reform

  • They insisted that the amount of currency in circulation was insufficient, and called for “free and unlimited coinage” of silver

  • Their party did remarkably well in the presidential election later that year, but their popularity was short lived

• The Election of 1896 and the “Cross of Gold” Speech

  • The election of 1896 resulted in the demise of the populist party and helped establish the identity of the major political parties in the 20th century

  • William Jennnings Bryan called for free and unlimited coinage of silver, and in his Cross of Gold speech, he promised not to let the American people be crucified upon a cross of gold, and endorsed by the populist party

  • On the other hand McKinley appealed to banking and business interests by keeping the country on the gold standard, and won the election

  • The Republican Party continued to be more aligned with pro-business interests and the Democratic Party continued to present itself as the champion of the “little guy”

Politics, Big Business, and Corruption in the Gilded Age

• The Evolution of the Two-Party System

  • Neither party was able to dominate politics during the last decades of the 19th century, and both seem to be increasingly removed from the concerns of ordinary Americans 

  • They seemed to be more responsive to the priorities of the newly formed trusts and industrial giants than to the needs of farmers or workers, which is why the Populist Party formed

• Ideology Takes a Back Seat

  • Issues like child labor, the consolidation of industries, workplace safety, and abuses by railroad companies were either avoided or dealt with superficially

  • Neither party did much to protect rights of blacks or indians, or rights of women

  • Both were divided on the tariff - Democrats wanted lower tariff rates and Republicans wanted higher tariff rates

  • Both parties seemed to be aligned with the priorities of big business - taking bribes and favors

• Corruption and the Grant Administration

  • Grant’s Administration was tainted by corruption, and many government spots were given to friends

  • He surrounded himself with incompetent staff, and was indecisive on the Reconstruction

• Corruption and Civil-Service Reform

  • Civil service is the workforce of government employees - attempted were made to remove nepotism from government hiring - hiring the most qualified people instead

• Mugwumps, Stalwarts, and Half-Breeds

  • Reform-minded Republicans, nicknamed “Mugwumps”, wanted to move away from the corruption of the Grant years and create a merit-based civil service

  • Their opposition were the Stalwarts, and those who were loyal republicans but wanted some degree of reform, were known as the Half-Breeds

• The Pendleton Act

  • The Republicans nominated Garfield for president in 1880, but was assassinated 4 months after inauguration, shot by Guiteau who claimed it was because he was denied a government job

  • Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883 to set up a merit-based federal civil service, a professional career service that allots government jobs on the basis of a competitive exam

• The Politics of Tariff Rates

  • Industrialists tended to encourage higher tariffs to keep out foreign goods, and they were supported by the Republicans

  • Democrats tended to support a lower tariff rate - their cotton and wheat sales benefited from increased international trade

  • President Chester Arthur broke with Republican orthodoxy and lowered tariff rates

  • Many Democrats, including Cleveland began to push for lower tariff rates - arguing that it would put more money into circulation and stimulate economic activity

  • Many tariff reformers became increasingly critical of the power of trusts and large corporations in dominating the economy at the expense of consumers and small producers

  • In 1888, Benjamin Harrison signed into law the highest tariff in the nation’s history

• The Currency Issue

  • The vibrant economic growth that characterized much of the last decades came to a screeching halt in 1983 because of the Panic of 1893

  • Many historians cite the inadequate amount of currency in circulation as one of the underlying weaknesses in the economy - the money supply did not have the possibility to grow as the economy expanded

Politics, Power, and Reform in Urban America

• Urban Politics and the Rise of Machine Politics

  • Politics came to be dominated by political machines - smooth running organizations whose purpose was to achieve and maintain political power, usually regardless of political ideology

  • NYC was dominated by the Democratic Party machine, run by party “bosses” and headquartered at Tammany Hall - most notable was Tammany Chief William Marcy Tweed 

  • Boss Tweed earned a reputation for corruption, however, under the Democratic Party, the city initiated massive municipal projects that provided jobs to thousands of immigrants

• The Campaign Against Prostitution

  • Religious-based activists saw the practice as sinful, whereas campaigners for gender equality saw a double standard in society’s acceptance of male extramarital sexual activities, and public health advocates saw this as spreading venereal disease, and anti-poverty activists saw this as reinforcing a cycle of poverty of working class women

  • These forced pressured local authorities to close red-light districts, and successfully lobbied for the Mann Act (1910) which cracked down on the transport of women across states to engage in prostitution

• The Temperance Campaign

  • This was especially popular among women who were troubled by the fact that their husbands often drank away their paychecks

  • Another reason for the movement’s popularity was that it complemented the anti-immigrant movement (against saloons were immigrants would drink)

Subject to Debate

• The Appropriateness of the Label: Robber Baron

  • Most big companies were incorporated and run by boards of directors, not one big money man, and moreover, the rising tide of wealth generated helped lift all boats through higher wages and better conditions 

• The Populist Movement - Reasonable or Irrational?

  • One one hand, some historians see the movement as a reasonable response to the dire situation farmers were in

  • However, others paint it as an irrational, emotional rebellion against the modern world, citing racism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the movement

• Corrupt Political Bosses and Immigrant Communities

  • Although there is truth to the narrative that bosses undermined democracy until reformers rose up to clean the political process, political machines provided the only safety net and jobs program for recently arrived immigrants

  • In some ways, the attacks on the political machines were attacks on the structure of the immigrant community