The Rise of Mass Democracy

Ch. 13: Corrupt Bargain of 1824

• As James Monroe finished his second term, there were 4 candidates for the presidency:

• John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay , William H. Crawford, and Andrew Jackson

• They all professed to be Republicans

• Jackson had the stronger personal appeal and won most of popular vote, but not electoral vote

• House of Representatives had to choose top 3 candidates

  • Clay was eliminated, but he was still speaker of the house and was in the position to give the election to the candidate of his choice

• Crawford was out of picture (health issues), Clay hated Jackson

• Clay didn’t like Adams, but the two men were both: nationalists and advocates of the American System

• Before the final balloting in the House, Clay met privately with Adams and assured him of his support

• Decision day came in

  • House of Representatives met

  • Because of Clay’s secret influence, Adams was elected president, Adams announced that Henry Clay would be the new secretary of state

• Office of secretary state was a prize

  • ¾ preceding secretaries had reached presidency, and high cabinet office, which was a pathway to the White House

• According to Jackson’s supporters, Adams had bribed Clay with the position, making himself the victor over Jackson

• Masses of angry Jacksonians protested against the corrupt bargain for nearly four years

• No positive evidence has been unearthed to prove Adams and Clay entered into a formal bargain

• clay was the natural choice for secretary of state; even if bargain had been struck, it was not necessarily corrupt because deals like this were normal

John Quincy Adams

• Adam’s nationalistic views gave him problems

• The nation was turning away from post-Ghent nationalism and toward states’ rights and sectionalism

• He wanted infrastructure construction, national university, and an astronomy observatory, but the public didn’t want it

• Adam’s land policy antagonized westerners

  • he didn’t want expansion because he wanted to avoid over speculation of public domain and he wanted to deal with natives fairly, which the public also didn’t want

Election of 1828:

• Essentially, Andrew Jackson’s next presidential campaign started on February 9. 1825, the day of John Quincy Adams controversial election by the House

• Even before the election of 1828, the temporarily united Republicans of the Era of Good Feelings had split into two camps. One was the National Republicans, with Adams as their representation. The other was the Democratic-Republicans with Jackson heading their ticket

• Jackson’s followers presented their hero as a rough frontiersman and a champion of the common man; they denounced Adams as a corrupt aristocrat, but Jackson was no frontier farmer but a wealthy planter

• On voting day, the electorate split on sectional lines

  • Jackson’s strongest support came from the West and South

  • Middle states and Old Northwest were divided, while Adams was backed by New England and Northeast

• Jackson won electoral and popular vote in election of 1828

The Spoils System

• Spoils system—rewarding political supporters with public office—was introduced into fed. Gov. on a large scale

• Jackson defended the spoils system on democratic grounds

• Scandal accompanied the new system

• Men who had openly bought their posts by campaign contributions were appointed to high office. Illiterates, incompetents, and crooks were given positions of public trust; men wanted the spoils—rather than the toils–of office.

• Despite its abuse, the spoils system was an important part of emerging two party order. The promise of patronage provided a reason for Americans to pick and stick to a party

Tariff of Abominations

• Tariffs protected American industry against competition from European manufactured goods, but they also drove up prices for all Americans and invited retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural exports abroad

• Middle states and New England were supporters of tariffs

• Southerners, as heavy consumers of manufactured goods with little manufacturing industry of their own, were hostile to tariffs;

• Tariff of Abominations/Tariff of 1828: Noteworthy for its unprecedented high duties on imports. Southerners opposed the tariff, arguing that it hurt southern farmers, who did not enjoy the protection of tariffs but were forced to pay higher prices for manufacturers

• Northeast was experiencing a boom in manufacturing, West was prospering from rising property values and multiplying population, southwest was expanding into cotton lands

• Old South fell under hard times and the tariff was a scapegoat

• Southerners sold their cotton and other farm produce in a world market completely unprotected by tariffs but were forced to buy their manufactured goods in an American market heavily protected by tariffs

• Much deeper underlay the southern protests with anxiety about possible fed. Interference with slavery (Missouri Compromise) and pressure of abolitionism

• South Carolinians protested against Tariff

  • Pamphlet known as The South Carolina Exposition by John C. Calhoun denounced recent tariff as unjust and unconstitutional

  • He proposed that states should nullify the tariff within their borders

Nullies in South California

• Nullifiers—nullies—tried to get ⅔ vote for nullification in the South Carolina legislature but were blocked by Unionists

• Congress passed the Tariff of 1832, it got rid of the worst parts of the tariff of 1828, bit was still protective and fell short of meeting southern demands

• Nullification Crisis deepened

• South Carolina’s Nullifiers and Unionists clashed in election of 1832

  • state legislature declared that existing tariff to be null and void within South Carolina; convention threatened to take South Carolina out of Union if Washington attempted to collect customs duties by force

• Jackson threatened to invade the stade nad have nullifiers hanged

• He dispatched naval and military reinforcements

• Henry Clay created the Compromise tariff of 1833

• Gradually reduce Tariff of 1832 by 10 percent over period of 8 years

• Compromise tariff of 1833 squeezed through Congress

  • Opposition came from protectionist New England and middle states; Calhoun and south favored compromise

• Congress passed Force Bill:

  • authorized president to use army and navy to collect fed. tariff  duties

  • Neither Jackson nor nullies won victory

  • The Armed conflict was avoided

Trail of Tears

• Jackson’s Democrats wanted western expansion, but it would mean confrontation with current Natives on the land. More than 125,000 Native AMericnas lived in the forests east of the Mississippi in the 1820s. Fed policy toward them varied. Beginning of 1790s, $20,000 was given for promotion of literacy, agricultural, and vocational instruction among Natives

• Many tribes resisted white encroachment, others followed path of accommodation

• Cherokees abandoned semi nomadic life and adopted system of settled agriculture

• Missionaries opened schools; Cherokee National Council legislated a written legal code, adopted a constitution w/ 3 branches of gov.

• Not good enough for whites

• In 1828, Georgia legislature declared Cherokee tribal council illegal and asserted its own jurisdiction over Native affairs and lands; Cherokees appealed to  Supreme Court, which upheld rights of Natives 3x, but Jackson wanted natives gone from land for white settlement Jackson proposed bodily removal of remaining eastern tribes—Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles—beyond Mississippi

• Jacksonś  policy led to forced uprooting of more than 100,000 Natives

• In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, providing for transplanting of all Native Tribes then resident east of Mississippi. Natives died on forced marches—notably the Cherokees along the **Trail of Tears—**to the newly est. Native Territory, where they were to be “permanently” free of whtite encroachment

• In fall/winter of 1838-1839, US Army forcibly removed 15,000 Cherokees from ancestral homelands in southeastern US and marched them to Native Territory (Oklahoma).

  • Freezing weather and inadequate supplies resulted in suffering.

  • The Army refused to slow the forced march so that the ill could recover, and some 4000 Cherokees died on the 116 day journey

• The Bureau of Native Affairs was est.. To administer relations with America’s original inhabitants the “permanent” frontier lasted about 15 years

• Sauk and Fox braves from Illinois and Wisconsin, led by Black Hawk, resisted eviction and bloodily defeated in the Black Hawk War of 1832 by Lieut. Jefferson Davis. In Florida, Seminole Natives and runway slaves retreated to Everglades

  The American field commander seeized leader, Osceola. Some fled deeper into Everglades, but ⅘ of them were moved to Oklahoma.

Bank War

• Jackson did not hate all banks and businesses, but he distrusted monopolistic banking and big business

• He hated the Bank of the US

• The national gov. Minsted gold and silver coins in the mid 19th century but did not issue paper money. Paper notes were printed by private bank. Their value fluctuated with the health of the bank and the amt of money printed, giving private bankers considerable power over the nation’s economy

• The Bank of the US had a lot of power and was a principal depository for the funds of Washington gov. And controls much of the nation’s gold and silver. Its notes were stable in value. A source of credit and stability, the bank was an important useful part of the nation’s expanding economy.

• But Bank of the US was a private institution, accountable not to the people, but to the investors. Its president, Nicholas Biddle held an immense amt of power over nationś  affairs.

• Bank Criticism: went against democracy, bank foreclosed on Western farms, asked profit

• The Bank War erupted in 1832, when Daniel Webster and Henry Clay presented Congress with a bill to renew the Bank of the US’ charter. The charter was not set to expire until 1836, but Clay pushed for renewal 4 years early to make it an election issue in 1832 (He was Jackson’s rival for the presidency)

• Clay wanted a recharter bill through Congress and then sent it to the white house. If Jackson signed it, he would alienate western followers. If he vetoed it, he would lose the presidency by alienating the wealthy and influential of the East

• The recharter bill went through Congress, but was vetoed by Jackson

  • It was declared monopolistic bank to be unconstitutional

• In McCulloch v. Maryland, Supreme COurt had declared it constitutional, but Jackson regarded executive branch as superior to judicial branch

• Consequences:

  • squashed bank bill

  • amplified power of presidency

  • all previous vetoes were based on constitutionality.

  • Though Jackson invoked Constitution, he argued that he was vetoing the bill because he found it harmful to the nation.

Election of 1832

• Henry Clay (National Republicans) vs. Andrew Jackson (Dem Republicans)

• First time, third party entered the field: Anti-Masonic party:

• First founded in New York, it gained considerable influence in New England and the mid-Atlantic during the 1832 election, campaigning against the politically influential Masonic order, a secret society. Anti-Masons opposed Andrew Jackson, a Mason, and drew much of their support from evangelical Protestants

• Anti-Masons and National Republicans adopted formal platforms, publicizing positions on the issues

  • National Republic Advantages: funds flowed into their campaign ($50,000 from Bank of the US), Most newspaper editors wrote poorly about Jackson

• Jackson won the election

Bank of the US

• Its charter denied, the bank of the US was due to expire in 1836; he needed to get rid of the bank and feared that Biddle might try to manipulate the bank to force its recharter

• In 1833, Jackson removed federal deposits from its vaults; he proposed depositing more funds and gradually shrinking existing deposits by using them to get rid of daily expenses of the gov. By slowly siphoning off govs. Funds, he would get rid of the bank

• Death of bank of the US bank left a financial vacuum in the American economy. Surplus federal funds were placed in several dozen state institutions (pet banks) chosen for pro-Jackson sympathies and small banks flooded the country with paper money.

• Jackson tried to control the flood of paper money. He authorized the Treasury to issue a **Specie Circular–**a decree that required all public lands to be purchased with hard money. This halted speculative boom and contributed to financial panic and crash in 1837

Birth of the Whigs

• Democratic-Republicans of Jackson Jackson adopted official name: Democrats

• Jackson’s opponents began to coalesce as the Whigs

• First emerged as group in the SEnate—Clay, WEbster, and Calhoun joined together in 1834 to pass a motion censuring Jackson fro his single-handed removal of federal deposits from the Bank of the US. After , the Whigs evolved into a national political force by attracting other groups alienated by Jackson:

• supporters of Clay’s American System

• southern states’ righters offended by Jackson’s stand on nullification

• larger northern industrialists and merchants

• evangelical Protestants associated with the Anti-Masonic Party

• Whigs thought of themselves as conservatives, yet they were progressive in support of active gov. Programs and reforms. INstead of boundless territorial acquisition, they called for internal infrastructure improvements: canals, railroads, telegraph lines, and support institutions like prisons, asylums, and public schools

• Whigs welcomed market economy, drawing support from manufacturers in the North, planters in the South, and merchants and bankers in all sections sss

• Whigs claimed to be defenders of common man

Election of 1836:

• Martin Van Buren (VP of Jackson) was Jackson’s choice for appointment as his successor in 1836

• Whigs couldn’t nominate a single presidential candidate

• The strategy was instead to run several prominent candidates and to scatter the vote so that no candidate would win a majority

• A deadlock would have to be broken by House of Representatives, where Whigs might have a chance.

• LEading Whig was General William Harrison of Ohio

• Van Buren won

Martin Van Buren’s Presidency

• Martin Van Buren

• Was resented by many Democrats

• INheriting Andrew Jackson’s mantle without his popularity, Van Buren also inherited his numerous enemies

• Can Buren’s four years overflowed with trouble:

• Two short-lived rebellions in Canada in 1837: mostly over political reform, but aggravated by unregulated immigration from the US

  • incidents along northern frontier and threatened to trigger with Britain

• North wanted abolition and they were condemning the prospective annexation of Texas

• Van Buren also had to deal with the panic of 1837

Panic of 1837:

• Caused by overspeculation in western lands; people in western lands were doing business on borrowed capital, much of it in currency of “wildcat’ Banks

  • There was a speculative craze spread to canals, roads, railroads, and slaves

• Overspeculation alone did not cause the crash; Jacksonian finance—Bank War and Specie Circular—gave an additional jolt to a faltering structure. Failures of wheat crops—ravaged by Hessian fly–deepened the distress and grain prices were so high that mobs broke out

• FInancial struggles abroad also endangered America’s economy

• Late in 1836, failure of two prominent British banks created tremors, and caused British investors to call in foreign loans. The resulting pinch in the US, combined with other setbacks, started the beginning of the panic. Europe’s economic distresses have often become America’s distress, for every major American financial panic has been affected by conditions overseas

• American banks collapsed by hundreds, commodity prices drooped, sales of public lands fell of, and customs revenues dried; factories closed and unemployment rose

• Whigs came forward with proposals for active gov. Remedies for economy called for expansion of bank credit, higher tariffs, and subsidies for internal improvements

• Van Buren—shackled by Jacksonian philosophy of laissez faire—stopped all ideas

• Van Buren tried to remediate financial problems through “Divorce Bill”, he championed the principle of divorcing the gov. From the bank. By est. an independent treasury, the gov. Could lock its surplus money in vaults in several larger cities. Gov. funds would be save, but they would also be denied to the banking system as reserves, thereby diminishing available credit resources

Manifest Destiny:

• belief that US had divine mission to extend its power and civilization across North America

• Belief was driven by nationalism, population increase, rapid economic development, tech advances, and reform ideals

• northern critics argued against expansionism and Southerners wanted to spread slavery into western lands

Texas

• Americans continued to covet TExas, which US had abandoned to Spain when acquiring Florida in 1819. The Spanish authorities wanted to populate Texas, but before they could the MExicans won their independence in 1821. A new regime in Mexico City concluded arrangements in 1823 for granting a huge tract of land to Stephen Austin, with the understanding that he would bring into Texas 300 American families. IMmigrants were to be est. Roman Catholics and upon settlement were properly Mexicanized.

• These two stipulations were largely ignored; especially ignored by presence of Mexican soldiers

• Among adventurers were Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and leader ex-governor of Tennessee Sam Houston

• Friction increased between Mexicans and Texans over issues such as slavery, immigration, and local rights. Mexico emancipated its slaves in 1830 and prohibited the further importation of slaves into Texas, as well as further colonization by Americans. The Texans refused to honor these decrees. They kept their slave sin bondage and kept bringing more.

• When STephen Austin went to Mexico City in 1833 to negotiate these differences with the Mexican gov, the dictator Santa Anna put him in jail for 8 months. Explosion finally came in 1835, when Santa Anna wiped out all local rights and started to raise an army to suppress the Texans

Lone Star Rebellion

• In 1836, TExans declared independence and named Sam Houston commander in chief.

• Santa Anna went into Texas; he trapped of 200 TExans at the Alamo in San Antonio, he wiped them out after a 13 day siege

• A short time later, a band of 400 surrounded and defeat American volunteers, having thrown down their arms at Goliad, were massacred

• Jim Bowie and Davy Crocket died and became legendary

• Americans were pissed and wanted revenge

• General Sam Houston’s small army retreated to the east, luring Santa Anna to San Jacinto. The Mexicans numbered at 1300 men and Texans at 900 men. Texans wiped out pursuing force and captured Santa Anna. He was induced to sign two treaties.

• He agreed to withdraw Mexican troops and to recognize the Rio Grande as extreme southwestern boundary of Texas; when released, he repudiated teh agreement as illegal because it had been extorted under duress

• Many Texans wanted not just recognition of their independence but union with the US

• Texas officially petitioned for annexation in 1837

• But America was also hesitant because of slavery; Antislavery crusaders in the North were opposing annexation and viewed it as a scheme to bring more slavery into the Union

Election of 1840

• Democrats: Martin Van Buren

• Whigs: William Henry Harrison

• Log cabin and hard cider became campaign symbols

• Van Buren was aristocratic and stuck up

• William Henry Harrison won, but dies, and John Tyler takes over

• Voters faced choice between two economic visions of how to cop with nation’s first major depression: Whigs wanted to expand and stimulate economy while Democrats favored an end to aristocratic banks and big business

  • First change in elections:

  • Wanted politics for the people

  • The common man was given importance

The Two-Party System

• Second change from 1840 election was formation of two-party system

• Jeffersonians had absorbed programs of Federalist opponents that two-party system had never truly emerged in Era of Good Feelings

• Idea had prevailed that parties were consisted of conspiracies and factions went against republic

• By 1840 political parties came to fruition

• Both national parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, grew out of Jeffersonian republicanism, and each claimed dif. Aspects of republican inheritance

• Jacksonian democrats glorified liberty of individual and against privilege of gov

• Whigs wanted natural harmony of society and value of community and were willing to use gov. To realize their objectives

• Democrats clung to states’ rights and federal restraint in social and economic affairs as their basic doctrines; Whigs tended to favor a renewed national bank, protective tariffs, internal improvements, public schools, moral reforms such as prohibition of liquor and abolitionism

• Two parties were separated by differences of philosophy and policy

Ch. 14: Forging National Economy

Westward Movement

• Pioneer families lived harsh life:

• Poorly fed, ill-clothed, housed in hastily erected shanties, perpetual victims of disease, depression, and premature death, loneliness

• Women were cut off from human contact while confined to dark cabin; breakdowns and madness

• No holds barred wrestling was popular entertainment, pioneering americans—marooned by geography—were often ill-informed, superstitious, provincial, and individualistic

• Ralph Waldo emerson’s popular essay “Self Reliance” –reflected spirit of individualism pervaism in American pop culture during 1830s and 40s

• Pioneer men, facing immense amounts of tasks, relied on women, children, neighbors, and South’s slaves for logrolling and barn raising.

• Shaping Western Landscape

• Ecological Imperialism: Exploitation of West’s natural resources

• Pioneers exhausted land in tobacco regions and resulted in barren fields

• They Burned cane off and European bluegrass became ideal pasture for livestock

• Fur trapping

• Buffalo robes resulted in the annihilation of bison herds

• Sea-otter pelts resulted in otters being driven to  point of near-extinction

• March of Millions:

• As American people moved west, population was increasing, which led to urbanization

• Overrapid urbanization brought problems:intensified problems of smelly slums, feeble street lighting, inadequate policing, impure water, foul sewage, rats, and iproper garbage disposals

• Boston pioneered a sewer system in 1823

• NY in 1842 abandoned wells for piped-in water supply

• The city eliminated breeding places of many disease-carrying mosquitoes

• Continuing high birth rate increased in population

• Increasing immigration occurred because Europe seemed to be running out of room

• A majority of migrants headed to US for freedom of opportunity better one’s opportunity, freedom from aristocratic caste and state church

The Irish

• Ireland, was under the heavy hand of British overlands, and suffered the Irish potato famine

• A terrible rot attacked the potato crop, on which the people had become dangerously dependent and ¼ of Irish were attacked by disease and hunger and 2 million perished

• Tens of thousands of destitute people headed to America

• These newcomers—too poor to move west and buy land, livestock, and equipment—swarmed into seaboard cities (noteworthy boston and NY)

• Irish immigrants were forced to live in squalor, crammed into slums and scorned by older Americans, especially Protestant Bostonians (since the Irish were catholics)

• Irish women took jobs as kitchen maids; Men were pushed into shoveling on canals and railroads

• Irish were hated by native workers; “No Irish need Apply” was commonly posted at factory gates

• Irish resented blacks; race riots between black and Irish dockworkers flared up

• **Ancient Order of Hibernians—-**A semi-secret society founded in Ireland to fight landlords, served in America as a benevolent society, aiding the destitute. It also helped spawn the Molly maguires, A Irish miners’ union that rocked the Pennsylvania coal district in the 1860s and 70s

• Irish tended to remain in low-skill occupations, but gradually improved their lot by acquiring modest amts of property

• childrens’ education was cut short to save money to purchase a home

• The Irish soon began to gain control of powerful city machines, notably New York’s Tammany Hall, and reaped patronage rewards. Irishmen dominated police depts. In many big cities.

• American politicians made haste to cultivate Irish vote, especially in NY; Irish populated quickly

Germany Forty-Eighters

• INflux of refugees from Germany between 1830-1860

• Bulk of them were uprooted farmers, displaced by crop failures and other hardships

• Strong population of them were liberal political refugees

• Due to the collapse of democratic revolutions of 1848, they decided to leave autocratic Germany and flee to America

• Germanic newcomers possessed a modest amount of material goods; most of them went to the Middle West; they also formed influential body of voters whom American politicians went after

• German contributions to American culture: Conestoga wagon, Kentucky rifle, Christmas Tree

• Germans had fled from militarism and wars of Europe

• They supported public schools, including Kindergarten; stimulated art and music; champions of freedom—enemies of slavery

• Germans were regarded with suspicion by old-stock American neighbors

• Seeking to preserve their language colonies and kept aloof from the surrounding community

• Old World Drinking habits of Irish and Germans spurred advocates of temperance in the use of alcohol

Anti-foreignism

• Immigrations inflamed prejudices of AMerican nativists—-those who believed that native-born Americans are superior to foreigners—movement based on hostility to immigrants

• Immigrants took jobs from “native” Americans, and Irish were also Roman Catholics

• Roman Catholics, seeking to protect their children from Protestant indoctrination in public schools, in the 1840s, they began to construct an entirely separate Catholic educational system

• Enormous influx of Irish and Germans–Catholics became a powerful religious group

• Older-stock Americans were alarmed; Know-Nothing Party was formed—Nativists agitated for rigid restrictions on immigration and naturalization and for laws authorizing the deportation of alien paupers. They also promoted literature of exposure, much of it pure fiction—sensational books include Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures

• Immigrants were making America one of the most ethnically and racially varied

Industrial Revolution:

• shift toward mass production and mechanization that included creation of modern factory system

• Beginning about 1750, A group of gifted British inventors perfected a series of machines for mass production of textiles. This harnessing of steam multiplied  the power of labor and ushered in the Industrial Revolution.

• The factory system gradually spread from Britain to other lands.

• America was slow to embrace the machine:

• Land was cheap in America

  • However, labor was scarce and there weren’t enough people who could operate the machines—until immigrants arrived

• Money for capital investment was not plentiful in pioneering America, whose Industrial Revolution awaited an influx of foreign capital—which in turn awaited assurance of secure property rights, sufficient infrastructure, an adequate work force, and political stability

• Without such capital, raw materials were undeveloped, undiscovered, or unsuspected

• America also had difficulty producing goods of high enough quality and cheap enough cost to compete with mass-produced European products. Losing-est. British factories provided competition.

• The British also enjoyed a monopoly of the textile machinery, whose secrets they were anxious to hide from foreign competitors

• Parliament enacted laws and mercantile system, forbidding the export of the machines or the emigration of mechanics able to reproduce the

• Sanyl Slater was attracted by bounties being offered to British workers familiar with the textile machines. After memorizing the plans for the machinery, he escaped in disguise to  America. He reconstructed the essential apparatus

• In 1791, he put into operation the first efficient American machinery for spinning cotton thread

• Eli Whitney built a crude machine called the cotton gin that was more effective than hand picking cotton

• South and North both prospered

• Slave-driving planteres cleared more acres for cotton, pushing the SOuth westward; factories flourished in New England branched to NY, NJ, and PA; the South had little manufacturing in comparison

• New Englandwas industrial center for several reasons

  • farming was difficult and manufacturing was better

  • dense population provided labor and accessible markets, shipping brought in capital, and seaports made easy the import of raw materials and the export of the finish products, Rivers provided water power to turn machines

Boundary Dispute in Oregon:

• British-American dispute; territory used to be claimed by four dif. nations : Spain, Russia, Great Britiain, and the US

• Spain gave up Oregon to US (Adam-Onis treaty of 1819)

• US based its claim based on discovery of Columbia River and Meriwether and CLark expedition

• Americans believed it was their country’s manifest destiny to take oregon and Texas By 1944 election

Election of 1844:

• Slavery was allwoed in Texas; Northeners opposed to annexation

• Leading Northern wing of Dem. Party: Martin Van Buren opposed immediate annexation

• Challengin Dem. nomination: John C. Calhoun: proslavery, proannexation

• Democrats finally nominated James K. Polk

• Favored annexation of Texas, taking Oregon, and acquisition of California

• Henry Clay: Whig Nominee

• Polk Wins

John Tyler leaves president’s office and leaves Polk to deal w/Teas and decided to compromise w/Britain (54 40 line)

• US annexation of Texas resulted in diplomatic trouble with Mexico

• Polk dispatched John Slidell as an envoy

• he wanted Slidell to persuade Mexico to sell California and New Mexico territories to US and settle Mexico-Texas border. However, slidell failed

Immediate Causes of Mexican-american war

• Polk ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor to move his army toward Rio Grande across territory claimed by Mexico

• The mexican army crossed rio grande and captured an American army patrol

• Polk used incident to justifygaining TExas

Military Campaigns:

• War fought in MExican territory and fought by small American armies

• John C. Fremont overthrew Mexican rule in California

• General Stephen Kearney took Santa Fe—New Mexico territory

• Zachary Taylor drove Meixcan army from TExas

Consequences: After fall of Meixco City, the gov. Agreed to US terms

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• Mexico recognized Rio grande as southern border of Texas

• US took possession of former Mexican provinces of Califronia and New Meixoc

• Mexican cession

• US paid $15 million and assumed responsibility for any claims of American citizens against Mexico

• Wilmot Proviso: US entry into war w/Mexico provoked controvery

  • It Forbade slavery in any new territories acquired from Mexico

  • This was Passed by House and defeated in Senate

• Led to tensions between North and South

Manifest Destiny to the SOuth

• Souteherners hoped to acquire new territories

  • esp. In Latin America

    • Plantations worked by slaves and economically feasible

    • They wanted to acquire cuba

• Osten Manifesto: President Polk offered to purchase Cuba from Spain for $100 million but Spain refused to sell last major remnant of its empire

• In 1852, President Franklin Pierce tried dispatching 3 american diplomats to Ostend, Belgium to negotiate to buy Cuba from Spain, which angered antislavery members of Congress

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty:

• Americans wanted to build a canal through central America. Great Britain had the same ambition. To prevent each other from seizing this opportunity on its own, Great Britain and the US agreed to this treaty; provided that neither nation would attempt to take exclusive control of any future canal route in Central America. This continued until Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and gave US free hand to build canal w/o British Participation

Gadsden Purchase

• President pierce gained strip of land to American Southwest for railroad

• Mexico agreed to sell thousands of semidesert land to US for $10 million

Marvels of Manufacturing

• As factory system flourished, it embraced other industries in addition to textiles—among them: mass production  of firearms by Eli Whitney

• Principle of interchangeable parts became widely adopted by 1850

• This became basis of modern mass production and assembly line methods, which contributed to industrialization

• The Sewing machine invented by Elias Howe in 1846, and perfected by Isaac Singer, gave another boost to northern industrialization

  • The foundation of ready-made clothing industry was created and drove many seamstress from shelter of private home to factory

• Patent Office: Federal gov. Bureau that reviews patent applications. A patent is a legal recognition of a new invention, granting exclusive rights to the inventor for a period of years

• Technical advances spurred important changes in form and legal status of business orgs.

• Principle of limited liability aided concentration of capital by permitting the individual investor, in cases of legal claims or bankruptcy, to risk no more than his own share of the corporationś  stock.

• Samuel FB Morse’s telegraph helped business world

• The instant communication w/separated people revolutionized news gathering, diplomacy, and finance

Workers and Wage Slaves

• Working people often wasted away w/labor

• Hours were long, wages were low, and meals were skimpy and hastily eaten. Workers were forced to toil in unsanitary buildings that were poorly ventilated, lighted, and hated. They were forbidden by law to form labor unions to raise wages, for ushc cooperative activity was regarded as a criminal conspiracy.

• Especially vulnerable to exploitation were child workers. In 1820, a significant portion of the nation’s industrial toilers were children under 10 years.. Victims of factory labor, many children were mentally blighted, emotionally starved, physically stunted, and even brutally whipped.

• Adult wage workers improved markedly

  • workers had goals of acquiring the 10 hour day, higher wages, and tolerable working conditions, they demanded public education for their children and an end to imprisonment for debt

• Employers fought the 10 hour day

  • they argued that reduced hours meant less productivity and increased costs, whihc demoralizes workers

• President Van Buren est. 10 hour day for fed employees on public workers.

• Dozens of strikes erupted in 1830s and 40s—most of them for higher wages, some for 10 hr day,

• Workers usually lost more strikes than they won

• Commonwealth v Hunt: In this case, the supreme court of massachusetts ruled that labor unions were not illegal conspiracies, provided that their methods were honorable and peaceful.

Women and the Economy

• Women were also sucked into mechanism of factory production

• Farm women and girls had important place in preindustrial economy

• Spinning yarn, weaving cloth, making candles, soap, butter, and cheese

• New factories such as textile mills of New England cranked out manufactured goods faster than home-made goods

  • The factories offered employment and promised greater economic independence for women, as well as the means to buy manufactured products of the new market economy

• “Factory Girls” typical worked 6 days a week, earning little for working 12-13 hours; girls were carefully supervised by matrons, forbidden to form unions, few opportunities to share dissatisfactions

  • Factory jobs were unusual

  • There were opportunities to be economically self-supporting, which was scarce

    • Ex. nursing, domestic service, and teaching

• Catharine Beecher—sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)---urged women to enter teaching profession;

• The vast majority of working women were single. Upon marriage, they left their paying jobs and took up their new work (w/o wages) as wives and mothers. IN the home they were enshrined in teh cult of domesticity, a widespread cultural creed that glorified the customary functions of the homemakers. Married women commanded immense moral power, and increasingly made decisions that altered the character of the family itself.

• Women’s changing roles and spreading industrial revolution brought some important changes in the life of the 19th century hom

• Love marriages rather than parental arrangement More frequently determined the choice of a spouse—yet parents often retained the power of veto

• Families became more closely knit and affectionate

• Families grew smaller—Total fertility rate dropped after American revolution

• New assertive role for women to not have as many children was domestic feminism

  • Growing power and independence of women while wrapped in cult of domesticity

• Parents cared for children more now that they had less children to focus on

• Individualist society

Western Farmers’ Revolution in the fields

• As the east was altered with factories, farms were changing the west

• Pioneer families planted corn which had a lot of versitalities, also pigs were shipped

• Most western produce was at first floated down Ohio-Mississippi River system to feed the South, but western farmers were as hunger profits as southern slaves and planters were food. The westerners sought ways to bring more into cultivation.

• Thick matted soil of West snapped wooden plows

  • John Deere produced steel plow

• Cyrus McCormic invented a mechanical mower-reaper aka the McCormick reaper

• Farmers wanted more land; subsistence farming gave way roof production for both domestic and foreign markets, as large-scale, specialized, cash crop agriculture came to dominate the west

• With it followed debt and Farmers bought more land more machinery

Settlement of West

• Americans migrated to West after acquisition of California and Oregon

• Fur traderss, pioneers were faced w/attacks by Natives, natural disastesr (snow),, disease and depression from harsh everyday conditions on trail

• Mining: California Gold Rush of 1848

• Mining camps and towns (short lived) Sprang up wherever a discovery was reported

• California’s population attracted Chinese

• Urban Frontier: western cities arose because of railroads, mineral wealth, and farming (ex. San Fransisco, Denver)

Highways and Steamboats

• In 1789, when the Constitution was launched, primitive methods of travel were in use

• Waterborne commerce was slow, uncertain, and dangerous

• Stage-coaches and wagons drove on shaky roads

• In the 1790s, a private company completed the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania–stretched from Philadelphia to Lancaster

• Turnpike: Broad hard surfaced highway; as drivers app        roached the tollgate, they were confronted with a barrier of pikes, which were turned aside when they paid their toll

• highly successful venture, stimulated western development

• Fed gov started construction of National Road which was halted by War of 1812

• The states righters complaints about fed. Grants for internal improvements

• The road started in Maryland and reached Illinois in 1839. Later extensions brought it from Baltimore on Chesapeake Bay, to the banks of Mississippi River in St. Louis

• Robert fulton installed a steam engine in a vessel–the Clermont

• The success of steamboat was sensational and people could now navigate streams of Mississippi

• Opened up WEst and South, both of which had many navigable rivers

• Can float produce out to market, could ship in at low cost

Erie Canal

• New Yorkers, cut off from federal aid by states’ righters, dug the Erie Canal, linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River. Begun in 1817, the canal ribboned 363 miles. On its completion in 1825, the canal stretched from Buffalo, on Lake Erie to Hudson River and NY  harbor

• Cost of shipping fell, cargo was transported more easily

• Value of land along erie canal route skyrocketed, new cities blossomed, industry boomed, new profitability in Northwest—Ohio, Michigan, INdiana, Illinois—-attracted European immigrants

• Transformations in the Northeast/Canal Consequences showed how long est. local market structures could be swamped by emerging continental economies. As American products began to flow into international markets, even Europenas were affected by America’s economic vitality. Italian and Polish peasants would come to America to build new lives.

Railroad:

• The most significant contribution to the development of the market economy was the railroad

• Fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to construct, and not frozen over in winter

• First railroad appeared in 1828

• At first railroad faced strong opposition, especially from canal backers who wanted to protect its investment in the Erie Canal

• Early railroads were public menaces and flying sparks could set things on fire

• Railroad pioneers had other obstacle w/construction

• Canal-building of 1820s/30s replaced by rail lines

• Emerged as America’s largest industry

• Railroads required immense amounts of capital and labor and gave rise to complex business organizations

• Local merchants and farmers would often buy stocks in new railroad companies in order to connect their area to the outside world

• Local and state govs. Also helped the railroads grow by granting special loans and tax breaks

• Cheap and rapid transportation promoted western agriculture

• farmers in illinois and iowa were closely linked to Northeast by rail tahn river routes in South

• Railroad had a strategic advantage in Civil War

Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders

• Other forms of transportation and communication were binding the US and the world together

• Cyrus Field organized a joint Anglo-American-Canadian venture to stretch a cable under deep North Atlantic waters from Newfoundland to Ireland

• The cable went dead after 3 weeks and a heavier cable laid in 1866 permanently linked American and Euorpean continents

• In 1840s and 1850s, Americans created Clipper ships— long and narrow, they glided across the sea under towering masts; they could outrun any steamer

• Sacrificed cargo space for speed; hauled high-valued cargoes in record times

• British invented better ship w/ iron tramp steamers

  • It was slower, but vessels were steadier, roomier, more reliable, and more profitable

• Pony Express: est. in 1860 to carry mail speedily the 2000 miles from Missouri to California. Riders leaped onto ponies saddled at stations to make the trip in 10 days.

Transportation Revolution:

• term referring to series of 19th century transportation innovations—turnpikes, steamboats, canals, and railroads—that linked local and regional markets, creating a national economy

• Principle of division of labor—spelled productivity and profits in the factory–applied nationally

• Each region now specialized in a particular type of economic activity

• South raised cotton for export to New England Britain; West grew grain and livestock to feed factory workers in the East and in Europe; the East made machines and textlilse for the South and WEst

Market Revolution:

• Transformed a subsistence economy of scattered farms and tiny workshops into a national network of industry and ecommerce

• Under Chief Justice John Marshall, the US Supreme Court vigilantly protected contract rights by requiring state govs. To grant irrevocable charters

  • Monopolies easily developed as new companies found it difficult to break into markets

• Revolutionary advances in manufacturing and transportation brought increased prosperity to all Americans, but they also widened gap between rich and poor

• Cities bred greatest extremes of economic inequality

• Unskilled workers fared the worst—always looking for work

• Social mobility was a myth

• America had dynamic society and wide-open spaces

Ch. 15: Reform and Culture

Age of Reason:

• Thomas Paine’s anticlerical treatise that accused churches of seeking to acquire “power and profit”and to “enslave mankind”

• Founding fathers embraced the liberal doctrines of **Deism–**deists relied on reason rather than revelation, on science rather than the Bible. They rejected the concept of original sin and denied Christ’s divinity. Yet Deists believed in a Supreme Being who had created a knowable universe and endowed human beings with a capacity for moral behavior

  Second Great Awakening

• episodes in history of American religion; tidal wave of spiritual fervor  resulted in converted people, many shattered and reorganized churches, and numerous new sects. It also encouraged evangelicalism that was pronounced in American life—including prison reform, the temperance cause, the women’s movement, and the crusade to abolish slavery

• Methodists and Baptists thrived

• Many Americans became missionaries and spread their messages to Africa, Asia, Hawaii, and to Native tribes of the American west

• Peter Cartwright was the best known of the Methodist. He was a frontier preacher.

• Charles Grandison Finney became an evangelist.

• Key feature of the Second Great Awakening was the feminization of religion, in terms of both church membership and theology. Middle-class women were enthusiasts of religious revivalism. They made up majority of new church members; evangelicals preached of female spiritual worth and offered women an active role in bringing their husbands families back to God

• Women turned to save society through Charitable organizations and ambitious reforms

Denominational Diversity

• Revivals also furthered the fragmentation of religious faiths

• Burned-Over District: Popular name for western New York, a region particularly swept up in religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening which preached of hellfire and damnation

• Like the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening tended to widen the lines between classes and regions. The more prosperous and conservative denominations int he East were less shaken by revivalism

• Episocopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians continued to rise mostly from wealthier, urbanized, better-educated levels of society

• Methodists, Baptists, and members of other new sects tended to come from less prosperous, less learned communities in the rural South and west

• Religious diversity reflected social beliefs when the churches faced up to slavery

• Splitting of churches led to splitting of political parties and then the splitting of the Union

Mormons

• Joseph Smith was the founder of mormonism

  • He constituted Book of Mormon and the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) was launched

• Smith was opposed by non-Mormon neighbors—first in Ohio, then Missouri and ILlinois

• Mormons voted as a unit, drilled militia for defense, and polygamy, which made people mad

• Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered

  • Brigham Young led mormons after Smith’s death  and led them to Utah

• Community became prosperous frontier theocracy and cooperative commonwealth, missionaries

• Washington had problem with the Mormon and delayed statehood for Utah until 1896

Free Schools:

• Tax-supported primary schools werescarce

• Tax-supported public education triumphed btwn. 1825-1850—lagged in South

• Laborers wielded increased influence and demanded instruction for their children

• Problems with school: 8 grades, one room, one teacher, cramped, stayed open few months a year, teachers were ill-paid, trained, and tempered

• Reform was instigated by Horace Mann:

  • Campaigned effectively for more and better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum

  • Influence irradiated out to other states, improvements were made

• Yet education remained an expensive luxury for many communities

• 1 million white adult illiterates, black slaves were forbidden to receive instruction

• free blacks were excluded as well

• Educational advances were aided by improved textbooks

• Women’s higher education was frowned upon in the early decades of the 19th century. A woman’s place was believed to be in the home.

• Emma Willard: early advocate of women’s education

  • She Founded Troy Female Seminary, America’s first women's school of higher education

• America’s public school children learned about literature from a series of textbooks called McGuffey REaders. ALso known as Eclectic Readers, the books featured stories illustrating the virtues of patriotism, hard work, and honestly

• Religious zeal of Second Great Awakening led to planting of many small, denominational, liberal arts colleges, chiefly in the South and West.

• Traveling lecturers helped to carry learning to the masses through the lyceum lecture associations

• The Public lecture hall hosted speakers on topics ranging from science to moral philosophy.

• It was Part of a broader flourishing of higher education in the mid-19th century

Age of Reform

• Imprisonment for debt continued to be a nightmare

• hundreds of poor people were thrown into jail; poorer working classes were especially hard hit by this merciless practice; state legislatures gradually abolished debtors’ prisons

• Reformers also tackled criminal codes in states—they succeeded in reducing the number of capital offenses and helped and helped eliminate brutal punishments

  • prisons were also reformatories, house of correction, penitentiaries

• Dorothea Dix was a petitioner for better asylum conditions for the insane

• Her classic petition of 1843 to the Massachusetts legislature, describing cells so foul that visitors were driven by the stench, this resulted in improved conditions

Alcohol:

• Drink problem attracted dedicated reformers

• Hard life led to an excessive drinking of hard liquor

• Decreased efficiency of labor and poorly safeguarded machinery operated under influence of alcohol increased danger of accidents occurring at work

• Drunkenness also fouled the sanctity of the family, threatening the spiritual welfare—and physical safety—of women and children

• American Temperance Society formed in Boston in 1826

  • Thousands of local groups sprang into existence and made effective use of pictures, pamphlets, and lecturers

• Early temperance protestors were moderate reformers whos tressed temperance rather than total elimination of intoxications

• Neal S. Dow the father of prohibition sponsored the Maine Law of 1851—new statute prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor

• Other states in the North followed Maine’s example

• Within a decade, some of the statutes were repealed or declared unconstitutional

Women in Revolt

• In the 19th century, a wife was supposed to immerse herself in her home and subordinate herself to her husband (disgusting). Women could not vote and they could be legally beaten by their husbands. When they married, women could not retain title to her property; it passed to her husband; Americans fared better than Europeans though (still both were god awful)

• Gender differences were strongly emphasized in the 19th century America—largely because the burgeoning market economy was increasingly separating women and men into sharply distinct economic roles, Women were thought to be physically and emotionally weak, but also artistic and refined. Endowed with finely tuned moral sensibilities, they were the keepers of society’s conscience, with special responsibility to teach the young how to be productive citizens of the Republic. Men were considered strong, but crude.

• The home was a cult of domesticity

• FEmale reformers—most of them white and well off—began to demand rights for women, they joined in the general reform movement of the age, fighting for temperance and abolitionism

• The women’s rights movement had prominent figures such as Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony

• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwelll—first female graduate of medical college

• Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina championed antislavery

• Lucy stone retained her maiden name after marriage

• Amelia Bloomer revolted against female skirts by wearing trousers

Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls:

• Feminists met in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY. Stanton read a Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence, which declared that all men and women were equal. Seneca Falls meeting launched modern women’s rights movement.

• Crusade for women’s rights was eclipsed by campaign against slavery before Civil War.

• Women resented the way men relegated them to secondary roles and prevent them from taking part fully in policy discussions

• In the 1950s, issue of women’s rights was overshadowed by crisis over slavery

Antislavery movement:

• Opponents of slavery ranged from moderates who proposed gradual abolition to radicals who demanded immediate abolition w/o compensating their owners

• The Second Great Awakening led many Christians to view slavery as a sin

American Colonization:

• Idea of transporting freed slaves to an AFrican Colony appelaed to moderate antislavery reformers and politicians

• racist whites hoped to remove free blacks from US society

American Antislavery Society

• William Lloyd Garrison, known as The Liberator, and began the radical abolitionist movement

• Advocated immediate abolition of slavery in every state and territroy w/o compensating the slaveowners

Liberty Party: Garrison’s radicalism led to split in abolitionist movement

• Group of northerners believed that political action was a more practical route to reform than Garrison’s moral crusade

Black Abolitionists:

• escaped slaves and free African Americans were most outspoken and convincing critics of slavery; ex. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, David ruggles, Sojourner Truth, and William Stilll helped organize the effort to assist fugitive slaves to escape to free territory in the North or to Canada, where slavery was prohibited

Violent abolitionism: David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet were northern African Americans who advocated radical solution to slavery  by means of a revolt

American peace society:

• objective of abolishing war

• They protested war with Mexico in 1846

Southern reaction to reform

• Reform was largely found in northern and western states, w/little impact in South

• They were more committed to tradition and slow to support public education and humanitarian reforms

• They viewed social reform as a northern threat against the southern way of life

Wilderness:

• Various reformers set up more than 40 communities of cooperative, communistic , or communitarian nature

• Seeking human betterman, Scottish textile manufacturer, Robert Owen, founded in 1825 a communal society of about a thousand people at New Harmony, Indiana.

• Little Harmony prevailed in the colony, which attracted radials, hard-working visionaries, theorists, and scoundrels

• The colony sank into contradiction and confusion

• Brook Farm was started in 1841 with brotherly and sisterly cooperation of about 20 intellectuals committed to the philosophy of transcendantlism. They prospered reasonably well until 1846, when they lost by fire a large new communal building.

• Oneida Community founded in NY in 1848. It practiced free loved (complex marriage), birth control , and eugenic election of parents to produce superior offpsiring. This enterprise flourished for more than 30 years.

• Various communistic experiments, mostly small in scale, have been attempted since founding of Jamestown in 1607. But in competition with democratic free enterprise and free land, virtually all of them sooner or later failed or changed their methods. Among the longest-lived sects were the Shakers, founded in England in 1747 and brought to America in 1774 by Mother Ann Lee. She moved to NY with her followers. The Shakers’ monastic customs prohibited both marriage and sexual relations, so they went extinct in 1940.

The Dawn of Scientific Achievement

• John J. Audubon: French-descended naturalist; he painted wild birds in their natural habitat

  • He illustrated Birds of America which was popular—Audubon society for protection of birds was named after him

Artistic achievements

• Architecturally, America chose to imitate Old World styles rather than create new ones

• Early national builders articulated a plain Federal Style of architecture that borrowed from classical Greek and Roman examples and emphasized symmetry, balance, and restraint. Public buildings were incorporated with columns and domes .

• Greek REvival: Came between 1820 and 1850, stimulated by efforts of the Greeks to gain independence from the Turks. Greek Revival houses scattered across America, especially in NY’s burned over district and Old Northwest. About mid century, strong interest developed in a revival of medieval Gothic forms w/emphasis on pointed arches, sloped roofs, and large, stained-glass windows

• The Hudson River school: After the War of 1812, American painters turned from human portraits and historical paintings to mirrorings of local landscapes. In America’s vast wilderness the new nation’s painters were inspired. The school excelled in this type of arts.

• Music: **Minstrel shows–**white actors w/black face playing plantation characters.

• Stephen C. Foster created famous Southern sons—Foster contributed to American folk music by capturing the spirit of the slaves. He finally lost both his art and his popularity and died in a charity ward after drinking too much.

National Literature

• Romanticism: originated in the salons of Europe and England; emphasized imagination over reason, nature over civilization, intuition over calculation, and the self over society. Emotion, expression, and experimentation were core values; celebrated human potential

• James Fenimore COoper: Wrote The Spy—-a story of the American Revolutions. His stories of the sea were popular, but his fame was mostly on his Leatherstocking Tales, featuring a rifleman named Natty Bumppo, a solitary hero who mingles w/nature's “savage. Cooper’s deeper theme was an exploration of the viability and destiny of America’s republican experiment

• Transcendentalism: Rejected empiricist theory; truth transcends the senses—it cannot be observation alone; commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline; hostile to authority and to formal institutions

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Delivered “The American Scholar” At Harvard University. His appeal was an intellectual declaration of independence, for it urged Americans to seek out their own creativity rather than copying Europeans

• Poet and philosopher; stressed self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism, and freedom; detested slvavery

• Henry David Thoreau: Close associates w/Emerson, poet, mystic, transcendentalist, noncomforist; did not support slavery—refused to pay MA poll tax and jailed for a night

• Well known for Walden: Or Life in the Woods—record of Thoreau’s 2 years of simple existence in a hut

• Inspired Gandhi to protest against British

• Walt Whitman: American poet

• Wrote Leaves of Grass

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Wrote: EVangeline, Song of Hiawatha, and Courtship of MIles Standish

• Professor who taught modern languages at Harvard

• Wide knowledge of European literature supplied him with many themes, but his stories were based on american traditions

• Louisa May Alcott: Transcendentalist author; wrote Little Women

• Emily Dickinson: poet

• Explored universal themes of nature, love, death, and immortality

• Edgar Allan Poe: Poet

• Orphan, ill health, wife died of TB; wrote Gothic horror

• Wrote: The fall of the House of Usher and The Raven, tell tale heart

• Obsessed with romantic antiheroes on the verge of mental disintegration

• Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Wrote The Scarlet Letter—describes Puritan practice of forcing an adulteress to wear a scarlet A on her clothing. The tale chronicles the heroine Hester Prynne, an outcast, and her secret lover Arthur Dimmesdale, the father of her baby and minister of the gospel in Puritan Boston. In The Marble Faun, Hawthorne wrote about a group of young AMerican artists who witness a mysterious murder in Rome. The book explores the concepts of evil and the past.

• Herman Melville: Wrote Moby Dick—allegory of good and evil

  • Ishmael was in conflict between Capt. Ahab and Moby Dick

  • Capt. Ahab lives only for revenge but Moby Dick sinks Ahab’s ship

• Francis Perkman: Historian; Wrote brilliant series of volumes beginning in 1851; he chronicled the struggle between France and Britain in colonial times for mastery of North America

Panic of 1857:

• End of mid century economic boom

• Prices dropped for midwest farmers and unemployment in northern cities increased

• Cotton prices were still high and the south was less effected

Causes of Civil War: *slavery, sectionalism, secession

• Slavery was a moral issue in North vs. defense and expansion of Slavery in south

• Constitutional disputes over fed. And states’ rights

• Economic differences: industrializing North vs. agricultural South (tarirrfs, banking, infrastructure)

• Political blunders and extremism

Conflict over status of territories

• Issue of slavery in territories gained in Mexican war resulted in the focus of sectional differences in late 1940s

• The Wilmot Proviso upset Compromise of 1820 (15 free vs. 15 slave states)

Free Soil Movement

• Nrothern Dems and Whigs supported wilmot Proviso and that all African Americans—slave and free—could be excluded from Mexican Cession;

• Many abolitionists advocated eliminating slavery everywhere,

• many Northerners who opposed westward expansion of slavery did not oppose slavery in South

• They wnated to keep West a land of opportunity for whites only so that white would not have to complete with labor of slaves of free blacks

• They also advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements

Southern Position

• Whites viewed any attempts to restrict expansion of slavery as violation of constitutional right to take and use property as they wished

• They Favored extending missouri compromise line  westward to Pacific Ocean;

• North of that line, slavery was prohibited

Popular Sovereignty

• Slave state/non slave state was determined by vote of people who settled territory

Election of 1848:

• Dems: Lewis Cass

• Whigs: Zachary Taylor

• Free-Soil Party: Martin Van Buren

  • This consisted of whigs who opposed slavery and antislavery dems

• Zachary Taylor wins

Compromise of 1850:

• Gold rush of 1848 resulted in settlers influx into California

• Prseident Taylor supported immediate admission of Claifornia and New Meixoc as free states

• This Angers southerners and Clay compromises

• Admit Claifornia to Union as a free state

• Dvidied Mexican cession into 2 territories:

  • Utah and New Mexico were settled with popular sovereignty

• New fugitive slave law was enforced

• Land in btwn texas and new mexico territory to new territories for fed. Gov assuming Texa’s public debt of $10 million

• Ban slave trade in DC but permit whites to hold slaves as before

• Passage of Compromise bought time for Union

  • California  became a free state and added to North’s political power

Agitation over slavery

• Occasional mass violence

  • As early as 1834, a Catholic convent near Boston was burned; In 1844 in Philadelphia, Irish Catholics fought back against threats of nativists

  • 2 catholic churches burned, 13 citizens killed and 50 wounded