TCC HIST 1483 UNIT 3

Garrison, William Lloyd

(1805-1879) Editor and anti-slavery advocate who published his own newspaper, Liberator, beginning January 1, 1831, and called for "immediate emancipation" which became known as abolition. Representative of the extremist attitudes on slavery which emerged in the 1830s in the North and in the South and of the evangelical perfectionism spreading across the North, Garrison saw slavery as sinful and therefore an evil which had to be eliminated without compromise. This did not mean that he thought slavery could be abolished overnight, but he did want people to recognize that its existence was intolerable and therefore gradualism and colonization needed to be replaced with emancipation and legal equality for blacks. A moralist and Christian perfectionist who also made a rational case against slavery, Garrison developed his anti-slavery position after he went to work in 1828 as an assistant editor for Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker who in 1821 began publishing his anti-slavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation. After starting the Liberator in 1831, Garrison also founded that year the New England Anti-Slavery Society and then in 1833 helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society. The movement soon suffered from disagreements. Other abolitionists considered Garrison to be an extremist for at least three reasons. First, he favored not only legal equality for blacks but also suggested social equality when he advocated their admission to anti-slave societies and recruited blacks such as Frederick Douglass as speakers for the movement. Second, Garrison came out for women's rights and full equality for women within the anti-slavery movement. Third, Garrison came to oppose political action because the government supported slavery (under property rights) and used force. Garrison developed a doctrine of "nonresistance" and began to reject all laws and governments. In 1838 he founded the New England Non-Resistance Society and broke with other abolitionists who favored political action such as Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore Dwight Weld, Frederick Douglass, and James G. Birney, who became the presidential candidate for the abolitionist Liberty party in 1840. Garrison's goal was to keep emotions stirred up about slavery, and this he did, thereby creating conditions which helped lead to civil war. He is significant for representing the problem of how to deal with great wrong-doing. Should an absolutist position be taken, and if it is, should it involve arousing people's emotions because without that little happens in a democracy?

Douglass, Frederick

(1817-1895) Abolitionist, writer, orator who was the son of a black slave and a white father and became one of the most influential advocates for the abolition of slavery and equal rights for blacks. Born a slave and named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, he took the name Douglass after escaping to Massachusetts from Baltimore in 1838. After giving a speech at an anti-slavery society convention in 1841, Douglass immediately became a lecturer for the society. In 1845 he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and then spent two years in England where he collected enough money to buy his freedom upon returning to the US. Breaking with Garrison over the issue of political action, Douglass started his own newspaper in Rochester, New York, the North Star. He continued to advocate abolition and then citizenship, suffrage, and civil rights for blacks, helping to raise black regiments during the Civil War partly because he thought white society would find it difficult to deny rights to black Union veterans. He is representative of the leading role which blacks took in the movement to end slavery and gain civil rights for all.

Exposition and Protest

(Also known as South Carolina Exposition and Protest) Essay by John C. Calhoun, published anonymously in December 1828, advocating two doctrines, that of Interposition (nullification) and that of the Concurrent Majority, as means by which the people of the various states could protect themselves from harmful national action. Calhoun, then Vice-president of the US in the Jackson administration and anxious to become president, wrote the Exposition in reaction to the Tariff of Abominations (1828) which was extremely unpopular in the South. Following the line of argument in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, Calhoun contended that the Union was a social compact of the states and that the true sovereign bodies in the United States were the people of the various states. State conventions, representing the people of the states, had ratified the Constitution, and they had the power to declare national legislation null and void within any given state. The national government had only those powers delegated to it by the states. Among those powers was the power to enact tariffs but only, Calhoun argued, to raise revenues for the common good. Because the Tariff of 1828 was harmful to the South, southern states could declare it null and void within their borders. Calhoun called this the Doctrine of Interposition. The Doctrine of the Concurrent Majority argued that true democracy reflected the will of all the people, not simply the majority. Therefore, people in the states who constituted a minority should be able to protect their rights and interests through state action. This was a response to Southern concerns about the possibility of the national government acting contrary to southern interests on other matters such as slavery. These ideas would contribute to the coming of the secession crisis of 1832-1833 and ultimately to the Civil War in 1861.

Kitchen Cabinet

A group of friends and unofficial advisers with whom President Jackson regularly consulted. This group, which included a number of western newspapermen, met informally with Jackson during his first administration and advised him concerning presidential policy. During this period (roughly 1829-31), there was so much factionalism in his official cabinet that Jackson stopped holding cabinet meetings and formed the Kitchen Cabinet. Members included Amos Kendall, Andrew J. Donelson, and William B. Lewis. Two of the official cabinet members, Martin Van Buren and John Eaton, also met with the Kitchen Cabinet. At first, Duff Green, editor of the United States Telegraph, was a member of the Kitchen Cabinet, but he was replaced by Francis J. Blair in 1830. In the spring of 1831, the cabinet was reorganized (a result of the treatment of Mrs. Eaton), and role of the Kitchen Cabinet was diminished.

Godey's Lady's Book

A popular (but expensive) 19th century magazine published by Louis A. Godey from Philadelphia for 68 years (1830-1898). By the Civil War, Godey's Lady's Book was the most successful women's magazine in the U.S., with a circulation of 150,000 and an estimated million readers living all across the nation, from the eastern cities to the Pacific Northwest and the cotton kingdom of the South. Each issue was contained the latest fashions, information concerning etiquette, raceipts, patterns (including an illustration and pattern for a garment to be sewn at home), house plans, crafts projects, helpful hints, health advice,sheet music for piano, and short stories, poetry, book notices, and articles by some of the most well known authors in America all designed to inform "women" how to be "ladies." (Essentially, Godey's Lady's Book argued that womoan's sphere was in the home.) As the regions became increasingly politically estranged, Godey's remained a unifying force among elite women and those aspiring to that status. Literary editor Sarah Josepha Hale promoted such national concerns as the preservation of Mount Vernon and the importance of advanced education for young women.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

A series of seven formal political debates between the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, and Democratic candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858 which discussed the issue of slavery. Although Lincoln lost the election, these debates launched him into national prominence which eventually led to his election as President in 1860. In responding to Lincoln's charges concerning the weakness of his stand on slavery in Freeport, Douglas issued the Freeport Doctrine, which alienated the Southern wing of his party and ultimately contributed to his defeat in 1860.

Compromise of 1850

Also known as the Omnibus Bill of 1850, it was a response to the national secession crisis of 1850 which grew out of the question of whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories acquired from Mexico at the end of the Mexican War (1846-1848) and the need to organize California in the wake of the Gold Rush of 1849. When northerners, led by the Free Soilers and the Young Guard, advocated the Wilmot Proviso and banning slavery from these territories, the South threatened secession. The bill admitted California as a free state, organized the rest of the Mexican Cession into the New Mexico and Utah territories without restrictions on slavery, settled the Texas-New Mexico border in favor of New Mexico with a $10 million payment to Texas, abolished the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia, and passed a new, more vigorous Fugitive Slave Law (1850). The compromise was adopted only with great difficulty. Initially proposed by Henry Clay as a single bill, it was finally passed in the summer of 1850 under the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois who built majorities for the various parts of the bill and passed it piecemeal. The debate involved some of the greatest and last efforts of the political leaders of the first half of the century including John C. Calhoun's last speech (read for him), Daniel Webster's famous "Seventh of March" speech, and Henry Clay's efforts. Contributing to the bill's passage was the sudden death of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, as his successor, President Millard Fillmore, supported the compromise. Hailed as "a final solution" of all sectional problems, the compromise postponed the Civil War a decade but did not solve the underlying problems. Disciples of Calhoun in the South and abolitionists and members of the Free Soil party in the North denounced the compromise as a betrayal of principle, but for the moment they were in a minority.

Gadsden Purchase

An area of southern New Mexico and Arizona which was bought by the U.S. from Mexico in 1854 in order to build a transcontinental railroad linking the Deep South with the Pacific Coast. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War and set the U.S.-Boundary was based on a faulty land survey and following the signing of the Treaty, a dispute arose between the U.S. and Mexico concerning the exact border. The location of the border was of major concern primarily because the Mesilla Valley appeared to be the best route for a southern transcontinental railroad to the Pacific, and its ownership was in dispute. Therefore, Pierce had the American minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, negotiate the purchase. By the terms of the purchase, the U.S. paid $10 million for approximately 30,000 square miles of land (approximately the size of Pennsylvania) which lies south of the Gila River from El Paso to California, thereby aiding the resolution of the border dispute and paving the way for the construction of a southern railroad to the Pacific.

evangelicalism

An emotional form of Christianity which emerged in the 18th century and stressed personal rebirth and salvation.

The Child at Home

An example of ante bellum children's fiction written by John S. C. Abbott, which was designed to teach children values by emotional messages and heavy moralizing.

boom and bust economy

An unstable economy characterized by periods of growth followed by periods of depression.

Fremont, John C.

Army officer and politician who explored the West in the 1840s and was a presidential candidate in the 1850s. (Topo left, Freemont, middle, his explorations, right, his flag)

Gettysburg

Battle fought in southern Pennsylvania between July 1 and July 3, 1863 in which Union forces under Meade turned back an invading Confederate force under Lee, which marked the turn of the military tide in the East. Following his victory at Chancellorsville in May, 1863, General Lee received approval from his government to invade the north. Lee hoped an invasion would fuel the northern peace movement and disrupt the Union war effort. The battle at Gettysburg was the largest ever fought in North America, and is generally considered to be the turning point of the American Civil War. The Confederate army number 75,000, while the combined Federal strength was more than 90,000. As a result of this costly battle (there were some 51,000 casualties in all, killed, wounded, and captured/missing, with more than 7,000 dead on the battlefield), Confederate forces retreated South, there hopes of carrying the war to the North at an end. The Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive engagement in that it arrested the Confederates' second and last major invasion of the North, destroyed their offensive strategy, and forced them to fight a defensive war in which the inadequacies of their manufacturing capacity and transportation facilities doomed them to defeat.

Battle of Bull Run

Battle fought on July 21, 1861, at Manassas Creek, where Union troops under McDowell were routed by Confederate troops under P.G.T. Beauregard.

Antietam

Battle in September, 1862, following Lee's invasion of Maryland which proved the most costly day of the war in terms of soldiers killed and wounded.

Communitarianism

Belief in perfectibility which inspired the establishment of a variety of secular and religious utopian communities between 1825 and 1850. These communities shared several assumptions which defined them as communitarian. One of these was to restore the individual to a healthy whole and truly free state by constructing a society in a rural setting where all would engage in both mental and physical activities, work would be shared, and the society organized on a familial basis. Second, the belief that the innate goodness of people would move them to give up worldly goods and live in cooperative communities dedicated to the good of all. Third, belief in the possibility of the creation of ideal societies by eliminating individual selfishness while striving for individual freedom. These communities, such as Brook Farm in Massachusetts, New Harmony in Indiana, and Oneida in New York, were often quite successful but usually not for long. They are significant as indications of the idealism of the early 19th century and the desire to reform society. They also reveal that Americans have cooperated in community action and communal efforts in a variety of ways at different times in U.S. history. Cooperative efforts as well as rugged individualism have built the US.

Dartmouth College v. Woodward

Case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1819. One of several landmark decisions under Chief Justice John Marshall, this case specifically concerned the Republican-dominated New Hampshire legislature's attempt to transform Dartmouth College from a private institution controlled by the Federalists into a state college by altering its charter. Broadly, the case concerned the power of legislatures to regulate corporations. When Marshall ruled that the legislature could not change Dartmouth's corporate charter, he gave all corporate charters the legal status of contracts and put them beyond the reach of politics. Once a state legislature had granted a charter to a corporation, it could no longer regulate that corporation or interfere with the privileges provided by the charter. Marshall thereby strengthened the legal standing of contracts and increased the power of corporations. It was a decision in accord with the theory that property rights are a form of natural rights.

"The Crime Against Kansas"

Charles Sumner's speech of 1856 which attacked the South as violent and immoral. The personal attacks made by Sumner (1811-1874) on the elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler (1796-1857) led his nephew, Preston Brooks (1819-1857), to attack Sumner on the floor of the Senate Chamber.

Erie Canal

Canal built between 1819 and 1825, running 364 miles from Albany, New York on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York on Lake Erie. Built by the state of New York (for $7.5 million) at the urging of Governor DeWitt Clinton, it is an example of the involvement of the states in encouraging, funding, and constructing internal improvements such as roads, canals, railroads, and harbors which brought about a transportation revolution in the early 19th century in the US. The canal opened the interior of the US, tying the coast to the Great Lakes by a water route which made New York City a major port and upper New York state an area of urban, commercial development, exemplary of the new market revolution sweeping the US and promoting an age of opportunistic materialism, self-reliance, and evangelical Protestantism which promoted moral self-discipline and economic self-reliance (including the identification of wage labor with being a free man) as an act of religious faith. The Erie Canal was immensely successful and profitable and set off a canal boom across the nation which lasted about twenty years. It shows how important transportation was for the US in creating the national market economy and bringing industrialization and how economic growth and the westward movement occurred in the US as a result not of pure laissez faire economics and private investment alone but of government action and expenditure, especially by the states.

Impressment Act

Confederate measure passed in 1863 which allowed government agents to requisition food, horses, wagons, and other necessary war materials, often for only about half their market price.

Harrison Land Act

Congressional land act of May 10, 1800 which provided for a more liberal land policy in accord with western interests to enable more people to buy land in the West more easily. A model until 1820 for a series of land acts, the Harrison Act embodied a compromise between Eastern interests and Western interests. The Eastern position, as reflected in Alexander Hamilton's report on lands of 1790-91, emphasized using the lands to raise revenue and ignored the orderly survey of the land called for by the Ordinance of 1785. These positions tended to favor Eastern land speculators rather than actual settlers. The orderly survey was restored in the Land Act of 1796, but the minimum price of land for public auction was raised from $1 to $2 per acre for 640 acres. The Harrison Act retained the $2 price but reduced the acreage to 320, allowed for credit over a four year period, and stipulated an 8% reduction in price for cash payment. Drafted by William Henry Harrison who became the first Congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory in 1799 and in 1801 governor of Indiana Territory (who defeated Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811) and then president in 1840, the act was calculated to raise revenue, but it also encouraged settlement. After the War of 1812, when movement west increased enormously, the credit arrangements led to widespread speculation in land, weakened the national land system, and contributed to the coming of the Panic of 1819. The Land Act of 1820 abolished the credit system while reducing the minimum price to $1.25 per acre and minimum purchase to 80 acres.

Lecompton Constitution

Constitution drafted by the pro-slavery forces in Kansas.

Battle of San Jacinto

Decisive battle (1836) of the Texas Revolution in which the Texans under Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army and gained their independence.

Fort Sumter

Federal installation in Charleston harbor which Lincoln attempted to resupply in 1861, and, as a result, the Civil War began. On April 10, 1861, in response to a movement of troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, Brig. General P.G.T. Beauregard, who was in command of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, demanded the surrender of the Union garrison. Union commander Major Robert Anderson refused. On 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort, which was unable to effectively respond. On April 13, Fort Sumter was surrendered to the Confederacy.

Manifest Destiny

Doctrine which emerged in the 1830s and 1840s providing a justification for US expansionism. It held that the clear, God-given, and inevitable future of the US was to spread across the whole continent, perhaps around the world. This idea that the US would and should expand and incorporate more territory was the result of Romanticist attitudes and of arguments such as the US had a superior civilization including the best economic and political systems (capitalism and democracy) and the true faith (Protestant Christianity) and as such its enlargement would increase the area of liberty and make proper use of the land. The phrase, Manifest Destiny, was first used in 1845 by John L. O'Sullivan an editor of the journal, Democratic Review. It is significant because it represents an agrarian expansionism which led to the US's acquisition of Texas (1845), Oregon (1846), the Mexican Cession (1848), and the Gadsden Purchase (1853), and unsuccessful efforts to obtain all of Mexico in 1848, Cuba in 1854 (Ostend Manifesto), and parts of Central America by filibuster in the1850s. This expansionism was also identified by some with the South's effort to expand the territory which could enter the Union as slave states, and the subsequent debate over whether slavery would be allowed in the territories contributed to the coming of the Civil War.

internal improvements

Early 19th century term for the US's infrastructure such as roads, canals, bridges, railroads all of which were needed to tie the country together and promote its economic and political development. They are significant because they reveal that the US did not have a pure laissez faire, market economy but an economy in which the government played a major role. In the early 19th century the private sector did not have or was not willing to risk the large amounts of capital necessary to build these internal improvements, and therefore government, along with British investors, provided much of the funding for these projects. The national government's activity was limited by ideological and political concerns as exemplified by Andrew Jackson's veto of the Maysville Road Bill in 1830. But the national government did build the National or Cumberland Road and provide support for other projects by passing tariffs, by allowing the use of surveyors from the Army Corps of Engineers, and, after 1850, by making land grants to the railroads. State governments were more active as exemplified by the construction of canal systems after New York built the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825. The states also granted charters, tax exemptions, and free rights-of-way to companies, bought company securities with public monies, and made land grants to railroads.

"constable-and-watch"

Early system of maintaining law and order in cities through night patrols by citizens and day efforts by paid officials to preserve health, carry out court orders, and apprehend criminals against whom complaints had been lodged.

cotton gin

Eli Whitney's invention which made the rapid separation of short-staple cotton seeds and fiber possible and thus revolutionized the southern economy. Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 while he was working as a tutor on a South Carolina plantation. Prior to the cotton gin, it took an individual a considerable amount of time to "clean" (remove seeds from) a pound of short-staple cotton. Whitney's simple machine provided a mechanical means of extracting the difficult-to-remove seeds. Short staple cotton, unlike long-staple cotton, could be grown inland. Thus the invention of the cotton gin increased the area where cotton was produced, making it the king of staple crops in the South. With the spread of cotton cultivation, the demand for slaves in the lower South increased, Southern cotton fed the growing cotton textile mills in England and New England, and the South was tied into the dependent position of producer of raw materials for an increasingly industrialized North. Thus Whitney's invention revolutionized cotton production, stimulated the cotton textile industry, and allowed slavery to spread across the South as the US moved westward.

Malthus, Thomas (1766-1834)

English clergyman and Reader at Oxford University who in 1798 formulated a law of population in "An Essay on the Principles of Population" and gave economics the reputation (contrary to the optimism of Adam Smith) for being the "dismal science." Reacting to the population boom which began in the 18th century (and continued into the 20th) and the suffering of the working poor, Malthus argues that population increases in geometrical progression while food production increases in arithmetical progression so that population will exceed its ability to feed itself. That will automatically limit population growth because the excess population will die of vice and misery. The only way to reduce that suffering was to keep the population down and have people practice "moral restraint." His observations` led to the conclusion that public welfare programs should be stopped because they simply encourage the poor to have children which they cannot actually afford. His ideas were used by industrialists and others in the 19th and 20th centuries to claim the accuracy of laissez faire economics and to justify low wages, oppose governmental regulation of the economy including factory conditions or monopolistic practices or stock market booms, and prevent governmental programs from providing consumer protection or relief to the poor and unemployed or measures to stimulate the economy during depressions. Although Malthus' theories have been discredited to some degree, population growth, food production, and public health are major world problems at the beginning of the 21st century.

amnesty

Executive clemency for groups of people accused of violating federal law.

Fugitive Slave Act

Federal measure designed to assure that runaway slaves were returned to their masters. This measure, an outgrowth of the Compromise of 1850, stated civilians must aid federal marshals in the capture of runaway slaves. When caught, a suspected runaway was brought before a special judge who would decide if the suspect was a free man or a slave. The judge would be paid $10 if he found the person to be a slave, $5 if he found the person to be free. Northerners, seeing slave hunters come into their communities and force cooperation in the capture of suspected runaways, were infuriated, especially considering the financial incentive given judges to return suspects to slavery. The fugitive slave act personalized the issue of slavery and contributed to the growth of the abolishionist movement.

Compromise of 1833

Following the passage of the Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations), the tariff remained a principle issue between the North and South. In 1832, another tariff measure was passed which retained significant taxes on imported goods. Although infant industries, such as factories in the North, benefited from this tariff, Southern cotton farmers lost business. South Carolinian John C. Calhoun denounced this tariff and the entire protective tariff system as unconstitutional, unequal, and founded on selfish sectional interests. South Carolina then passed an ordinance of nullification, which declared that the federal tariff was null and void within the boundaries of the state. South Carolina also threatened to forcibly resist federal attempts to collect tariff duties. President Jackson called for and received legislation (the Force Bill) to give the President the authority to used armed force to collect the tariff. A crisis was averted when Henry Clay (advocate of the protective tariff) introduced the compromise Tariff Act of 1833, which was more acceptable to the South. This Compromise Tariff provided for the gradual reduction of duties to the revenue level of 20 percent. Faced with Jackson's Force Bill if they did not comply, South Carolina agreed, and the peace, the Union, and the Constitution were preserved in 1833 while Civil War was postponed for a generation.

Cottage Industry

Form of early industrial production (also known as the putting-out system) in which entrepreneurs farmed out jobs (different aspects of the production process such as spinning thread or weaving cloth) to individuals who did the work in their own home. These workers were more like contractors than employees and, as a result, cottage industry tended to be characterized by two primary problems. One was that the employers had very little control over the workers, who produced at their own pace. A second was that these workers tended to produce for their own purposes and therefore often disregarded economic conditions such as inflation or recession and made those conditions worse (by, for example, producing more during a period of recession to counter their reduced pay and thereby making the recession worse). Cottage industry did offer advantages to the workers in that they worked at home, set their own schedules, and were not as yet subject to a culture of acquisition for acquisition's sake. Entrepreneurs, to gain greater control over production and to increase efficiency, brought the workers together under one roof, a factory.

Jomini, Henri

French military historian whose ideas were central to the West Point curriculum who argued that an army seized victory by concentrating its infantry attack at the weakest point in the enemy's defenses.

Beecher's Bibles

Guns provided young men who went to fight for free soil in Kansas.

agrarian

Having to do with agriculture or farming.

American System

Henry Clay's Neo-Federalist, nationalist program to promote US economic growth and tie the country together by government-sponsored protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank. Proposed in 1816, the American System reflected the nationalist fervor of the years after the War of 1812. Congress in 1816 passed the first intentionally protective US tariff (raising duties an average of 25%) and established the 2nd Bank of the US with a 20 year charter (the 1st BUS having been allowed to die when its charter expired in 1811). Federal spending for internal improvements such as roads and canals was often blocked on constitutional grounds, so state governments provided funds to build turnpikes, canals, and railroads. Most of the private money invested came from Britain as private investors in the US did not have the capital needed for such projects. Therefore, without government action, the transportation network and banking system needed for the transportation revolution and the national market economy would not have occurred at that time. The American System is an example of the strong nationalist feeling in the US in the years after the War of 1812--the so-called Era of Good Feelings--and it indicates that in the 19th century the US did not have a laissez faire, free trade economic policy but instead continued with a neo-mercantilist, protectionist economic policy, including a substantial and important government involvement in the economy.

banditos

Hispanics who became outlaws and folk heroes because they felt they could effectively protest events connected with American expansion only through violence.

interchangeable parts

Multi-part devices like guns and watches were traditionally made by skilled craftsmen, and each item was unique. If a gun, watch, or similar device needed a replacement part it had to either be sent back to the original craftsman for repair or thrown away. A number of individuals at times experimented with making the parts of items such as guns so precisely that they could be interchanged from item to item. Eli Whitney has long been credit in the United States for first introducing this method. Around 1798, Whitney built ten guns, all containing the same parts and mechanisms. He then took them apart before Congress, placed the parts in a pile, and, with help, reassembled the guns. Congress, impressed, ordered a standard for all U.S. equipment. With interchangeable parts, if one mechanism in a product failed, a new piece could be ordered. The principle of interchangeable parts made mass production possible, based on the use of templates by semi-skilled labor to construct parts rather than making them by hand.

abolitionists

Individuals who wanted an immediate and total end to slavery.

"bread and butter issues"

Issues such as hours, wages, working conditions, and benefits which labor can negotiate directly with management. While employers make the decisions about these issues, labor unions in the ante-bellum era tended to focus on other issues which could only be dealt with by the government, thereby limiting their effectiveness.

ante bellum

Latin phrase which means, literally, before the war. In the case of the United States, the term is used to refer to the period before the Civil War, most especially the years from 1815 to 1860.

black laws

Laws in free states such as Ohio which prevented freed slaves from entering the state.

Clay, Cassius Marcellus

Newspaper editor and abolitionist from Lexington, Kentucky who, along with Hinton Rowan Helper (North Carolina farmer who wrote The Impending Crisis in 1859), was one of the few southern opponents of slavery by the 1840s and 1850s. One of Clay's most effective attacks on slavery came in his pamphlet, "Slavery: The Evil--The Remedy" (1840). Clay made two primary points which became part of the recurring arguments against slavery. One was that slavery degrades all labor by removing the incentives for self-improvement. The second was that slavery retards economic growth by freezing capital in the form of slaves, by restricting education for a significant portion of the population, by discouraging the development of skills, and by limiting the market because slaves could not buy goods. Clay concluded that slavery had caused the South as a whole to suffer by keeping it from developing as rapidly and fully as it could have if everyone had been free and able to participate fully in the economy and society. Southerners attacked Clay and destroyed his printing press in 1845. Clay and Helper are significant for representing how little criticism of slavery existed in the South after 1831 and how the South became a closed society.

Dix, Dorothea (1802-87)

Leader of the effort to improve conditions in asylums and prisons to promote rehabilitation. Dix began her career at 14 as a school teacher, and, by the age of 19, had opened her own school. Ultimately, however, her fragile health intervened, and her school was forced to close. She went to Europe to recuperate, and, while there, met a number of reformers who told her about new theories of caring for the insane. In 1841, Dix, back in Boston, volunteered to teach a Sunday School class of twenty women inmates at the Cambridge, Massachusetts jail. After the lesson, she explored the prison and found the dungeon cells where the insane were jailed. There, she found mentally ill men and women were chained to walls and locked into pens. These individuals were naked, filthy, brutalized, and underfed. They had no heat and were sleeping on stone floors. At this point, Dix decided to make improvement of the conditions of the mentally ill her life's work, at once starting a campaign to have stoves placed in cells and inmates fully clothed. From Massachusetts, she expanded her crusade throughout New England and across the United States, finally, in the 1850s, carrying her work to the British Isles, France, Greece, Russia, Canada, and Japan. During the Civil War, she volunteered to form an Army Nursing Corps and was made Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army. Her duties included organizing hundreds of women volunteers into a nursing corps, establishing and inspecting hospitals, and raising money for medical supplies. After the war, she actively aided in rehabilitating facilities in the South which had been neglected or damaged during the war. Her life illustrates the impact a single individual can have on society. The reforms she initiated have been continued and still profoundly affect the treatment of the mentally ill today.

Femme Covert

Legal term for a married woman, literally a "covered woman" whose rights and interests are covered by her husband who is her legal guardian and whose rights supersede hers. Providing for the legal subordination of women to men, femme covert defined the position of women under English common law and therefore in the English colonies and most states into the 20th century. The 19th Amendment gave women political rights nationally in 1920, but the Equal Rights Amendment (proposed initially in 1923 and intended to end all vestiges of the legal status of femme covert in state and common law) was not ratified.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Legislation sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and passed in 1854, organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the basis of popular sovereignty. By using popular sovereignty, the act overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which had banned slavery north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, except for Missouri, and thereby it opened up the whole question of slavery in the territories again. This led to an influx of pro-slavery and anti-slavery immigrants into Kansas, and by 1855-1856 these groups were engaged in a civil war for control of Kansas, leading to references to "Bleeding Kansas" and to emotional conflicts between and pro- and anti-slavery advocates in Congress. Douglas had adopted the doctrine of popular sovereignty in order obtain the necessary support to organize the territory so that he could sponsor legislation to build a transcontinental railroad west from Chicago to the west coast, but before that happened (a bill was passed in 1863) the conflict in Kansas spread to the rest of the country and the Civil War began in 1861.

Gwinn Land Law

Measure passed by Congress in 1851 which supposedly validated Spanish and Mexican land titles but forced California landowners to defend their claims, resulting in their ultimate loss of land to pay for court proceedings.

Federalist-Whig Economic program

Measures, including a high protective tariff, a national banking system, federal appropriations for internal improvements, and land for western farmers designed to benefit free labor and free enterprise.

Fort Laramie Council

Meeting held in 1851 between the U.S. government and the northern plains tribes at which the U.S., in the Fort Laramie Treaty, agreed to pay compensation to the Indians for destruction of their lands but required the tribes to give up their rights of free movement and restricted them to greatly reduced lands.

The Alamo

Mission in San Antonio which was the site of a battle between Mexican and Texas forces, which ended in a massacre of the Texans. William Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett, who fought for the "Texicans," (from left, above) were among those killed in the battle. Santa Anna (right, above), who commanded the Mexican forces, was captured later at the Battle of San Jacinta, and forced to surrender Texas. (At left above is a rendering of the Alamo Compound as it was in 1836; at right, the Alamo church.)

Copperheads

Northerners, especially Democrats who argued for a negotiated peace which included an independent Confederacy (i.e. the Peace Democrats as opposed to the War Democrats, the other major faction of the party, who, while opposed to many of Lincoln's policies, still supported the war to preserve the Union). Peace Democrats claimed Lincoln had betrayed the Constitution, that working-class Americans bore the brunt of his policy of conscription, and that the war should be ended immediately. These critics were especially strong in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where Clement L. Vallandigham (above) was their leader. The Knights of the Golden Circle was their secret society. Subsequently, the term was applied indiscriminately to all Democrats who opposed the administration in an effort to make it seem that those who opposed any of the administration's policies (both civil and military) were disloyal.

Gibbons v. Ogden

One of several landmark Supreme Court cases decided by Chief Justice John Marshall (1801-1835). Issued in 1824, this decision strengthened the powers of the national government, provided more centralized control over commerce, reduced state power to grant monopolies to a few, and increased the opportunities for economic expansion. Marshall ruled that a monopoly on steamboat navigation of the waters of New York granted by the state of New York to Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton (inherited by Aaron Ogden) was unconstitutional. Marshall gave a broad construction to the commerce clause which gives Congress the power "to regulate commerce among the states" (interstate commerce) and therefore reduced the power of the states to interfere with any activity which crossed state lines. The effect of this decision was to make the US into one large trading area and increase economic opportunity. The opening of economic opportunity to the common man became one of the predominant characteristics of the Era of Jacksonian Democracy.

Austin, Stephen F.

One of the first and most famous of the impresarios who took advantage of Mexico's offer of land to bring settlers to Texas.

Barton, Clara

One of the most famous military nurses during the Civil War. Born in 1821, Barton spent her early work years as a school teacher (1839-54), but, by the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, she was a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. After the war began, she served as a nurse in army camps and on the battlefields. In 1865, President Lincoln appointed her to search for missing prisoners. The records she compiled also served to identify thousands of the dead at Andersonville Prison. She was in Europe for a conference at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) and worked behind the German lines for the International Red Cross. She returned to the United States and, in 1881, organized the American National Red Cross, which she headed until 1904. She worked successfully for the President's signature to the Geneva treaty for the care of war wounded (1882) and emphasized Red Cross work in catastrophes other than war.

Commercial-minded

One of two mentalities or outlooks which began to clash in 18th century colonial society partly as a result of the effects of the Financial Revolution. The commercial-minded people (as opposed to the agrarian-minded) identified with the Financial Revolution and therefore were generally engaged in work connected to commerce, living usually in or near cities along the coast. The commerical-minded identified with the ideas of earned status, self-reliance within a mobile society, and freedom to act according to self-interest and opportunity. This mentality was part of the general economic change which emphasized using paper securities, banks, paper money and giving individuals the freedom to act thereby potentially setting themselves outside the community and becoming free moral agents, under the justification that pursuing one's own self-interest will redound to the benefit of all. Promoted by the boundless opportunity of North America, this outlook marked the movement of the colonists away from the traditional world view--that of restrictions and limited goals and set communities--to a world view of boundlessness which would really take hold in the US after 1815.

Finney, Charles G.

One-time lawyer who, after a religious conversion experience in 1821, became a Presbyterian minister and the "father of modern revivalism." Known as the greatest evangelist of the 1820s and 30s, Finney brought the Second Great Awakening (which had begun in Connecticut in the 1790s and then moved to Kentucky ca. 1800) to new heights in upper New York state. One of the principal reasons why Finney was such a success as a religious leader and why his ideas came to dominate evangelical Protestantism was that he developed a theology which reflected the outlook of the Jacksonian era. In a period celebrating the self-made, common man, people wanted to believe that they controlled their own destinies and that anything was possible, and Finney said this was as true of salvation as anything else. He rejected the strict Calvinism of predestination and original sin and instead argued for free will and salvation by good works. According to Finney, once a person undergoes a conversion experience, he or she (and it was important that he included women which had not always been true) became a free moral agent who has a religious duty to reform this world to bring about the kingdom of God. His message was therefore a form of religious perfectionism and soon provided support for social reforms such as temperance and abolitionism. Certain standards of personal behavior (what became known as middle class morality) were identified with religious beliefs so that people would control themselves socially (at work, at home, in the community) for religious reasons.

American Colonization Society

Organization founded in 1816 by opponents of slavery or opponents of the presence of free blacks in the US. The Society called for the gradual, voluntary, and compensated emancipation of slaves and the removal of free blacks to Africa. Obtaining land in West Africa in 1819, later referred to as Liberia with a capital named Monrovia, but failing in 1827 to obtain a congressional appropriation to fund sending free blacks to Africa, the Society "repatriated" only about 1400 blacks to Liberia by 1831. Advocated by Henry Clay and John Randolph and supported by gentleman planters of the Chesapeake Bay area where slavery was no longer as important as in the Deep South, the Society reflected if not an anti-black sentiment, then a fear of possible race war or race amalgamation. This mild and largely ineffective anti-slavery program is indicative of how the US, in its adoption of Jacksonian Democracy, stopped being a republic based on Natural Rights doctrine and social status, often marked by the ownership of property, and became a democracy with more equality for white men but often with less equality for others including blacks, women, Native Americans, and Hispanic-Americans. Free blacks in the North began to lose employment opportunities and rights (such as the right to vote which was generally taken away when the states drafted new constitutions ending property qualifications for the franchise). In places such as Philadelphia and New York City where free blacks lived in substantial numbers, they began to create separate institutions for themselves. A good example is the foundation of the African Methodist Church in Philadelphia in the 1790s and the American Methodist Episcopal Church in 1804. Blacks reacted negatively to the American Colonization Society arguing that they were natives of the US and did not identify with Africa. In the 1820s, they began to use the word Colored rather than African to refer to their causes and organizations. Some, such as David Walker in his Appeal (1829), became strong advocates of ending slavery immediately and giving blacks equal rights within the US. White society became more divided and extremist on the subject in 1831 with the publication of William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist paper, Liberator, and with the slave uprising in Virginia known as Nat Turner's Rebellion.

American Temperance Society

Organization founded in 1826 which was dedicated to total elimination of the consumption of alcohol or abstinence. (See Temperance)

"King Cotton"

Phrase made famous by James Hammond, US Senator from South Carolina, who in a speech on March 4, 1858 on the floor of the Senate, argued that cotton had become so important to industry and the world economy that "You dare not make war upon cotton; no power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king." Hence, the South, as the chief producer of cotton, could do what it wanted. The phrase represents several things. One is how the South had been transformed from a stagnant economy based on tobacco in 1790 to a thriving economy based on cotton by 1840. A second is how the South in the 1850s renewed its dedication to an agrarian society and an economy of commercial agriculture as superior to an urban culture and an industrialized economy. A third is how the South viewed itself as central to national prosperity because, for instance, by 1840 cotton accounted for over half of all US exports. A fourth follows from the third in that if the South seceded from the Union and the North resisted, then Britain and France would aid the South assuring its independence because their factories would not be able to withstand the disruption of the cotton supply. Hence, when the Civil War began, the South engaged in "King Cotton Diplomacy" and actively sought to obtain British and French aid and intervention by withholding cotton from the market.

Clermont

Robert Fulton's steamboat, which in 1807 made the first successful steam-powered voyage (in the US) up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany. This is significant because it was the first real application of the Watt-Bolton engine in the US, and it was made not for a factory, as had been the case in the UK, but for transportation. This points out that transportation was key for the US, as a large, loosely connected country, to develop economically. Because overland transportation was slow and difficult and because water remained the best means of transporting goods and people, the steamboat was one of the most important developments for the US to become a commercial and industrial economy. It allowed shipments upriver as well as down and opened the whole Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri River valleys to more efficient trade, settlement, and development.

"Corrupt Bargain"

Phrase used by the followers of Andrew Jackson after the election of 1824 to discredit President John Quincy Adams, his Secretary of State Henry Clay, and the whole political system and social order which had brought the Adams Administration (1825-1829) into office . The Jacksonians, without any solid evidence, accused Adams of appointing Clay Secretary of State in return for Clay's support in electing Adams to the presidency, and they intimated that the whole government and the republic were in danger of falling victim to intrigue and corruption which would threaten the people's liberties and the republic itself. Although unproven, these charges undermined the Adams Administration and the subsequent career of Henry Clay. The accusation was made because four candidates ran for the presidency in the election of 1824--John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson--and because none of them received a majority of votes in the Electoral College, the election went to the House of Representatives. Although Jackson had received the most popular and Electoral College votes, Adams won by one vote in the House of Representatives after Clay threw his support to Adams. Jackson and his followers were furious and claimed that Clay and Adams made a deal after Jackson had refused to agree to such a deal with Clay. According to Jackson, this "corrupt bargain" thwarted the popular will and revealed the corruption in government and society. This accusation and the election itself also marked the effective end of the caucus system for nominating presidents under which the party leaders had met and selected the party's nominee which, after 1800, had virtually meant election. In 1824 the caucus chose William Crawford, but he had a stroke during the campaign.

Free Soil party

Political party in 1848 by anti-slavery advocates who were aroused by the failure of the Wilmot Proviso and the threat of more slave states being admitted from the territory acquired from Mexico. These anti-slavery forces accused the southern planters and their northern business allies of organizing a giant conspiracy--a "Slave Power" conspiracy--dedicated to making the whole US a slave society. Nominating the former Democrat Martin Van Buren for president and the Whig Charles Francis Adams (John Quincy Adams' son) for vice president, the Free Soil party sought to attract broad support and did. The first anti-slavery movement since 1830 to gain widespread support in the North, the Free Soil party abandoned the position of the Liberty party and William Lloyd Garrison both of which had focused on the sinfulness of slavery and the desirability of civil rights for blacks and instead emphasized that slavery was a threat to republican institutions, yeoman farming, and the rights and opportunities of free men. The West should be kept open for white families. Garrison denounced the Free Soil position as racist "whitemanism." The party's position suggests, as the historian Eric Foner has argued, that the Civil War was ultimately the result of northern white men's interests clashing with southern white men's interests--not the result of concern over human rights and ending slavery. In the election, Van Buren and Adams won enough votes to deny the Democrat Lewis Cass the presidency. The Whigs, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, won by a narrow margin.

Jacksonian Democrats

Political party in the ante bellum period which espoused liberty and local rule, emphasized the freedom of the individual to follow his own interests, and appealed primarily to the common man.

Know-Nothings

Popular name for the nativists who organized the American party in the 1850s.

Biddle, Nicholas

President of the Second Bank of the United States who, in his fight with Jackson over the recharter of the bank, engaged in political actions which eventually doomed the bank.

"Log Cabin" Campaign

Presidential election campaign of 1840 in which for the first time both the Democrats and the Whigs used the methods of the new democratic politics which emphasized manipulating public opinion by presenting one's candidate and his position on the issues in terms which would be appealing to the common man. The Whigs' candidate was William Henry Harrison, a military hero and Indian fighter who had become famous as the Governor of Indiana Territory by defeating the forces of Tecumseh's confederacy at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. His running mate was John Tyler of Virginia, and the Whigs' slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." The Democrats ran Martin Van Buren for re-election. Van Buren lost partly because the depression following the Panic of 1837 had continued and partly because the Whigs were able to portray Van Buren as an aristocrat and Harrison as a common man. When the Democrats tried to discredit Harrison as someone who liked to sit in front of a log cabin and drink hard cider all day, the Whigs turned it into a boast arguing that Harrison was a common man with the common man's interests. He had been born in a log cabin, and he liked cider. The election was significant because it revealed at least three things. One was that the people could be manipulated . A second was that the political parties attempted to appeal to as wide a portion of the public as possible often by using emotional generalities or stereotypes rather than reasoned arguments. A third was that the parties were more concerned with gaining office than with upholding certain principles.

Beard, Charles A.

Progressive historian whose book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), was one of the most influential and controversial in the early 20th century. Beard argues that the framers drafted the Constitution largely to protect their economic interests as property-holders and justified their action on the grounds that property rights are a kind of Natural Right and therefore exist prior to government and cannot be interfered with by government. As a Progressive historian who sees the story of the US as one of the common man struggling to obtain liberty, equality and opportunity against the wealthy few, Beard suggests that the Constitution is a setback for the common man and a successful conservative reaction against the ideas advanced by the Declaration of Independence and the greater liberty and equality loosed by the Revolution. The Constitution, Beard implies, places property-rights over human rights and, hence, under the Constitution as drafted in 1787, men were not treated as if they were all created equal. Blacks remained slaves, women remained legally subordinate, and males without property could not vote.

"Fifty-four forty or fight!"

Slogan concerning the Oregon territory which was used in 1845 by those Americans who wanted all of the Oregon Country from California (including present-day Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) to Alaska (then claimed by Russia), the southern border of which was 54 degrees and 40 minutes north latitude. The demand for all of the Oregon Country to Alaska had been part of the expansionist Democratic party platform in the presidential election of 1844 along with a demand for the annexation of Texas. James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate for president in 1844 and former Governor of Tennessee and Jacksonian operative in the House of Representatives, won the election as an expansionist who favored not only the acquisition of Texas and Oregon but New Mexico and California as well. When Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, wavered on the issue and said he would support annexation if it could be done without war with Mexico, he alienated enough northern voters (who opposed the admission of Texas as a source of more slave states and who voted for the Liberty party candidate, James G. Birney) to enable Polk to win. Texas was annexed by joint resolution of Congress before Polk took office, and Polk expressed his intention to acquire all of Oregon and California. War with Mexico began in May 1846 so in June, 1846 Polk, despite his earlier claims and bravado, signed a treaty with Britain which divided the Oregon Country between the US and Britain at the 49th parallel, north latitude. This outraged many Democrats in the Old Northwest who wanted all of Oregon to balance Texas and opened a breach in the Democratic party between northerners and southerners which would worsen in the late 1840s and the 1850s. The slogan is significant as representative of the expansionist sentiment of Americans in the 1840s and one of the early signs of the divisions which would develop between North and South over the question of whether slavery would be allowed into the territories.

Ex parte Merryman

Supreme Court decision in 1861 which said if the public's safety was endangered, only Congress had the right to suspend a writ of habeas corpus.

Dred Scott Case/Decision (1799-1858)

Supreme Court decision of 1857 which declared that slaves were not citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The case involved Dred Scott, who was born a slave in Virginia in 1799. In 1830, Scott, who had been taken to Missouri by his master, was sold to Dr. John Emerson, a military surgeon. Over the next twelve years, Scott accompanied Emerson to posts in the free state of Illinois and the free Territory of Wisconsin. During this period, he met and married Harriet Robinson and the couple had two children. In 1843, Dr. Emerson died, and Scott and his family were hired out to other St. Louis families by Mrs. Emerson. In 1846, Harriet and Dred Scott sued Mrs. Emerson (later the Emerson estate) for their freedom. After a long court battle, the case ultimately found its way to the Supreme Court which handed down a decision in 1857. The Court ruled that Scott should remain a slave because as a slave he was not a citizen of the United States and thus not eligible to bring suit in federal court; as a slave, he was personal property and thus had never been free. In addition, the Court said that the provision of the Missouri Compromise that permitted Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories was unconstitutional. This decision alarmed those opposed to slavery and intensified the growing divisions within the United States. Dred Scott was set free shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1858.

free soil

Term representing the idea that the western territories should not allow slavery.

Freeport Doctrine

The Freeport Doctrine was stated by Stephen A. Douglas in the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on August 27, 1858, in Freeport, Illinois in response to Lincoln's effort to force him to choose between the principle of popular sovereignty stated in the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott Case (which stated slavery cold not legally be excluded from the territories). Douglas said that despite the Dred Scott decision, slavery could be kept out of any territory if the people living in the territory refused to pass laws favorable to slavery (i.e. laws which provided slavery with local police protection, which had to be passed by local authorities). While Douglas' Freeport Doctrine satisfied the Illinois State Senate which elected him to the U.S. Senate, it angered Southern Democrats who wanted strict adherence to the Dred Scott Decision and saw Douglas' statement as indicative of duplicity on his part. The Freeport Doctrine thus played a major role in his defeat in the 1860 presidential election.

cotton diplomacy

The South's policy of using European need for raw materials in an attempt to force their recognition of the Confederacy and an end to the Union blockade.

genteel society

The South's vision of itself as a society which rejected crass materialism and emphasized proper behavior and social status to maintain order.

Emancipation Proclamation

The announcement by Lincoln on New Year's Day, 1863, that slaves in states still in rebellion against the Union were forever free. Lincoln had been under pressure from abolitionists and radicals to issue such a proclamation since the beginning of his administration, but, while he approved in principle, he wanted wider support from the American people before freeing the slaves. Following the passage of the Second Confiscation Act (which freed the slaves of everyone in rebellion against the government) by Congress on July 17, 1862, Lincoln believed the time was ripe. In the fall of 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning that on January 1, 1863, he would free all slaves in those states still in rebellion. Intended as a war and propaganda measure, Lincoln's Proclamation initially had more symbolic than real impact because the federal government had no means to enforce it at the time. However, the document notified the South, the Union, and the rest of the world that the war was being fought to end slavery as well as to preserve the Union, and, eventually, as more southern territory was occupied by the Union, thousands of slaves were freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation.

John Brown's Raid

The attack led by John Brown (1800 - 1859) on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia on October 16, 1859, which was intended to inspire a slave uprising but which ended in the deaths of the attackers and increased tensions between North and South.

"free labor" ideology

The belief that northern economic, political, and social customs and institutions were fundamental to a republic, and that a moral, civilized society could not be based on slavery.

Lowell Mills

The cotton textile factories forming Lowell, Massachusetts, built in 1823 as a factory or mill town intended to be a miniature republic which would cultivate a model citizenry while contributing to an industrial economy. Lowell Mills were founded by the partners of Francis Cabot Lowell who had secretly derived ideas and machinery plans from British factories in 1811, established the Boston Associates and the Waltham System in 1813, and begun the first fully mechanized textile factory in the US. By 1840 the largest manufacturing center in the US, Lowell was also intended to be a model for industrial organization and the development of a republican society with high morals and civic virtue. At the heart of the Lowell Mills as a miniature republic of virtue was its boarding house and labor system. Intent on avoiding the grim conditions of the British mill towns, described by the poet William Blake as the "satanic mills", Lowell's partners developed a labor force of young women from New England farms who lived in boarding houses in a kind of half-way house arrangement between the hierarchical, paternalistic society of the past and the self-reliant, contractual society of the future. The women, however, did not abide by expectations and remain subservient but found their employment and their association with others empowering and in the 1830s became active in the labor movement, the organization of labor unions, and the campaign in the 1840s for a ten hour day. With the influx of new German and Irish immigrants in the 1840s, the young women were gradually replaced as laborers with men, and the experiment of making mill towns into miniature republics and the creator of model citizens ended.

Leisured/Laboring Dichotomy

The division of human beings, in the West, into two groups based on whether the person worked or not. From ancient times until the American and French Revolutions and before the rise of modern capitalism, if a person worked for others to support himself, then society (or those in control) often viewed that person as less than free. This almost always meant that as a laborer, the person was a member of the lower class, and in some societies and at some times, the laborer was reduced to being no better than a dumb animal and considered not completely human. Only a person who was leisured--who had an income from the labor of others--was completely free and had the means to develop themselves as fully developed human being. This began to change with the arrival of the Natural Rights philosophy and a more commercial and industrial economy. As people began to provide labor as a result of voluntary rather than involuntary arrangements and as people began to accept the idea that all human beings have certain inherent rights, the dichotomy began to fade. But this occurred much more in the North in the US than in the South. In the first half of the 19th century, the North became a more modern, contractual society and economy, and it changed the definition of what constituted being free so that a free man was one who worked for himself--that is, literally or under arrangements to which he had agreed and for pay. Moreover, such free men felt threatened by laborers who worked for others--such as slaves in the South. The South, as an agrarian, hierarchical society, retained a version of the leisured/laboring dichotomy based on slavery. This dichotomy was one of the ways in which the North and the South differed, contributing to misunderstanding and the coming of the Civil War.

Confederate Conscription Act of 1862

The first act drafting people into the army in American history, passed by the Confederacy in 1862.

Anti-Masonic Party

The first third party in US history, the Anti-Masonic party formed c. 1830 in western New York as a result of suspicion about and hostility toward the Masonic Order. This hostility is representative of the change in mentality which had occurred during the Age of Romanticism and popular politics. Historically, since its organization in the 18th century, the Masonic Order had stood for Enlightenment principles such as reason, rejection of superstition, and tolerance towards a variety of religious beliefs. But by the 1820s, it had come to symbolize, as a secret society, a vestige of an age of privilege and skepticism, and therefore was apparently opposed to equal opportunity, popular liberty, Christianity, and social reform such as the movement for temperance. The Anti-Masonic party was therefore able to associate itself with the popular thinking of the 1820s and 1830s which advocated the common man as uncommon, equal opportunity, the self-made man, and democracy while simultaneously the party could oppose Andrew Jackson (a symbol of the new democracy) who was a Mason and, by extension, oppose the Democrats generally. The movement creating the Anti-Masonic party grew out of the disappearance of one William Morgan in Genesee County, New York in 1826 after he had threatened to expose the secrets of the Masons. When the investigation of his disappearance proved futile, people blamed the Masonic Order for conducting a conspiracy of silence since many officials were Masons and claimed to know nothing. In 1831, the party held the first national convention to nominate its presidential candidate (William Wirt, 1772-1834), a practice which the other parties then adopted. Its platform expressed anti-Jacksonian positions including denunciations of Catholics and foreigners as well as secret societies and, in particular, the Masonic Order as a conspiracy by the wealthy to deny the common people their liberty, to oppose Christianity, and to corrupt society by engaging in drunkenness and immorality. The Anti-Masonic party could also be seen as representative of the difficulty of explaining the generally more complicated case in favor of reason and tolerance as opposed to making a black-and-white case which is emotionally appealing and tends to support unreason and intolerance.

Bear Flag Republic

The government established by American settlers in California following a rebellion in 1846.

Agrarian Myth

The idea in US history that people who live close to nature--frontiersmen, pioneers, Jefferson's yeoman farmers--are naturally virtuous and therefore the backbone of the republic. They went West as honest, courageous, self-reliant individuals to live the good, simple life and be free of the corruption, greed, power, immorality, and pretensions of the city and the East and Europe. The historian Richard Hofstadter among others argues that this idea is a myth, an idealized and romanticized version of America, created in the 19th century to help Americans establish a grand, uplifting national history. Hofstadter says people did not go West to live a simple life of virtuous self-reliance but to get ahead. They were not opposed to government but wanted government action to provide internal improvements so they could market their products and live more satisfying lives. Moreover, contrary to the myth of the West and Hollywood, the westerner was as likely to be greedy, deceitful, and prejudiced as big-hearted, decent, and fair. The Agrarian Myth is significant because the idea of Americans as naturally virtuous lives on and because it is an example of how Jefferson's vision of the US, while continuing in the national consciousness, was already fading even during Jefferson's presidency. The standards of civic virtue as expressed by the Republican Ideology and the values of the Enlightenment as expressed in reason were being challenged if not replaced by the values of the Financial Revolution as expressed in individual freedom to pursue one's self-interest and Romanticism as expressed in emotion, intuition, and mysticism.

equality of worth

The idea that everyone has the same inherent value and should be treated accordingly.

Lone Star Republic

The independent Texas nation which existed from Texas independence from Mexico in 1836 to its annexation by the United States in 1845

"Bleeding Kansas"

The minor civil war in Kansas which occurred in 1856 following the sack of Lawrence and the Massacre at Pottawatomie Creek.

Jacksonian Democracy

The new political and social order emerging in the 1820s which celebrated the common man (white males only) as uncommon, corresponded to the rise of a more democratic political system, further undermined the heirarchical society, and identified equality, greater opportunity, and more political power for the common man with Andrew Jackson. Elected president in 1828 and 1832, Jackson had risen from poverty, become famous as an Indian fighter and general, and was the first president from west of the Appalachians and therefore seemed to embody the ideas and interests of the frontier and the common man (although Jackson had become a wealthy planter). Jackson came to symbolize the age because he fit romanticist ideas of both the hero and the idea that there is a spirit which exists in and makes equal all men (white males at that time). Also, his policies tended to open up economic and social opportunities for adventurous entrepreneurs while he (and all presidential candidates after him) publicly attacked anything seemingly elitist and praised the common man as the fount of wisdom and progress in the US. His popularity and actions as president transformed the presidency from simply the executor of the laws of Congress to the branch which takes the lead in setting public policy. The strong reaction to him by some helped stimulate the formation of the second 2-party system in US history, pitting Jacksonian Democrats versus Whigs (formerly National Republicans). Both soon dismissed the old style politics in which the parties nominated certain known gentlemen because they were best qualified and adopted the new politics in which election depended on appealing to the masses and therefore personality, promises, patronage, and praise.

greenbacks

The nickname for paper money printed by the Union during the Civil War.

Era of Good Feelings

The period in American history from roughly 1815 (the end of the War of 1812) to the election of Jackson (1828) (some end the era in 1823, some in 1825). Following the War of 1812, the Federalist Party practically disappeared leaving only the Republican Party, thus there was little open party conflict. In addition, the U.S. success at the Battle of New Orleans inspired a new wave of nationalism, as seen in the Supreme Court decisions of the period (which established the supremacy of the federal government and expanded the powers of Congress), American initiatives in foreign policy, and industrial development which increased the nation's self-sufficiency and united the nation with improved roads, canals, and river transportation. The phrase was coined during President Monroe's good-will tour (1817) through the North, including New England, which had not been visited by a President since Jefferson took office. However, under the surface, sectional issues (as seen in the Missouri statehood controversy) and economic hard times (Panic and Depression of 1819) were brewing and personal rivalries were gathering strength (see the election of 1824).

impeachment

The process of officially indicting an official for wrongdoing as one step in the process of removing him from office.

border states

The slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri which shared a border with free states to the North. While the Border States had strong cultural ties with the South and sanctioned the institution of slavery, they also had important economic relationships with the North. President Lincoln sent federal troops into these states as war threatened and, as a result, they remained with the Union. When Virginia seceded from the Union, fifty pro-Union counties in the western portion of the state broke from the state and petitioned for admission to the Union as West Virginia in 1863, making five border states. The border states were a problem for Lincoln; convinced they were the key to victory, he did not want to alienate them with emancipation and was thus scorned by Radicals for refusing to abolish border-state slavery. Slavery remained legal in the border states until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in late 1865.

Bank War

The successful effort of President Andrew Jackson to destroy the second Bank of the United States (2nd BUS) between 1832 and 1836 (when the 2nd BUS's charter expired). Jackson's action against the BUS is indicative of Jackson's politics and the mood of the age. Jackson tended to see issues in personal terms and advocated solutions which were general in nature such as fighting corruption, ending privilege, opening opportunities, promoting equality. Jackson opposed the 2nd BUS because he thought its president, Nicholas Biddle, had opposed his election in 1828 and 1832 and because the BUS represented privilege, inequality, interference with opportunity for the common man, and power to the few. The results of the 2nd BUS's destruction are symbolic of the irony of Jackson's presidency. Acting in the name of promoting civic virtue (by fighting the use of paper money and reducing the greed and power represented by the 2nd BUS) and maintaining Jeffersonian values (such as small government and strict construction), Jackson accomplished almost the opposite--contributing to the replacement of the Jeffersonian agrarian republic with a Hamiltonian commercial society. By removing the 2nd BUS and its controls on the economy, Jackson allowed, in the short term, increased speculative activity by land agents and state banks leading to an inflationary boom and then the Panic of 1837 and depression. In the long term, the absence of a central bank and little governmental regulation of the economy meant that the US would experience a boom and bust economy during the 19th century, culminating in the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ending the 2nd BUS did decrease the size of the government and the power of the privileged class who had invested in it, but in the process Jackson, using the public's emotional identification with the president in the new, more democratic political system, changed the nature of the presidency, increased its power, and used that power, introducing a politics of personality in which a leader, if popular or strong-willed enough, might ignore or over-ride constitutional restraints because he purported to represent the people's will.

Loyal National League

The women's organization established by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to lobby Congress to emancipate all southern slaves.

Adams-Onis Treaty

This Treaty with Spain, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, was negotiated by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Luis de Onis, Spanish minister to the United States, and was signed in 1819. By this agreement Spain recognized U.S. possession of West Florida and ceded East Florida to the United States for $5 million. In addition, the southwestern border of the Louisiana Territory was set along the west bank of the Sabine River from its mouth to the 32nd parallel, then due north to the Red River, then along the south bank of the Red River to the 100th Meridian, then north to the Arkansas and along its south bank to its source, then north to the 42nd parallel and due west to the Pacific Ocean. By the terms of this treaty, the U.S. also gave up her claims to Texas, while Spain abandoned her claims to Oregon.

Convention of 1818

Treaty with England which set the northern boundary of the Louisiana Territory at the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota westward to the Rockies. When agreement could not be reached on the border west of the Rockies, Britain and the United States settled on for joint occupation of the Oregon Territory for ten years, with the provision that the agreement for joint occupation could be renewed for additional ten year periods if both parties agreed.

Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge

U.S. Supreme Court case of 1837 in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Jackson's appointee, ruled so as to open up more opportunity in the economy to more people. This decision symbolizes the tendency in the Jackson years to promote economic opportunity by removing barriers and privileges. The result of this, ironically, would be a more commercial society composed of "men on the make," a society at odds with Jackson's professed belief in the Jeffersonian agrarian republic. In the decision, Taney modified Marshall's ruling on corporate charters and denied to uphold the charter of the Charles River Bridge which allowed it to function as a monopoly. The Warren Bridge could be built because it was in the public interest to have another bridge over the Charles River, and when the public interest affects the public domain, then the private interest must give way. The case is significant because it weakened the old capitalist elite and opened the way for a new capitalist class to form. It is also important because it reveals that the courts had begun to take a pragmatic view of the law which meant that the law was seen as a man-made instrument to achieve social policy and serve the public need. The law should change to meet people's needs.

Anaconda Plan

Union General Winfield Scott's long-term strategy for winning the war by weakening the South gradually through blockades on land and sea until the northern army was strong enough for the kill.

Battle of Pea Ridge

Union victory in March, 1862, in northern Arkansas over Confederate forces including a brigade of Native Americans from the Five Civilized Tribes.

Fitzhugh, George

Virginia farmer, lawyer, and author who took one of the arguments for slavery and for the agrarian lifestyle to its most complete development. Fitzhugh wrote a series of pro-slavery articles which were gathered into two books, Sociology for the South (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857). The argument for slavery on which Fitzhugh expounds is that slavery is a better, more humane, less exploitive economic system for workers than the free-labor capitalism of the North which makes workers into poverty-stricken "wage slaves." Capitalism, Fitzhugh says, is a form of war in which each person is pitted against all others in a struggle for survival while southern slavery, he says, is a paternalistic system in which all are cared for. Slaves have shelter, food, clothing, and care when they are sick and old whether they work or not, while wage-earners do not. Free-market laborers are generally poorly paid, poorly housed, poorly protected (if at all) against illness, injury, or death, and northern cities, by extension, are filthy and wretched. The South and the slave therefore have a higher standard of living and more security, and Fitzhugh says, "you [Northerners] must recur to domestic slavery. . .the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, white or black." The agrarian life with its sense of community and interdependence is simply better for everyone--planters and slaves alike--or as Fitzhugh put it, "the southern farm is the beau ideal of communism." Fitzhugh is significant for representing the Southern position (which had a resurgence in the mid to late 1850s after an attempt at diversification in the 1840s, led by JDB De Bow of De Bow's Review in New Orleans, proved ineffective) that slavery is a positive good and that the agrarian life and an economy based on commercial agriculture (especially the production of cotton) is superior to a society based on cities, commerce, and industry. This seemed to be upheld in 1857 when the North suffered a panic and an economic downturn and the South seemed immune. Southerners decided that their system was superior and that they could prosper to an even greater extent if they were free and not united with the North.