History exam 4
What improvements did the new "cult of domesticity" bring to women's lives, and what disadvantages did the new conception of femininity have?
"Virtue," which in the eighteenth century was a political characteristic of men essential to the success of republican government, came to be redefined as a personal moral quality associated more and more closely with women. "Virtue" for a woman meant not only sexual innocence but also beauty, frailty, and dependence on men.
What were the major forms of resistance to slavery?
- "day-to-day resistance" or "silent sabotage": doing poor work, breaking tools, abusing animals, and in other ways disrupting plantation routine - theft of food, a form of resistance so common that one southern physician diagnosed it as a hereditary disease unique to blacks - they also, less frequently committed larger crimes
How did slavery shape social and economic relations in the Old South?
- slavery helped to determine where people lived, where they worked, and under what conditions they could exercise their freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press - northern merchants and manufactureres profitted from the slave economy - money earned in the cotton trade helped to finance industrial development andinternal improvements in the North - NYC's rise to commercial prominence depended on cotton from the south, which was produced by the thousands of slaves living there - according to the North, slavery limited the growth of industry, discouraged immigrants from entering the region, and inhibiting technological progress - according to the South, southern economy was hardly inactive, and slavery was very profitable, and it formed a powerful obstacle to abolition - for blacks, freedom was to not be a slave & to be literate; for whites, part of their freedom and liberty was the ability to own their own slaves - the Mason-Dixon Line was the dividing line between slavery and freedom - slave population in the south increased due to the cotton industry - the economic investment represented by the slave population exceeded the value of the nation's factories, railroads, and banks combined
How did the meanings of American freedom change in this period?
- spread of market relations - the westward movement of the population (westward expansion) - the rise of a vigorous political democracy - freedom was identified more closely with economic opportunity, physical mobility, and participation in a vibrantly democratic political system - coexistence of liberty and slavery - during this second great awakening American Freedom changed - laws began to favor the individual person, not the government (individualism)
What was the legal status of slaves in the southern United States?
Although they had a few legal rights (all states made it illegal to kill a slave except in self-defense, and slaves accused of serious crimes were entitled to their day in court, before all-white judges and juries), these were haphazardly enforced. Slaves could be sold or leased by their owners at will and lacked any voice in the governments that ruled over them. They could not testify in court against a white person, sign contracts or acquire property, own firearms, hold meetings unless a white person was present, or leave the farm or plantation without the permission of their owner. By the 1830s, it was against the law to teach a slave to read or write.
How did the market revolution change religious thought about freedom and individual responsibility?
Americans increasingly understood the realm of the self—which came to be called "privacy" as one with which neither other individuals nor government had a right to interfere. Individualism also helped to inspire the expansion of democracy. Ownership of one's self rather than ownership of property now made a person capable of exercising the right to vote.
How did abolitionists spread their message?
Antislavery leaders took advantage of the rapid development of print technology and the expansion of literacy due to common school education to spread their message. Abolitionists seized upon the recently invented steam printing press to produce millions of copies of pamphlets, newspapers, petitions, novels, and broadsides. Abolitionists also pioneered modern ways of raising funds, especially charity fairs or "bazaars,"
Who opposed abolitionism, and why?
At first, abolitionism aroused violent hostility from northerners who feared that the movement threatened to disrupt the Union, interfere with profits wrested from slave labor, and overturn white supremacy. Elsewhere, crowds of southerners, with the unspoken approval of Andrew Jackson's postmaster general, Amos Kendall, burned abolitionist literature that they had removed from the mails.
How did improvements in transportation and communication alter the population distribution of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century?
Between 1790 and 1840, some 4.5 million people crossed the Appalachian Mountains more than the entire U.S. population at the time of Washington's first inauguration. By 1840, settlement had reached the Mississippi River and two large new regions—the Old Northwest and Old Southwest—had entered the Union. Between 1810 and 1830, Ohio's population grew from 231,000 to more than 900,000. It reached nearly 2 million in 1850, when it ranked third among all the states.
How did the development of a market economy change town and country in the United States?
By 1860, thanks to the railroad, Chicago had become the nation's fourth-largest city, where farm products from throughout the Northwest were gathered to be sent east. Like rural areas, urban centers witnessed dramatic changes due to the market revolution. The number of cities with populations exceeding 5,000 rose from 12 in 1820 to nearly 150 three decades later, by which time the urban population numbered more than 6million.
Why did early labor movements stress the "liberty of living?"
In the 1830s, a time of rapidly rising prices, union organization spread and strikes became commonplace. Along with demands for higher wages and shorter hours, the early labor movement called for free homesteads for settlers on public land and an end to the imprisonment of union leaders for conspiracy.
Why did the nation face a crisis with the admission of Missouri in 1819?
Congress considered a request from Missouri, an area carved out of the Louisiana Purchase, to form a constitution in preparation for admission to the Union as a state. Missouri's slave population already exceeded 10,000. James Talmadge, a Republican congressman from New York, moved that the introduction of more slaves be prohibited and that children of those already in Missouri be freed at age twenty-five. Tallmadge's proposal sparked two years of controversy, during which Republican unity shattered along sectional lines. His restriction passed the House, where most northern congressmen supported it over the objections of southern representatives. It died in the Senate, however. When Congress reconvened in 1820, Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois proposed a compromise with three parts. Missouri would be authorized to draft a constitution without Tallmadge's restriction. Maine, which prohibited slavery, would be admitted to the Union to maintain the sectional balance between free and slave states. And slavery would be prohibited in all remaining territory within the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′ (Missouri's southern boundary). Congress adopted Thomas's plan as the Missouri Compromise.
What did Alexis de Tocqueville say about Americans?
Democracy, Tocqueville saw, had become an essential attribute of American freedom. Democracy reinforced a sense of equality among those who belonged to the political nation, and it deepened the divide separating them from those who did not. Participation in elections and the pageantry surrounding them—parades, bonfires, mass meetings, party conventions—helped to define the "people" of the United States. The right to vote increasingly became the emblem of American citizenship.
How did the Democrats differ from the Whigs in the rise of the "party system" in the United States?
Democrats tended to be alarmed by the widening gap between social classes. They believed the government should adopt a hands-off attitude toward the economy and not award special favors to entrenched economic interests. The Democratic Party attracted aspiring entrepreneurs who resented government aid to established businessmen, as well as large numbers of farmers and city workingmen suspicious of new corporate enterprises. Poorer farming regions isolated from markets, like the lower Northwest and the southern backcountry tended to vote Democratic. Whigs united behind the American System, believing that via a protective tariff, a national bank, and aid to internal improvements, the federal government could guide economic development. They were strongest in the North- east, the most rapidly modernizing region of the country. Most established businessmen and bankers supported their program of government-promoted economic growth, as did farmers in regions near rivers, canals, and the Great Lakes, who benefited from economic changes or hoped to do so.
Why did Jacksonian Democrats lose the 1840 election after they had risen to such broad prominence since 1828?
Despite his reputation as a political magician, Van Buren found that without Jackson's personal popularity he could not hold the Democratic coalition together. By 1840, the mass democratic politics of the Age of Jackson had absorbed the logic of the marketplace. Selling candidates and their images was as important as the positions for which they stood. With two highly organized parties competing throughout the country, voter turnout soared to 80 percent of those eligible, a level at which it remained for the rest of the nineteenth century. Harrison won a sweeping victory.
How did the "factory system" change the life of the "industrial worker?"
Factories gathered large groups of workers under central supervision and replaced hand tools with power-driven machinery. Eventually, however, the entire manufacturing process in textiles, shoes, and many other products was brought under a single factory roof. Massachusetts soon became the second most industrialized region of the world, after Great Britain. By the 1840s, steam power made it possible for factory owners to locate in towns like New Bedford nearer to the coast, and in large cities like Philadelphia and Chicago with their immense local markets. In 1850, manufacturers produced in factories not only textiles but also a wide variety of other goods, including tools, firearms, shoes, clocks, ironware, and agricultural machinery. As the market revolution accelerated, work in factories, workshops, and even for servants in Americans' homes took place for a specified number of hours per day. In colonial America, an artisan's pay was known as his "price," since it was linked to the goods he produced. In the nineteenth century, pay increasingly became a "wage," paid according to an hourly or daily rate.
Discuss the different working conditions of slaves in the antebellum South.
Food supplies and wild game were abundant in the South, and many slaves supplemented the food provided by their owners (primarily cornmeal and pork or bacon) with chickens and vegetables they raised themselves, animals they hunted in the forests, and, not infrequently, items they stole from the plantation smokehouse. Compared with their counterparts in the West Indies and Brazil, American slaves enjoyed better diets, lower rates of infant mortality, and longer life expectancies. Improvements in the slaves' living conditions were meant to strengthen slavery, not undermine it. Even as the material lives of the majority of slaves improved, the South drew tighter and tighter the chains of bondage.
How did family, gender, religion, and values combine to create distinct slave cultures in the Old South?
For slaves, unlike whites, males were not higher than females on the social hierarchy pyramid; they were equal. Because the slave community was discriminated against, it brought them closer together like one big family. Their culture reflected that as they "never abandoned their desire for freedom or their determination to resist total white control over their lives". They had a "semi-independent" culture as their lives outside of being a slave revolved around "the family and church"
How did abolitionists change conceptions of race in American society?
Frederick Douglass was only one among many former slaves who published accounts of their lives in bondage; these works convinced thousands of northerners of the evils of slavery. Indeed, the most effective piece of antislavery literature of the entire period, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, was to some extent modeled on the autobiography of fugitive slave Josiah Henson. By portraying slaves as sympathetic men and women, and as Christians at the mercy of slaveholders who split up families and set bloodhounds on innocent mothers and children, Stowe's melodrama gave the abolitionist message a powerful human appeal.
How did abolitionism challenge barriers to racial equality and free speech?
Freedom of speech was a big part of the abolitionist movement as it was their way of expressing their opinions on slavery. Because they were expressing their opinions of slavery and freeing blacks, racial equality became a big part, also. Abolitionists believed that slavery was not fair to blacks because they saw them as equals to whites.
What efforts were made in this period to strengthen the economic integration of the nation, and what major crises hindered these efforts?
Governmental improvements like the United States Bank, which served as "the nation's main financial agent" (295), and inventions that helped the economy advance (railroads, canals, roads, etc.) strengthened the economic integration of the nation all together. Although these advancements helped, they came with bad effects also. Some resented the 2nd National Bank (because they "often printed far more money than the specie in their vaults" (380), which caused the value of paper money to stay inconsistent) the Panic of 1819 (where many claimed bankruptcy and unemployment was increasing) occurred, and problems like the Missouri Controversy all hindered the efforts.
How did the market revolution spark social change?
Growth of cities, factory systems, the "mill girls," growth of immigration all had an impact on social change
In what ways did Andrew Jackson embody the contradictions of democratic nationalism?
He was a self-proclaimed champion of the common man, but his vision of democracy excluded any role for Indians, whom he believed should be pushed west of the Mississippi River, and African-Americans, who should remain as slaves or be freed and sent abroad. Although he rose from modest beginnings on the South Carolina frontier to become one of the richest men in Tennessee, he had an abiding suspicion of banks and paper money, and he shared the fears of many Americans that the market revolution was a source of moral decay rather than progress. A strong nationalist, Jackson nonetheless believed that the states, not Washington, D.C., should be the focal point of governmental activity. He opposed federal efforts to shape the economy or interfere in individuals' private lives.
How did the expansion of democracy affect Women and African-Americans in the 1830s?
If the exclusion of women from political freedom continued a long-standing practice, the increasing identification of democracy and whiteness marked something of a departure.Racist imagery became the stock-in-trade of popular theatrical presentations like minstrel shows, in which white actors in blackface entertained the audience by portraying African-Americans as stupid, dishonest, and altogether ridiculous. As late as 1800, no northern state barred blacks from voting. But every state that entered the Union after that year, with the single exception of Maine, limited the right to vote to white males. And, beginning with Kentucky in 1799 and Maryland two years later, states that had allowed blacks to vote rescinded the privilege.
What was the appeal and what were the limits of the colonization movement?
In 1816, proponents of this idea founded the American Colonization Society, which promoted the gradual abolition of slavery and the settlement of black Americans in Africa. Colonization struck many observers as totally impractical. Many northerners saw colonization as the only way to rid the nation of slavery. Southern supporters of colonization devoted most of their energy to persuading those African-Americans who were already free to leave the United States. But most African-Americans adamantly opposed the idea of colonization.
Explain the role of the United States Supreme Court in the fight of the Cherokee Indians against their removal from western Georgia.
In a crucial case involving Indians in 1823, Johnson v. M'Intosh, the Court had proclaimed that Indians were not in fact owners of their land, but merely had a "right of occupancy." In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Marshall described Indians as "wards" of the federal government. They deserved paternal regard and protection, but they lacked the standing as citizens that would allow the Supreme Court to enforce their rights. The justices could not, therefore, block Georgia's effort to extend its jurisdiction over the tribe. In 1832, in Worcester v. Georgia, the Court seemed to change its mind, holding that Indian nations were a distinct people with the right to maintain a separate political identity.
How did technological innovations in transportation change the American economy in the first half of the nineteenth century?
In the first half of the nineteenth century, in rapid succession, the steamboat, canal, railroad, and telegraph wrenched America out of its economic past. These innovations opened new land to settlement, lowered transportation costs, and made it far easier for economic enterprises to sell their products. They linked farmers to national and world markets and made them major consumers of manufactured goods. The completion of the Erie Canal set off a scramble among other states to match New York's success. Several borrowed so much money to finance elaborate programs of canal construction that they went bankrupt during the economic depression that began in 1837.
How did cotton shape the institution of slavery in the antebellum South?
In the nineteenth century, cotton replaced sugar as the world's major crop produced by slave labor. And although slavery survived in Brazil and the Spanish and French Caribbean, its abolition in the British empire in 1833 made the United States indisputably the center of New World slavery. Because the early industrial revolution centered on factories using cotton as the raw material to manufacture cloth, cotton became by far the most important commodity in international trade. And three-fourths of the world's cotton supply came from the southern United States. Southern newspapers carried advertisements for slave sales, southern banks financed slave trading, southern ships and railroads carried slaves from buyers to sellers, and southern states and municipalities earned revenue by taxing the sale of slaves. The Cotton Kingdom could not have arisen without the internal slave trade, and the economies of older states like Virginia came increasingly to rely on the sale of slaves.
Explain the significance of the Monroe Doctrine.
It expressed three principles. First, the United States would oppose any further efforts at colonization by European powers in the Americas. Second, the United States would abstain from involvement in the wars of Europe. Finally, Monroe warned European powers not to interfere with the newly independent states of Latin America.
Why did Congress have to decide the Elec. of 1824.
Jackson received 153,544 votes and carried states in all the regions outside of New England. But with four candidates in the field, none received a majority of the electoral votes. As required by the Constitution, Clay, who finished fourth, was eliminated, and the choice among the other three fell to the House of Representatives. Clay gave his support to Adams, helping to elect him.
What new challenges and opportunities emerged with the growth of immigration in antebellum America?
Lacking industrial skills and capital, these impoverished agricultural laborers and small farmers ended up filling the low-wage unskilled jobs native-born Americans sought to avoid. Male Irish immigrants built America's railroads, dug canals, and worked as common laborers, servants, longshoremen, and factory operatives.By the end of the 1850s, the Lowell textile mills had largely replaced Yankee farm women with immigrant Irish families. Germans also settled in tightly knit neighborhoods in eastern cities, but many were able to move to the West, where they established themselves as craftsmen, shopkeepers, and farmers. The Irish influx of the 1840s and 1850s thoroughly alarmed many native-born Americans.
Explain the various systems of slave labor in the South
Large plantations were diversified communities, where slaves performed all kinds of work. The 125 slaves on one plantation, for instance, included a butler, two waitresses, a nurse, a dairymaid, a gardener, ten carpenters, and two shoe-makers. Other plantations counted among their slaves engineers, blacksmiths, and weavers, as well as domestic workers from cooks to coachmen. The precise organization of their labor varied according to the crop and the size of the holding. On small farms, the owner often toiled side-by-side with his slaves. The 150,000 slaves who worked in the sugar fields of southern Louisiana also labored in large gangs. Conditions here were among the harshest in the South. On the rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia, the system of task labor, which had originated in the colonial era, prevailed. With few whites willing to venture into the malaria-infested swamps, slaves were assigned daily tasks and allowed to set their own pace of work.
What were the legal and material constraints on slaves' lives and work?
Legal -Court (could not testify) -Could not be taught literacy -Their marriages weren't really held sacred. -No firearms -Need travel papers Material -No firearms -No Dogs -No property -Were themselves property
How did the Supreme Court respond to the challenges of the market revolution?
McCulloch vs. Maryland: Reasserting his broad interpretation of governmental powers, Marshall declared the Bank a legitimate exercise of congressional authority under the Constitution's clause that allowed Congress to pass "necessary and proper" laws. Maryland, the chief justice continued, could not tax the Bank. "The power to tax," Marshall remarked, "involves the power to destroy," and the states lacked the authority to destroy an agency created by the national government.
How did religious utopian communities try to reorganize American society in the early nineteenth century?
Most arose from religious conviction, but others were inspired by the secular desire to counteract the social and economic changes set in motion by the market revolution. Nearly all the communities set out to reorganize society on a cooperative basis, hoping to restore social harmony to a world of excessive individualism and to narrow the widening gap between rich and poor. Most utopian communities also tried to find substitutes for conventional gender relations and marriage patterns. Some prohibited sexual relations between men and women altogether; others allowed them to change partners at will. But nearly all insisted that the abolition of private property must be accompanied by an end to men's "property" in women.
Why were African-Americans not able to take advantage of the new market economy?
Most blacks, of course, were slaves, but even free blacks found themselves excluded from the new economic opportunities. The 220,000 blacks living in the free states on the eve of the Civil War (less than 2 percent of the North's population) suffered discrimination in every phase of their lives. Although virtually every northern county east of the Mississippi River reported some black residents, the majority of blacks lived in the poorest, unhealthiest sections of cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati.
How did women first enter the public sphere in early-nineteenth-century America?
Much of the movement's grassroots strength derived from northern women, who joined by the thousands. Most were evangelical Protestants, New England Congregationalists, or Quakers convinced, as Martha Higginson of Vermont wrote, that slavery was "a disgrace in this land of Christian light and liberty." Women's letters and diaries reveal a keen interest in political issues, from slavery to presidential campaigns. women circulated petitions, attended mass meetings, marched in political parades, delivered public lectures, and raised money for political causes. Women organized a petition campaign against the policy of Indian removal. Although unsuccessful, the experience helped to produce a generation of women who then turned their attention to abolitionism, temperance, and other reforms.
How did slavery shape the national economy?
Northern merchants and manufacturers participated in the slave economy and shared in its profits. Money earned in the cotton trade helped to finance industrial development and internal improvements in the North. Northern ships carried cotton to NewYork and Europe, northern bankers financed cotton plantations, northern companies insured slave property, and northern factories turned cotton into cloth.
Discuss the role of William Lloyd Garrison in the abolitionist movement.
Not until the appearance in 1831 of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal published in Boston, did the new breed of abolitionism find a permanent voice. Some of Garrison's ideas, such as his suggestion that the North abrogate the Constitution and dissolve the Union to end its complicity in the evil of slavery, were rejected by most abolitionists. But his call for the immediate abolition of slavery echoed throughout antislavery circles. Garrison's pamphlet Thoughts on African Colonization persuaded many foes of slavery that blacks must be recognized as part of American society, not viewed as aliens to be shipped overseas. Other antislavery publications soon emerged, but The Liberator remained the preeminent abolitionist journal.
What were the different varieties of abolitionism?
One of the versions of abolitionism was militant abolitionism where "a new generation of reformers rejected the traditional approach of gradual emancipation and demanded immediate abolition" (466). Abolitionism was more popular throughout the North than the South due to the fact that the North was more advanced, specifically in education and literacy. Because most of the North could read and write, "Antislavery leaders took advantage of the rapid development of print technology" (467), to spread the message (another form of abolitionism). Moral suasion was another form, which was when activists focused on "awakening the nation to the moral evil of slavery" (469). In doing so, "The abolitionist crusade both reinforced and challenged common understandings of freedom in Jacksonian America" (470), which was another way abolitionism was shown.
What were the social bases for the flourishing democracy of the early mid-nineteenth century?
Owning property changed from being the social base for a flourishing democracy, as individualism became more influenced within the states. On page 373 it states, "The personal independence necessary in the citizen now rested not on owner- ship of property, but on ownership of one's self—a reflection of the era's individualism."
What were the major areas of conflict between nationalism and sectionalism?
There was conflict between nationalism and sectionalism because nationalism's goals were to expand the US inside their borders while the goals of sectionalism was to take over areas outside of the US border. Also by the time of the election of 1824, "sectionalism seemed to rule domestic politics"
How did African-American slaves think about freedom?
Slave culture rested on a conviction of the unjustness of bondage and the desire for freedom. Most slaves fully understood the impossibility of directly confronting the system.
How did gender and religion shape the life of slaves in the South?
Slave men and women experienced, in a sense, the equality of powerlessness. The nineteenth century's "cult of domesticity," which defined the home as a woman's proper sphere, did not apply to slave women, who regularly worked in the fields. Slave men could not act as the economic providers for their families. Nor could they protect their wives from physical or sexual abuse by owners and overseers (a frequent occurrence on many plantations) or determine when and under what conditions their children worked. When slaves worked "on their own time," however, more conventional gender roles prevailed. Slave men chopped wood, hunted, and fished, while women washed, sewed, and assumed primary responsibility for the care of children.
How did slavery shape the African-American family?
Slaves never abandoned their desire for freedom or their determination to resist total white control over their lives. In the face of grim realities, they succeeded in forging a semi-independent culture, centered on the family and church. This enabled them to survive the experience of bondage without surrendering their self-esteem and to pass from generation to generation a set of ideas and values fundamentally at odds with those of their masters.
Explain the relationship between white slaveowners and non-slaveholding whites.
Some poorer whites resented the power and privileges of the great planters. But most poor whites made their peace with the planters in whose hands economic and social power was concentrated. Racism, kinship ties, common participation in a democratic political culture, and regional loyalty in the face of outside criticism all served to cement bonds between planters and the South's "plain folk." In the plantation regions, moreover, small farmers manned the slave patrols that kept a lookout for runaway slaves and those on the roads without permission. Non slaveholders regularly elected slaveowners to public offices in the South. Like other white southerners, most small farmers believed their economic and personal freedom rested on slavery.
How did Transcendentalists respond to the market revolution?
The restless, competitive world of the market revolution strongly encouraged the identification of American freedom with the absence of restraints on self-directed individuals seeking economic advancement and personal development. In Emerson's definition, rather than a preexisting set of rights or privileges, freedom was an open-ended process of self-realization by which individuals could remake themselves and their own lives.
How did the growing white middle class, especially women, try to reform American society in the antebellum years?
The American Temperance Society, founded in 1826, directed its efforts to redeeming not only habitual drunkards but also the occasional drinker. It claimed by the 1830s to have persuaded hundreds of thousands of Americans to renounce liquor. During the 1830s and 1840s, Americans embarked on a program of institution building—jails for criminals, poorhouses for the destitute, asylums for the insane, and orphanages for children without families. The largest effort at institution building before the Civil War came in the movement to establish common schools.
How did the Bank War influence the economy and party competition?
The Bank War caused a short raise in wages, value of money, and inflation. It was short because the value of money dropped quickly making wages and prices drop too. Hard money then came into play and the anti-bank section of the democratic party was established.
How did women broaden American notions of freedom before the Civil War?
The Grimkés were the first to apply the abolitionist doctrine of universal freedom and equality to the status of women. The Seneca Falls Convention, a gathering on behalf of women's rights held in the upstate New York town where Stanton lived, raised the issue of woman's suffrage for the first time. The Declaration of Sentiments condemned the entire structure of inequality that denied women access to education and employment, gave husbands control over the property and wages of their wives and custody of children in the event of divorce, deprived women of independent legal status after they married, and restricted them to the home as their "sphere of action." Equal rights became the rallying cry of the early movement for women's rights, and equal rights meant claiming access to all the prevailing definitions of freedom. Whether married or not, early feminists insisted, women deserved the range of individual choices—the possibility of self-realization—that constituted the essence of freedom.
How did the market revolution affect the lives of workers, women, and African-Americans?
The Market Revolution affected the lives of workers by giving them jobs. It did bring them from skilled labor to cheap labor though. Their lives started revolving around the clock as they began having to work a certain amount of hours everyday. The number of immigrants increased, also. There were far more immigrants in the North than in the South because there were more job opportunities due to there being less slaves. This irritated nativists because they thought that since they were there first that their jobs, land, and other opportunities should stay theirs; they shouldn't have to share with foreigners. There is a similar problem today. Women still had less freedom than men and still were under the idea of coverture. Poor women worked in factories. Mainly, people thought a woman's job was to teach their children the concept of democracy, freedom, and liberty. Slavery became more constituted and became ingrained in the South after the invention of the cotton gin.
How did the Second Great Awakening draw on the individualism of the ear and change how Americans saw faith?
The Second Great Awakening spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity, making it a truly mass enterprise. At large camp meetings, especially prominent on the frontier, fiery revivalist preachers rejected the idea that man is a sinful creature with a preordained fate, promoting instead the doctrine of human free will. Even more than its predecessor of several decades earlier, the Second Great Awakening stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and the possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works.
What were the major movements and goals of antebellum reform?
The goals of the antebellum reform was peace, temperance "(which literally means moderation in the consumption of liquor) was transformed into a crusade to eliminate drinking entirely" (461), women's rights, and abolitionism.
How did the market economy and its technologies shape the "information revolution" in the 1830s?
The market revolution and political democracy produced a large expansion of the public sphere and an explosion in printing. The application of steam power to newspaper printing led to a great increase in output and the rise of the mass circulation "penny press," priced at one cent per issue instead of the traditional six. Thanks to low postal rates, many newspapers circulated far beyond their places of publication. The publication of all sorts of magazines travel guides, advice manuals, religious titles, and other reading materials also rose dramatically. The growth of the reading public, yet another facet of the democratization of American life, opened the door for the rise of a new generation of women writers.
What were the main elements of the market revolution?
The market revolution represented an acceleration of developments already under way in the colonial era. In the first half of the 19th century, in rapid succession, the steamboat, canal, railroad, and telegraph brought America out of its economic past. These innovation opened new land to settlement, lowered transportation costs, and made it far easier for economic enterprises to sell their products.
What types of resistance to slavery did African-Americans practice?
The most widespread expression of hostility to slavery was "day-to-day resistance" or "silent sabotage"—doing poor work, breaking tools, abusing animals, and in other ways disrupting the plantation routine. Less frequent, but more dangerous, were serious crimes committed by slaves, including arson, poisoning, and armed assaults against individual whites.
Why did John C. Calhoun insist on the principle of nullification?
The national government, Calhoun insisted, had been created by an agreement among sovereign states, each of which retained the right to prevent the enforcement within its borders of acts of Congress that exceeded the powers specifically spelled out in the Constitution. Calhoun denied that nullification was a step toward disunion. On the contrary, the only way to ensure the stability of a large, diverse nation was for each state to be assured that national actions would never trample on its rights or vital interests.
Explain the "American System" and its benefits.
The plan rested on three pillars: a new national bank, a tariff on imported manufactured goods to protect American industry, and federal financing of improved roads and canals. The last part didn't go through but the other two became law. The tariff of 1816 offered protection to goods that could be produced in the United States, especially cheap cotton textiles, while admitting tax-free those that could not be manufactured at home. And in 1816, a new Bank of the United States was created, with a twenty-year charter from Congress.
How did the rise of the "Cotton Kingdom" change life in the South?
These factories generated an immense demand for cotton, a crop the Deep South was particularly suited to growing because of its climate and soil fertility. Until 1793, the marketing of cotton had been slowed by the laborious task of removing seeds from the plant itself. But in that year, Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate working in Georgia as a private tutor, invented the cotton gin. A fairly simple device consisting of rollers and brushes, the gin quickly separated the seed from the cotton. It made possible the growing and selling of cotton on a large scale. After Congress prohibited the Atlantic slave trade in 1808—the earliest date allowed by the Constitution—a massive trade in slaves developed within the United States, supplying the labor force required by the new Cotton Kingdom. As the southern economy expanded westward, it was cotton produced on slave plantations that became the linchpin of southern development and by far the most important export of the empire of liberty.
How did Martin Van Buren's concept of politics challenge the likes of John Quincy Adams in the Elec. of 1828?
Van Buren represented the new political era. The son of a tavern keeper, he was a talented party manager, not a person of great vision or intellect. Rather than being dangerous and divisive, as the founding generation had believed, political parties, he insisted, were a necessary and indeed desirable element of political life. Party competition provided a check on those in power and offered voters a real choice in elections. He set out to reconstruct the Jeffersonian political alliance between "the planters of the South and the plain republicans [the farmers and urban workers] of the North."
Why did organized slave revolts in the United States fail?
Within two days, the militia and regular army troops met the rebels and dispersed them in a pitched battle, killing sixty-six. Soon afterward, the principal leaders were executed. Captured rebels offered little explanation for their revolt other than the desire, as one put it, "to kill the white." -The plot was discovered before it could reach fruition. -In the end, thirty-five slaves and free blacks, among them Vesey and three slaves belonging to the governor, were executed and an equal number banished from the state.
What role did the end of the Bank of the United States have in causing the Panic of 1837?
Without government deposits, the Bank of the United States lost its ability to regulate the activities of state banks. They issued more and more paper money, partly to help finance the rapid expansion of industrial development in New England, agriculture in the South and West, and canal and railroad systems planned by the states. The value of bank notes in circulation rose from $10 million in 1833 to $149 million in 1837. Prices rose dramatically, and even though wages also increased, they failed to keep pace. As a result, workers' "real wages"—the actual value of their pay—declined. Numerous labor unions emerged, which attempted to protect the earnings of urban workers. Speculators hastened to cash in on rising land prices. Using paper money, they bought up huge blocks of public land, which they resold to farmers or to eastern purchasers of lots in entirely nonexistent western towns. States projected tens of millions of dollars in internal improvements.
What were the diverse sources of the antebellum women's rights movement and its significance?
Women at this time were basically fighting to show that they are just as good as men. The main thing they wanted out of it was the right to vote. They thought that is they could prove they have the same skills, can perform the same tasks/work, this would influence the men to change their mind. They also wanted to prove that they were capable of working for wages.
What role did women's wage work play in the formation of a women's movement?
Women, wrote Pauline Davis in 1853, "must go to work" to emancipate themselves from "bondage." But even as it sought to apply prevailing notions of freedom to women, the movement posed a fundamental challenge to some of society's central beliefs—that the capacity for independence and rationality were male traits, that the world was properly divided into public and private realms, and that issues of justice and freedom did not apply to relations within the family.
