US History Part 2

Burned Over District

Finney was also significant became he was active in the 'Burned-Over District' of Western New York - so-called because the preachers constantly warned against hellfire and damnation. Converts came from established sects and even from those who did not attend church. Religious revivalism tended to affect Methodists, Baptists and other new sects such as the Adventists and the Mormons. It attracted individuals from less prosperous and less educated communities. The evangelical movement traveled from New York, into Ohio, Kentucky and the South. Meanwhile the Northeast remained a stronghold of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians. The effect on the United States was profound. The early republic had embraced Enlightenment ideals. The majority of people didn't actively participate in organized religion. The president and most politicians made few public references to God. But by the middle of the nineteenth century this was a Christian nation. 1/3 of all Americans attended church regularly. It is estimated that between 1820 and 1860: 40,000 new churches were built. Camp meetings helped with the popularity of religion but women gave all of this staying power. A key feature of the Second Great Awakening was the feminization of religion. Middle-class women, the daughters of businessmen, were some of the first to embrace religious revivalism. They also made up the majority of new church members. Many evangelicals preached directly to women, with a gospel of female spiritual worth. Just as women were responsible for the civic education of their children under republican motherhood, they were also invested with the responsibility of bringing their husbands and families to church.

Lowell Mill

Once back in America, Lowell established his own mill during the War of 1812. By 1815, Lowell and his partners had made profits of 25 percent allowing them to survive the war and post-war depression. Eventually these early mills led to the establishment of the Lowell Mill in 1822. The Lowell Mill was much larger than its predecessors, it became the basis for America's textile industry. The mill had an innovative idea to centralize all aspects of cloth production: combing, shrinking, spinning, weaving, and dyeing. By 1836, the eight different mills in the Lowell factory complex employed more than five thousand young women, who lived in carefully managed company-owned boardinghouses. The owners of the mills preferred to hire girls because they had nimble, small hands, and would work for wages lower than male workers. The Lowell Mills started as a place for women to experience some level of economic freedom. The only other real economic opportunity for most women was household service. Although they were not paid equally to men, they were still paid, which gave women a new sense of independence from the world of husbands and fathers.

Love & Sex

Reform also led to new interpretations of love & sex. While polar opposites, the Shaker and Oneida Communities represent new experiments in family relations within utopian communities. Most utopian communities challenged conventional gender roles and marriage patterns. The Oneidans and Shakers are improtant because they show how many wanted a way out of the class division and sexual repression of the market economy.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

laid out a long term plan for the admission of five new states - Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. also banned slavery in the region, but allowed slave owners to reclaim escaped slaves.

Cabinet

practice of the British government but something not mentioned in the Constitution. first consisted of only three positions: he Secretary of State (Thomas Jefferson) to deal with foreign matters, the Secretary of War (Henry Knox) to deal with military issues, and the Secretary of the Treasury, (Alexander Hamilton) to manage the nation's finances.

Gabriel's Rebellion

Gabriel started an armed insurrection in Richmond, VA. This was not just a spontaneous insurrection. Gabriel's plan for the rebellion was to coincide with the 1800 election. He drew inspiration from the story of Saint-Domingue as well as the political division in the Untied States between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Gabriel had built a network in Richmond of slaves and radical French emigrants. His followers planned to carry a banner through town proclaiming 'Death or Liberty', clearly in imitation of earlier revolutionary slogans. Gabriel believed that all of the oppressed, including free blacks and white artisans, would join his cause. Gabriel planned to set fire to the city of Richmond, seize the capitol building, and capture the state's governor, James Monroe. Gabriel's hopes for freedom were cut short when the rebellion was betrayed, and the conspirators were captured, tried, and executed in October 1800. In response to Gabriel's Rebellion, Virginia imposed harsher slave codes to crackdown on any further rebellious slaves. The sad irony of slave rebellions is that they tended to make slavery even more firmly entrenched than before as white slave-owners overreacted to attacks on their way of life.

Virginia Plan

"Large state" proposal for the new constitution James Madison. It proposed a two house national legislature chosen according to proportional representation. Bicameral Drawing on Montesquieu's theory of separation of powers, Madison also proposed a judicial branch and an executive with a president elected by the legislature create a system of checks and balances; prevent any one branch of the government from becoming dictatorial. differed from the Articles of Confederation in its underlying philosophy. The plan rejected state sovereignty in favor of national authority. The national government would be established by the people (not the states National laws would operate directly on citizens and the people would have the power to overturn state laws. three-tier election system: The people would elect the lower house; the lower house would elect the upper house; and Congress would choose the executive and the judiciary.

NINA

'No Irish Need Apply' was a sign commonly posted at factory gates. American Protestants had strong prejudices against the Catholic Irish. Take this advertisement for housework in a nineteenth century newspaper: "Wanted. A Cook or Chambermaid ... must be American, Scotch, Swiss or African-no Irish." As they competed for the same low-level jobs, the Irish also fiercely resented freed black workers. Race riots broke out between black and Irish dockworkers flared up in several port cities. Because of this, the Irish generally opposed abolitionism. If you look closely, these advertisements bring me to my next point, German Protestants.

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

-1786 -Thomas Jefferson -It guaranteed Virginians FREEDOM OF RELIGION and influenced the first amendment -SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE- the state could not have an official religion

Federalist Party

.favored a strong national government and advocated the rule of the 'best people', meaning the wealthy and educated. Federalists distrusted full-blown democracy because they believed that the common person lacked the self-control to make up their mind. Because of their elite position and interest in maintaining peace with Great Britain, merchants, manufacturers, and shippers all backed the Federalist party.

Fulwar Skipwith

1765-1839 U.S. Consul to the French island of Martinique, from 1790-93 Poor timing led Skipwith to arrive in Martinique while the French government was dealing with the Revolution. Due to this, Skipwith remained unrecognized by the new French government, which meant he lived on Martinique without an official position as a U.S. diplomat. To survive, Skipwith provided for himself by trading from the island as a merchant. After three years without recognition, Skipwtih was fed up and he decided to leave Martinique. In 1793 he sent his property home only to discover that his ship was captured by the British and condemned as enemy property. According to the British Admiralty courts, Skipwith had become French by simply trading from the island. Despite his birth in Virginia (he was a cousin of Jefferson), and his official position in the American government, Skipwith spent the next decade tracking down every government official he could find on either side of the Atlantic to prove that he was an American. They provided him with the correct documentation, but every time he brought this evidence to the British government he received the same reply: To the British Skipwith's property was the property of a French merchant.

French Revolution

1789-1799. Period of political and social upheaval in France, during which the French government underwent structural changes, and adopted ideals based on Enlightenment principles of nationalism, citizenship, and inalienable rights. Changes were accompanied by violent turmoil and executions. By 1792 the revolution had started to radicalize beginning with the imprisonment of the Royal Family and the declaration of war on most of Europe most Americans supported the Revolutionary cause showed their enthusiasm by wearing French clothing, and public festivals imitated new French rituals about 'Reason' and 'Liberty'. Matters changed, however, by the end of 1792 when the Revolution radicalized. At the end of the year, the new French government began a program of Terror dedicated to hunting down the internal enemies of the Revolution. Anyone who seemed to be supporting monarchy, or even siding with the wrong party was targeted by the Terror. These individuals often faced execution by the guillotine. Tens of thousands were guillotined over the next two years. execution of the royal family in 1793 and the arrest of leaders like Lafayette. This is the moment when American support broke in half. United States there were serious social and political consequences to the French Revolution. It also led to troubling questions: If the French based their revolution on American liberty, was the United States susceptible to the same kind of Terror? And what effect would the French Revolution have on American politics?

Whiskey Rebellion

1794 As part of Hamilton's scheme to recover from revolutionary war debt, new taxes were placed on distilled liquor in 1791. This simple tax started a firestorm because it threatened the livelihoods of farmers living in Western Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Maryland and Kentucky. From the federal government's perspective this was a simple tax on a luxury good. Farmers, however, made more of a profit by shipping liquor to urban markets than by shipping corn. So farmers refused to pay the tax and in Pennsylvania this refusal led to an open rebellion started in July when a crowd attacked the local tax collector by burning his home. 6,000 protesters, including some members of the Pennsylvania militia, then gathered in Pittsburgh and threatened widespread violence. Washington responded by asserting federal power through military force. Hamilton, Washington's old aid in the Revolutionary War, led 15,000 federalized militia troops from other states into Pennsylvania in September. Troops managed to arrest the rebellion's leaders without widespread violence, but the use of federal military power against domestic protesters outraged the Democratic-Republicans. Washington meanwhile blamed the Democratic-Republicans for the rebellion, he believed that radical pro-Jefferson political clubs had encouraged the protesters. To many, on both sides, the Whiskey Rebellion seemed a lot like the American version of the French Revolutionary Terror.

Lewis and Clark Expedition

1804-1806 Jefferson had planned an expedition beyond the Missouri River even before the Louisiana Purchase. The purchase though gave this expedition increased importance. Jefferson sent his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, a retired army officer, to lead the expedition. The two left with 29 Men (called the Corps of Discovery) on May 14 1804. The Corps included Kentucky hunters, soldiers, French Canadian boatmen, an interpreter, and Clark's slave, 'York'. The expedition had several tasks ahead of them. The Corps was to communicate to Indian nations that the U.S. now controlled the Louisiana Territory. The Corps was also told to make new discoveries by observing plants and animals. Most importantly for future settlement, the Corps was to chart out maps of the expedition. This would also allow the U.S. to plot out future routes of trade to the Pacific. As late as 1804 they were still looking for the Northwest Passage to China! The Corps of Discovery first traveled up the Missouri River and met with powerful Indian groups in the region, including: The Lakota (Teton Sioux) and Yankton Sioux.

Articles of Confederation

1st Constitution of the U.S. 1781-1788 (weaknesses-no executive, no judicial, no power to tax, no power to regulate trade) set up an alliance between the 13 independent states drafted in 1777 during the Revolution, but it took until 1781 for all of the states to ratify national government, but its power was severely limited to declaring war, signing treaties, and establishing a postal service. forbade a standing army -- this was part of a wider republican belief that focused on restraining military power in favor of volunteer militias. could only be amended if all the sates approved meaning that it was very difficult to change the way the government worked. There was no executive branch to enforce laws (so there was no effective way to regulate the government). Finally, there was no national court system (no unified way of settling disputes among the states), instead each state had its own court system, leading to contradictory decisions.

convention

55 delegates met on May 25, 1787 held in complete secrecy with armed guards at the doors. Convention elected George Washington as the the president of the convention. With the exception of Ben Franklin (who was 81) Washington was alone. The rest of the Revolutionary generation (Adams, Jefferson, Paine) were all in Europe. Others, like Samuel Adams, refused to participate in the Convention or were simply not asked elected to 'revise' the Articles, but they quickly decided to scrap them in place of an entirely new government. In doing so, they basically overthrew the government. United States would act as a representative republic rather than a monarchy.

Federalist Papers

A collection of 85 articles written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison under the name "Publius" to defend the Constitution in detail. a wide-ranging argument in favor of ratification. used Enlightenment political theories to show the public that the constitution was necessary.

Annapolis Convention

A convention held in September 1786 to consider problems of trade and navigation, attended by five states and important because it issued the call to Congress and the states for what became the Constitutional Convention

Nullification

A state's refusal to recognize an act of Congress that it considers unconstitutional Madison and Jefferson secretly drafted a series of resolutions for the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in 1798 and 1799 to formally oppose the Alien & Sedition Acts. the justification was that the national government was the creation of the states and therefore individual states were the final judge of all laws. Other state legislatures did not fall into line and even denounced Kentucky and Virginia for the resolutions, which avoided a much larger conflict. It was a dangerous precedent for the relationship between the federal government and the individual states. Southerners later used these ideas to support the nullification of other federal laws and even secession. For the election of 1800, the resolutions were really campaign documents for the Democratic-Republican Party.

Navigation Act

A strict exclusive system for trade. Foreigners were not allowed to trade with another country's colonies. So Americans still relied heavily on trade with the British West Indies, but that trade was now in violation.

Quasi War with France

Adams was angry as a result of XYZ affair War with France was never declared For over two and a half years (from 1798 to 1800) American privateers and the new American navy captured 80 French vessels. everal hundred American ships were lost as well. As the primary victims of the French, the war further turned Federalists against France. New England ministers even preached that the French Revolution was a conspiracy against their religion and way of life. By 1799 French ships hovered off the coast of America making the potential of a French invasion seem very real. Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans continued to oppose war with France but this only hurt their own political standing. To the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans were traitors Adams enjoyed his highest personal popularity, which he loved. Adams, however, was more of a leader than a politician and he didn't want war. In October 1799 Adams decided to send a new team of diplomats to France. When the American envoys arrived in Paris, they found that the French were far more receptive. Napoleon Bonaparte had seized power and he was eager to end this little war with America. At the Convention of 1800 France agreed to annul the old alliance and pay damages for the seized ships.

Protest

After several decades, conditions in the mills began to deteriorate. The workday at the Lowell Mill was 12 hours, and the mills were often hot and cramped. Corporation rules at the mill required church attendance and prohibited drinking and unsupervised courtship with dorms locked at 10 p.m. Workers were stuck in the factory, and the factory then became the center of the worker's social life. The women were forbidden to form unions, but they eventually grew frustrated with their employers, and labor strikes broke out in response to these poor working conditions. Although the Lowell girls were not very successful, the strikes were nonetheless significant because they spurred a flood of strikes nationwide in an attempt to combat unfair employment practices.

Latin American Independence

After the British signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, they soon ended the Napoleonic Wars as well. The western world was suddenly at peace and by 1815 the international situation in the Americas had changed drastically. Largely this was because Spain had lost control over its Latin American colonies. Out of resistance, the Latin American colonies refused to listen to orders from Europe. Because of this, there were widespread rebellions against the Spanish colonial governments as insurgents created their own armies. The governments of all the major European powers were interested in the Latin American struggle because they recognized this as an untapped market. Remember that Spain had always jealously guarded its empire so this was a chance to steal Spain's trade with its colonies. The U.S. was also interested in this market for trade, but they were more alarmed by European interference in Latin America. In September 1815, the U.S. officially proclaimed its neutrality in Spain's wars with its colonies, but many U.S. traders and private citizens aided the Latin American rebels. American public opinion was in the rebels' favor as many were convinced that these independence movements were emulating the American Revolution.

Penny Presses

All of this brings us to the first mass culture in American history. Industrialization lowered the price of leisure and the cost of recreational goods. Printers began producing newspapers in greater volume at a lower cost. By the 1830s there were thousands of 'penny presses' in every city. These papers had no party affiliation, so they did not depend on political support. Instead they relied on individual sales and advertising. The working-class in particular could afford these newspapers. Penny presses featured 'stories' that were meant to entertain their audiences. Generally these were human interest tales about murders, robberies and assaults. Serialized fiction also appeared in these papers. Fictional stories were meant to appeal to female readers with tales of romance and duplicity. When politics did occur, it was the politics of scandal. Reporters began investigating political news to report on corruption in high office, to the horror of politicians. By 1840, newspaper readership in the United States, whose population was 17 million, exceeded that of Europe, whose population was over 200 million.

Judicial Review

Allows the court to determine the constitutionality of laws As we saw with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions against the Alien & Sedition Acts, it was unclear at this point who had the final say to decide which laws were constitutional. Jefferson and Madison claimed the states could nullify laws. Marshall argued that it was up to the Supreme Court through a process of judicial review. Judicial review remains the primary duty of the Supreme Court today.

John Adams

America's first Vice-President and second President. 1797-1801 It was a narrow victory, he won by only 3 electoral votes. Federalist Thom as Jefferson, the leader of the Democratic-Republicans, received the second-highest vote total and was elected Vice President. The fact that the president and Vice President could come from opposing political parties showed to what degree the Constitution had underestimated the power of factionalism in the Early Republic. As Washington's Vice President, Adams was a natural choice, but he experienced considerable opposition among Federalists. Many like Alexander Hamilton believed that Adams was not sufficiently conservative to guard the interests of the Federalist Party. Really Adams was never the most popular man in the Federalist Party. As one historian described him, he was a 'tactless and prickly intellectual aristocrat'. Adams also had a monumental ego. Washington's birthday had been celebrated by the entire nation and Adams had expected the same treatment. Adams tried to rise above the divisions in his own party. Adams tried to maintain Washington's cabinet, but Hamilton - who had resigned in 1795 - actively plotted with members of the cabinet against Adams. This effectively split the Federalist Party between Hamilton and Adams at a moment when they most needed their unity. There was one bright spot: Adams's election offered the prospect of continued Federalist rule. During the '96 election Federalists had also won a slim majority in Congress and this majority enabled Adams to set policies without worrying about compromise with the Democratic-Republicans.

Strike

American workers also drew inspiration from European labor writers and activists. In the 1830s many Europeans toured American cities, encouraging the formation of class-based political parties. The most famous was Frances Wright, a Scotswoman. In 1829 Wright went on a tour of New York City, delivering speeches that advocated for free thought and women's rights. Her performance was one of the first public addresses on politics by a woman. Wright called on American workers to use their voting power to reshape the workplace. While Workingmen's Parties did form in several northeastern cities, they had little effect on government policy.

Economic Depression 1783-84

Americans had imported on credit far more than they could actually afford. Americans could no longer make payments. The value of these imports dropped from £3.6 million to around £1 million pounds for the next two years. British merchants had over-lent and oversold and many went bankrupt because of it. English merchants and tradesmen to ignore reports of 'American wealth, American faith, [and] American prosperity'.

French Revolution Neutrality

Americans served as carriers of French (and later) Spanish colonial produce because French and Spanish ships were vulnerable to attack by the British. Commercial earnings from this trade averaged $20 million annually. American tonnage (weight of cargo) increased from 355,000 tons in 1790 to 1.1 million tons in 1808. This trade became so important that many historians argue that it provided an important stimulus to the American economy, helping to fund urbanization and industrialization. The economy recovered from its postwar debt through neutral trade.

Federalist No.10

An essay by James Madison in The Federalist (1787-1788) that challenged the view that republican governments only worked in small polities; it argued that a geographically expansive national government would better protect republican liberty. The true danger, according to Madison, was faction (something like interest groups or political parties). Madison claimed that large republics were better suited to guard against factions because large republics had so many parties and different interests, no one ground could ever seize power.

XYZ Affair

An insult to the American delegation when they were supposed to be meeting French foreign minister, Talleyrand, but instead they were sent 3 officials Adams called "X,Y, and Z" that demanded $250,000 as a bribe to see Talleyrand. The French government, known as the Directory, was also deeply corrupt by 1797. The best evidence of this comes from the initial meeting between the American and French delegations. new ambassador to France, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall joined Pinckney in a new diplomatic delegation. As a result, trade with the French was formally cut off. The Navy Department was created, the Marine Corps was reestablished, and a new army of ten thousand men was authorized.

Shay's Rebellion (1786-1787)

Angered by taxes & debts, Daniel Shay led a rebellion against the American Gov't. (SHOWED how Articles of Confederation were weak) the people didn't have a commercial bank and had to borrow from each other; were in large debt. They also petitioned legislatures for redress but little was done. In 1786 frustrations in Massachusetts soon turned into violence when a group of farmers, led by Daniel Shays, protested the taxes put in place by the Massachusetts state government. The government denied them the right to assemble, so they marched. Shaysites shut down courts in western Massachusetts and marched on the state arsenal in order to seize the weaponry. Massachusetts state militia was called in and four of the farmers were killed. Shays fled and the state government appealed to Congress for help. Shays' Rebellion underlined the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and highlighted the fact that there was no central government to help put down such rebellions, to enforce laws, or to settle disputes.

German Protestants

Another 25% of the total immigrant population came from Germany. German immigration was different from the Irish. Germans tended to emigrate in larger family groups. They also tended to come from rural backgrounds and a strong faith in democracy and opportunity. Farming became a mainstay of these communities who often pushed farther west where they settled in new areas. Unlike the Irish, German men who immigrated to America often had labor skills that allowed them to move up in American society. All of this contributed to an increasingly diverse population as the 19th Century progressed.

Oneida

Another utopian community was Oneida. Oneida was founded in upstate New York by John Humphrey Noyes, a former pastor and the son of a congressman. Noyes believed that he had become so perfect that he had achieved a state of "purity of the heart" - basically, he had no sin in his heart. In 1836 Noyes and his followers began their community. Like the Shakers, the Oneida Community abandoned traditional marriage. Noyes preached "complex marriage," which got rid of any kind of exclusivity in affections. Complex marriage was meant to free women from their status as the property of their husbands. Within the Oneida community, any members of the community could have sex with any other member, so long as the desire was mutual. Initially, Noyes was the only male allowed to reproduce with the community's women. The other men had to practice male continence, or intercourse without ejaculation. By the 1860's Noyes had loosened the rules in order to protect the population count. Other men could now procreate with the community's women, but only the men Noyes hand selected. To raise the children of this community, nurseries were setup that were run by both men and women. Women were also allowed to their hair and wore pants under their skirts. Through sex, dress, and child-care Oneida seriously challenged nineteenth-century gender relations. The Oneida community had about 200 residents and it became financially self-sustaining through the production of steel animal traps and silverware. Their silverware was incredibly popular. Most people to this day own Oneida silverware. If you don't own any, ask your parents -- you might be surprised.

Race & Gender

As cooks and cleaners, the Chinese upheld the values of separation of spheres. Due to the general lack of women, white men would have been forced to do the 'women's work' of cooking and cleaning. The Chinese offered an escape from complicating gender roles in the west. Despite providing these essential services, Chinese immigrants were segregated in their housing and offered low-wage jobs with little chance for upward mobility. Anglo-Americans accused Chinese men of 'lusting' after white women and described Chinese laborers as lazy and childlike. The California legal system,established in 1849 created a rigid binary system of classifying its residents. Chinese, African Americans, and Indians were all classified as 'nonwhite' and denied access to the vote, to the state courts, and even to schools.

Sex in the Market Revolution

As domestic servants, these women were ordered around by the mistress of the household and often sexually exploited by masters. Cities and employment offered some women a degree of independence from their families, but they also lost the protection that came with dependence. Desperately poor women turned to prostitution, which might ruin their name. In the new market economy, prostitutes found plenty of opportunities in cities by operating in bars, gambling dens, and brothels. Commercialized sex became a new facet of urban culture. Otherwise respectable married men kept mistresses in apartments and working men frequented brothels. In the 1820s New York City had an estimated two hundred brothels, and by the 1850s that number had reached 500. Prostitutes even openly advertised their services on Broadway.

Problems with Independence

At sea, Americans were now completely without the protection of the Royal Navy or technically even an available market for their goods. Under the old colonial system, most industries were restricted to the mother country. America and the other British colonies simply provided the raw materials for British manufacturing. Americans could not create finished products out of their raw materials on their own. Americans were completely dependent on imported goods from Britain and elsewhere even after independence. Many American merchants had made their fortunes trading with the British West Indies and selling surplus cargoes to the French. This system worked for them and they wished to continue the arrangement after independence.

Moving West

At the same time that the Cherokee were expelled from their lands in Georgia, settlers from the Northeast were moving into the Midwest. The appeal of the Midwest was clear. In the East population density was at about 31 people per square mile, in the Midwest that number was closer to 8 people per square mile. This means that the Midwest offered more land and fewer annoying neighbors. The journey west was not easy. It was 2,000 miles from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Those making the journey faced disease, thirst, and the elements. If they chose to head into the Southwest they entered a land dominated by Native Americans and Mexican settlers, groups that Anglo settlers viewed with a mix of loathing and disgust.

Military Disaster

At this point, war was definitely a mistake. Even though many British policies were deeply unpopular, the United States was very much divided by the war. In the Senate only 19 voted for war with 13 against, and the House saw a similar division of 79 to 49. For America, the war was a military disaster. There were grand plans that the Americans could invade Canada and possibly even annex the territory to the United States. The U.S. invasion of Canada in 1812 led to an immediate retreat. The northern states were also unwilling to amass the men and materiel to support a major invasion of Canada. Border communities actually proclaimed their neutrality separate from the U.S. - they basically seceded. By 1814 British military victories peaked when British soldiers burned the U.S. Capitol and government buildings, wrecking Washington and forcing the government to flee in humiliation. Outside of privateering, the only U.S. victories occurred in the southwest, a relatively unimportant region of the war. The most important American victory came at the Battle of New Orleans where General Andrew Jackson crushed the British forces attacking the city. This was the greatest victory of the war for the United States and it happened a week after the signing of a peace treaty in December 1814.

Chesapeake Affair (1807)

Avoiding war was not easy. Matters were not helped by the fact that the British persisted in impressing sailors found on American ships, claiming they were in fact secretly British sailors. The British had practiced impressment as a form of conscription for centuries. It involved press gangs grabbing men in British ports or merchant ships and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy. It is estimated that from 1808 to 1811 6,000 U.S. citizens were impressed - a number of them actually died in British service. In 1807 the impressment controversy peaked when the British commander of the HMS Leopard attacked the USS Chesapeake in American waters. The Leopard was looking for British sailors who had deserted. When the American commander refused, the British fired on the Chesapeake: killing 3 and wounding 18. Taking a U.S. naval ship in U.S. waters was a violation of national sovereignty and an attack on a military vessel, both are acts of war. The attack served as a rallying cry for the nation, and even New England Federalists who were sympathetic to Great Britain were unable to defend the incident. The Chesapeake Affair was a real justification for war and the whole nation was behind the cause in 1807. Just like the predicament faced by John Adams, Jefferson had popular backing for a war the United States could not win. Instead of choosing war, Jefferson continued to favor embargoes. This decision meant that the American public soon lost its taste for war and many even became involved in violating Jefferson's embargo through smuggling.

British Orders in Council

Beginning in July 1783 (like an executive order) barred Americans from trading with the British West Indies. This initial Order simply required that all American goods travel on British ships. Subsequent orders banned fishing in the British North American waters, and heavily taxed American commodities imported into British ports. Finally an Act of Parliament in 1788 made all of these restrictions permanent. The French and Spanish similarly blocked American access to their islands through heavy import duties.

Middle-Class Homes

Between 1830 and 1857 the per capita income (per person income) of Americans increased by about 2.5% a year. While this does not sound like a lot, it was really unprecedented growth. The surge in income allowed the middle-class to purchase these new retail goods. There were class distinctions in living situations from squalid shacks to opulent mansions. Middle-class homes were outfitted with furnaces to heat water for bathing and radiators for waring the entire room. Middle-class husbands earned enough that their wives not only stayed home, but they were relieved of much of the household labor. Instead, wives hired Irish or -African-American domestic servants. Middle-class families based their culture off of European taste in art, music, dress and literature. The sons of American elites even went on a Grand Tour of travel and education in European cities. The distinctive American elements of this culture came through the theme of the self-made man. This required a new kind of moral and mental discipline that became the distinguishing mark of the middle class. They received more of an education, generally going through high school in an era when most white children only received five years of formal education. Both the business elite and the middle class celebrated work as the key to individual social mobility and national prosperity. Personal achievement became a marker of success for these families. Their success inspired men and a few women to seek more wealth.

Road to Civil War

Between Kansas-Nebraska and the Fugitive Slave Act, there no longer appeared to be any rules about free land v. slave land. The Kansas-Nebraska Act put the nation on the road to Civil War. Abolitionist Northerners were angered by the Act and all future compromises became far more difficult. The most direct impact of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the rise of the Republican Party. Opposition to the act brought together disgruntled Whigs, some Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, and radical abolitionists under the Republican Party banner. The North had more electoral votes and more seats in the House, and by 1856 there was a Republican speaker of the House. The Republicans had convinced a quarter of the norther Democrats to desert their party in favor of the new party. Overnight it became the second major political party, but the ascendancy of the Republican Party almost broke the union.

Sacagawea

Beyond the Missouri River the Corps reached a region unexplored by previous Europeans. There they relied heavily on local Indian expertise especially from the wife of a French Canadian Trader, Sacagawea. Sacagawea had been purchased by the French Canadian trader as a war captive and she was instrumental to the success of the Corps of Discovery. The expedition survived off of her linguistic and geographic skills. She was also pregnant at the time, and the birth of her son did not stop her from continuing along with the Corps.

The Excluded

Bill of Rights did not protect, this included: women, blacks, and Native Americans. The Bill of Rights would offer no protection against gender or racial discrimination for America's minorities and women. Additionally, some Southern states continued to maintain property qualifications for voting.

Macon's Bill No. 2

Britain's attack on neutral trade continued into the next administration, that of James Madison, Jefferson's former secretary of state. The embargo was finally lifted 3 days before Jefferson left office, but Madison continued to support the notion of trade sanctions in order to force the British and the French to deal with the United States fairly. The Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 reopened American trade with the rest of the world, except Great Britain and France. By May 1810 it was recognized that excluding two countries in a world so interconnected and so loosely controlled was too difficult to enforce, so all restrictions were lifted. The next attempt at controlling trade was Macon's Bill No. 2, the successor to the Non-Intercourse Act. Macon's Bill reopened trade with both countries, but threatened more trade sanctions if either side continued to harass U.S. ships. This gave the French an opportunity. France outwardly promised to stop seizing U.S. shipping, turning popular opinion against Great Britain. At this point events moved far too rapidly for Madison to control. No one ever checked to see if the French actually stopped preying on American shipping. While the British were guilty of harassing American ships, they did not want war and agreed to end impressment. British peace offers came too late, and President James Madison urged Congress to declare war in June 1812.

Executive Branch

Constitution established a robust executive in the presidency. president was to act as the commander-in-chief granting him the power to wage war (though Congress had the right to declare war) more checks and balances. The president also had the authority to make appointments to domestic offices such as judgeships as well as to veto legislation. convention placed the election of the president in an electoral college chosen on a state-by-state basis.

Compromise of 1850

By 1850 the Union was facing another crisis over the question of California's annexation. California had applied as a free state, but this would have upset the balance of free and slave states in the Union. The crisis became so bad that the Congressional Session had to be extended in order to solve the issue and protect the nation from falling apart. Eventually Democrats and Whigs agreed on the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 had five provisions: it admitted California as a free state; banned the internal slave trade in the District of Columbia; empowered the U.S. to assume Texas's debts and set the boundary of Texas; organized the territories of New Mexico and Utah on the basis of popular sovereignty; and gave the South a much stronger federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Slavery by the numbers

By 1860 there were 4 million black people held in bondage in the South. In financial terms these 4 million represented $3 billion, the single largest investment of any kind in the United States. The growth of slavery was accompanied by the contraction of slave ownership. By 1860 only 25% of southern households owned slaves, and only 10% owned more than 12 individuals. Most families who owned slaves only owned 1 or 2 workers. Just like with corporate slavery, this testifies to the diversity of the slave experience. Slaves in small households tended to work alongside the family, they slept under the same roof, and were in close contact with white people at all times. But the small households were disappearing. The economic structure of the south, with Cotton as King, tended to become monopolistic, and small farmers were forced to sell their holdings to large planters and move north or west.

American Colonization Society

By the 1830s abolition had democratized and found religion. The religious spirit of the Second Great Awakening inspired northern abolitionists against slavery. One group, the American Colonization Society, advocated for gradual emancipation of all U.S. based slaves, and the re-settlement of African-Americans in Africa. Basically, the argument here was that all former American slaves should be eventually deported to Africa and the Caribbean. Many Northerners saw this as the only way to end slavery - that unless all African Americans were gone, the South would continue to enslave them. Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the premise that America was fundamentally a white society. By the 1830s abolition had democratized and found religion. The religious spirit of the Second Great Awakening inspired northern abolitionists against slavery. One group, the American Colonization Society, advocated for gradual emancipation of all U.S. based slaves, and the re-settlement of African-Americans in Africa. Basically, the argument here was that all former American slaves should be eventually deported to Africa and the Caribbean. Many Northerners saw this as the only way to end slavery - that unless all African Americans were gone, the South would continue to enslave them. Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the premise that America was fundamentally a white society. At the New England Anti-Slavery Society, white activists joined their black peers to create a new model of an abolition society. Drawing inspiration from the ongoing democratization of American politics, activists ignored legal strategies and instead appealed directly to the people.

Charles Grandison Finney

Charles Grandison Finney was considered the greatest of the revival preachers. Finney was a lawyer who abandoned the bar to become an evangelist. It was said that he could spellbound crowds. Finney started out preaching in Rochester and New York City in 1830 and 1831. He traveled the canals and roads of the Market Revolution linking the Northeast to the Midwest. Finney was an innovator, he devised the 'anxious bench' where repenting sinners could sit in full view of the congregation. Women were also encouraged to participate and pray aloud in public. Finney offered up the promise of a Christian kingdom and used his pulpit to denounce both alcohol and slavery. While the saved often backslid into their former sinful ways, the revivals boosted church membership and stimulated a variety of humanitarian reforms.

Jay Treaty

Chief Justice John Jay was sent to England by Washington's Administration to work out a compromise. gave Americans access to the British West Indies and the British also agreed to pay damages for seizures of American ships. forced Americans to pay their pre-Revolutionary War debts, and allowed British privateers to seize enemy contraband on board American ships. British also agreed to vacate their forts in the Western territory, but this was something that they had already agreed to at the end of the Revolutionary War. The new French ambassador, the new Secretary of State, and several state legislatures all opposed angry crowds burned John Jay in effigy several reasons for their opposition: many believed it was too pro-British, or that it potentially violated U.S. neutrality. It was also a failure of the United States' commitment to the revolutionary cause. More than anything the Jay Treaty gave the Democratic-Republican party purpose. Southern planters were on the hook for their debts to Great Britain dating back to 1775, while Federalist shippers would collect damages from recent British captures. Again, sectional division arose: one part of the nation profited while another part lost everything. Sectional interest is a repeated theme we will see going forward. Washington had secured U.S. neutrality for the time being, but it came the cost of his own popularity.

John Marshall

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Marshall's formal legal schooling amounted to all of six weeks, but he has continued to shape the American legal tradition to this day.

Wealthy

Class distinctions only matter when one class has another to compare themselves to. In the case of the working class, they faced off against a new upper and middle class that emerged in the 1830s and 1840s. The business elite, the factory owners, were the new aristocracy of America. In 1800 the top 10% of the nation's families owned 40% of the wealth. By 1860, the top 10% held 70% of the wealth. In large cities, the capitals of the industrial world, the top 1% owned more than 40% of all the property. The wealthy dressed in well-tailored clothes, rode in fancy carriages, and lived in expensively furnished houses, mansions really, tended by butlers, cooks, and other servants.

Western Territory

Congress believed that by aiding the British, the Indians had forfeited their right to any land within the territory of the United States. First, many congressmen believed that the American economy heavily depended upon the ability of farmers to move westward to expand their farms. On the other hand, others in Congress saw expansion as a threat to American safety - they feared what Native Americans would do when their land was taken over. The ability to move west freely was seen as an essential element of American freedom In an attempt to appease these settlers, but to also regulate how and where they could settle, Congress approved a series of land laws in the 1780's.

Democratic-Republicans Jefferson

Current day Democrats Led by Thomas Jefferson, believed people should have political power, favored strong STATE governments, emphasized agriculture, strict interpretation of the Constitution, pro-French, opposed National Bank Philip Freneau's National Gazette support the anti-aristocratic elements of the French Revolution -- despite the fact that many Democratic-Republicans were southern planters. ideology was more democratic; calling for non-elite white men to have a greater say in the government, this meant farmers and artisans.

Federalists: Hamilton

Current day republican Group that supported Strong Central Gov., National Bank, Tariffs, Business Investments, Loose Interpretation, believed in the need to restore good relations with Great Britain most critical of the 'excesses' of the French Revolution. (John Freno's) Gazette of the United States

Age of JACKSON Key Points

Democracy: Jackson's election and patronage represented the result of universal male suffrage in America. Nullification: Sectional interests led to the threat of secession and potential armed conflict over state's rights. Opposition: White democracy, immigration, and forceful removal brought together a coalition against King Andrew.

Dangers of urban slavery

Despite southern confidence there were complications involved in urban slavery. Masters rented their slaves out so they were largely absent from the day to day operations. This meant that outside of work, enslaved people supervised themselves. In their free time they frequented bars and gambling saloons just like white workers. But this led to troubling questions: Who was supposed to oversee them? If they committed crimes, who would be held responsible? These issues tended to result in tensions between masters and city officials who resented having to serve as stand in masters in the cities.

Mission to the Slaves

Despite the prominence of abolitionists in the 19th Century reform movements, supporters of slavery also embraced reform. Initially the anti-slavery stance of early evangelicals in the Second Great Awakening did inhibit larger reform, but pro-slavery Christianity provided a way to take back both piety and respectability from Southern critics. In the 1850s this came through the Mission to the Slaves. The Mission to the Slaves was the central evangelical reform project in the South. It was modeled on the work of West Indian planters who had pursued a similar movement at the turn of the century. The Mission to the Slaves encouraged masters to improve the physical and moral conditions of their slaves. Those who failed to repent, would receive Church or social sanctions. The Mission wanted laws to protect slaves from cruel treatment as well, but given the power of slaveholders in Southern society, reforms could only extend so far.

Manifest Destiny key points

Destiny: Americans believed expansion West across the continent was mandated by God. Immigrants: 'Gold Mountain' and population pressure brought migrants from across the world. Nativism: Fears of Catholic domination and lusty Chinese workers led to new 'American' Parties.

three-fifths compromise (1787)

Determined that each slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning taxes and representation. The compromise granted disproportionate political power to Southern slave states. So 3 out of every 5 slaves were counted in the state's total population

Revolution of 1800

Election of Thomas Jefferson was referred to A revolution comparable to 1776. Jefferson represented the first president of another political party, the Democratic-Republicans. Unity really meant joining the Democratic-Republicans, who for the next ten years controlled not only the presidency but also Congress. As the party that believed in democracy, the Democratic-Republicans looked to expand the participation of free, white, property-holding men.

Is slavery backward or modern?

Enslaved workers were actually hired by companies who rented slaves from their masters. These corporations did not want to invest the capital in buying slaves outright so they rented their labor force. Slaves worked alongside white men in Southern cities such as in the tobacco factories of the upper South. By 1860 hired slaves represented one half of all tobacco workers in factories in Virginia. The greatest example of enslaved industrial workers came from Richmond's Tredegar Iron Works. This was the largest industrial facility in the South with over 1,000 workers. The Iron Works employed hundreds of slaves who worked for a wage. Urban slaves lived in rented rooms or boarding houses, their rent and food was deducted from their wages. Slaves could work overtime, and some were able to set aside money and had more autonomy than the average slave on a plantation. But these wage workers were still slaves, proving the vitality of the institution.

Confederacy Key Points

Equality: The new nation offered the potential for unparalleled equality in the Western world. (In)Dependence: The loss of markets and dependence on British goods had deadly consequences. Military: A weak national government made Americans vulnerable at home and abroad. VA Plan: Strong national government with representation based on population. NJ Plan: weak national government with equal representation between the states. Great Compromise: The Constitution was a bundle of compromises to create a conservative system of government.

Brutal Conditions

Even though a prime field hand was valued at $1200, slavery was still brutal. Conditions varied from region to region, but there were certain universals. Slavery meant hard work, ignorance, and oppression. Men and women toiled from dawn to dusk in the fields. They had no civil or political rights other than minimal protection from arbitrary murder or unusually cruel punishments. Some states offered further protection such as banning the sale of a child under the age of ten. But any check on slavery was difficult to enforce, especially since slaves were forbidden from testifying in court. Discipline came through floggings which were common. The whip became the symbol of the planter's mastery over another being. The only check on discipline was that a savage beating or extreme lash marks hurt resale values. With the exception of limited literacy for religious education, slaves were also denied an education. It was generally believed that literacy brought dangerous ideas and discontent. State laws actually forbade the instruction of slaves and 9/10 of adult slaves were illiterate.

Apache & Comanche

Even when California established rigid racial divisions, the territory of New Mexico remained far more fluid. The United States had little military control in New Mexico. Indian communities such as the Comanche, Apache, Navajo, Cheyenne and Kiowa continued their traditional practices without outside interference. The two most powerful tribes were the Apache and the Comanche. Generations of Spanish and Mexican settlers had failed to pacify these tribes, and as late as 1850 there were 5,000 Apache roaming modern day New Mexico. The loss of control over the territory had led the Mexican government to offer scalps for men, women and children. Initially the U.S. did little better.

Swedish Bottoms

Finally, we have the boom in 'Swedish' bottoms. In a kind of ironic twist, Americans started to rely on neutral shipping, putting their goods on European ships owned by mostly Danes and Swedes. Just like with British registers in the 1780s, newspapers were filled with ads for sending cargoes on these vessels. It was a convenient method though for concealing one's identity from the enemy and at times even their own government.

Bill of Rights

First ten amendments to the Constitution; major source of civil liberties; applies to states via selective incorporation doctrine; promised to Anti-Federalists to secure ratification of Constitution Massachusetts was a hotbed of Anti-Federalist sentiment, it was also the home of former revolutionaries John Hancock and Samuel Adams who opposed the Constitution. To win over the delegates, Federalist leaders assured the Massachusetts Convention that they would enact a national bill of rights at the first Congress. The Constitution then passed the Massachusetts Convention with a vote of 187 to 168. After Massachusetts the Federalists then won more victories in Maryland and South Carolina. New Hampshire provided the minimum number of nine states to approve the Constitution. However, without New York and Virginia the new Union would have been a very weak nation. It took more promises of a Bill of Rights before the Constitution narrowly passed in these states. In New York the vote was still close: 30 to 27. New amendments to the Constitution were passed either by two-thirds of the states or by a two-thirds vote of Congress. The amendments were drafted by Madison to offer protection for religion, speech, the press, arms over a standing army, and the right to a jury trial, among others. The last two amendments were especially broad. The 9th Amendment guaranteed the government could not infringe on rights not specifically listed. The 10th Amendment gave all remaining power not explicitly delegated to the government, to the states and the people.

Burr & Wilkinson

Foreign interference continued with the collapse of the political career of Aaron Burr, the former Vice President. Burr was dropped from Jefferson's cabinet in the second term and he then joined a group of Federalist extremists plotting the secession of New England and New York. When Alexander Hamilton insulted Burr, Burr shot him dead in a duel. Some argue that Burr killed the Federalist Party when he shot Hamilton. Duels were illegal, so Burr fled West. Out West Burr found a new ally, General James Wilkinson - the highest ranking military officer in the American army. Wilkinson was a man of many faces: a military general, the governor of the Louisiana territory, and a foreign agent for the Spanish crown. We still don't know everything about Burr and Wilkinson's plans, but it seems that Burr and Wilkinson had a scheme to separate the Louisiana territory from the United States and then invade Mexico and Florida in order to create a new nation. Jefferson found out about the plot and Wilkinson turned on Burr to protect himself. Burr was then arrested and tried for treason. The case went to the Supreme Court where Burr was acquitted -- it is very hard to prove treason in a 'free' country. Burr later moved to Europe where he unsuccessfully tried to convince Napoleon to invade America.

Ratification

Formal approval, final consent to the effectiveness of a constitution, constitutional amendment, or treaty ratification process took place through ratifying conventions, not through the state legislatures. Special elections were held for members of the ratifying conventions with candidates elected on pledges to either support or oppose the Constitution. Ratification went smoothly in Pennsylvania where merchants and artisans joined with farmers to support the new Constitution. Other early Federalist successes came in four less-populous states: Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut. These states hoped that a strong national government would offset the power of their larger neighbors. North Carolina and Rhode Island voted against the Constitution. The first real test came in January 1788 in Massachusetts.

Key points sectionalism

Fugitives: The South used federal power to recover fugitive slaves anywhere in the nation. Cotton: Economic center of the South, making slavery vital to southern survival. Slaves: Developed a unique culture, religious, and family life despite bondage.

Key Points - Adams in Charge

France: The almost-war with France united the nation under Adams. Immigrants: Foreign-born Americans were labeled as traitors by the Federalists due to their Democratic-Republican sympathies. Slaves: Represented political and social danger, but also the possibilities of democracy for white farmers and Haitians alike.

Edmond Charles Genêt

French ambassador, arrived in April 1793 sent with a mission to ideally renew the alliance between the United States and France. dangled the possibility of using the United States to expel Great Britain from Canada and Spain from the Louisiana Territory. At the very least, Genêt wanted a commercial treaty with the U.S. and he planned to use North America as a staging ground to outfit privateers. This would involve recruiting U.S. citizens into French military service. arrived in the United States via South Carolina and then he traveled north to the temporary U.S. capital of Philadelphia. American officials wanted him to keep a low profile, instead he went on a tour. Enthusiastic crowds welcomed him displaying French symbols, and inviting him to banquets and balls. Great Britain would not see the U.S. as a neutral power if U.S. citizens were fighting for the French.

British Response

Great Britain was understandably alarmed by the successes of Slater and Lowell, and the flood of men and machines to the former colonies. However minor this progress was, it was a threat. The empire was built after all around protecting British industry from competition. The Navigation Act limited foreign imports and guaranteed that only the mother country could manufacture products. A rogue former colony could not be allowed to steal Great Britain's industrial monopoly.

Revolutionary War Debt

Hamilton supported the federal government assuming the debt owed by the states during the war. He believed that this would reassure foreign governments of the credibility of the United States. It was a statement that the U.S. would pay its bills. The Democratic-Republicans, however, opposed this maneuver because they wanted to restrict centralized power. Many southern states had also paid back their creditors so they had no interest in paying back the debts of other states. Assumption of debt was passed in return for moving the nation's capital from New York to a site on the Potomac River, which would give the South greater influence.

Indian Removal Act

In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act to transport all Native American tribes west of the Mississippi. Over 100,000 Native Americans were forced west. Countless died on the forced marches, the most notable were the Cherokee who were marched along the Trail of Tears. Those who survived faced new obstacles in an alien territory. While popular in certain regions, many white citizens were uncomfortable with the federal government's blatant violation of property rights, and the violence of the forced march created new political enemies for Andrew Jackson.

Radical Abolitionists

In 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison used the New England Society as his model for the formation of the national American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison was uncompromising, he called for immediate abolition. The AASS organized local chapters and sent speakers around the country preaching against slavery. By 1837 the society had more than 1,000 chapters with 100,000 members. American abolition societies drew inspiration from the successes of great Britain. Between 1833 and 1838 Britain ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, emancipating 800,000 people. Many in America, even among antislavery activists, were worried however that Garrison had gone too far. They were concerned that radical abolitionists would spark racial violence. Abolitionists also experienced social isolation, expulsion from their communities, and even violence. Two reforming sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were forced to relocate from South Carolina to Pennsylvania due to their abolitionist views. Opponents of abolition continually interrupted their meetings through the show of force. Mobs even killed abolitionists for printing their views.

Samuel Morse

In 1844 Samuel Morse secured $30,000 from Congress to support his experiment with 'talking wires' later patented as the 'telegraph'. Morse strung wires forty miles from Washington and Baltimore and tapped out the message 'What hath God wrought?' Morse's web of wires connected the continent together changing the nature of news, diplomacy and finance. Now messages could be sent over a wire in a matter or seconds.

Monroe Doctrine

In March 1822, the Monroe administration finally altered its neutral course. President James Monroe recognized the Latin American independence movements as valid, officially siding with the rebel cause. At this point Spain only retained Cuba and Puerto Rico as colonies. The U.S. warned Spain that it would not approve of any further interference in Latin America, and the U.S. formally opposed Spain trying to retake the other colonies. In James Monroe's seventh State of the Union in 1823 he declared that the U.S. shared a common interest with the other states in the Western Hemisphere. According to Monroe, the Americas were distinct from Europe, and while the United States would not interfere in European politics, European nations could take no more territory in the New World. Further the U.S. would stop Europe from meddling in the governments of the Americas. This idea of the Monroe Doctrine brought the West under the United States' sphere of influence. The immediate effect of the Monroe Doctrine was limited. Most in Europe were unaware of it. The few European monarchs who did know about Monroe's speech were offended that America, with its puny military, would dare challenge them. The fact remained that while the U.S. was increasingly capable of patrolling its own waters, it could not defend the entire Western Hemisphere. Instead it was the British navy that ruled the seas in the nineteenth century and kept Europe at bay. The British navy would prevent the approach of hostile fleets because the South American markets had to be kept open at all costs for British merchants. British patrols provided needed cover for the U.S. to make a threat that someone else would enforce. The Monroe Doctrine also factors into another story, nationalism. Since the War of 1812 the United States experienced a resurgence of nationalist feeling. After all, this is when the national anthem was actually written. As the head of the only remaining American political party, President Monroe stoked pride in the country. He took a tour of the nation in 1817. Supposedly this was meant to inspect military defenses, but it was really about tying the nation together. Even in New England the Virginian Monroe received a warm welcome, with a Boston newspaper declaring the time of Monroe as the 'Era of Good Feelings'. Going forward that same nationalism would guide Americans west, fuel government investment in manufacturing, and encourage a sense of American exceptionalism.

Government Loans

In order to boost domestic manufacturing, state legislatures offered loans to finance new inventions and acquire English textile machinery. Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all led the way in offering loans to introducers of unknown technologies. The Pennsylvania legislature began offering bonuses to introducers of new technology as early as the 1780s. Other states offered similar rewards and inducements. Even loans were forgiven for the entrepreneur too busy to repay the money provided by the government.

Emigration Legislation

In order to stop emigration, Britain relied on legislation. After American independence, skilled artisans were prohibited from leaving British territories for work, and textile printers could not even leave the British Isles for any reason. The penalties for lawbreakers could be severe including: a £200 fine, forfeiture of equipment, and 12 months in prison for industrial smugglers. The penalty was later increased to a £500 fine, forfeiture of equipment, and a 12-month prison term. Ship captains were also fined at £100 for each passenger leaving Britain illegally. Combating emigration was difficult. Customs officials readily admitted that customs officers had no real means of detecting who was a skilled artisan. Often it was only by accident that a self-smuggled artisan's true identity might be discovered. For example, one Manchester spinner boarding a ship in Liverpool bound for New York had particularly bad luck. When he had to deal with custom officials, he claimed to be an unskilled laborer, but his marriage certificate was found in his sea chest, as were letters of introduction to Philadelphia businessmen.

Niles Weekly Register

In response to the Federalists, the Baltimore publisher Hezekiah Niles used his newspaper, the Niles Weekly Register to defend the war and blame the Federalists for U.S. military defeats. According to Niles, Federalist vessels were only 'semi-American' and he delighted in printing news of each capture of an American vessel trading with the enemy. For Niles, the Federalists were traitors who no longer deserved to be considered American citizens. The Hartford Convention and the Union's survival during the War of 1812, killed the Federalist Party. However, the immense division between the North and the South that threatened secession and treason have led some historians to claim this was America's First Civil War.

Gold Rush of 1849

In terms of climate and terrain, The American West was different from the rest of the United States, but the average person would not have known that if they read contemporary advertisements. Advertisements and travel pamphlets lured settlers West with stories of fertile lands just like in the East. Settlers moving west brought expectations of profitable farming and even plantation agriculture, but the dry western ecology forced them to quickly modify their plans. In 1848 explorers found specks of gold at a place called Sutter's Mill, California. There was little gold found. Instead, the real profits were made by those who 'mined the miners', overcharging for laundry and personal services. But the 49ers, as the original gold rushers were known, continued to chase for gold in even more distant places, even to Australia and Alaska. More immediately, this led to a huge population influx to the newly acquired territory of California, because people thought they could get rich very quickly. Migration rose from 400 people annually in 1848, to 100,000 people annually in 1849! The fledgling California government was completely overwhelmed by the massive population influx. A high proportion of the new arrivals were criminals or prostitutes leading to high crime rates. Robbery and murder were common. In San Francisco from 1848 to 1856 there were countless murders, but only three semi-legal hangings - hinting that there was very little government apparatus here. The majority of Californians were law-abiding, however, and they wanted governmental protection and the other benefits of civilization. The gold rush accelerated the development of farming, manufacturing, shipping, and banking in California. By 1855 more newspapers were published each day in San Francisco than in London. Without the California gold rush, California would have taken much longer to develop into a state.

Separate Spheres

In the North, the expanding economy drew upper and middle-class men from household production. Before the Market Revolution, the household had been the basic social and economic unit: a site for both production and reproduction. The factory took the man outside of the home, but it kept women inside. This created the concept of separate spheres. The world outside the household was the public sphere meant for men, the domestic sphere of the household was meant for women. Employers supported separate spheres by refusing to hire women. Separate spheres meant that women had greater authority in child-rearing and household tasks, but the public world of business and government was morally suspect. The market was a free-for-all in the pursuit of profit, it was considered not safe for women. This was because profit required immoral behavior (greed), and in this space women's strengths (morality) were liabilities. The gendered division of labor was more an ideal rather than a reality. Middle-class women were the leaders of reform movements for temperance, abolition and women's rights, violating (to some degree) the principle of separate spheres. Out west beyond the Mississippi the household remained the economic center of daily life. The frontier required men and women to spend their days working alongside one another. Finally, separate spheres was a middle-class ideal. Poor families needed the income of their female members and could not afford to remove them. Poorer women continued to serve as cooks, cleaners, launderers and seamstresses.

Sectional Violence

In the South and West, this new standard of manhood took much longer to take hold. Men, rich and poor, all enjoyed gambling, cockfighting and horse racing. In Florida, which only became a state in 1819, conflicts were centered around hyper-masculinity. Political factions solved disputes and guarded their honor by assaulting each other through gouging eyes and biting off earlobes All of this brutality was calculated to produce the maximum amount of shame; to show the public that one man was inferior to another. During the Second Great Awakening, evangelical Christianity worked to limit this hyper-masculinity. Evangelical Christians backed up middle class values by stressing charity, humility and compassion. This new form of Christianity competed with southern systems of honor by arguing that individuals should value their relationship to God more than their own public image. As churches gained influence they began to alter southern values. Evangelicals had particular scorn for bare-knuckle fighting, a sport imported from England. This sport in particular seemed to violate religion and middle class values of restraint and nonviolence, but these critiques had a limited impact. Men from all classes watched, gambled on, and enjoyed matches that could last 50 rounds. Popular forms of ritualized violence bonded white men together in a shared culture, but it alienated these regions from northerners. Anywhere with few institutions to moderate the actions of young men could lead to a higher degree of violence, but for the nation it also further contributed to the sectional divide.

Women

In the new nation women did not enjoy the same privileges as men. Few states (such as New Jersey) allowed female suffrage. Women were not given political rights under the new government. Married women in partircular were defined as legally under their husband's control. As such most women in the Revolutionary-era were still doing traditional household work.

Market System

In the period from 1789 to 1832 the United States experienced the development of a full market economy. The "market revolution" transformed the United States from a subsistence economy of scattered farms and tiny workshops into a national network of industry and commerce. Before 1789 most rural Americans lived on independent family farms. After the market revolution, a greater percentage started moving into towns and cities. America's extensive overseas trade and then the development of domestic manufacturing fueled the market system. Family farms began to specialize because they no longer had to be self-sufficient. Instead, they simply purchased the goods they needed rather than having to produce everything. The system led to intense competition that changed business and labor patterns. We have already discussed overseas trade so I want to start with the development of American manufacturing. In this lecture we'll see how Americans stole machines, infringed patents, and encouraged the flagrant disregard of other nation's laws. In a word, the entire backbone of American industry was built on smuggling.

Toussaint Louverture.

Inspired by the French Revolution in 1791, the slaves rose up in rebellion with assistance from the Spanish army. The rebels were led by the former slave, Toussaint Louverture. In 1794 the slaves switched sides when the new French republican government agreed to abolish slavery. Louverture became the Governor General of Saint-Domingue and successfully forced out the Spanish, taking over the entire island of Hispaniola. The peace between the former slaves and the French government was temporary. In the middle of the Quasi-War, Louverture wrote to John Adams requesting assistance in his coming fight for independence from France. The United States had halted all trade with France during the Quasi-War but the legislation blocking trade allowed the president to lift restrictions with specific ports at his discretion. This allowed Adams to aid Lovuerture and Haitian independence. Jefferson and his party were alarmed by this provision, which they dubbed 'Toussaint's Clause'. War ships, trade goods, funding, and even a U.S. Diplomat were sent to support Louverture's movement. Some southern congressmen even supported the measure - sometimes profit outweighs everything else. All of this support for Haiti was reversed once Adams was out of office, but for a brief moment the U.S. supported the Haitian Revolution.

Corrupt Bargain'

Jackson did not take this defeat lying down. He publicly called it the 'Corrupt Bargain'. Clay's back room deal with Adams ruined his reputation, and Jackson spent Adams's term in office, campaigning for the election of 1828. Jackson even stole Adams's running mate, John C. Calhoun! Having won the popular vote but lost the election convinced Jackson of the importance of the common man. So Jackson actively campaigned for the presidency, using modern political methods that portrayed Jackson as a War Hero, and public campaign events to encourage support for Jackson. A lot Jackson's appeal came from his willingness to engage with the common man. This is what set the Democrats apart from the National Republicans, they were willing to campaign for the office. Despite being a wealthy plantation owner, Jackson was sold to the people as a backwoods commoner committed to equality for all white men. Meanwhile, John Quincy Adams was presented as an out of touch aristocrat. Like any modern campaign, there was plenty of mudslinging on both sides. Jackson accused John Quincy Adams of having a European mistress, while Adams accused Jackson of being a murderer because he had killed multiple men in duels. Jackson won the election of 1828 with 178 to 83 in electoral votes. His election symbolized the ascendancy of the masses. For Jackson's inauguration, commoners poured into Washington, sleeping on hotel floors and in hallways just to see his oath of office. The White House was thrown open on Inauguration Day and they wrecked the place like it was a frat party. They broke the China, and threatened Jackson (because they were drunk). For his own protection, Jackson was taken out a side door and they lured the mob outside onto the law with spiked punch. To conservatives in America, this represented all of the dangers of King Mob.

Force Act

Jackson's Democrats in 1833 passed the Force Act in Congress, authorizing the president to use the army and navy to collect federal tariff duties. Jackson threatened to personally lead U.S. troops into the South if South Carolina did not back down. Facing civil war and invasion South Carolina blinked first, repealing nullification and in exchange Congress reduced the tariff. The nation had been dangerously close to secession and war. The tariff had violently unveiled the divergent interests of different sections of the Union.

Whig Party (1833-1856)

Jackson's policies created an opposition coalition against him and the Democrats. Reformers criticized his Indian removal. State's rights advocates were angry at his opposition to nullification. In the 1830s the Whig Party organized around these issues into a national party. Really the Whig Party was best defined about what the party was against, by their hatred of 'King Andrew'. Democrats encouraged mass immigration, so the Whigs distrusted the working class and Catholics. In their place the Whigs emphasized native-born Protestants as a form of Anglo-Saxon nationalism. That nationalism also led them to support closing government services on the Sabbath. Nationalism also supported government investment in infrastructure, and to endorse antislavery politics. The Whigs saw themselves as conservatives, but they also supported government programs and reforms.

Expansion of White Male Suffrage

Jackson's victory only came through the expansion of voting rights. The Constitution had left voting regulation to the states, but the participation of the common man was openly celebrated after 1800 by the Democratic-Republican Party. Before the War of 1812, American leaders still expected deference from the common people when it came to actually making decisions. Politicians were criticized for actively campaigning for political office, the idea being that this was beneath them. After the War of 1812, nationalist sentiment was on the rise and the expansion of white male suffrage came with it. No new state admitted after 1815 had property requirements for voting. Congress also removed most impediments to white male voting in the territories. Massachusetts issued a new state constitution in 1820, which removed the religious test and property requirements for white male voters. New York followed suit in 1821. By 1824 virtually all white men in the United States were eligible to vote, though some Southern states (like South Carolina and Virginia) resisted removing property requirements. Black men in the era continued to see their rights contract. The New York constitution in 1821 expanded white male suffrage, but also retained property requirements for black male voters. And every new state, except Maine, disenfranchised black men altogether. Democracy was based on race. By 1828 more American men could vote than men in other countries worldwide. And unlike today, this sense of American exceptionalism actually energized voter turnout. 57% of eligible voters, voted in the 1828 presidential election. Many Europeans believed that the liberalization of voting rights would lead to the collapse of the American Republic. Americans also opened up their democracy to new peoples. Millions of immigrants naturalized and became American citizens and enjoyed full participation in American democracy. Compared to European standards this was a huge shift.

Spoils System

Jacksonian Democracy went beyond voting rights, it embraced the idea that the common man was fully capable of helping to run the government. Many government officials had held their positions since the Washington and Adams administrations. They brought decades of experience to the job, but their politics did not necessarily square with the current administration. Jackson changed all of that, through the Spoils System. The Spoils System placed Jackson's own political supporters in government positions. Through this system Jackson gave away many important jobs to friends, and also to political allies. Rewarding political allies with government office is essentially corruption, meaning that scandal was inevitable under this new system. Men bought their posts through campaign contributions. Others were illiterate or incompetent and appointed to important offices. One of the most infamous was Samuel Swartwout. Despite a notorious reputation, Swartwout was awarded the post of collector of the customs for the port of New York. Nine years later he fled to England with a million dollars in his pocket. To Jackson all of this was the cost of democracy, the participation of the common man. But it also had the added benefit of promoting party loyalty.

Democratic-Republican Party

Jefferson became a master political organizer. Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans believed in a weak central government with power resting with the states. They limited central authority by leaning on a strict interpretation of the Constitution - according to them this was the only true guard against tyranny. Jefferson appealed to the middle class and the underprivileged: along with immigrants, laborers, artisans and small shopkeepers. Most of all the Republicans appealed to farmers.

Education, Land, & Slavery

Jefferson believed that agriculture was the key to American prosperity and the economy. Jefferson did not believe in complete democracy, there were two qualifiers to participation in his mind: education and land. The ignorant, according to Jefferson, were incapable of self-governance. Those without property would be the political pawns of the landowning. While this sounds a lot like the kind of exclusivity that the Federalists supported, there was a key difference: Jefferson believed that the common person could acquire these education and land. He had profound faith in the ability of the masses to learn when taught and he also had a solution for the small farmer: slavery. Slavery allowed poor whites to become landowners rather than providing cheap labor for the large planters. This was how Jefferson reconciled slave-holding with democracy, by making the relationship essential. From our perspective, this view is reprehensible, but we should note that Jefferson's confidence in the upward mobility of the common man made him appear incredibly democratic and open-minded for the late 18th Century.

Empire of Liberty

Jefferson justified this move because the new territory helped Jefferson fulfill his dream of an agrarian republic by providing new land for farming. The new land also avoided any rupture with France and an entangling alliance with Great Britain meaning that America peacefully settled its issues with the last major European power on the North American continent. Finally, the purchase of people and territory set new precedents for future expansion. Tens of thousands of Indian, French, Spanish, and black inhabitants were added to the Union. This territory was not conquered, but purchased. Louisiana would be added to the United States on an equal status with the other states, as part of an 'empire of liberty'. The United States could grow through imperialism but with a democratic face.

Federal City / Washington DC

Jefferson was the first president to live in the new capital at Washington for his entire term, which brings us to the other part of his ideology: embracing the common man. he ended the practice of personal appearances before Congress, by simply sending a message for his State of the Union; all of the pomp around the State of the Union seemed very monarchical to him

Accessing the Mississippi

Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic of simple white land-owners required land most of all. In October 1800 Spain had secretly given the Louisiana Territory back to France. The United States had no knowledge of the transfer, but half a million Americans relied on access to the Mississippi River. When the Spanish temporarily closed New Orleans in preparation to transfer the territory to France, the Americans panicked. Frontier farmers depended on the port as a hub for their produce.

Slavery 1790

Jefferson's faith in the ability of slavery to safeguard democracy overplayed the confidence of the average Southern planter in a system of labor they depended upon completely. The 1790s challenged the institution of slavery like never before thanks to a massive slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791. By the middle of the 18th Century Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti) was the most important sugar colony in the entire Caribbean. The colony possessed 500,000 slaves working on 3,000 different plantations. Like in most slave colonies, the enslaved population of the island drastically outnumbered the whites.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Led the slave rebellion after the first slave rebel was captured; led to Haitian independence. Most of the remaining white residents fled or were executed. In 1805 Haiti's constitution confirmed the worst fears of American slave-owners by proclaiming the permanent abolition of slavery. The constitution went even further by formally barring whites from owning property. American politicians feared that the national revolution in Haiti would spread to America so they responded with new slave codes: codes that restricted the rights of free blacks, imposed harsher discipline, and even forbade slave owners from freeing their slaves.

Market Revolution Key Points

Machines: American 'invention' based on smuggled people and parts. Government: provided protection and support for industrial development. Nation: Innovations in technology and infrastructure webbed the nation together.

Manifest Destiny (1845)

Manifest Destiny fueled American expansion West. Countless citizens in the 1840s and 1850s felt a sense of mission from God that Americans were destined to dominate the hemisphere. Let's take a moment to examine this famous painting that embodies Manifest Destiny. In the portrait, Lady Liberty is marching west. She brings education, telegram lines, and civilization. She brings knowledge represented by light. As she marches west she chases the savage natives away. But what motivated people to move westward? There were, in fact, several motivations for people to move West: to escape debt, gold, land, and slavery.

Slavery in the world - Emancipation

Many Americans in the 1850s were surprised that slavery was still around. The American revolutionaries had expected it would simply disappear over time. After all, Western philosophical thought favored freedom and condemned slavery as inefficient and inhumane. This meant that by the 19th Century, the U.S. was a curious exception in the Western World. In 1838 the British government had abolished slavery in the West Indies. The emancipation process took place in stages. The British offered compensation to owners for their slaves. Emancipation was gradual, taking place in stages, and slaves were offered no land. Whites in the American South had predicted that any form of emancipation would lead to a race war, but this did not happen. To Northern abolitionists, emancipation so close to American shores was a shining example of success. U.S. slaveholders still considered the entire project unsuccessful. They pointed to the decline of West Indian sugar production as proof. To Southerners, the only logical conclusion was that the British must have emancipated their slaves in order to weaken the U.S. by undermining the institution of slavery.

Joseph Smith

Many Americans struggled financially in the East and thought they could make a profit in the new lands of the West. Others migrated West to escape religious persecution, this was especially true of the Mormons. The Mormons were another sect out of the Second Great Awakening, like the Shakers or the Oneida Community. The Mormon Church, or the Church of Latter Day Saints, was founded by Joseph Smith of Upstate New York. Smith claimed to have been visited by an angel who offered him divine visions. He wrote these down into the Book of Mormon, which he published in 1830. The book told the story of an ancient civilization from the Middle East that had migrated to the Western Hemisphere. Jesus had visited these people soon after the Resurrection.

Middle Class

Meanwhile the middle class was also unique. They were not so independently wealthy that they could live without working, but they did not have to perform physical labor. Middle-class workers were lawyers, office workers, clerks and accountants - those who wore cleaner 'white' clothes. In the northeast the middle-class numbered about 30% of the total population. The establishment of the middle class was a result of rapid urban growth. Cities created a space for the middle class. The anonymous nature of cities forced residents to identify one another as members of broader social communities.

Lord Sheffield

Member of Parliament. In the immediate aftermath of independence, He wrote a short work called Observations on the Commerce of the United States (1783/84). Here he was alarmed at the liberal treatment of American 'foreigners' in British ports, argued that the British West Indies should instead rely on Canada. Canada could provide all of the provisions and timber that America had shipped to the West Indies. Canada was a wasteland in the eighteenth century. The territory that the British had won in 1763 remained largely undeveloped. Like the French before them, the British had mostly limited themselves to the fur trade, fishing, and a limited timber industry. in 1784 issued another edition of his pamphlet, this time it was 4x as long as the first edition! It was now a 300 page pamphlet that proved through statistics and trade data that the British Empire did not need America to prosper.

Catholic Menace / know nothings

Nativists feared that Irish and German Catholics would always owe their allegiance to the pope in Rome, not the United States. These nativist societies shared general goals: they wanted to unite all native-born Protestants against the 'alien menace'; to restrict office holding to native-born Americans; to retain the Protestant Bible in schools; and to extend the naturalization process from 5 to 21 years. These nativist movements had established by the 1850s a secret fraternal association that historians call the Know Nothings. These associations did not trust mainstream political parties, and when asked about their organization members answered that they 'knew nothing'. Nativists promoted their views through literature meant to expose Catholic corruption, especially among nuns in convents. Authors described tales of shocking sins including the secret burial of babies. One book, called Awful Disclosures (1836) sold over 300,000 copies. All of this hysteria contributed to occasional mass violence. In 1834 a Catholic convent near Boston was burned by a mob. This was followed up with occasional attacks on Catholic schools and churches. All of this nativist animosity peaked in 1844 in Philadelphia. Irish Catholics reached a breaking point against the threats of the nativists. Two Catholic Churches were burned to the ground, 13 were killed, and 50 wounded over several days of rioting. By 1854 the Know Nothing Party became a real political force with 8 governors, more than 100 congressmen, thousands of local officials, and nearly a million citizens backing them. They were especially successful in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Their successes included restricting public funds for parochial schools, disbanding immigrant militias, and imposing literacy tests on voting. While the party disappeared after 1854, it was in fact absorbed into the new Republican Party.

Key Points - A New Nation

Neutrality: Americans profited from the war in Europe, if they could prove that they were American. Party: International relations and the role of the federal government broke American politics in half. Rebellion: Popular politics and whiskey led to America's own 'Terror'.

Unusually Brutal

New cotton plantations were unusually brutal. Generally those who moved west were the sons of established slaveholders in the east. Young men often moved ahead of their families. They were eager to pay off their debts and prove themselves independent, which led to a harsh life for slaves. Enslaved workers spent long hours clearing land and planting crops. Cotton was a demanding crop with a long growing season. Slaves plowed in March, dropped seeds in April, and in August were engaged in a back-breaking four-month picking season. Without established families with them, planters also engaged in a higher degree of sexual exploitation of their workers. Despite the high mortality rate in the Deep South, profits remained high and more planters continued to flood into the area into the 1850s. The profits made by cotton not only continued the longevity of slavery it also increased the demand for land.

Minstrel Shows

One of the most popular forms of entertainment in northern cities were minstrel shows. Minstrel shows featured white male performers with blackened faces, performing -- mocking, really -- what they imagined to be black behavior. These shows were enormously popular in New York, Boston and other major cities. The legacy of minstrel shows live on in our culture. Stephen Foster, the first major American songwriter gained fame penning minstrel tunes such as 'Camptown Races' and 'Oh! Susanna'. In the early 1830s, Thomas D. Rice of New York became famous for portraying Jim Crow, an old southern slave. Rice wore patched clothing and torn shoes, he danced and sang. Minstrel performers told jokes mocking economic and political elites, and evoked nostalgia for preindustrial work habits and morality. But black face actors encouraged a racist stereotyping of African Americans as sensual and lazy. While we see these shows as racist, and they definitely were, the shows were popular because they were transgressive. They featured whites imitating, celebrating, and mocking blacks all at the same time. They also served as a critique of white society. Minstrels mocked Irish drinking, parodied Germans, and denounced women who dared to challenge the patriarchy by demanding civil liberties. Even the arrogance of upper-class men was fair game at the minstrel show. Still, the main message of the minstrel show was the importance of being white in America. The shows encouraged immigrants who could assimilate to do so as quickly as possible.

Calhoun & SC

Opposition in South Carolina was led by John C. Calhoun (the former Vice President) who came out against the tariff. Calhoun saw the tariff as unconstitutional and destructive of liberty. South Carolina's legislature passed an act to nullify the federal law, refusing to collect tariffs in South Carolina ports. Just like the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, the legislature argued that they could ignore a federal law that they disagreed with. South Carolina even threatened secession if they were challenged on nullification. South Carolina expected support from other Southern states, but none followed. As Jackson was a Southerner who supported state's rights, many expected he would approve. Jackson denounced nullification with these words: "I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed."

The Judiciary Act of 1789

Organized the Supreme Court, originally with five justices and a chief justice, along with several federal district and circuit courts. It also created the attorney general's office.

King Cotton

Outside the factory, slavery remained strong because cotton was king. With the industrial revolution Great Britain, France, and the growing industrial sector of the North all increased demand for cotton. This led investors to seek new opportunities in the fertile lands of central Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. This region grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s financed by the high returns on cotton. The high demand for labor in picking and processing cotton ensured the long life of slavery as an economic system. Demand for cotton and workers actually led to an expansion of the internal slave trade as planters sold slaves from the Eastern Seaboard into the Deep South. Between 1790 and 1860 one million slaves were moved from tobacco fields in the Upper South to the cotton fields of the Deep South. The internal slave trade generally involved forced marches over hundreds of miles, making it no less violent than the Atlantic slave trade.

Abolition

PAS Politically, the most dangerous reform movement was abolition. The origins to this movement reached back to minority religious communities in England and America. Quakers and Methodists had both opposed slavery in the eighteenth century. In 1775, Pennsylvania hosted the first anti-slavery organization in the world, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. The PAS was founded on Quaker pacifism at the start of the American Revolution, the organization focused its efforts on individual emancipations. Despite their religious origins, reason, not faith, guided the mission of the PAS. The organization was also limited in its outlook. While focused on emancipation, former slaves and free blacks were kept from joining the organization. Instead the PAS reflected the Federalist belief in elite action for the common good.

Tariff of Abominations

Party loyalty was especially important when a new sectional crisis occurred under Jackson's watch. The origins of this came from a debate over the tariff. Tariffs protected American industry against European competition by driving up the prices of imported goods. With the growth of industry since the War of 1812, industry leaders in New England and the Middle states supported tariffs because import duties protected their companies from foreign competition. Southerners possessed little industry and they were angered by being forced to either purchase northern-made goods or more expensive European goods. At the end of Quincy Adams's presidency, the highest tariff ever was passed with strong northern support. This was known as the Tariff of Abominations, it doubled the tax on imported goods. When Jackson became president, the South expected immediate relief, but Jackson moved slowly. It took until 1832 before the tariff was reduced. This was too late for radical South Carolina, which started the nullification movement.

Judiciary Act of 1801

Passed by the departing Federalist Congress, it created sixteen new federal judgeships ensuring a Federalist hold on the judiciary. the appointment of these 'Midnight Judges' laid the groundwork for another political fight. Federal judges are lifetime posts so Adams was essentially packing the judiciary with men loyal to him — ensuring that the courts would remain under Federalist influence for years to come.

Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

Polk wanted California and the rest of Northern Mexico. His administration opened diplomatic negotiations in late 1845, but Polk also hedged his bets. He created a pretext for war by ordering troops into a contested territory south of the Texas border. The Mexican forces responded by attacking the U.S. invasion. In the face of 'foreign aggression', Whig opposition to the war fell apart and the Democrats had a clear road to conquest. This maneuver into foreign territory sparked the Mexican-American War, which lasted from 1846-48. The Mexican-American War was incredibly popular in the Untied States, especially since the American forces defeated the Mexican army in every major engagement. Those who opposed the war (including Congressman Abraham Lincoln) lost their seats at the next election. In Congress there could be no reasonable debate so long as the United States kept winning battle after battle. But the war was also one of the deadliest in U.S. history with a death rate of 110 for every 1,000 soldiers. Most died due to disease rather than on the battlefield. Under the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, the U.S. expanded the territory of Texas, and the Mexican lands up the West Coast of North America, this contained 500,000 square miles, or 55% of Mexico. The new territory expanded the United States by over 40%. This meant that America now controlled the lands that would become California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. The Mexican-American War was significant in two different ways: First, it formally completes Manifest Destiny - America has now officially expanded from East to West, coast to coast. Second, it leads to one of the most important moments in California history - the Gold Rush.

Moving West

Popular hostility against Mormons resulted in a mob killing Joseph Smith in 1844. This led the next leader of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, to move his 16,000 followers further west, to the Great Salt Lake in modern-day Utah. Under Brigham Young, the Mormons became a prosperous frontier theocracy - the Church controlled the entire community. Young himself married 27 women and had 56 children. Washington was unable to control Brigham Young, so they made him the Territorial Governor of Utah in 1850. Congress did however pass anti-polygamy laws in 1862 and 1882 targeting the Mormons. Utah's marriage practices delayed statehood all the way until 1896. Compared to the utopian communities we've already discussed, the Mormons succeeded where the others had failed. The Mormons supported private property and individual enterprise, which helped them prosper in the market society. But their leaders also used strict religious controls to discipline the community. In all, the Mormons created a unique blend of economic innovation, social conservatism, and hierarchy.

Conservative Triumph

Ratification. A militant minority fought for the Revolution and won it. Another minority of 55 individuals overthrew the Articles of Confederation. Then 11 states had seceded, formed their own government, and convinced the rest of the Union to join them. Only one quarter of adult white males voted for delegates to the Convention. Most scholars believe that if every adult male could have voted, it would have killed the Constitution. So this was a Conservative document, but it was also a republican one. The Constitution rests on the notion that every branch represents the people, with the goal of finding a balance between revolutionary liberty and law and order.

Religion

Religion was another issue for Anglo-Mexican relations. Immigration to Texas was based on a pledge that the settlers would learn Spanish and convert to Catholicism. White settlers from the United States refused on both counts. Despite their differences, Spanish-speaking Texans (Tejanos) and English-speaking Texans shared one thing in common: they were both unhappy with Mexican misrule. These differences eventually led the Texas territory to declare its independence from Mexico in 1836. While the U.S. remained neutral in the conflict between Mexico and Texas, Andrew Jackson eventually extended recognition to the Lone Star Republic. The question of admitting such a large territory as a slave state stalled Texas's annexation for a decade. But Texan independence further seemed to confirm the destiny of Americans to march west, and the destiny of slavery as an institution to only grow larger.

Age of reform key points

Religion: The 19th Century responded to Enlightenment elitism with a more democratic and emotional faith that created a Christian Nation. Abolition: Radical reformers pushed for ending slavery immediately, resulting in violence and greater sectional division. Gender: Reform and religion challenged the relationship of men and women and the role of women in the public sphere.

Key Points 1800-1812

Revolution: 1800 for many represented a return to the republican ideals of 1776. The West: The land demands of an agrarian republic led to imperialism with a democratic face. Frenchified: The impact of Haiti and mass migration connected the U.S. to the revolutionary Atlantic. Trade: Government action led to smuggling, trade with the enemy, and defiance of authority. Nationalism: Impressment and war gave Americans a sense of purpose. West: Nationalism and expansion led the U.S. to claim the West as its responsibility.

Revolutionaries v. Statesmen

Revolutions are fought for certain ideals but there is always a question of whether the resulting government upholds those ideals. Consider the true values of 1776: taxation requires representation, civil liberties, limited state power.

Report on Public Credit (1790)

Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton advocated for using federal power to further encourage economic development. argue for financing public debt and proposing new excise taxes. advocated for the creation of a national bank that would be supported by federal deposits and private shareholders The Bank of the United States would also print paper money to provide a sound and stable national currency Democratic-Republicans saw this proposal as unconstitutional and opposed it with all of their political weight. According to the Democratic-Republicans, the Constitution did not specifically authorize the bank so it could not be created by the federal government. They pointed to the 10th Amendment, which stated that all powers not specifically listed for the federal government were reserved for the states. The Democratic-Republicans favored a literal, or strict interpretation of the Constitution Hamilton's response was the exact opposite. According to him, whatever the Constitution did not strictly forbid, was technically permitted. He drew on the clause of the Constitution that Congress may pass any laws 'necessary and proper' to carry out the powers of the government agencies. The government could collect taxes and regulate trade. And the national bank was necessary for doing this. This is the concept of implied powers, or a loose interpretation of the Constitution.

Missouri Compromise

Sectionalism would come to a head in 1818 when settlers in Missouri applied for statehood. Missouri was the first state west of the Mississippi River to apply, and before Missouri the number of free and slave states was balanced. There were already many slaves in Missouri so it seemed natural that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state. In 1818 Henry Clay, a Kentucky Congressmen and the Speaker of the House, presented resolutions to admit Missouri as a state. Then i February 1819 a New York congressmen amended Missouri statehood legislation to ban the further introduction of slave and to gradually emancipate slaves in the territory. The House approved the amendments after heated debate, but the Senate struck them down. The two Houses of Congress could not agree on Missouri. The matter was actually carried over to the next session of Congress. Meanwhile antislavery activists from New England sent petitions denouncing slavery as evil, and state legislatures adopted competing resolutions in support or opposition to Missouri. During these debates, for the first time, Southern Congressmen defended slavery as a moral positive rather than just an economic necessity. There were immense constitutional issues at play here. Could Congress could place restrictions on new states? Would the slaves in the Missouri territory be counted for representation under the Constitution's three-fifths clause? Finally Congress settled on the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Missouri was admitted as a slave state. Maine, which had existed as a province of Massachusetts since the colonial period, was admitted as a free state. This preserved the balance of slave and free states. An amendment was added to define a line on the map to separate future free and slave states. A line was drawn at 36 degrees 30 minutes across the Louisiana Purchase Territory. Slavery was permitted only to the south of the line. The Missouri Compromise suppressed political controversy over slavery for the next thirty years.

Slater & Brown

Slater was hired to work for Moses Brown at a textile mill in Pawtucket, RI in 1790. Brown had smuggled spinning machines to America but nobody knew how to operate them. Slater discovered the machines were broken so he cannibalized the parts to build his own. Slater's yarn-spinning machine was based on the British inventor Richard Arkwright's design who Slater worked for in England. In America, Slater became the 'father of the industrial revolution' by becoming the first to turn a British machine into a commercial success in the U.S. In 1793, Slater & Brown opened their first mill. Slater mills quickly proliferated throughout New England, becoming the early model of family-owned textile factories. Thanks to Slater, by 1815 New England cloth manufacturing was 50x what it had been a decade earlier.

Life as a slave

Slaves in large plantations had a measure of distance from their owners. They lived in their own 'quarter' on the plantation, usually a collection of small cabins with 1 cabin for each family. While not recognized by white owners, slaves had families, communities, and their own culture. Each quarter also had musicians, historians, storytellers and healers. The Second Great Awakening meant that slave culture was heavily Christianized, but it also blended Christian and African elements into a distinctive forms. For example, we can link African ceremonial traditions to responsorial preaching - where the preacher expects the congregation to offer remarks as he preaches. Religion also responded to their personal experiences. The biblical story of Exodus - of the Jews fleeing Egypt - played a central role in black Christianity. By 1860 slavery in the cotton producing South had also stabilized. Most enjoyed a family life and forced separations were less common. We know of the continuity of these families because they developed distinctive identities. For example, slaves named children after grandparents, which indicates that they at the very least knew of their grandparents. But one third of families were still broken by the sale of a slave. Given the importance of family, slave auctions represented the greatest tragedy an enslaved person could face.

Mormons, Society & Sex

Smith preached a conservative theology of patriarchal authority. His following gathered thousands of followers, but the arrival of a new interpretation of Christianity generated fear and suspicion among other Americans. Mormons responded by building a separate society, wherever they lived, they lived apart. Within that society, Smith preached practices that were central to individual success in the market economy: frugality and hard work. But there was also an emphasis on the good of the community, of communal discipline to protect the Mormons from sin. This created a unique mix between individualism and the communalism of Oneida and the Shakers. After 1852 the Mormon Church also began to advocate plural marriage, or polygamy, which further set the Mormons apart from the rest of Christian America. Persecutions chased the Mormons from New York to Ohio, and then to Illinois. At Nauvoo Illinois, Smith built the largest utopian community in the United States with 30,000 inhabitants.

Smuggling

Smuggling during the War of 1812 was incredibly hard to control. Close links between British subjects in Canada and Americans living in border communities in New England supported illegal trades throughout the war. Americans in New England shared a common culture with their British neighbors, one that was much closer than their relationship to the Democratic-Republican national government in Washington. There was little interest within these communities of cutting ties when war broke out, especially since New England's commercial interests were deeply opposed to a war with Great Britain. During the war, new communities were built to aid in smuggling. Towns like Eastport (Maine) and other smuggling havens in the North grew exponentially during the War of 1812. Entire smuggling towns popped up and you can see why from this map. It is a short trip from Northern Maine to Nova Scotia and it was even easier to simply cross the border. On top of this, as the war continued on, the British were able to seize a sizable portion of the northeast, making trade and collaboration even easier. Smuggling Strategies: collusive captures, lost cattle, Swedish bottoms Smuggling during the War of 1812 depended on several tactics, some new, some old, and a few ridiculous.

Collusive Captures

So first we have sham or collusive captures. This was when goods were smuggled onto vessels which were then intentionally captured. All of this was prearranged with merchants on the other side of the war. The cargo would change hands and the vessel would find its way back home. Meanwhile the owners could claim that they were the victims of the enemy and possibly even get an insurance pay out!

Slavery and the Constitution

South wanted slaves included in the population count that determined the number of representatives in the House. Northern states, who had very few slaves, disagreed. The clauses that ended up in the Constitution were efforts to find a middle ground between slavery critics and its defenders. disagreement about the future of the slave trade. South Carolina and Georgia with their killer crop rice demanded that the slave trade continue or they would not join the Union. led to the slave trade clause in the Constitution. The clause allowed the continued importation of slaves from Africa until 1808. Slavery did not end in 1808, this was just about the slave trade, not slavery itself. However, it was a moral victory for the South because the slave trade represented to many the worst aspects of slavery as an institution.

Justifying Enslavement

Southern slave owners justified the brutal reality of slavery through a system called paternalism. The idea that slave owners took personal responsibility for the physical and moral well-being of their dependents - women, children, and slaves. The paternalist outlook enabled slave-owners to think of themselves as fathers, responsible masters who welcomed slaves into their family. This was in sharp contrast to the reality that they bought and sold their human property often with little to no concern for slaves' own families. In the years leading up to the Civil War, as northern criticism of slavery intensified, so did Southern arguments for slavery. White supremacy was a major factor in this pro-slavery argument. The belief that blacks were innately inferior to whites and unsuited for any life other than slavery formed one pillar of the pro-slavery argument. Most slaveholders also found evidence for slavery in biblical passages. Others argued that slavery was essential to human progress, because the ancient republics of Greece and Rome had relied heavily on slave labor. The relationship of master to slave was a hard balance. There was a strong economic incentive to keep slaves healthy and satisfied with their material conditions. As we saw in the reform movements in the South, it was believed that a degree of better treatment would stave off runaway slaves or worse slave rebellion. Better treatment meant greater profit.

Federalists

Supporters of the Constitution that were led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison favored a system where power was divided between a federal and state governments, but to their critics it was really about a stronger national government. had the support of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, whose names added a lot weight to their arguments Cities and seaports tended to support the Constitution because they needed to boost the credit of the United States in order to do business better financed, better educated, and were able to coordinate their efforts because they controlled much of the press.

Brazil

The American South felt under siege, but there was still some hope on the international stage: Brazil. Brazilian planters had won their independence from Portugal in 1822, and they remained committed to slavery. Arguably, Brazil was even more committed to slavery than the United States. Brazil openly flouted international law by continuing to participate in the slave trade, decades after the United States and Great Britain had banned the transportation of slaves across the Atlantic. Between 1835 and 1855 half a million Africans were smuggled into Brazil. Southerners were aware of this practice, and American ships were even used in the smuggling operations. Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery in 1888. This meant that during the entirety of the American Civil War Brazil offered Southerners hope of a bright future.

Comanche Empire

The Comanche were an even more serious threat. They had dominated Northwest Texas and New Mexico since the early 18th Century. Their power was established through military raids on their neighbors: native, Mexican, and American. The Comanche were also a dangerous force because of their willingness to reinvent themselves. When the Spanish had pushed north, the Comanche seized new weapons and tools, especially the use of horses. These new tools worked especially well with their raiding and slave taking. The Comanche were the largest native power to exist independently from American control. But times were already changing. When the Americans arrived mid-century the Comanche were experiencing a period of internal conflict and decline due to the spread of smallpox, and the decline of buffalo herds. All of this weakened Indian power. The loss of bison from over hunting (something that was accelerated by white settlement) deprived the Comanche of a key source of food, an important commodity and an essential part of their spiritual beliefs. This led to increased warfare among tribes for scarce resources. While some resisted and continued to defend their autonomy into the 1870s, most were weakened by starvation and placed on reservations by the U.S. The Comanche represented the last foreign impediment to Western settlement.

Election of 1844

The Election of 1844 was all about Manifest Destiny. Expansionist Democrats were swayed by the spell of expansion they called for the 'Reannexation of Texas'. It was said that God wanted the Americans to take it, so James K. Polk was elected with a divine mission to expand the United States' borders. The Southwest contained huge swaths of land that belonged to the independent republic of Texas or to Mexico. Texas contained about 135,000 residents. The state joined the Union six days after Polk took office. But the Mexican government also held the land that is now California and New Mexico, and the American government wanted that too. The population of California by 1845 was mixed, it consisted of 13,000 Spanish Mexicans and 75,000 Indians. There were fewer than a thousand foreigners who were mostly Americans. Polk was eager to buy California from Mexico, but relations were dangerously embittered after the annexation of Texas. Mexico was also struggling to deal with rebellions in its own territory, especially the northern region. Indian war parties stole livestock, and took human captives to enslave or ransom. These problems weakened the Mexican government at the exact wrong time.

1824 Election

The Era of Good Feelings came to a screeching halt in 1824. In 1824 Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, lost the presidential election to John Quincy Adams, despite having won the popular vote. The 1824 election was a reckoning for the Democratic-Republican Party. The expansion of voting rights had energized local politics and led to a four way contest along sectional lines, as the map below illustrates. The Democratic-Republican party unofficially broke in two: the National Republicans v. The Democrats. When no candidate won an absolute majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives decided the contest (Twelfth Amendment). John Quincy Adams struck a deal with the Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and Adams became the president. Clay agreed to this because: 1. Although in the election himself, Clay only won three states. 2. Clay hated Jackson over past political disputes. 3. Clay wanted to be President, and after Adams's election he was made Secretary of State - three of the last four previous Secretaries of State had become President. After Clay and Adams came to an agreement, the electoral math changed.

Overseas Trade

The French Revolution had created an enormous trading opportunity for the new American Republic. This opportunity continued on into the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) as the British and French West Indies absorbed great quantities of American lumber, fish, livestock, corn, and wheat. When war broke out again in Europe in 1803, trade with the Caribbean and Latin America skyrocketed to its highest level ever. In addition to its own trade, the U.S. also became involved in the re-export trade. U.S. ships under the re-export trade would act as middle-men between European colonies and their mother countries -- similar to the Dutch Trade during the Seven Years War. Through supplying the West Indies and the re-export trade, the United States was increasingly connected to Europe and the West Indies.

Hartford Convention (1814)

The Federalist Party was so opposed to war with Great Britain that it went beyond merely trading with the enemy, the Federalists threatened to end the Union. The political opposition to the war shows how divided the nation was in 1812. In the week after Congress declared war, a riot broke out in Baltimore when a Federalist newspaper editor denounced the war as 'unnecessary'. A pro-war mob responded by destroying the newspaper office and other Federalist property. The editor was put into protective custody but the mob rushed the jail and nearly killed him. The mob did succeed in killing a former Revolutionary War officer who tried to protect the editor. Even with accusations of disloyalty, Federalists continued to oppose the war. In 1814, Federalist representatives from the five New England states met at the Hartford Convention to discuss their grievances and lay the foundation for a radical reform of the Union. Initially the Convention was focused on the possibility of secession, but cooler heads prevailed. Resentful of Virginia's domination of the presidency (3 of the last 4 presidents were Virginians) the Convention proposed that the office of the presidency should be limited to a single four year term and that it should rotate among the states. The convention also suggested constitutional amendments limiting the power of the government over commercial embargoes and limiting all embargoes to sixty days. Other amendments would require a two-thirds majority in Congress to declare war, prohibit trade, or admit a new state to the Union. The Convention concluded that a state had the right to assert its authority to protect its citizens against unconstitutional federal laws. So this was another attempt at nullification. The plan to deliver their message on state's rights to Congress hit a snag when the war suddenly ended in 1814.

Philosophic Cock

The Federalists were also able to engineer a rumor campaign about Thomas Jefferson. He was accused of swindling a widow out of a trust fund and of having impregnated one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. The Hemings episode continued into the 19th Century with one newspaper displaying the following print titled 'A Philosophic Cock'. The print portrays Jefferson as a rooster and Hemings as a hen. This attack ad against Jefferson was about Jefferson's alleged relations with Hemings. It was also about France, the rooster is the symbol of France. The ad is incredibly effective on multiple levels as it reminds readers of Jefferson as a slave owner and of his radical sympathies for the French Revolution. Jefferson denied the affair with Hemings, but for the next two centuries the episode occasionally popped up in public debate, sometimes encouraged by Hemings' descendants. Some of the most prominent historians in American history debated this issue. Many concluded that Jefferson did not have an affair with Hemings, but DNA evidence has shown that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children. Thanks to low Federalist turnout in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Jefferson won a 73 to 65 victory over Adams in the Electoral College. Adams was not even the runner-up. Instead, Aaron Burr of New York won 73 votes as well, making the race a tie. The House of Representatives decides the winner in the case of a tie vote for the presidency. After 35 rounds of balloting, Federalists continued to block Jefferson's election. There was even a rumor that the Virginia militia might forcefully put Jefferson into office. In the end, it was Alexander Hamilton who persuaded the Federalists to allow Jefferson's election. Jefferson was considered preferable to Burr and some feared a potential Civil War if a winner was not decided.

Migration

The Gold Rush also prompted a flood of migration to the Pacific Coast, especially from new immigrant populations. Not everyone migrated from the Eastern United States. By the end of the 1850s Chinese and Mexican immigrants made up 1/5 of the mining population in California. Between 1840 and 1920, 2.5 million people left China for Hawaii, the United States, Canada, Australia and Southeast Asia. The Chinese, especially Cantonese migrants, came in pursuit of 'Gold Mountain'. The high cost of travel forced Chinese immigrants to sign contracts agreeing to work for five years at a set wage - basically as indentured servants. The Chinese contract laborers provided invaluable services to the miners; they worked in railroad and construction work and served as cooks and cleaners.

Embargo

The Jefferson administration instead chose to issue a complete trade embargo in December 1807. The Embargo Act ended all foreign trade until further notice. Jefferson truly believed that France and Britain would realize the importance of American trade and back down. Until that moment, all American vessels would have to stay home. Jefferson saw this as an act of peaceful coercion and a way to defend the rights of neutral nations. In fact, the Embargo Act did far more damage to the United States than it did to Great Britain or France. Britain had bumper crops (a surplus) in situations like this, and they had opened up trade with Latin American Republics. Essentially Great Britain could survive without American trades. Napoleon simply tightened his belt and seized American ships in French ports as a way 'help' the Americans enforce their own embargo! Meanwhile, in the United States, the Gross National Product (the nation's real wealth) fell by 8%. Tax revenue also fell as the U.S. government largely depended on taxing imports of foreign products to fund itself. New England's ports became a forest of ships stuck in harbor and their warehouses overflowed with cargoes of cotton, grain, and tobacco. Opposition to the embargo revived the flagging Federalist Party, giving it a new purpose. From 1807 to 1809 there were further embargo laws all of which were meant to strengthen the policy and to prevent Americans from trading with the warring powers and accidentally starting a war.

Artisan v. Worker

The Market Revolution led to a transformation in the American worker. American artisans - like bookbinders and cobblers - owned their own tools, supervised themselves and enjoyed lives of respectability. Mechanization changed the worker. Factory owners were able to both underprice and outproduce artisans. The process took several decades but by 1830 a new national economy had emerged. For the American consumer this meant cheaper standardized goods - they no longer had to wonder about the individual artisan who created their chair or shoes, everything came from the same factory. The skilled workers suffered with the rise of unskilled labor. Between 1820 and 1860 the number of factory workers in the U.S. increased sevenfold, from 350,000 to 2 million just before the Civil War. This huge shift in the economy shaped politics, social relationships and the very nature of American cities. By the middle of the 19th century, most Americans at the time clearly saw the rise of a distinct American working class. In New York, Philadelphia, and Boston neighborhoods were defined by class. Before industrialization, workers often lived and worked in the master's shop. Now, workers had less contact with the owner and his family and more contact with others in the same economic position. Workers lived in boarding houses together, and spent all of their leisure time together at bars, boxing arenas, and minstrel halls. Some were able to move up the income ladder by working hard, saving their earnings and seizing new opportunities. The idea that hard work was always rewarded was a fiction for many workers. Employers did not respect employment contracts because there were more laborers than jobs. This allowed employers to exploit the longest workday for the lowest salary. Real wages among major trades declined through the the 1830s and 1840s. This left laborers making half of what they needed to support a family of four. The decline in wages always hit the unskilled workers the hardest - the largest growing pool of workers. When workers reached their breaking point, strikes were used as a measure of last resort. Strikes in industrial America dated back to the Lowell Mills. From 1830-1850 male and female workers initiated more strikes, but generally with little effect. There were simply too many new workers to replace the strikers. This kept unions weak and wages low.

Shakers

The Shakers were a religious community that rose to prominence in the 1840s. The Shakers were founded by Mother Ann Lee, a former Quaker from England. In 1770 Lee had a vision that she was an incarnation of Christ and she took that vision with her when she emigrated to upstate New York. The community she founded expanded and by 1840 Shakers lived all over the nation, from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers earned their name because of their extreme religiosity. During church services, its members would often be so moved by sermons that they would begin dancing and shaking with enthusiasm. They lived in isolated, deeply disciplined communities, and believed in a unique God that had a "dual personality" both male and female. Ann Lee represented the female incarnation of God. What do you think depicting God as female would do for gender relations in the community? There was full equality between the sexes in Shaker communities. Shakers also valued "virgin purity". They completely abandoned traditional family life, men and women never co-habitated. They instead lived in dorms, and only mixed with the other gender during communal meal times. Shakers prohibited sex, so while their numbers reached 60,000 by 1840 they could only grow by attracting new members or adopting children. This meant that by 1940 they were virtually extinct. The Shakers also rejected individual wealth and property ownership, but had a strong group economy. Shaker furniture and woodwork was known for its amazing attention to detail, and is still sold at high prices even today.

Cotton Gin/Eli Whitney

The South also experienced the Market Revolution. The most important inventor in the history of the South was Eli Whitney. Whitney, originally from Massachusetts, had graduated from Yale and moved to Georgia to work as a tutor. While in Georgia, Whitney was told that the poverty of the South could be relieved if someone could invent a device for separating the seed from cotton fiber. Within ten days Whitney built his first cotton gin (short for engine) which was 50x more effective than the handpicking process. The cotton gin saved slavery. Before Whitney, slavery seemed like an economically-dead institution. Demand for tobacco was down and cotton was too labor intensive to be profitable. After Whitney, the South was now tied to King Cotton. Planters cleared more acres for cotton, and the demand for land pushed slavery west, deeper into America. Now the South was not alone in this, the demand for cotton came from Northern and European mills. By 1860 more than 400 million pounds of southern cotton poured into New England mills each year. Cotton was the fuel for the Industrial Revolution.

Kansas-Nebraska

The arrest of Anthony Burns set a deadly precedent for disputes over slavery. The first real test of popular sovereignty came in the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. Since Kansas and Nebraska are North of the 36 degree 30 minute line set by the Missouri Compromise, they should have been technically free. Then Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The Act left the decision of whether to allow slavery in new territories up to the people residing there, under the principle of popular sovereignty. Douglas thought popular sovereignty would finally end the slavery question by leaving it up to the people in each territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act overrode the Missouri Compromise making all new territories sites of popular sovereignty. For the South, establishing popular sovereignty in these territories would protect a slaveholders' right to their property. To the North, Douglas had just destroyed a 30 year policy that had stopped violent sectional disagreements. Popular sovereignty was easily legislated but hard to enforce. Largely because of the diverse groups that arrived in Kansas. Antislavery organizations sent 2,000 people to the area to stop the territory from becoming a slave state. These settlers also brought guns with them, which led slave owners to arm themselves as well. Conflict soon broke out in Kansas resulting in millions of dollars in property damage, halting development, and costing scores of lives.

Cotton

The cost of land in the cotton producing South soon skyrocketed, as did the the price for slaves. By the 1850s, the price had nearly doubled to reflect the importance of new laborers in the cotton market. The cotton trade linked the South to a world market. New England ships transported Southern cotton to England, sold the cargo, and purchased manufactured goods for sale in the United States. The prosperity of both North and South rested on the backs of southern slaves for decades. After 1840, cotton represented half the value of all American exports. It amounted to about five hundred million pounds of cotton sent each year. As the world's leading manufacturer, this made Great Britain particularly dependent on the South. About 20% of Britain's population was involved in the manufacture of cotton cloth either directly or indirectly. The American South produced more than half of the entire world's supply of cotton. The South was very aware of the power this gave their region and this led them to proclaim that 'Cotton was King'. Cotton was the foundation of the southern economy and this meant that southerners were obsessed with protecting the system. To many, without cotton, the South had nothing. This led white southerners to live in a state of imagined siege: they believed that they were surrounded by potential rebellion and conspiracy from the North.

Marbury v. Madison (1803, Marshall)

The court established its role as the arbiter of the constitutionality of federal laws, the principle is known as judicial review William Marbury. Marbury had been appointed by Adams, but the paperwork had not been filed. If Marbury was going to become a federal judge, the Jefferson administration would have to file the paperwork. Like any new president Jefferson wanted to appoint his own judges, and so he told Secretary of State James Madison not to file the necessary paperwork. This argument - about whether or not Madison had to file these papers - became vitally important to the American judicial system in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided against Marbury, so at face value this was a win for Jefferson and Madison. in his decision, Chief Justice John Marshall made a unique argument. Marshall claimed that part of the original Judiciary Act of 1789, that would have forced Madison to deliver the paperwork, was unconstitutional - meaning it somehow violated the tenets of the Constitution. In this ruling, the Supreme Court asserted its power to decide which laws were constitutional, and which were not.

O-grab-me

The embargo quickly became a farce. A cartoon image of the embargo was featured in Federalist newspapers called 'O-grab-me'. O-grab-me, is embargo backwards. Other favorites included 'Go Bar 'Em' and 'Mob-rage'. The cartoon represented the federal government as a turtle too slow to stop most smugglers. The inability of the federal government to enforce the embargo made the law, and the government, into a bad joke. Smugglers, whose business was based on embargo busting, thrived in these years. Embargo busting took three forms: Overland smuggling into Canada - this was often helped by the British government. Coastal trade to border towns in Canada and Spanish Florida: Vessels would (at night) quietly sail up the coast until they reached a safe port. American ships sailed for foreign waters without clearance papers: These ships would go everywhere: Canada, Florida, the West Indies, and even Europe. Because the ships left without proper clearance, many were forced to stay abroad until the embargo ended.

Paradox of Slavery and Modernity

The example of Brazil led to increasingly elaborate justifications for slavery in America. And slavery as an economic system proved surprisingly adaptable to new forms of labor. Southern cities never received the same surge of foreign immigrants, so urban slaves became vital to industrial growth.

Free Soil v. Popular Sovereignty

The expansion of the country through Manifest Destiny led to troubling questions about the expansion of slavery. The Missouri Compromise had split the Louisiana Territory in half, allowing slavery in the lands South of Missouri. When the United States acquired former Mexican territory, it touched off a new round of conflict. A Pennsylvania Democrat, David Wilmot, proposed that slavery should be excluded from any new territory that the U.S. acquired. The Wilmot Proviso never passed, but it inspired the creation of the Free-Soil Party. The Free-Soil Party even nominated a candidate for the 1848 Election. The free soil movement wanted to block the further expansion of slavery. They ran with the slogan "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men," and won almost 300,000 northern votes. While this was not nearly enough to win the White House, much of this platform was later adopted by the future Republican Party. Southern planters and Democrats responded to Free Soil with 'popular sovereignty'. The idea that Western settlers should decide whether their state became a free state or a slave state. The was the ingenious idea of using American democracy to defend slavery.

Patent Act of 1790

The federal government's first defense of domestic industry came with the Patent Act of 1790. The Act protected inventors' intellectual property by granting patents for original inventions. To safeguard smuggling enterprises the act offered protections for only native inventors. Foreigners specifically could not patent an invention they had already patented in Europe. 1790 the U.S. Patent act only registered 3 patents, by 1831 it had 573. At one point a clerk in the Patent Office resigned in despair, complaining that all of the inventions had already been discovered. Later patent acts required inventors to take an oath certifying their invention was original and not some product smuggled in from Europe. Of course there was no means of verifying this. Even for the upright smuggler, the oath was not consistently required by the patent office. Obtaining a patent was also incredibly easy. It simply required filing the proper paperwork, regardless of whether the device was already in use. In practice, this meant that one could steal a foreign invention, smuggle it to the United States, and develop it for domestic commercial application. The patentee would enjoy the protection of the law every step of the way. The Patent Act helped to make the new United States the world's most notorious haven for industrial piracy.

Texas

The first American arrivals in modern Texas came with permission from Spain's Royal Governor in 1820. Moses and his son Stephen Austin founded several private colonies in Texas. When Mexico won its independence from Spain, they continued to invite settlers into the sparsely populated region. In 1823 Stephen Austin reached an agreement to import 300 American families into Texas. It was believed by the Mexican government that populating Texas would strengthen frontier defenses and provide protection from the expansionist United States. Within a decade there were 30,000 Americans living in the region. There was increased friction between Mexicans and Texas over issues of slavery, religion and the region's autonomy. Slavery was an especially touchy issue. Mexico had emancipated its slaves in 1830 and prohibited further importation. In response, Austin had the slaves classified as 'indentured servants', but no one was fooled. Slaves comprised 10-15% of the total Texas population.

Nationalism and Sectionalism

The first half of the 19th century saw new economic and political differences arising in the United States. The nation and its leaders were faced with the issue of balancing two competing ideas: Nationalism and Sectionalism. Nationalism is the devotion to the interests and culture of one's nation. Nationalism also involves placing the needs of your nation before the needs of any competing interests, such as your state or your own family. As we saw with James Monroe, the period after the War of 1812 was a new moment for nationalism in the United States. There was a push for government to invest in national roads to connect the nation together. Sectionalism, on the other hand, is the placing of the interests of one's own region ahead of the interests of the nation as a whole. In America sectionalism arose in the North and the South. The Northern states began to industrialize, while the Southern states remained agricultural. The North saw rapid market expansion during the 19th century and began to see the beginnings of the industrial revolution. The Northeast was full of port towns whose economy depended on shipping and foreign trade. These industries required factories and an increase in manufacturing. The South, however, remained heavily focused on agriculture. Even though they adopted some technology, machines did not replace humans. Instead, machines like the cotton gin made it possible for Southern plantation owners to produce cotton more efficiently but it required an even larger workforce. The South relied heavily on slave labor, and slavery became deeply entrenched in Southern society. As the country expanded and new territories were added as states, there became a real concern over which side of the slavery debate these new states would fall on. Would slavery be allowed in new lands, or not?

The Bank War (1832-1836)

The first major issue that united together the Whig Party came from a dispute over the Bank of the United States. Hamilton's Bank of the United States had been deeply hated by Democrats and farmers since its creation. Because the federal government deposited its funds there, no bank had more power in the United States. The bank was a source of credit and stability but the very existence of a federal bank offended Jackson's support of state's rights. It did not help that the bank had foreclosed on many properties in the West. It was believed that the bank only benefited elites, while hurting the financial hopes of common Americans. When the Bank's charter came up for renewal in 1832, Jackson vetoed it, declaring the Bank unconstitutional. Jackson then had the Treasury Secretary, Roger B. Taney, remove federal deposits from the Bank and place that money into state-run banks. This was deeply controversial and it forced him to reshuffle his cabinet twice in order to find someone (Taney) that would follow these orders. Without these funds, the bank was crippled and it collapsed. Now here's the problem: the Supreme Court had already ruled that the bank was constitutional in 1819. All previous vetoes of laws were based on constitutionality, but Jackson got rid of the bank because he simply did not like it. Just like with his treatment of the Cherokee, he acted as if the executive branch was superior to the judicial branch. In response Congress in 1834 voted to censure Andrew Jackson for removing federal deposits from the Bank of the United States, but they could not save the Bank. So King Andrew's actions gave birth to the Whig party. During the 1836 election the Whigs made a significant showing in the popular vote, they then won the presidential elections in 1840 and 1848. As a coalition, each Whig supporter was different, but what they had in common was a desire to reform the nation.

A Multicultural World

The greatest social conflict in the new American West came from Anglo migrants who were deeply suspicious of what they regarded as Catholic superstition. To white Protestants, displacing the Mexican inhabitants was necessary in order to develop California. Much like the old Black Legend, every outrageous tale of Catholic corruption was believed. It was the perfect setup. Anglos could make money, purify American character, and fulfill their Christian duty by bringing true religion to the west: Protestantism. Not every American shared these views. There was a long tradition of open trading that brought early American travelers together: Mexicans, French, British and Native. The earliest settlers had trapped, hunted, and intermarried with the locals. For early settlers, California was seen as an escape from the pressures of the East with its dirty cities, tired land, and debt collectors. But the rapid increase of the white population killed cohabitation.

Frederick Douglas

The most effective opponent of slavery was the former slave, Frederick Douglas. Born on a Maryland plantation, Douglas had learned to read and escaped slavery in 1838. He eventually made his way to Rochester where he began his career as an abolitionist by starting his own newspaper. Douglas, through print and speech, had a commanding physical presence. He toured the country lecturing on the evils of slavery. Douglas also printed his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas which detailed his experiences as the son of a black slave woman and a white father. While Garrison preached radicalism, immediate abolition and even expelling the southern states from the Union, Douglas focused on politics as a means to end slavery. Douglas believed that only legitimate government action could overthrow slavery. This led Douglas to join different political parties as they rose and fell all the way through the 1850s. This faith in a political solution made each election even more important for abolitionists like Douglas and heightened the chance of a permanent sectional rift in the Union.

American Society for Useful Manufactures

The most important society established in these years was nation-wide, the American Society for Useful Manufactures. It was founded in 1791 in New Jersey and was led by Alexander Hamilton. Funding was important, but it did not miraculously establish manufacturing in America. The society also needed machines and skilled artisans. The society described their scheme for importing machines and artisans colorfully as the spirit of 'emulation', but really it was their true intention to smuggle trade secrets from Europe, specifically Great Britain. For America to rival British industrial output, required a massive smuggling enterprise to move men and machines across the Atlantic under the nose of the British state and the Royal Navy. To assist in this, the societies underwrote the establishment of textile factories and provided prize money for any useful 'inventions' that Americans produced. Within a year of its founding the Pennsylvania society operated a large cotton factory. To spin cotton, the men used smuggled British machinery acquired by an official in the U.S. Treasury. The first year of the factory's operation was declared an economic success. So much so that during a parade celebrating the adoption of the new U.S. constitution, members of the society and workers at the factory proudly wore their American-made clothing. The fact that the entire operation rested on pirated technology seemed to have mattered to no one.

Anthony Burns

The most infamous example of the Fugitive Slave Act came with the rendition of a Virginia Fugitive slave Anthony Burns in 1854. Burns had escaped to Boston where he became a preacher. A year after his escape slave catchers had clubbed Burns and thrown him into jail. A mob gathered outside the courthouse to protest his capture, and a deputy U.S. Marshal was shot. Federal troops had to be called in to escort Burns back to Virginia. As he was marched to Boston harbor, Bostonians hung American flags at half-mast in protest. It cost the U.S. government $40,000 to send Burns back into slavery and making Burns a rallying cry for emancipation.

Women's Rights

The nineteenth century also saw advocates of women's rights. Many of these individuals drew inspiration from events in Europe. German reformers during the 1848 Revolutions in Europe had called for complete gender equality. And many American women's rights reformers wrote biographies of European women who provided models of an active, virtuous life. Reformers in America got hands on reforming experience in the abolition movement. Only in the 1830s did they move towards women's rights. Take the Grimké sisters, beyond participation in political reform, they proclaimed a woman's right to rule. They pointed out that a woman now ruled England (Victoria in 1837) so why not the United States?

Captain Zebulon Pike

The promise of western expansion came with further problems of secession and foreign interference. While Lewis & Clark were able to avoid the Spanish, Captain Zebulon Pike was less lucky. Lewis & Clark had traveled Northwest, but Jefferson sent Pike up the Mississippi in 1805. In the following year, 1806, Pike then went west from St. Louis where he established diplomatic ties with Indian tribes and explored the Arkansas and Red Rivers. Pike was abandoned by his native guides as he attempted to follow Spanish and Indian trails across the Rockies. By January 1807 he was lost and his expedition strayed off course until it hit the Rio Grande. Pike and his men were captured by the Spanish in February 1807. Pike was interrogated and let go but several of his men remained imprisoned for two years. Lewis & Clark's expedition has remained popular because it represents American opportunity, Pike's journey shows the dangers of expansion, even in territory already claimed by the United States.

Land Ordinance of 1784

The region would be divided into separate territories that would initially be governed by Congress, and eventually would become their own states.

Cattle

There was also the case of the 'lost cattle'. It was illegal to cross the Canadian border during the war, and especially to bring goods over to the other side. So in the middle of the night farmers would lead livestock to the border where they would be met by British traders. The American farmer would let his cattle go, and the cattle would wander over to the other side. This tactic technically evaded the law because Americans never actually crossed the border. 'Lost cattle' is a bit weird, but keep in mind that this cattle was probably meant for the British soldiers; so the farmers here were directly supplying the enemy army.

Retail

There were also new commercial establishments in these cities. In New York, Philadelphia and Boston retail stores sold a broad array of domestic and foreign-produced goods. Mass-produced clothing, food, magazines, books all were commercialized. Shops were often several stories tall and outfitted with light fixtures, paintings, and carpets. They provided examples of a new world of options for the middle-class. In the stuff that they bought, the middle class could distinguish themselves from the working class with their single-room homes and the family-run stores they frequented.

Mudslinging

These ideological differences and the legacy of the Adams administration meant that the Election of 1800 was particularly brutal. The Democratic-Republicans targeted the Federalists for driving up the public debt for a war that never happened. They dubbed the sailors for John Adams new navy 'John Adams's Jackasses'. The Federalists themselves struggled to mount a coherent defense as Adams and Hamilton fought amongst themselves for the party's ideology. So they turned to name-calling as well. Federalists warned that the rule of Jefferson would usher in the principles of the French Revolution, which meant the Terror. According to the Federalists, America would be filled with "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest."

Larger and Smaller

These technological improvements were significant because they simultaneously made the nation larger and smaller. They enlarged the scope of how people could communicate and the markets in which they sold their goods, shortening distances. People in rural areas could now connect instantly with people living in urban cities via the telegraph. Rural Americans could also buy goods that previously were not available outside of metropolitan cities thanks to new roads and canals. All of this, in turn, encouraged westward expansion as distance no longer mattered; helping the nation to grow and unifying the nation together through transportation and communication. These inventions had profound effects on how the nation would grow and develop over the next century.

republican motherhood

Through the moral education of their children they could create a population ready for democracy it created a vital role for women in the new nation, they were the nation's conscience. also provided more opportunities for women. In order to teach their children, women also had to acquire an education.

Societies for Useful Manufactures

To understand how the U.S. created a manufacturing sector, we need to first look at both official and unofficial government support. Let's begin with the information societies established before and after independence to encourage the development of domestic manufacturing in America. These societies argued that through domestic manufacturing, Americans could gain and maintain their independence, not only from Britain, but from the rest of the world as well. Given what America faced after independence - impressment, embargoes, war - the appeal of domestic manufacturing is unsurprising. All of these information societies were sponsored by the social and political elite. For example, New York's Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, launched in 1784, included prominent politicians such as the state's governor, New York City's mayor, and the U.S. government's secretary for foreign affairs. These societies helped fund manufacturing through a lottery system supported by the state

Transportation

Transportation systems also improved. The construction of toll roads increased, and for the first time we see the government putting money into the building and maintenance of paved roads. In 1811 as part of the new nationalist sentiment, the federal government invested in a national road that stretched from Maryland to Ohio. While the War of 1812 briefly halted road construction, the National Road eventually reached Illinois before Congress cut off funding. There was a fear that the federal government's investment in road construction concentrated too much federal power in one location. Finally, in 1825 the Erie Canal was completed; a 360 mile canal across upstate NY, and allowed for the flow of goods between the Great Lakes and New York City. The canal attracted an influx of farmers and merchants to new cities leading the value of land along the route to skyrocket in places like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. The Erie Canal gave New York City an advantage over cities like Philadelphia and Boston because of its quick access to the western parts of the country. The completion of the canal set other states into a scramble to match New York's success. By 1837 more than 3000 miles of canals had been built, creating a network for trade that linked the Atlantic with the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and drastically reducing the cost of transportation.

'Pacific' Route?

Traveling by foot and canoe the Corps reached the Pacific in November 1805. Their main discovery was that there was no easy overland Pacific trade route. Anyone going West would literally face an uphill battle through the Rocky Mountain range. The expedition solidified U.S. claims over the territory and established good relations with several Indian groups including Sacagawea's tribe the Shoshoni. Other groups were more hostile, as were the Spanish who tried to intercept the Corps on several occasions. In one instance in Western Montana, Lewis pursued a band of Blackfoot Indian teenagers who stole their horses. Lewis shot one through the belly and after killing another he hanged the expedition's 'peace and friendship' medals around the neck of the teenage corpse as a warning to other Indians. This was not exactly a shining moment for the expedition. Despite these instances, Lewis & Clark's discoveries were widely published and fueled further westward expansion over the next decades.

Revolutionary Migrations

Under Jefferson the United States refused to recognize the independence of Haiti, but it was not immune to revolutionary events. The American Revolution had inspired the black revolt. Historians believe that several of the leaders of the revolt may have served alongside French troops in the American Revolution. Because of their ties to both the West Indies and France, the United States experienced the effects of mass migration in the years of the French and Haitian Revolutions. This was one of the most important effects of the American Revolution. Free and slave migrants arrived in the U.S. and brought with them food, clothing, language and other cultural traditions. Between 1793 and 1809 15,000 slaves, white French colonists, and free people of color fled the island of Hispaniola. They ended up in the major port cities of Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York, and Baltimore. Philadelphia became a center of French culture in America as migrants from France and Haiti settled there. The French emigrants established political clubs, fraternal lodges, cultural societies, bakeries, bookstores, and their own newspapers. Louis Philippe, an exile from the French royal family and the future King of France, participated in Philadelphia high society and allegedly had relations with a number of American women in the city! As these numbers indicate, thousands of slave masters brought their slaves with them rather than allow them to remain in a free Haiti. This was a particularly embarrassing episode because the United States had outlawed the slave trade in 1808, but Congress allowed exemptions to slaves brought through Louisiana as refugees from Saint-Domingue. The reverse was also true. Hundreds of African-Americans also emigrated to Haiti, the only symbol of black power and freedom in the Western Hemisphere. This is a further reminder that the Enlightenment ideas that inspired the American Revolution could not be contained or controlled. Despite the best wishes of American politicians, it was true in the French Revolution and continued to be true in the Revolutions in the Americas.

Limited Reform

Under southern law slaves could not legally marry, but evangelicals saw this as a gross violation of the proper relationship between men and women. So southern reformers advocated allowing slaves to marry. Female evangelicals went a step further, they advocated in particular for the protection of female slaves from sexual exploitation. Along with marriage, the second major reform that Southern evangelicals advocated for was the spread of literacy. Literacy is essential to Protestant Christianity as everyone is expected to read the Bible. This was a particularly thorny issue for slavery because of the circulation of abolitionist propaganda, Southern plantation owners were deeply suspicious of slaves who could read. Evangelical reformers tried a middle ground: they built Sunday schools and worked with individual masters to persuade them to let their slaves attend. Sunday schools only taught limited literacy, just enough to read a few short passages of the Bible. The idea was to save the slave's soul without endangering the entire social order of the South. All of this was sold to the planters as a way of making slaves more obedient and loyal to their owners.

Francis Cabot Lowell

We've seen that the process of smuggling machines or people out of Britain was an immense challenge. Francis Cabot Lowell took a different approach. Lowell came from a prominent Massachusetts merchant family. After graduating from Harvard, Lowell worked for his uncle's import-export company during the Napoleonic Wars. Like most transatlantic merchants, Lowell witnessed firsthand the dangers faced by American shipping. Between embargo and impressment, Lowell saw how weak and powerless American merchants were on the international stage. In 1810 Lowell moved his family to England, officially for his wife's ill health. Once there, Lowell spent less time with his wife and more time making casual tours of British textile mills. In the mills he observed power looming firsthand. Power looms could spin twice as much thread as hand machines. Lowell made a good impression on his English hosts who were pleased by his interest and his intelligent questions. They did not know that each night, in his hotel room, Lowell made detailed sketches from memory of the machines he had inspected during the day. At some point the British became suspicious of Lowell, and his ship was actually stopped in Halifax and searched for any hidden sketches, but Lowell managed to avoid the authorities.

Temperance

What was the problem? Well drinking was the problem. Weddings and funerals in America often became drunken brawls. It was common for drunken mourners to fall into the open grave with the corpse. In response to America's rising drunkenness, The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826 by evangelical ministers. The American Temperance Society used pictures, pamphlets and graphic lectures to call for a total prohibition on alcohol, even during communion. Ministers in the movement denied church membership to those who drank. Despite their evangelical roots, the Temperance Society relied on scientific analysis and data to prove the social consequences of drinking. The clergy, for example, argued that alcohol represented not just a serious threat to the moral order but it also led men to lose their jobs, fall away from church and abuse or abandon their families. For the factory owner, heavy drinking decreased the efficiency of the worker. The Temperance Movement did not end the consumption of alcohol in America, they did however convince millions of people to rethink their drinking. Temperance prompted numerous state legislatures to consider legal restrictions on alcohol. In 1851 Maine passed a new law that prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor. Other states in the North followed Maine's example, and by 1857 a dozen states passed various prohibitory laws. Many of these laws however were repealed or later declared unconstitutional. Prohibition was particularly difficult because of the role that alcohol played in America social rituals. Manual laborers, drawing on European tradition, drank during morning and afternoon breaks. Numbers help us to chart the effect of the Temperance movement. In 1825 the average American over the age of 15 consumed 7 gallons of alcohol per year, that's 110 eight-ounce glasses. By 1850 that number had fallen to two gallons per year. Temperance also helped evangelical Christians differentiate themselves from Catholic immigrants. Catholics used wine in their communion rites and came from cultures (Southern Europe) where alcohol played an important social role. This meant that temperance rarely had the support of immigrant communities or the Democratic Party. As the image above shows, women also played a leading role in temperance. Susan B. Anthony, a leader in women's rights, started out as a temperance advocate.

Phineas Bond

When customs officers failed to stop emigration, the British government relied on the diplomatic consuls in America. Phineas Bond, was the British Consul at Philadelphia from 1786-1812. Bond played an early and vital role in monitoring America's industrialization efforts. He provided regular reports to the British government about American merchants using fake papers and reported on the current political and commercial state of the nation. Bond also issued reports on British emigration. Through Bond, the British learned that approximately 100,000 individuals left Ulster for the United States from 1783 to 1812, with emigration averaging about 3,000 people per year. Bond tracked recent immigrants, and corresponded with British agents in Philadelphia. British agents even purchased smuggled British machines and sent them back to Great Britain or destroyed them. Bond assisted them in their efforts and even protected British merchants from angry mobs when it became known that the British were attempting to destroy America's domestic industry. Bond also proposed schemes for encouraging re-immigration back to Britain for wayward artisans. He suggested that artisans should receive payment for their inventions if they decided to return to Britain. The British response simply came too late to stop the flood of trade secrets to America.

Buying Louisiana

When the Americans learned that the French had taken over New Orleans, they sent Robert Livingston and James Monroe to France to purchase the port from Napoleon. They were deeply worried about the French emperor having designs on North America and if he refused to sell they were prepared to seek an alliance with Great Britain. Napoleon at this point was preparing for war with Great Britain and annoyed by French defeats in Haiti, so he had little interest in a New World Empire. If the Haitian Revolution had turned out differently, he probably would have kept Louisiana. Foreign minister Talleyrand (who was still in power since the XYZ affair) responded by offering the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million. Livingston bought it on April 30, 1803. The purchase entitled the United States to 828,000 square miles at 3 cents an acre. While a great bargain, there was a problem here for Jefferson. The Constitution does not grant the President the power to buy territory to expand the union. The acquisition of new territory for the United States forced Jefferson to abandon his strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Americanism

While America expanded, the problems settlers experienced in the Southwest were reflected in a general discomfort with America's growing Catholic population. Millions of new Catholic immigrants arrived in the country over the 1840s and 1850s, and increased fears about their presence in the country. Many Catholics having left countries where they were oppressed, wanted to protect their children from Protestant indoctrination in the public schools. So they created their own educational system and argued for public funds to support parochial schools. Political conflicts between Protestants and new Catholic immigrants in the eastern states and the movement of Chinese workers into the West propelled public policy on immigration. By the mid-1840s different organizations labeled as the 'American Party' had formed in various major U.S. cities.

Samuel Slater

While encouraging machine smuggling was one possible method for industrialization, the British artisan Samuel Slater represented an alternative approach: he smuggled himself. Samuel Slater lived from 1768-1835, he had emigrated to America in 1789. The British tried to limit emigration of artisans with knowledge of industrial machinery. Slater pretended to be a farmhand and boarded a US bound ship in 1789, enticed by stories of opportunity and success in America. To smuggle himself, he was forced to leave his tools, machines, models, and drawings behind. The only thing he could bring with him was his memory.

The New Man

While men dominated American public life in the 1830s and 1840s, notions of masculinity changed. In the new cities men increasingly found opportunities to build marriages and families on the basis of affection rather than family advancement. This probably built stronger connections with a relationship based on love, but these new relationships required men to change as well. Men could no longer defend their honor through violence. New norms of manhood took shape in crowded northern cities where men were expected to control themselves, a virtue that diminished conflict.

Coverture & Exclusion

While middle-class women had certain advantages, nearly all women in U.S. suffered under similar restrictions to public rights. Women could not: vote or hold office; could not sue or establish contracts; were barred from positions of leadership in their churches; they were rarely allowed access to higher education or divorce, even from abusive husbands. The legal practice of coverture ensured that a married woman had no property or wage rights. Despite these legal constraints, women had an increasing sense of themselves as unique individuals. They found themselves within an American economy that created new opportunities and challenges.

Cherokee of Georgia

While the tariff divided the South from the Union, the prospect of more land in the South was deeply popular. Jacksonian Democrats were committed to Western expansion, but expansion meant confrontation with Native Americans. Approximately 125,000 Native Americans still lived in the forests and prairies East of the Mississippi. Among these tribes, the Cherokee of Georgia were exceptional. Based on the standards of American society, the Cherokee did everything right: they made a concerted effort to learn white ways; they abandoned their semi-nomadic life; and they adopted a system of settled agriculture and private property. Cherokee Schools were opened and they created their own legal code in 1808. By 1827 that had a written constitution modeled on the Untied States with executive, legislative and judicial branches. In imitation of their Georgia neighbors, the Cherokee even owned black slaves. The Cherokee were one of the five so-called Civilized Tribes which included: The Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and of course the Cherokee. The tribes' problems coincided with the election of Andrew Jackson. In 1828 the Georgia legislature declared the Cherokee ruling council illegal and asserted its own jurisdiction. The Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court, still led by John Marshall, which upheld the rights of the Indians. Jackson who was born in the revolutionary backcountry (when Native Americans still challenged the U.S. borders) believed that the Indians were barbarians and that all treaties with Indians were absurd. So Jackson responded by ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling and proposed to forcefully remove the eastern tribes.

Replaceable Parts

Whitney's second invention had an even longer lasting impact as it set a standard for manufacturing to this day. In 1798 Whitney turned to the production of muskets. Before Whitney, each part of a musket was hand-tooled, meaning that there were no replaceable parts as each was unique. Whitney's invention was to make all triggers universal and interchangeable. Journeying to Washington in search of a military contract, Whitney dismantled ten muskets, scrambled the parts together and quickly reassembled ten different muskets. The principle of interchangeable parts was widely adopted by 1850, and it became the basis of modern mass-production and assembly-line methods. Whitney's second invention gave rise to the North's vast industrial might, a strict military advantage over the South in the Civil War.

Virginia Plan Opposition

Why would the states oppose this plan? It stripped them of their power. The idea that the federal government could veto state laws was unacceptable. From a state perspective, the problem with state representation based on population was that the larger states like Virginia and New York would have all of the power.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

With the Compromise of 1850 the Union was now protected, but the Fugitive Slave Act was hotly contested. The Act nationalized the process of slave capture and return - a clear expansion of federal power. Commissioners would hear cases of accused fugitives and required states to turn over escaped slaves. Slaves could not testify on their own behalf and they were denied a jury trial. Any Northerner who aided an escaped slave would face heavy fines and even jail sentences. Commissioners were also provided financial incentives to find fugitive slaves guilty: $10 as opposed to $5 for the innocent. The North hotly protested the passage of the legislation and in fact the Fugitive Slave Act radicalized many moderates in the North to support abolition.

Seneca Falls

Women though found that their allies in the abolition movement were not as accepting of their demand for equal political rights. In Western New York they organized a convention at Seneca Falls in 1848 to consider the issue of women's rights. The Convention issued a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Sentiments listed infringements on women's rights and called for change including the right to vote. In listing their grievances, one of the leaders of the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, pointed out that only Frederick Douglas (who was in attendance) could relate to the discrimination faced by women in America. Many women were not automatically in support of these claims to women's political participation. American women believed that it was the responsibility of women to raise moral children and preserve the home. Politics was considered too inappropriate for a woman. Female reformers experienced many of the same contradictions that still plague women to this day. Women were typically seen as distinct from men, more moral. Women could use this position to combat the worst effects of industrialization, to combat slavery, to organize, fund raise and petition. But that distinctiveness also served to isolate them, and make them separate from the rest of society.

City county frontier key points

Workers: The factory led to the creation of a distinctive class of laborers Wealthy: A genteel culture based on European refinement, hard work, and discipline Women: Romantic love and reform were hindered by separate spheres

fugitive slave clause

allowed masters to reclaim slaves (or even indentured servants) who had escaped to other states. The clause attached slavery to a person even if he or she escaped to a state where slavery had been abolished. This meant that for slaves in America, there would be no 'free air', no place for them to go.

The 1778 alliance with France

bound the United States to defend the French West Indies from France's enemies. Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, wanted to honor the alliance

Continental Congress

called for the abolition of the slave trade and several Northern states abolished slavery outright. Even on plantations in Virginia a few idealistic masters freed their slaves as a response to the revolution. No state south of Pennsylvania abolished slavery, and laws in all sections of the new nation discriminated against freed blacks, who were barred from purchasing property, holding certain jobs, and even educating their children.

Bank of the United States

chartered in 1791 for 20 years. (BUS) operating capital of $10 million with 1/5 of the capital owned by the federal government. sold stock in order to encourage public and foreign investment constitutionality, and the proper role of the federal government, remained a burning question in American politics for the next 40 years

Meeting of Elites

convention to 'revise' the Articles of Confederation in 1787. Every state, except Rhode Island (which always did its own thing) chose representatives. The leaders of the Convention were appointed by state legislatures, not by the voters. Most of the members of the Convention were lawyers who had experience at constitution-making from their home states. 19 of the delegates were slaveholders. So this was a fairly elite group and there is some debate over whether the resulting Constitution was merely meant to guard their interests rather than that of all Americans.

Judicial Branch

created a single 'Supreme Court' Federal judges were appointed for life

13 States

each state received one vote in Congress, regardless of population. This was meant as an equalizing factor so that everyone received an equal say in national issues. 9 out of 13 states were needed to agree in order to simply pass laws, making it incredibly difficult to enact any laws. Congress had no power to enact or collect taxes. Instead each state had a tax quota but it was met through voluntary contributions.

George Washington

elected as the nation's first president in 1788 John Adams chosen as the Vice President -- under the Constitution second place in the election became the Vice President oath of office on April 30, 1789 on Wall Street in New York City. first actions was to organize a cabinet

Great Compromise

established a two-house, bicameral legislature: representation in the lower house (the House of Representatives) would be based on population; the upper house (the Senate) was based on equal representation, with each state receiving two senators.

Quakers of Philadelphia

founded the world's first antislavery society during the Revolution in 1775

Electoral College

gave power to the states, but it was also a check on popular democracy.

Land Ordinance of 1785

granted Congress control over the region north of the Ohio River, and then the power to sell that land to individual farmers. This was a way for the government to both control land settlement, and also make some desperately needed money.

No. 1 Goal: Avoid War

he tone of American overseas trade changed as both France and Britain increasingly became hostile to neutral traders. After the British won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, they ruled the seas. Once they conquered the seas, the British had no fear of French privateers, and therefore saw little reason to tolerate the U.S. re-export trade with Great Britain's enemies. The British government then issued a new Order in Council, stating that if an American vessel traded with Europe without first stopping in Britain and paying a fee, it was liable to capture. At the same time, Napoleon had conquered most of the European continent and he instituted a self-blockade of Europe in 1806. After Napoleon closed the Continent, and the British blockaded everything, Americans were increasingly forced to take a side and ditch their neutrality. Taking a side, however, would have meant war

Marquis de Lafayette

hero of the American Revolution proclaimed the head of the National Guard and France established a National Assembly Declaration of the Rights of Man

Declaration of the Rights of Man

imitation of the Bill of Rights August 1789 established by a National Assembly of France

Neutrality Proclamation of 1793

issued by George Washington, established sought a middle road by offering to continue trading with Great Britain, France, and the West Indies, but maintaining a neutral stance in the conflict. but in doing so he broke the 1778 alliance. The U.S. sold the Neutrality Proclamation to France by claiming that if they joined the war, they could no longer send supplies. Genêt responded by encouraging popular opposition to neutrality and outfitting American ships as French privateers, threatening to force the U.S. into the war. In response, the Cabinet unanimously asked for France to recall Genêt. It hardly mattered, Genêt's political faction had lost during the Terror and the current French government wanted him back. Genêt resigned as the ambassador, but he never returned to France - he was too worried about the guillotine. While agreeing that Genêt had gone too far, Jefferson also resigned at the end of 1793. He believed that Washington was too influenced by the pro-British Hamilton.

In 1804, Saint Domingue

now called Haiti, declared its independence from France. The origins of this new revolution date back to 1802 when Toussaint Louverture was ousted by French troops and deported back to France as part of Emperor Napoleon's plan to end the threat of 'black barbarism' in the Caribbean. The French probably planned to reimpose slavery on the island when they took control.

James Madison

only 36, not only kept detailed notes, he also made contributions so notable that he has been dubbed the Father of the Constitution.

Anti-Federalists

opposed a strong central government - and this meant that they were against the constitution. most prominent Anti-Federalists were Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and John Hancock. Essentially, leaders of the Revolution were standing in opposition to the Constitution These individuals were supported by a collection of back country dwellers, poor farmers, debtors and states' rights devotees. far less organized because they were only united by their opposition to some aspect of the constitution. Some did not like the protections for slavery put in place. Others objected to what they saw as an aristocratic power grab

Alien and Sedition Acts

passed by Federalists, signed by President Adams; Summer of 1798 Three Alien Acts restricted immigration to the United States. These were sweeping reforms, that gave the president power to deport anyone thought to be 'dangerous' in times of peace and to deport or imprison them during open conflict. Apparently spreading radical ideas, like running a newspaper, qualified. In addition, the residence requirement for citizenship was raised to 15 years. The accompanying Sedition Act imposed steep fines and prison sentences on anyone found guilty of conspiring to oppose any measure of the government. disagreeing with the government, was now against the law. It went even further than that. Even jokes about the president could be a violation of the Sedition Act. Both of these Acts were meant to target immigrants from Ireland, France and the Caribbean. Officially, it was believed that these groups could potentially bring the radicalism of the French Revolution with them. In reality, these groups were also more likely to support the Democratic-Republicans; they lacked wealth and were welcomed as potential voters by the more-democratic Jeffersonians. The Federalists wrote that the laws would expire in 1801, which ensured that the Sedition Acts could not be used against them.

Naturalization Law of 1802

reduced the residency requirement for citizenship to 5 years from Adams's 15 years. the Democratic-Republicans favored immigration so this law also helps them grow their numbers.Jefferson saw his election as a return to the spirit of 1776, which in his mind meant checking the growth of governmental power and embracing the common man. Limiting governmental power began with ending Hamilton's excise tax, which Jefferson felt hurt farmers and only served a growing government bureaucracy. Killing this hated tax cost the federal government about a million dollars a year, something that made Jefferson's other goal of paying off the national debt even more difficult. Jefferson also made deep cuts into Adams's military establishment, because republican ideology favored militias over standing armies.

1784 New York

released all of their indentured servants as their status violated the democratic ideals of the new Republic

New Jersey Plan

response to the Virginia Plan, the small states had their own proposal William Patterson, the New Jersey delegate, pushed the idea of each state having equal representation. state power over federal power, so it was very similar to the original Articles of Confederation proposed a unicameral (or one house) legislature. The plan would grant the federal government greater financial power to control commerce, raise revenue, and force states to pay their bills. basically the Articles of Confederation with power vested in the states.

Legislative Branch

state legislatures would elect members of the U.S. Senate. The power of the states over the Senate was meant as a bribe, giving the state legislatures an important role would result in a reduction in national sovereignty.

civic virtue

the idea that democracy only worked when each citizen sacrificed their own selfish urges for the public good.

The Excluded

there was an interest in limiting the political voice of women and free African Americans. We tend to think of this period in broad strokes: rich white men have the power, everyone else is powerless. It was far more complicated than that. Women and free blacks in New Jersey had enjoyed the right to vote since the Revolution. That all came to an end in 1807 when New Jersey disenfranchised property-holding women and African Americans.

New Immigrants

transformation of the industrial workplace, and the seemingly limitless supply of labor was largely due to the arrival of new immigrants. The population of Europe more than doubled in the nineteenth century. Due to immense population growth many became displaced from their homelands. Leaving their homes, many searched for freedom from Europe's aristocratic caste and state-run churches. They wanted opportunity, land, and freedom from persecution. The journey from the U.S. took ten or twelve days after the introduction of the transatlantic steamship. This trip was also less expensive than a voyage to more distant destinations such as South Africa, Australia, or Argentina - which perhaps was the greatest draw. From 1820-1860 over 5 million immigrants entered the country. Nearly 95% were from northwestern Europe. While they only made up 2% of the total population in any given year, this added up. By the start of the Civil War 13.2% of the population was foreign born. One third of all newcomers were Irish immigrants, and most of them were Catholic. The Irish immigration to America reached a fever-pitch during the Irish Potato Famine that occurred from 1845 to 1849. More generally, the English Protestant domination of Ireland gave the island's Catholic inhabitants little chance of economic success. Irish immigrants tended to settle in the Northeast. New York City and Boston became the largest Irish cities in the world. Irish immigrants often lacked technical skills, and as a result they were perfect for the boom in unskilled positions as road builders, factory workers, and domestic servants. The influx of Irish workers also kept wages down. From the perspective of native-born workers they were 'stealing jobs' and ruining their lives. Economic pressure and Irish Catholicism stimulated anti-Irish riots in the 1830s and birthed an anti-immigrant nativist movement in the 1850s.

Alexander Hamilton

who was 32, favored a strong central government and in many ways was the Second Father of the Constitution.