United States History Test Four
Why did the Mexican government ban further Anglo settlement in 1830? 13.1.1
A Mexican commission reported in 1829 that Americans in Texas were flagrantly violating Mexican law—refusing to emancipate their slaves, evading import duties on goods from the United States, and not converting to Catholicism. In 1830, the Mexican Congress prohibited further American immigration and importation of slaves to Texas.
Who was Frederick Douglass and why is he remembered? 12.3.2
Although Garrison truly saw himself as part of an interracial movement and had close relationships with many black abolitionists, relations between white and black abolitionists were often tense. Blacks protested that they did not have their fair share of leadership positions or influence over policy. In addition to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became a leading orator and author, prominent black abolitionists included Charles Remond, Sojourner Truth, William Wells Brown, Frances Harper, Robert Purvis, and Henry Highland Garnet. The Negro Convention movement, which sponsored national meetings of black leaders beginning in 1830, provided an important forum for independent black expression. Their most eloquent statement came in 1854, when black leaders met in Cleveland to declare their faith in a separate identity, proclaiming, "We pledge our integrity to use all honorable means, to unite us, as one people, on this continent." Black newspapers, such as the North Star founded by Douglass in 1847, enabled black writers to preach liberation to black readers. African American authors also wrote books and pamphlets attacking slavery, refuting racism, and advocating resistance.
What provoked the 1840s War with Mexico and why did it last longer than expected? 13.1.5
Although Mexico had offered to recognize Texas independence in 1845 to forestall annexation to the United States, it rejected the Lone Star Republic's dubious claim to the unsettled territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. When the United States annexed Texas and assumed its claim to the disputed area, Mexico broke off diplomatic relations and prepared for war.....The Mexican-American War lasted much longer than expected because the Mexicans refused to make peace despite military defeats. In the first major campaign of the conflict, Taylor took Matamoros and overcame fierce resistance to capture the city of Monterrey.
Who was the target audience for the American Tract Society? 12.1.3
Another major effort went into publishing and distributing religious tracts, mainly by the American Tract Society, founded in 1825. Special societies targeted groups beyond the reach of regular churches, such as seamen, Native Americans, and the urban poor. In 1816-1817, middle-class women in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston formed societies to spread the gospel in lower-class wards—where, as one of their missionaries put it, there was "a great mass of people beyond the restraints of religion."
Prior to the 1830s, how did defenders of slavery describe the institution? 11.2.4
Before the 1830s, the rights and wrongs of slavery had been openly discussed in much of the South. Apologists commonly described the institution as "a necessary evil."
Why were slave uprisings rare, and what was the most famous uprising? 11.1.3
As we have already seen, the most bloody and terrifying slave revolt was the Nat Turner insurrection of 1831. Although it was the last slave rebellion of its kind before the Civil War, armed resistance had not ended. Indeed, slaves' most sustained and successful effort to win their freedom by force took place in Florida between 1835 and 1842, when hundreds of black fugitives fought the U.S. Army in the Second Seminole War alongside the Indians who had given them a haven. The Seminoles were resisting removal to Oklahoma, but for the blacks who took part in it, the war was a struggle for their own freedom. When it ended, most of them were allowed to accompany their Indian allies to the trans-Mississippi West. Few slaves ever took part in organized acts of violent resistance against white power. Most realized that the odds against a successful revolt were high. Bitter experience had shown them that the usual outcome was death for the rebels. As a consequence, they resisted white dominance in safer, more ingenious ways.
How common was the use of hard liquor in the early 19th century? 12.1.3
Beecher was especially influential in the temperance movement, the most successful reform crusade; his sermons against drink were the most important and widely distributed of the early tracts calling for total abstinence from "demon rum." The temperance movement was directed at a real social evil. Since the Revolution, whiskey had become the most popular American beverage. Made from corn by farmers or, by the 1820s, in commercial distilleries, it was cheaper than milk or beer and safer than water (which was often contaminated). In some areas, rum and brandy were also popular. Hard liquor was frequently consumed with food as a table beverage, even at breakfast, and children sometimes imbibed along with adults. Per capita annual consumption of distilled beverages in the 1820s was almost triple what it is today, and alcoholism had reached epidemic proportions.
Did the American Colonization Society advocate gradual or immediate emancipation of slaves? 12.3.1
Before the 1830s, most people who expressed religious and moral concern over slavery were affiliated with the American Colonization Society. Most colonizationists admitted that slavery was an evil, but they also viewed it as a deeply rooted social and economic institution that could be eliminated only gradually and with the cooperation of slaveholders. Reflecting racial prejudice, they proposed to provide transportation to Africa for free blacks who chose to go, or were emancipated for that purpose, to relieve southern fears that a race war would erupt if freed slaves remained in America. In 1821, the society established the colony of Liberia in West Africa, and in the 1830s, a few thousand African Americans were settled there.
What was the underlying premise of Manifest Destiny? 13.1.4
Besides coining the phrase "Manifest Destiny," O'Sullivan pointed to the three main ideas that lay behind it. One was that God favored American expansionism. This notion came naturally out of the long tradition, going back to the New England Puritans, that identified the growth of America with the divinely ordained success of a chosen people. Second, the phrase "free development" implied that the spread of American rule meant "extending the area of freedom." Democratic institutions and local self-government would follow the flag if the United States annexed areas claimed by autocratic foreign governments. O'Sullivan's third premise was that population growth required territorial acquisitions.
From what part of the world did most immigrants to America originate between 1820 and 1840 and which group tended to have more capital available to them? 13.2.3
Between 1820 and 1840, an estimated 700,000 immigrants arrived in the United States, mainly from the British Isles and German-speaking areas of continental Europe.... German immigrants
In early Texas, what issue created friction between the Mexican government and Anglo colonists? 13.1.1
But friction soon developed between the Mexican government and the Anglo-American colonists over slavery and the authority of the Catholic Church. Anglo-American settlers were not willing to become Mexicans. Yet under the terms of settlement, all people living in Texas had to become Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics. Slavery presented another problem. In 1829, Mexico freed all slaves under its jurisdiction. The Mexican government gave slaveholders in Texas an exemption that allowed them to emancipate their slaves and then force them to sign lifelong contracts as indentured servants, but many Texans refused to limit their ownership rights in any way. Settlers either converted to Catholicism in name only or ignored the requirement.
Why do historians consider the mid-19th century abolition movement successful? 12.3.2
But in another sense the crusade was successful. It made the public conscious of the slavery issue and convinced many northerners that the South's peculiar institution was morally wrong and dangerous to the American way of life. The South helped the antislavery cause in the North by responding hysterically and repressively to abolitionist agitation. In 1836, southern congressmen forced adoption of a gag rule requiring that abolitionist petitions be tabled without being read; the post office refused to deliver antislavery literature in the slave states. Prominent northerners who had been unmoved by abolitionist depictions of slave suffering became more responsive when their own civil liberties were threatened. The politicians who later mobilized the North against the expansion of slavery into the territories drew strength from the antislavery and anti-southern sentiments that abolitionists had already called forth.
Why did slaves typically prefer living on large plantations as opposed to small farms? 11.1.2
But in areas where most slaves lived on farms or small plantations, and especially in the Upper South where slaves were often sold or hired out, a different pattern seems to have prevailed. Under these circumstances, slaves' spouses frequently resided on other plantations or farms, often some distance away, and ties between husbands and wives were looser and more fragile. Female-headed families were the norm, and mothers, assisted in most cases by female relatives and friends, took responsibility for child rearing. Mother-centered families with weak conjugal ties were a natural response to the absence of fathers and the prospect of their being moved or sold beyond visiting distance. Where sale or relocation could break up unions at any time, it did not pay to invest all of one's emotions in a conjugal relationship. But whether the basic family form was nuclear or matrifocal (female-headed), it created infinitely precious ties for its members. The threat of breaking up a family through sale was a disciplinary tool that gave masters great power over their slaves.
Why did some working class parents look upon public schools unfavorably? 12.2.2
Demand for more public education began in the 1820s and early 1830s as a central focus of the workingmen's movements in eastern cities. Hard-pressed artisans viewed free schools open to all as a way to counter the growing gap between rich and poor. Affluent taxpayers, who did not see why they should pay to educate other people's children, opposed the demands. But middle-class reformers seized the initiative, shaped educational reform to fit their own end of social discipline, and provided the momentum for legislative success.
What was central to the message of evangelist Charles G. Finney? 12.1.1
During the late 1820s, Beecher was forced to confront the new and more radical form of revivalism Charles G. Finney was practicing in western New York. Upstate New York was a hotbed of religious enthusiasms. Most of its population consisted of transplanted New Englanders who had left behind their close-knit villages and ancestral churches but not their Puritan consciences. Troubled by rapid economic changes and the social dislocations that accompanied them, they were ripe for a new faith and fresh moral direction. Although he worked within Congregational and Presbyterian churches (which were cooperating under a plan of union established in 1804), Finney was relatively indifferent to theological issues. His appeal was to emotion or the heart, rather than to doctrine or reason. He wanted converts to feel the power of Christ and become new men and women. He eventually adopted the extreme view that redeemed Christians could be free of sin—as perfect as their Father in Heaven. This perfectionism led many evangelicals into moral-reform movements. Beginning in 1823, Finney conducted successful revivals in towns and cities of western New York, culminating in his triumph in Rochester in 1830-1831. Even more controversial than his freewheeling approach to theology was how he won converts. Finney sought instantaneous conversions. He held meetings that lasted all night or for days in a row, placing an "anxious bench" in front of the congregation where those who were repenting could receive special attention, and he encouraged women to pray publicly for male relatives. Finney's new methods and the emotionalism that accompanied them disturbed Beecher and eastern evangelicals. Finney also violated Christian tradition by allowing women to pray aloud in church. An evangelical summit meeting between Beecher and Finney, in New Lebanon, New York, in 1827, failed to resolve these and other issues. Beecher threatened to stand on the state line if Finney tried to bring his crusade to Connecticut. But it soon became clear that Finney was not merely stirring people up; he was leaving strong, active churches behind him. Opposition weakened. Finney eventually founded a tabernacle in New York City that became a rallying point for evangelical efforts to reach the urban masses.
Why did white southerners who owned no slaves follow the lead of planters and support the institution of slavery? 11.2.3
Even if they did not aspire to own slaves, white farmers often viewed black servitude as providing a guarantee of their own liberty and independence. A society that gave them the right to vote and the chance to be self-sufficient on their own land encouraged the feeling that they were fundamentally equal to the largest slaveholders. Although they had no natural love of planters and slavery, they believed—or could be induced to believe—that abolition would threaten their liberty and independence. In part, their anxieties were economic; freed slaves would compete with them for land or jobs. But racism deepened their fears and made their opposition to black freedom implacable. Emancipation was unthinkable because it would remove the pride and status that automatically went with white skin in this acutely race-conscious society. Slavery, despite its drawbacks, kept blacks "in their place" and made all whites, however poor and uneducated they might be, feel they were free and equal members of a master race.
What was the experience of free blacks in the South? 11.1.4
Free blacks occupied an increasingly precarious position in the antebellum South. White southerners' fears of free blacks inciting slave revolts like Turner's, and their reaction to abolitionists' attacks, led slaveholders after 1830 to defend slavery as a positive good rather than a necessary evil. This defense was racist, emphasizing a dual image of the black person: Under the "domesticating" influence of a white master, the slave was a happy child; outside of this influence, he was a savage beast. As whites strove to convince themselves and northerners that blacks were happy in slavery, they more frequently portrayed free blacks as savages who needed to be reined in. Beginning in the 1830s, all the southern states cracked down on free blacks as well as people of mixed ancestry—or "people of color," as they were known in the law. Laws forced free people of color to register or have white guardians who were responsible for their behavior. Free blacks had to carry papers proving their status. In some states, they needed permission to move from one county to another. Licensing laws excluded blacks from several occupations, and the authorities often prevented them from holding meetings or forming organizations. Vagrancy and apprenticeship laws forced free people of color into economic dependency barely distinguishable from outright slavery. Although beset by special problems of their own, most free blacks identified with the suffering of the slaves; when they could, they protested against the peculiar institution and worked for its abolition. Many of them had once been slaves themselves or were the children of slaves; often their relatives were still in bondage. They knew that the discrimination from which they suffered was rooted in slavery and the racial attitudes that accompanied it. As long as slavery existed, their own rights were likely to be denied. Even their freedom was at risk; former slaves who could not prove they had been legally freed could be re-enslaved. This threat existed even in the North: Under federal fugitive slave laws, escaped slaves had to be returned to bondage. Even blacks who were born free were not safe. Kidnapping or fraudulent seizure by slave-catchers was always a risk. Because of the elaborate system of control and surveillance, free people of color in the South could do little to work against slavery. Most found that survival depended on creating the impression of loyalty to the planter regime. In the Deep South, relatively privileged free people of color, mostly of 6racially mixed origin, were sometimes persuaded that it was to their advantage to preserve the status quo. As skilled artisans or small-business owners dependent on white favors and patronage, they had little incentive to risk everything by taking the side of the slaves. In southern Louisiana, a few people of color even became planters who lived in relative luxury, supported by the labor of other African Americans. However, although some free people of color created niches of relative freedom, their position in southern society became increasingly precarious. Beginning in the 1830s, southern whites sought to make the line between free and unfree a line between black and white. Free blacks were an anomaly in this system; increasingly, the southern answer was to exclude, degrade, and even enslave those free people of color who remained within their borders. Just before the Civil War, a campaign developed to carry the repression and discrimination to its logical conclusion: State legislatures proposed forcing free people of color to choose between leaving the state or being enslaved.
How did President Andrew Jackson react to the establishment of the Republic of Texas? 13.1.2
Houston became the first president of Texas. He immediately sent an emissary to Washington to test the waters for annexation. Houston's agent found sympathy for Texas's independence, but Andrew Jackson and others told him that domestic politics and fear of a war with Mexico made immediate annexation impossible. The most that he could win from Congress and the Jackson administration was formal recognition of Texas sovereignty.
What was the message of David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World? 12.3.1
In 1827, Baptist minister Reverend Nathaniel Paul of Albany, New York, exhorted fellow African Americans to "enter the field with a fixed determination to live and die in the holy cause" of abolition of slavery. David Walker published his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in 1829, denouncing slavery in the most vigorous language, calling for a black revolt against white tyranny, and appealing to allies in the "holy cause" of abolition.
By 1860, what demographic made up the majority of the workforce in Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mills? 13.2.4
In established industries and older mill towns of the Northeast, immigrants added to, or displaced, the native-born workers who had predominated in the 1830s and 1840s. The changing workforce of the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, provided a striking example of this process. In 1836, only 3.7 percent of the workers in one Lowell mill were foreign-born; most were young unmarried women from New England farms. By 1860, immigrants constituted 61.7 percent of the workforce. This trend reveals much about the changing character of the American working class. In the 1830s, most male workers were artisans. Factory work was still largely the province of women and children. Both groups were predominantly of American stock. In the 1840s, more men worked in factories, although women predominated in the textile industry. During that decade, conditions in many mills deteriorated. Relations between management and labor became more impersonal, and workers were pushed to increase their output. Workdays of 12-14 hours were common.
How did the Second Great Awakening differ in the South and New England? 12.1.1
In the South, Baptists and Presbyterians eventually deemphasized camp meetings in favor of "protracted meetings" in local churches that featured guest preachers holding forth day after day for up to two weeks. Southern evangelical churches, especially Baptist and Methodist, grew rapidly in membership and influence during the first half of the nineteenth century and became the focus of rural life. Although they fostered societies to improve morals—to encourage temperance and discourage dueling, for example—they generally shied away from social reform. The conservatism of a slaveholding society discouraged radical efforts to change the world. Reformist tendencies were more evident in the distinctive revivalism that originated in New England and western New York. Northern evangelists were mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians, influenced by New England Puritan traditions. Their greatest successes were not in rural or frontier areas but in small- to medium-sized towns and cities. Their revivals could be stirring affairs but were less extravagantly emotional than the camp meetings of the South. The northern brand of evangelism led to the formation of societies devoted to redeeming the human race in general and American society in particular.
Why did revivalism in the south not lead to social reform as it did in the north? 12.1.1
In the South, Baptists and Presbyterians eventually deemphasized camp meetings in favor of "protracted meetings" in local churches that featured guest preachers holding forth day after day for up to two weeks. Southern evangelical churches, especially Baptist and Methodist, grew rapidly in membership and influence during the first half of the nineteenth century and became the focus of rural life. Although they fostered societies to improve morals—to encourage temperance and discourage dueling, for example—they generally shied away from social reform. The conservatism of a slaveholding society discouraged radical efforts to change the world. Reformist tendencies were more evident in the distinctive revivalism that originated in New England and western New York. Northern evangelists were mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians, influenced by New England Puritan traditions. Their greatest successes were not in rural or frontier areas but in small- to medium-sized towns and cities. Their revivals could be stirring affairs but were less extravagantly emotional than the camp meetings of the South. The northern brand of evangelism led to the formation of societies devoted to redeeming the human race in general and American society in particular.
What was the goal of the members of the American Colonization Society who lived west of the Blue Ridge Mountains? 11.2.4
In the Upper South, as late as the 1820s, there had been significant support for the American Colonization Society, with its program of gradual voluntary emancipation accompanied by deportation of the freedmen. In 1831 and 1832—in the wake of the Nat Turner uprising—the Virginia legislature debated gradual emancipation. Representatives of the yeoman farmers living west of the Blue Ridge Mountains supported getting rid of both slavery and blacks to ensure white safety. But the argument that slavery was "a positive good"—rather than an evil slated for gradual elimination—won the day, and emancipation was defeated.
What did reformer Catharine Beecher believe was an appropriate occupation for women (outside the home)? 12.2.1
In the benevolent societies and reform movements of the Jacksonian era, especially those designated as women's organizations, women handled money, organized meetings and public appeals, made contracts, and even gave orders to male subordinates. The desire to extend the feminine sphere motivated Catharine Beecher's campaign to make school teaching a woman's occupation. A prolific and influential writer on the theory and practice of domesticity, this unmarried daughter of Lyman Beecher saw the spinster-teacher as equivalent to a mother. By instilling in young males the virtues that only women couldteach, the schoolmarm could help liberate America from corruption and materialism.
What was the experience of planter class women as young girls and then as wives? 11.2.1
Likewise, the responsibility of running an extended household that produced much of its own food and clothing kept plantation mistresses from being the idle ladies of legend. Not only were plantation mistresses a tiny minority of the women who lived and worked in the slave states before the Civil War, but even women from the planter elite rarely lived lives of leisure. A few of the richest and most secure plantation families did aspire to live like a traditional landed aristocracy, and visiting English nobility accepted them as equals. Big houses, elegant carriages, fancy-dress balls, and multitudes of house servants all reflected aristocratic aspirations. Dueling, despite efforts to repress it, remained the standard way to settle "affairs of honor" among gentlemen. Another sign of gentility was the tendency of planters' sons to avoid "trade" as a primary or secondary career in favor of law or the military. Planters' daughters were trained from girlhood to play the piano, speak French, dress in the latest fashions, and sparkle in the drawing room or on the dance floor. The aristocratic style originated among the older gentry of the seaboard slave states, but by the 1840s and 1850s, it had spread southwest as a second generation of wealthy planters began to displace the rough-hewn pioneers who first settled Mississippi and Alabama.
What living situation - plantation or small farm - was more likely to allow slave children to have a more stable upbringing? 11.1.2
More than any other institution, the African American family prevented slavery from becoming utterly demoralizing. Slaves had a strong and abiding sense of family and kinship. But the nature of the families or households that predominated on plantations or farms varied with circumstances. On large plantations with relatively stable slave populations, most slave children lived in two-parent households, and many marriages lasted for 20 to 30 years. The death or sale of one of the partners broke up more marriages than voluntary dissolutions did. On such plantations with stable populations, mothers, fathers, and children were bonded closely, and parents shared child-rearing responsibilities (within the limits masters allowed). Masters and churches encouraged marital fidelity: Stable unions produced more offspring, and adultery and divorce were considered sinful.
Why did the Mexican government grant Stephen F. Austin land in what is now Texas? 13.1.1
Newly independent Mexico encouraged trade with the United States and wooed American settlers to Texas, which was sparsely populated. It granted Stephen F. Austin, son of a one-time Spanish citizen, a huge piece of land there in hopes he would help attract and settle new colonists from the United States. Some 15 other Anglo-American empresarios received similar land grants in the 1820s. In 1823, 300 families from the United States were settled on the Austin grant. Within a year, the colony's population was 2,021. The offer of fertile and inexpensive land attracted many American immigrants.
How did slavery on a rice plantation differ from slavery on other types of plantations? 11.1.1
Not all slaves in agriculture worked in gangs. In the low country of South Carolina and Georgia, enslaved people who cultivated rice worked under a "task system" that gave them more control over the pace of labor. With less supervision, they could complete their tasks within an eight-hour day. Slaves on small farms often worked side by side with their masters rather than in slave gangs, although such intimacy did not necessarily affect power relationships. While about three-quarters were field workers, the enslaved performed many other kinds of labor. They dug ditches, built houses, worked on boats and in mills (often hired out by their masters for a year), and worked in the house—cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Some slaves, especially women, also worked within the slave community as preachers, caretakers of children, and healers. A few slaves, about 5 percent, worked in industry in the South, including in mills, iron works, and railroad building. Slaves in cities did a wider range of jobs than plantation slaves, and in general enjoyed more autonomy. They worked in restaurants and saloons, in hotels, and as skilled tradesmen. Some urban slaves even lived apart from their masters and hired out their own time, returning part of their wages to their owners.
What was the purpose of the Underground Railroad? 11.1.3
One way was to run away, and thousands of slaves did so. Most fugitives never got beyond the neighborhood of the plantation; after "lying out" for a time, they would return, often after negotiating immunity from punishment. But many escapees remained free for years, hiding in swamps or other remote areas. Others escaped to freedom in the North or Mexico. Fugitives stowed away aboard ships heading to northern ports or traveled over land for hundreds of miles, avoiding patrols and inquisitive whites by staying off the roads and moving only at night. Light-skinned blacks sometimes made it to freedom by passing for white. Some escaped with the help of the Underground Railroad, an informal network of sympathetic free blacks (and a few whites) who helped fugitives make their way north. The Underground Railroad had an estimated 3,200 active workers. It is estimated that 130,000 refugees (out of 4 million slaves) escaped the slave South between 1815 and 1860. By the 1850s, substantial numbers of northerners had been in open violation of federal law by hiding runaways for a night. One resourceful slave even had himself packed in a box and shipped to the North. Henry "Box" Brown, like other successful fugitives, published an account of his life in slavery and his daring escape, and fashioned his story as a plea to support the antislavery cause. Such narratives by fugitive slaves are an important source of information about life under slavery.
What were characteristics of life for enslaved Americans on a Louisiana sugar plantation? 11.1.1
Slaves' daily life varied with the region in which they lived and the type of plantation or farm on which they worked. On large plantations in the Cotton Belt, most slaves worked in "gangs" under an overseer. White overseers, sometimes helped by black "drivers," enforced a workday from sunup to sundown, six days a week. There was never a slack season: cotton cultivation required year-round labor. Enslaved women and children also worked in the fields. Parents often brought babies and young children to the fields, where older children could care for them and mothers could nurse them during brief breaks. Older children worked in "trash gangs," weeding and yard cleaning. Life on the sugar plantations of Louisiana was much harsher: Slaves had to work into the night during harvest season, and mortality rates were high.
Why were the Grimke sisters considered objectionable to male abolitionists? 12.3.3
Some antislavery women defied conventional ideas of their proper sphere by becoming public speakers and demanding an equal role in the leadership of antislavery societies. These included black women abolitionists like Maria Stewart, Sarah Mapps Douglass, and Sarah Louise Forten, who helped found abolitionist societies and made speeches on behalf of abolition. The most famous women in the movement were the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Angelina, who attracted enormous attention as the rebellious daughters of a South Carolina slaveholder. When male abolitionists objected to their speaking in public to mixed audiences of men and women, Garrison defended them and helped forge a link between blacks' and women's struggles for equality.
How did Second Great Awakening speakers encourage emotional excitement amongst audiences? 12.4.1
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement that swept the United States beginning in about the 1790s and lasting through the 1840s. Through camp meetings and other gatherings, many Americans sought a closer relationship with God and, ultimately, their own spiritual salvation. This new idea of a personal relationship with God, together with the message of equality preached by many revivalist ministers, encouraged religious excitement among frontiersmen, farmers, laborers, women, and slaves in a way that the more established and conservative churches had failed to do. This spiritual revival also had implications for national politics, encouraging many Americans to support moral reform movements such as temperance and abolition.
How did the development of interchangeable parts affect the factory system? 13.2.2
The essential features of the emerging mode of production were gathering a supervised workforce in a single place, paying cash wages to workers, using interchangeable parts, and manufacturing by "continuous process." Within a factory setting, a sequence of continuous operations could rapidly and efficiently assemble standardized parts, manufactured separately and in bulk, into a final product. Mass production, which involved the division of labor into a series of relatively simple and repetitive tasks, contrasted sharply with the traditional craft mode of production, in which a single worker produced the entire product out of raw materials. The transition to mass production often depended on new technology. Just as power looms and spinning machinery had made textile mills possible, new and more reliable machines or industrial techniques revolutionized other industries. Elias Howe's invention of the sewing machine in 1846 laid the basis for the ready-to-wear clothing industry and contributed to the mechanization of shoemaking. During the 1840s, iron manufacturers adopted the British practice of using coal rather than charcoal for smelting and thus produced a metal better suited to industrial needs. Charles Goodyear's discovery in 1839 of the process for vulcanizing rubber made new manufactured items available to the American consumer, most notably the overshoe.
How were city centers changing by the beginning of the 19th century in terms of population distribution? 13.2.3
The immigrants exacerbated the problems of America's rapidly growing cities. The old "walking city," in which rich and poor lived in close proximity near the center of town, was giving way to a more segregated environment. Railroads and horse-drawn streetcars enabled the affluent to move to the first American suburbs, while areas nearer commercial and industrial centers became the congested abode of newcomers from Europe. Slums such as the notorious Five Points district in New York City were characterized by overcrowding, poverty, disease, and crime. Recognizing that these conditions created potential dangers for the entire urban population, middle-class reformers worked to professionalize police forces, introduce sanitary water and sewage-disposal systems, and upgrade housing. They made some progress before the Civil War, but the lot of the urban poor, mainly immigrants, was not dramatically improved. Most urban immigrants' lives remained unsafe, unhealthy, and unpleasant.
Why did northern factories and farms turn more and more to mechanization? 13.2.3
The incentive to mechanize northern industry and agriculture came in part from a shortage of cheap labor. Compared to the industrializing nations of Europe, the economy of the United States in the early nineteenth century was labor-scarce. Since it was difficult to attract able-bodied men to work for low wages in factories or on farms, women and children were used extensively in the early textile mills, and commercial farmers had to rely on the labor of their family members. Labor-saving machinery eased but did not solve the labor shortage. Factories required more operatives. Railroad builders needed construction gangs. The growth of industrial work attracted many European immigrants during the two decades before the Civil War.
Out of what reform movement did the abolitionist movement grow? 12.3.1
The new perfectionism had its most important success within the antislavery movement. The abolitionist movement, like the temperance crusade, was a direct outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening. Leading abolitionists had undergone conversion experiences in the 1820s and were already committed to Christian activism before they dedicated themselves to freeing the slaves. Several were ministers or divinity students seeking a mission that would fulfill spiritual and professional ambitions.
What accounted for the new focus on childhood in the early 19th century and how did it change parent-child relationships? 12.2.2
The nineteenth century has been called the century of the child. More than ever, childhood was seen as a distinct stage of life requiring the special and sustained attention of adults at least until the age of 13 or 14. The middle-class family now became "child-centered": The care, nurture, and rearing of children was viewed as the family's main function. Earlier, adults had treated children more casually, often sending them away from home for education or for apprenticeship at a young age. By the early nineteenth century, however, children were staying at home longer and receiving more attention from parents, especially mothers. The new concern for children resulted in more intimate relations between parents and children. In advice manuals and sentimental literature, affection, not authority, bound the ideal family together. Discipline remained at the core of "family government," but the preferred method of enforcing good behavior changed. Shaming or withholding affection partially displaced corporal punishment. In an age of moral perfectionism, the role of discipline was to induce repentance and change basic attitudes. The goal was often described as "self-government"; to help children achieve it, parents used guilt, rather than fear, as their main source of leverage.
What limited the early success of railroads and how did the federal government step in to change that? 13.2.1
The railroad transformed the American economy during the 1840s and 1850s. The technology came from England, where steam locomotives were first used to haul cars along tracks in 1804. In 1830 and 1831, two American railroads began commercial operation—the Charleston and Hamburg in South Carolina and the Baltimore and Ohio in Maryland. After these pioneer lines had shown that steam locomotion was practical and profitable, other railroads were built and began to carry passengers and freight during the 1830s. But this early success was limited, because canals were strong competitors, especially for the freight business. Passengers might prefer the speed of trains, but the lower unit cost of transporting freight on the canal boats prevented most shippers from changing their habits. Furthermore, states such as New York and Pennsylvania had invested heavily in canals and resisted chartering a competitive form of transportation.....Private capital did not fully meet the needs of the early railroad barons. State and local governments, convinced that railroads were the key to their prosperity, loaned them money, bought their stock, and guaranteed their bonds. Despite the dominant philosophy of laissez-faire, the federal government surveyed the routes of projected lines and provided land grants. In 1850, for example, the Illinois Central was granted millions of acres of public land. Forty companies received such aid before 1860, setting a precedent for the massive post-Civil War land grants to the railroads.
Why did the movement to limit the workday to ten hours fail? 13.2.4
The result was an upsurge of labor militancy involving female and male factory workers. Mill girls in Lowell, for example, formed a union—the Female Labor Reform Association—and agitated for shorter working hours. On a broader front, workers' organizations petitioned state legislatures for laws limiting the workday to ten hours. Some such laws were actually passed, but they were ineffective because employers could still require a prospective worker to sign a contract agreeing to longer hours. As was the case for many immigrants seeking economic opportunities in the New World, his situation apparently changed for the better.
Why did Upper South slave owners participate in the domestic slave trade so enthusiastically? 11.3.1
The slave trade provided crucial capital in a period of transition and innovation in the Upper South. Nevertheless, the declining importance of slave labor in that region meant the peculiar institution had a weaker hold on public loyalty there than in the cotton states. More rapid urban and industrial development than elsewhere in the South accompanied this diversification of agriculture. As a result, Virginians, Marylanders, and Kentuckians were divided on whether their future lay with the Deep South's plantation economy or with the industrializing free-labor system that was flourishing north of their borders.
From the point of view of temperance reformers, what aspect of society was threatened by overuse of liquor? 12.1.3
The temperance reformers viewed drinking as a threat to public morality. Drunkenness was seen as a loss of self-control and moral responsibility that spawned crime, vice, and disorder. Above all, it threatened the family. Drinking was mainly a male vice, and the main target of temperance propaganda was the husband and father who abused, neglected, or abandoned his wife and children because he was a slave to the bottle. Women played a vital role in the movement and in making it a crusade for protecting the home. The drinking habits of the poor and laboring classes also aroused concern. Particularly in urban areas, "respectable" and propertied people lived in fear that drunken mobs would attack private property and create chaos.
What, typically, was the demographics of the slave who ran away to seek freedom? 11.1.3
The typical fugitive was a young, unmarried male from the Upper South. For most slaves, however, flight was not an option. Either they lived too deep in the South to reach free soil, or they were reluctant to leave family and friends behind. Slaves who did not or could not leave the plantation had to oppose the masters' regime while remaining under the yoke of bondage.
What were the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe that ended the War with Mexico? 13.1.6
Trist ignored Polk's instructions and lingered in Mexico City. On February 2, 1848, he finally signed a treaty that gained all the territory he had been commissioned to obtain. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded New Mexico and California to the United States for $15 million, established the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico, and promised that the U.S. government would assume the financial claims of American citizens against Mexico. The 80,000 Mexican residents of the new territories would become U.S. citizens. When the agreement reached Washington, Polk censured Trist for disobeying orders but still sent the treaty to the Senate, which ratified it by a vote of 38 to 14 on March 10.
What industry pioneered the factory system of production? 13.2.2
While railroads were revolutionizing transportation, American industry was growing rapidly. The factory mode of production, which had originated before 1840 in the cotton mills of New England, was extended to other products. Instead of being done in different locations, wool was woven and processed in single production units beginning in the 1830s. By 1860, some of the largest textile mills in the country were producing wool cloth. In eastern Pennsylvania, iron was being forged and rolled in factories by 1850. The industries producing firearms, clocks, and sewing machines also adopted the factory system during this period.
On what grounds did slave owners argue their disposition to treat slaves well? 11.2.2
While some historians have argued that paternalism was part of a social system that was organized like a family hierarchy rather than a brutal, profit-making arrangement, there was no inconsistency between planters' paternalism and capitalism. Slaves were a form of capital; that is, they were both the main tools of production for a booming economy and an asset in themselves, valuable for their rising prices, like shares in the stock market today. The ban on the transatlantic slave trade in 1808 was effective enough to make it economically necessary for the slave population to reproduce itself if slavery were to continue. Rising slave prices also inhibited extreme physical abuse and deprivation. It was in masters' self-interest to see that their slave property remained in good enough condition to work hard and produce children. Furthermore, a good return on their investment enabled southern planters to spend more on slave maintenance than masters in less prosperous plantation economies like the Caribbean or Brazil could. Much of the slaveholders' paternalist writing discussed "the coincidence of humanity and interest," by which they meant that treating slaves well (including firm discipline) was in their best economic interest. There was a grain of truth in the planters' claim that their slaves were relatively well provided for. Comparative studies have suggested that pre-Civil War North American slaves enjoyed a higher standard of living than those in other New World slave societies, such as Brazil and Cuba. Their food, clothing, and shelter were normally sufficient to sustain life and labor at slightly above a bare subsistence level, and the rapid increase of the slave population in the Old South stands in sharp contrast to the usual failure of slave populations to reproduce themselves.
Why did some Tejanos support the separation of Texas from Mexico? 13.1.2
While this early fighting was going on, delegates from the American communities in Texas declared their independence on March 2, 1836. A constitution, based on that of the United States, was adopted for the new Republic of Texas, and a temporary government was installed to carry on the struggle. Although the ensuing conflict largely pitted Americans against Mexicans, some Texas Mexicans, or Tejanos, sided with the Anglo rebels. They too wanted to be free of Santa Anna's heavy-handed rule.
What was the most controversial topic discussed at the 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York? 12.3.3
Wounded by men's reluctance to extend the cause of emancipation to include women, Stanton and Mott began discussing plans for a women's rights convention. They returned to New York, where a campaign was already under way to reform the state's laws limiting the rights of married women. Ernestine Rose, a young Jewish activist, and Judge Thomas Herttell—a political radical and freethinker who had introduced the first bill to reform the state's marriage laws to the New York legislature—spearheaded this campaign. It came to a crescendo at the famous Seneca Falls Convention, which Stanton and Mott organized in upstate New York in 1848. These early feminists, in their first national gathering, issued the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, charging that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." They demanded that all women be given the right to vote, and that married women be freed from unjust laws giving husbands control of their property, persons, and children. Rejecting the Cult of Domesticity with its doctrine of separate spheres, these women and their male supporters launched the modern movement for gender equality.
How did the southern cotton economy affect industrialism in that region? 11.3.2
Yet just because the system made slaveholders wealthy did not mean that the benefits trickled down to the rest of the population—to the majority of whites who owned no slaves and to the slaves themselves—nor that it promoted efficiency and progressive change. Large plantation owners were the only segment of the population to enjoy the full benefits of the slave economy. Small slaveholders and non-slaveholders shared only to a limited extent in the bonanza profits of the cotton economy. The South's economic development was skewed in favor of a single route to wealth, open only to the minority with white skin and access to capital. Concentrating capital and business energies on cotton production foreclosed the diversified industrial and commercial growth that would have provided wider opportunities. Thus, compared to the industrializing North, the South was an underdeveloped region in which much of the population had little incentive to work hard.
How did the Cult of True Womanhood, also known as the Cult of Domesticity, shape expectations about women's lives? 12.2.1
oi\The notion that women belonged in the home while the public sphere belonged to men has been called the ideology of "separate spheres." In particular, the view that women had a special role to play in the domestic sphere as guardians of virtue and spiritual heads of the home has been described as the cult of domesticity, or the "cult of true womanhood." For most men, a woman's place was in the home and on a pedestal. The ideal wife and mother was "an angel in the house," a model of piety and virtue who exerted a wholesome moral and religious influence over men and children.