Unit 4: Jacksonian Period, Manifest Destiny, & the 1850s

The evolving concept of american democracy & Andrew Jackson’s Shaping of the Presidency

• Changing Economy in the 1820’s

  • Factory Systems →

    • Samuel Slater → British but comes to America in the early 1800’s

      • brings knowledge of textile mills and the understanding of technology

      • Beleives that streams and bodies of water can be used to create energy to run textile mills in America

    • Mills are created and are all located in the Northern States

    • US has an abundance of natural resources like:

      • water

      • cotton - new cash crop

        • can now be sold to factories and out of the country

    • Not as good at making cloth as the British as the British were still #1 for finer clothes

      • needed to find a cheap labor force:

        • young un-married women who had no economic opportunity outside of their households

    • Henry Clays American System created protective tariffs so that people would buy from these textile mills in the upper New England area

  • Eli Whitney → creates interchangable parts

    • creates the cotton engine(gin)

      • revolutionizes cotton production

      • once cotton is picked, you still need to separate the cotton from the seed and it is very labor intensive

      • demand for cotton increases and so southern states grow more of it and slavery is even more important

  • Transportation →

    • Robert Fulton → created the idea of a steam engine and put it on a boat to create steam boats which makes it much more efficent for transportation

    • Canals are being built during this time period to allow more transportation for steam boats

      • built by state funding to connect natural bodies of water to connect regions

        • part of Henry Clay’s American System

  • Market Revolution → connecting all the regions because of the innovations in technology

    • helps to grow internal economy in America and helps to reduce buying from places like Britian

• Population

  • Country is growing and population is more dense

  • Urban population(cities) is growing

    • more cities are emerging but majority of the people still live in rural areas

    • by 1800 5.3 million people in cities

    • by 1840 17 million people in cities

    • specifically in cities in the North where textile factories are

  • American Generation

    • 1824 - Jefferson and Adam die on the same day

    • Founding fathers are no longer a part of America and the population is now truly an American generation

    • One of the factors that Henry Clays American System was so supported

  • Imigration increases from countries in Eruope

    • mainly for economic reasons

• Politics

  • Universal White Male Suffrage →If you are a white male you can vote even if you don’t own land

  • most states have removed the requirment to own land in order to vote

  • occurs first in the Western States

    • Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois

  • want to see the average common folk voting

  • changes the ideal of democracy

1828 Presidential Election

• A. Jackson v J.Q. Adams v

• J.C. Calhoun(current vice-president) wants to remain vice-president

• ‘Common Man’ - Jackson is wealthy and owns lands and slaves but wants to be seen as the man’s ‘common man’

• A. Jackson wins majority of the electoral votes and over ½ of the popular votes in this election

• Opens up the white house and has a party to celebrate winning the election

• this creates the Democratic party - the true democracy

• creates a cabinet →

  • ‘Spoils System’ or Rotation in Office

    • fires his enemies and hires his friends

    • regularly fired and rehired people in his cabinet if he didn’t like what they were doing or how they were behaving

  • ‘Kitchen Cabinet’

    • newspaper people, politicians, friends from the west

    • people who got their names from coming to the white house through the kitchen door

    • occured when he ignored his cabinet and asked advice from the ‘common man’

Indian Removal Act (1830)

• Jackson agreed with the state of Georgia that Native American land should be opened up to the white man

• remove tribes from their land and move them to indian territory on the other side of the mississippi river

• 5 civilized tribes → five tribes that tried to asimilate into the white culture

  • cherokee

  • creek

  • chickasaw

  • seminole

  • choctaw

• Trail of Tears → forced to leave their native land and traveled through snow, hundreds of miles without proper supplies

  • 60,000 forcfilly relocated and thousands die en-route or shortly after arrival

• some historians say that Jackson was just trying to protect the Native Americans by moving them away and preserving their culture

The Brink of Civil War - Nulification Crisis (1832-1833)

• Vice President and the President don’t get along

• Calhoun wanted to protect slavery as slaves became a minority

• high tax on cloth used to clothe slaves

• Calhoun wanted to create nulification so states could ignore any law that they considered unconstitutional

  • reamergance of the Kentucky Resolutions

• Divided colonies as the southern states wanted nulification while the northern states beleived that it would ruin the country

• Calhoun arote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest

• Jackson states his beleif as he was entirely against nulification

• 1832 - State of South Carolina nulified the high tax and said that if Jackson tried to stop them, that they would withdraw from the union

• Force Bill

  • approval to use military force if South Carilina does not remove their nulification and if they try to leave the union

    • Jackson issued a proclomation to try and get them to stop the nulification and showed that if they tried to leave the union, then a war would occur

    • a union of people not a union of people

      • South Cariliona could not leave the union or it would cause a war as it was considered a removal from the union by force

• Compromise Tariff of 1833 → Clay passed a bill that largley decreased the tax on cloth and then SOuth Carilina removed their

Clay wants to try and be president as he does not like Jackson

Jackson beleived that the bank of the United States was corrupt

• he thought it was unconstitutional

• gave too much power to private bankers over the country as a whole

• Biddle was the man in charge of the bank

• bank was using the money to pay for people to get into congress

Clay and Biddle created a bill to protect the bank for another 12 years

Jackson vetoed the recharter bill and made the bank the issue of the re-election

Henry Clay beleieved that Jackson was trampeleing on the US Constitution and used it in his election

1832 - Jackson re-won the election

• Biddle wants to show Jackson to stay out of this

• Biddle made it hard for the averge man and business owners by increasing taxes and declining loans

Jackson vetoes 12 bills in congress while Madison was the 2nd highest and only vetoed 7 times

• Jackson vetoes anything that isn’t in the interest of the common man while the presidents before him were cautios and only used it if they considered it unconstitutioanl

‘Killing the Bank’

• Jackson pulled deposits out of the bank which destroyed the national bank and payed off the national debt

• put all the national money into state banks

Pet Banks

• negative term by Jacksons enemies on his view of removing the national bank

Banks had to loan money to make money and the loan was handed out in paper cirtificates

paper cirtificates were also handed out when people bought land

Inflation occures because of the paper cirtificates

‘Specie Circular’

• If you want to buy land from the national government, you have to pay in hard cash not in paper certificates

• people with paper certificates go back to the bank and try to get the hard cash so they can buy land

Bank Runs

• banks had to close because they could not keep up

The Panic of 1837

• second economic crisis that the country faces

• Martin Van Buren replaces Jackson as the new president

  • serves his presidency during this economic decline

The Whig Party

• Anti-Jacksons

  • beleive that Jackson is a king and a tyrant

• W.H. Harrisson - war hero who won a battle during the war of 1812

  • wins the election

• goes into the inogeration underdressed for the weather to show he is strong

  • gets nemonia and dies 30 days in

• Tyler is the vice president and has to step up

  • doesn’t have.a very successful presidency

The age of reform → 1800-1848

The Second Great Awakening → 1800-1840

• succession of religious revivals that remade americas religious landscape

• Many preachers a traveling from church to church and don’t stay in one place

  • traveled mostly to rural areas to go to revivals as they popped up

• more people are flocking to urban cities

• American generation - no longer the founding fathers (moral and philisophical values) and americans now want to get in touch with their religious roots

• Religion becomes a haven for some of the people that are struggeling with the changes taking place in Jacksonian era

• Cane Ridge, Kentucky is seen as the first revival that sparks this awakening

  • 1 in every 10 people in Kentucky was present in a revival

• white males, white women, and free african americans are all present

  • provides a space for previously marginalized groups

• philosphy is that everyone deserves a change while the original philosphy revolved around pre-determined

• emotional, passionate revivals

  • fainting, crying, speeking in tounges, etc.

• in 1831, churches across the nation reported about a 100,000 converts

• one of the most inclusive movements

• did not have to have a preaching license to preach

Charles Grandison Finney → former lawyer that converted and became a preacher

• extremley popular internarant preacher that travels from place to place

• says that it is up to the individual when they want to recieve forgivness and no longer beleives in the alter call

• had an anxious bench → people that were torn between asking for forgivnes would sit on this bench right next to Finney

• critized by established churches mostly for breaking away from the statu quo

• tried to expand the role of women in these revival meetings

Revival allowed african americans to create their own churches

Joseph Smith → beleives that he is seeing a series of visions in the early 1820’s

• told that the christian denominations have straied from the truth

• gold tablets have the real truth on them

• given acess to reading what is on these gold tablets

• Smith dictates these writings to friends

• Creates the book of Mormon

Latter-Day Saints → derogitory name for Mormons

• mostly located in New York

• run out of town and is the start of the westward migration for Mormons

The Search for an American Zion → eventual promised land for Mormons

• go to Ohio but so many people flock to Ohio that they are run out of town

• move to Missouri but are once again run out; partly because it occured during the Panic of 1812

• head to Navu, Illinois

  • Smith is advocating for plural marriage

    • followers become wary of Smith

  • followers turn on Smith with the issue of plural marriage

  • Smith flees but returns and is shot and killed by a mob

• followers moved again to Salt Lake City, Utah

  • propose State of Desserai

  • majority of followers still reside here

Millerites → William Miller is a farmer from Upstate NY and interrpreates the end of the world in the bible to mean that the world will end in 1843

• Becomes known as the Great Dissapointment

• Miller losses credibility

• some followers break off and create their own religion

The Shakers → first experiment in Communal living

• share property and items

• relied on getting people to convert to their cause

• beleived that men and women should be seperated at all times

  • made it hard to grow the religion

• when people turned 21 they could stay or leave

• primarily agriculturally based

• Nathaniel Hawthorn observed behabior(writter of the Scarlett Letter)

• Sopontanious dancing untill it was converted to choriagraphed and then back to spontanious in teh 1840s

• Was not a huge community

  • small community in rural Maine and is the only known Shakers community to still exist

Upstate New York → ‘Burned-over district’

• Mormons, Shakers, Revivals, and Antislavery churches

John Humphrey Noyes → starts the Oneida Community

• originally wants to be a preacher but decides that the informality of the 2nd great awakening is odd

• beleives that humans can achieve perfectionism

• beleieved they could be perfect once they converted

• community established in 1841 in Upstate New York

• Every man and every woman is married to each other

• each memeber of the community that was being repremanded was put in front of the community and looked down upon

• beleive that men and women are equal

• people who convert are in a state of sinlessness

  • no confession

• abandoned in 1881

George Ripley → originally a minister

• founds Brook Farm in 1841 with his wife and 15 followers

• physical labor → condition of well being and good mental health

  • 10 hours in the summer

  • 8 hours in the winter

• intellectual community → plays, music

• Nathaniel Hawthorne is a part of this

  • becomes disalusioned and talks badly about it in one of its books

• very good school system

• 1846 - fire destroyes the main part of the farm and religion is never the same

Transcendentalism → mainly in New England

• extremley disaludioned with organized relgion

• philisophical, political, and literature movement

• beleive that man is perfectable and naturally good

• man has freedom of will

• nature is good

• when man goes into nature and treates it good, then he will meet God

• man must follow his own heart

• self-reliant

• extremley distrought at the Manufacturing Industry

  • concerned that nature is going to be taken away from them

• sceptical of capitalism

• against west-ward expansion movement

Ralph Waldo Emerson → Dean of the movement

• rails against Manufactuing industry

• emphasized the reliablity of the individual sole

• believed that the time had come for American to start its own intellectual movements

Birth of American Literature

• printers are better and can print quicker

• publishing offices are popping up

• magizines grow in popularity and writes can publish short stories in these

• novels that come out by chapter each week in magizines become popular

Herman Melville → takes trip on the whale ship and enspires Moby Dick

Nathaniel Hawthorne → writer of The Scarlett Letter and also writes short stories

• vivid paintings of New England

Edgar Allan Poe → gains international fame for stories and poems

• the telltale heart

Temperance Movement → 1826, temperance society created to get people to obstain from alchol

• women become the driving force behind the temperance movement because they are the ones that suffered if a man drank too much

  • became a staple of everyday household

    • average man drinks 7 gallons of alchol in a year

    • some households don’t have clean drinking water so they drink alcohol

• some beleived that it was created to target the lower class

• in the 1840s, americans drank ½ of what they had drank in the 1820s

Healthcare Reform →

• Dorothea Dix → sickly child that becomes a tutor

  • told to go to Europe to look at her medical problems

  • sees that Europeans are building special buildings for people with mental issues

    • called Lunatic Hospitals

  • before these facilities, people were thrown into general population prisons because they had nowehere else to go

  • contends that our prison system needs to be reformed

    • men and women need to be put into separte facilities

  • asylums and institutions established in places like New England and North Carolina

  • pioneer in the field of nursing which is just starting to kick off

Education Reform →

• Horace Mann →

  • advocated for universal public education for all

  • in the beginning, it was the rich people that could get a formal education

  • Mann did not get a high quality education and beleives that the teachers he had were not fully equpit to deliver his education

  • beleives that american cannot remain ignorant

  • beleives that education must be payed for by the people of the US

  • education needs to be free of any religious influence

  • education needs to be provided by well equipt teachers

  • establishes the board of education

• Bronson Alcott →

  • adds art, music, physical education, nature study all added to education

  • pushes against the educationoal current

  • father of Louise May Alcott who wrote Little Women

Anti-slavery → beleive that slavery is immoral and socially wrong but are not advocating for equality among races

• many of these advocates that enslaved people should be free

  • enslaves should be payed or release gradualy

• want emancipated slaves to be sent back to Africa and do not want them to be a part of america

• American Colonization Socity: John Marshall, Henry Clay, James Madison, etc.

  • want to send free slaves to Monrovian in Africa

  • very few free slaves go back

The Abolition Movement →

• William Lloyd Garrison starts this movement

• Jan 1, 1831, published the first copy of his newspaper and advocates for the freedom and staying of african americans

• passivist and beleives that it should not be violent

• attempts to convert peopple with moral persuasion by trying to show them how slavery is wrong

• one of the earliest followers is Fredrigh Douglas

• Frederick Douglass → lecter for the Massachusets Anti-Slavery Society

  • Douglass beleives that slavery will not go away without violence

Womens Rights → women are upset that african americans are getting all the attention

• beleive that they should have the right to vote, etc

• Seneca Falls → womens declaration of independence

  • 68 women adn 32 men sign this declaration

• movement continues into the 20th century

The Consequences of Manifest Destiny

• Americans beleive that it is their right and thier destiny to move west

• slogan from a journalist, John O’Sullivan, that claimed it was the manifest destiny of the power and beleived that the country needed to grow

  • by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continetnt which Providence had given us for the development of the great experiment

• greatest support in Northern and Western States

  • large % supports expansion

• The Whig party was against manifest destiny

The Texas Issue →

• Mexico is an independent country after defeating the Spanish by the 1830s

• Texas is not very populated and only a few native mexicans and tribes live their

• Mexican government beleives that they need to populate Texas

  • needs to come up with incentives:

    • open the territory up for settelment and let Americand live here

      • give emprearios (large mexican land grants)

      • you have to become a citizen of Mexico

      • You have to convert to the Catholic religion

      • Slaves are not allowed

• By 1835 35,000 Americans have populated Texas

  • don’t see themselves as Mexicans, don’t convert to Catholisism, and some still bring slaves

• By 1836, Americans argue that they need to overthrow and establish their own government

War for Independence → starts in 1836

• The Alamo is just a small portion of this event but starts the war cry

• “Remeber the Alamo”

• Government of Mexico will eventually surrender

• The first thing that Americans will do once they acheive freedom from Mexico is to ask for statehood

  • they want to be anexxed and join the US

  • ask multiple times

    • President Andrew Jackson is in power whent they ask the first time

      • Jackson says no

    • Van Buren is next and refuses to touch the issue

  • beleived that bringing this issue of statehood up to congress would lead to political unrest

  • Abolition movement is ocurring during this time

• Abolitionist Petitios → Abolitionist movements are creating petitons and taking it to congress to bring ths issue up for debate

• Flood of abolitionist petitions coming into congress to the point where they are not getting anything else done

• Gag Rule → put in place by members of congress that tabled all topics of slavery and stopped the debate of said topic

  • put in place in 1836 and lasts untill about 1850

    • vast majority of politicians are not strong abolitionists and don’t care about these problems

  • Because of this reslolution, the annexation of Texas cannot be brought up

    • was the Repuclic of Texas

James K. Polk’s Aggressive Foreign Policy →

• Polk is a democrat and a follower of Jackson

• Elected in 1844 and is a “dark horse”

• Polk ran against Henry Clay (part of the Whig party)

• Polk is in support of annexating Texas and also supports expanding

  • wants to take Oregon - 54 -40 or fight (line of latitude) is his campaign speech

• Enforcment of Monro Doctrine → Polk supports this doctrine and beleives that all of North America is our land

• Polk negotiates and gets is to the 49 line - the compromise line

  • agressive in his push that military force should be used to gain this land

    • this causes the British to step back

• 1846 Treaty grants the 49 degree line

  • Victory for Polk

• Remember Texas

  • President Tyler annexxes Texas because he knows the Polk will do it

• Slidell’s Mission → sent by Polk to see if the Mexican Government will sell the US California

  • Mexico says they won’t sell

  • they only way to get California is by going to war

• Causes dispute of where the southern boundary line is drawns which leads to disputed territory

• Polk talks one of his generals and sends them to the newaces river and then decides to march the soldiers onto the other side of the river

  • soldiers are killed and congress declares war

The Mexican -American War (1846-1848)

• American strategy →

  • Gain California & New Mexico

    • gain California without almost any violence

  • Unpopularity of the War →

    • Lincoln’s “spot resolution”

      • knows that Polk caused the squrmish to expand territory and knows that the blood was spilled in disputed terrioty

    • Whig criticism

      • David Wilmot

      • Wilmot Proviso → in this war, whatever land is gained should not allow slavery

• Impact of the War

  • Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty →

    • formerly ends the war

    • Mexican cession → name given to terrioty that America gets from the war

California Gold Rush →

• Discovery occurs in 1848

• Causes a massive population boom

  • Within one year of cession, their are enough people in California to ask for statehood

• Diverse population → mexicans, americans, chinese

• Consequences →

  • California wants to be a free state

  • Southern members are against it

  • Sectionalism → people are viewing this from their own lense and not seeing whats good for the whole country

  • Causes tensions to increase

• Henry Clay says this is tearing the country apart

Compromise of 1850

• California is granted statehood as a free state

• Popular Sovereignty is allowed in the Utah and New Mexico territory

  • is population vote for slavery then they will have slavery and if they vote against then their won’t be slavery

• No more public sale of slaves in the capitol but slavery can still exist in the capitol

• Stronger/ Stricter fugitive Slave law

  • Northern Citizencs must assist in the return of run-away slaves