APUSH Chapters 8 & 9
The Second Great Awakening
-Added a religious underpinning to the celebration of personal self-improvement, self-reliance, and self-determination -Initially organized by established church leaders alarmed by low levels of church attendance (as few as 10% of white Americans attended church in the 1790s) -Reached a crescendo in the 1820s and early 1830s when the Reverend Charles Grandison Finney held months-long revival meetings in upstate NY and NYC -Finney warned of hell in vivid language and promised salvation to converts who abandoned their sinful ways -Spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity -Increase in number of American preachers -1840s- Methodism became the largest sect of Christianity in the U.S. -Deism waned and Christianity became more central to American culture -Preachers rejected the idea that man is a sinful creature with a preordained fate, promoting instead the doctrine of human free will -Stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works -Sinners could experience a "change of heart and embrace spiritual freedom" -Ministers traveled to spread their message -Spread message that ordinary Americans could shape their own spiritual destinies resonated with the spread of market values -Against greed and indifference -Selfishness called "the law of Satan's empire" -Promoted controlled individualism -Mormonism emerged
Despite some governmental and private efforts to create a unified national economy, most notably the American System, the shift to market production linked the North and the Midwest more closely than either was linked to the South.
-American system of manufactures relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts that could be readily assembled into standardized finished products -The North and Midwest was much more industrialized and also prohibited slavery while the South still heavily relied on slavery for labor
Efforts to exploit the nation's natural resources led to government efforts to promote free and forced migration of various American peoples across the continent, as well as to competing ideas about defining and managing labor systems, geographical boundaries and natural resources.
-As the population moved west, the nation's borders expanded -National boundaries made little difference to territorial expansion- in Florida and later in Texas and Oregon -American settlers used in to claim land under the jurisdiction of foreign countries or Indian tribes, confident that American sovereignty would soon follow in their wake -1810- American residents of West Florida rebelled and seized Baton Rogue and the U.S. soon annexed the area -Andrew Jackson led troops into East Florida in 1818 and created an international crisis by executing 2 British traders and a number of Indian chiefs -Spain then sold Florida to the U.S. in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 negotiated by John Quincy Adams
Urban middle class
-Badge of respectability for wives to remain at home while the husbands worked -In larger cities, instead of all social classes living alongside each other as before, fashionable middle-class neighborhoods populated by merchants, factory owners, and professionals began to develop -Work in these homes was done by domestic servants
Enslaved and free African Americans, isolated at the bottom of the social hierarchy, created communities and strategies to protect their dignity and family structures, even as some launched abolitionist and reform movements aimed at changing their status.
-Barred from schools and other public facilities, free blacks laboriously constructed their own institutional aid and educational opportunities, as well as independent churches, most notably the African Methodist Episcopal Church -Richard Allen founded the church after being removed from his old church for praying at the altar rail
American Indians
-By 1800, nearly 400,000 Americans lived west of the Appalachian mountains and far outnumbered the remaining Indians -Among the Creek and Cherokee, a group led by men of mixed Indian-white ancestry like Major Ridge and John Ross endorsed the federal policy of promoting "civilization" -Many established businesses as traders and slaveowning farmers with their white fathers's help -Their views infuriated "nativists", who wished to root out European influences and resist further white encroachment on Indian lands -1800-1812: "Age of prophecy" among the Indians -Movements for the revitalization of Indian life arose from many tribes -Handsome Lake of the Seneca preached that the Indians must refrain from fighting, gambling, drinking, and sexual promiscuity and Indians could regain their autonomy without directly challenging whites or repudiating all white ways, urging his people to farm and attend school -Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa called for a revival of traditional Indian culture and resistance to federal policies -Called for attacks on American settlement
As various constituencies and interest groups coalesced and defined their agendas, various political parties, most significantly the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in the 1790s, were created or transformed to reflect and/or promote those agendas.
-By the mid-1790s, 2 increasingly coherent parties had appeared in Congress, the Federalists and Republicans -The Federalists, supporters of the Washington administration, favored Hamilton's economic program and close ties to Britain. Had a generally elitist outlook. Federalism rested on deference to authority. The "spirit of liberty" was degenerating into anarchy and "licentiousness" -Federalists= typically prosperous merchants, farmers, lawyers, and established political leaders -Republicans, led by Madison and Jefferson, were more sympathetic to France and had more faith in democratic self-government -Republicans= wealthy southern planters, ordinary farmers, urban artisans -Republicans were far more critical than the Federalists of social and economic inequality, and more accepting of broad democratic participation as essential to freedom -1792- Madison composed an imaginary dialogue between spokesmen for the 2 groups. The Federalist described ordinary people as "stupid, suspicious, licentious" and accused the Republican of being "an accomplice of atheism and anarchy". Republican called the Federalist an opponent of liberty and "an idolater of tyranny" -Political language increasingly became heated in real life as Federalists denounced Republicans as French agents, anarchists, and traitors while Republicans called Federalists monarchists intent on transforming the government into a corrupt, British-style aristocracy
Erie Canal
-Completed in 1825 -363-mile canal across upstate NY -Allowed goods to flow between the Great Lakes and NYC -NY governor DeWitt Clinton predicted that it would make NYC "the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations" -Typified the developing transportation infrastructure -Between 1787 and 1860, the federal government spent about $60 million building roads and canals and improving canals; the states spent nearly 10 times that sum -Many states went bankrupt while attempting to build their own canals right before the economic depression that began in 1837 -By 1837, more than 3,000 miles of canals had been built, creating a network linking the Atlantic states with the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and drastically reducing the cost of transportation
Roads
-Construction of toll roads, or "turnpikes" -Between 1800 and 1830, the New England and Middle Atlantic states alone chartered more than 900 companies to build new roads -1806- Congress authorized the construction of the paved National Road from Cumberland, Maryland to the Od Northwest -Due to high maintenance costs and many towns building "shunpikes", short detours allowing residents to avoid tolls, most private tolls never turned a profit -Even on the new roads, horse-drawn carriages remained an insufficient mode of getting goods to the market
Regional interests continued to trump national concerns as the basis for many political leaders' positions on economic issues including slavery, the national bank, tariffs, and internal improvements.
-Divide between North and South -Southern states refused certain pieces of legislature if it put slave labor in jeopardy -New Englanders didn't like tariffs -New England and regions other than the South were more industrial
Migrants from Europe increased the population in the East and the Midwest, forging strong bonds of interdependence between the Northeast and the Old Northwest.
-Economic expansion fueled a demand for labor which was met by increased immigration -Between 1840 and 1860, over 4 million people entered the U.S., the majority from Ireland and Germany -90% headed for the northern states -1860- NYC had a population of 814,000, 384,000 were immigrants -In Europe, the modernization of agriculture and the industrial revolution disrupted centuries-old patterns of life, pushing peasants off the land and eliminating the jobs of traditional craft workers -Steamship and railroad made long-distance travel more practical -America's political and religious freedoms attracted Europeans who chafed under the continent's repressive governments and rigid social hierarchies -Great Potato Famine of 1845-1851 -A blight destroyed the potato crop that Ireland's diet rested -1 million died and 1 million emigrated -Many emigrated to the U.S. were they filled low-wage unskilled jobs, building America's railroads, dug canals, and worked as common laborers, servants, longshoremen, and factory operatives -4/5 of Irish immigrants remained in the Northeast -Germans -Settled in tightly knit neighborhoods in eastern cities, but many were able to move West, where they established themselves as craftsmen, shopkeepers, and farmers -German Triangle= Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee -A vibrant German-language culture, with its own schools, newspapers, associations, and churches developed wherever large numbers of Germans settled -40,000 Scandinavians emigrated and settled on Old Northwest farms -The continuing expansion of industry and the failure of the Chartist movement of the 1840s, which sought to democratize the system of government in Britain, also inspired many English workers to emigrate to the U.S.
The market revolution helped to widen a gap between rich and poor, shaped an emerging distinctive middle class and caused an increasing separation between home and workplace, which led to dramatic transformations in gender and family roles and expectations.
-Economic transformation produced an explosive growth in the nation's output and trade and rise in the general standard of living -Especially in the growing cities of the Northeast, it significantly widened the gap between wealthy merchants + industrialists and impoverished factory workers + unskilled dockworkers + seamstresses -In Massachusetts, the richest 5% owned more than half the wealth -Bankruptcy was a common fact of life and men unable to pay their debts filled prisons in major cities -All members of lower class families worked -Became a sign of status if the women stayed home
The Haitian Revolution
-Events during the 1790s underscored how powerfully slavery defined and distorted American freedom -The same Jeffersonians who hailed the French Revolution as a step in the universal progress of liberty reacted in horror against the slave revolution that began in 1791 in Saint Dominique -Toussaint L'Overture forged the rebellious slaves into an army able to defeat British forces seeking to seize the island and then an expedition hoping to reestablish French authority -Led to the establishment of Haiti as an independent nation in 1804 -Affirmed the universality of the revolutionary era's creed of liberty -Inspired hopes for freedom among slaves in the U.S. -In the 19th century, black Americans looked to L'Overture as a hero and celebrated the winning of Haitian independence -1820s, several thousand free African-Americans emigrated to Haiti -Among white Americans, the rebellious slaves seemed not men and women seeking liberty in the tradition of 1776, but a danger to American institutions and illustrated blacks' unfitness for republican freedom -Adams administration encouraged the independence of black Haiti while Jefferson sought to quarantine and destroy the hemisphere's 2nd independent republic -Inspired slaves and women to fight for more rights
Women
-Factories relied on female and child labor -At Lowell, young unmarried women from northern farm families dominated the workforce that tended the spinning machines -Lived in boarding houses with strict rules regulating behavior and went to lecture halls and churches established by the company -1st time large numbers of women left their homes to participate in the public world -Most valued the opportunity to earn money independently -Lucy Larcom- working at Lowell gave the "mill girls" a "larger, firmer idea of womanhood", teaching them "to go out of themselves and enter into the lives of others" -Typically worked in the factories for a few years before returning home, marrying, or moving west -As the household declined as a center of economic production, many women saw their traditional roles undermined by the availability of mass-produced goods previously made at home -Woman's role was to sustain non mark values like love, friendship, and mutual obligation, providing men with a shelter from the competitive marketplace -Republican motherhood evolved into the cult of domesticity -Virtue= associated with woman, meant sexual innocence, beauty, frailty, and dependence on men -Power over personal affairs within the family -Decline of American birthrate -Women were supposed to remain cloistered in the private realm of the family
With the opening of canals and new roads into the Western territories, native-born white citizens relocated westward, relying on new community systems to replace their old family and local relationships.
-Few Americans moved west as lone pioneers -People traveled in groups and cooperated with each other to clear land, build houses and barns, and establish communities once they arrived in the West -Small farmers and planters with their slaves moved from the south to Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas to form the Cotton Kingdom -Many farm families from the Upper South moved to southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois -Families from New England moved to the Upper Northwest, northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois along with Michigan and Wisconsin
A new national culture emerged, with various Americans creating art, architecture, and literature that combined European forms with local and regional cultural sensibilities.
-Free African Americans often possessed craft skills -It was difficult for them to apply their craft skills once they were freed -White artisans viewed freed slaves as low-wage competitors and sought to bar them from skilled employment even though they criticized slavery
Railroads
-Opened vast new areas of the American interior to settlement, while stimulating the mining of coal for fuel and the manufacture of iron for locomotives and rails -Work on the Baltimore and Ohio, the nation's first commercial railroad, began in 1828 -1833- The South Carolina Canal and Railroad became the first long-distance line to begin operation -By 1860, the railroad network had grown to 30,000 miles, more than the total in the rest of the world combined
Despite the outlawing of the international slave trade, the rise in the number of free African Americans in both the North and the South, and widespread discussion of various emancipation plans, the U.S. and many state governments continued to restrict African Americans' citizenship possibilities.
-Free blacks found themselves excluded from the new economic opportunities -The 220,000 blacks living in the free states on the eve of the Civil War experienced discrimination in every phase of their lives -Majority of blacks lived in the poorest, unhealthiest sections of cities that were subject to occasional violent assaults by white mobs -Barred from schools and other public facilities -Large numbers of free blacks experienced downward mobility -White employers refused to hire blacks in anything from menial positions, and white customers didn't wish to be served by then, resulting in a rapid decline in economic servants -The vast majority of northern blacks labored for wages in unskilled jobs and as domestic servants -Federal law banned them from access to public land and by 1860, 4 states, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon banned them from entering
Steamboats
-Improved water transportation most dramatically increased the speed and lowered the cost of commerce -1790s- Robert Fulton experimented with steamboat designs and even launched a steamboat on the Seine River in Paris in 1803 -But it wasn't till 1807 when Fulton's ship the Clermont navigated the Hudson River from NYC to Albany, was the steamboat's technological and commercial feasibility demonstrated -Made upstream commerce on the country's major rivers as well as across the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean possible -By 1811, the 1st steamboat had been introduced on the Mississippi River; 20 years later some 200 plied its waters
Increasing numbers of Americans, especially women in factories and low-skilled male workers, no longer relied on semi-subsistence agriculture but made their livelihoods producing goods for distant markets, even as some urban entrepreneurs went into finance rather than manufacturing.
-In some industries, most notably textiles, the factory superseded traditional craft production altogether -Factories gathered large groups of workers under central supervision and replaced hand tools with power-driven machinery -1790- Samuel Slater established America's first factory at Pawtucket, Rhode Island -Slater built a power-driven spinning jenny so his factory produced yarn -"Outwork" system, rural men and women earned money by taking in jobs from factories. Ex.: Factory produced yarn which traditional hand-loom weaves & farm families wove into cloth -Cutoff of British imports stimulated the establishment of the first large-scale American factory utilizing power looms for weaving cotton cloth -1814- Boston Associates -1820s- establishment of factory town on the Merrimack River, where they built a group of modern textile factories that brought together all phases of production from the spinning of the thread to the weaving and finishing of cloth -MA became the 2nd most industrialized region of the world -"American system of manufactures" -Dispersion of mechanical skills throughout northern society -Industrial Revolution largely confined to New England as the South lagged in factory production
Cotton gin
-Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 -Separated the seed from cotton -Allowed for the growing and selling of cotton on a large scale to occur
Resistance to initiatives for democracy and inclusion included pro-slavery arguments, rising xenophobia and anti-black sentiments in political and popular culture, and restrictive anti-Indian policies.
-Lack of employment for blacks, women, and Indians -Government wanted to completely control over Indian lands -Federal law banned free blacks from access to public land and by 1860, 4 states, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon banned them from entering
Many white Americans in the South asserted their regional identity through pride in the institution of slavery, insisting that the federal government should defend that institution.
-Lurking behind the political battles of the 1790s lay the potentially divisive issue of slavery -Jefferson received every Southern electoral vote and referred to his victory as the "Revolution of 1800", seeing it not simply as a party success but as a vindication of American freedom, securing for posterity the fruits of independence -The triumph of "Jefferson and Liberty" wouldn't be possible without slavery -The issue of slavery would not disappear -The 1st Congress under the new Constitution received petitions calling for emancipation -Benjamin Franklin petitioned the blessings of liberty should be available "without distinction of color to all descriptions of people" -A long debate followed, in which speakers from Georgia and SC defended the institution and warned that behind northern criticism of slavery they heard "the trumpets of civil war" -Madison found their defense of slavery as an embarrassment but concluded that slavery should be kept out of national politics -1793- Congress enacted a law providing for federal and state judges and local officials to facilitate the return of escaped slaves to implement the Constitution's fugitive slave clause
Telegraph
-Made instantaneous communication throughout the nation possible -Invented during the 1830s by Samuel F. B. Morse and was put into commercial operation in 1844 -Using Morse code, messages could be sent over electric wires, with each letter and number represented by its own pattern of -electrical pulses -Helped speed the flow of information and brought uniformity to prices throughout the country
With the acceleration of a national and international market economy, Americans debated the scope of government's role in the economy, while diverging economic systems meant that regional political and economic loyalties often continued to overshadow national concerns.
-Many Americans experienced the market revolution not as an enhancement of the power to shape their own lives, but as a loss of freedom -The period between the War of 1812 and 1840 experienced a sharp economic downturn in 1819, with a depression starting in 1837 with ups and downs in between with irregular employment and numerous failed businesses -For every aspiring American who rode the tide of economic progress, another seemed to sink beneath the waves -Economic transformation produced an explosive growth in the nation's output and trade and rise in the general standard of living -Especially in the growing cities of the Northeast, it significantly widened the gap between wealthy merchants + industrialists and impoverished factory workers + unskilled dockworkers + seamstresses -In Massachusetts, the richest 5% owned more than half the wealth -Bankruptcy was a common fact of life and men unable to pay their debts filled prisons in major cities -Alarmed by this, skilled craftsmen created the world's 1st Workingmen's Parities, who sought to mobilize lower-class support for candidates who would press for free public education, end to imprisonment for debt, legislation limiting work to 10 hours a day -Union organization spread and strikes became common -Called for free homesteads for settlers on public land and an end to the imprisonment of union leaders for conspiracy
Southern cotton furnished the raw material for manufacturing in the Northeast, while the growth in cotton production and trade promoted the development of national economic ties, shaped the international economy, and fueled the internal slave trade.
-Rise of the Cotton Kingdom -The North- centered on factories producing cotton textiles with water-powered spinning and weaving machinery, immense demand for cotton -Invention of the cotton gin made the growing and selling of cotton on a large scale possible, also revolutionized American slavery -Cotton plantations spread into the SC upcountry, a major reason why the state reopened the African slave trade between 1803 and 1808 -Cotton was produced solely for sale in national and international markets, the South was in some ways the most commercially oriented region of the U.S.
The South remained politically, culturally, and ideologically distinct from the other sections, while continuing to rely on its exports to Europe for economic growth.
-Rise of the cotton kingdom, which continued the importance of slaves as a labor source -The other states industrialized and prohibited slavery while the southern economy relied on slavery -Cotton produced by slaves was necessary for northern industry -Cotton was solely for exports, making the South in that case the most economically minded because it didn't feed local families
Religious Followers
-The Second Great Awakening -Added a religious underpinning to the celebration of personal self-improvement, self-reliance, and self-determination -Reached a crescendo in the 1820s and early 1830s when the Reverend Charles Grandison Finney held months-long revival meetings in upstate NY and NYC -Spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity -Increase in number of American preachers -1840s- Methodism became the largest sect of Christianity in the U.S. -Deism waned and Christianity became more central to American culture -Stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works -Ministers traveled to spread their message -Spread message that ordinary Americans could shape their own spiritual destinies resonated with the spread of market values -Promoted controlled individualism -Mormonism
Supreme Court decisions sought to assert federal power over state laws and the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the Constitution.
Several times in this time period, the Supreme Court asserted the federal power and the primacy of the judiciary in suppressing local uprisings, such as Gabriel's Rebellion to prove their power
