APUSH 14-16

Chapter 14: Forging the National Economy (1790-1860)

The Westward Movement

The life as a western pioneer was very grim. Pioneers were poor and stricken with disease and loneliness.

Shaping the Western Landscape

Fur trapping was a large industry in the Rocky Mountain area.  Each summer, fur trappers would meet with traders from the East to exchange beaver pelts for manufactured goods ("rendezvous" system).

George Caitlin: painter and student of Native American life who was one of the first Americans to advocate the preservation of nature; proposed the idea of a national park.

The March of Millions

By the mid-1800s, the population was doubling every 25 years.  By 1860, there were 33 states and the U.S. was the 4^th most populous country in the western world.

The increased population and larger cities brought about disease and decreased living standards.

In the 1840s and 1850s, more European immigrants came to the Americas because Europe seemed to be running out of room. Immigrants also came to America to escape the aristocratic caste and state church, and there was more opportunity to improve one's life. Transoceanic steamboats also reduced ocean travel times.

The Emerald Isle Moves West

In the 1840s, the "Black Forties," many Irish came to America because of a potato rot that induced a famine through Ireland.  Most of the Irish were Roman-Catholic.  They were politically powerful because they bonded together as one large voting body. They increased competition for jobs, so they were hated by native workers.  The Irish hated the blacks and the British.

The German Forty-Eighters

Between 1830 and 1860, many Germans came to America because of crop failures and other hardships (collapse of German democratic revolutions).

Unlike the Irish, the Germans possessed a modest amount of material goods when they came to America. The Germans moved west into the Middle West (Wisconsin).

The Germans were more educated than the Americans, and they were opposed to slavery.

Flare-ups of Antiforeignism

The massive immigration of the Europeans to America inflamed the prejudices of American nativists.  The Roman Catholics created an entirely separate Catholic educational system to avoid the American Protestant educational system.

The American party (Know-Nothing party) was created by native Americans who opposed the immigrants.

Many people died in riots and attacks between the American natives and the immigrants.

Creeping Mechanization

In 1750, steam was used with machines to take the place of human labor.  This enabled the Industrial Revolution in England.

It took a while for the Industrial Revolution to spread to America because soil in America was cheap and peasants preferred to grow crops as opposed to working in factories.  Because of this, labor was scarce until the immigrants came to America in the 1840s.  There was also a lack of investment money available in America. The large British factories also had a monopoly on the textile industry, with which American companies could not compete.

Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine

Samuel Slater: "Father of the Factory System" in America; escaped Britain with memorized plans for textile machinery; put into operation the first machine to spin cotton thread in 1791.

Eli Whitney: built the first cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was much more effective than slaves at separating the cotton seed from the cotton fiber. Its development affected the entire world. Because of the cotton gin, the South's production of cotton greatly increased and demand for cotton revived the demand for slavery.

New England became the industrial center of the Industrial Revolution in America because it had poor soil for farming; it had a dense population for labor; shipping brought in capital; seaports enabled the import of raw materials and the export of the finished products.

Marvels in Manufacturing

The War of 1812 created a boom of American factories and the use of American products as opposed to British imports. 

The surplus in American manufacturing dropped following the Treaty of Ghent in 1815.  The British manufacturers sold their products to Americans at very low prices.  Congress passed the Tariff of 1816 to protect the American manufacturers. 

In 1798, Eli Whitney came up with the idea of using machines (instead of people) to make each part of the musket. This meant that the musket's components would be consistently manufactured, and thus, could be interchanged. The principle of interchangeable parts caught on by 1850 and it became the basis for mass-production.

Elias Howe: invented the sewing machine in 1846. The sewing machine boosted northern industrialization. It became the foundation of the ready-made clothing industry.

Limited Liability: an individual investor only risks his personal investment in a company in the event of a bankruptcy.

Laws of "free incorporation": first passed in New York in 1848; enabled businessmen to create corporations without applying for individual charters from the legislature.

Samuel F. B. Morse: invented the telegraph.

Workers and "Wage Slaves"

Impersonal relationships replaced the personal relationships that were once held between workers.

Factory workers were forbidden by law to form labor unions to raise wages.  In the 1820s, many children were used as laborers in factories.  Jacksonian democracy brought about the voting rights of the laboring man.

President Van Buren established the ten-hour work day in 1840 (for federal employees on public projects).

Commonwealth vs. Hunt: Supreme Court ruled that labor unions were not illegal conspiracies, provided that their methods were honorable and peaceful.

Women and the Economy

Farm women and girls had an important place in the pre-industrial economy: spinning yarn, weaving cloth, and making candles, soap, butter, and cheese. 

Women were forbidden to form unions and they had few opportunities to share dissatisfactions over their harsh working conditions.

Catharine Beecher: urged women to enter the teaching profession.

The vast majority of working women were single.

Cult of Domesticity: a widespread cultural creed that glorified the customary functions of the homemaker.

During the Industrial Revolution, families were small, affectionate, and child-centered, which provided a special place for women.

Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields

The trans-Allegheny region, especially Indiana and Illinois, became the nation's breadbasket.

Liquor and hogs became the early western farmer's staple market items because both of these items were supported by corn.

John Deere: produced a steel plow in 1837 which broke through the thick soil of the West.

McCormick Reaper: a horse-drawn mechanical reaper that could cut and gather crops much faster than with previous methods (i.e. hand-picking). This enabled larger-scale farming.

Highways and Steamboats

Lancaster Turnpike: hard-surfaced highway that ran from Philadelphia to Lancaster; drivers had to pay a toll to use it.

In 1811, the federal government began to construct the National Road, or Cumberland Road.  It went from Cumberland, in western Maryland, to Illinois.  Its construction was halted during the War of 1812, but the road was completed in 1852.

Robert Fulton: installed a steam engine on a boat and thus, created the first steamboat. The steamboat played a vital role in the economic expansion of the West and South, via their extensive waterways.

"Clinton's Big Ditch" in New York

Governor DeWitt Clinton: governor of New York who lead the building of the Erie Canal that connected the Great Lakes with the Hudson River in 1825; the canal lowered shipping prices and decreased passenger transit time.

The Iron Horse

The most significant contribution to the expansion of the American economy was the railroad.  The first one appeared in 1828.

Railroads were initially opposed because of safety flaws and because they took away money from the Erie Canal investors.

Cables (Telegraphs), Clippers, and Pony Riders

In the 1840s and 1850s, American navel yards began to produce new ships called clipper ships.  These ships sacrificed cargo room for speed and were able to transport small amounts of goods in short amounts of time.  These ships were eventually superseded by steamboats after steamboats were improved.

The Pony Express was established in 1860 to carry mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.  The mail service collapsed after 18 months due to lack of profit.

The Transport Web Binds the Union

The transportation revolution was created because people in the east wanted to move west.

The South raised cotton for export to New England and Britain.  The West grew grain and livestock to feed factory workers in the East and in Europe.  The East made machines and textiles for the South and the West.  All of these products were transported using the railroad; the railroad linked America.

The Market Revolution

The market revolution transformed the American economy from one in which people subsisted on things they grew/created to one in which people purchased goods that were produced all over the country.

Chapter 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture (1790-1860)

Reviving Religion

Thomas Paine promoted the doctrines of Deism.  Deists relied on science rather than the Bible and they denied the divinity of Christ.  They did believe in a Supreme Being who had created a universe and endowed human beings with a capacity for moral behavior.

Unitarianism was derived from Deism.  Unitarians believed that God existed in only one person, and not the Trinity.  It appealed to mostly intellectuals.

The Second Great Awakening began in 1800. A wave of religious fervor swept over the country. Women became more involved in religion during the Second Great Awakening.

Peter Cartwright: a revivalist, traveling preacher who converted thousands to Christianity.

Charles Grandison Finney: one of the greatest revivalist preachers.

Denominational Diversity

The Second Great Awakening widened the gap between the societal classes and regions.  The more prosperous and conservative denominations in the East were little touched by revivalism. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians derived its members from the wealthier parts of society, while Methodists and Baptists came from less prosperous communities in the South and West.

The issue of slavery split the churches apart.

A Desert Zion in Utah

Joseph Smith: formed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in 1830 when he deciphered the Book of Mormon from some golden plates given to him by an angel; led the Mormons to Illinois.

After Joseph Smith was killed 1844, Brigham Young led the Mormons to Utah to avoid persecution.

Free Schools for a Free People

Tax-supported public education came about between 1825-1850. Americans eventually saw they had to educate their children because the children were the future.  The teachers of the schools were mostly men and did not know how to teach.  There were not very many schools in the U.S. because of their high costs to communities.

Horace Mann: campaigned effectively for a better school system.

Higher Goals for Higher Learning

The first state-supported universities showed up in the South in 1795.

The University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson.

Women's schools at the secondary level came in the 1820s because of Emma Willard. At the time, it was still widely believed that a women's place is in the home.

An Age of Reform

States gradually abolished debtors' prisons due to public demand.  Criminal codes in the states were being softened.  The number of capital offenses was being reduced.  Society began to think that prisons should reform as well as punish.

Dorothy Dix: traveled the country, visiting different asylums; released a report on insanity and asylums; her protests resulted in improved conditions for the mentally ill.

In 1828, the American Peace Society was formed.  It was led by William Ladd. 

Demon Rum - The "Old Deluder"

In the early 1800s, many people developed drinking problems due to social norms and hard/monotonous life. This included women, clergymen, and members of Congress.  The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826.  Its members persuaded people to stop drinking. 

Drinking decreased worker efficiency and threatened the family structure.

Neal S. Dow: thought that alcohol should be outlawed; "Father of Prohibition"; supported the Maine Law of 1851 which banned the manufacture and sale of liquor in Maine.  (The country banned the sale of alcohol with the 18^th amendment in 1918.)

Women in Revolt

In the early 19^th century, the role of women was to stay at home and be subordinate to her husband.  Women could not vote and when married, she could not retain her property.  Because of these things, women actually started to avoid marriage.

Gender differences were emphasized in the 19^th century because the market economy was separating women and men into distinct economic roles (women were viewed as artistic and the keepers of society's conscience, while men were viewed as strong but crude).

Feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York in a Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 to rewrite the Declaration of Independence to include women.

Wilderness Utopians

Several utopian communities were created in the early 1800s, but all of them ultimately failed.

Robert Owen: founded a communal society in New Harmony, Indiana in 1825 to seek human betterment.

The Dawn of Scientific Achievement

Americans were more interested in practical gadgets than in pure science.  Americans invented practical gadgets, but they borrowed and adapted scientific findings from the Europeans.

Medicine in America was still primitive by modern standards.  In the early 1840s, several American doctors and dentists successfully used laughing gas and ether as anaesthetics.

Artistic Achievements

Early American architects used a Federal Style that emphasized symmetry, balance, and restraint (columns, domes, pediments).

Between 1820 and 1850, a Greek revival in architecture came to America.  Most of the ideas of art and painting were taken from Europe.

"Dixie" was the battle hymn of the Confederates and was written in 1859.

The Blossoming of a National Literature

Before the mid-1800s, most literature in America was imported from Britain.

Following the War of 1812, American literature received a boost from the wave of nationalism and the arrival of romanticism to America.

Washington Irving: the first American to win international recognition as a literary figure.

James Fenimore Cooper: the first American novelist to gain world fame.

Trumpeters of Transcendentalism

The transcendentalist movement came about in the 1830s. The transcendentalists believed that knowledge transcends the senses and can't be found just by observation; knowledge comes from within the person.  Associated traits included self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: transcendentalist poet and philosopher; urged American writers to forget European traditions and write about American interests; wrote "The American Scholar," which was an intellectual declaration of independence.

Henry David Thoreau: transcendentalist who believed that people should ignore bodily desires and pursue truth through study and meditation.

Glowing Literary Lights

Not all poets and writers of the time were transcendentalists.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: one of the most famous poets to come from America; wrote for the wealthy class; was adopted by the less-cultured class.

Literary Individuals and Dissenters

Edgar Allan Poe: wrote with a pessimistic tone, unlike the literature at the time.

Herman Melville: wrote the novel Moby Dick. 

Portrayers of the Past

In the mid-1800s, American historians began to emerge.

Chapter 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy (1793-1860)

In the late 1700s, slavery was starting to die out, but the invention of the cotton gin prompted plantation owners to keep their slaves to support the larger cotton harvests.

"Cotton is King!"

Cotton accounted for half the value of all American exports after 1840. In the 1850s, Britain's most important manufactured item was cotton cloth. Britain imported 75% of its raw cotton from the South. Because of this, the South had a significant influence in Britain.

The Planter "Aristocracy"

The South was more of an oligarchy, a government ran by a few.  The government was heavily affected by the planter aristocracy. Southern aristocracy widened the gap between the rich and poor because the aristocrats made governmental decisions in their favor.

The Southern plantation wife commanded the female slaves.

Slaves of the Slave System

The economic structure in the South became increasingly monopolistic.  The Southern economy was very dependent on cotton, which made the economy unstable. Many plantation owners over-speculated in land and slaves, causing them fall into debt.

The White Majority

The white population of the South was as follows (from smallest to largest): a) Wealthy slave owners. b) Less wealthy slave owners. These people didn't own a majority of the slaves, but they made up a majority of the masters. c) Non-slave-holding whites (3/4 of South white population). These whites supported slavery because they wanted to eventually own slaves and achieve the "American dream" of moving up in society.  The less prosperous non-slave-holding whites were known as "poor white trash" and "hillbillies."  Civilization hadn't reached mountain whites who lived in the valley of the Appalachian range. They supported Abraham Lincoln's Union party.

Free Blacks:  Slaves Without Masters

Many free blacks settled in New Orleans. 

Free blacks were generally not liked in the North and South. In the South, free blacks were prohibited from having certain jobs and forbidden from testifying against whites in court.  They were known as the "3^rd Race." 

White southerners liked the black as an individual, but they hated the race.  The white northerner professed to like the race, but disliked the individual.

Plantation Slavery

Because the price of "black ivory" (slaves) was so high, slaves were smuggled into the South even though legal importation of African slaves into American ended in 1808.  Most slaves were the offspring of slaves already in America.

Planters regarded slaves as major investments.

Life Under the Lash

"Black Belt": region of the South where most slaves were concentrated; stretched from South Carolina and Georgia into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Blacks managed to sustain family life in slavery. 

Blacks formed their own religions from a mixture of Christian and African elements.

Responsorial: style of preaching in which the congregation responds to the preacher with remarks of "amen."

The Burdens of Bondage

Slaves were not permitted to read because reading brought ideas and ideas brought discontent.

Slavery in the South was known as the "peculiar institution."

Nat Turner's Rebellion: southern rebellion against slavery led by Nat Turner; the rebellion was defeated.

Enslaved Africans aboard the slave ship Amistad rebelled and took control of the ship in 1839. The ship landed in Long Island, but the Africans were eventually returned to Sierra Leone.

Early Abolitionism

American Colonization Society: founded in 1817; focused on transporting blacks back to Africa.

Republic of Liberia: founded in 1822 as a place for former slaves.

By 1860, all southern slaves were born in America, and many did not have a desire to return to Africa.

The Second Great Awakening inspired many abolitionists to speak out against the sins of slavery.

Theodore Dwight Weld: abolitionist who spoke against slavery; wrote the pamphlet American Slavery As It Is (1839) which made arguments against slavery; went to Lane Theological Seminary.

Radical Abolitionism

William Lloyd Garrison: wrote a militantly anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator; publicly burned a copy of the Constitution.

American Anti-Slavery Society: founded in 1833 to oppose slavery.

Sojourner Truth: freed black woman who fought for black emancipation and women's rights.

Frederick Douglass: black abolitionist who lectured for abolitionism; looked to politics to end slavery; published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

The South Lashes Back

From 1831-1832, Virginia defeated numerous emancipation bills. Other states followed suit, prohibiting all forms of emancipation. This series of emancipation setbacks was known as the nullification crisis of 1832. It silenced the voice of white southern abolitionism.

The Southerners argued that slavery was supported by the Bible, and that slavery was good for the Africans because it introduced them to Christianity.

The Gag Resolution required all anti-slavery appeals to be tabled without debate in the House of Representatives.

In 1835, the government ordered the southern postmasters to destroy abolitionist material due to anti-abolitionist mobbing and rioting at a postal office in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Abolitionist Impact in the North

Abolitionists were, for a long time, unpopular in many parts of the North.  The southern planters owed much money to the northern bankers. If the Union collapsed, these debts would not be repaid. Additionally, New England textile mills were supplied with cotton raised by the slaves. If slavery was abolished, then the cotton supply would be cut off, resulting in unemployment.

"Free soilers" opposed extending slavery to the western territories.