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Chapter 13: Rise of Manufacturing and the Age of Jackson (1820–1845)
Important Keywords
Monroe Doctrine (1823): Proclamation that countries of the Western Hemisphere “are not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”
Removal Act of 1830: Congressional act that authorized the removal of all Native American tribes east of the Mississippi to the west.
The Trail of Tears and other forced migrations caused the deaths of thousands.
The Liberator: Sbolitionist newspaper begun by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831.
Spoils system: System used heavily during the presidency of Andrew Jackson whereby political supporters of the winning candidate are given jobs in the government.
Nullification: In reaction to tariff legislation passed in 1828, the South Carolina legislature explored the possibility of nullification, by which individual states could rule on the constitutionality of federal laws.
Whig Party: Political party that emerged in the 1830s in opposition to the Democratic Party.
Whigs favored policies that promoted commercial and industrial growth.
Key Timeline
1790s: Beginning of Second Great Awakening
1816: Second Bank of United States chartered
Tariff of 1816 imposes substantial import tariffs
Election of James Monroe
1819: Panic of 1819
1820: Missouri Compromise
Reelection of James Monroe
1820s: Growth of New England textile mills
1823: Monroe Doctrine
1824: Proposal by President Monroe to move Native Americans west of the Mississippi River
1825: John Quincy Adams elected president by House of Representatives
1828: Andrew Jackson elected president
1830: Passage of Indian Removal Act in Congress
Webster-Hayne Debate
1830s: Growth of the Whig Party
1831: Cherokee nation goes to court to defend tribal rights in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia First issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator published
1832: Andrew Jackson reelected
Nullification crisis after nullification of tariffs by South Carolina
1834: First strike of women textile workers in Lowell, Massachusetts
1836: Democrat Martin Van Buren elected president
1840: Whig William Henry Harrison elected president
1841: William Henry Harrison dies after one month in office, and Vice President John Tyler becomes president.
The Rise of Manufacturing
The putting-out system was primarily used in early nineteenth-century manufacturing.
Families produced goods in their homes using the raw materials that merchants gave them.
American factories began in the 1790s.
British textile machinery was powered by the Industrial Revolution.
New England manufacturers used this technology to make southern cotton cloth.
Eli Whitney's cotton gin helped southern planters boost cotton production.
This accelerated the US and UK Industrial Revolution.
By the early 1840s, American textile mills employed 75,000 people, nearly half of whom were women.
Lowell, Massachusetts, was a center of the American textile industry.
Here mill owners developed the “Lowell System.”
Local young women worked for them.
Mill owners provided dormitories for these young women who worked in the mills for years.
Despite low wages, these young women earned an income.
Some used their time in the mills to save up for marriage before returning home.
Workers were cheap and plentiful for mill owners.
A new white-collar factory middle class emerged in Lowell and other industrial towns.
They helped manufacturers and bankers revitalize these cities.
The Panic of 1819 was caused by changes in the international economy after the Napoleonic Wars and inflationary policies by branches of the Second Bank of the United States speculating on land sales.
In the 1830s, workers demanded state legislatures limit working hours.
In the 1840s, textile workers demanded better pay and conditions.
The Monroe Doctrine
In the early 1820s, President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams worried that Spain and France would try to retake Latin American republics that had gained independence during the Napoleonic Wars.
British fears of losing South American markets echoed this.
The British proposed guaranteeing the sovereignty of the new Latin American states with the US.
In 1823, Monroe and Adams issued their own statement rather than follow the British.
The Monroe Doctrine forbade European colonization in the Western Hemisphere.
Monroe said the US would stay out of European affairs.
The Monroe Doctrine shaped American foreign policy for over a century.
Native American Removal
Since Thomas Jefferson's presidency, American political leaders believed that moving all Native American tribes west of the Mississippi was the only way to resolve conflicts.
In 1824, James Monroe called for this removal policy.
Monroe believed that exile to the west would allow Native Americans to learn how to farm and adapt to "white man" ways without interference from land-hungry settlers.
Monroe ignored the fact that some Native Americans, like the Cherokee, were adapting to settled agriculture.
Andrew Jackson increased pressure to expel Native Americans.
The Removal Act of 1830 allowed Congress and Jackson to negotiate the removal of tribes east of the Mississippi.
During the War of 1812, Jackson defeated the powerful Creek tribe and forced the remaining Creeks to cede 60% of their land to the United States.
Jackson fought Native Americans as efficiently and brutally as he had as a soldier, despite claiming no animosity toward them.
The Cherokee fought for removal in the courts.
In 1831's Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall questioned the Cherokee's legal status in American courts.
In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall upheld the Cherokee's treaty-granted land rights.
Jackson refused to implement Marshall's ruling, saying, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it."
Tribes began to be moved west in 1831.
In 1838, Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren expelled the Cherokee.
Detachments of the Army rounded up and escorted the Cherokee west.
Disease and starvation killed about a third of the Cherokee.
Seminole wars in Florida lasted until the 1850s.
The Transportation Revolution and Religious Revival
After the War of 1812, rapid urbanization, industrialization, and westward settlement transformed the American economy.
Transportation revolutionized economic growth.
Steamboats traveled America's great rivers on the federally built National Road.
Canal building increased after the Erie Canal was built.
Bad canals bankrupted some states.
In the 1840s, railroad expansion threatened canals' economic viability.
The transportation revolution boosted American commercial development and increased market economy participation.
Religious fervor shaped American culture as the economy grew.
The Second Great Awakening emphasized a more personal, emotional approach to traditional religion.
The Baptists, Methodists, and Adventists were strengthened by its fervor, and others were founded.
Charles Grandison Finney and Timothy Dwight preached to large crowds nationwide.
Revival meetings across the nation inspired public conversions, emotional outbursts, and tongue-speaking.
The Second Great Awakening flourished in both the countryside and cities.
Evangelical Christianity's "Benevolent Empire" of missionary organizations had more women volunteers.
Women's education was driven by scripture reading and comprehension.
An Age of Reform
Economic and religious upheaval spurred an era of reform.
Dorothea Dix was famous in the 1830s and 1840s for her efforts to improve mental health care in states.
Horace Mann promoted universal public education and teacher training.
Other activists improved prisons and urban poverty.
The temperance movement fought alcoholism and was a major reform movement.
The evangelical Christian temperance movement also fueled anti-slavery sentiment.
In the 1820s and 1830s, abolitionists dominated society.
William Lloyd Garrison, founder, and editor of the Liberator, was an outspoken abolitionist.
Slavery was sinful to some abolitionists.
Other abolitionists worried about US racial mixing and conflict.
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, encouraged freed slaves to settle in Africa.
African Americans led slavery abolition.
In 1845, Frederick Douglass, a Maryland former slave, published his antislavery memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Nat Turner, a Virginia slave who led a violent slave uprising that killed 60 white men, women, and children.
White citizens and state authorities killed 200 African Americans, including Turner and 56 others.
Slave owners tightened the Black Codes in fear of the rebellion.
Jacksonian Democracy
Politically, the 1820s inaugurated an era of the “common man.”
By the 1820s, most states had eliminated or lowered property requirements for voting.
In 1800, five states allowed popular vote for Electoral College electors; in 1824, 18 of 24 states did.
By 1824, politics was a popular pastime with parades, buttons, and posters.
Alexis de Tocqueville, an aristocratic French visitor, was inspired to write Democracy in America by this egalitarian spirit.
Andrew Jackson ruled this period and promoted the "common man."
Thus, "Jacksonian democracy" was the era.
The Election of 1824
In 1824, four Democratic-Republicans ran for president.
John Quincy Adams was secretary of state.
William Crawford was secretary of the treasury.
Henry Clay was speaker of the house.
Andrew Jackson was the leading military hero of the War of 1812.
Jackson won the popular vote but not the Electoral College in the four-way race.
This threw the election to the House of Representatives.
Henry Clay, who had finished second to Jackson, advised his supporters to vote for John Quincy Adams.
Adams defeated Jackson and became president.
Adams appointed Clay secretary of state immediately.
After winning the most popular and electoral votes, Andrew Jackson was furious at losing.
He called Adams-Clay's deal "corrupt."
Jackson immediately began preparing for a rematch in 1828, becoming a spokesman for democratic attacks on "privilege" in American politics.
The Election of 1828
John Quincy Adams was a capable president, but the Jacksonians, later known as the Democratic Party, sabotaged his administration.
In 1828, both sides slandered each other.
Jacksonians portrayed Adams as an effete aristocrat who stole the 1824 election.
Adams's supporters called Jackson, a duelist, a violent killer.
Jackson and his wife were found guilty of adultery because they married without knowing.
Jackson blamed the character attacks on Mrs. Jackson's death after the election.
Jackson won the election decisively, ushering in a new political era.
President Jackson
Andrew Jackson was a Tennessee landowner and slaveholder when he became president.
He had been a congressman and senator from Tennessee for decades, despite his fame as a general.
Jackson portrayed himself as a stern democratic champion of the people.
His fans called him "Old Hickory."
Jackson, a Democrat, believed his supporters should take over federal offices held by John Quincy Adams' supporters.
He believed that any competent and well-informed citizen could perform government duties.
Jackson championed the spoils system by appointing loyal Democrats to federal positions.
Jackson trusted his "Kitchen Cabinet" more than his cabinet.
Jackson believed in a Jeffersonian America ruled by self-sufficient yeoman farmers.
He was a Jeffersonian who opposed economic federalism and limited government.
He vetoed internal improvement bills.
After John Marshall's death in 1835, Jackson appointed Roger B. Taney as Supreme Court chief justice.
The Taney Court would become a stalwart defender of states’ rights.
Despite advocating limited government, Jackson paradoxically strengthened the presidency.
His opponents called him "King Andrew I" for his actions.
The Nullification Controversy
Jackson ironically had to assert federal over state power in his first crisis.
In 1828, Congress passed a tariff bill to protect northern manufacturers.
Imported manufactured goods cost more, hurting southern and western farmers.
Southern leaders termed the Tariff of 1828 the “Tariff of Abominations.”
The South Carolina legislature claimed the right to nullify unconstitutional federal laws.
John C. Calhoun, Jackson's vice-president from South Carolina, developed this nullification theory.
Calhoun believed states needed a defense against federal power.
He feared the more populous north would force abolitionism on the south.
In 1830, the U.S. Senate debated nullification.
In the Webster-Hayne Debate, Daniel Webster eloquently stated that nullification would result in "states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched... in fraternal blood!"
Jackson took decisive action to show that he supported states' rights but opposed nullification.
South Carolina delegates nullified new tariffs in 1832.
Jackson prepared to enforce the law in South Carolina with troops and federal marshals.
Congress passed a Force Act supporting this action.
Calhoun resigned as vice president, and Jackson told confidants that he would gladly execute his former running mate.
Henry Clay's tariff-lowering bill ended the crisis.
South Carolinians revoked their nullification after this.
The Bank War
Jackson's next major crisis involved the 1816-chartered Second Bank of the United States.
The Bank issued bank notes that served as a de facto national paper currency and regulated state banks and credit.
The Bank was owned by the U.S. government and private investors.
Nicholas Biddle had managed the Bank since 1823.
As a Jeffersonian, Jackson disliked the Bank on principle.
He believed that the Bank had helped bring on the Panic of 1819.
He believed Biddle and the Bank directors had unchecked and undemocratic power.
Henry Clay ran against Jackson in the election of 1832.
He campaigned to recharter the Bank early.
Clay passed a rechartering bill, which Jackson vetoed.
Clay misjudged public opinion, thinking the Bank's economic utility would win over voters.
Jackson portrayed the Bank as a sinister special interest.
He easily won reelection by criticizing economic privilege.
Jackson hated Biddle and the Bank.
In 1833, he withdrew federal money from the Bank and put it in state banks, which his opponents called "pet banks."
Biddle called loans to save his bank.
Jackson's Bank War and the Specie Circular, which required gold or silver coins to buy federal land, caused the Panic of 1837.
This in turn led to an economic depression that carried into the 1840s.
The Whig Party and the Second Party System
In the 1830s, Jackson's opponents formed the Whig Party.
Whigs opposed Democrats until the 1850s.
Party politics during this time is called the Second Party System.
Whigs supported the active government, while Democrats supported Jeffersonian limited government.
Whigs supported Henry Clay's American System, a national bank, tariffs, and internal improvements.
Whigs wanted a government that promoted trade, industry, and farmer markets.
Whigs supported reform legislation more than Democrats because they believed government action worked.
Whigs were more business-minded and less land-hungry than Democrats, and they were warier of Manifest Destiny.
Wealthy businessmen and planters supported the Whig Party, as did ambitious young men like Abraham Lincoln.
In 1836, Martin Van Buren, Jackson's successor, won.
The Panic of 1837 weakened Democratic economic policy.
In 1840, the Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison for president.
"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" was the campaign's catchphrase.
Harrison was elected, but pneumonia at his inauguration killed him a month later.
John Tyler was the first vice president to succeed a president.