US History ch 4

Who was inspired by the Seneca Falls Convention to publish a newspaper called The Lily

Amelia Bloomer

Which of the following is an accurate statement about emigrants heading west in the middle 1800s

Emigrants usually traveled in wagon trails of 50 to 1,000 people

Which person built a mill in which all operation in the manufacturing of cloth were performed

Francis Cabo`t Lowell

Which of the following is an accurate summary of the Antifederalists' beliefs

Liberty could not survive unless the federal government remained weak and state governments remained strong

Why did factory owners benefit from industrialization during the early 1800s

Many jobs could be done by unskilled workers who earned lower wages

What was Mexico's response when the United States annexed Texas in 1845

Mexico refused to recognize the annexation

What term was used to describe young Americans who hunted for beaver pelts along the Rocky Mountain region

Mountain Men

Which state ratified the Constitution when Alexander Hamilton threatened to lead a prominent city to secede from the state

New York

Effects of the Gold Rush

Newcomers from the eastern United States quickly asserted their dominance over California. To discourage the Chinese, they levied a heavy tax on foreign miners

Senate Adopts the Compromise of 1850

Over the years, Congress had adopted a variety of measures in order to preserve the Union. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had limited slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had maintained the balance between slave and free states. Now, in yet another effort to ward off division, the Senate adopted legislation based on Clay's proposals. It became known as the Compromise of 1850. The debate over ratification of the compromise raged for months. Young northern radicals, like New York's William Seward, argued that the morality of God's "higher law" against slavery was more important than popular sovereignty or national unity. Equally radical southerners organized boycotts against northern goods, and a few even promoted separation from the Union. The proceedings erupted into violence in the Senate when Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who supported California's admission as a free state, denounced Mississippi senator Henry Foote, who opposed it. Furious, Foote rose from his seat and aimed a loaded revolver at Benton. The alarmed senators tried to restore order. But Benton was defiant, shouting "I am not armed! I have no pistols! I disdain to carry arms! Stand out of the way, and let the assassin fire!" At last, a senator from New York seized the revolver and locked it in a desk. Order was restored. Still, debate dragged on. With dozens of speeches—one lasting two days—an exhausted Clay struggled to gain supporters for the compromise. But in the end, the young senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois took charge. Working tirelessly, Douglas steered each component of Clay's plan through the Congress, persuading the Senate to adopt each measure separately. By September 1850, the obstacles to agreement had melted away: Both Calhoun and the slaveholding President Taylor were dead. Unlike Taylor, the new President, Millard Fillmore, supported the compromise. At last, the Senate passed the Compromise of 1850. California was admitted as a free state, and the policy of popular sovereignty was applied to the territory acquired from Mexico. Texas relinquished its claims on New Mexico in return for $10 million from the federal government with which to settle its debts. One by one, the other provisions passed. Slavery would remain undisturbed in Washington, D.C., but the slave trade was prohibited. And a new Fugitive Slave Act added stringent amendments to the earlier law, including the requirement that private citizens assist with apprehending runaway slaves. Citizens who assisted a fugitive slave could be fined or imprisoned. Most Americans, in both the North and South, breathed a sigh of relief that the crisis had been laid to rest. Though the Compromise of 1850 restored calm for the moment, it carried the seeds of new crises to come.

Why was placer mining the most widely used method of mining for gold

Placer mining was affordable to a large number of prospectors

Which situation showed how divided the federal government was over "Bleeding Kansas"?

President Pierce wanted Kansas to become a slave state, but Congress did not

What was the Constitution's system of checks and balances designed to do?

Prevent the emergence of a single domineering center of power

Which of the following was a key element of the American System

Protective tariffs

The Constitution granted different responsibilities to each branch of government. This is an example of which constitutional principle

Separation of powers

What did Sojourner Truth do that most women of the day were not allowed to do

She lectured to audiences

What did America gain from the 1795 treaty with Spain

Shipping rights on the Mississippi River and access to New Orleans

How did the Compromise of 1850 address the question of slavery in Washington DC

Slavery continued in Washington DC, but slave trading was banned

Who benefited most from Andrew Jackson's actions against Native Americans

Southern whites

Why did Spain agree to a treaty with the United States in 1795

Spain feared a U.S. alliance with Great Britain

What issue was at the root of the nullification crisis

States wanted to nullify federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional

Who should be credited for the federal Bill of Rights

The Antifederalists

What took place at the Hartford Convention

The Federalists demanded constitutional amendments

What was the result of the Battle of Tippecanoe

The Native American movement lost some of its power

What was the long term effect of the "Bleeding Kansas" problem?

The North and the South became more divided over the issue of slavery

Which new political party, with a central antislavery philosophy, became popular in the North in the mid 1850s

The Republican Party

What prompted the passage of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions

The Sedition Act

What was the most important advantage the US forces had against Mexico

The United States had well-trained military officers

Which US political party broke up as a consequence of the Compromise of 1850

The Whig Party

Which of the following issues emerged when California applied for admission to the Union

The balance between free and slave states was threatened

How did the nationalization of markets affect the economy

The economy experienced panics

Why did the United States remain neutral in the war between France and Great Britain

The economy of the United States depended on trade with Great Britain

Limited Government

The government has only the powers that the Constitution gives it

In 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over what issue

The imposition of higher tariffs

What was a major goal of the American Colonization Society (ACS)?

The migration of free blacks to Africa

What was the Grimke sisters' arguments for equal rights for women based on

The moral nature of human beings

What discouraged colonists from settling in Spanish borderlands

The threat of war with nomadic Native Americans

What was the main purpose of the Three-Fifths Compromise

To increase the power of southern states in Congress

What was the purpose of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787

To provide a system of government for the Northwest Territory

What did Margaret Fuller believe

Women needed freedom to develop the powers that they possessed

What issue did Stephen A. Douglas believe had a constitutional basis for its resolution

Slave ownership in territories could be decided by popular sovereignty

Why did some northerners support personal liberty laws

They resented federal intervention in the affairs of independent states

California Statehood Threatens the Balance of Power

"Gold fever," as it came to be known, drew people from all over the world. They literally dug into the western foothills of California's Sierra Nevada, setting up towns with names that reflected their hopes and their origins: Gold Run, Eldorado (Spanish for "gilded one"), Dutch Flats, Chinese Camp, French Corral, Negro Bar, Iowa Hill. Within a year, more than 80,000 people had journeyed to California. As the influx continued without a letup, California became a wild and lawless place. Californians recognized that they needed a government to bring order to the chaos. In 1849, they drafted a constitution and asked to be admitted to the Union as a free—nonslave—state. California's request created an uproar in the nation. For years, the North and the South had accused each other of being "aggressors" on the issue of slavery. And for years, the two sides had maintained a delicate balance of slave and free states in Congress. Now, inflamed southerners angrily noted that admission of California would tip the balance in favor of the free states. Other concerns simmered around the edges of the slavery issue, threatening to come to an explosive boil. Texas, a slave state, and the federal government were locked in a dispute over Texas's northwestern border. New Mexico and Utah were organizing to become territories but seemed likely to someday join the Union as free states. In the North, abolitionists seemed to be gaining ground in their bid to ban slavery in Washington, D.C. In the meantime, southerners demanded that the federal government enforce the weak and often-neglected Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. The law stated that runaway slaves must be returned to their masters, but it provided no government aid to do so. The South felt that its property and its honor were at stake. Many northerners insisted that the federal government should not help to enforce slavery.

Battle of Tippecanoe

1811 battle in the Indiana Territory between Native Americans and United States troops in which the Native Americans were defeated

First Seminole War

1817-1818 war between U.S. soldiers and Seminole Indians in Florida

How was the nullification crisis resolved

A compromise tariff was passed with the support of President Anderw Jackson

Which phrase best describes the way Andrew Jackson portrayed himself during the 1828 campaign

A down-to-earth man with humble roots

Garrison Demands Emancipation

A printer named William Lloyd Garrison, who lived in Boston, Massachusetts, became one of the leading abolitionists. Garrison began his antislavery career by working for Benjamin Lundy, a Baltimore Quaker who published America's first antislavery newspaper. In 1831, Garrison began publishing his own antislavery newspaper, The Liberator. Garrison used dramatic language to attract readers and convince them that slavery was morally wrong. This technique of trying to effect change by persuading people through moral arguments is called moral suasion. It was a favorite technique of leaders of many reform movements. Garrison was in favor of emancipation, or the freeing of enslaved people. At first he thought, like most abolitionists, that this should be accomplished gradually over time to minimize economic and social disruption. But Garrison soon took the radical step of advocating immediate emancipation and the extension of full political and social rights to African Americans. In cities across the Northeast and the Midwest, abolitionist societies, made up of people who shared Garrison's views, sprang up. Founded by Garrison in 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society had over 150,000 members nationally by 1840. This group implemented moral suasion by printing antislavery pamphlets and distributing them to churches and other community organizations. The American Anti-Slavery Society and similar groups also supported a team of hundreds of lecturers who spoke against slavery at camp meetings and other public gatherings. They insisted that holding slaves was counter to most Americans' religious ideals.

In what way did democratic Patriots such as Thomas Paine differ from conservative Patriots in their view of republics as a form of government

Democratic Patriots wanted the greatest amount of power among the greatest number of people

Agriculture Remains Strong

Despite the growing size and power of the nation's factories, agriculture remained the largest industry in the United States. But change affected farming as well. American farms became more productive, raising larger crops for the market. In 1815, American farmers sold only about a third of their harvests. By 1860, that share had doubled. The gains came partly from the greater fertility of new farms in the Midwest. Farmers also adopted better methods for planting, tending, and harvesting crops and for raising livestock. After 1840, large farms also employed the steel plow invented by John Deere and the mechanical reaper developed by Cyrus McCormick.

What was the Three-Fifths Compromise

Each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person to be added to a state's free population in allocating representatives

Expansionists Seek Manifest Destiny

Expansionists justified their views by pointing to the weakness of the Mexican government and economy. They argued that the Mexicans, whom many Americans regarded as inferior, did not deserve to keep lands so badly needed for American settlement. In 1845, journalist John L. O'Sullivan wrote an influential editorial in favor of expansion. He wrote: "The American claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and . . . self-government entrusted to us." —John L. O'Sullivan, New York Morning News, December 27, 1845 Expansionists were soon using the term Manifest Destiny to refer to the belief that God wanted the United States to own all of North America. But O'Sullivan envisioned liberty primarily for white men. Expansion would come at the expense of Indians and Mexicans. And southern expansionists hoped to add more slave states to strengthen their political position in Congress.

As Chief Justice of the United States, what was John Marshall's interpretation of state and federal laws under the Constitution

Federal laws were superior to state laws

Why did John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry fail

Few black or white Americans were prepared to join a rebellion led by a fanatical abolitionist

First Continental Congress

Group of delegates that met in 1774 and represented all the American colonies, except Georgia

Why did Andrew Jackson oppose the national bank

He felt it undermined the rights of states

What was one important precedent set by George Washington during his term in office

He formed a Cabinet approved by the Senate

What did Abraham Lincoln gain from the Lincoln-Douglas debates in spite of losing the 1858 US Senate election to Stephen A. Douglas

He gained growing respect and a political following that would help him later

How did Junipero Serra contribute to the Spanish settlement of California

He helped set up a string of missions to convert Indians to Christianity

Why did John Brown attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859

He hoped to inspire a revolution that would end slavery

Which of the following is not part of Justice John Marshall's four-part legacy

He insisted that state laws were superior to federal laws

What was John Brown's role in the violence that led to "Bleeding Kansas"?

He killed a group of proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek

How did Nat Turner show resistance to slavery

He organized a slave revolt

Which of the following did Chief Justice John Marshall do

He participated in more than 1,000 court decisions

How did Lincoln's election reflect the break between the North and the South?

He won without receiving a single southern electoral vote. Lincoln won the election handily, with 40 percent of the popular vote and almost 60 percent of the electoral vote. Still, he did not receive a single southern electoral vote. In fact, he was not even on the ballot in most southern states.

What did Abraham Lincoln say in his inaugural address

He would not interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed

Who drafted the compromise that established California as a free state and allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide the slavery issue by popular sovereignty

Henry Clay

American System

Henry Clay's federal program designed to stimulate the economy with internal improvements and create a self-sufficient nation Clay also favored reestablishment of a national bank. The charter for the first Bank of the United States, created during Washington's administration, expired in 1811. That freed private and state banks to print their own money, which caused widespread uncertainty about the value of money. A national bank, Clay argued, would provide federal control over the nation's money supply and banking practices. In 1816, Congress established the second Bank of the United States. But most congressmen opposed using federal funds for internal improvements.

Articles of Confederation

In 1777, the Continental Congress drafted the original constitution—known as the Articles of Confederation—for the union of the states. The Articles reflected the principles of the Declaration of Independence and rejected centralized power. The new federal government consisted of a congress of delegates that was chosen by state legislatures rather than by voters. The powers to make, implement, and enforce laws were placed with the Congress. The Articles also granted Congress limited external powers, such as declaring war and negotiating peace. The government did not include a President, an executive branch, or the power to levy taxes. In 1781, all states finally ratified the Articles.

Innovation Quickens Communication

In 1837, American Samuel F.B. Morse invented the electric telegraph, which allowed electrical pulses to travel long distances along metal wires as coded signals. The code of dots and dashes is called Morse code after its inventor. Before the telegraph, a message could pass only as fast as a horse or a ship could carry a letter. By using Morse's invention, a message could be delivered almost instantly. By 1860, the nation had 50,000 miles of telegraph lines.

Why were southerners outraged about the outcome of the election of 1860

Lincoln had won without getting a single vote from southern states

Why was the Louisiana Purchase an embarrassment to Jefferson

It contradicted Jefferson's constitutional principle

Why did the Federalists believe that the Constitution would prevent the national government from gaining too much power

It divided the federal government into three branches

What impact did the Marshall Court have on the American economic system

It encouraged the development of more large corporation

What was the significance of the Louisiana Purchase

It expanded the United States to the Rocky Mountains

What effect did the end of the British war with France have on the War of 1812

It freed large numbers of British troops to fight in North America

How did the Marshall Court interpret the Constitution in its rulings

It gave the federal government more power over the states

What was one way that the Virginia Plan resembled rule under the British Parliament

It gave the national Congress the power to veto any state law

Why did Great Britain oppose the reexport trade

It helped the French economy, which strengthened Napolean's army

How did John Brown's raid impact the national issue of slavery

It increased tensions over the issue of slavery across the United States

What effect did the "sanctity of contracts" have on state governments' power

It limited the power of states to regulate businesses

How did the construction of canals affect transportation in the Northeast

It lowered the cost of shipping produce from farms to cities

What was the significance of the Seneca Falls Convention?

It marked the beginning of the women's movement in America. The Seneca Falls Convention attracted hundreds of men and women and inspired many women to continue to fight for women's rights.

Which of the following was a characteristic proposed by the New Jersey Plan

It preserved an executive committee rather than adopting a singular President

How did the Articles of Confederation reflect the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence

It rejected centralized power

How did the purchase of the Louisiana Purchase help the United States avoid war with European powers

It removed French control of New Orleans and the Mississippi River

How did the new Fugitive Slave Act deal with the issue of slavery

It required private citizens to assist in the search for runaway slaves

Which is true about the Treaty of Ghent

It restored the American and British prewar boundaries

What did the Treaty of Ghent do

It restored the prewar boundaries between the United States and Canada

Which of the following best describes the significance of the Monroe Doctrine

It showed America's desire to be viewed as an international power

Why did the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin infuriate people in the South

It showed that some slave owners were cruel

Why did the coup led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna anger Anglo-Texans and Tejanos

It sought to undermine their autonomy

How did the Constitution ensure limited government

It specifically states what powers the government has

The constitution of the Confederate States of America closely resembled the U.S. Constitution. How was the Confederate constitution different

It stressed the independence of each state and guaranteed the protection of slavery

Douglass Presses for Popular Sovereignty

It was Senator Douglas who forced the issue of slavery to the surface once again. In 1854, Douglas introduced a bill to set up a government in the Nebraska Territory. The area would be organized, Douglas proposed, according to the principle of popular sovereignty. That is, the people of the territory themselves would decide whether to allow slavery or outlaw it when they applied for statehood. On the surface, Douglas's plan made sense. In fact, it seemed to be a democratic solution. But would it work in practice?

Why did some northerners object to dividing the Nebraska Territory in two

It would allow slavery to spread north of the line established by the Missouri Compromise

Why would the act of nullification have weakened the Union

It would have weakened federal law, allowing states to act on their own behalf

Slavery Divides the Nation

After the American Revolution, the North and the South developed distinctly different ways of life. The North developed busy cities, embraced technology and industry, and built factories staffed by paid workers. As immigrants arrived in northern ports, the North became an increasingly diverse society. The South, on the other hand, remained an agrarian, or agricultural, society. The southern economy and way of life was based largely on a single crop: cotton. To grow cotton, southern planters depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans. By the mid-nineteenth century, cotton cultivation and slavery had spread across the Deep South—that is, through Florida and Alabama into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. As the country continued to expand, Americans faced a crucial question: Should slavery be allowed to spread to new American territories west of the Mississippi River?

Calhoun Champions Nullification

Jackson's Vice President, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, violently opposed the tariff. During the War of 1812, he had been a strong nationalist. But his opinions changed after the Missouri controversy of 1819 and 1820. This episode convinced him that the future of slavery, which he supported, required a stronger defense of states' rights. Toward that end, he began to champion the concept of nullification, which meant that states could nullify, or void, any federal law deemed unconstitutional. Calhoun and his supporters expected Jackson to reject a protective tariff. After all, Jackson was not a supporter of the tariff, and they hoped he might take action against it on his own. He did modify the tariff rates, but not enough to satisfy Calhoun.

What key concession did the Federalists make to ensure the Constitution was ratified

Agreeing to support a bill of rights

Why did some leaders believe that unicameral legislatures created a more democratic government

All the members of the single house are elected by the people

What would the constitutional amendment proposed in the Crittenden Compromise have done

Allow slavery in western territories south of the Missouri Compromise line

The Civil War Begins

Amid this turmoil, the new President took office. Lincoln had no illusions about the challenge he faced. He confronted "a task," he feared, "greater than that which rested upon [President George] Washington."

Why did Thomas Jefferson resist building a larger navy to fight British impressment of American sailors

Jefferson did not want to raise taxes and did not want a large navy

Lincoln Wins the Election

Benefiting from the fracturing among the other political parties, Lincoln won the election handily, with 40 percent of the popular vote and almost 60 percent of the electoral vote. Still, he did not receive a single southern electoral vote. In fact, he was not even on the ballot in most southern states. Breckinridge was the clear favorite among southern voters, carrying every cotton state, along with North Carolina, Delaware, and Maryland. The border states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee—whose economic interests were not as closely tied to slavery as the cotton states were—gave their votes to Bell. Stephen A. Douglas, although running second to Lincoln in the popular vote, won only in Missouri and New Jersey. The election of 1860 demonstrated that Americans' worst fears had come to pass. There were no longer any national political parties. Bell and Breckinridge competed for southern votes, while Douglas and Lincoln competed in the North and West. The North and South were now effectively two political entities, and there seemed no way to bridge the gap.

The legal tradition that kept women from owning property and holding public office came to the United States from which nation

Britain

The Constitutional Convention

By 1787, most Americans agreed that the Articles of Confederation were flawed and needed at least two major changes. First, almost everyone wanted Congress to have the power to regulate interstate and international commerce. Second, most Americans also supported granting Congress the power to tax the people. The convention, then known as the Federal Convention, was slated to begin on May 14. However, only the delegates from Pennsylvania and Virginia made it there on time. More than a week would pass before there were enough delegates to begin the convention.

How did the Spanish discourage American settlement in the West

By forbidding American trade at the New Orleans port

Causes and Effects of the War of 1812

Causes: British interfere with American shipping British interfere with American expansion into the western frontier Southerners want Florida, which is owned by Britain's ally Spain War Hawks want to expel Britain completely from North America Effects: Revealed need for a strong standing army Encouraged American nationalism Brought end to the Federalist Party Shattered the strength of Native American resistance Paved the way for American acquisition of Florida

Antifederalists Fear a Strong Government

Critics of the Constitution, known as Antifederalists, denounced it as a retreat from the liberty won by the Revolution. The Antifederalists especially disliked the lack of a bill of rights that would provide basic liberties, protecting the people from the powers of the government. They noted that the Constitution greatly increased the powers of the central government and provided a more elitist government by concentrating power in relatively few hands at a great distance from most voters. The Antifederalists believed that liberty could not survive unless the federal government remained weak, which meant that most power would belong to the democratic state governments. A strong central government would undermine basic liberties The Antifederalists included such leading Patriots as Samuel Adams and John Hancock of Massachusetts, George Clinton of New York, and Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry of Virginia. Successful state politicians, they distrusted the Federalist effort to subordinate the states to a stronger national Union.

How did the XYZ Affair affect politics in the United States

The nation was unified by anger at the French

Building the Federal Government

The new government started out with huge problems. It had inherited a national debt of $52 million from the Confederation—a huge burden for a nation with a farm economy and only about 3 million people. With no navy and an army of only around 400 men, the United States was not respected by other countries. At New Orleans, the Spanish closed the Mississippi River to American trade. Along the Great Lakes, the British kept forts within American territory.

What spurred American trade with northern Mexico

The revolution that established Mexico as an independent republic

How did Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell change early American industry

They opened textile mills that employed many workers

How did northerners respond to the Fugitive Slave Act?

They passed personal liberty laws. Northerners responded by passing personal liberty laws and helping escaped slaves remain free.

What did the colonists do to let British Parliament know they were against new taxes

They stopped buying British goods

Why did southerners support the Kansas-Nebraska Act

They thought that granting popular sovereignty would allow slavery

Why did many white people want Native Americans removed from the southeastern United States?

They wanted the land and did not want to share it with Native Americans

In addition to promoting industry, what did members of Congress hope to accomplish by passing the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations"?

They wanted to ensure that Andrew Jackson won the election

Why did delegates gather in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention

To amend the Articles of Confederation

In western Massachusetts in 1786, why did farmers revolt

To block foreclosure hearings

What was the purpose of the Federal Convention

To draft proposed amendments of the Articles of Confederation

Why was the Lewis and Clark expedition launched

To explore the Louisiana Territory

Before the Second Great Awakening, what was the expected role for women

To focus on their families

Why did the United States make the Gadsden Purchase in 1853

To gain land for a railroad across the continent

What was the purpose of establishing state governments that were republics

To give people a voice in their government

Interpreting the Constitution

To justify his ambitious program, Hamilton interpreted the Constitution broadly, relying on its "implied powers" and its clause empowering Congress to enact laws for the "general welfare." His broad interpretation, or loose construction, appalled his critics, including Jefferson and Madison. They favored a strict construction, or limiting the federal government to powers explicitly granted by the Constitution. They opposed Hamilton's plans for assuming state debts. Fearing that a national bank would benefit the North at the expense of the South, they also argued that the Constitution did not authorize Congress to charter one.

What was the purpose of the Boston Tea Party

To protest the tax Parliament had levied on tea

Why did Jefferson want the Untied States to expand in the early 1800s

To provide more farm land for its growing population

In 1807, Thomas Jefferson persuaded Congress to declare an embargo on Great Britain. What was Jefferson's strategy

To starve the British and close their factories

What did the United States promise in the Monroe Doctrine

To stay out of European affairs

Defeating the Native Americans

To the surprise of many Americans—and to the shock of the British—the little American navy performed well, capturing four British ships during 1812. On Lake Erie, American ships led by Oliver Hazard Perry defeated a British flotilla in 1813, enabling an American army, commanded by Harrison, to retake Detroit. The Americans made little progress in conquering Canada, but they did defeat Britain's Indian allies within the United States. In October 1813, Harrison's army killed Tecumseh and scattered his supporters. In 1814, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee crushed the Creek Indians of Alabama, who had allied with the British. To make peace, the survivors surrendered most of their lands. Jackson then invaded the Spanish colony of Florida, defeating the Seminole Indians and seizing the Spanish fort at Pensacola.

How was Martin Van Buren's presidency weakened by the policies of predecssor, Andrew Jackson?

Van Buren's presidency was weakened because of an economic depression that led to the Panic of 1837.

The War Hawks Demand War

War Hawks-members of Congress who pushed for war against Great Britain beginning in 1810 In 1811 some aggressive young politicians, known as the War Hawks, took the lead in Congress. Representing farmers and settlers from the southern and western states, the War Hawks included John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and Henry Clay of Kentucky. Strongly nationalist, they denounced the impressments of American sailors and British support for Native Americans. The War Hawks pushed for a war against Britain to restore national honor. They insisted that invading British-held Canada would deprive the Indians of their main source of arms and drive the British out of North America. The War Hawks also believed that the British would make maritime concessions to get Canada back from the Americans. They underestimated the value that the British put on their domination of world trade.

John Marshall's Supreme Court

When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, John Marshall became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Although the two men were cousins, they were political enemies. Marshall was a Federalist, a last-minute appointee by the outgoing President, John Adams. Marshall's appointment had a major impact on the Supreme Court and on its relationship with the rest of the federal government. Over 35 years, he participated in more than 1,000 court decisions, writing over half of them—more than any other Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history

Pursuing Republican Principles

When the Democratic Republicans took power, they spoke of the election as a "revolution." Thomas Jefferson insisted that "the Revolution of 1800 was as real a Revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form." In that view, those in the Jefferson administration set out to do things quite differently from their predecessors, who had copied the style of the British monarchy.

What was one source of division among the women who were involved in the abolition movement

Whether women should be allowed to join in the men's business meetings

Which group opposed war with Mexico

Whigs

Why did Brigham Young lead the Mormons to the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake

Young wanted to move the Mormons far from hostile neighbors

What factors contributed to industrialization in the early 1800s

labor supply, water power, and capital In the Northeast, immigrants were looking for jobs, swiftly flowing rivers could power factories, and financiers had money to invest in industry

What is a culture in which inheritance follows the female line?

matrilineal Certain Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans were matrilineal, meaning that inheritance of family names and property were passed down through the female side of the family.

What was the term created by journalist John O'Sullivan that reflected the idea that it was the fate of the United States to occupy all or most of North America?

Manifest Destiny Driven by expansionism, nationalism, and feelings of racial superiority, many Americans believed it was the nation's fate to move aggressively westward to the Pacific Ocean. Native Americans and Mexicans who stood in the way would be dealt with harshly.

Which of the following helped women to begin to see their own social restrictions as being comparable to those imposed by slavery

Middle-class women had more time to think about society because they had begun hiring poor women to do their housework

Resistance Against the Fugitive Slave Act

Most Americans, in both the North and South, breathed a sigh of relief that the crisis had been laid to rest. Though the Compromise of 1850 restored calm for the moment, it carried the seeds of new crises to come.

Suffering Cruel Treatment

Most of these unfortunate men, women, and children labored from dawn to dusk at backbreaking tasks—cultivating fields of cotton, loading freight onto ships, or preparing meals in scorching hot kitchens. Their "overseers" maintained brutal work routines by punishing people physically with beatings, whipping, and maimings, and mentally, through humiliation and the threat of being separated from family members. The basics of life—food, clothing, and shelter—were barely adequate for most enslaved people The conditions under which enslaved people lived can be difficult to imagine. One glimpse of the heartbreak that tormented so many is provided by a letter from an enslaved woman, apparently pregnant, to her mother, who had been sold. She wrote to say that now her husband had also been sold: "A cloud has settled upon me and produced a change in my prospect, too great for words to express. My husband is torn from me, and carried away by his master. . . . I went to see him—tried to prevail on him not to carry my husband away . . . but mother—all my entreaties and tears did not soften his hard heart. . . . A time is fast approaching when I shalt want my husband and my mother, and both are gone!" Such anguish was commonplace. This woman was relatively lucky—she could read and write, and managed to get a letter to a distant family member. More often, enslaved people were not allowed to learn to read, and family members who were separated never heard from each other again.

Beliefs of Those Who Supported Hamilton's Economic Plan

National bank Strong national government Loose interpretation of Constitution High tariffs

Who were the main supporters of the Federalists in the newly emerged two-party system

Northern merchants

Tensions Build

Relations between Anglo-Texans and the Mexican government soured by 1830. Despite their oaths of allegiance and their land grants, the settlers had not honored their part of the bargain. They remained Protestants and ignored Mexico's slavery ban by smuggling in enslaved African Americans to work their farms and plantations. In turn, the Anglo-Texans felt dismayed by the unstable Mexican government, which suffered from military coups. In 1834, the charismatic but ruthless general Antonio López de Santa Anna seized power in Mexico City. Santa Anna favored a centralized, authoritarian government dominated by the military. His coup troubled those liberal Mexicans who preferred a decentralized federal system like that of the United States. Santa Anna's rule especially angered the people of Texas, both Anglo-Texans and Tejanos, who wanted greater autonomy, or independent control over their own affairs. One Anglo-Texan protested that Santa Anna would "give liberty to our slaves and make slaves of ourselves."

What was the outcome and impact of the Battle of San Jacinto?

Santa Anna was defeated. Sam Houston and his men defeated and captured Santa Anna, who signed a treaty recognizing Texan independence.

In the 1830s, women began to compare their lack of rights to that of what group

Slaves

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which position did Abraham Lincoln take

Slaves had natural rights but were not entirely equal to whites

What agreement was reached with the Great Compromise

States would be represented equally in the Senate and proportionally in the House

What role did Roger B. Taney play in determining whether or not slaves could sue in the courts

Taney led the US Supreme Court as Chief Justice in the Dred Scott decision

What issue caused the Nullification Crisis of 1833

Tariffs

Colonists Unite Against Harsh Measures

The Bostonians' actions outraged Parliament and the Crown. To punish Boston, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts. They closed the port to trade until the inhabitants paid for the destroyed tea, including the tax. They also increased the power of the governor at the expense of the elected assembly and town meetings. To enforce these measures, the British sent warships and troops to Boston.

The Whig Party Disintegrates

The Compromise of 1850, as well as the policies that grew out of it, caused political upheaval. Millard Fillmore—the last Whig President—angered the South with his support for California's entry as a free state. Northerners inflamed by his support of the Fugitive Slave Act and popular sovereignty left the party in large numbers. For the 1852 presidential election, Whigs searched unsuccessfully for a candidate and a platform to unite their members. But with their two visionary leaders—Henry Clay and Daniel Webster—dead, the party fell back on Winfield Scott, a military hero. Deeply divided over the issues, the Whigs lost to the Democrats, who solidly endorsed the 1850 Compromise that they hoped and believed would preserve the Union. The Whigs would never again achieve enough harmony to mount a presidential campaign.

The Convention Begins

The Federal Convention opened in the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, on May 25, when 29 delegates had finally arrived. Other delegates continued to arrive during the subsequent weeks and months. The proceedings of the convention were shrouded in secrecy so the delegates could speak freely. Because of this, the windows of the hall were often closed for privacy. It was an especially hot summer in 1787 so the delegates were frequently uncomfortable in their closed-off space. Although Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were away in Europe serving as diplomats, the convention included most of the other leading statesmen of the day. Several leaders emerged, including Alexander Hamilton of New York and James Madison of Virginia. The eldest delegate was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, who added great prestige to the proceedings. Other leaders in attendance were Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, James Wilson, Elbridge Gerry, William Paterson, John Dickinson, Charles Pinckney, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason. These delegates were not typical Americans. They were all white males, many were wealthy, and more than half of them were lawyers. Many of the delegates had helped to write their state constitutions, and seven had been state governors. Twenty-one had fought in the American Revolution, and eight had signed the Declaration of Independence. After reading the names of those in attendance, Jefferson remarked that it was "an assembly of demi-gods." The delegates unanimously elected George Washington as the president of the convention.

The Alien and Sedition Acts

The Federalists exploited the war fever by passing the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The Alien Act authorized the President to arrest and deport immigrants who criticized the federal government. Because most immigrants supported the Democratic Republicans, the Federalists made it difficult for them to become citizens. The Sedition Act made it a crime for citizens to publicly discredit the federal government. Arguing that criticism undermined trust in the government, the Federalists used this act to silence Democratic Republican opposition. The Sedition Act did allow juries to acquit defendants who could prove the literal truth of their statements. But that still put the burden of proof on the defendants, reversing the tradition of presuming someone innocent until proven guilty. In the end, the federal government convicted ten men of sedition, including those in Massachusetts who erected a liberty pole comparing the Federalists to the Loyalists who had supported the British king

What action by Thomas Jefferson did he say was "an act beyond the Constitution"?

The U.S. purchase of a land from a foreign government

Expansionists used the term "Manifest Destiny" to justify what belief

The belief that God wanted the United States to own North America

What event inspired Francis Scott to write "The Star-Spangled Banner"?

The defeat of the British attack on Baltimore, Maryland

Why Industrialization Spread

The embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 cut off access to British manufactured goods. Eager for substitutes, Americans built their own factories in the Northeast. After the war, however, British goods once again flowed into the United States, threatening to overwhelm fledgling American manufacturers. Congress could have let those industries wither from the competition. Instead, Congress imposed the Tariff of 1816, a tariff on imports designed to protect American industry. This tariff increased the price of imported manufactured goods by an average of 20 to 25 percent. The inflated price for imports encouraged Americans to buy products made in the United States. The tariff helped industry, but it hurt farmers, who had to pay higher prices for consumer goods.

What issue divided Congress in the debate over passage of the Wilmot Proviso

The extension of slavery into new territories

Following the Mexican-American War, which issue broke party unity and divided Congress largely along sectional lines

The extension of slavery into territories acquired from Mexico

What was the result of the Mexican army's victory over the Texan garrison at the Alamo

The fallen defenders became heroes to the cause of Texan independence

Which of the following provisions of the Articles created economic problems for the federal government

The federal Congress could not establish a common currency, regulate interstate commerce, or levy taxes

Federalism

The federal government and the state governments share power Just as the Constitution divides power among the three branches of the federal government, it also divides power between the states and the nation, a division known as federalism. At the time, this meant that the states could no longer issue their own paper money or provide debtor relief at creditors' expense. These delegated powers belonged exclusively to the federal government. Federalism also reserves some powers to the state governments. For example, states regulate all elections. The federal and state governments also hold some overlapping concurrent powers, among them parallel court systems.

Why did southerners feel the federal government was not protecting their interests

The federal government did not enforce the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793

Why did Congress call a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation

The federal government needed to be made stronger

The Election of 1860

The issue of states' rights was on southern minds as well. Would northern radicals conspire to eliminate slavery not only in the territories but also in the original southern states? In the spring of 1860, Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis convinced Congress to adopt resolutions restricting federal control over slavery in the territories. The resolutions also asserted that the Constitution prohibited Congress or any state from interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed. Even southerners who did not own slaves felt that their way of life and their honor were under attack. With ill will running so deep, the upcoming elections posed a serious dilemma. It was hard to imagine that either northerners or southerners would accept a President from the other region. Could the Union survive?

Which of the following phrases best describes daily life for enslaved persons

Backbreaking work from dawn to dusk

What did the Wilmot Proviso do

Ban slavery in land obtained from Mexico

What professions made up the emerging middle class in the 1850s

Bankers, lawyers, accountants, and clerks

What action started the Civil War

Confederate troops seized the federal fort guarding the harbor in Charlestown, South Carolina

Which important precedent did George Washington set for the executive branch during his administration

George Washington formed a group of leaders to advise the president

What is one reason that industrialization spread in the Northeast

More capital was available to build factories

Why was the creation of a national bank so important to the US economy

The national bank controlled the money supply

Who were the Mountain Men

Young American trappers and traders in the Rocky Mountains

How did Harriet Tubman contribute to African Americans' resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act

She used the Underground Railroad to guide hundreds of slaves to freedom

As slavery became entrenched in the South, what effect did agriculture have on southerners

Slavery was defended as a positive good

What event led to the outbreak of war?

the sending of supplies to Fort Sumter When President Lincoln sent supplies to Fort Sumter, the Confederates attacked and took control of the fort. As a result, President Lincoln called for volunteers to fight the Confederacy.

Native American Removal

Southern voters had good reason to expect Jackson's help with Indian removal. Jackson's victory in the Creek War of 1814 had led to the acquisition of millions of Creek acres in Georgia and Alabama. His war with the Seminoles in 1818 paved the way for the Adams-Onís Treaty and American control of Florida. Still, many Native Americans had remained in the South. In many cases, they had even adopted white American culture. For example, many practiced Christianity, established schools, owned private property, and formed constitutional, republican governments. A Cherokee named Sequoyah invented a writing system for the Cherokee language so they could print their own newspaper and books. These Native Americans in the five southeastern tribes became known as the "five civilized tribes." Many southern whites, however, denounced the Indian civilizations as a sham. Indians could never be civilized, southerners insisted. President Jackson agreed that the Indians should make way for white people. "What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic?" he asked. Indeed, southern whites wanted the valuable lands held by the Indians Between 1827 and 1830, the states of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama dissolved the Indian governments and seized these lands. In 1832, after the Indians appealed their case to the federal courts, John Marshall's Supreme Court tried to help the Indians. In Worcester v. Georgia, the Court ruled that Georgia's land seizure was unconstitutional. The federal government had treaty obligations to protect the Indians, the Court held, and federal law was superior to state law. President Jackson, however, ignored the Court's decision. "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it," Jackson boldly declared. Although often a nationalist, Jackson favored states' rights in this case. Even before this ruling, Jackson had urged Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act sought to peacefully negotiate the exchange of American Indian lands in the South for new lands in the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). The Choctaws and Chickasaws reluctantly agreed to leave their southeastern homelands for new lands in the West. A few stayed behind, but they suffered violent mistreatment by whites. The Jackson administration continued pressuring remaining Indian groups to sell their lands and move west. In 1835, a small group of Cherokees who did not represent their nation made an agreement with the government under which all Cherokees would leave the South for Oklahoma. Though the rest of the Cherokees protested, the federal government sought to enforce the treaty. In 1838, U.S. soldiers forced 16,000 Cherokees to walk from their lands in the Southeast to Oklahoma along what came to be called the Trail of Tears. At least 4,000 Cherokees died of disease, exposure, and hunger on their long, hard journey. Some Indians in the South resisted removal. In 1836, after a number of violent conflicts with white settlers, troops forcibly removed the Creeks from their southern lands. In Florida, the Seminoles fought the Second Seminole War between 1835 and 1842. In the end, American troops forced most Seminoles to leave Florida. Removal also affected Native Americans in the Midwest. In Illinois, a chief named Black Hawk led the resistance by the Sauk and Fox nations. In what became known as Black Hawk's War, they fought federal troops and local militia until crushed in 1832

The Union Collapses

Southerners were outraged that a President could be elected without a single southern vote. In the southerners' perception, the South no longer had a voice in the national government. They decided to act.

Why did the Mexican government refuse to honor the treaty signed by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

The treaty gave too much land to the Lone Star Republic

What happened to the Native Americans who lost their land to white miners

They became workers on farms and ranches

Why did the northern Democrats support Stephen A. Douglas for president in the election of 1860

Douglas supported the doctrine of popular sovereignty

United States Constitution/The Great Compromise

Executive Branch: Powerful president Legislative Branch: House of Representatives Senate Judiciary Federal Courts Number of representatives based on a state's population Senate representation equal for all states regardless of a state's population

What were Americans who favored territorial growth across North American called

Expansionists

What is one way in which factory work changed people's lives

It enabled untrained workers to find jobs

The electoral college is an example of which of the following

Indirect democracy

What did the treaty Thomas Pinckney negotiated with Spain guarantee

It guaranteed Americans free shipping right on the Mississippi River

What Jeffersonian principle was the foundation of Jacksonian Democracy

Strong state powers and a weak federal government

What rights were granted to the federal government by the Force Bill

The right to enforce federal laws, including the collection of protective tariffs

The Whig Party formed as a response to what

The veto of the national bank

Effects of the Mexican-American War

The US gains territory with the Treaty of Guadalupe - The gold rush brings many people to California The Rio Grande is the new southern border of Texas - Mexican Americans lose land and rights The Wilmot Proviso divides Americans on the slavery issue - Native Americans are terrorized and killed California becomes a US territory during the 1949 gold rush - California's application for statehood causes debate over slavery

Jefferson Asks for an Embargo

The United States lacked a navy large enough to challenge the British fleet. Jefferson balked at the high cost of building a bigger navy, which would undermine his policies of reducing the national debt and keeping taxes low. He also worried that a large military would become a threat to the Republic. As an alternative to war, in 1807 Jefferson persuaded Congress to declare an embargo, suspending trade by ordering American ships to stay in port. He expected the embargo to starve the British and close their factories, creating riots in the streets. Instead, the British found other markets in South America. Meanwhile, the embargo bankrupted American merchants, threw American sailors out of work, and hurt farmers, who could no longer export their crops. Exploiting voter anger, the Federalists gained support in the northern states, especially in New England. Even Jefferson had to admit failure, lifting the embargo just before he retired from the presidency in 1809. Despite having been easily reelected in 1804, the embargo had caused his popularity to lag. Still, he was succeeded by his friend James Madison, who defeated a Federalist rival in the election of 1808.

Which statement best describes US foreign policy during the Monroe administration

The United States sought to expand its borders into Spanish territories

Which of the following statements could be said about the Mexican-American War

The United States won every major battle

Why did Whigs oppose a war with Mexico

The Whigs did not want conquered territory to become slave states

Debating the Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey ebellion, and its outcome, fueled disagreement. The Federalists blamed the rebellion in part on a set of political clubs known as the Democratic Societies. The clubs had formed to oppose the Federalists. Although these clubs were small and scattered, Washington denounced them as "the most diabolical attempt to destroy the best fabric of human government and happiness." Jefferson and Madison defended the societies, fearing that aristocracy would triumph if leaders were immune from constant public scrutiny and criticism. They were alarmed that the Federalists had sent so many troops to suppress popular dissent in western Pennsylvania. As debate over the rebellion continued, the two sides gradually emerged as distinct political groups.

The Election of 1848

The Wilmot Proviso had given the nation's political parties a new focus. In the 1848 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Whigs split over the question of whether to limit the expansion of slavery. New political factions emerged, with slavery at the center of debate.

What controversial issue was settled by the Compromise of 1850

The admission of California as a free state

An Expansionist Becomes President

The annexation of Texas became a key issue in the 1844 presidential election. Southern expansionists supported James K. Polk of Tennessee. A Jacksonian Democrat and a slaveholder, Polk devoutly believed in Manifest Destiny. Whig candidate Henry Clay opposed annexation. Polk reasoned that northerners would accept the annexation of Texas if they got their own prize. He promised them the Oregon Territory. Polk threatened to fight Britain if it did not concede all of Oregon. Polk's vow to obtain both Texas and Oregon helped him win a decisive electoral victory.

Political Parties Compete for Power

The authors of the Constitution wanted to avoid organized political parties, or groups of people who seek to win elections and hold public office in order to shape government policy. They deemed these groups to be "factions" that threatened the unity of a republic. Despite these intentions, politicians decided to form two parties: the Federalists, led by Hamilton and John Adams, and the Democratic Republicans, led by Jefferson and Madison. Northerners, especially merchants, tended to favor the Federalists. In contrast, southerners, especially farmers, voted mainly for the Democratic Republicans. Still, Federalists and Democratic Republicans could be found in every social class, in every type of community, in every region, and in every state. Political elections were closely contested most of the time. The first two Presidents and most of the governors, state legislators, and congressmen were Federalists. Their electoral success indicates that many common voters shared Federalist values. Voters credited the Federalists with the new Constitution and with the nation's increased prosperity and stability during the 1790s. But many common people continued to support the Democratic Republicans. They worried that the Federalists would concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the elite. Many voters also believed that the Democratic Republican Party offered more social mobility.

How did southern slaveholders attempt to convince people in the North to support slavery

They pointed out that northern industry relied on southern cotton

How did southern slaveholders claim that the North benefited from slaverty

They pointed out that the North's textile industry depended on southern cotton

What was one concession the Federalists made to ensure the Constitution would be ratified

They promised to support key amendments to the Constitution

How did nativists respond to increased immigration from Ireland and Germany

They pushed for laws to discourage immigration or deny political rights to immigrants

How did Americans respond to John Brown's raid and execution

They reacted with mixed emotions

How were skilled craftsmen affects by industrialization

They saw a decline in wage

How did Great Britain react to the proclamation of American neutrality in 1793

They seized American merchant ships

What strategy did Federalists use to win ratification

They sought quick ratification in key states to build momentum

What was one way the overseers punished slaves

They threatened to separate slaves from their families

Which of the following steps did southern slaveholders take to prevent abolitionist ideas from spreading in South

They tried to prevent southerners from reading abolitionist materials

Why did northerners fear the abolition of slavery

They wanted to avoid competition for jobs and the disruption of cotton production. Northern workers feared their jobs would be in danger if black workers would work for lower wages. Factory owners feared that the production of cotton would be disrupted which would affect their mills.

Which British actions caused the War Hawks to push for war against Britain

Impressment of American sailors and support for Native Americans

Nonimportation Agreements

colonial consumer boycotts of British exports as a response to taxes passed by Parliament

Republic

form of government in which officials are elected by the people

What was one precedent that Washington set?What was one precedent that Washington set?

formation of a Cabinet The Cabinet members provided leadership for the various parts of the executive branch and offered expert advice to the President.

What foreign policy actions did John Quincy Adams take that reflected nationalism?

formulated the Monroe Doctrine. Adams negotiated with Spain for the sale of Florida. He also formulated the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that Europeans were expected to stay out of the affairs of Latin American nations.

Federalism

political system in which power is shared between the national government and state governments

Which term was used to describe the use of political jobs as a reward for party loyalty

spoils system This occurred when the political party in power gave jobs and appointments to its supporters, rather than to people based on their qualifications.

What advantages did the United States have in the Mexican-American War?

wealth, weapons, and size The United States was wealthier and more populous. It could produce more war supplies, had superb army officers, and maintained a larger and better equipped navy than Mexico.

In which of the following ways did slaves commit sabotage

They broke tools

What was the purpose of the Cabinet formed during Washington's term

To advise the President

Why was the Republican Party established in 1854

To oppose slavery

What was the name of the document adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention that was modeled after the Declaration of Independence?

"Declaration of Sentiments" Although ridiculed at the time, the declaration and the convention marked the beginning of the women's movement in the United States that would continue into the latter part of the twentieth century.

How did Congress organize the judiciary system

13 federal district courts, 3 circuit courts, and 1 Supreme Court

Battle of Fallen Timbers

1794 battle in which federal troops defeated the Miami Confederacy of Native Americans

How did supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act benefit the South

A new territory, Kansas, would likely become a slave state

Canals Boom

A second transportation advance of the early 1800s was the construction of canals. The nation's canal network grew from 100 miles in 1816 to 3,300 miles in 1840. Mostly built in the Northeast, canals provided efficient water transportation that linked farms to the expanding cities. The best-known canal of the era was the Erie Canal. Completed in 1825, it ran 363 miles across New York State from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Before this canal went into service, it could cost $100 or more to ship a ton of freight overland from the city of Buffalo on the shores of Lake Erie to New York City. The canal lowered that cost to just $4. By funneling western produce to the Hudson River, the Erie Canal helped make New York City the nation's greatest commercial center. As a result, the city grew quickly. From a population of 124,000 in 1820, its population surged to 800,000 in 1860. The canal also enhanced the value of farmland in the Great Lakes region, because farmers there now had easier access to eastern markets for their goods.

Which of the following ideas is represented in the Federalist Papers

A strong central government

Missionaries Reach Oregon

A variant of this trail turned northwest at South Pass to reach Oregon Country. In 1836, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman followed this route, which became known as the Oregon Trail, to found an Indian mission at Walla Walla. The Whitman compound served as a magnet and way station for farm families bound farther west to the fertile Willamette Valley. In 1847, the Whitmans were killed by Native Americans who blamed them for a deadly measles epidemic. But by then, the tide of migration to Oregon was unstoppable.

Hamilton's Plan for Restructuring Debt

Action: Pay foreign debt and interest in full Result: Restore national credit Lasting Legacy: Established the United States as trustworthy Action: Federal government assumes state debts Result" Bring stability to country; stimulate economy Lasting Legacy: Unified country Action: Impose excise taxes and tariffs Result: Pay debts and increase manufacturing Lasting Legacy: Establishing precedent of nation paying its debts Action: Create national back and national currency Result: Help government regulate economy and commerce; generate income through loans Lasting Legacy: Created model on which today's Federal Reserve System is based

How did Alexander Hamilton's and Thomas Jefferson's views toward the interpretation of the Constitution differ

Alexander Hamilton believed in a loose interpretation, while Thomas Jefferson believed in a strict interpretation

The Kansas-Nebraska Act Undoes the Missouri Compromise

Although Congress meant well, its repeated attempts to resolve the question of slavery resulted in a jumble of contradictory, and often unenforceable, policies. The Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850: Each seemed to offer the solution. But, in reality, the issue lay beyond the ability of patchwork legislation to resolve.

Why was Thomas Jefferson wrong when he advised President James Madison that American forces would easily win the War of 1812

American militia and troops were poorly trained and inexperienced

Wilmot Proviso Seeks to Limit Slavery

Americans had long avoided the troubling issue of the expansion of slavery. But when the United States gained new territories as a result of the Mexican War in the late 1840s, the nation had to decide whether to admit these lands as slave territories or free territories. The delicate balance of power between North and South—free and slave—depended on this decision. During the early days of the Mexican War, Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot had predicted the dilemma. He proposed a law stating, "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any" lands won from Mexico. Southerners angrily denounced the Wilmot Proviso. The northern-dominated House of Representatives approved the law, but the Senate voted it down.

Why was the treaty with Spain in 1795 important to Americans

Americans needed access to a port to ship their goods

Which is the best description of the southern economy in the mid-1850s

An agricultural economy overly dependent on cotton and slave labor

What event led to the formation of the Whig Party

Andrew Jackson failed to renew the charter for the national bank

Which two groups of Native Americans started attacking Spanish settlers in New Mexico?

Apaches and Comanches After the raids became increasingly destructive, Spanish officials responded by building better frontier defenses and using better methods of diplomacy.

How did Jackson and the Democrats change the process of appointing government officials

Appointments were based on party loyalty

Compromise Over a National Capital

As Americans aligned themselves either with Hamilton or with Madison and Jefferson, debate heated up. Jefferson declared that Hamilton's system "flowed from principles adverse to liberty and . . . calculated to undermine and demolish the republic." Jefferson and Madison insisted that Hamilton was betraying the American Revolution to establish a "kingly government." They pointed to Great Britain, where factories made owners wealthy but kept most of the workers in poverty. Fearing that industrial development led to greater inequality, they concluded that America needed to keep a farm economy in order to sustain the Republic. In 1791, by a narrow vote, Congress approved full funding of the federal debt, the implementation of new excise taxes, and the creation of a national bank. But in order to get southerners to agree to the assumption of state debts, Hamilton promised that in ten years the national capital would move southward to the banks of the Potomac River, between Maryland and Virginia. To honor the first President, who was reelected in 1792, the new capital became known as Washington, District of Columbia.

Economy Experiences Panics

As the national market emerged and more enterprises became interconnected over greater distances, the economy became subject to periodic shocks, or panics. These panics were the result of "busts" in a "boom-and-bust" cycle that is common in capitalism. In capitalism, individuals own most productive property—factories and farms—and markets set prices. During the "boom" phase, high consumer demand encourages owners to expand production. But once the expanded supply of goods exceeds demand, a "bust" follows. Prices fall and producers cut back on production, closing factories and firing workers. Those jobless workers then have less to spend, hurting other businesses.

Which cabinet position was established by an act of Congress

Attorney General

Why did farmers in western Massachusetts take up arms in Shays' Rebellion

Because of high taxes, they faced the loss of their farms to foreclosure

Revival Plans of Government

Before a constitution could be written and approved, the delegates needed to come to an agreement about what it should contain. To achieve this goal, they advanced and debated a number of proposals for several months.

What event started "Bleeding Kansas"?

Border Ruffians raided the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas

Lowell Builds Fully Operational Mill

Boston merchant Francis Cabot Lowell developed another industrial system in Massachusetts. In 1811, he toured England's factory towns to gather secret information. Returning home, Lowell organized a company called the Boston Associates. In 1813, the associates built their first mill at Waltham, Massachusetts, in which all operations in the manufacture of cloth occurred—instead of just the production of thread. During the 1820s, they built more factories on the Merrimac River and established a new town called Lowell. Their system employed young, single women recruited from area farms. The company enforced strict rules of behavior and housed the "Lowell girls" in closely supervised boardinghouses. After a few years of work, most of the young women married and left the factories.

Where did Winfield Scott face bitter resistance from the Mexican army

Chapultepec

Representative Government

Citizens elect representatives to government to make laws The writers of the new Constitution had misgivings about the democratic rule of the majority. Many saw democracy as something that would lead to mob rule. Instead of creating a direct democracy in which all citizens vote on every matter, the writers created an indirect democracy in which voters elect representatives to govern. For example, the Constitution stipulated that the citizens would directly elect only the representatives to the House of Representatives. The state legislatures, rather than the voters, would choose the members of the Senate (who would serve for six years, rather than the two years representatives served). Similarly, an electoral college, or group of persons chosen from each state, would indirectly elect the President. Each state legislature would determine whether to choose those electors or let the citizens elect them. In addition, the indirectly elected President and senators would choose the least democratic branch of all: the judiciary. By giving the federal judges (including the Supreme Court Justices) life terms, the delegates meant to insulate them from democratic politics.

Sugar Act

Colonial merchants had grown rich from trade, often smuggling or bribing officials to avoid duties, or taxes, on imports. In 1764, the new prime minister, George Grenville, proposed raising money by collecting duties already in effect. The law, known as the Sugar Act when put into effect, actually lowered the duty on foreign molasses. However, it also assigned customs officers and created courts to collect the duties and prosecute smugglers. Grenville hoped that these measures would encourage colonists to pay the tax.

Why did Antifederalists believe that the Constitution was a threat to liberty

It created a strong central government

What powers did the Articles of Confederation give to Congress, and what powers did they withhold

Congress could declare war and make peace, but could not levy taxes

Which of the following was a weakness of the Articles of Confederation

Congress could not establish a common currency

Which of the following was a weakness of the Articles of Confederation

Congress could not levy or collect taxes from the states

Which of the following was a weakness of the Articles of Confederation

Congress could not regulate interstate trade

Which of the following occurred in response to the XYZ Affair

Congress expanded the army and began a small navy to fight French warships

Why was it difficult for Congress to fund its operation

Congress relied on contributions from the states

Under the Articles of Confederation, how was the federal government structured

Delegates were chosen by voters, and each state voted according to its population

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, what position did Stephen A. Douglas take on the role of slavery

Douglas argued for the right of states to decide whether or not to allow slavery

What did Roger B. Taney do that increased regional tensions in the United States during the 1850s

During that time Taney led the Supreme Court, which declared slaves to be property

Conflicts with Spain and Britain

During the mid-1780s, the Spanish and British did not take the new United States seriously. To them, the republican Confederation seemed weak to the point of anarchy, or lawlessness.

What group benefited most from the Supreme Court decisions in McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden

Federal government

Because of John Marshall, what type of laws does the Supreme Court review for constitutionality

Federal

What did the Judiciary Act of 1789 establish

Federal courts system and the office of Attorney General

Which two parties emerged after the Whiskey Rebellion

Federalists and Democratic Republicans

Sectional Divisions Intensify

For many years, the North and South tried to ignore or patch over their differences. But by the mid-1850s, the dispute over slavery caused sectional differences to intensify.

A Four-Way Race

Four leading Democratic Republicans hoped to replace Monroe in the White House. John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State, offered great skill and experience. A caucus of Democratic Republicans in Congress preferred William Crawford of Georgia. A caucus is a closed meeting of party members for the purpose of choosing a candidate. War hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and Henry Clay of Kentucky provided greater competition for Adams.

Which well-known abolionist spoke about his difficult life as a slave

Frederick Douglass

Most Americans agreed on what two changes to the Articles of Confederation

Granting Congress the power to regulate commerce and to tax the people

Cotton Boom Spread Slavery

Growing cotton required workers as well as land. Southern planters met this need with enslaved African Americans. After federal law abolished the overseas slave trade in 1808, illegal trade and interstate trade filled the gap. Many slaves came from the fading tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland, where planters who once grew crops now acquired their income from trading slaves. Because cotton was so profitable, the demand for slaves soared. Slaves became more valuable to their owners. In 1802, a slave could sell for $600. By 1860, that price had tripled to $1,800. The total number of slaves increased from 1.5 million in 1820 to 4 million in 1860. Far from withering, slavery flourished and became more deeply entrenched in the southern economy.

What was the most important factor in John Brown's decision to launch the raid at Harpers Ferry

Harpers Ferry was a hub of trains and canals, which provided escape routes

Why did President James K. Polk support the US acquisition of both Texas and the entire Oregon Territory

He believed in Manifest Destiny

What did President James K. Polk do to win support for the annexation of Texas

He promised to take control of all of the Oregon Territory

Henry Clay

Henry Clay was one of the leading advocates of this new economic nationalism. He regarded the protective tariff as part of a larger, ambitious federal program he called the American System. Clay and his supporters wanted the federal government to build new roads and canals to link the Atlantic states with the Midwest. Clay insisted that the tariff and "internal improvements" would work together to tie the different regions into a harmonious and prosperous whole.

Polk Compromises on Oregon

However, northern Democrats soon felt betrayed by the new President. They had reluctantly supported annexing Texas because Polk had also vowed to grab all of Oregon. Instead, in June 1846 Polk compromised with the British, agreeing to split the Oregon Territory at the 49th parallel of latitude. The United States got the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The British kept what became the Canadian province of British Columbia. An Ohio Democrat sputtered, "Our rights to Oregon have been shamefully compromised. The administration is Southern, Southern, Southern!" Polk compromised because the nation could not afford two wars. He wanted to fight weak Mexico rather than powerful Britain. Indeed, by the time the Oregon compromise was completed, war with Mexico had already begun.

Settling the Spanish Borderlands

In 1830, what is now the U.S. Southwest was the Mexican North. Like the former British colonies in the East, this region had a long colonial history, one that dated back to the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Northern Blacks Mobilize

In 1851, a small group of free African Americans gathered in a farmhouse in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Heavily armed, they had come to protect several fugitives from their Maryland master, who had brought a federal official to reclaim them. In the scuffle that followed, the slave owner was killed. White bystanders refused to intervene to help the slave-hunting party. Although more than 30 people were tried for conspiracy, none was found guilty. No one was tried for the murder of the slave owner. The "Christiana Riot" was a dramatic enactment of a scene that was played out in many northern communities. In Vermont and New Hampshire, in New York City, in Oberlin, Ohio, and in Baltimore, Maryland, African Americans and white bystanders defied officials who tried to reclaim fugitives to slavery.

Improving the Roads

In an effort to improve overland transportation, some states chartered companies to operate turnpikes—roads for which users had to pay a toll. The term came from the turnpikes, or gates, that guarded entrances to the roads. Turnpike operators were supposed to use toll income to improve the roads and ease travel. But only a few turnpikes made a profit, and most failed to lower transportation costs or increase the speed of travel. The country's lone decent route, which was made of crushed rock, was the National Road. Funded by the federal government, this roadway extended west from Maryland to the Ohio River (in present-day West Virginia) in 1818

The First Continental Congress

In reaction to the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament enacted the Coercive Acts to force the colonists to pay their taxes. The colonists thought the Coercive Acts were intolerable; as a result, they convened the First Continental Congress The First Continental Congress put pressure on the British to repeal the Coercive Acts. This was one of the first signs of colonial unity.

Whigs Make a Last Effort

In the meantime, the few remaining Whigs teamed up with the Know-Nothings to create the Constitutional Union Party. They hoped to heal the split between North and South. Their candidate was John Bell, a little-known moderate from Tennessee. Their platform condemned sectional parties and promised to uphold "the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States and the enforcement of the laws."

Why did Democratic Republicans speak of the election of 1800 as a revolution

It changed rom the Federalist style of expensive displays

How did industrialization change the experience of working people?

Industrialization affected job opportunities, wages, and social classes. Industrialization created new job opportunities, but it also reduced the wages previously earned by artisans, and it created a more rigid division of social classes.

Where did women first gain economic opportunity

Industries in the Northeast

How did Samuel Morse's invention change communication in the United States

It allowed people to send messages almost instantly

Why did Alexander Hamilton believe that the British constitution was "the best model the world has ever produced"?

It balanced monarchy with republicanism

What was the result of George Washington's proclamation of neutrality in the war between Great Britain and France

It became the foundation of American policy toward Europe

Why was the National Road an important part of overland transportation in 1818

It was the only good route from Maryland to the Ohio River

Which delegate favored republicanism rather than a constitution modeled after the British system

James Madison

How did antislavery groups respond to the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by Border Ruffians

John Brown executed five proslavery settlerss 20 miles south of Lawrence

The Election of 1860

John Brown's raid and execution were still fresh in the minds of Americans as the 1860 presidential election approached. Uncertainty about Kansas—would it be a slave state or a free state?—added to the anxiety. In the North, loss of confidence in the Supreme Court resulting from the Dred Scott decision and rage about the Fugitive Slave Act's intrusion into the states' independence further aggravated the situation.

What constitutional principle did the Supreme Court ruling on Marbury v. Madison establish

Judicial review

What act revived the issue of slavery?

Kansas-Nebraska Act The Kansas-Nebraska Act reintroduced the idea of allowing people in the western territories to decide whether or not to allow slavery.

Why did wagon trains consist of up to 100 wagons and 1,000 people?

Large numbers provided security and mutual help. There were many dangers on a trip that covered nearly 2,000 miles and took up to five months to complete. Despite the dangers, the rewards of the journey could be great. Most of those who persevered gained bigger and better farms in Oregon or California than they had owned in the East or Midwest. Between 1840 and 1860, about 260,000 Americans crossed the continent to settle on the west coast. Use the interactive map to see the location of the major trails that the wagon trains traveled along.

The idea that government officials are not above the law is an example of which constitutional principle

Limited government

Beliefs of Those Who Opposed Hamilton's Economic Plan

Limited national government Strict interpretation of Constitution States' rights

What position did Abraham Lincoln take on slavery during the Lincoln-Douglas debates

Lincoln argued that it was wrong to decide whether to allow slavery in a state or territory by voting

Which two leaders of the women's movement argued in favor of full equality for women?

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Mott and Stanton were active reformers who became outraged when women were not allowed to fully participate in a meeting on equality and human decency. Mott and Stanton also actively supported the temperance and abolitionist causes.

During the British invasion, the British were defeated in every attack on the United States except where

Maine and Washington D.C

Marshall's Four-Part Legacy

Marshall applied four of Hamilton's principles to interpret the Constitution. First, his Supreme Court claimed the power to review the acts of Congress and of the President to determine if they were constitutional. This power is known as judicial review. Second, he insisted that federal laws were superior to state laws. Third, like Hamilton, Marshall broadly interpreted the Constitution to find implied powers for the national government. Fourth, he insisted upon the "sanctity of contracts." This limited the power of state governments to interfere with business.

What caused frequent violence to break out in mining camps

Men were frustrated by failure to find gold

The Fight Against Slavery

Misgivings about slavery had been spreading across the nation since Revolutionary times. Many northerners objected to it on moral grounds. By 1804, all states north of Maryland had passed legislation to end slavery. In 1807, bringing new slaves to any part of the United States from Africa was banned. Still, slavery was an established institution in the South, where slaves played an important role in the economy. By the early 1800s, a growing number of Americans opposed to slavery began to speak out. Because they wanted slavery abolished, or ended, they became known as abolitionists. The great reform movement they led was the abolition movement.

What did the Missouri Compromise propose

Missouri would be admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state

A Battle Rages in "Bleeding Kansas"

Most of the people who came to the newly opened territory of Kansas were farmers looking for land. But Kansas also attracted settlers—northern and southern—with political motives. Each group wanted to outnumber the other, so that when it came time to vote, they could control the government. Their competition to settle the territory would have deadly consequences.

Most Statues Preserve Colonial Traditions

Most states, however, including Massachusetts and New York, chose to create more conservative state constitutions. These state governments had a bicameral legislature and a strong governor. A bicameral legislature is a lawmaking body with two houses—a Senate and a House of Representatives. These constitutions counterbalanced the power of the common voters in the House with the power of wealthy, well-educated gentlemen in the Senate.

American Art and Literature Flourish

Nationalism also influenced art and literature. Artists celebrated America's beautiful landscape, while novelists expressed pride in the nation's immense potential. A period known as the American Renaissance ensued, in which literature reflected the nationalistic spirit. James Fenimore Cooper of New York became the first American to make a career as a novelist. His most celebrated novels, a series known as The Leatherstocking Tales, created the genre of frontier adventure tales that persists to this day. There were also several regional voices in literature. For instance, Cooper influenced William Gilmore Simms, a southern writer who gave frontier stories a more southern voice.

How did industry benefit from nationalism

Nationalism encouraged the development of large corporations

Texas Attracts Few Settlers

New Mexico's growth and improved security did not extend to Texas, its sister colony to the east along the Gulf of Mexico. In Texas, the nomads were more formidable and the colony remained weaker. The Spanish had founded Texas as a buffer zone to protect the valuable towns and mines of Mexico to the south. Like New Mexico, Texas was a mixture of ranches, missions, and military presidios. But Texas stagnated because few settlers felt attracted to such a distant and poor region subject to nomadic raiders. In 1760, only about 1,200 colonists lived in Texas, primarily in and around San Antonio. Ranchers drove longhorn cattle southward for sale in Mexico.

What area of the country was most affected by European immigration in the 1840sand 1850s

Northeast

The Missouri Compromise revealed a growing split between what two groups

Northern and southern states

Washington and the Continental Army

On April 19, 1775, the first shots of the American Revolution rang out. War erupted at Lexington and Concord, two country towns west of Boston. In May 1775, delegates from all the colonies assembled in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. Congress assumed responsibility for the war and gave command of the new Continental Army to George Washington.

What kind of government did the Virginia Plan propose

One with three branches: a legislative branch, an executive branch, and a judicial branch

Mountain Men Cross the Rockies

Other traders ventured up the Missouri River and into the Rockies, seeking valuable furs from the abundant beaver of the mountain streams. The daring young American trappers who hunted for beaver pelts in the Rockies were called Mountain Men. Most worked for two large fur companies, which provided their supplies. Restless in pursuit of furs, the Mountain Men thoroughly probed the Rockies, making important discoveries. They blazed the best route through the mountains, via South Pass in what is now Wyoming. Some Mountain Men then pressed westward to the Great Salt Lake in the arid Great Basin of Utah. In 1826, Jedediah Smith crossed the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada to reach California. In addition to trapping, he traded with the Mexican residents. Smith's trade and migration route became the California Trail, linking the United States with the Pacific coast.

What is the electoral college

People chosen from each state to elect the President

Why did violence break out in Kansas?

People had established both antislavery and proslavery governments in Kansas. Each group was determined that Kansas would enter the Union with its views entrenched in the new government.

Methods of Mining Change

Placer mining soon gave way to more efficient methods that required more money and equipment. One method was to dam and divert rivers to expose their beds. Another method, hydraulic mining, employed jets of water to erode gravel hills into long lines of sluices to catch the gold. Hydraulic mining damaged the environment by leveling hills and clogging rivers with sediment. Those with the most money turned to "hard rock mining," searching in the mountains for veins of quartz that contained gold. Miners extracted gold by digging deep tunnels and shafts braced with posts and beams and drained by pumps. One California newspaper complained that the new type of large-scale mining operation "degrades the sturdy miner into a drudge . . . while [mine owners] reap the great profit of his endeavor." The democratic age of placer mining was over. With few exceptions, wealthy investors rather than common miners owned the mines and enjoyed the profits.

Congress Declares Was

Polk sent American troops led by General Zachary Taylor to occupy the contested borderland between the two rivers. While waiting for the inevitable conflict, Polk drafted a declaration of war. He did not have to wait long. In May 1846, a Mexican patrol clashed with American soldiers, killing eleven. Polk rushed his war message to Congress: "We have tried every effort at reconciliation. . . . But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil." —James K. Polk, war message to Congress, May 11, 1846 Of course, the Mexicans saw the clash differently: To them it was an American invasion that shed Mexican blood on Mexican soil. Democrats, especially those from the South, were enthusiastically in favor of war with Mexico. Most Whigs, especially those from the North, opposed war. They believed that Polk had deliberately provoked the war by sending troops to Texas. Whigs also feared that Polk would not settle for even the biggest version of Texas but planned to annex the adjacent northern Mexican provinces, including New Mexico and California. The conquered territories might then become slave states, increasing southern power in Congress. Despite their suspicions, most Whigs did not dare block the declaration of war. They knew that the war had wide popular support—and they remembered the demise of the Federalist Party after it had opposed the War of 1812. On May 13, Congress voted overwhelmingly to declare war on Mexico.

What happened after Congress renewed the charter for the Bank of the United States

President Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill

Which of the following was an example of the increasingly democratic structure of national politics in the 1820s

Public conventions replaced party caucuses in selecting candidates

Why did Texans revolt against the rule of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Santa Anna wanted centralized government, and Texans wanted autonomy

What did presidential candidate John Bell condemn during the election of 1860

Sectional political parties

How did sectionalism threaten the expansion of the Union?

Sectionalism required negotiation about whether or not new states would be admitted as free or slave. Congress was reluctant to admit new states to the Union because these states might disrupt the balance of power between free states and slave states.

Free-Soil Party Vows to Keep Territories Free

Several factions united in support of the Wilmot Proviso to form the new Free-Soil Party. Pledged to a "national platform of freedom" that would "resist the aggressions of the slave power," they nominated New Yorker Martin Van Buren as their candidate for President. The Free-Soil Party promised "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Their main goal was to keep slavery out of the western territories.

What factor contributed to the higher voter turnout in the 1840 election

Several states removed property requirements for voters

Clay Offers a Compromise

Since the War of 1812, the Senate had benefited from the leadership of three extraordinary statesmen: Daniel Webster from the North, John Calhoun from the South, and Henry Clay from the West. Clay's ability to work out compromises to the thorniest problems had earned him the title the "Great Pacificator." In the crisis now brewing, Clay, although in his seventies and ailing, once again came forward. Clay urged the North and South to reach an agreement. He advanced a series of compromise resolutions, offering concessions to both the South and the North. The most significant proposed that Congress admit California as a free state but also enact a stricter fugitive slave law. Popular sovereignty would decide the slavery issue in the Utah and New Mexico territories. Clay's attempt at sectional justice garnered wide support.

Indians Face Restrictions

So long as wagons kept moving west, Native Americans usually left them alone. Still, the federal government sought to protect migrants by restricting the Plains Indians. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie bound the Indians to territories away from the major trails. But the Indians clung to their mobile way of life, pursuing buffalo across all artificial boundaries. As migration continued, the stage was set for future conflict.

The New Jersey Plan

Some delegates advocated only modest changes to the Articles of Confederation. Favored by the small states, their proposal, introduced by William Paterson of New Jersey, became known as the New Jersey Plan. William Paterson's proposal for a unicameral legislature with each state having one vote Legislative Branch: Unicameral legislature Executive committee Representation equal for all states regardless of a state's population No power to veto state laws First, the New Jersey Plan retained a unicameral legislature representing the states as equals, no matter how large or small. Second, it preserved an executive committee rather than adopting a singular President. Third, the states remained sovereign except for those few powers specifically granted to the national government. Under the New Jersey Plan, the United States would remain a loose confederation.

What effect did John Brown's raid and execution have in the North

Some northerners came to admire him for trying to end slavery

The Great Compromise

Something had to be done in order to prevent the convention from ending in a stalemate. The delegates were far from a unanimous decision concerning the structure of the new government, and without compromises, they may never have reached an agreement. compromise between the Virginia and New Jersey plans for a bicameral legislature; each state would have equal representation in the Senate and varied representation in the House of Representatives based on the state's population John Dickinson of Delaware played a key role in creating this compromise, which made a concession to the small states: The Senate would equally represent every state, regardless of size, by allowing two senators per state. In keeping with the Virginia Plan, the House of Representatives would represent population, granting more power to the larger states.

Why did Andrew Jackson support the Indian Removal Act of 1830

Southerners wanted him to remove Native Americans from the South

Northerners Resist Abolition

Southerners were not alone in their resistance to abolition. Most northerners agreed with them. In Boston in 1835, Garrison was chased through the streets by an angry mob as a result of his antislavery views. In Philadelphia in 1838, the Grimké-Weld wedding, attended by both white and black guests, so infuriated local residents that they burned down the antislavery meeting hall. In Alton, Illinois, irate crowds destroyed abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy's printing press several times, killing Lovejoy himself in November 1837. In city after city, white workers, fearing black competitors would take their jobs, launched stiff resistance to abolition. Wealthy industrialists resented the presence of black entrepreneurs in their midst. They also worried that the end of slavery would cut off the supply of southern cotton for northern textile mills. Most white northerners disliked southerners, but they did not want to wrestle with the problems of African Americans either. They wanted to stay out of the controversy about slavery. When southern politicians pushed a Gag Rule, a law which prohibited debate and discussion in Congress on the subject of slavery, some northerners supported them. First passed in 1836, the Gag Rule was renewed annually for eight years.

What movement did Susan B. Anthony help to lead

Suffrage

What was an effect of the events in "Bleeding Kansas"?

Tensions and violence over slavery spread outside Kansas

Which of the following was a provision of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Territories had a governor, a secretary, and three judges

What did the Confederate States of America (CSA) do when some southerners were hesitant to leave the Union

The Confederacy named moderate Jefferson Davis its president

Why did the Confederate States of America (CSA) select Jefferson Davis as its president after the election of 1860

The Confederacy needed a moderate president in order to gain support

In what areas did the British keep forts after the American Revolution

The American territory along the Great Lakes

Why did the Apache nomads of the Great Plains flee to New Mexico where they raided Spanish settlements

The Apaches were forced into New Mexico by other Plains tribes

Under the leadership of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the Congress designed which of the following

The Articles of Confederation

Which naval battle established the U.S. Navy as a strong fighting force

The Battle of Lake Erie

Facing British Impressment

The British navy also angered the United States by relying on impressment, or taking American sailors from their ships and forcing them to serve in the British navy. Engaged in a tough war, the British desperately needed sailors for their huge fleet. Britain insisted that anyone born within its empire was a British subject for life. Yet British naval officers also took American-born sailors. By 1812, about 6,000 American citizens had been impressed for the harsh duty of serving on a British warship. At first, Federalist merchants were willing to regard the British abuses as unfortunate costs of doing business on the high seas. They pointed out that the old trade with Great Britain remained even more valuable than the new reexport trade with France. But Democratic Republicans insisted that the British actions insulted the United States and threatened the country's economic growth. In 1807, when the British attacked an American warship, the Chesapeake, in order to take some of its sailors, many Americans—including many Federalists—were outraged.

A Change in Style

The Federalists believed that expensive displays taught the public to respect their leaders. Without that respect, they did not think that the government could survive. But, the Democratic Republicans hated the Federalist displays of wealth as an aristocratic threat to the republic. Although Jefferson was a very wealthy, refined, and educated gentleman, he recognized the popularity of a common style.

How did the Free-Soil Party influence the election of Whig Zachary Taylor in 1848

The Free-Soil candidate drew votes away from the Democratic candidate

Which statement best describes the effects of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie

The Indians crossed artificial boundaries, setting the stage for conflict

What was the effect of Abraham Lincoln winning the election of 1860

The North and the South became two separate political entities

Which is NOT a reason why growth of American industry occurred primarily in the Northeast

The Northeast had a larger population of enslaved people for a workforce

Which of the following is an example of the Constitution's system of checks and balances

The President would nominate judges, but the Senate has to approve them

During the early 1800s, what factor most contributed to the South having an agricultural economy

The South had fertile soil and a warm climate

Why were Texans angry when Santa Anna seized power in Mexico City?

The Texans wanted more autonomy. Santa Anna favored a centralized, authoritarian national government. The people living in Texas wanted to control their own affairs.

Why was Andrew Jackson's battle at New Orleans unnecessary

The Treaty of Ghent had already been signed

What event opened the Northwest Territory to American expansion

The Treaty of Greenville

In February 1848, the defeated Mexicans made peace with the Americans. What did the United States get in return for leaving Mexico City and paying $15 million?

The United States retained New Mexico and California and kept the Rio Grande as the border of Texas

Which statement best describes U.S. foreign policy during the Monroe administration

The United States sought to expand its borders into Spanish territories

How did the Whig Party win the election of 1840

The Whigs organized a big campaign that portrayed the opposing candidate as a corrupt aristocrat

What was the immediate catalyst to the Civil War

The conflict between Union troops and Confederates at Fort Sumter

What ended the Whigs' brief reign in the White House

The death of President William Henry Harrison

Which of the following was an outcome of California's application for statehood

The debate over the spread of slavery grew more bitter

What was the main cause of the Panic of 1837

The decision to stop accepting paper money for the purchase of federal land

Women Lead Reform Efforts

The drive to reform American society created by the Second Great Awakening provided new opportunities for women. Many joined reform groups sponsored by their churches. Women played leading roles in all of the great reform movements of the day. Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Ann Preston advanced education during the public school movement. Dorothea Dix almost single-handedly launched reforms in the way the country treated prisoners and people who suffered from mental illness. Most community leaders of the temperance movement were women; after all, they and their children were the primary victims of husbands' and fathers' abuse of alcohol. The abolition movement attracted some of the most thoughtful women of the day, including Angelina and Sarah Grimké. Many abolitionist groups, like the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, were made up entirely of women. One of the most effective abolitionist lecturers was Sojourner Truth, a former slave from New York who held audiences spellbound with her powerful speech and arguments.

Separation of Powers

The government's power is divided among three branches The Constitution mandated the separation of powers within the federal government. The Constitution, therefore, defined distinct legislative, executive, and judicial branches with different responsibilities to prevent misuse of power by any of the three branches. The Constitution assigns certain specific powers to each of the three branches of the federal government. The legislative branch, or Congress, enacts laws. The executive branch, headed by the President, carries out the laws, negotiates treaties, and commands the armed forces. The judicial branch interprets the Constitution and enforces the law. The Constitution established a Supreme Court and authorized Congress to establish other courts as needed.

What contributed to the growth of the Know-Nothing movement in the mid-1850s

The growing immigrant population

Which actions by the colonists surprised John Adams

The increase of political activity about taxes

What was the most direct result of Mexican independence from Spanish rule

The increase of trade along the Santa Fe Trail

Why did the industrialists favor the national bank

They believed it promoted economic growth

What did Alexander Hamilton believe was one of the benefits of his plan regarding the national debt

The plan would enrich investors and promote new businesses

How did the presidential election process begin to change in the early 1800s

The popular vote became more important

What was one of the effects of the California Gold Rush

The population of California grew rapidly

Which of Thomas Jefferson's Constitutional principles did the Louisiana Purchase go against

The principle of limited federal government

Why were southern politicians opposed to Wilmot Proviso

The proviso would limit the spread of slavery

Why did southerners denounce the Wilmot Proviso

The proviso would upset the balance of power between the North and the South

What was a surprise to Americans and a shock to the British during the early fighting in the war of 1812

The small American navy fought well

Opposing Hamilton

The southern states, which were overwhelmingly agricultural, had done a better job of paying their own debts. Why, southerners wondered, should they pay federal taxes to bail out the northern states? And why should their tax dollars flow into the pockets of creditors in the Northeast? Opposition to Hamilton's plans grew steadily in the South.

Why did the states of the Deep South leave the Union?

The states left the Union because Abraham Lincoln was elected. The election of Abraham Lincoln persuaded people in these states that the federal government would not consider their views and interests. Many feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery in the South.

Why did Lincoln send a ship to Fort Sumter in April of 1861

The troops desperately needed food and supplies

What is the spoils system

The use of political jobs as a reward for party loyalty

What issue started the violence in the Kansas territory

The vote over whether to allow slavery

What led Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to work together

Their outrage that women were refused full participation in business meetings

Which of the following is an accurate description of the Bill of Rights

These ten amendments protected individual freedoms

Why did Jacksonian Democrats oppose the national bank

They believed it favored a wealthy few

Why did many Americans initially welcome new of the French Revoltion

They considered the French to be fellow republicans

What was one reason Thomas Jefferson offered to buy the Louisiana Territory

To avoid war with France

Why did the War Hawks push for the invasion of British-held Canada

To deprive the Indians of their main source of arms

Why is the journey of the Cherokees called the "Trail of Tears"?

Thousands of Cherokees died while walking to Oklahoma

What was the purpose of the Treaty of Fort Laramie

To keep Native Americans away from migration routes used by westward settlers

What was one effect of the Alien and Sedition Acts

To limit the power of the Democratic Republican Party

Why did some Americans form political clubs, known as the Democratic Societies

To oppose the Federalists

What was the purpose of the Federalist Papers

To outline key ideas in support of the Constitution

Immediately prior to "Bleeding Kansas," what kind of government had been established in the Kansas-Nebraska teritory

Two opposing governments were established in Kansas

Which of the following northern groups supported the South in its resistance to abolition

Urban white workers and wealthy industrialists

Virginia and New Jersey Plan

Virginia: Three branches Strong president Bicameral legislature Both: Regulate commerce Power to tax New Jersey Plan: Unicameral legislature Executive committee Principles of the Articles of Confederation

Over which issue did Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas disagree during their debates

Whether slavery should be allowed in states where voters supported it

In the early 1800s, new state constitutions expanded the electorate by giving which group the right to vote

White men without property

Who demanded "nothing less than...a Revolution in the Government of the country"?

William Lloyd Garrison

Who founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833

William Lloyd Garrison

Political and Economic Status of Women in the Early 1800s

Women could not vote Could not hold public office Could not serve on juries Few could receive any level of higher education Could bot work in most trades or professions Paid less than men; fathers or husbands took what they earned Married women lost legal control of any money or property Could not testify against husband in court

Shays' Rebellion

farmers' rebellion led by Daniel Shays against higher taxes in Massachusetts

Electoral College

group of persons chosen from each state to indirectly elect the President and Vice President

Land Ordinance of 1785

law which designed a system for managing and settling lands in the Northwest Territory

Committees of Correspondence

network of local groups that informed colonists of British measures and the opposition to them in the years before the Revolutionary War

Virtually

not completely, but for all practical purposes

What were the three measures that Congress adopted to preserve the Union?

the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Compromise of 1850 The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had limited slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had maintained the balance between slave and free states. The Compromise of 1850 was based on Henry Clay's proposals.

Why did Jefferson call for an embargo

to end the impressment of U.S. sailors America's navy was too small to challenge the mighty British navy, so in an effort to avert war, Jefferson convinced Congress to declare a trade embargo against Britain. The strategy did considerable damage to the U.S. economy and was considered a major failure.

What was one way that colonial governments differed from the British government

Colonists' rights were defined by formal documents British rights were defined by laws and tradition

Why did American merchants call for a stronger national government?

Congress was too weak. The states were not supporting one another on trade issues and Congress was too weak to put together a united front to counteract Great Britain's self-serving mercantile policy.

Conservative Patriots and Democratic Patriots

Conservative: Bicameral legislature Strong governor Both: Voting restrictions Freedom of religion Democratic Patriots: Weak governor Unicameral Legislature

How was moral suasion used by abolitionists as an argument against slavery

Abolitionists argued that slavery was morally wrong

Which presidential candidate completely opposed the spread of slavery to western territories

Abraham Lincoln

What was the main result of the election of 1860

Abraham Lincoln won, as competing candidates divided votes over slavery and regional interests

Who rejected the final compromise effort to stop the secession movement

Abraham Lincoln, because it undercut the gains made by the 1860 election

What action affected the second Bank of the United States after Jackson's reelection

Jackson removed the bank's funds and placed them in state banks

Cultural Consequences

A dispersed population and the burden of slavery affected the culture of the South. Planters opposed education for slaves and cared little about providing it to poor whites. The rate of southern white illiteracy was 15 percent—three times higher than what it was in the North and West. Although slavery was central to life in the South, slaveholders were a minority. No more than one fourth of white men had slaves in 1860. Three fourths of these held fewer than 10 slaves, and only about 3,000 white men owned 100 or more slaves. The typical slaveholder lived in a farmhouse and owned only four or five slave Why, then, did southern whites so vigorously defend the slave system? Part of the answer lies in the aspirations of common farmers. They hoped some day to acquire their own slaves and plantations. Common whites also dreaded freeing the slaves for fear they would seek bloody revenge. All classes of whites also believed that they shared a racial bond. Even the poorest whites felt a sense of racial superiority. They also reasoned that southern whites enjoyed an equality of rights impossible in the North, where poor men depended on wage labor from rich mill owners. Southern farmers took pride in their independence. They credited that independence to a social structure that kept slaves at the bottoms. By the 1850s, proslavery forces rejected the criticism of slavery once expressed by Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. They no longer defended slavery as a necessary evil but touted the institution as a positive good. They also insisted that slavery was kinder to African Americans than industrial life was to white workers Despite these claims, no northern workers fled to the South to become slaves, while hundreds of slaves ran away to seek wage work in the North.

The Monroe Doctrine

Adams also formulated the famous foreign policy doctrine named for President Monroe—the Monroe Doctrine. This policy responded to threats by European powers, including France, to help Spain recover Latin American colonies that had declared their independence. Monroe and Adams were eager to protect those new republics. The British shared that goal and proposed uniting with the United States to warn the other European powers to stay out of Latin America. Adams and Monroe, however, preferred to act without a British partner. In 1823, Monroe issued a written doctrine declaring that European monarchies had no business meddling with American republics. In return, the United States promised to stay out of European affairs. The Monroe Doctrine meant little in 1823 when the Americans lacked the army and navy to enforce it. The Latin American republics kept their independence with British, rather than American, help. The doctrine did, however, reflect the nation's growing desire for power. The doctrine became much more significant in the 1890s and in the twentieth century, when the United States increasingly sent armed forces into Latin American countries.

Establishing Important Precedents

After establishing the precedent of judicial review, Marshall never again ruled a federal law unconstitutional. Instead, most of his decisions overruled state laws, usually to defend businesses and interstate commerce from state interference, or strengthened judicial review. These decisions set precedents critical to the development of the new nation's legal and economic systems. Like Hamilton, Marshall interpreted the Constitution broadly to find the implied powers needed for a strong national government. John Marshall's loose interpretation of the constitution gave the Court the power of judicial review, declared federal law supreme over state law, and found implied powers for the federal government.

The Hartford Convention

After the War of 1812 and Jackson's victory in New Orleans, Americans experienced a surge of nationalism and a new confidence in the strength of their republic. By weathering a difficult war, the nation seemed certain to endure, and most Americans were giddy with relief. The outcome discredited the Federalists, who looked weak for opposing a war that became popular once it was over. Strongest in New England, the Federalists had undermined the war effort there. In December 1814, Federalist delegates from the New England states met at Hartford, Connecticut, to consider secession and making a separate peace with Britain. Drawing back from the brink, the delegates instead demanded constitutional amendments designed to strengthen New England's political power. Unfortunately for the delegates of the Hartford Convention, their demands reached Washington, D.C., at the same time as news of the peace treaty and Jackson's victory. That combination embarrassed the Federalists, who were mocked as defeatists and traitors. Madison ignored their demands, and the voters punished the Federalists in the elections that followed. By 1820 the Federalist Party was dead—a sad fate for the party that had created the federal government only to lose faith in it during the War of 1812. 1814 meeting of Federalists from New England who opposed the War of 1812 and demanded constitutional amendments to empower their region

Adams Confronts Crisis with France

Although honest and dedicated, Adams could also be stubborn and pompous. Lacking tact, he made few friends and many enemies. Those foes included Hamilton, who had retired from public office but who tried to control the Federalist Party and the national government from behind the scenes. His meddling weakened the Adams administration. A French crisis briefly unified the nation. The Jay Treaty of 1794 had offended the French as a betrayal of their 1778 treaty of alliance with the United States. To show their irritation, in 1796 the French began seizing American merchant ships. Adams sent envoys to Paris to negotiate peace. But three French officials—known in code as X, Y, and Z—demanded humiliating terms, including $250,000 in bribes. Adams broke off negotiations. Called the XYZ Affair (diplomatic controversy in 1798 in which French officials demanded bribes of American negotiators), the insult roused public sentiment against France. In 1798, the Federalist majority in Congress expanded the army and authorized a small navy, which won some surprising victories over French warships. To pay for the expanded military, Congress imposed unpopular taxes on stamps and land.

Economic Consequences

Although many plantation owners became rich, cotton production limited regional development. Most of the South became too dependent on one crop. That dependence paid off in most years, when cotton prices were high. But prices sometimes plummeted, forcing many planters into bankruptcy. Another problem was that plantations dispersed the population. The South lost out on the urban growth needed for an industrial economy. Only one southern city, New Orleans, ranked among America's top fifteen cities in 1860. The South also lacked the commercial towns so common in the Northeast and Midwest. In 1860, a traveler in Alabama noted, "In fact the more fertile the land, the more destitute is the country of villages and towns." The stunted commercial development in the South did not attract the immigrants who needed wage work. Consequently, the northern population grew much faster than the southern population. In 1850, the North had twice as many free people as did the South. That trend increased the political power of the North, especially in the House of Representatives. And that political trend alarmed southern whites who did not trust northerners to protect slavery. The South also paid an economic price for keeping two fifths of its people in slavery. For lack of wages, most slaves were desperately poor and consumed very little. The South's limited consumer demand discouraged southern entrepreneurs from building factories. It was more profitable to buy a plantation.

Women Begin the Fight for Rights

Although many women became leading reformers, and many others entered the workforce, there had still been virtually no progress in women's rights. Real progress began only when two historical trends coincided in the 1830s. First, many urban middle-class northern women began to hire poor women to do their housework. This allowed the middle-class women more time to think about the society in which they wanted to raise their children. Second, women began to see their own social restrictions as being comparable to slavery.

Conflict in the Ohio Valley

Although the United States had gained a vast new territory west of the Appalachians from the Treaty of Paris, the British kept their forts on the American side of the Great Lakes. Hoping to limit American settlement in the Northwest Territory, the British provided arms and ammunition to the Miami Indians and their allies, who were actively resisting American expansion into their lands. In 1790, Native Americans led by the war chief Little Turtle defeated a small force sent by President Washington to stop attacks against settlers. In 1791 in the Ohio Valley, British guns helped a confederacy of many Indian nations, again led by Little Turtle, to crush a larger American force commanded by General Arthur St. Clair. The tide turned in August 1794 when federal troops led by General Anthony Wayne defeated the Native American confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, named for the fallen trees that covered the battle site. Wayne's decisive victory forced the Native Americans to accept his peace terms. In the Treaty of Greenville, Native American leaders ceded most of the present state of Ohio to the U.S. government. This also opened the Northwest Territory to settlement.

Slavery Divides the Nation

Although the abolition movement remained small and mostly confined to the North, it was vocal—and persistent. The debate over slavery divided Americans like no other issue. It widened regional cultural differences between the largely urban and industrialized North and the largely rural and agricultural South. Indeed, the divisive issue of slavery would soon prove to be a major factor in the division of the country itself.

Why did the Miami Indians fight the Americans

American settlers took their land

How did Americans respond to John Brown's raid and his execution?

Americans reacted with mixed emotions. Some northerners saw Brown as a martyr who died for a worthy cause, but others believed he had gone too far and was wrong to use violence. Many southerners began to prepare for war.

What did California become during the Mexican War

An independent republic

Southerners Cling to Slavery

As abolitionists were developing their arguments against slavery, southern slaveholders intensified their arguments in support of it. They publicized their conviction that slavery was necessary because it formed the foundation of the South's agricultural economy. Moreover, they argued, slavery benefited the North, since the North's textile and shipping industries depended upon southern cotton. They further maintained that a slave labor force was superior to the wage labor force of the North. They argued that northern employers and laborers would be inevitably at odds, since employers wanted workers to work more for less money while workers wanted to work less for more money. In contrast, such conflict was avoided in the South, where the well-being of slaves depended on their slaveholders' fortunes and slaveholders' fortunes depended on the well-being of their slaves. But some southerners went even further, claiming that Christianity supported slavery, that enslaved people could not survive without slaveholders, and that the enslavement of Africans was historically inevitable. Such assertions were clearly racist, but many people of the time believed them. As abolitionist rhetoric grew more strident, southern support for gradual manumission, or freeing, of slaves decreased. Southern spokespeople stepped up their arguments about the value of slavery, and southern slaveholders tried to prevent southerners from reading abolitionist publications. Post offices refused to deliver abolitionist newspapers. Southerners—even many of those who did not own slaves—embraced slavery as their preferred way of life, to be defended at all costs.

Southern States Leave the Union

As soon as Lincoln's election was confirmed, the South Carolina legislature summoned a state convention. Meeting in Charleston on December 20, 1860, and without a dissenting vote, the convention declared that "the union now subsisting between South Carolina and the other States, under the name of the 'United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." They cited as their reason for seceding the election of a President "whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery." They further declared: "On the 4th of March next, [a new administration] will take possession of the Government. It has announced . . . that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. . . . The Guarantees of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy." —Declaration of the South Carolina Convention, December 20, 1860 In the next few weeks, six other states of the Deep South seceded from the Union. Sentiments favoring secession were not always unanimous, with the gravest doubts surfacing in Georgia. State senator Alexander H. Stephens, though alarmed by Lincoln's election, was devoted to the Union of states under the Constitution: "This government of our fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good government than any other on the face of the Earth," he said. But Georgia voted to secede anyway. Like delegates in the other slave-dependent, cotton-growing states, they believed they had to take this step to protect their property and way of life.

The Republican Party is Born

As the old parties broke up, antislavery zeal gave rise to the new Republican Party in 1854. Opposition to slavery was the center of the Republican philosophy. Attracting antislavery Democrats, Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Know-Nothings, the Republican Party grew rapidly in the North. It included a coalition of businessmen who believed that slavery stifled industry, as well as moral leaders who feared that slavery encouraged vice. By 1856, it was ready to challenge the older, established parties. Use the interactive table to review the nation's political parties during the 1850s.

Entering the Reexport Trade

As the population grew and spread westward, the United States needed to expand overseas markets for the surplus produce raised on its new farms. From 1793 to 1807, war in Europe aided this goal. The dominant British navy quickly captured most of France's merchant ships. To supply food to the French colonies in the West Indies, and to export their sugar, the French turned to American ships. Because the British had banned direct American voyages between the French West Indies and France, American merchants picked up cargoes in the French colonies and took them to ports in the United States, where they unloaded them. Then the merchants reshipped the cargoes to France as if they were American products. The value of this "reexport" trade soared from about $300,000 in 1790 to nearly $59 million in 1807, creating a boom for the American economy. To meet the new demand, American shipyards produced hundreds of new ships, tripling the size of the nation's merchant marine by 1807. Prosperous American merchants built new wharves, warehouses, and mansions, boosting the construction trades in seaport cities. Farmers also benefited by selling their produce to feed French soldiers in Europe and enslaved Africans and plantation owners in the West Indies. The British hated the reexport trade for two reasons. First, it helped the French economy, which sustained Napoleon's army. Second, the new trade helped the United States become Britain's greatest commercial competitor. In 1805, as British merchants lost markets and profits to American shippers, British warships began to stop and confiscate growing numbers of American merchant ships for trading with the French.

John Brown's Raid

Both Lincoln and Douglas believed the slavery crisis had to be resolved within the framework of the nation's laws. Abolitionist John Brown felt no such constraints. Brown viewed himself as an angel of God, avenging the evil of slavery. Even before one of his sons was killed in Bleeding Kansas, he had concluded that violence was the best way to reach his goal. By late 1857, Brown had begun planning his attack. For many months, he crisscrossed New England, the Midwest, and Canada, soliciting recruits and funds to mount an armed assault on slavery.

Why were the Great Plains and the Great Basin major obstacles to wagon trains journeying west

Both areas were dry and hot, with few rivers

Who was responsible for leading the Mormon exodus to the colony of New Zion on the shore of the Great Salt Lake

Brigham Young

Brown's Execution Deepens the Growing Divide

Brown's attack increased the heat in already-boiling tempers. Similar to the Dred Scott decision, suspicion and rumors were widespread. Stephen Douglas accused the Republicans of instigating Brown's attack, and southern congressmen demanded an investigation. But when Abraham Lincoln and other Republicans condemned Brown, the rumors subsided. Yet, many congressmen still came armed to the Capitol. The uncertainty caused a steep drop in cotton prices, and many southerners prepared for war. Many northerners thought abolitionist activism had gone too far. But others now saw Brown as a courageous martyr. They were moved to tears when he proclaimed his willingness to "mingle my blood . . . with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments." Some admirers suggested that Brown should be buried at Boston's Bunker Hill, next to the heroes of the American Revolution. A popular song later immortalized him, celebrating the fact that "his soul goes marching on." On the morning of his execution, Brown made the prophetic prediction that "the crimes [of slavery] of this guilty land will never be purged away, . . . without very much bloodshed." Many Americans agreed with him.

Proclaiming Neutrality

By 1793, Britain and France were at war. Both American political parties agreed that the United States was too weak to get tangled in the war and too dependent on trade with Britain, which provided nearly 90 percent of American imports. That trade generated most of the federal revenue, which came primarily from tariffs and only secondarily from excise taxes. If the United States entered the conflict, it could bankrupt the federal government. In 1793, President Washington, therefore, issued a proclamation of American neutrality, which became a foundation of American policy toward Europe until the twentieth century. The powerful British navy tested that neutrality by seizing American ships trading with the French colonies in the West Indies. Those seizures added to American outrage at the British policy along the new nation's western frontier.

The Election of 18000

By 1800, the Sedition Act and the new federal taxes had become very unpopular. Sensing that trend, in 1799 Adams had suspended expansion of the army and sent new diplomats to France to seek peace. Those moves angered many Federalists, including Hamilton, who worked to undermine Adams's reelection. Adams lost the heated election to Jefferson. Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, tied. The voters had meant for Jefferson to become President and Burr to become Vice President. But because the Constitution did not then allow a distinction between electoral votes, the House of Representatives had to decide between the two. Hamilton preferred Jefferson, so in early 1801 the Federalist congressmen allowed Jefferson to become President. This peaceful transfer of power from one party to another set a valuable precedent. To avoid another electoral crisis, in 1804 the Constitution was amended to require electors to vote separately for President and Vice President. Offended by Hamilton's criticism, Burr killed him in a duel in 1804.

Two Governments Are Established

By 1855, proslavery settlers had set up a territorial government near the border of Missouri, a slave state. During the election, proslavery residents from Missouri, known as Border Ruffians, had swept into Kansas and coerced local voters into voting for proslavery candidates. They also cast their own illegal votes. The new legislature quickly passed proslavery laws, including penalties for antislavery agitation and a requirement that officeholders take a proslavery oath. Within two years, they had called a convention and developed a constitution that would have legalized slavery and punished those who spoke or wrote against it. Northern abolitionists also rushed into Kansas. The New England Emigrant Aid Society raised money to help several thousand free-state supporters establish the town of Lawrence, a few miles east of the proslavery capital. These settlers joined other free-state advocates in establishing an antislavery government in Topeka. By early 1856, this Topeka government had petitioned Congress for statehood. Kansas now had two governments petitioning for statehood. It was a sure setup for disaster.

How was the conflict surrounding the election of 1824 finally settled

By a majority vote in the House of Representatives

The Struggle Over Ratification

By drafting a new Constitution, the delegates had exceeded their mandate. They were only supposed to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Official approval, or ratification, of an entirely new constitution was doomed if all 13 states had to approve it as the Articles required. To improve the odds of ratification, the delegates arbitrarily decided to change the rules. They determined that approval by nine states would suffice. They also took the ratification decision away from the state legislatures, for they would most certainly oppose a new constitution that would deprive them of some power. Instead, the delegates ruled that specially elected conventions would determine a state's choice for or against the Constitution. Two groups soon emerged in the debate: the Federalists, who favored ratification, and the Antifederalists, who opposed it.

How did most enslaved people cope with the miserable conditions they faced

By keeping family traditions alive

What role did the Free-Soil Party play in the election of 1848?

By nominating a candidate, the Free-Soil Party allowed Zachary Taylor to win. Although Martin Van Buren, the Free-Soil Party candidate, did not win any states, he won enough votes to cause Lewis Cass to lose.

How did William Lloyd Garrison's Anti-Slavery Society fight against slavery

By printing and distributing antislavery pamphlets

How did Alexander Hamilton plan to handle the national debt

By selling government bonds to fund the debt

Forty-Niners Flock to California

By summer, news of the gold strike caused a sensation in the eastern United States. In a mass migration known as the California Gold Rush, some 80,000 fortune seekers headed for California in search of easy riches. About half of these forty-niners traveled by land trails. Another half went by ship around South America or via a short land passage at the Isthmus of Panama. The ships landed their human cargo in San Francisco. The golden news also attracted miners from around the Pacific Rim. Many fortune seekers came from South America, especially Peru and Chile. Another 25,000 laborers migrated from China to California during the 1850s. From a mere 14,000 in 1847, California's population of outside settlers surged to 225,000 in just five years.

The Election of 1828

By the election of 1828, Jackson's supporters called themselves Democrats, not Democratic Republicans. Jacksonian Democracy triumphed in the presidential election of 1828. With 56 percent of the popular vote and two thirds of the electoral votes, Jackson defeated Adams. A rowdy crowd attended Jackson's inauguration in Washington, D.C. Their raucous conduct symbolized the triumph of the democratic style over the alleged aristocracy represented by John Quincy Adams. Jackson owed his victory to his campaign manager Martin Van Buren, who revived the Jeffersonian partnership of southern planters and northern common people. The party promised a return to Jeffersonian principles: strong states and a weak federal government that would not interfere in slavery. Only those principles, Van Buren argued, could keep sectional tensions from destroying the Union.

Brown Seizes the Arsenal at Harpers Ferry

By the fall of 1859, Brown was ready. "Men, get your arms," he cried, "we will proceed to the ferry." Gathering his following of 21 men—including 5 free African Americans—Brown set out to seize the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia). He hoped to inspire local slaves to join a revolution that would destroy slavery in the South. Brown had chosen Harpers Ferry because it was a hub of trains and canals, which would offer efficient escape routes. This locale was also near the borders of Pennsylvania, a free state, and Maryland, where there were many free African Americans. It seemed the ideal launching point. But the effort failed. Few Americans—black or white—were prepared to join a rebellion organized by this intense, fanatical white man. Frederick Douglass, a close friend, refused to join, warning Brown that his mission "would array the whole country against us." A few black and white abolitionists sent money for guns, but in the end Brown's revolution came to naught. Local residents surrounded Brown's men in the arsenal, and federal troops soon arrived to arrest them. Two more of Brown's sons were killed in the fray, but a few of the rebels escaped to Canada. Brown and several others, however, went to the gallows.

Know-Nothings Attract Support

By the mid-1800s, a growing immigrant population was changing the country. For example, up to that time, Protestantism—which includes Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and many other groups—had been the dominant American religion. By 1850, however, Americans of Irish and German descent and Spanish-speaking natives of lands ceded by Mexico had made Catholicism the nation's largest religious group. Many native-born white Protestants were alarmed by the change. These "nativists" raised questions that reflected their prejudices. Would Catholics bring ideas that would undermine America's religious freedom? Would the newcomers take jobs away from workers who were already here? Or, alternatively, would they be lazy, not work, and become paupers, weighing down society? These concerns fueled the growth of an anti-immigrant movement. Dubbed "Know-Nothings" because members responded "I know nothing" when questioned about their nativist organization, the group quickly gathered momentum. By 1855, the Know-Nothings had abandoned secrecy to form the American Party. Like the Whigs, however, the American Party soon divided over the issue of slavery in the western territories.

Provisions of the Compromise of 1850

California enters the Union as a free state Popular sovereignty is used to determine if territory acquired from Mexico is slave or free Slave trading, but not slavery, ends in Washington DC Congress agrees to pass a strict runaway slave law Texas relinquishes its claim to New Mexico in exchange for $10 million

California Seeks Statehood

California's application for statehood stirred discord between North and South. At the time, the Union was comprised of 15 free states and 15 slave states. Admission of a new free state would thus tip the delicate regional balance in the Senate. Over the next decade, debate over the spread of slavery into the lands won from Mexico would grow increasingly bitter. Thus, westward expansion became a major source of the division that ultimately led to the tragic Civil War.

At the beginning of the War of 1812, what did Thomas Jefferson believe

Canada could be conquered easily by the United States

Wagon Trains Journey West

Commencing in springtime at the western edge of Missouri, the demanding journey covered nearly 2,000 miles and took about five months to complete. Oxen pulled the emigrants' wooden wagons covered with canvas. For security and mutual help, most emigrants traveled in trains of from 10 to 100 wagons and from 50 to 1,000 people. Eager to get to the fertile and humid Pacific, the emigrants bypassed the Great Plains, which they considered little better than a desert, and the Great Basin, which truly was a desert. They were also in a hurry to get across two cold and lofty mountain chains, the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Most of the emigrants were farm people from the Midwest. Men relished the journey as an adventure, while many women more keenly felt the hardships and anxieties. "What had possessed my husband, anyway, that he should have thought of bringing us away out through this God-forsaken country?" wrote one woman in her diary. Indeed, the journey was a gamble that cost many their property and some their lives. Emigrants faced hunger, exposure, disease, poisoned streams—or worse. In 1846, the Donner Party got lost on the way to California. Trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada, the starving survivors resorted to cannibalism.

Why did slavery flourish between 1820 and 1860

Cotton plantation owners needed a large labor force

Democratic Republicans vs. Federalists

Democratic Republicans: Offered more social mobility Led by Jefferson and Madison Attracted many southerners Federalists: Credited for creating the new Constitution Led by Hamilton and Adams Attracted many northerners

Technology Sparks Industrial Growth

Developments in technology also transformed manufacturing. This transformation became known as the Industrial Revolution, which changed not only the nation's economy but also its culture, social life, and politics. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain during the 1700s, with the development of machines, powered by steam or flowing rivers, to perform work that had once been done by hand. The first machines spun thread and wove cloth more quickly and cheaply.

Douglas Backs Popular Sovereignty

Douglas had supporters in both the North and the South. Though he was not a slaveholder, his wife had inherited slaves, and he was somewhat sympathetic to slavery. Popular sovereignty, he insisted, was the implied intent of the Constitution. He expressed this sentiment strongly in the seventh and last debate: "This Union was established on the right of each State to do as it pleased on the question of slavery, and every other question." —Stephen A. Douglas, 1858 Douglas was seeking the support of both southern and northern Democrats. But while some southerners supported him, many northern Democrats distrusted what they believed were his self-serving motives.

What was the result of the debates?

Douglas won the election but Lincoln won a large following. Douglas won the election by a slim margin. Lincoln, however, won a large following that would serve him well the next time he ran for national office.

The British Invade

During 1812 and 1813, most of the British forces were in Europe fighting Napoleon. In early 1814, however, the French dictator's defeat freed thousands of British troops to fight in North America. During the summer and fall, the British took the offensive. While the British navy blockaded the coast, British forces invaded the United States. One army occupied eastern Maine, easily brushing aside the weak defense by local militia. From Montreal, a second army invaded northern New York, while a third British force landed in Maryland and marched on Washington, D.C. In late 1814, a British fleet carried a fourth army into the Gulf of Mexico to attack New Orleans. On the defensive, the Americans fought better than they had when invading Canada. Except for the occupation of Maine, the British attacks ended in defeat. The British did capture the national capital, easily accessible by ship via the Chesapeake Bay, and burned the White House and Capitol in revenge for some American arson in Canada. But the British suffered defeat when they moved on to attack Baltimore. Lawyer Francis Scott Key, who observed the British attack on Fort McHenry, celebrated the American victory by writing a poem that later became the national anthem known as "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise

During the debates over the Constitution, the delegates discovered that their greatest division pitted the southern against the northern delegates. The southerners feared future domination by the northern states, which had more free people. They worried that northern domination would threaten the slave system, which they viewed as essential to the southern economy and society. The delegates from South Carolina and Georgia threatened to walk out unless provided constitutional protection for slavery. The subject tore at Madison. On the one hand, he wanted a powerful nation, and he despised slavery as "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man." On the other hand, he owned slaves, and he knew that southern voters would reject a constitution that threatened slavery. So he assured his constituents in Virginia that the Constitution offered slavery "better security than any that now exists." That security took three forms. First, the Constitution forbade Congress from blocking the importation of slaves for twenty years. Georgia and South Carolina would import another 100,000 slaves by 1808. Second, a compromise known as the Three-Fifths Compromise counted each slave as three fifths of a person to be added to a state's free population in allocating representatives to the House of Representatives and electoral college votes. The three-fifths clause gave the southern states more seats in Congress and more power in presidential elections than they would have enjoyed had only free people been counted—as the northern delegates preferred. Third, the Constitution committed all states to return fugitive slaves to their owners. In other words, running away to a free state did not free a slave. Northerners were required to help enforce the slave system as the price of union. Most state constitutions had adopted bills of rights to protect civil liberties from the power of government. But the federal delegates declined to include a bill of rights in their constitution. A South Carolina delegate, Charles C. Pinckney, explained, "such bills generally begin with declaring that all men are by nature born free." Such a declaration would come "with a very bad grace when a large part of our property consists in men who are actually born slaves." Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution did not proclaim that all men were born free and equal in their rights. On September 17, the Constitutional Convention concluded with 42 delegates still present. Many, including Madison, disliked the compromises, but Franklin appealed to all to unite in support of the "federal experiment." Hamilton reluctantly accepted the Constitution as the only alternative to "anarchy and Convulsion." In the end, 39 delegates signed the document, while three refused to sign out of protest. George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts considered the document to be flawed. Next came the greater challenge of winning approval from the states.

Van Buren's Presidency and the Panic of 1837

Economic trouble was still in the future when Jackson retired from politics in 1836. In that year's election, voters chose Martin Van Buren, Jackson's favorite, to become President. Soon after Van Buren took office in 1837, the economy suffered a severe panic. A key trigger was Jackson's decision, taken months earlier, to stop accepting paper money for the purchase of federal land. The effect was a sharp drop in land values and sales. As a result, hundreds of banks and businesses that had invested in land went bankrupt. Thousands of planters and farmers lost their land. One out of three urban workers lost his or her job. Those who kept their jobs saw their wages drop by 30 percent. The Panic of 1837 was the worst depression suffered by Americans to that date.

The Wilmot Proviso Divides Americans

Even before the war ended, the prospect of gaining land from Mexico stirred fierce debate in the United States. In 1846, Whig congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania had proposed a law, known as the Wilmot Proviso, that would ban slavery in any lands won from Mexico. The proposal broke party unity and instead divided Congress largely along sectional lines. Most northern Democrats joined all northern Whigs to support the Wilmot Proviso. Southern Democrats joined southern Whigs in opposition. The Proviso passed in the House of Representatives, but it failed narrowly in the Senate. The Wilmot Proviso would reappear in every session of Congress for the next 15 years. Repeatedly, it passed in the House only to fail in the Senate. The Proviso brought the slavery issue to the forefront and weakened the two major parties, which had long tried to avoid discussing the issue in Congress. Thus, the lands won from Mexico increased tensions between North and South.

The Nation Continues to Grow

Events during the War of 1812 ended most Indian resistance east of the Mississippi River for the time being. As a result of various defeats of Native Americans in the South, millions of acres of southern land also opened up for settlement. Settlement in the South and West led to the establishment of the new states of Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), and Alabama (1819). The union became bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, American settlers had been pouring into Spanish Florida, resulting in cross-border conflict among the region's Seminole Indians, Americans, and the Spanish. Fugitive slaves from the United States, seeking sanctuary in Florida, added to the tensions. Over the next decade, the conflict would contribute to Spain's decision to cede Florida to the United States. In return the United States renounced its claims to Texas, as part of the Adams-Onís Treaty signed in 1819.

XYZ Affair

Events: U.S. sends three ministers to France Agents X, Y, and Z demand bribe money and apologies from the diplomats Diplomats return to U.S. People: French agents X, Y, and Z President Adams French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tallyrand Effects: American public is outraged President Adams authorizes U.S. Navy to capture French ships U.S. cancels Treaty of Alliance with France

How did the Alien and Sedition Acts divide American political parties

Federalists supported the acts. Democratic Republicans opposed them

Why did John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry fail

Few Americans would join a rebellion organized by Brown

Whigs and Democrats Dodge the Slavery Issue

For decades, the major parties—the Whigs and Democrats—had avoided the slavery issue, thus managing to win support in both the North and the South. In 1848, they hoped once again to attract voters from all sides of the slavery debate. But with the Free-Soilers calling for limits to slavery in the territories, the major parties were forced to take a stand. Both Democrats and Whigs addressed the problem by embracing the idea of popular sovereignty, a policy stating that voters in a territory—not Congress—should decide whether or not to allow slavery there. This idea had wide appeal, since it seemed in keeping with the traditions of American democracy. Furthermore, it allowed Whigs and Democrats once again to focus on the personal exploits and triumphs of their candidates rather than on the issues. The Whigs nominated Zachary Taylor, a general and a hero of the Mexican War. The Democrats put forward Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan. Cass opposed the Wilmot Proviso and supported popular sovereignty. Taylor, who was primarily a military man, revealed little of his political opinions. But Taylor was a slaveholding Louisiana planter, so many southern voters automatically assumed that he supported slavery. When the votes were counted, Taylor won the election, with slim majorities in both northern and southern states. Van Buren did not carry any states, but he did draw sufficient votes to cause Cass to lose. The Free-Soil Party, which had won 10 percent of the vote with its antislavery platform, had clearly captured Americans' attention.

Electing a President

Fortunately, the new government enjoyed extraordinary leaders. In 1789, the new electoral college unanimously elected George Washington as President of the United States. As a revolutionary leader, Washington enjoyed widespread respect and popularity. Yet he took the difficult job reluctantly. Massachusetts patriot John Adams was elected Vice President. Washington's administration, or the officials in the executive branch of government, began with just himself, Adams, and about a dozen clerks. Besides the newly elected Congress, there were few other federal officers. There were also few set rules to guide the administration. Quickly after taking office, Washington began setting important precedents, or acts or statements that become traditions to be followed.

Miners Lead a Rough Life

Forty-niners flocked to the gold fields with high hopes. One young man described the excitement of departing for California from Indiana: "The diggings had been discovered but a twelve-month before, and the glowing tales of their marvelous richness were on every tongue. Our enthusiasm was wrought up to the highest pitch, while the hardships and perils . . . were scarcely given a passing thought." —David Rohrer Leeper, "The Argonauts of '49" At first, the miners used cheap metal pans, picks, and shovels to harvest gold flecks from the sand along the banks and bottoms of rivers and streams. This process was known as placer mining. A few miners got rich, but most worked hard for little gain. Because food and clothing were so expensive, shrewd traders made more money selling goods to the miners than the miners made by panning for gold. Conditions were hard in the crowded mining camps. Poor sanitation promoted diseases, especially cholera and dysentery, killing hundreds. In addition, life was cheap and law was scarce in the camps. Almost all of the inhabitants were men, who felt frustrated by their failure to find much gold and by their lack of family life. Competition and fights became common. One forty-niner noted, "It is surprising how indifferent people become to the sight of violence and bloodshed in this country." In search of order, the miners carried out their own rough justice. Without official legal authority, they acted as judges, juries, and executioners.

Spain Settles New Mexico

Founded in 1598, New Mexico was the oldest colony along New Spain's northwestern frontier. Yet, by 1765, only about 9,600 Hispanics lived in New Mexico, half of them in the two major towns of El Paso and Santa Fe. The rest lived on farms and ranches scattered through the long Rio Grande valley. One factor discouraging further settlement was the threat of war with nomadic Native Americans in surrounding areas. Colonists depended for protection on an alliance with local Pueblo Indians. But disease steadily reduced the Pueblo population, from about 14,000 in 1700 to about 10,000 in 1765. At the same time, the nomads of the Great Plains, known to the Spanish as Apaches, were becoming more powerful. The Apaches lived by hunting vast herds of buffalo. These hunts became easier after 1680 when the Apaches acquired horses from the Spanish. On horseback, men could see farther, travel faster, and kill their prey more quickly and in greater safety. At the same time, the nomads began to acquire firearms from French traders. The Indians continued to hunt with bows and arrows, but they used guns to wage war.

Which political party wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories

Free-Soil Party

What role did Frederick Douglass play in the fight to abolish slavery

He told stories about the difficulties of his life as a slave

Why did President Andrew Jackson oppose the second Bank of the United States

He viewed it as a blow to congressional authority

How did the United States benefit from the Jay Treaty

Great Britain gave up their forts on American soil

Why did the cotton trade lead to a rise in slavery

Growing cotton required many workers

Handling the National Debt

Hamilton despised the nation's agricultural economy as backward. He wanted to quickly develop a commercial and industrial economy that could support a large federal government along with a strong army and navy. He saw the national debt of $52 million and the additional $25 million in debts owed by the individual states as assets. Rather than pay down those debts using cash reserves, he meant to fund them by selling government bonds, which would pay annual interest to the holders. Such bonds delighted investors, who welcomed an opportunity to reap annual profits To pay the annual interest on the bonds, Hamilton proposed new excise taxes and high tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, to raise revenue for the federal government and protect struggling American manufacturers from foreign competition. He also asked Congress to charter a Bank of the United States that could regulate state banks, strengthen the national government, and ensure that business interests were closely aligned with those of the government.

Hamilton's Strategy

Hamilton saw three great benefits from his system. First, it would establish the nation's financial credibility, making it easier to borrow money in the future. Second, it would buy political support from the wealthiest Americans, which Hamilton believed was essential for the government's stability. Third, it would enrich investors, who could then build new ships, wharves, storehouses, and factories. In other words, his plan would promote the accumulation of capital needed for commercial and industrial growth. Hamilton's program was intended to redistribute wealth in two ways: from farmers to merchants and from the South to the North. About eighty percent of the nation's debt was owed to merchants in the seaport cities of the Northeast. During the 1780s, they had bought up notes issued by the Congress or by the states. Those notes had lost most of their value but the merchants had bought them anyway as an investment. Because they paid only a fraction of the original value of the notes, and because Hamilton proposed paying them at full value, the merchants would profit under Hamilton's plan. But to pay those debts, the federal government would tax the American people, who were mainly farmers.

Hamilton's Plans Stir Debate

Hamilton was tasked with paying off the young nation's immense debts and setting it on a course of economic security. An ardent Federalist, he believed that a strong, centralized government was necessary to preserve the Union. As he developed his plans, Hamilton faced fierce and vocal opposition from Antifederalists, who feared that a strong national government would threaten states' rights and people's freedoms. Their struggles and debates made clear that two very different views of government were solidifying in the new nation.

How did John Marshall interpret the Constitution

He broadly interpreted the Constitution to find implied powers for the national government

When President Lincoln sent supplies to Fort Sumner, the Confederates attacked and took control of the fort. What was Lincoln's response

He called for 75,000 volunteers to fight the Confederacy

How did Jackson respond to his defeat in the 1824 presidential election

He campaigned and gathered support for the next election. Jackson traveled the country drumming up support among the voters—a new practice. Jackson hoped to exploit the increasingly democratic character of national politics.

In what way did the 1842 expedition of John C. Fremont contribute to westward migration

He publicized the beauty of the West

How did Thomas Jefferson end the Barbary War

He refused to pay the bribes and blockaded the port of Tripoli

How did Eli Whitney change the way goods were produced in the United States

He started making identical parts that could replace each other to increase efficiency

Adding the Bill of Rights

If the Federalists deserve credit for the Constitution, the Antifederalists deserve credit for the federal Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Only the forceful resistance of the Antifederalists obliged the Federalists to add a bill of rights. first ten amendments to the Constitution; written list of freedoms guaranteed to citizens by the government In the newly elected Congress, Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. Many of these amendments relied on an earlier Virginia bill of rights. Madison limited the amendments to guarantees of individual rights, leaving the federal framework the same. He also avoided any sweeping preamble that declared all men equal in their creation and rights. That omission enabled slave owners to persist in denying rights to their slaves. The protected rights included freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition; protection from unreasonable searches and seizures; and the right to a speedy and public trial. Madison feared that any finite list of rights would later be abused to deny any left unmentioned. So the Ninth Amendment provided: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." That left open the subsequent development of additional rights. Congress passed the Bill of Rights in 1789.

Responding to the French Revolution

In 1789, Americans welcomed news of the French Revolution, a republican uprising in France. Grateful for French help during the American Revolution, Americans now saw the French as fellow republicans in a hostile world of aristocrats and kings. In 1793, however, leaders of the French Revolution began executing thousands of opponents, including the French king and his family. They also declared war on the monarchies of Europe, including Great Britain. In response, Americans divided along party lines. The Democratic Republicans regretted the executions but still preferred the French Republic to its monarchical foes. Jefferson regarded the French Revolution as "the most sacred cause that ever man was engaged in." But the Federalists decided that the French revolutionaries were bloody anarchists out to destroy religion and social order. They suspected that the Democratic Republicans meant to do the same.

Washington's Farewell

In 1792, Washington had won reelection without opposition, but he declined to run again in 1796. In ailing health, he longed to escape the political turmoil by returning to his beloved plantation, Mount Vernon. He also recognized that the young nation needed him to set an example by walking away from power, proving that he was no king. His voluntary retirement after two terms set a precedent honored by all Presidents until the 1940s. Washington retired with a record of astounding achievements. On the frontier, the Indians had been defeated, the western lands opened to settlement, and the Whiskey rebels suppressed. He had kept the nation out of the war in Europe. A booming foreign trade boosted tariffs, which funded the government and the national debt. Many historians have concluded that without Washington's skillful leadership, the nation may not have survived the harsh tests of the early 1790s. In a farewell address, Washington offered sound political advice for his successors, calling on them to temper their political strife in favor of national unity and to avoid "entangling alliances" that might lead to overseas wars.

Warfare Threatens the Colony

In 1800, a trader on the Great Plains remarked, "This is a delightful country and, were it not for perpetual wars, the natives might be the happiest people on earth." The conflict stemmed largely from competition for the buffalo herds. Well-armed groups, such as the Comanches of the Rocky Mountains and the Lakotas of the Mississippi Valley, spread at the expense of Apaches and other long-time residents of the Great Plains. The defeated Apaches fled west into New Mexico, where they raided Pueblo and Spanish settlements, taking horses, sheep, cattle, and captives. Some Apaches found a haven in the canyons of northwest New Mexico, where they became known as Navajos. The Pueblos taught their Navajo neighbors how to weave, make pottery, grow corn, and herd sheep. But most Apaches remained nomadic hunters. Raids on Spanish settlements became more frequent and destructive, for the Apaches were now armed, mounted, and desperate. The Comanches began to attack New Mexico as well. In 1777, a governor sadly reported that Indian raids had reduced his colony "to the most deplorable state and greatest poverty." Spanish officials rescued New Mexico by building stronger frontier defenses and using more flexible diplomacy with the nomads. By providing gifts and weapons, the new officials found it cheaper to form bonds with some nomads than to fight them all. In general, Spain paid Comanche and Navajo allies to attack the Apaches. For the most part, the strategy worked. Although most Apache groups remained defiant, some accepted peace on Spain's terms. And the alliance program did reduce raids on New Mexico. As the colony became safer, its population grew and its economy developed. By 1821, the Hispanic population had grown to about 40,000.

Marbury v. Madison

In 1803, Marshall first asserted the power of judicial review in the case of Marbury v. Madison. In early 1801, outgoing President John Adams had appointed William Marbury, a Federalist, a justice for the District of Columbia. The incoming Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver the official papers of appointment. When Marbury complained to the Supreme Court, Marshall ruled in favor of Madison by declaring unconstitutional part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. This ruling was a stroke of genius. Marshall gave the Democratic Republicans what they wanted by denying Marbury his appointment. But in doing so, Marshall claimed a sweeping power for the Supreme Court that the Democratic Republicans did not want that Court to have. After all, the Constitution was silent on what institution should judge the constitutionality of congressional actions. In the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, Jefferson and Madison had claimed that power for the state legislatures. Because of Marshall, today we accept that the Supreme Court will review the constitutionality of federal laws.

Replacing the Embargo

In 1809, Congress replaced the embargo with the Nonintercourse Act. Aimed at Britain and France, the act stated that the United States would resume trade with whichever of those countries lifted their restrictions on American shipping. The following year, Congress passed legislation that went a step further. Macon's Bill No. 2 restored trade with both Britain and France but also promised that if either country actively recognized American neutrality, then the United States would resume trading sanctions against the other country. When France agreed to withdraw decrees against American shipping, President Madison ordered sanctions against the British. In the meantime, however, France continued to seize American ships.

Expanding the United States

In 1819, American pressure and Adams's diplomacy persuaded Spain to sell Florida to the United States. Spain had felt pressured to give up their claims by the First Seminole War that occurred in 1818. The Seminoles were an American Indian group from southern Georgia and northern Florida, an area that was then part of Spain. Seminoles clashed often with white settlers, who were upset with the Seminoles for providing safe havens for runaway slaves. American General Andrew Jackson led a force into Florida to fight the Seminoles and seized Spanish forts. Though Jackson had not been told to act against the Spanish, the episode made it clear that Spanish control of Florida was very weak. Ratified in 1821, the Adams-Onís Treaty also ended Spanish claims to the vast Pacific Coast territory of Oregon. The British also claimed Oregon, but in 1818, the United States and Great Britain agreed to share the contested territory. Following the Adams-Onís Treaty, Americans began to settle in Florida and pursue the fur trade in Oregon.

The Nation Compromises Over Slavery

In 1820, after a long and bitter debate, Henry Clay crafted the Missouri Compromise. The northern district of Massachusetts would enter the Union as the free state of Maine to balance admission of Missouri as a slave state. MISSOURI COMPROMISE: 1820 agreement calling for the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banning slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36°30'N latitude To discourage future disputes over state admissions, the compromise also drew a line across the continent from the southwestern corner of Missouri to the nation's western boundary. Territories south of that line would enter as slave states. Those north of the line would become free states. The compromise solved the short-term crisis. But that crisis had exposed the growing division between the North and the South over the expansion of slavery. Jefferson worried, "This momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the [death] knell of the Union." Southern whites felt insulted by the northern attacks on their region's reliance on slavery. They also felt threatened. In 1822, they blamed the Missouri debates for inspiring Denmark Vesey to plan a slave revolt. Vesey, a black freedman, prepared slaves to seize control of Charleston, South Carolina. The revolt, however, never took place because Charleston officials learned of the plot. These officials arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged Vesey and 34 others. Anxious over their close call, southern politicians insisted that their safety required northern silence on slavery.

The Crisis Deepens

In 1832, the South Carolina legislature nullified the protective tariff and prohibited the collection of federal tariff duties in South Carolina after February 1, 1833. Further, the state threatened to secede from the Union if the federal government employed force against South Carolina. Calhoun resigned the vice presidency and instead became a senator. Jackson generally supported states' rights, and he wanted a lower tariff. He drew the line at nullification and secession, however. "Disunion by armed force is treason," Jackson thundered. He felt the Union must be perpetual and states must honor federal law. Other state legislatures around the country supported him by passing resolutions rejecting nullification.

Texans Revolt

In 1835, the Texans rebelled against Mexican rule. They seized the Mexican garrisons at Goliad and San Antonio. A year later, the Texans declared their independence and adopted a republican constitution. Their new nation became known as the Lone Star Republic because of the single star on its flag. To crush the rebellion, Santa Anna led his army north into Texas. In March 1836, his forces attacked the small Texan garrison at the Alamo, a fortified former mission in San Antonio. After 12 days of cannon fire, Mexican troops overran the walls of the Alamo. Refusing to keep prisoners, Santa Anna ordered the defenders slaughtered. The victims included Anglo-Texans Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, as well as a dozen Tejanos. A few weeks later, Santa Anna ordered a similar mass execution of Texan prisoners who had surrendered at Goliad. Santa Anna expected the slaughter to frighten other Texans into surrendering. Instead, the fallen defenders of the Alamo became martyrs to the cause of Texan independence. The slogan "Remember the Alamo" rallied the Texans and attracted volunteers to their cause from the southern United States. Led by Sam Houston, the Texans drew Santa Anna eastward into a trap. In April, they surprised and crushed the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Houston's men killed 630 and captured 730 Mexicans, including Santa Anna himself, while suffering only 32 casualties. Fearing execution, Santa Anna signed a treaty recognizing Texan independence. He conceded generous boundaries that stretched the new republic south and west to the Rio Grande. On paper, Texas even got half of New Mexico, including its capital of Santa Fe. Of course, the government in Mexico City refused to honor a treaty forced on a captured and disgraced dictator. The Mexicans only would accept an independent Texas that remained within its traditional boundaries, which extended no farther south than the Nueces River. For the next decade, a border war persisted between Texas and Mexico.

Women Convene in Seneca Falls

In 1848, Mott and Stanton helped organize the nation's first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Often called the Seneca Falls Convention, the meeting attracted hundreds of men and women. One of the most illustrious attendees was Frederick Douglass. The delegates to the convention adopted a "Declaration of Sentiments," modeled after the language of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Sentiments was ridiculed, and the convention resulted in few concrete improvements in women's rights. It did, however, mark the beginning of the women's movement in the United States.

Women Make Some Gains

In 1848, the same year as the Seneca Falls Convention, the state of New York passed a law, the Married Women's Property Act, guaranteeing many property rights for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton had worked hard for its passage. Twelve years later, the law was amended to make it more comprehensive. New York's efforts to advance property rights for women would become a model for similar laws in other states in the years to come. By the middle 1800s, American women had laid the foundation for a future in which equality seemed a real possibility. They had become wage earners. They had become reformers. And they had started to voice their call for justice.

Stowe and Delany Condemn Slavery

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin, a powerful condemnation of slavery. Stowe's sympathetic main character, Uncle Tom, gave slavery a face for those who had never witnessed it firsthand. Set in the slave-owning South, Stowe's story features the gentle and patient Uncle Tom, a frightened slave mother, and both kind and cruel slave owners. Selling 300,000 copies in its first year, the novel spread compassion for enslaved people in the North, but it infuriated people in the South. Black abolitionist Martin Delany also wrote an antislavery novel, called Blake. It is the story of an African American who chooses to rebel violently, rather than to submit like Uncle Tom. The protagonist, Blake, murders a white slave owner in order to make his escape, a scenario that terrified slave owners. In the excerpt shown here, Blake stands up to his master's threat to whip him: "I won't be treated like a dog. You sold my wife away from me, after always promising that she should be free. . . . And now you talk about whipping me. Shoot me, sell me, or do anything else you please, but don't lay your hands on me, as I will not suffer you to whip me!" —Martin R. Delany, Blake White southerners responded by writing their own versions of southern life. In these accounts, slaves were happy and carefree, gently cared for and taught Christianity by kind masters. They claimed that only mentally ill slaves ran away. A southern doctor even reported his discovery of a disease he called Drapetomania, which supposedly caused slaves to flee. "With the advantages of proper medical advice," he claimed "this troublesome practice" could be eliminated.

Webster Defends the Union

In Congress, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts became the great champion of nationalism. In an 1830 debate over nullification, he had blasted the notion in a fiery speech. "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," he declared. Webster defined the Union as the creation of the American people rather than of the states. In 1833, Webster led the way in pushing for passage of a Force Bill, giving Jackson authority to use troops to enforce federal law in South Carolina.

The Crisis Avoided

In Congress, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts became the great champion of nationalism. In an 1830 debate over nullification, he had blasted the notion in a fiery speech. "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," he declared. Webster defined the Union as the creation of the American people rather than of the states. In 1833, Webster led the way in pushing for passage of a Force Bill, giving Jackson authority to use troops to enforce federal law in South Carolina. The difficult questions of nullification and secession, however, had been postponed rather than resolved

The Confederacy Is Formed

In February 1861, the seven seceding states established the Confederate States of America. They then proceeded to frame a constitution for the new government. The Confederate constitution closely resembled the U.S. Constitution. However, it stressed the independence of each state and implied that states had the right to secede. It also guaranteed the protection of slavery. To win the support of Britain and France, which adamantly opposed the slave trade, it prohibited importing new slaves from other countries. Not all southerners backed the Confederacy. Some large planters with economic ties to the North still hoped for a compromise. So, too, did many small farmers with no vested interest in slavery. To gain the loyalty of such citizens, the Confederacy chose former Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis as their president. Davis had supported the Compromise of 1850, but he had also insisted that the South should be left alone to manage its own culture and institutions—including slavery.

The Federalists Triumph

In Massachusetts, the Federalists faced defeat until they made two key concessions to sway the moderate Antifederalists, led by Governor John Hancock. First, the Federalists appealed to Hancock's vanity. They hinted that he could become the nation's first Vice President by switching sides. Second, to make that switch easier, they promised to support key amendments to the Constitution. They would add a bill of rights but only after ratification—not as a condition for it. In early February, following Hancock's lead, the Massachusetts convention ratified the Constitution. The promise of a bill of rights helped the Federalists win most of the remaining states. Maryland ratified in April; South Carolina, in May; and New Hampshire, in early June. They provided the winning nine, but the new nation would not last without the support of Virginia and New York. In late June, Virginia narrowly ratified, despite the forceful opposition of Patrick Henry, the greatest political orator of his generation. In July, New York also narrowly approved after Hamilton threatened New York City's secession from the state to join the Union if the state rejected the Constitution. With the ratification of 11 states, the Congress of the Confederation made plans for the establishment of the new government and chose New York City as the temporary capital. The new Congress convened there on March 4, 1789, in Federal Hall. Plans for electing the nation's first President and Vice President were made. Within a short time, Rhode Island and North Carolina, which had previously rejected the Constitution, reconsidered and joined the Union.

Federal Power and States' Rights

In another concession, Madison abandoned his cherished national veto over state laws. Instead, the compromise simply forbade the states from enacting the sorts of laws that offended many during the 1780s. For instance, the states could no longer issue their own money or provide debtor relief at creditors' expense. By compromising between Madison's plan and the New Jersey Plan, the delegates supported a system known as federalism that divided government power between the federal government and state governments.

The United States Gains Territory

In return for leaving Mexico City and paying $15 million, the victors kept New Mexico and California. They also secured the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas. The treaty disgusted and humiliated Mexicans, who continued for decades to feel bitterness toward the United States. The treaty also dismayed Polk, but for a different reason. After Scott captured Mexico City, the President decided that he wanted to keep more of Mexico. He blamed his negotiator, Nicholas Trist, for settling for too little. But Polk had no choice but to submit the treaty to Congress because northern public opinion would not support a longer war. In the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the United States obtained from Mexico another 29,640 square miles in southern Arizona and New Mexico. The Americans bought this strip to facilitate a railroad across the continent. Along with the annexation of Texas, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase increased the area of the United States by about one third. Only the Louisiana Purchase had added more territory. The new lands` comprised present-day New Mexico, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and half of Colorado.

What problem did some northerners have with the Kansas-Nebraska Act

It violated the Missouri Compromise

Which statement best summarizes the Free-Soil Party's view of slavery

It wanted to keep slavery from spreading into the western territories

Missions Thrive in California

In the 1760s, the Spanish extended their northern buffer zone to the west by colonizing the California coast. They were afraid of losing the region to Russian traders probing south from Alaska. As in Texas, Spain had trouble attracting settlers to California. Potential settlers were daunted by California's isolation from Mexico. The distance to market discouraged the export of California's livestock and grains. The limited economy depended on royal money sent to supply and pay the soldiers. Lacking colonists, the Spanish leaders sought to convert Indians to Christianity. Led by Father Junípero Serra, Franciscan priests set up a string of missions. The missions were more successful in California than in Texas or New Mexico. Because the local Indians lacked guns and horses, California missions suffered few raids. By the time of Father Serra's death in 1784, California had two abordgricultural towns (San Jose and Los Angeles), four presidios, and nine missions. In 1821, when Spanish rule ended, the system had grown to 20 missions housing more than 18,000 Native American converts. The Native Americans constructed buildings, dug irrigation ditches, erected fences, herded cattle, and cultivated grain. But large numbers died of diseases, and the Spanish had to round up more Indians to replace them.

Women Work for Change

In the 1800s, American women's freedoms and rights were sharply limited. Instead of taking a powerful role in public life, women were expected to make a difference privately, by influencing their husbands and raising their children to be good Americans. But this idealized influence was too limiting for women. Largely as a result of the Second Great Awakening, women of the early 1800s began to take on more active roles in public life.

Women Enter the Workplace

In the 1820s and 1830s, the Northeast was rapidly industrializing. This provided the first real economic opportunity in the nation's history for women outside the home. Thousands of young women, who previously would have stayed in the family home, went to work in the new mills and factories. This gave many women a small degree of economic independence (although their wages were typically sent to their husbands or fathers) and a larger degree of social independence as they developed networks of friendships with other factory workers. By 1830, a few women's labor unions had formed, and women went on strike for better wages and working conditions.

Emigration From Ireland and Germany

In the 1840s, the new middle class and most of the nation's farmers had been born in the United States. Increasingly, however, the working class was comprised of immigrants. Prior to 1840, immigration consisted mainly of Protestants from England or Scotland. During the 1830s, about 600,000 immigrants arrived. That number more than doubled to 1,500,000 during the 1840s and nearly doubled again to 2,800,000 in the 1850s. This surge primarily came from Ireland and Germany, regions suffering from political upheavals, economic depressions, and rural famines. In Ireland, mass starvation occurred in the 1840s as a result of a fungus that destroyed the potato crop. The potato had been the primary food source for the Irish poor. A few historians suggest that the famine was an act of genocide. As hundreds of thousands of Irish were starving to death, huge amounts of livestock, corn, and other foods were being exported from Ireland to England. However, most historians dismiss this idea because there was no deliberate British policy to exterminate the Irish. In fact, the British government provided some relief with soup kitchens for the starving and work projects for the jobless. Even so, it is estimated that more than a million Irish people died of starvation or famine-related diseases. Another million or more left Ireland, immigrating to Australia or North America. Those who came to America joined many other Irish and German immigrants. Germans had fled their homeland during the same period when their political revolution failed. Unlike most of their predecessors, the new immigrants tended to be Catholic or Jewish. In search of work, they arrived in the seaports of the Northeast. A small minority, mostly German, could afford to set up shops or move to the West to buy farmland. But most immigrants had to find work on the docks, in factories, at construction sites, or in middle-class homes as domestic servants. Immigration boosted the Northeast's share of the nation's population. It also promoted urban growth. In 1860, immigrants comprised more than 40 percent of the population of New York City. Some working-class immigrants moved on to new cities in the Midwest, including Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. Very few went to the South, which lacked factory jobs for wage workers. The rapid influx of so many newcomers produced social and political strains. Poverty forced many immigrants to cluster in shabby neighborhoods. The newcomers competed for jobs and housing with free African Americans. Rioters attacked African Americans, killing some and burning others' homes. Catholic immigrants also suffered contempt from the American-born Protestant majority. Protestants distrusted the Catholic Church, thinking it to be hostile to republican government. Protestant workers also resented the competition from newcomers who depressed wages offered by employers. Riots between Protestants and Catholics occurred in Philadelphia in 1844 and in Baltimore in 1854. Some politicians, particularly in the Whig Party, exploited ethnic tensions. Called nativists, they campaigned for laws to discourage immigration or to deny political rights to newcomers. To defend their interests, many immigrants became active in the Democratic Party.

Cotton Production Surges

In the Deep South, three developments worked together to boost cotton production: the cotton gin, western expansion, and industrialization. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin while working in Georgia. This machine reduced the amount of time and the cost of separating the cotton seeds from the valuable white fiber. The cotton gin made cotton cultivation much more profitable. Previously a minor crop, cotton became the South's leading product. From 5 million pounds in 1793, cotton production surged to 170 million pounds in 1820. In part, that surge came as planters in older states—Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina—switched to growing cotton. But mostly it came as planters moved west or south to make new plantations in Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and east Texas. These areas offered fertile soil and a warm climate well suited for growing cotton. The increase in the cotton supply filled a growing demand from textile factories in the Northeast and in Europe. By 1840, southern plantations produced 60 percent of the cotton used by American and European factories. Cotton and cotton textiles accounted for over half the value of all American exports. With good reason, Americans spoke of "King Cotton" as the ruler of their economy.

Women Face Limits

In the early 1800s, American women lacked many basic legal and economic rights. Under the British legal traditions that dominated the United States, women usually could not hold property or hold office or vote, and they usually were forbidden even to speak in public. Formal educational opportunities were virtually unheard of. In the rare instances of divorce, husbands generally gained custody of children. Some of the groups living in America—certain Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans—had a tradition of affording women a significant amount of power. In these cultures, women controlled or influenced work patterns and family structures. Some cultures were matrilineal, that is, the inheritance of family names and property followed the female line in the family. Still, the legal and economic rights of the majority of American women lagged far, far behind those of American men. Use the interactive table to review the limitations American women faced.

How did California statehood spark a new crisis over slavery?

It would upset the balance of the number of free states and slave states in Congress. If California were admitted as a free state, the country would have more free states than slave states. The South feared that this shift in power would lead to a universal ban on slavery.

US Forces Sweep to Victory

In the war, the United States had great advantages. It was much larger, wealthier, and more populous than Mexico. The Mexicans lacked the industries that so quickly and abundantly supplied the Americans with arms and ammunition. The Americans also had a larger and better navy and more advanced artillery. Above all, the United States enjoyed superb officers, well trained at the military academy at West Point. Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott received exceptional support from their junior officers, including Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman. (All these men would later play key roles in the U.S. Civil War.) Meanwhile, Mexicans were bitterly divided because Santa Anna had resumed his dictatorship. In this one-sided war, the United States won every major battle. During the summer of 1846, General Stephen W. Kearny quickly conquered New Mexico. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy helped American settlers, led by explorer John C. Frémont, to seize control of California. Until they could legally join the United States, these rebels organized the short-lived Bear Flag Republic. Frémont joined forces with Kearny to bring all of California under American control. Taylor led another army deeper into northern Mexico, seizing the city of Monterrey in September. In February 1847, Santa Anna tried to retake the city. But Taylor's small army defeated the more numerous Mexicans at the bloody Battle of Buena Vista. By early 1847, American forces had achieved all of Polk's war goals—but he wanted more. A New England critic of the war complained that with every victory, "Our Manifest Destiny higher and higher kept mounting." In March, the navy carried another American army, commanded by Winfield Scott, to the Mexican port city of Veracruz. After seizing the port, Scott boldly marched his men through 200 miles of rugged terrain to Mexico City. Scott faced bitter resistance at Chapultepec (chah POOL tuh pehk), a fortress above Mexico City. The defenders included six young Mexican cadets—ranging in age from 13 to 19—who fought to the death. Today, Mexico honors the cadets who fell at Chapultepec as Los Niños Héroes, or the Child Heroes. In September 1847, Scott captured Mexico City. After little more than a year and a half of fighting, the Mexican-American War had ended in a thorough American victory.

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

In two Democratic Republican states, the state legislatures passed controversial resolves in response to the acts. Written by Jefferson and Madison in 1798 and 1799, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions declared the Sedition Act unconstitutional. The resolves even hinted that states had the power to nullify federal laws that were unconstitutional. Though this doctrine of nullification threatened to dissolve the union, no other state legislatures adopted it. Instead, the presidential election of 1800 would decide the balance of federal power and states' rights.

The Whiskey Rebellion

In western Pennsylvania, mountains made it difficult to transport bulky bushels of grain to eastern markets. So people distilled their grain into whiskey, which was more compact and of higher value. Rural farmers hated the excise tax on whiskey, which reminded them of the British taxes that had led to the Revolution. In 1794, farmers resisted the tax by intimidating and attacking tax collectors. Hamilton welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate the new power of the nation by suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington agreed, observing, "We had given no testimony to the world of being able or willing to support our government and laws." Under Hamilton's command, 12,000 militiamen marched west into the troubled region. The rebellion quickly dissolved. Rather than resist such overwhelming force, most rebels stayed home or ran away. Hamilton arrested twenty suspects, but only two were convicted. Jefferson mocked that "an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found."

In 1813 and 1814, the Americans defeated which British allies

Indian

What type of economy did Alexander Hamilton want to develop

Industrial and commercial

What was the purpose of the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie

It bound the Plain Indians to territories away from the major trails

How did the French Revolution affect American politics

It caused a political divide. Democratic Republicans supported the Revolution while Federalists opposed it

How did the Great Compromise support the idea of federalism

It divided power between the federal government and state governments

What was the main impact of Eli Whitney's cotton gin on the South

It improved the profitability of plantations, which made cotton the South's main crop

How did the steam engine change transportation in America

It made travel faster and cheaper

What did Jackson think of the second Bank of the United States

Jackson thought the second Bank only served few instead of many. Jackson believed that the Bank was not authorized by the Constitution and that it served only the rich.

Jackson Opposes the Bank

Jacksonian Democrats suspected that the new economy encouraged corruption and greed. They howled when industry sought special advantages, such as protective tariffs or federal subsidies for roads and canals. Industry claimed these advantages promoted economic growth. To Jackson and his followers, they seemed mainly to enrich wealthy people at the expense of everyone else. Jacksonian Democrats promised to rescue the Republic from a new form of aristocracy they called the "Money Power." Jacksonian Democrats especially disliked the second Bank of the United States, which had been chartered by Congress in 1816. They saw it as a dangerous, and perhaps even corrupt, special interest that favored rich investors. Many business leaders, on the other hand, valued the Bank. They believed it promoted economic growth by providing a stable currency—paper money—in which people could have confidence. They argued that a lack of confidence in the money supply could cause serious harm to the economy. The Bank had many supporters in Congress. In 1832, they voted to renew the Bank's charter. Jackson, however, vetoed the renewal. He denounced the Bank as "unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive of the rights of the states, and dangerous to the liberties of the people." He opposed government action that led to "the advancement of the few at the expense of the many." He regretted "that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes." Jackson posed as the defender of "the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers."

New Government Policies

Jefferson encouraged Congress to abandon the Alien and Sedition Acts, as well as the hated taxes on stamps, land, and alcoholic spirits. Unlike Hamilton, Jefferson wanted to retire the national debt by paying it down. Despite reducing taxes, he cut the national debt from $80 million when he took office to $57 million in 1809. To do this he made major cuts to the army and navy and streamlined the government's bureaucracy, or the departments and workers that make up the government. He also benefited when customs revenue from imports increased with a dramatic growth in foreign trade. In addition, the westward movement of American farm families increased the sale of federal lands. These two revenues drove down the federal debt.

The Louisiana Purchase

Jefferson reasoned that he could avoid war by offering to buy New Orleans from the French. When James Monroe and Robert Livingston, the American minister in France, approached Napoleon, they found him surprisingly receptive. Napoleon's imperial plans had been foiled by slave rebels in the Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue, which is now Haiti. Led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the rebels defeated a French army sent to suppress them. Without that army to occupy Louisiana, and needing money to fight the British, Napoleon decided to sell all of the Louisiana Territory. In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Jefferson obtained a vast territory extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. At about 828,000 square miles, the Louisiana Territory nearly doubled the size of the United States. For all of this, the United States paid only $15 million. Although a great bargain, the Louisiana Purchase was also something of an embarrassment, as it contradicted Jefferson's constitutional principles. He had long argued for a minimal federal government, and the Constitution did not authorize the federal government to buy territory from a foreign country. Jefferson confessed that he had "done an act beyond the Constitution." In 1804, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new territory, in what became known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The men were guided much of the way by a Shoshone woman, named Sacajawea, and her husband

How were Thomas Jefferson's actions toward the Barbary States different from those of previous presidents

Jefferson refused to pay protection money to the Barbary States

What actions did Thomas Jefferson take to lower the national debt

Jefferson streamlined government and increased sales of federal land

How did Thomas Jefferson's view of the national debt differ from that of Alexander Hamilton

Jefferson wanted to pay off the debt; Hamilton did not

During the election of 1860, which presidential candidate most reflected the southern position on the expansion of slavery

John C. Breckinridge

Who suggested that the South should secede from the Union if an agreement could not be reached on slavery

John Calhoun

Which of the following resulted from the South's dependence on cotton

Limited consumer demand discouraged commercial development

What was President Lincoln's first response to the situation at Fort Sumter

Lincoln said he would send food but no arms to the fort

Why the Northeast

Most of the new factories emerged in the Northeast. There were several reasons for this. One reason was greater access to capital, or the money needed to build factories or other productive assets. In the South, the land and the climate favored agriculture. Thus, people there invested capital in land and slave labor. The Northeast had more cheap labor to work in the factories. In addition, the Northeast had many swiftly flowing rivers to provide water power for the new factories.

Lincoln Takes Office

Lincoln was sworn in as President on March 4, 1861. In his inaugural address, he took a firm but conciliatory tone toward the South. "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists," he began. But he did intend to preserve the Union. "No state, upon its own mere action, can lawfully get out of the Union," he said. Still, he would avoid violence. There would be no war, he pledged, unless the South started it. He concluded with an appeal to the South to live in peace: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." —Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861

How did elections change in the early 1800s

Male voter turnout increased dramatically

Resisting Slavery

Many enslaved people did whatever they could to fight back against their oppressors. Resistance took many forms including sabotage, such as breaking tools or outwitting overseers, and the more direct method of escape. Tens of thousands of enslaved people fled to the North or to Mexico, where slavery was prohibited. A loose network of ever-changing escape routes called the Underground Railroad helped many reach freedom. Some enslaved people decided not to run but to fight. Indeed, historians estimate that nearly 200 significant slave revolts took place in the first half of the 1800s. In 1822, Denmark Vesey planned what would have been the greatest slave revolt in American history in Charleston, South Carolina. Vesey was a freedman, or former slave. Traveling to Haiti as a ship's carpenter, he was inspired by the successful slave rebellion that had taken place there in the 1790s. Vesey nurtured his dream of a revolt after becoming frustrated with his status as a second-class citizen in Charleston. When authorities shut down Vesey's church, he was prompted into action. Vesey gathered some five-dozen conspirators and plotted a slave uprising that would involve hundreds or even thousands of people. The plan called for slaves in the city and on surrounding plantations to seize weapons from guardhouses and arsenals and use them to destroy Charleston and free all of the slaves living nearby. His plan was thwarted, however, when news of it leaked. In the end, Vesey and dozens of his accomplices were hanged. In 1831, a slave named Nat Turner was more successful in carrying out his plans for revolt. Turner had taught himself to read the Bible and believed that he had received a sign from God instructing him to lead his people to freedom. In August of 1831, he led followers through the countryside near Richmond, Virginia, intending to capture a nearby armory and gain more weapons. On their journey, Turner's group killed nearly 60 people before the local militia stopped their march. In the process of the manhunt that followed, the local militia killed dozens of African Americans. Turner was captured after six weeks. He and his associates were executed. Terrified by the idea of a successful slave revolt, southerners reacted by passing much more stringent laws and controls regarding slavery. In some places, it became illegal to teach enslaved people to read. Often, they were forbidden to gather in groups unless an overseer was present. Yet, these restrictions did nothing to dampen the spirit of the enslaved people who were determined to resist their captivity—and they inspired free people in the North to work against slavery.

How was John Marshall's interpretation of the Constitution different from Thomas Jefferson's

Marshall believed the Constitution granted strong federal powers; Thomas Jefferson did not

Setting Up the Cabinet

One of Washington's most important precedents was the formation of a Cabinet, or the group of federal leaders who headed the major departments of the executive branch and advised the President. The first four executive departments were the departments of State, Treasury, and War, and the Attorney General. The State Department, led by Thomas Jefferson, conducted foreign policy. The War Department supervised national defense. The Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, managed the nation's finances. Nominated by the President, the Cabinet members were approved by the Senate. In 1907, the Cabinet was officially recognized by law.

Popular Sovereignty

The Constitution abides by the principle of popular sovereignty, in which all government power comes from the people. In other words, the government derives its political authority from the people. The people are the only source of the government's power

Americans Trade with Mexico

Mexican independence spurred American trade with northern Mexico. The Spanish had discouraged such contacts, but Mexican officials welcomed them. Indeed, trade and migration promoted economic growth in the border provinces. Still, as the Spanish had feared, American traders and settlers would come to threaten the security of Mexico's border. Merchants from Missouri saw Mexican independence as an opportunity to open trade across the Great Plains with Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. Welcomed by the Mexican officials, the traders launched a growing commerce along what became known as the Santa Fe Trail. In exchange for American manufactured goods, the New Mexicans offered horses, mules, furs, and silver. In the 1820s, mariners from the Northeast launched a more ambitious route. Sailing around South America to the California coast, they traded manufactured goods for tallow and hides from California ranches. Like New Mexico, California became economically dependent on commerce with the Americans.

How did the War of 1812 affect U.S. expansion

Millions of acres of southern land opened up for settlement

What was the result of the defeat of Native Americans in the South during the War of 1812

Millions of acres of southern land opened up for settlement

The Federalists Gain Support

Most farmers recognized that the Constitution threatened the state debtor-relief laws that had rescued their farms from foreclosure. Common farmers also distrusted the lawyers, merchants, and other wealthy men who promoted the Constitution, viewing them as aristocrats hostile to the Republic. In South Carolina, farmers protested by staging a mock funeral around a coffin with the word Liberty painted on the side. Because most citizens were farmers, the proposed Constitution lacked majority support in 1787 However, the Constitution had the support of two of the most popular and trusted men in America—George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Their support allayed the fears of many rural Americans. Some frontier farmers also endorsed the Constitution because they hoped that a stronger nation would defeat the Native Americans and take control of the British forts along the Great Lakes. The Federalists also enjoyed popular support in key places—the seaports—which hosted most of the ratifying conventions. Unlike the common farmers, most urban artisans supported the Constitution. Hurt by the depression of the 1780s, the artisans hoped that a strong national government could expand American commerce. The seaports also had most of the nation's newspapers, the printers of which strongly endorsed the Constitution. The Federalists were also better organized than the Antifederalists. Acting quickly after the Constitutional Convention, the Federalists built a nationwide network of support. Their national experience and connections gave them a great advantage in coordinating the first national political campaign. By contrast, the Antifederalists were state politicians who struggled to build alliances across state lines.

The Virginia Plan

Most of the delegates preferred an ambitious scheme proposed by Madison called the Virginia Plan. In addition to securing the power to tax and to regulate commerce, Madison proposed creating a government that divided power among three branches—the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The plan proposed a bicameral legislature with a House of Representatives and a Senate. In both houses, the states with larger populations would have more members. Madison's plan also included a daring feature—the national Congress would have the power to veto any state law, just as Parliament had done with colonial laws. James Madison's proposal for a bicameral legislature with representation based upon population The Virginia Plan also called for a strong President. The President would enjoy a relatively long term in office of seven years but could not be elected a second time. The President would command the armed forces and manage foreign relations. He would appoint all executive and judicial officers, subject only to approval by the Senate. A critic of the plan, Patrick Henry, worried that such a powerful President could "easily become a king." Executive Branch: Powerful president Legislative Branch: House of Representatives Senate Judiciary: Federal courts

Jackson Begins His Next Campaign

Much of the criticism of Adams's presidency came from Andrew Jackson. Indeed, Jackson and his supporters spent much of Adams's term preparing for the next election. Jackson especially relied upon New York's Martin Van Buren, who worked behind the scenes to build support for Jackson. Meanwhile, Jackson traveled the country drumming up support among the voters—a new practice. Jackson hoped to exploit the increasingly democratic character of national politics. In the 1824 presidential election, a growing number of states had chosen their presidential electors based on popular vote. This was a shift from the method used in the first presidential elections, in which state legislatures chose electors. By 1836, every state but South Carolina was choosing electors based on the popular vote. Voters also had an increased role in choosing other state and local officials across the country. For example, the use of caucuses was replaced in many cases by more public conventions in which voters had a greater say in who became a candidate for office. During the 1810s and 1820s, many states rewrote their constitutions. Those documents had originally restricted the right to vote and hold office to men who owned property. In 1776, about three fourths of all free men could meet the property-ownership requirement because they owned a farm or a shop. But that qualified proportion slipped as more men worked for wages in the expanding industries. Without their own farm or shop, they could not vote. The economic losses caused by the Panic of 1819 had also removed many voters from the rolls. The new state constitutions expanded the electorate by abolishing the property requirement. In most states, any white man who paid a tax could vote and hold office. These changes increased participation in elections. Male voter turnout that had been less than 30 percent in the elections of the early 1800s reached almost 80 percent in 1840. Unfortunately, the expansion of democracy did not benefit all Americans. Most of the new constitutions also took the vote away from free blacks—even those with property. Nor did the new constitutions allow women to vote. (With the exception of New Jersey, in which a loophole in the state constitution allowed property-owning women to vote until 1807, no state had ever allowed women to cast a ballot.) In addition, American Indians, who were not citizens of the United States, were denied the vote. Democracy was limited to white men.

How did nationalism affect the economy, starting in 1816?

Nationalist policies encouraged nationwide markets. The United States passed protective tariffs, established a central bank, and interpreted the Constitution broadly to encourage nationwide markets.

Underground Railroad to Freedom

Northern abolitionists and free black people risked their lives and safety to help enslaved people escape to freedom through a loosely organized network known as the Underground Railroad. Although it was not underground and had no tracks or cars, this escape system used railroad terminology to describe its actions. A secret network of "conductors" hid runaway slaves in farm wagons and on riverboats and then moved them to destinations in the North or in Canada—sometimes even as far as England. Using complex signals and hiding places, the Underground Railroad carried its passengers over hundreds of miles of dangerous terrain. Underground Railroad conductors had to be resourceful and daring. One of the most courageous was Harriet Tubman, a Maryland-born fugitive slave. She was known as "Black Moses" because, like Moses in the Bible, she led her people out of bondage. After her own escape in 1849, Tubman made almost two dozen trips into the South, guiding hundreds of slaves, including her own parents, to safety. Southern planters placed a large reward on her head, but she was never captured. Several fugitive slaves published dramatic escape stories that inspired black Americans and struck fear in the hearts of white southerners. In one account, six-foot-tall Henry "Box" Brown described how he had himself packed into a small crate and shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to the Underground Railroad agents in Philadelphia. Light-skinned Ellen Craft and her husband, William, made their escape by posing as an invalid gentleman and his loyal servant.

How was northern society different from southern society

Northern society became more diverse than southern due to heavy immigration through northern ports

Resistance Against the Fugitive Slave Act

Northerners also resented what they saw as increasing federal intervention in the affairs of the independent states. A few northern states struck back, passing personal liberty laws. These statutes nullified the Fugitive Slave Act and allowed the state to arrest slave catchers for kidnapping. Many northerners agreed with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison when he demanded "nothing less than . . . a Revolution in the Government of the country." Black Americans, of course, despised the law. Some of the captured "fugitive slaves" were really free people who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Although the imprisoned African Americans could appeal to a judge for their release, the law awarded $10 to judges who ruled in favor of slave owners but only $5 to those who ruled that the captive should be set free. Slaves, fugitives, and free black people plotted and carried out resistance. Through the succeeding decade, tempers flared and violence erupted as far north as Canada, as far west as Kansas, and as far south as Virginia.

What statement best explains why John Brown's raid failed to unite forces that opposed slavery

Northerners and southerners were not ready to resort to violence to abolish slavery

Why did new Californians who were northerners exclude all blacks in the state constitution

Northerners did not want to compete for gold with slaveholders using slave labor or with free blacks

How did northerners view slavery?

Northerners had mixed opinions about slavery. Because northerners did not rely on slavery, many did not have strong opinions about it. However, some believed that it was morally wrong and some did not want to abolish slavery because they were sympathetic to Southern plantations owners.

The Lives of Free African Americans

Not all people of African descent in the United States were held as slaves. Beginning with Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in the 1780s, northern states had gradually outlawed slavery by the 1840s. In Maryland and Virginia, many slaveholders were slowly manumitting, or officially freeing, their slaves. The net result was a large and growing population of free blacks. Despite their freedom, however, they suffered from persistent racial discrimination. Moreover, the very existence of free African Americans concerned many white Americans, especially slaveholders. They felt that the large population of free African Americans made those still in bondage long all the more for freedom. In 1816, some of the South's most prominent slaveholders established the American Colonization Society (ACS). The goal of the ACS was to encourage the migration of free blacks to Africa. The ACS established Liberia, a colony on the west coast of Africa, and by 1830 some 1,100 people from the United States had been relocated there. Most free African Americans were wary of the motives of the ACS.

Violence Grips the Territory

On May 21, 1856, Border Ruffians raided the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas. They pillaged homes, burned down the Free State Hotel, and destroyed the presses of The Kansas Free State newspaper. Swift retaliation came from John Brown, a New York abolitionist who had moved his family several times in pursuit of opportunities to confront slavery head-on and who now made his home near Lawrence. With his sons and a few friends, Brown carried out a midnight execution of five proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek, about 20 miles south of Lawrence. When stories of the incident reached the East, abolitionists were stunned. While they were outraged at the events that triggered it, they condemned Brown's massacre. In Kansas, both sides armed for battle. Throughout the fall of 1856, violent outbreaks occurred in various locales around Lawrence. Reporters characterized the territory as "Bleeding Kansas." By now, it was clear that popular sovereignty was not a solution to the slavery issue. Over the next several years, the question of how to admit Kansas to the Union baffled local residents, political parties, the U.S. Congress, and the Supreme Court. Although the Border Ruffians had determined the outcome of the election, President Franklin Pierce urged Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state in 1858. However, Congress refused and Kansas submitted four constitutions before it finally entered as a free state in 1861, after the Civil War had already begun.

Battling Native Americans

On the western frontier, two Shawnee Indian brothers, the prophet Tenskwatawa and the warrior Tecumseh, wanted to preserve Native American culture and unite the Indian nations in armed resistance against American expansion. They were angered by the government's repeated use of dishonest treaties to take their lands. In late 1811, while Tecumseh was seeking allies in the South, Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory led troops into the brothers' village of Prophetstown, along the Tippecanoe River. After the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Americans burned Prophetstown. The Native American movement lost some momentum, though most Native Americans escaped to fight again.

Congress Debates the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Once again, Congress was gripped in bitter debate. After pressure from the South, which feared Nebraska might decide to enter as a free state, Douglas amended the bill to divide the region into two distinct territories, Kansas and Nebraska. The idea was that Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska would organize as a free state, but those assumptions were not written into the bill. In the spring of 1854, Congress accepted this proposal and passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Some northerners pointed out that, in effect, the Kansas-Nebraska Act nullified the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery to spread to areas that had been free for more than 30 years.

Mormons Seek a Refuge

One group of people preferred to settle along the way. These were the Mormons. Mormon founder Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 by a mob in Illinois. Leadership passed to Brigham Young, a brilliant organizer with a powerful will. Convinced that the Mormons could not survive among hostile neighbors, Young organized an exodus. In 1847, he led Mormons across the Great Plains and the Rockies to establish the colony of New Zion on the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake. Through hard work and cooperation, the Mormons made the arid land bloom by diverting water from mountain streams. By 1860, some 40,000 Mormons lived in the West. Despite their achievements and their isolation, other Americans continued to distrust the Mormons. During the 1850s, after the territory had passed from Mexico to the United States, the government forced the Mormons to accept federal authority. New Zion became the federal territory of Utah.

What kind of government did the New Jersey Plan propose

One with a unicameral legislature, an executive committee, and generally sovereign states

Which of the following is an accurate summary of the Federalists' beliefs

Only a strong central government based on the Constitution could meet the challenges facing the nation

Samuel Slater and his business partners built water-powered textile mills along New England rivers. What family system did these factories rely on

Parents and children working together in the mills

Why did southern expansionists support James K. Polk for President in 1844

Polk was a slaveholder who promised to bring Texas into the Union

Limited Government

Popular sovereignty ensures that a government's power is restricted, or limited. In a limited government, the Constitution specifically states what powers the government has. The principle of limited government also refers to the rule of law. Government leaders are not supposed to be above the law.

War's Aftermath

The Americans won their greatest victory at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. From a strong and entrenched position, General Andrew Jackson routed the British attack. In this lopsided battle, the Americans suffered only 71 casualties, compared to 2,036 British casualties. The bloodshed at New Orleans was especially tragic because it came two weeks after the Americans and the British had signed a peace treaty at Ghent in Belgium. Unfortunately, notifying the soldiers in North America took over a month because of the slow pace of sailing ships.

Which of the following groups stood against Andrew Jackson on the removal of Native Americans

The Supreme Court

"Honest Abe" vs. "The Little Giant"

Raised in rural poverty and largely self-taught, Abraham Lincoln began his political career at age 25, when he was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a Whig. By 1836, he had been admitted to the Illinois bar and was practicing law in Springfield. He soon gained a reputation for integrity and directness that earned him the title "Honest Abe." Lincoln seemed to be staunchly opposed to slavery, but his political life was marked by a desire to steer a middle course. In the 1840s, Lincoln had served a short stint in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting Zachary Taylor and his policy of admitting California as a free state. But Lincoln's real political career began with his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its implicit support for the expansion of slavery promoted by rival Illinois politician Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas was, in many ways, the opposite of Lincoln. Lincoln was tall, lanky, and slow of speech. Douglas was short, round, and filled with energy and a commanding voice. These qualities earned him the nickname the "Little Giant." His critics, however, questioned his motives and his sincerity. Unlike Lincoln, Douglas supported the annexation of Texas, and he promoted popular sovereignty as the solution to regional tensions. But many wondered if he promoted these policies because he believed in them or because he had a financial stake in the railroads that would profit from them.

Which two presidential candidates in 1860 took directly opposing positions on slavery in the western territories

Republican Abraham Lincoln and southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge

The Election of 1856 Causes Alarm

Republicans, at their first national convention, nominated for President the abolitionist John C. Frémont, a colorful Mexican War hero who had helped win California's independence. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, while the Know-Nothings put up former President Millard Fillmore. "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, Frémont!" Under this slogan, the Republican Party tried to rally Americans to reject popular sovereignty and to insist that slavery be excluded from the western territories. They also campaigned to admit Kansas as a free state. But Buchanan, who promised that as President he would stop "the agitation of the slavery issue," won the election, supported by the large majority of southerners. His running mate from the South, John C. Breckinridge, further bolstered his campaign. Still, the Republican Frémont, with his solid abolitionist platform, made a strong showing, winning one third of the popular vote and 11 northern states.

What did Harriet Beecher Stowe do that increased tensions between the North and the South

She wrote a novel that aroused compassion for enslaved people

How did slavery affect the American Party and the Whig Party?

Slavery caused divisions in each party. Both the American Party and the Whigs became divided over the issue of slavery in the western territories.

Northern Views of Slavery

Slavery ended early in the North, but slowly. By 1800, there were about 50,000 enslaved people in the North, compared to nearly one million in the South. In 1860, there were still 18 slaves in New Jersey, but none in the other northern states. Most white northerners at the time viewed blacks as inferior. Laws in the northern states severely limited the rights of free African Americans and discouraged or prevented the migration of more. As a result, many white northerners had little personal experience with African Americans, slave or free, and only a few held strong opinions about slavery. A vocal minority of northerners were abolitionists, or people who wanted to end slavery. They believed that slavery was morally wrong. Some abolitionists favored a gradual end, while others demanded that all slavery be outlawed at once. Not all northerners wanted to end slavery. Some white northern bankers, mill owners, and merchants earned a lot of money on southern cotton and tobacco or by trading or transporting enslaved people. They were sympathetic to Southern plantation owners and did not want to abolish slavery. Some northern workers—especially those in unskilled, low-paying jobs—also opposed abolition, fearing that freed slaves might come north and compete with them for work.

Southern Views of Slavery

Slavery was an integral part of southern life. Many southerners believed that God intended that black people should provide the labor for white "civilized" society. In a speech before Congress in 1837, planter John Calhoun of South Carolina firmly defended and even praised the virtues of slavery. "I hold it [slavery] to be a good . . . ," he said, " . . . and [it] will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the . . . spirit of abolition." Calhoun's words expressed the feelings of many white southerners. By the 1850s, many southern politicians, journalists, and economists had begun to argue that the northern free labor system harmed society more than slavery did. Southerners claimed that enslaved people were healthier and happier than northern wage workers. Use the interactive table to compare the northern and southern views of slavery.

Nationalist Economic Policies

Some economic policies promoted the growth of industry. A leading example was the Tariff of 1816. By embracing a protective tariff, many Democratic Republicans betrayed their former principles. Once they had opposed federal power, supported agriculture, and favored trade unburdened by tariffs. Now they used federal power to help industrialists and their workers.

How did personal liberty laws increase tensions between the North and the South over the Fugitive Slave Act

Some northern states used personal liberty laws to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act, written to help the South

A Final Compromise Fails

Some politicians sought a final compromise. Kentucky senator John Crittenden proposed a constitutional amendment allowing slavery in western territories south of the Missouri Compromise line. He also called for federal funds to reimburse slaveholders for unreturned fugitives. Lincoln, now President-elect, warned that Crittenden's plan would "lose us everything we gained by the election." A narrow margin of senators voted down this Crittenden Compromise. President Buchanan, in his last few weeks in office, told Congress that he had no authority to prevent secession. He lamented the breakup of the Union and he sympathized with the South's concerns, but he made no serious effort to resolve the crisis. Other pacifying attempts also failed. A secret peace convention held in Washington, which drew delegates from the border states as well as the North and South, failed to reach a compromise that could save the Union.

Settling Differences Through Compromise

Something had to be done in order to prevent the convention from ending in a stalemate. The delegates were far from a unanimous decision concerning the structure of the new government, and without compromises, they may never have reached an agreement.

Fort Sumter Falls

South Carolinians were suspicious of Lincoln's motives and ordered the Fort Sumter garrison to surrender to the Confederacy. When the Union troops refused, the Confederates fired on the fort. The Union troops eventually ran out of ammunition, forcing the commander to surrender. Northerners responded to the attack on Fort Sumter with shock and anger. A few days later, on April 15, President Lincoln declared that "insurrection" existed and called for 75,000 volunteers to fight against the Confederacy. The South responded just as strongly. At the outbreak of hostilities, the states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy. As in the North, the South raised troops quickly and struggled to equip and train them before sending them into battle Both sides predicted a short skirmish, with victory only a few days or months away. These predictions were unfounded. Americans faced years of terrible suffering before the fighting that had begun at Fort Sumter finally ended

What was the effect of settlers pouring into Spanish Florida after the war

Spain's decision to cede Florida to the United Staes

The Treaty of Ghent

The Americans won their greatest victory at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. From a strong and entrenched position, General Andrew Jackson routed the British attack. In this lopsided battle, the Americans suffered only 71 casualties, compared to 2,036 British casualties. The bloodshed at New Orleans was especially tragic because it came two weeks after the Americans and the British had signed a peace treaty at Ghent in Belgium. Unfortunately, notifying the soldiers in North America took over a month because of the slow pace of sailing ships.

The Whig Party Forms

The Bank's supporters denounced Jackson as a power-hungry tyrant trampling on the rights of Congress. The veto shocked them because previous Presidents had so rarely used that power—only nine times in forty-two years. Led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, in 1832 the Bank's friends formed a new political party known as the Whigs. (The name came from a British political party.) The Whigs were nationalists who wanted a strong federal government to manage the economy. Relying on a broad interpretation of the Constitution, they favored the American System of protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank. Whigs also appealed to northern Protestants who wanted the government to promote moral reform. The emergence of the Whigs renewed two-party politics in the United States. For the next twenty years, Whigs challenged Jackson's Democrats in local, state, and national elections. These close contests drew growing numbers of voters to the polls. In the presidential election of 1832, the Whigs nominated Henry Clay. Voters, however, reelected the popular Jackson in a landslide. Longtime Jackson supporter Martin Van Buren became the new Vice President. Emboldened by the public support, Jackson completed his attack on the second Bank of the United States by withdrawing federal funds and placing them in state banks. Though its charter still had several years to run, Jackson's action weakened it severely. As Secretary of the Treasury, Roger B. Taney managed Jackson's plan to undermine the Bank of the United States. When John Marshall died in 1835, Jackson rewarded Taney by appointing him Chief Justice of the United States.

Fighting the Barbary War

The Barbary States of North Africa—Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—were profiting by seizing American ships and sailors in the Mediterranean Sea. To buy immunity from that piracy, the Washington and Adams administrations had paid protection money to the Barbary States. Jefferson was willing to do the same until the ruler of Tripoli increased his price. In 1801, Jefferson sent the small American navy to blockade the port of Tripoli, winning a favorable peace in 1805, concluding the Barbary War.

What was the result of the British attack on Washington D.C. in 1814

The British burned the White House and the Capitol

What were the provision of the Jay Treaty of 1794

The British gave up forts on American soil, but kept restrictions on American ships and required Americans to repay their debts

Checks and Balances

The Constitution also limits the power of government by creating a system of checks and balances designed to prevent the emergence of a single domineering center of power. For example, while only Congress has the power to enact laws, the President may veto them. However, a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress can override the President's veto. The President nominates judges, but the Senate must approve them. Executive Branch: Nominates judges for judicial branch Vetos laws from legislative branch Legislative Branch: Can override an executive branch veto Confirms judges for the judicial branch Judicial Branch: can declare executive action unconstituional Can rule legislative branch laws unconstitutional

Setting Up the Judiciary

The Constitution called for one Supreme Court and several smaller ones, but intentionally left to Congress the details of organizing a federal court system. Madison, who had been elected to the House of Representatives in the first Congress, helped to pass the Judiciary Act of 1789. This act established a judiciary, or a system of courts. The U.S. judiciary was made up of thirteen federal district courts, one for each state. Three circuit courts would hear appeals from the state courts and a six-member Supreme Court would decide contested cases. The Supreme Court also served as a trial court in certain cases involving states or foreign affairs. The act also established the office of Attorney General to prosecute and defend cases on behalf of the federal government. Washington appointed John Jay as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Democrats Split Their Support

The Democrats held their nominating convention in Charleston, North Carolina. For ten days, they argued about the issue that had plagued the nation for decades: slavery. The southern Democrats called for a platform supporting federal protection of slavery in the territories. The northern Democrats, who backed Stephen Douglas, supported the doctrine of popular sovereignty. When the Douglas forces prevailed, the delegates from eight southern states walked out and formed a separate convention. The Democrats were now split into two parties. The northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas. The southern Democrats nominated the Vice President, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Breckinridge was committed to expanding slavery into the territories.

What happened at the party convention for the Democrats that affected the 1860 presidential election

The Democrats split into two parties and nominated two men for President, one from the North and one from the South

Why did the Dred Scott decision alarm northerners

The Dred Scott decision declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and ruled that slaves were property

The Federalist Papers Outline Key Ideas

The Federalists' case for ratification of the Constitution appeared in The Federalist, a series of 85 essays that came to be called the Federalist Papers. Three leading Federalists—Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay—wrote the essays, which were published in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788, a time of heated debate in New York's ratifying convention. The essays argued that the separation of powers in three branches of government would prevent the concentration of power dreaded by the Antifederalists. The authors were also eager for the United States to have a strong central government, as supported by Madison in The Federalist, No. 10. Federalist leaders feared that the United States would dissolve without a strong government. They argued in The Federalist, No. 51, that the checks and balances in the Constitution prevented any of the three branches from gaining too much power. The authors insisted that the real threat to liberty came from the state legislatures, which lacked sufficient checks and balances. Hamilton wrote of the importance of a judicial branch in The Federalist, No. 78. Today, these essays help scholars, judges, and lawyers understand the meaning of the Constitution.

What was the result of the presidential election of 1824

The House of Representatives selected the President

Under the Virginia Plan, who would command the armed forces and manage foreign relations

The President

Republicans Nominate Lincoln

The Republicans, who had gained great strength since their formation, held their nominating convention in Chicago. After several ballots, they nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate. When the party convened, seasoned politician William H. Seward of New York had been the favorite to win the nomination. But when many delegates began to worry that Seward's antislavery views were too radical, the convention went with the more moderate Lincoln. The Republican platform called for the end of slavery in the territories. At the same time, the Republicans defended the right of each state to control its own institutions and stipulated that there should be no interference with slavery in the states where it already existed. Abraham Lincoln—with his great debating skills, his moderate views, and his reputation for integrity—was seen as the ideal candidate to carry the Republican platform to victory.

Calhoun and Webster Speak

The Senate's other two giants—Calhoun and Webster—prepared long and deeply passionate responses to Clay's proposal. Calhoun was too sick and weak to deliver his own speech, but he watched defiantly from his seat as a younger colleague read it for him. Calhoun's speech expressed his fear "that the agitation on the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion." But Calhoun did not believe that Clay's proposal gave the South enough protection. If the North would not submit to the South's demands, "let the states agree to separate and part in peace. If you are unwilling that we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do." In other words, if the North did not agree, the South would secede, or break away, from the Union. Daniel Webster, also ill and nearing the end of his life, tried to rally both northerners and southerners to the cause of unity. In an emotional speech, Webster urged senators to accept Clay's compromise. He suggested that the cotton and tobacco crops that flourished under slavery would not grow in California. Thus, he argued, popular sovereignty would allow the South to feel a measure of comfort but would not result in the spread of slavery to the West. (In fact, California eventually became a cotton-producing state—although a free one.) Though some abolitionists felt betrayed by Webster's conciliatory three-hour speech, it persuaded many northerners to support the compromise.

The Seneca Falls Convention Inspires Women

The Seneca Falls Convention inspired generations of young women. One of these was Amelia Bloomer, who actually attended the convention. While she remained relatively quiet there, she would soon become a leading voice for women's rights. In the following years, Bloomer published a newspaper, The Lily, in which she advocated equality of women in all things—including the right to wear pants instead of dresses. Another woman who drew inspiration from the convention was Susan B. Anthony, whose involvement in the temperance and abolition movements led her to work for greater rights for women as well. Anthony would help lead the charge to win a single, critical right for women: the right to vote. This quest for suffrage would prove to be a long, hard fight.

What is one way in which southern and northern societies differed in the 1800s

The South had fewer large cities than the North

How was the economy of the South different from that of the North

The South's economy was based largely on growing cotton. The North's economy was based on industry

What was the colonists' main objection to the Stamp Act

The colonists did not want to be taxed directly by Parliament

Why did Thomas Jefferson describe the delegates as an "assembly of demi-gods"?

The convention included most of the leading statesmen of the day

Hamilton and Madison

The convention's leading thinkers were Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Bold in action, Alexander Hamilton was very conservative in principles. Disliking democracy, he praised the British constitution, including its king and House of Lords, as "the best model the world has ever produced." He insisted that a balanced government should have elements of aristocracy and monarchy as well as of republicanism. Hamilton believed that such a government would have real power to command its citizens and impress foreign empires. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania also advocated a strong central government at the Convention. Morris thought the President should hold office for life. James Madison showed his eagerness to participate in the convention by arriving in Philadelphia 11 days early. He had also sent a letter to George Washington in April outlining his thoughts about what should be debated at the convention. Madison had concluded that only a strong nation could rescue the states from their own democratic excesses. Although a critic of democracy, Madison favored republicanism rather than a constitution modeled after the British system. His challenge was to design a government that was both strong and republican. Rejecting the old notion that a republic needed to be small and homogeneous, he insisted that a large republic with diverse interests would best preserve the common good. He reasoned that the numerous interests would "check" one another. Madison hoped that the nation's most learned men, rather than the many local political leaders he saw in the state legislatures, would govern the new national Republic. In addition to providing the basic blueprint for the Constitution, Madison kept the notes that are the best record of the convention.

Women Disagree on Aims

The women who spoke up for full equality were a small minority, however. Even among abolitionists there was disagreement about how much public leadership women should take. When an international abolitionist convention met in London in 1840, the group fractured over whether women should be allowed to join in the men's business meetings. Some abolitionists thought that they should not. Two who thought they should were Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both Mott and Stanton were active reformers, supporting particularly the temperance and abolitionist causes. Mott had helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Stanton was married to a leading abolitionist, Henry Stanton. (Both Elizabeth and Henry were already keenly interested in women's rights.) These two women, outraged that women were refused full participation at a meeting to discuss the promotion of human decency and equality, were inspired to take a dramatic step to advance women's rights.

A Troubled Outcome

The crowded race produced no clear winner. Jackson won more popular votes than did Adams, his next nearest competitor. Jackson did well in many southern states and in the western part of the country. Adams ran strongest in the Northeast. But neither won a majority of the electoral votes needed for election. As a result, for the second time in the nation's history (the first was in 1800), the House of Representatives had to determine the outcome of a presidential election. There, Clay threw his support to Adams, who became President. When Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson accused them of a "corrupt bargain," in which he thought Clay supported Adams in exchange for an appointment as Secretary of State. Jackson's opposition weakened Adams's presidency. Taking a broad, nationalist view of the Constitution, Adams pushed for an aggressive program of federal spending for internal improvements and scientific exploration. Jackson and other critics denounced this program as "aristocratic" for allegedly favoring the wealthy over the common people. This would become a growing theme in national politics.

In 1814, what happened to the number of British troops fighting in the United States

The defeat of Napoleon in Europe freed British troops in North America

The Whigs Taste Brief Victory in the Election of 1840

The depression in 1837 revived the Whigs. In 1840, they ran William Henry Harrison for President and John Tyler for Vice President. Harrison was known as "Old Tip" for his successes at the Battle of Tippecanoe against the Indians in 1811. The Whigs ran a campaign that was light on ideas but heavy on the sort of theatrics that would become common in American politics. For example, the Whigs organized big parades and coined a catchy slogan—"Tippecanoe and Tyler too"—to garner voters' attention. With more creativity than honesty, Whig campaign managers portrayed Harrison as a simple farmer who lived in a log cabin and drank hard cider instead of the expensive champagne favored by Van Buren. Turning the political tables, the Whigs persuaded voters that Van Buren was ineffective, corrupt, and an aristocrat who threatened the Republic. This helped Harrison win the presidency, and meant that the Whigs had succeeded in capturing Congress. The Whig victory proved brief, however. A month after assuming office, Harrison died of pneumonia. Vice President John Tyler of Virginia became the President. He surprised and horrified the Whigs by rejecting their policies. He vetoed Congress's legislation to restore the Bank of the United States and to enact Clay's American System. The Whigs would have to wait for a future election to exercise full control of the government

What caused South Carolina to secede from the Union

The election of Lincoln as President

How did the embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 affect industry in America

The embargo cut off access to British goods, so more factories were built in the United States

What issue continued to divide the country in the early 1800s

The expansion of slavery

The Steamboat Goes Commercial

The first major advance in transportation was the development of the steamboat. By burning wood or coal, the engine boiled the water to create steam. The force of the steam turned a large, rotating paddle, which pushed the boat through the water. American Robert Fulton designed the first commercially successful steamboat—the Clermont The steamboat made it much easier to travel upstream against the current. For example, before the steamboat, it took about four months to travel the 1,440 miles from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky, along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. In 1820, a steamboat made the same journey in just 20 days. By 1838, it took a steamboat only six days. Steamboats unlocked the great potential of the Mississippi River Basin for moving people and goods. The number of steamboats plying the rivers of that system grew from 230 in 1834 to nearly 700 in 1843. Steam-powered ships also revolutionized transatlantic travel. By 1850, a steamship could cross the Atlantic in 10 to 14 days, compared to the 25 to 50 days for a sailing ship.

What was the "Trail of Tears"?

The forced removal of Cherokee Indians from the Southeast to Oklahoma

What measure did some southern states take to prevent a slave revolt

They passed strict laws and controls pertaining to slavery

Factory Work Changes Lives

The growth of factories changed more than the speed and volume of production. It changed the working lives of thousands of people. Machines increased the pace of work and divided labor into many small tasks done by separate workers. This process reduced the amount of skill and training required for individual jobs. Factory owners benefited because untrained workers were more numerous and less costly to employ. In some trades, owners achieved those benefits without adopting new machines. The manufacture of clothing and shoes are two examples. As you have read, America's first factories produced thread or cloth rather than finished clothing. During the 1820s, a garment trade developed primarily in New York City. Contractors provided cloth to poor women who made the clothes in their homes without the help of machines. They earned about $1 per week. Shoemaking followed a similar model. Lynn, Massachusetts, led the nation in this industry. A few men performed the skilled and better-paying tasks of cutting and shaping leather for the tops of the shoes. For less pay (about 50 cents a week), women sewed the shoes together.

What event marked the beginning of the women's movement in the United States

The meeting of Seneca Falls Convention

Surviving Through Spirit and Strength

The miserable conditions forced on enslaved people took their inevitable toll. Some, losing all hope, took their own lives. Others simply toiled through a lifetime of pain and sadness. But, in a remarkable triumph of spirit over hardship, most enslaved people maintained their hope and their dignity. They developed many ways of coping with their inhumane conditions. They worked to maintain networks of family and friends. Parents kept family traditions alive by naming children for beloved aunts, uncles, or grandparents, and by passing on family stories that their children could cherish wherever they might find themselves. Enslaved people took comfort in their religion, a unique mix of traditional African and Christian beliefs, which shone the light of hope in the midst of their difficult lives. But, in a remarkable triumph of spirit over hardship, most enslaved people maintained their hope and their dignity. They developed many ways of coping with their inhumane conditions. They worked to maintain networks of family and friends. Parents kept family traditions alive by naming children for beloved aunts, uncles, or grandparents, and by passing on family stories that their children could cherish wherever they might find themselves. Enslaved people took comfort in their religion, a unique mix of traditional African and Christian beliefs, which shone the light of hope in the midst of their difficult lives.

Railroads Further Ease Transport

The most dramatic advance in transportation in the 1800s was the arrival of a new mode of transportation—railroads. This technology, largely developed in Great Britain, began to appear in the United States in the 1820s. Horses pulled the first American trains. But clever inventors soon developed steam-powered engines, which could pull heavier loads of freight or passengers at higher speeds than horses could manage. Compared to canals, railroads cost less to build and could more easily scale hills. Trains moved faster than ships and carried more weight. Their introduction put a quick end to the brief boom in canal building. Meanwhile, the American rail network expanded from 13 miles of track in 1830 to 31,000 miles by 1860. In 1800, a journey from New York City to Detroit, Michigan, took 28 days by boat. In 1857, the same trip took only two days by train.

What contributed to the first real progress in the women's movement

The opportunity for middle-class women to think about society

The Transportation Revolution

The original 13 states hugged the Atlantic Coast, and all major settlements in the United States sprang up near a harbor or river because water provided the most efficient way to move people and goods. At the start of the nineteenth century, overland transportation consisted of carts, wagons, sleighs, and stagecoaches pulled by horses or oxen over dirt roads. Moving goods just a few dozen miles by road could cost as much as shipping the same cargo across the ocean.

Many Abolitionists Spread the Word

Theodore Weld, a student at the Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, became another leading abolitionist. Weld shared Garrison's belief in the power of moral suasion. However, whereas Garrison resorted to public confrontation, Weld chose to work through the churches. Weld married Angelina Grimké, the daughter of a southern slaveholder, who was so moved by the abolition movement that she went north to join it. She and her sister Sarah Grimké spoke and wrote against slavery. Another well-known abolitionist, and arguably the most eloquent, was Frederick Douglass, a former slave whose booming voice filled lecture halls with touching stories about the difficulty of his life as a slave.

How did Southerners react to slave revolts

They passed stricter laws controlling slaves

The Origins of the Women's Rights Movement

The parallels between the lack of power held by slaves and the lack of power held by women were hard to ignore. In fact, many women argued that their lack of rights made them almost the same as slaves. These women, along with a handful of men in the abolition movement, began to work for women's rights. They began the women's movement, a movement working for greater rights and opportunities for women, of the early and middle 1800s. This stage of the women's movement was active throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s. Women's rights reformers began to publish their ideas in pamphlets and books. One of these was the Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, who believed that what women needed was not personal power but "as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her . . ." The Grimké sisters also published their ideas on women's rights. In Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, Sarah Grimké argued that God made men and women equal and that therefore men and women should be treated equally. Building on her sister's ideas, Angelina Grimké Weld defended the rights of both slaves and women on moral grounds: "The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. . . . Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings. . . [I]f rights are founded on the nature of our moral being, then the mere circumstance of sex does not give to man higher rights and responsibilities, than to woman." —Angelina Grimké, Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, 1838

What was significant about the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions

The resolves hinted that states had the power to nullify federal laws

What right was granted to the federal government by the Force Bill

The right to enforce federal laws, including the collection of protective tariffs

What act by customs officers began a series of events that led to the Boston Massacre

The seizure of the merchant ship Liberty for smuggling

By 1861, what action did seven southern states take in order to protect their way of life

The states seceded from the Union

How did inventions by John Deere and Cyrus McCormick change agriculture

The steel plow and the mechanical reaper increased production and the size of farms

What caused the economic panics in the 1800s

The supply of goods exceeded the demand

Violence Spreads to the Senate

The violent battles over slavery were not limited to Kansas. Tempers ran high in Congress, and some members went to work armed not only with words but with pistols and canes. In May 1856, just as fighting broke out in Kansas, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner delivered a blistering speech on the Senate floor, which came to be known as "The Crime Against Kansas." He blasted southerners for their bullying and fraud in the Kansas elections, and he referred to the Border Ruffians from Missouri as "hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization—in the form of men." Then, Sumner invited trouble. He insulted South Carolina senator Andrew Butler, who was absent. But a few days later, Butler's nephew, South Carolina representative Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner in the Senate, beating him unconscious with a cane. What happened next illustrates the division of the two sides. Congress tried to punish Brooks by removing him from office. His constituency simply reelected him and sent him back. Sumner was so badly injured that he could not return to the Senate for three years. The Massachusetts voters reelected him anyway, using his empty seat as a public reminder of southern treachery. The divide between North and South grew ever wider and deeper

Why did the authors of the Constitution want to avoid political parties

They believed political parties threatened the unity of a republic

Why did Antifederalists oppose Alexander Hamilton's plan

They felt it threatened individual freedom

How did the Border Ruffians contribute to the "Bleeding Kansas" problem

They forced local residents to vote for proslavery candidates

In 1790, how were Native Americans, led by chief Little Turtle, able to defeat American troops

They had arms and ammunition provided by the British

Why did most free African Americans dislike the American Colonization Society's plan for black migration to Africa

They had been born in the United States and considered it home

Why were precedents set by the Supreme Court with Marshall as Chief Justice important?

They influenced the legal and economic system in the United States

During the California Gold Rush, how did newcomers from the eastern United States assert their dominance over California

They levied a heavy tax on foreign miners

How did steamboats revolutionize the movement of people and goods

They made travel much faster on the Mississippi River

Why did Mormons emigrate to the west in 1847

To escape hostile neighbors

The Invasion of Canada Fails

Thomas Jefferson acted as adviser to Madison. He argued that with a population of 8 million, the United States could easily conquer Canada, which had only 250,000 people. Indeed, the prospects for a victory looked favorable. An overland invasion would save the cost of building a bigger navy to fight the British. In addition, Jefferson argued that the United States did not even need a professional army. The citizen militia of the states could do the job quickly and with little expense. He called the conquest of Canada "a mere matter of marching." Jefferson's assumptions proved to be wrong. In fact, the small British and Indian forces in Canada repeatedly defeated the American invasion attempts in 1812 and 1813. Reliance on the state militias proved a disaster. Having had no professional training, many militiamen broke rank and ran when attacked. The American regular army performed almost as poorly. One blundering general, William Hull, surrendered Detroit to a much smaller British force commanded by Isaac Brock and assisted by Indians led by Tecumseh. Instead of bolstering American pride, the attempted invasion of Canada only further embarrassed the nation.

Federalists Favor Strong Government

Those who favored ratification of the Constitution were known as Federalists. The group included George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. The Federalists stressed the weaknesses of the Articles. They argued that only a new government based on the proposed Constitution could overcome the difficulties facing the new nation. Strong central government The checks and balances would prevent any of the three branches from becoming too strong The real threat to liberty came from the state legislatures, which lacked sufficient checks and balances

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Throughout the 1850s, American attention was riveted on westward expansion. But no discussion of expansion, or any aspect of the nation's future, could get beyond the issue of slavery. In 1858, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln held a series of seven debates while competing for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Thousands of Americans attended the Lincoln-Douglas debates and listened raptly as the two candidates presented opposing views of slavery and its role in America.

Signing Treaties With Britain and Spain

To avoid war with Britain, Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to London to negotiate a compromise with the British. In the Jay Treaty of 1794, the British gave up their forts on American soil, but they kept most of their restrictions on American ships. The treaty also required Americans to repay prewar debts to the British. Washington and the Federalists favored this compromise, but the Democratic Republicans denounced the Jay Treaty as a sellout. After a heated debate, the Senate narrowly ratified the treaty, keeping the peace. In 1795, the United States also signed a treaty with Spain. American settlers needed to move their goods down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where they could be shipped to markets in the East. But, Spain controlled the Mississippi River and New Orleans. To ensure a free flow of trade, an American diplomat, Thomas Pinckney, negotiated a favorable treaty with the Spanish, who feared that an Anglo-American alliance might threaten their American possessions. Pinckney's Treaty guaranteed Americans free shipping rights on the Mississippi River and access to New Orleans. The treaty also established the northern boundary of Spanish Florida. The removal of British forts, victories over Native Americans, and secure access to New Orleans encouraged thousands of Americans to move westward. By 1800, nearly 400,000 Americans lived beyond the Appalachian Mountains. By selling land to these settlers, the federal government gained revenue that helped to pay off the national debt.

Why did the Mexican government allow Americans to settle in Texas

To defend the province from U.S. expansion

American Migrate to Texas

To develop and defend the province, Mexico adopted a risky strategy: It agreed to allow Americans to settle in Texas. In return for cheap land grants, Americans had to agree to become Mexican citizens, to worship as Roman Catholics, and to accept the Mexican constitution, which banned slavery. Mexico hoped this strategy would convert American settlers from a potential threat to an economic asset. Led by Stephen F. Austin, American emigrants began to settle east of San Antonio, founding the town of Austin. Like settlers on other frontiers, these newcomers sought the economic opportunity of good farmland in large portions. Mostly coming from the southern United States, they raised corn, pigs, cattle, and cotton. By 1835, Texas was home to about 30,000 American settlers, known as Anglo-Texans. They outnumbered Tejanos by about six to one.

What was the purpose of the Hartford Convention

To discuss the withdrawal of the New England states from the Union

What was the goal of the American Colonization Society (ACS)

To encourage migration of free blacks to Africa

What was the goal of the American Colonization Society (ACS)?

To encourage migration of free blacks to Africa

A Compromise Avoids a Crisis

To expand slavery or restrict it—this dilemma came to haunt the rapidly growing nation. In 1848, gold was discovered in California, and soon thousands of adventurers were headed west to seek their fortune. Before long, the burgeoning western territories would petition for entry into the Union. Should these new states allow slavery? Who would decide?

Eyeing the Louisiana Territory

To get more land, Jefferson wanted the United States to expand to the Pacific—despite the fact that much of the continent was already inhabited by Native Americans and European colonists. At first, Jefferson believed that Spain's vast Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River would be easy to conquer. He noted that the Spanish colonists were few, their empire was weak, and they were distracted by the war in Europe. Jefferson's plans went awry, however, when the United States got a new and far more dangerous neighbor to the west. In 1801, France's military dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, had forced Spain to give him the Louisiana Territory, including the strategic city of New Orleans. The French threatened to block American access to the market in New Orleans. An alarmed Jefferson considered joining the British in an alliance to fight France

New Methods of Production

To improve efficiency in factories, manufacturers designed products with interchangeable parts, identical components that could be used in place of one another. Inventor Eli Whitney introduced this idea to the United States. Traditionally, items such as clocks and muskets were built one at a time by skilled artisans who made each part and assembled the device from start to finish by hand. As a result, a part that would work in one gun or clock might not work in any other. Whitney proposed making muskets in a new way—by manufacturing each part separately and precisely. Under Whitney's system, a part that would work in one musket would work in another musket. In other words, the parts would be interchangeable. It took some years for American manufacturers to make interchangeable parts reliably. Yet the idea of interchangeable parts eventually made possible the much more efficient production of a wide range of manufactured goods. One of the products manufactured with interchangeable parts was the sewing machine. Invented by Elias Howe and improved by Isaac Singer, the sewing machine lowered the cost and increased the speed of making cloth into clothing.

What was the goal of Macon's Bill No. 2

To persuade France and Great Britain to recognize American neutrality

Why did Thomas Jefferson order the embargo against Great Britain in 1807

To prevent the British impressment of American sailors

Why did Congress pass the Tariff of 1816

To protect American factory owners against competition from British manufacturers

Slater Opens First Textile Mill

To protect its industrial advantage, the British banned the export of machinery, as well as the emigration of workers with knowledge of the technology. However, a skilled worker named Samuel Slater defied that law and moved to the United States. Slater used his detailed knowledge of the textile machinery to build the nation's first water-powered textile mill in 1793 at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The mill used the flowing Blackstone River to power its machinery, which produced one part of the textile: cotton thread. Slater and his business partners later built more factories along New England rivers. These factories used the so-called family system, in which entire families, including parents and children, were employed in the mills. Those families settled in villages owned by factory owners and located around the mills

What was one purpose for the creation of the Workingmen's Party

To protect the rights of skilled workers

Why did Native Americans fight American forces in the Northwest Territory

To protect their land

Why did Parliament pass the Coercive Acts

To punish colonists for the Boston Tea Party

After Senator Sumner delivered the speech "The Crime Against Kansas," he was attacked for his blistering speech. Why did Massachusetts voters reelect Senator Sumner when he was so badly injured that his seat remained empty

To remind the public of southern treachery

What power does judicial review give the Supreme Court

To review acts of Congress and the President to decide if they are constitutional

What was the purpose of the Missouri Compromise

To settle future disputes about the spread of slavery

What was one reason that Alexander Hamilton asked Congress to charter a National Bank

To strengthen ties between business and government

What was the purpose of the Land Ordinance of 1785

To subdivide and sell land in the Northwest Territory

Cycles of Boom and Bust

Too many goods have been produced; the supply is greater than the demand for goods Boom: Demand for goods is high Producers supply more goods Employment, profits, and incomes are high Spending on good from business is high REPETITIVE CYCLE TURNS INTO BUST Bust: Prices drop Production drops Employment, profits, and incomes are low Spending on goods from all businesses is low Between 1815 and 1860, there were three great panics that occurred: 1819, 1837, and 1857. Thousands of factory workers lost their jobs. The panics also hurt farmers and planters as demand declined for their grain or cotton. When farm prices fell, many farmers and planters could not pay their debts. They, therefore, lost their properties to lawsuits and foreclosures. Panics led many workers and farmers to doubt capitalism—or at least to blame the banks, especially the Bank of the United States. The panics lifted after a year or two, however, and "boom" times returned. These economic revivals quieted the doubts.

Workers Organize

Troubled workers responded by seeking political change. During the 1820s, some artisans organized the Workingmen's Party to compete in local and state elections. They sought free public education and laws to limit the working day to ten hours versus the standard twelve. The party also supported the right of workers to organize labor unions—groups of workers who unite to seek better pay and conditions. Most early labor unions focused on helping skilled tradesmen, such as carpenters or printers. Unions went on strike to force employers to pay higher wages, reduce hours, or improve conditions. In 1834 and 1836, for example, the Lowell mill girls held strikes when employers cut their wages and increased their charges for boarding. Singing "Oh! I cannot be a slave!" they left their jobs and temporarily shut down the factory. The Lowell strikes failed to achieve their goals, however. The women eventually returned to work and accepted the reduced pay. Factory owners sometimes turned to the courts for protection. In 1835, a New York City court convicted 20 tailors of conspiracy for forming a union. Such convictions angered workers. But, neither the union movement nor the Workingmen's Party prospered in the early 1800s.

Marshall and the Supreme Court Boost Federal Power

Under John Marshall, who served as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835, the Supreme Court favored a strong federal government and a national economy. Marshall applied several Federalist principles to interpret the Constitution. For example, the Marshall Court claimed the power to review the acts of Congress and of the President for their constitutionality. This was established in the landmark decision Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marshall also insisted upon the "sanctity of contracts." In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) and Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Marshall Court limited a state government's power to interfere in business contracts. Further, the Marshall Court insisted that federal law was superior to state law. This point was famously established in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The case involved the renewed Bank of the United States. When it was reestablished in 1816, branches were placed in states across the country. In effect, the bank competed with and threatened many state and local banks. In Maryland, state officials tried to defend their banks by levying a tax on the operations of the Bank of the United States. The Marshall Court struck down this Maryland law. Embracing a broad interpretation of the Constitution, Marshall insisted that Congress had the power to charter a national bank. Further, no state could destroy such a bank with taxes. Finally, Marshall broadly interpreted the Constitution to give greater power to the national government. In the 1824 case Gibbons v. Ogden, Marshall rejected a steamboat monopoly granted by the state of New York. The monopoly threatened the business of a steamboat operator who had run a service between New Jersey and New York. Marshall ruled that steamboat traffic was "commerce" and that the power to regulate commerce involving more than one state—interstate commerce—belonged to the federal government. As in McCulloch v. Maryland, the ruling extended federal power by creating a broad definition of commerce and by asserting the supremacy of federal over state law. In general, Marshall's Court encouraged the development of large, far-flung business corporations by freeing them from meddling by the states. (Think, for example, how difficult it might have been to build a railroad company that covered several states if each state had the power to establish its own monopolies within its borders.) Corporations took the place of the older, smaller, and simpler forms of business—single proprietorships and limited partnerships whose reach was confined to a small area. Due in part to the Marshall Court, the United States increasingly became one large integrated market.

Which of the following is a correct description of the New Jersey Plan

Under the New Jersey Plan, the United States would remain a loose confederation

Following the Adams-Onis Treaty, which countries claimed the Oregon territory

United States and Great Britain

Lincoln Wins a Reputation

When Lincoln stood before these same audiences, he spoke of the "eternal struggle between right and wrong." He repeatedly referred to the Dred Scott decision as wrong. He attacked popular sovereignty as wrong. And he condemned slavery as a system whereby one person does the "work and toil to earn bread" and someone else does the eating. While Lincoln, like most white people of his day, ridiculed the idea of social and political equality with African Americans, he strongly affirmed the idea of their natural rights: "There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. . . . In the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." —Abraham Lincoln, 1858 The debates lasted for weeks. When they were over, Douglas won the election by a slim margin. But Lincoln had not really lost. As a result of the debates, Lincoln won a large following that would serve him well the next time he ran for national office.

Lincoln Decides to Act

When the southern states seceded, they seized the federal forts and arsenals within their borders. Only four forts remained in Union hands. The most important of these was Fort Sumter, which guarded the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. In January 1861, President Buchanan tried to send troops and supplies to the fort, but the unarmed supply ship sailed away when Confederate guns fired on it. Upon taking office, Lincoln had to decide whether to take the risk required to hold on to these forts or yield to Confederate demands that they be surrendered. By April, the troops at the fort desperately needed food and supplies. Lincoln, who still hoped to bring back the South without bloodshed, faced a dilemma. Should he try to resupply the fort? Or should he let the Confederates take it? Lincoln struggled to make a decision. During his inaugural address, he had promised southerners that "the government will not assail you." But as President, he was sworn to defend the property of the United States. A wrong move could touch off a war. At last, trying to steer a middle course, Lincoln notified South Carolina that he was sending supplies—food only, no arms—to the fort

A Middle Class Emerges

While hurting some working Americans, industrialization helped others. A middle class emerged, in which men helped manage businesses as bankers, lawyers, accountants, clerks, auctioneers, brokers, and retailers. The middle class stood above the working class of common laborers but below the upper class of wealthy business owners. Most middle-class men worked in offices outside of their homes. They also began to move their homes away from the crowds, noise, and smells of the workshops and factories. Factory workers, however, could not afford that move. Neighborhoods, therefore, became segregated by class as well as by race. This contrasted with colonial cities and towns, where people of all social classes had to live close to one another. For the middle class, work became separated from family life. These families expected wives and mothers to stay at home, tending those spaces as havens from the bustle of the working world, while the men went off to work and returned with the money to support the household. Working-class and farm families could not afford such an arrangement. In those families, women and children also had to work.

The Dred Scott Decision Triggers Outrage

While passions still ran high from the 1856 election, another event fueled the flames of division. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Missouri slave Dred Scott, who had sued for his freedom. Scott based his case on the fact that his master had taken him to the free state of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was outlawed by the Missouri Compromise. In other words, between 1834 and 1838, Scott had lived mostly on free soil while remaining enslaved. With the help of abolitionists, Scott's case reached the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In its decision handed down in March 1857, the Court ruled against Scott. In a controversial decision, the Court decided that slaves and their descendants were property, not citizens, and therefore were not entitled to sue in the courts. It also said that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it was illegal for Congress to deprive an owner of property—in this case, a slave—without due process of law. Move through the activity to learn more about the landmark Supreme Court case. Southerners celebrated the decision, but the North viewed it with alarm. Abolitionists labeled the ruling a southern conspiracy. Some suggested that the North should secede from the Union. Others insisted that the members of the Supreme Court should be impeached. Leading black abolitionist Frederick Douglass predicted that the decision would actually hasten the end of slavery: "The Supreme Court . . . [is] not the only power in the world. We, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the complete overthrow of the whole slave system." —Frederick Douglass, 1857

A New Party Structure

While returning to old principles, the Democrats innovated in party structure. They developed a disciplined system of local and state committees and conventions. The party cast out anyone who broke with party discipline. While becoming more democratic in style, with carefully planned appeals to voters and great public rallies, elections also became the business of professional politicians and managers. The new party rewarded the faithful with government jobs. Where Adams had displaced only a dozen government officials when he became President, Jackson replaced hundreds. He used the government jobs to reward Democratic activists. Van Buren's "reward" was appointment as Secretary of State, the coveted steppingstone to the presidency. The Democrats defended the use of jobs as rewards for political loyalty. Here, Senator William Learned Marcy of New York defended the Jacksonians: "They boldly preach what they practice. When they are contending for victory, they avow [state] the intention of enjoying the fruits of it. If they are defeated, they expect to retire from office. If they are successful, they claim, as a matter of right, the advantages of success. They see nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belongs the spoils [loot] of the enemy." —Senator William L. Marcy, speech before Congress, January 1832 Critics, however, denounced the use of political jobs as a reward for party loyalty, a practice they called the spoils system.

Indians and Mexicans Face Discrimination

White miners also terrorized and killed Native Americans by the thousands. Losing their land, many surviving Indians became workers on farms and ranches. Mob violence drove most Mexican Americans away from the gold fields. Those who stayed had to pay the foreign miners' tax, though Mexicans had been in California long before the new American majority. Californios, or Mexican Californians, also lost most of their land. Contrary to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the courts ignored land titles created under Mexican law. One Californio who lost most of his land to white settlers was Mariano Vallejo. The courts refused to recognize his family land grants.

Which British legal tradition was followed in the United States

Women were not allowed to hold property

How were women women expected to bring about change in society in the early 1800s

Women were supposed to influence their husbands and raise patriotic children

What was one effect of the rise of factories during the Industrial Revolution

Workers needed fewer skills and less training to do most factory jobs

What was one result of the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848

Young women were inspired to work for equal rights for women

What was the goal of the American Colonization Society (ACS)?

to encourage the migration of free blacks to Africa The ACS was established by a number of well-known slaveholders in 1816. Many whites, especially those who owned slaves, were concerned that the growing number of free blacks would trigger further resistance and revolts by slaves yearning for freedom. Most had been born in America, and they considered the United States their home. Moreover, they feared that colonization was just a plan to strengthen slavery by exiling the most able black leaders. Although several thousand free African Americans did eventually migrate to Liberia, most chose to stay in the country of their birth. Many free African Americans worked together to establish churches and schools. Some acted to try to change and improve the lives of enslaved African Americans. In Boston, a free African American named David Walker published a pamphlet that used religion as the base for a blistering attack on slavery: Most had been born in America, and they considered the United States their home. Moreover, they feared that colonization was just a plan to strengthen slavery by exiling the most able black leaders. Although several thousand free African Americans did eventually migrate to Liberia, most chose to stay in the country of their birth. Many free African Americans worked together to establish churches and schools. Some acted to try to change and improve the lives of enslaved African Americans. In Boston, a free African American named David Walker published a pamphlet that used religion as the base for a blistering attack on slavery: "You may do your best to keep us in wretchedness and misery, to enrich you and your children, but God will deliver us from under you. . . . Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is no doubt in my mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy people. The whites may say it is impossible, but remember that nothing is impossible with God." Walker's pamphlet was outlawed in the slaveholding South. Still, it reached a wide audience in the North, where more people were beginning to view slavery as fundamentally incompatible with the religious views they embraced during the Second Great Awakening.

Why did Hamilton want to add to the national debt?

to stabilize the economy Hamilton's initial goal was to stabilize the economy, which required increasing the debt to pay off earlier debt and give the young nation much-needed financial credibility—both at home and overseas.

How did the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 reflect Thomas Jefferson's ideas

Citizens were guaranteed freedom of religion, trial by jury, and the rights of the common law

Enlightenment Ideas

Colonial protests drew upon the liberalism of the Enlightenment. Europe's leading liberal writers included Baron de Montesquieu of France and John Locke of England. They argued that people had divinely granted natural rights, including life, liberty, and property. A good government protected these individual rights. Locke insisted that government existed for the good of the people. Therefore, people had the right to protest any government that violated this "social contract" by failing to protect their rights.

Which of the following was included in Patrick Henry's Virginia Resolves

Colonists could be taxed by colonial assemblies

Why did British soldiers open fire on colonists in the event known as the Boston Massacre

Colonists had thrown rocks and snowballs at the soldiers

Patriot Leaders Emerge

Colonists violently opposed the Stamp Act, which affected every colonist. In the months following the passage of the act, colonists began to work together to fight it, which created a new, but still fragile, sense of American unity. Those who opposed the British taxes called themselves "Patriots." In the seaport streets, people showed a powerful new interest in politics. To lead the popular protests, some men formed associations known as the Sons of Liberty. Their most famous leader was Boston's Samuel Adams, a cousin of John Adams. As the protests continued, angry crowds assaulted colonists who supported or helped to collect the taxes. The crowds were especially violent in Boston. In August 1765, a mob led by the Sons of Liberty tore down the office and damaged the house of the stamp tax collector. The Massachusetts lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson, denounced this riot. He insisted that the colonists had a legal duty to pay Parliament's taxes. Another mob destroyed Hutchinson's house. Thereafter, no one in Boston dared to voice support for the stamp tax. By the end of the year, every stamp collector in the colonies had resigned, leaving no one to collect the taxes.

Battle of Trenton

After the British left Boston in early 1776, they decided to attack New York City and cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. The British commander, Lord William Howe, finally captured the city on September 15. About 30,000 British and German troops nearly crushed the poorly trained American soldiers, who retreated to New Jersey. General Washington barely saved his little army and the Revolution by counterattacking on December 26. Crossing the Delaware River in the middle of Christmas night, he surprised a garrison of more than 1,000 German mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton. This modest victory raised the spirits of the troops and Patriot supporters at a critical moment.

Why it Matters

After the Revolutionary War, the Patriots were wary of creating another tyrannical or abusive parliament, so they refused to entrust their new Union with much power. As a result, most authority remained with the states. Within a short time, the powerful states and weak national government faced severe problems.

New Taxes

As a result of the French and Indian War, Great Britain nearly doubled its national debt. To pay down the debt, the British Parliament imposed new taxes on the colonies. British efforts to collect money resulted in the Sugar and Quartering Acts, which angered the colonists but were tolerated. Passage of the Stamp Act infuriated the colonists, who argued that Parliament could not tax them because they had no representation in Parliament.

Freedom of Religion

Because the American Revolution promoted greater religious liberty, most states also guaranteed freedom of religion in their constitutions. Before this time, states collected taxes to support religious establishments. The freedom to choose among several faiths had been controversial. After the Revolution, however, religious liberty and pluralism became the norm. This came about with the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Massachusetts and Connecticut were exceptions. They kept their Congregational established churches, which continued to draw fire from Baptists and Methodists.

Constitution Drafted

By 1787, most Americans agreed that the Articles of Confederation were flawed and that a stronger federal government was needed to preserve the Union. Congress called for a Constitutional Convention to meet in Philadelphia in 1787 "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." Instead of revising the Articles, however, the delegates created an entirely new constitution. After months of intense debate, the delegates eventually agreed on a dramatic new plan of government. The next step—an extremely challenging one—was winning the approval of all 13 states.

Bill of Rights

By September 1787, the Constitution had been signed by all but three delegates who had attended the Constitutional Convention. The question now was whether three-fourths of the states would accept the new plan. Federalists and Antifederalists engaged in a lively debate. Federalists won quick ratification in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut. But Antifederalists, concerned that the federal government would be too powerful, pushed for a bill of rights. In time, the Federalists agreed, which resulted in ratification by 11 states. Congress then made plans to implement the newly created government. In 1791, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution.

Differences in Colonial Governments

Despite the similarities, colonial politics differed from the British model in several ways. The British constitution was not a formal document but a collection of laws and traditions accumulated over centuries. In contrast, the colonists' rights had traditionally been spelled out in formal legal documents such as the royal charters of Maryland or South Carolina, as well as informal written agreements like the Mayflower Compact. In addition, two thirds of free colonial men owned enough property to qualify to vote, compared to less than a fourth of British men. By 1760, political upheaval in Great Britain and European wars had allowed the elected colonial assemblies to increase their powers at the expense of the royal governors. Since the colonies lacked aristocrats with inherited titles, the leaders in both assembly and council were wealthy planters and merchants related by blood or marriage. The assemblies often withheld salaries from unpopular governors. British officials hoped to change the situation by taxing the colonists to provide salaries to royal governors and judges. Crown salaries would make them less responsive to the assemblies and councils. But that prospect alarmed the colonists, who began to cherish their deviations from Britain as important advantages. Members of Parliament believed that they "virtually represented" every British subject, including the colonists. While Parliament expected the colonists to obey, the colonists saw themselves as equal members of the British political body. These differences quickly became a problem when Parliament tried to levy taxes on the colonies. The colonists believed that only their own elected officials had that right.

Cornwallis Surrenders

During the summer of 1781, Washington boldly marched most of his troops south. He planned to trap Cornwallis's army at Yorktown, Virginia. The Battle of Yorktown was a siege that included many small confrontations. In July 1781, British troops under General Cornwallis marched to Yorktown expecting reinforcements from New York. French General Lafayette's smaller force trapped the British on the Yorktown peninsula until the Continental Army and more French troops arrived. Meanwhile, a French fleet prevented reinforcements from reaching Cornwallis by sea. The French and American forces forced Cornwallis to surrender his troops on October 19. It was the last military confrontation of the war.

Congress Creates the Articles of Confederation

In 1777, the Continental Congress drafted the original constitution for the union of the states, known as the Articles of Confederation. A confederation is a league or alliance of states that agree to work together. Under the leadership of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the Congress designed a loose confederation of 13 states, rather than a strong and centralized nation. The Articles reflected the principles of the Declaration of Independence and rejected the centralized power of the British Empire as a threat to liberty. As Article II reads, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." Original federal constitution drafted by the Continental Congress in 1777

Democratic Gains

Even the conservative constitutions, however, dramatically expanded the power of the common people. In contrast to the colonial era, voters chose the members of both houses of the new legislatures, rather than just the members of the lower house. Almost all of the states also enlarged their legislatures. Creating smaller districts and a greater number of representatives made representatives more accountable to their constituents, or voters. In almost all of the states, the voters also elected their governor—something only two colonies had previously done. Still, democratic and conservative Patriots disagreed about who would vote. The democratic Patriots wanted equal political rights for almost all free men, even those who had little or no property. Pennsylvania's state constitution opened voting to all men over the age of 21 who paid any taxes. In most of the states, however, the conservatives preserved the colonial property requirements to vote. Adams warned that allowing poor men to vote would "confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to the common level." Valuing distinctions, he opposed political equality as foolish and unworkable. But even in the conservative states, most free men qualified to vote because owning farms was so widespread. Both theory and practice excluded slaves and women from voting. Over time, in most states, the most democratic institution—the House of Representatives—gained power at the expense of the Senate and the governor. By the mid-1780s, this concentration of legislative power troubled conservative Patriots who feared the "tyranny of the majority."

Declaration of Independence

In January 1776, the first great American bestseller was Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Paine proposed that the colonies declare independence from Great Britain and establish a union with republican state governments. By the spring of 1776, Paine's ideas had built momentum for American independence. The Second Continental Congress selected a committee to draft a document declaring American independence. On July 2, Congress voted that America was free. Two days later, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration drew upon Paine's ideas to denounce the king of England as a tyrant who made American independence necessary.

Stamp Act

In March 1765, Parliament passed a bill intended to raise money from the colonies. The Stamp Act required colonists to pay a tax on almost all printed materials, including newspapers, books, court documents, contracts, and land deeds. This was the first time that Parliament had imposed a direct tax within the colonies.

The Colonies Take Action

Fortunately for Massachusetts, the other colonies also opposed the Coercive Acts and viewed them as a threat to their freedom. In the fall of 1774, delegates from every colony except Georgia met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the First Continental Congress. Virginia's delegates included the fiery Patrick Henry, who became famous for declaring, "Give me liberty, or give me death." He delighted the New England delegates by declaring, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." To pressure Parliament to withdraw the Coercive Acts, the delegates announced a boycott of all British imports. Throughout the colonies, the Patriots established local committees and provincial congresses to enforce the boycotts. In effect, the Patriots established new governments that bypassed Parliament and the Crown. By including common shopkeepers, artisans, and farmers, the committees expanded the ranks of the politically active. In the spring of 1775, a newly arrived immigrant marveled, "They are all liberty mad." By 1774, Patriot John Adams had decided that he already lived in a new country named America. He also believed that Americans could unite to defeat the British. But Adams was ahead of most colonists, who still hoped to remain within the British Empire, provided that Parliament would revoke the Coercive Acts and stop trying to tax them. Far from blaming the king, most colonists still expected that he would side with them against Parliament. Within two years, however, events would prove Adams right.

Comparing British and Colonial Governments

Great Britain: King (inherited executive power) Parliament House of Lords (aristocrats with inherited titles also inherited legislative power) House of Commons (elected by men who held significant amounts of property; less than 1/4 of British men qualified to vote) American Colonies Governor (appointed by and served the king but paid by the colonial legislature) Colonial Legislatures (Upper House or Council and Lower House of Assembly) Upper House or Council (appointed by governor; prominent colonists but without inherited titles) Lower House of Assembly (elected by men who held property; about 2/3 of colonial men qualified to vote)

British Troops in Boston

In 1767, British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which were taxes levied on everyday items such as glass, paper, and tea. Colonists refused to pay the taxes and often resorted to smuggling goods into port cities. In June 1768, British customs officers seized the merchant ship Liberty for smuggling. The ship belonged to John Hancock, a prominent colonial politician. The seizure set off riots against the customs officers. To suppress the riots, the British government sent 4,000 troops to occupy Boston. For more than a year, the presence of British troops inflamed popular anger, especially because the poorly paid English soldiers competed with unskilled colonial workers for jobs.

Quartering Act

In early 1765, Parliament passed another unpopular law, the Quartering Act. This act required the colonies to provide housing and supplies for the British troops stationed there after the French and Indian War. Colonists complained but most went along with the changes because they accepted Parliament's right to regulate trade and provide for defense.

Violence Erupts in Boston

In response to the Townshend Acts, the colonists revived their protests, boycotts, and street violence. Once again, the largest riots occurred in Boston, where many of the British customs officials abused their power. The Massachusetts legislature issued a circular letter denouncing the Townshend duties. Few other colonial legislatures paid attention to it until the governor dissolved the Massachusetts legislature in retaliation for their protest. In an already tense situation, customs officers seized the merchant ship Liberty in June 1768 for smuggling. The ship belonged to John Hancock, a wealthy merchant and a prominent colonial politician. The seizure set off riots against the customs officers. To suppress the riots, the Crown sent 4,000 troops to occupy Boston, a city of only 16,000 people. For over a year, the presence of British troops inflamed popular anger, especially because the poorly paid soldiers competed with unskilled workers for jobs. One night in March 1770, a group of colonists hurled snowballs and rocks at British soldiers guarding the Customs House. The nervous soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five colonists. The dead included Crispus Attucks, a sailor who may have been an escaped slave of mixed Indian and African ancestry. Under the leadership of Samuel Adams, Patriots called the killings the Boston Massacre. Adams later organized a network of local committees of correspondence throughout Massachusetts. The committees provided leadership and promoted cooperation. By 1773, several other colonies had created committees, which helped build colonial unity. Once again, Parliament backed down. The British withdrew troops from Boston and dropped most of the Townshend duties. But to preserve the principle of Parliamentary supremacy, Parliament kept the tax on tea. Therefore, colonists continued to boycott British tea and to drink smuggled Dutch tea.

Which is true about the Land Ordinance of 1785

It designed a system for distributing public lands

How did the Land Ordinance of 1785 favor wealthy speculators over ordinary settlers

It set the cost of public lands at prices too high for most settlers

Farmers Revolt in Massachusetts

Meanwhile, a slowdown in the trading of goods increased unemployment in the seaports and reduced the prices paid to farmers for their produce. Without the West Indian market for their shipping, Americans could not pay for their imported manufactured goods. Their debts to British suppliers mounted. In 1785, those suppliers curtailed their credit and demanded payments from the American import merchants. These demands sent a shock wave through the weak American economy as the importers sought to collect from their own debtors in the countryside. Most Americans were farmers, and most farmers were in debt. They lacked the cash to pay their debts on short notice, especially when prices fell for their crops. Losing lawsuits for debt, they faced the loss of their crops, livestock, and even their farms to foreclosure. In western Massachusetts in 1786, farmers took up arms to shut down the courts to block any foreclosure hearings. Farmers did not want to lose their property or go to prison, but they could not pay the higher taxes imposed by the Massachusetts government. One of their leaders was Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolutionary War. In 1787, he led about 1,000 farmers to seize weapons from the Springfield Armory and again attempted to shut down the courts. But the elected leaders of Massachusetts insisted that the new Republic could not survive if people violently interfered with the courts. In eastern Massachusetts, the state raised an army, which marched west to suppress what became known as Shays' Rebellion Most other states avoided rebellion by satisfying their debtors with relief measures. Some states suspended lawsuits for debt until the depression lifted. More common were state laws to flood the money supply with paper money. Paper money made it easier for debtors to pay, while reducing the value that creditors could collect. Naturally, what relieved the debtors infuriated their creditors, who felt cheated. Creditors blamed the relief measures on excessive democracy. They saw the state governments as too responsive to the opinion of the public, which had wanted debtor relief. James Madison agreed: "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as [by] the abuses of power." Some thought of abandoning republicanism in favor of an American monarchy. But most hoped to save the Republic by establishing a stronger national government. This stronger government would therefore be capable of controlling the states whenever they threatened commercial property.

The Boston Massacre

One night in March 1770, a group of colonists hurled snowballs and rocks at British soldiers guarding the Customs House. The nervous soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five colonists. Under the leadership of Samuel Adams, Patriots called the killings the Boston Massacre. Adams later organized a network of local committees of correspondence throughout Massachusetts. The committees provided leadership and promoted cooperation. By 1773, several other colonies had created similar committees, which helped build colonial unity. As a result, the British withdrew troops from Boston and dropped most of the taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts.

Northwest Ordinance

One of the accomplishments of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation was the creation of plans for settling and governing the Northwest Territory. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established a territorial government. The citizens would enjoy freedom of religion, trial by jury, and the rights of common law. The ordinance also barred slavery from this vast territory. When the population of a territory reached 60,000, the people could request admission to the Union as a state. The Northwest Territory later formed the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.

Congress Creates a Plan for Western Lands

One of the most important accomplishments of the national Congress under the Articles of Confederation was the creation of plans for both settling and governing a vast territory that they had authority over. This territory, called the Northwest Territory, lay north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River. By selling this land to speculators and farmers, the Congress hoped to raise revenue and extend America's republican society westward. Northwest Territory vast territory north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania as far as the Mississippi River

Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry, a young Virginia representative, used these ideas (enlightenment ideas) to draft a radical document known as the Virginia Resolves. He argued that only the colonial assemblies had the right to tax the colonists On May 30, 1765, the Virginia House of Burgesses accepted most of Henry's resolves, but rejected two because they were deemed too radical. Colonial newspapers, however, printed all six, believing that they had been accepted. Eight other colonies then adopted resolves similar to Henry's original proposal.

Relations with Britain Deteriorate

Relations with the British Empire were also strained. In the peace treaty that ended the American Revolution in 1783, the British had tried to cultivate American goodwill. A year later, the British abandoned that policy in favor of making the Americans pay for their independence. Rejecting the new doctrine of free trade championed by Adam Smith, the British renewed their traditional mercantilism as defined by the Navigation Acts. This meant that Americans could only trade with the British Empire under rules that favored British interests. They could certainly import all the British manufactures that they wanted, but they could no longer freely send their ships to trade with the British West Indies—the most important market for American fish, lumber, and grains. During the 1780s, the British reserved this valuable trade for their ships to benefit their merchants. They alone could carry the American produce needed by West Indian consumers. This restriction especially hurt Massachusetts, which had more ships than any other state and a greater need for the West Indian market for its fish and lumber. In retaliation, Massachusetts prohibited British ships from transporting its exports. But this retaliation did not work because the other states did not support Massachusetts. In addition, the Congress was too weak to coordinate a common front against Britain's mercantile policy. American merchants began to call for a stronger national government. The British Empire also embarrassed the Confederation by keeping frontier forts on the American side of the boundary set by the peace treaty. To please the Indians, the British kept their forts at Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac. For justification, the British cited American violations of the peace treaty. Contrary to the spirit of the treaty, some states had blocked attempts by British merchants to collect debts and attempts by Loyalists to reclaim their confiscated properties. The Congress could not make the states honor the treaty. The British hold on the forts angered Americans, but they could do nothing because they could not afford an army. Like the merchants, many settlers wanted a national government strong enough to compel British respect on the frontier.

Leaders Organize a Boycott

Some colonial leaders opposed the tax but feared the violence of the crowds. To control and coordinate their protest activities, nine colonies sent delegates to a Stamp Act Congress held in New York City in October 1765. Members of this congress encouraged a consumer boycott of goods imported from Britain. Local committees enforced these nonimportation agreements, which threatened British merchants and manufacturers with economic ruin Women played an important economic role in the boycotts. When colonists stopped buying British goods, they needed "homespun" cloth to substitute for British-manufactured cloth. Gatherings of women to spin thread and weave cloth drew applause from spectators and from the Patriot newspapers. Women also gave up certain comforts when they pledged not to buy any manufactured British goods. Known as "Daughters of Liberty," these women won respect for their efforts in the political struggle. The combination of tactics worked. Under pressure from British merchants and manufacturers, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. But the struggle was not over, for Parliament also passed an act declaring its right to levy taxes on the colonists.

Intensified Protests

Tax resistance among the colonists took three forms: intellectual protest, economic boycotts, and violent intimidation. Colonists protested through the publication of rebellious literature, such as the Virginia Resolves by Patrick Henry. Colonists enacted a consumer boycott of goods imported from Great Britain. Colonists also reacted violently to the taxes. In one clash with British soldiers, several colonists were killed. This incident became known as the Boston Massacre.

Colonial Protests Intensify

Tax resistance among the colonists took three forms: intellectual protest, economic boycotts, and violent intimidation. All three forms combined to force the British to back down. Colonial leaders wrote pamphlets, drafted resolutions, gave speeches, and delivered sermons to persuade colonists to defy the new taxes. The surge in political activity astonished John Adams, a prominent Massachusetts lawyer who observed "our presses have groaned, our pulpits have thundered, our legislatures have resolved, our towns have voted."

Powers of the National Congress

The Articles granted certain limited powers to Congress. These powers were mostly external: to declare and conduct war and to negotiate peace, to regulate foreign affairs and to administer relations with Indian nations. The Congress had no power to raise money through taxes. Therefore, it relied on contributions from the states, which were unreliable. On some minor issues, a majority of seven states could pass a law. But on the major issues, including declaring war and making treaties, two thirds of the states (nine) had to approve. Amending the Articles was almost impossible because all 13 states had to approve any change. In 1781, all states finally ratified the Articles.

British Government is a Model

The British government had three branches. Executive power belonged to the monarch. Legislative power was divided between two houses of Parliament: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Aristocrats inherited seats in the House of Lords. Only the House of Commons depended on elections by a small percentage of the people. Similarly, each colony except Pennsylvania had a two-house legislature: an elected assembly and a council of prominent colonists appointed to life terms by the governor. The governor was appointed by, represented, and served the king. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island elected their own governor, while Pennsylvania's entire assembly was elected. The colonists did not elect any members of British Parliament. By modern standards, the British system was far from democratic. But democracy seemed foolish and dangerous in a society where people inherited wildly unequal property and status. In 1770, the British prime minister, Lord North, insisted, "I can never acquiesce in the absurd opinion that all men are equal." Most Britons and colonists agreed, and wealthy men controlled government in the colonies as in Great Britain.

How did Patrick Henry's words "I am not a Virginian, but an American" symbolize the importance of the First Continental Congress

The First Continental Congress helped unite the separate colonies

Which statement best describes the significance of the First Continental Congress

The First Continental Congress showed unified colonial opposition to the Coercive Acts

Which of the following barred slavery from the lands that would become Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Governing Western Lands

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided a government for the western territory based on Thomas Jefferson's ideas. At first, the Congress would appoint a territorial government led by a governor, secretary, and three judges. The citizens would enjoy freedom of religion, trial by jury, and the rights of common law, including habeas corpus. Once a territory had 5,000 men, they could establish an elected assembly—but the governor retained an absolute veto over its laws. When the population of a territory reached 60,000, the people could request admission to the Union as a state on equal terms with the original 13 states, provided the new state adopted a republican constitution. The Northwest Territory later formed the midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. law which provided a basis for governing the Northwest Territory The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 also barred slavery from this territory, which meant that the five new states would enter the Union as free states rather than slave states. This federal restriction set a precedent that would later alarm people in southern states who wanted to expand slavery throughout the territories. By adopting the Northwest ordinances, the Congress discarded the British model of keeping colonies in permanent subordination. The Congress designed the territories to attract American settlers and to assure their acceptance of federal rule. In the wake of the Revolution, few Americans would settle where they could not enjoy basic freedoms, including the right to elect those who would set their taxes. But freedom and opportunity for Americans came at the expense of the region's 100,000 Indians, who were expected to give up their lands and relocate elsewhere. During the mid-1780s, however, the Indians resisted, and the federal government lacked the means to defeat them. For want of money, the Confederation reduced its army to only 350 men who could barely defend themselves much less conquer the territory.

Proclamation of 1763

The Proclamation of 1763 was a law imposed by the British government on the colonies to prevent settlers from moving west of the Appalachian Mountains. As part of a peace agreement between Great Britain and Native Americans at the end of the French and Indian War, the British agreed to enforce the proclamation, and they ordered settlers to remain east of the Appalachians. The colonists resented this law and refused to obey it. British troops were unable to prevent the colonists from pushing westward.

New Taxes Upset Colonists

The Seven Years' War—called the French and Indian War in the colonies—nearly doubled Britain's national debt and greatly expanded its colonial territories. Parliament needed to raise money, both to pay the debt and to protect the colonies. People in Britain paid far more taxes than the colonists did. This imbalance seemed unfair, for the war had been fought largely to protect the colonists. Parliament decided that the colonists could and should pay more to help the Empire.

The Spanish Forbid American Trade

The Spanish had never liked American independence, and they distrusted American expansion westward because they feared it threatened their colonies of Louisiana and Mexico. To discourage settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains, the Spanish forbade American trade with New Orleans. American settlers expected to ship their produce down the Mississippi River to market in Spanish-held New Orleans. The Congress lost support from western settlers when it almost accepted the closure of New Orleans in return for commercial agreements to benefit northeastern merchants. George Washington observed, "The Western settlers . . . stand, as it were, upon a pivot; the touch of a feather would turn them any way."

New Taxes Lead to New Protests

The Stamp Act crisis showed that the colonists would not accept a direct tax. But the British government still needed to raise money to pay its debt and support troops in the colonies. Charles Townshend, the Crown's chief financial officer, thought that colonists would accept indirect taxes on commerce. After all, they had long accepted customs duties in principle, though evading them in practice. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied new import duties on everyday items such as glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. To Townshend's surprise, the colonists insisted that they would pay no new taxes of any sort to Parliament. They also resented Townshend's plans to use the money to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges, making them more independent of the colonial assemblies. That prospect alarmed the colonists, who valued their financial control of the governors.

Taxation Without Representation

The colonists angrily protested the Stamp Act, which was to take effect in November. They claimed that it threatened their prosperity and liberty. Colonial leaders questioned Parliament's right to tax the colonies directly. They argued that the colonies had no representation in Parliament, so Parliament had no right to tax them. Some colonists believed that if they accepted this tax, Parliament would add ever more taxes, stripping away their property and political rights. Many colonists thought that the stamp tax revealed a conspiracy by British officials to destroy American liberties The colonists' arguments puzzled the members of Parliament. After all, most Britons paid taxes although they could not vote. Many large British cities did not elect representatives to Parliament, which claimed to represent everyone in the Empire. Parliament dismissed the colonial opposition as selfish and narrow-minded. The Empire needed money, and Parliament had the right to levy taxes anywhere in the Empire. Of course, Parliament's argument did not sway the colonists, who were appalled to discover that the British were denying their right to tax themselves.

Political Heritage

The colonists believed that Great Britain enjoyed the best government in the world, which included due process, freedom of the press, and freedom from taxation. Colonial governments divided power among three branches. The legislative branches were bicameral, meaning that power was divided between two houses Unlike the British, colonial laws, individual rights, and rules of government were written down in formal or legal documents..

The Colonists' Political Heritage

The colonists believed that Great Britain enjoyed the best government on Earth. British liberty included the due process of the common law, trial by jury, and freedom of the press from prior censorship. Above all, the colonists cherished the right to pay no tax unless it was levied by their representatives. Colonial governments followed the British model, but the colonists' protests of the 1760s revealed that there were some important differences.

The Intolerable Acts

The colonists were outraged. In addition to closing the port, the acts forced colonists to house British troops and allowed British officials to be tried in Britain for crimes committed in the colonies. In addition, the Quebec Act extended Canada's southern border, cutting off lands claimed by several colonies. The horrified colonists called the legislation the Intolerable Acts. They rejected the idea that the British could shut down trade and change colonial governments at will. American name for the Coercive Acts, which Parliament passed in 1774 to control the colonies

Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

The fledgling government under the Articles of Confederation found itself facing a host of difficulties. It soon became clear to many that the Articles themselves were part of the problem. Congress could not levy or collect taxes Congress was powerless to regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade Each state had only one vote in Congress, regardless of its size A two-thirds majority (9 out of 13 states) was required to pass laws Articles could only be amended with the consent of all states No separate executive branch to enforce acts of Congress No system of federal courts

Some States Reject Executive Power

The more democratic Patriots wanted to create state governments with strong legislatures and weak governors (or with no governor at all). Seeking greater rights for the people, these leaders preferred a unicameral legislature, or one with a single house, whose members were elected by the people. Pennsylvania and Georgia adopted these more democratic constitutions.

Structure of the New Nation

The new federal, or national, government consisted of a congress of delegates, chosen by state legislatures rather than by voters. Although states could choose to send as many as seven delegates, each state—no matter how large or small—had a single vote. Enormous Virginia had no more power than tiny Rhode Island. T`he powers to make, implement, and enforce the laws were all placed with the Congress. The national government included no President or executive branch. Instead, executive power was spread among several committees of congressmen.

Shay's Rebellion

The new government under the Articles of Confederation was unable to raise money it needed to pay the country's debts. British policies on trade also weakened the economy. Farmers were in danger of losing their crops, and even their farms. In western Massachusetts in 1786, farmers took up arms to shut down the courts to stop officials from taking their lands. In 1787, Daniel Shays led about 1,000 farmers to seize weapons from the Springfield Armory and again attempted to shut down the courts. In response, Massachusetts raised an army, which marched west to suppress the rebellion. After Shays' Rebellion, many agreed that the U.S. needed a stronger federal government.

The Boston Tea Party

The tea boycott worsened financial problems for the already struggling British East India Company. To help the company and encourage the colonists to pay the tax, Parliament passed a law allowing the company to sell directly to the colonists. This made their tea cheaper than the smuggled tea, even with the tax. Instead of buying the cheaper tea, the colonists protested that the British were trying to trick them into paying the tax. If the East India Company sold tea directly, it would also hurt the wealthy colonists who smuggled tea. On the night of December 16, 1773, Boston Patriots took matters into their own hands. Dressed as Indians, they boarded three British ships laden with tea and dumped the tea into the harbor. The event became known as the Boston Tea Party. December 16, 1773 protest against British taxes in which Bostonians disguised as Native Americans dumped tea into the harbor

Why did the colonists protest passage of the Stamp Act

They believed that without representation in Parliament, they should not be taxed

At the First Continental Congress, what significant action did delegates organize against the British

They called for a boycott of all British imports

Why did Massachusetts and New York choose a bicameral legislature

To balance powers between common people and wealthy people

Why did colonists form committees to enforce nonimportation agreements

To ensure that colonists observed the boycott of British goods

Why did the Sons of Liberty form

To lead popular protests against the Stamp Act

Why did Parliament raise taxes on the colonies after the French and Indian War

To pay war debts and keep the colonies safe

What was the goal of the committees of correspondence

To provide unity and leadership for anti-British colonists

Why did Pennsylvania and Georgia choose a unicameral legislature and a weak governor

To put the power in the hands of an elected body

Why did the federal government sell land in the Northwest Territory

To raise money and extend society westward

Why did colonial women gather to spin thread and weave cloth?

To support colonial boycotts against British-made goods

Economic Weakness

Under the Articles, the federal Congress could not establish a common currency, nor could it regulate interstate commerce or levy taxes. For financial support, the Congress relied solely on contributions from the states, which were unreliable. And the Congress could do nothing to compel states to pay their share. Without money, the federal government could not fund its immense war debts. Between 1781 and 1786, the Congress received only one sixth of what it requested from the states. By 1786, it needed $2.5 million to pay the interest on its debts but had only $400,000 on hand. The states had bankrupted the nation To survive, the Congress sought a constitutional amendment to permit a federal 5 percent duty on imported goods. Twice, that amendment failed when a single state balked: Rhode Island in 1782 and New York in 1786. If amending the Articles was so difficult, perhaps only a new constitution could save the Union.

Early State Governments

Upon declaring independence in 1776, the Congress invited each new state to create a constitution to establish a government. Although these documents varied, they all called for republics, or governments in which the people elect their representatives. But the Patriots disagreed over the proper design for those republics. Some Patriots, such as Thomas Paine, sought changes that would promote democracy by putting more power in the hands of the people. But more conservative Patriots distrusted the ability of the common people. They hoped instead to preserve many colonial institutions.

Distributing Western Lands

Western settlement, however, threatened to escape the government's control. By 1784, hundreds of settlers had already crossed the Ohio River to make their own farms. This provoked war with the Native Americans, who defended their land. Already strapped for cash, the federal leaders could not afford to fight wars provoked by unregulated settlement. Congressmen also feared that the settlers would secede from the Union, form their own states, and turn to the British or the Spanish empire for protection. If deprived of the western lands, the federal government would be hard-pressed to pay its debts and would probably collapse. To save the Union, the federal leaders needed to regulate frontier settlement. In ordinances, or laws, adopted in 1785 and 1787, the Congress defined a program for managing the Northwest Territory. In the Land Ordinance of 1785, the Congress designed a system for dispensing, or distributing, the public lands. By running a grid of lines north to south and east to west, federal surveyors divided the land into hundreds of townships, each six square miles. They then subdivided each township into 36 "sections" of one square mile (640 acres), to be sold for at least one dollar per acre. Because ordinary farmers could not afford to pay $640, the price and size of the sections favored wealthy land speculators who had cash. To obtain land, ordinary settlers had to buy it from the speculators. The Congress sometimes broke its own rules to further benefit speculators. For example, in 1787, the Congress sold 1.5 million acres for a mere 10 cents per acre to the Ohio Company, a politically powerful group of land speculators and army officers from New England.

Mayflower Compact

framework for self-government of the Plymouth Colony signed on the ship the Mayflower in 1620 Unlike the British, American colonists included the rights of the people in their plans for government.

Boston Massacre

incident on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers killed five colonists in Boston

Unicameral Legislature

lawmaking body made up of a single house

Bicameral Legislature

lawmaking body made up of two houses

Sons of Liberty

organization of colonists formed in opposition to the Stamp Act and other British laws and taxes

Why did most states ultimately choose a bicameral legislature

to create a balance of power Most states chose a bicameral legislature because it balanced the power of the common voters in the House with that of the wealthy, well-educated gentlemen in the Senate.

Why did Daniel Shays and other farmers in western Massachusetts take up arms in an attempt to shut down the courts?

to stop foreclosure on their farms Shays' Rebellion demonstrated how desperate America's farmers were in the face of Britain's aggressive trade policies. Local courts initiated foreclosure proceedings against many farmers who were unable to pay their debts.