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History of the United States (1789–1849)
Encyclopedia
With the election of George Washington
as the first president
in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton
, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national government, and refinanced them with new federal bonds. It paid for the program through new tariffs and taxes, especially the controversial Whiskey Tax
. Congress adopted and sent to the states a Bill of Rights
as 10 amendments to the new constitution; these amendments, written by Madison, are the U.S. Bill of Rights
. President Washington set up a cabinet form of government, with departments of State, Treasury, and War, along with an Attorney General (the Justice Department was created in 1870). The Judiciary Act of 1789
established the entire federal judiciary
, including the Supreme Court
. The Court became important under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall
(1801–1834), Federalist and nationalist who built a strong Supreme Court and strengthened the national government.
The 1790s were highly contentious, as the First Party System
emerged in the contest between Alexander Hamilton
and his Federalist party, and Thomas Jefferson
and his Republican party. Washington and Hamilton were building a strong national government, with a broad financial base, and the support of merchants and financiers throughout the country. Jeffersonians opposed the new national Bank, the Navy, and federal taxes. The Federalists favored Britain, which was embattled in a series of wars with France. Jefferson's victory in 1800 opened the era of Jeffersonian democracy
, and doomed the upper-crust Federalists to increasingly marginal roles.
The Louisiana Purchase
, in 1803 opened vast Western
expanses of fertile land, that exactly met the needs of the rapidly expanding population of yeomen farmers
whom Jefferson championed.
The Americans declared war on Britain (the War of 1812
) to uphold American honor at sea, and to end the Indian raids in the west. Despite incompetent government management, and a series of defeats early on, Americans found new generals like Andrew Jackson
, William Henry Harrison
, and Winfield Scott
, who repulsed British invasions and broke the alliance between the British and the Indians that held up settlement of the Old Northwest. The Federalists, who had opposed the war to the point of trading with the enemy and threatening secession, were devastated by the triumphant ending of the war. The remaining Indians east of the Mississippi were kept on reservations or moved via the Trail of Tears
to reservations in what later became Oklahoma.
The spread of democracy opened the ballot box to nearly all white men, allowing the Jacksonian democracy
to dominate politics during the Second Party System
. Whigs, representing wealthier planters, merchants, financiers and professionals, wanted to modernize the society, using tariffs and federally funded internal improvements
; they were blocked by the Jacksonians, who closed down the national Bank in the 1830s. The Jacksonians wanted expansion—that is "Manifest Destiny
"—into new lands that would be occupied by farmers and planters. Thanks to the annexation of Texas, the defeat of Mexico in war, and a compromise with Britain, the western third of the nation rounded out the continental United States by 1848.
Howe (2007) argues that the transformation America underwent was not so much political democratization but rather the explosive growth of technologies and networks of infrastructure and communication—the telegraph, railroads, the post office, and an expanding print industry. They made possible the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening
, the expansion of education and social reform. They modernized party politics, as speeded up business by enabling the fast, efficient movement of goods, money and people across an expanding nation. They transformed a loose-knit collection of parochial agricultural communities into a powerful cosmopolitan nation Economic modernization proceeded rapidly, thanks to highly profitable cotton crops in the South, new textile and machine-making industries in the Northeast, and a fast developing transportation infrastructure.
Breaking loose from European models, the Americans developed their own high culture, notably in literature and in higher education. The Second Great Awakening
brought revivals across the country, forming new denominations and greatly increasing church membership, especially among Methodists and Baptists. By the 1840s increasing numbers of immigrants were arriving from Europe, especially British, Irish, and Germans. Many settled in the cities, which were starting to emerge as a major factor in the economy and society.
The Whigs had warned that annexation of Texas would lead to a crisis over slavery, and they were proven right by the turmoil of the 1850s that led to civil war.
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George Washington, a renowned hero of the American Revolutionary War
, commander of the Continental Army
, and president of the Constitutional Convention
, was unanimously chosen as the first President of the United States
under the new U.S. Constitution. All the leaders of the new nation were committed to republicanism
, and the doubts of the Anti-Federalists of 1788 were allayed with the passage of a Bill of Rights
as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in 1791.
The first census, conducted by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
, enumerated a population of 3.9 million, with a density of 4.5 people per square mile of land area. There were only 12 cities of more than 5,000 population, as the great majority of the people were farmers.
Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789
, which established the entire federal judiciary
. At the time, the act provided for a Supreme Court of six justices, three circuit courts
, and 13 district courts
. It also created the offices of U.S. Marshal
, Deputy Marshal, and District Attorney
in each federal judicial district
. The Compromise of 1790
located to the national capital in the southern state of Maryland (now the District of Columbia), and enabled the federal assumption of state debts.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton
, with Washington's support and Jefferson's opposition, convinced Congress to pass a far-reaching financial program that funded the debts of the American Revolution, set up a national bank, and set up a system of tariffs and taxes to pay for all. His policies had the effect of linking the economic interests of the states, and of wealthy Americans, to the success of the national government, as well as enhancing the international financial standing of the new nation.
The Whiskey Rebellion
in 1794—when settlers in the Monongahela Valley of western Pennsylvania protested against the new federal tax on whiskey, which the settlers shipped across the mountains to earn money. It was the first serious test of the federal government. Washington ordered federal marshals to serve court orders requiring the tax protesters to appear in federal district court. By August 1794, the protests became dangerously close to outright rebellion, and on August 7, several thousand armed settlers gathered near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
. Washington then invoked the Militia Law of 1792 to summon the militias of several states. A force of 13,000 men was organized, and Washington personally led it to Western Pennsylvania
. The revolt immediately collapsed, and there was no violence.
Foreign policy unexpectedly took center stage starting in 1793, when revolutionary France and conservative Britain went to war, opening a period of intense European conflict that lasted until 1815. The American policy was, "remain neutral", but the Jeffersonians strongly favored France, and deeply distrusted the British, who they saw as enemies of Republicanism. Hamilton and the business community favored Britain, which was by far America's largest trading partner. The tensions with Britain were resolved with the Jay Treaty of 1794, which opened up 10 years of prosperous trade, and forced the British to withdraw from their forts in the American Far West. The Jeffersonians tried to defeat the treaty, but failed when Washington threw his prestige into the conflict.
Continuing conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson, especially over foreign policy, led to the formation of the Federalist and Republican parties. Although Washington warned against political parties in his farewell address
, he generally supported Hamilton and Hamiltonian programs over those of Jefferson. After his death in 1799 he became the great symbolic hero of the Federalists.
was created by Alexander Hamilton
and was dominant to 1800. The rival Republican Party
(Democratic-Republican Party) was created by Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison
, and was dominant after 1800. Both parties originated in national politics but moved to organize supporters and voters in every state. These comprised "probably the first modern party system in the world" because they were based on voters, not factions of aristocrats at court or parliament. The Federalists appealed to the business community, the Republicans to the planters and farmers. By 1796 politics in every state was nearly monopolized by the two parties.
Jefferson wrote on Feb. 12, 1798:
The Federalists promoted the financial system of Treasury Secretary Hamilton, which emphasized federal assumption of state debts, a tariff to pay off those debts, a national bank to facilitate financing, and encouragement of banking and manufacturing. The Republicans, based in the plantation South, opposed a strong executive power, were hostile to a standing army and navy, demanded a limited reading of the Constitutional powers of the federal government, and strongly opposed the Hamilton financial program. Perhaps even more important was foreign policy, where the Federalists favored Britain because of its political stability and its close ties to American trade, while the Republicans admired the French and the French Revolution. Jefferson was especially fearful that British aristocratic influences would undermine republicanism
. Britain and France were at war 1793–1815, with one brief interruption. American policy was neutrality, with the federalists hostile to France, and the Republicans hostile to Britain. The Jay Treaty
of 1794 marked the decisive mobilization of the two parties and their supporters in every state. President Washington, while officially nonpartisan, generally supported the Federalists and that party made Washington their iconic hero.
Washington retired in 1797, firmly declining to serve for more than eight years as the nation's head. Vice President John Adams
was elected the new President, narrowly defeating Jefferson. Even before he entered the presidency, Adams had quarreled with Alexander Hamilton
—and thus was handicapped by a divided Federalist party.
These domestic difficulties were compounded by international complications: France, angered by American approval in 1795 of the Jay Treaty
with its great enemy Britain proclaimed that food and war material bound for British ports were subject to seizure by the French navy. By 1797, France had seized 300 American ships and had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States. When Adams sent three other commissioners to Paris to negotiate, agents of Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (whom Adams labeled "X, Y and Z" in his report to Congress) informed the Americans that negotiations could only begin if the United States loaned France $12 million and bribed officials of the French government. American hostility to France rose to an excited pitch. Federalists used the "XYZ Affair
" to create a new American army, strengthen the fledgling United States Navy
, impose the Alien and Sedition Acts
to stop pro-French activities (which had severe repercussions for American civil liberties
), and enact new taxes to pay for it. The Naturalization Act
, which changed the residency requirement for citizenship from five to 14 years, was targeted at Irish and French immigrants suspected of supporting the Republican Party
. One of the Alien acts, still in effect in the 21st century, gave the President the power to expel or imprison aliens in time of war. The Sedition Act proscribed writing, speaking or publishing anything of "a false, scandalous and malicious" nature against the President or Congress. The few convictions won under the Sedition Act only created martyrs to the cause of civil liberties and aroused support for the Republicans. Jefferson and his allies launched a counterattack, with two states stating in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
that state legislatures could nullify acts of Congress. However, all the other states rejected this proposition, and nullification—or it was as it was called, the "principle of 98"—became the preserve of a faction of the Republicans
called the Quids.
In 1799, after a series of naval battles with the French (known as the Quasi-War
), full-scale war seemed inevitable. In this crisis, Adams broke with his party and sent three new commissioners to France. Napoleon, who had just come to power, received them cordially, and the danger of conflict subsided with the negotiation of the Convention of 1800, which formally released the United States from its 1778 wartime alliance with France. However, reflecting American weakness, France refused to pay $20 million in compensation for American ships seized by the French navy.
In his final hours in office, Adams appointed John Marshall
as chief justice. Serving until his death in 1835, Marshall dramatically expanded the powers of the Supreme Court and provided a Federalist interpretation of the Constitution that made for a strong national government.
Under Washington and Adams the Federalists had established a strong government, but sometimes it followed policies that alienated the citizenry. For example, in 1798, to pay for the rapidly expanding army and navy, the Federalists had enacted a new tax on houses, land and slaves, affecting every property owner in the country. In the Fries's Rebellion hundreds of farmers in Pennsylvania revolted--Federalists saw a breakdown in civil society. Some tax resisters were arrested--then pardoned by Adams. Republicans denounced this action as an example of Federalist tyranny.
Jefferson had steadily gathered behind him a great mass of small farmers, shopkeepers and other workers which asserted themselves as Democratic-Republicans in the election of 1800. Jefferson enjoyed extraordinary favor because of his appeal to American idealism. In his inaugural address, the first such speech in the new capital of Washington, DC, he promised "a wise and frugal government" to preserve order among the inhabitants but would "leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry, and improvement".
Jefferson encouraged agriculture and westward expansion, most notably by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition
. Believing America to be a haven for the oppressed, he reduced the residency requirement for naturalization back to five years again.
By the end of his second term, Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin
had reduced the national debt to less than $560 million. This was accomplished by reducing the number of executive department employees and Army and Navy officers and enlisted men, and by otherwise curtailing government and military spending.
To protect its shipping interests overseas, the U.S. fought the First Barbary War
(1801–1805) in North Africa
. This was followed later by the Second Barbary War
(1815).
With the upcoming expiration of the 20-year ban on Congressional action on the subject, Jefferson, a lifelong enemy of the slave trade, calls on Congress to criminalize the international slave trade, calling it "violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."
s and to profit from transporting goods between their home markets and Caribbean
colonies. Both sides permitted this trade when it benefited them but opposed it when it did not. Following the 1805 destruction of the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar
, Britain sought to impose a stranglehold over French overseas trade ties. Thus, in retaliation against U.S. trade practices, Britain imposed a loose blockade
of the American coast. Believing that Britain could not rely on other sources of food than the United States, Congress and President Jefferson suspended all U.S. trade with foreign nations in the Embargo Act of 1807
, hoping to get the British to end their blockade of the American coast. The Embargo Act, however, devastated American agricultural exports and weakened American ports while Britain found other sources of food.
James Madison
won the U.S. presidential election of 1808, largely on the strength of his abilities in foreign affairs at a time when Britain and France were both on the brink of war with the United States. He was quick to repeal the Embargo Act, refreshing American seaports.
In response to continued British interference with American shipping (including the practice of impressment
of American sailors into the British Navy), and to British aid to American Indians in the Old Northwest, the Twelfth Congress—led by Southern and Western Jeffersonians—declared war on Britain in 1812. Westerners and Southerners were the most ardent supporters of the war, given their concerns about defending national honor and expanding western settlements, and having access to world markets for their agricultural exports. New England
was making a fine profit and its Federalists opposed the war, almost to the point of secession. The Federalist reputation collapsed in the triumphalism of 1815 and the party no longer played a national role.
The United States and Britain came to a draw in the war after bitter fighting that lasted even after the Burning of Washington
in August 1814 and Andrew Jackson
's smashing defeat of the British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans
in January 1815. The Treaty of Ghent
, officially ending the war, returned to the status quo ante bellum
, but Britain's alliance with the Native Americans ended, and the Indians were the major losers of the war. News of the victory at New Orleans over the best British combat troops came at the same time as news of the peace, giving Americans a psychological triumph and opening the Era of Good Feelings
. The war destroyed the Federalist Party, and opened roles as national candidates to generals Andrew Jackson
and William Henry Harrison
among others, as well as civilian leaders James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.
, America began to assert a newfound sense of nationalism. America began to rally around national heroes such as Andrew Jackson
and patriotic feelings emerged in such works as Francis Scott Key
's poem The Star Spangled Banner. Under the direction of Chief Justice John Marshall
, the Supreme Court issued a series of opinions reinforcing the role of the national government. These decisions included McCulloch v Maryland and Gibbons v Ogden; both of which reaffirmed the supremacy of the national government over the states. The signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty
helped to settle the western border of the country through popular and peaceable means.
increased across the country, its effects were limited by a renewed sense of sectionalism
. The New England
states that had opposed the War of 1812 felt an increasing decline in political power with the demise of the Federalist Party. This loss was tempered with the arrival of a new industrial movement and increased demands for northern banking. The industrial revolution
in the United States was advanced by the immigration of Samuel Slater
from Great Britain and arrival of textile mills beginning in Lowell, Massachusetts
. In the south, the invention of the cotton gin
by Eli Whitney
radically increased the value of slave labour. The export of southern cotton
was now the predominant export of the U.S. The western states continued to thrive under the "frontier spirit." Individualism was prized as exemplified by Davey Crockett and James Fenimore Cooper
's folk hero Natty Bumpo from The Leatherstocking Tales. Following the death of Tecumseh
in 1813, Native Americans lacked the unity to stop white settlement.
(1817–1825) was hailed at the time and since as the "Era of Good Feelings" because of the decline of partisan politics and heated rhetoric after the war. The Federalist Party collapsed, but without an opponent the Republican party decayed as sectional interests came to the fore.
The Monroe Doctrine
was drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
in collaboration with the British, and proclaimed by Monroe in late 1823. He asserted the Americas should be free from additional European colonization and free from European interference in sovereign countries' affairs. It further stated the United States' intention to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies but to consider any new colonies or interference with independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts towards the United States. No new colonies were ever formed.
. From Kentucky came Speaker of the House
Henry Clay
, while Massachusetts produced Secretary of State Adams; a rump congressional caucus put forward Treasury Secretary
William H. Crawford
. Personality and sectional allegiance played important roles in determining the outcome of the election. Adams won the electoral votes from New England and most of New York; Clay won his western base of Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri; Jackson won his base in the Southeast, and plus Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey; and Crawford won his base in the South, Virginia, Georgia and Delaware. No candidate gained a majority in the Electoral College, so the president was selected by the House of Representatives, where Clay was the most influential figure. In return for Clay's support, which won him the presidency, John Quincy Adams
appointed Clay as secretary of state in what Jacksonians denounced as The Corrupt Bargain
.
During Adams' administration, new party alignments appeared. Adams' followers took the name of "National Republicans
", to reflect the mainstream of Jeffersonian Republicanism. Though he governed honestly and efficiently, Adams was not a popular president, and his administration was marked with frustrations. Adams failed in his effort to institute a national system of roads and canals as part of the American System
economic plan. His coldly intellectual temperament did not win friends.
rallied his followers in the newly emerging Democratic Party. In the election of 1828, Jackson defeated Adams by an overwhelming electoral majority. The election saw the coming to power of Jacksonian Democracy
, thus marking the transition from the First Party System
(which reflected Jeffersonian Democracy
) to the Second Party System
. Historians debate the significance of the election, with many arguing that it marked the beginning of modern American politics, with the decisive establishment of democracy and the formation of the two party system.
nation built on finance and manufacturing. The entrepreneurs, for whom Henry Clay
and Daniel Webster
were heroes, fought back and formed the Whig party.
Political machines appeared early in the history of the United States, and for all the exhortations of Jacksonian Democracy, it was they and not the average voter that nominated candidates. In addition, the system supported establishment politicians and party loyalists, and much legislation was designed to reward rich men and businesses who supported a particular party or candidate. Also during this period, a series of reforms resulted in changes to the electoral system which rewarded winners or plurality getters in smaller districts instead of the old method of dividing state offices among the biggest vote getters. As a consequence, the chance of single issue and ideology-based candidates being elected to major office dwindled and so those parties who were successful were pragmatist ones with no fixed beliefs.
Examples of single issue parties included the Anti-Masons, who emerged as a group set to outlaw Freemasonry
in the United States after a man who threatened to expose the Masons' secrets was kidnapped and murdered. They ran a candidate for president (William Wirt
) in 1832, but succeeded in only winning the state of Vermont and then quietly disappeared. Others included abolitionist parties, socialists like the Workingmen's Party, the Locofocos
(who opposed monopoly capitalism), and assorted nativist parties whose chief object was opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in the US. As pointed out above, none of these parties were capable of mounting a broad enough appeal to voters or winning major elections.
The election of 1828 was a significant benchmark marking the climax of the trend toward broader voter eligibility and participation. Vermont
had universal male suffrage since its entry into the Union, and Tennessee permitted suffrage for the vast majority of taxpayers. New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina all abolished property and tax-paying requirements between 1807 and 1810. States entering the Union after 1815 either had universal white male suffrage or a low taxpaying requirement. From 1815 to 1821, Connecticut
, Massachusetts and New York abolished all property requirements. In 1824, members of the Electoral College were still selected by six state legislatures. By 1828, presidential electors were chosen by popular vote in every state but Delaware and South Carolina. Nothing dramatized this democratic sentiment more than the election of Andrew Jackson.
, which authorized the President to negotiate treaties that exchanged Indian tribal lands in the eastern states for lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1834, a special Indian territory
was established in what is now the eastern part of Oklahoma
. In all, Native American tribes signed 94 treaties during Jackson's two terms, ceding thousands of square miles to the Federal government.
The Cherokee
s insisted on their independence from state government authority and faced expulsion from their lands when a faction of Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota
in 1835, obtaining money in exchange for their land. Despite protests from the elected Cherokee government and many white supporters, the Cherokees were forced to trek to the Indian Territory in 1838. Many died of disease and privation in what became known as the "Trail of Tears".
. The protective tariff passed by Congress and signed into law by Jackson in 1832 was milder than that of 1828, but it further embittered many in the state. In response, several South Carolina citizens endorsed the "states rights" principle of "nullification", which was enunciated by John C. Calhoun
, Jackson's Vice President until 1832, in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest
(1828). South Carolina dealt with the tariff by adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both the Tariff of 1828
and the Tariff of 1832
null and void within state borders.
Nullification was only the most recent in a series of state challenges to the authority of the federal government. In response to South Carolina's threat, Jackson sent seven small naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston
in November 1832. On December 10, he issued a resounding proclamation against the nullifiers. South Carolina, the President declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason", and he appealed to the people of the state to reassert their allegiance to that Union for which their ancestors had fought.
Senator Henry Clay, though an advocate of protection and a political rival of Jackson, piloted a compromise measure through Congress. Clay's 1833 compromise tariff specified that all duties more than 20% of the value of the goods imported were to be reduced by easy stages, so that by 1842, the duties on all articles would reach the level of the moderate tariff of 1816.
The rest of the South declared South Carolina's course unwise and unconstitutional. Eventually, South Carolina rescinded its action. Jackson had committed the federal government to the principle of Union
supremacy. South Carolina, however, had obtained many of the demands it sought and had demonstrated that a single state could force its will on Congress.
. The First Bank of the United States
had been established in 1791, under Alexander Hamilton's guidance and had been chartered for a 20-year period. After the Revolutionary War, the United States had a large war debt to France and others, and the banking system of the fledgling nation was in disarray, as state banks printed their own currency, and the plethora of different bank notes made commerce difficult. Hamilton's national bank had been chartered to solve the debt problem and to unify the nation under one currency. While it stabilized the currency and stimulated trade, it was resented by Westerners and workers who believed that it was granting special favors to a few powerful men. When its charter expired in 1811, it was not renewed.
For the next few years, the banking business was in the hands of State-Chartered banks, which issued currency in excessive amounts, creating great confusion and fueling inflation and concerns that state banks could not provide the country with a uniform currency. the absence of a national bank during the War of 1812 greatly hindered financial operations of the government; therefore a second Bank of the United States was created in 1816.
From its inception, the Second Bank was unpopular in the newer states and territories and with less prosperous people everywhere. Opponents claimed the bank possessed a virtual monopoly over the country's credit and currency, and reiterated that it represented the interests of the wealthy elite. Jackson, elected as a popular champion against it, vetoed a bill to recharter the bank. He also personally detested banks due to a brush with bankruptcy in his youth. In his message to Congress, he denounced monopoly and special privilege, saying that "our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress".
In the election campaign that followed, the bank question caused a fundamental division between the merchant, manufacturing and financial interests (generally creditors who favored tight money and high interest rates), and the laboring and agrarian sectors, who were often in debt to banks and therefore favored an increased money supply
and lower interest rates. The outcome was an enthusiastic endorsement of "Jacksonism". Jackson saw his reelection in 1832 as a popular mandate to crush the bank irrevocably; he found a ready-made weapon in a provision of the bank's charter authorizing removal of public funds.
In September 1833 Jackson ordered that no more government money be deposited in the bank and that the money already in its custody be gradually withdrawn in the ordinary course of meeting the expenses of government. Carefully-selected state banks, stringently restricted, were provided as a substitute. For the next generation, the US would get by on a relatively-unregulated state banking system. This banking system helped fuel westward expansion through easy credit, but kept the nation vulnerable to periodic panics. It was not until the Civil War
that the Federal government again chartered a national bank.
Jackson groomed Martin van Buren
as his successor, and he was easily elected president in 1836. However, a few months into his administration, the country fell into a deep economic slump known as the Panic of 1837
, caused in large part by excessive speculation. Banks failed and unemployment soared. Although the depression had its roots in Jackson's economic policies, van Buren was blamed for the disaster. In the 1840 presidential election, he was defeated by the Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. However, his presidency would prove a non-starter when he fell ill with pneumonia and died after only a month in office. John Tyler, his vice president, succeeded him. Tyler was not popular since he had not been elected to the presidency, and was widely referred to as "His Accidency". The Whigs expelled him, and he became a president without a party.
, Americans entered a period of rapid social change and experimentation. New social movements arose, as well as many new alternatives to traditional religious thought. This period of American history was marked by the destruction of some traditional roles of society and the erection of new social standards. One of the unique aspects of the Age of Reform was that it was heavily grounded in religion, in contrast to the anti-clericalism that characterized contemporary European reformers.
was a Protestant religious revival movement that flourished in 1800–1840 in every region. It expressed Arminian theology
by which every person could be saved through a direct personal confrontation with Jesus Christ during an intensely emotional revival meeting. Millions join the churches, often new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age
, so that the Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. For example, the charismatic Charles Grandison Finney
, in upstate New York
and the Old Northwest was highly effective. At the Rochester
Revival of 1830, prominent citizens concerned with the city's poverty and absenteeism had invited Finney to the city. The wave of religious revival contributed to tremendous growth of the Methodist, Baptists, Disciples, and other evangelical denominations.
challenged the traditional beliefs of the Calvinist faith, the movement inspired other groups to call into question their views on religion and society. Many of these utopianist groups also believed in millennialism
which prophesied the return of Christ and the beginning of a new age. The Harmony Society
made three attempts to effect a millennial society with the most notable example at New Harmony, Indiana
. Later, Scottish industrialist Robert Owen
bought New Harmony and attempted to form a secular Utopian community there. Frenchman Charles Fourier
began a similar secular experiment with his "phalanxes" that were spread across the Midwestern United States. However, none of these utopian communities lasted very long except for the Shakers.
One of the earliest movements was that of the Shakers
in which members of a community held all of their possessions in "common
" and lived in a prosperous, inventive, self-supporting society, with no sexual activity. The Shakers, founded by an English immigrant to the United States Mother Ann Lee
, peaked at around 6,000 in 1850 in communities from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers condemned sexuality
and demanded absolute celibacy
. New members could only come from conversions, and from children brought to the Shaker villages. The Shakers persisted into the 20th century, but lost most of their originality by the middle of the 19th century. They are famed for their artistic craftsmanship, especially their furniture and handicrafts.
The Perfectionist movement, led by John Humphrey Noyes
, founded the utopian Oneida Community
in 1848 with fifty-one devotees, in Oneida, New York
. Noyes believed that the act of final conversion led to absolute and complete release from sin. Though their sexual practices were unorthodox, the community prospered because Noyes opted for modern manufacturing. Eventually abandoning religion to become a joint-stock company, Oneida thrived for many years and continues today as a silverware
company.
Joseph Smith
also experienced a religious conversion in this era; under his guidance Mormon
history began. Because of their unusual beliefs, which included recognition of the Book of Mormon
as a supplement to the Bible, Mormons were rejected by mainstream Christians and forced to flee en masse from upstate New York to Ohio, to Missouri and then to Nauvoo, Illinois
, where Smith was killed and they were again forced to flee. They Settled around the Great Salt Lake
, then part of Mexico. In 1848, the region came under American control and later formed the Utah
Territory. National policy was to suppress polygamy, and Utah was only admitted as a state in 1896 after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints backtracked from Smith's demand that all the leaders practice polygamy.
For Americans wishing to bridge the gap between the earthly and spiritual worlds, spiritualism
provided a means of communing with the dead. Spiritualists used mediums to communicate between the living and the dead through a variety of different means. The most famous mediums, the Fox sisters
claimed a direct link to the spirit world. Spiritualism would gain a much larger following after the heavy number of casualties during the Civil War; First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln
was a believer.
Other groups seeking spiritual awaking gained popularity in the mid-19th century. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson
began the American transcendentalist
movement in New England, to promote self-reliance and better understanding of the universe through contemplation of the over-soul
. Transcendentalism was in essence an American offshoot of the Romantic movement in Europe. Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that "transcends" the physical, and is only realized through intuition
rather than doctrine. Like many of the movements, the transcendentalists split over the idea of self-reliance. While Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
promoted the idea of independent living, George Ripley brought transcendentalists together in a phalanx at Brook Farm
to live cooperatively. Other authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Edgar Allan Poe
rejected transcendentalist beliefs.
So many of these new religious and spiritual groups began or concentrated within miles of each other in upstate New York that this area was nicknamed "the burned-over district
" because there were so few people left who had not experienced a conversion.
was common, although it was often class-based with the working class receiving little benefits. Instruction and curriculum were all locally determined and teachers were expected to meet rigorous demands of strict moral behaviour. Schools taught religious values and applied Calvinist philosophies of discipline which included corporal punishment
and public humiliation. In the South, there was very little organization of a public education system. Public schools were very rare and most education took place in the home with the family acting as instructors. The wealthier planter families were able to bring in tutors for instruction in the classics
but many yeoman farming families had little access to education outside of the family unit.
The reform movement in education began in Massachusetts
when Horace Mann
started the common school movement. Mann advocated a statewide curriculum and instituted financing of school through local property taxes. Mann also fought protracted battles against the Calvinist influence in discipline, preferring positive reinforcement to physical punishment. Most children learned to read and write and spell from Noah Webster
's Blue Backed Speller and later the McGuffey Readers
. The readings inculcated moral values as well as literacy. Most states tried to emulate Massachusetts, but New England retained its leadership position for another century. German immigrants brought in kindergartens and gymnasiums, while Yankee orators sponsored the Lyceum
movement that provided popular education for hundreds of towns and small cities.
, a Massachusetts woman who made an intensive study of the conditions that the mentally ill were kept in. Dix's report to the Massachusetts state legislature along with the development of the Kirkbride Plan
helped to alleviate the miserable conditions for many of the mentally ill. Although these facilities often fell short of their intended purpose, reformers continued to follow Dix's advocacy and call for increased study and treatment of mental illness.
During the building of the new republic, American women were able to gain a limited political voice in what is known as republican motherhood
. Under this philosophy, as promoted by leaders such as Abigail Adams
, women were seen as the protectors of liberty and republicanism. Mothers were charged with passing down these ideals to their children through instruction of patriotic thoughts and feelings. During the 1830s and 1840s, many of the changes in the status of women that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period—such as the belief in love between spouses and the role of women in the home—continued at an accelerated pace. This was an age of reform movements, in which Americans sought to improve the moral fiber of themselves and of their nation in unprecedented numbers. The wife's role in this process was important because she was seen as the cultivator of morality in her husband and children. Besides domesticity, women were also expected to be pious, pure, and submissive to men. These four components were considered by many at the time to be "the natural state" of womanhood, echoes of this ideology still existing today. The view that the wife should find fulfillment in these values is called the Cult of True Womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity
.
In the South, tradition still abounded with society women on the pedestal and dedicated to entertaining and hosting others. This phenomenon is reflected in the 1965 book, The Inevitable Guest, based on a collection of letters by friends and relatives in North
and South Carolina
to Miss Jemima Darby, a distant relative of the author.
Under the doctrine of two spheres, women were to exist in the “domestic sphere” at home while their husbands operated in the “public sphere” of politics and business. Women took on the new role of “softening” their husbands and instructing their children in piety and not republican values, while men handled the business and financial affairs of the family. Some doctors of this period even went so far as to suggest that women should not get an education, lest they divert blood away from the uterus to the brain and produce weak children. The coverture
laws ensured that men would hold political power over their wives.
, which was active in both North and South, tried to implement these ideas and established the colony of Liberia
in Africa as a means to repatriate slaves out of white society. Prominent leaders included Henry Clay
and President James Monroe
—who gave his name to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. However after 1840 the abolitionists rejected the idea of repatriation to Africa.
The slavery abolitionist
movement among white Protestants was based on evangelical principles of the Second Great Awakening
. Evangelist Theodore Weld led abolitionist revivals that called for immediate emancipation
of slaves. William Lloyd Garrison
founded The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper, and the American Anti-Slavery Society
to call for abolition. A controversial figure, Garrison often was the focus of public anger. His advocacy of women's rights and inclusion of women in the leadership of the Society caused a rift within the movement. Rejecting Garrison's idea that abolition and women's rights were connected Lewis Tappan
broke with the Society and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
. Most abolitionists were not as extreme as Garrison, who vowed that "The Liberator" would not cease publication until slavery was abolished.
White abolitionists did not always face agreeable communities in the North. Garrison was almost lynched in Boston while newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy was killed in Alton, Illinois
. The anger over abolition even spilled over into Congress where a gag rule
was instituted to prevent any discussion of slavery on the floor of either chamber. Most whites viewed African-Americans as an inferior race and had little taste for abolitionists, often assuming that all were like Garrison. African-Americans had little freedom even in states where slavery was not permitted, being shunned by whites, subjected to discriminatory laws, and often forced to compete with Irish immigrants for menial, low-wage jobs. In the South meanwhile, planters argued that slavery was necessary to operate their plantations profitably and that emancipated slaves would attempt to Africanize the country as they had done in Haiti.
Both free-born African American
citizens and former slaves took on leading roles in abolitionism as well. By far the most prominent spokesperson for abolition in the African American community was Frederick Douglass
, an escaped slave whose eloquent condemnations of slavery drew both crowds of supporters as well as threats against his life. Douglass was a keen user of the printed word both through his newspaper The North Star and three best-selling autobiographies.
At one extreme David Walker
published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World calling for African American revolt against white tyranny. The Underground Railroad
helped some slaves out of the South through a series of trails and safe houses known as “stations.” Known as “conductors”, escaped slaves volunteered to return to the South to lead others to safety; former slaves, such as Harriet Tubman
, risked their lives on these journeys.
were southerners who moved North to advocate against slavery. The American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women. Garrison along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Lucretia Mott
were so appalled that women were not allowed to participate at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London that they called for a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York
. It was at this convention that Sojourner Truth
became recognized as a leading spokesperson for both abolition and women's rights. Women abolitionists increasingly began to compare women's situation with the plight of slaves. This new polemic squarely blamed men for all the restrictions of women's role, and argued that the relationship between the sexes was one-sided, controlling and oppressive. There were strong religious roots; most feminists emerged from the Quaker and Congregationalist churches in the Northeast.
condemned liquor as being a scourge on society and urged temperance among their followers. The state of Maine attempted in 1851 to ban alcohol sales and production entirely, but it met resistance and was abandoned. The prohibition movement was forgotten during the Civil War, but would return in the 1870s.
and railroads to ship goods more quickly. The government helped protect American manufacturers by passing a protective tariff.
".
The steady expansion and rapid population growth of the United States after 1815 contrasted sharply with static European societies, as visitors described the rough, sometimes violent, but on the whole hugely optimistic and forward-looking attitude of most Americans. While land ownership was something most Europeans could only dream of, contemporary accounts show that the average American farmer owned his land, fed his family afar more than European peasants, and could make provisions for land for his children. Europeans commonly talked of the egalitarianism of American society, which had no landed nobility and which theoretically allowed anyone regardless of birth to become successful. For example in Germany, the universities, the bureaucracy and the army officers required high family status; in Britain rich families purchased commissions in the army for their sons for tens of thousands of pounds. Rich merchants and factory owners did emerge in Europe, but they seldom had social prestige of political power. By contrast the US had more millionaires than any country in Europe by 1850. Most rich Americans had well-to-do fathers, but their grandfathers were of average wealth. Poor boys of the 1850s like Andrew Carnegie
and John D. Rockefeller
were two of the richest men in the world by 1900. Historians have emphasized that upward social mobility came in small steps over time, and over generations, with the Carnegie-like rags-to-riches scenario a rare one. Some ethnic groups (like Yankees, Irish and Jews) prized upward mobility, and emphasized education as the fastest route; other groups (such as Germans, Poles and Italians) emphasized family stability and home ownership more. Stagnant cities offered less mobility opportunities, leading the more ambitious young men to head to growth centers, often out west.
Westward expansion was mostly undertaken by groups of young families. Daniel Boone
was one frontiersman who pioneered the settlement of Kentucky. This pattern was followed throughout the West as American hunters and trappers traded with the Indians and explored the land. As skilled fighters and hunters, these Mountain Men trapped beaver in small groups throughout the Rocky Mountains
. After the demise of the fur trade
, they established trading posts throughout the west, continued trade with the Indians and served as guides and hunters for the western migration of settlers to Utah
, Oregon
and California
.
Americans asserted a right to colonize vast expanses of North America beyond their country's borders, especially into Oregon, California, and Texas
. By the mid-1840s, U.S. expansionism was articulated in the ideology of "Manifest Destiny
". The Oregon Territory had been jointly administered by the US and Great Britain since 1819, but the two nations fell into disputes over the territory. President Polk (Democrat) negotiated a compromise that gave half the area to the US, along the line of the current border with Canada.
American annexation of the Republic of Texas
in 1845 was unacceptable to Mexico and led to war. In May 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico after a border incident. Troops under the command of General Zachary Taylor
defeated Santa Anna's army in northern Mexico while other American troops took possession of New Mexico and California. Mexico continued to resist despite a chaotic political situation, and so Polk launched an invasion of the country's heartland. An army led by Winfield Scott
occupied the port of Veracruz, and pressed inland amid bloody fighting. Santa Anna offered to cede Texas and California north of Monterrey Bay, but negotiations broke down and the fighting resumed. In September 1847, Scott's army captured Mexico City. Santa Anna was forced to flee and a provisional government began the task of negotiating peace. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
was signed on February 2, 1848. It recognized the Rio Grande
as the southern boundary of Texas
and ceded what is now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico to the United States, while also paying Mexico $15,000,000 for the territory. The war was opposed by Whigs in the US (including Congressman Abraham Lincoln
) who considered it a European-style war of conquest and imperialism. In the presidential election of 1848, Zachary Taylor ran as a Whig and won easily when the Democrats became split, even though he was an apolitical military man who never voted in his life.
With Texas and Florida having been admitted to the union as slave states in 1845, California was made a free state in 1850.
Major events in the western movement of the U.S. population were the Homestead Act
, a law by which, for a nominal price, a settler was given title to 160 acres (65 ha) of land to farm; the opening of the Oregon Territory
to settlement; the Texas Revolution
; the opening of the Oregon Trail
; the Mormon Emigration to Utah
in 1846–47; the California Gold Rush
of 1849; the Colorado Gold Rush
of 1859; and the completion of the nation's First Transcontinental Railroad
on May 10, 1869.
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
as the first president
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national government, and refinanced them with new federal bonds. It paid for the program through new tariffs and taxes, especially the controversial Whiskey Tax
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion, or Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States in the 1790s, during the presidency of George Washington. Farmers who sold their corn in the form of whiskey had to pay a new tax which they strongly resented...
. Congress adopted and sent to the states a Bill of Rights
Bill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
as 10 amendments to the new constitution; these amendments, written by Madison, are the U.S. Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
. President Washington set up a cabinet form of government, with departments of State, Treasury, and War, along with an Attorney General (the Justice Department was created in 1870). The Judiciary Act of 1789
Judiciary Act of 1789
The United States Judiciary Act of 1789 was a landmark statute adopted on September 24, 1789 in the first session of the First United States Congress establishing the U.S. federal judiciary...
established the entire federal judiciary
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
, including the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
. The Court became important under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall
John Marshall
John Marshall was the Chief Justice of the United States whose court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of the United States a coequal branch of government along with the legislative and executive branches...
(1801–1834), Federalist and nationalist who built a strong Supreme Court and strengthened the national government.
The 1790s were highly contentious, as the First Party System
First Party System
The First Party System is a model of American politics used by political scientists and historians to periodize the political party system existing in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states:...
emerged in the contest between Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
and his Federalist party, and Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and his Republican party. Washington and Hamilton were building a strong national government, with a broad financial base, and the support of merchants and financiers throughout the country. Jeffersonians opposed the new national Bank, the Navy, and federal taxes. The Federalists favored Britain, which was embattled in a series of wars with France. Jefferson's victory in 1800 opened the era of Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian Democracy, so named after its leading advocate Thomas Jefferson, is a term used to describe one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The term was commonly used to refer to the Democratic-Republican Party which Jefferson...
, and doomed the upper-crust Federalists to increasingly marginal roles.
The Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
, in 1803 opened vast Western
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
expanses of fertile land, that exactly met the needs of the rapidly expanding population of yeomen farmers
Plain Folk of the Old South
The Plain Folk of the Old South refers to the middling class of white farmers in the Southern United States before the Civil War, located between the rich planters and the poor whites. At the time they were often called "yeomen". They owned land and had no slaves or only a few. Most of them were...
whom Jefferson championed.
The Americans declared war on Britain (the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
) to uphold American honor at sea, and to end the Indian raids in the west. Despite incompetent government management, and a series of defeats early on, Americans found new generals like Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States , an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. He was 68 years, 23 days old when elected, the oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the...
, and Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852....
, who repulsed British invasions and broke the alliance between the British and the Indians that held up settlement of the Old Northwest. The Federalists, who had opposed the war to the point of trading with the enemy and threatening secession, were devastated by the triumphant ending of the war. The remaining Indians east of the Mississippi were kept on reservations or moved via the Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830...
to reservations in what later became Oklahoma.
The spread of democracy opened the ballot box to nearly all white men, allowing the Jacksonian democracy
Jacksonian democracy
Jacksonian democracy is the political movement toward greater democracy for the common man typified by American politician Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated the previous political era. The Democratic-Republican Party of...
to dominate politics during the Second Party System
Second Party System
The Second Party System is a term of periodization used by historians and political scientists to name the political party system existing in the United States from about 1828 to 1854...
. Whigs, representing wealthier planters, merchants, financiers and professionals, wanted to modernize the society, using tariffs and federally funded internal improvements
Internal improvements
Internal improvements is the term used historically in the United States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly for the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements...
; they were blocked by the Jacksonians, who closed down the national Bank in the 1830s. The Jacksonians wanted expansion—that is "Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
"—into new lands that would be occupied by farmers and planters. Thanks to the annexation of Texas, the defeat of Mexico in war, and a compromise with Britain, the western third of the nation rounded out the continental United States by 1848.
Howe (2007) argues that the transformation America underwent was not so much political democratization but rather the explosive growth of technologies and networks of infrastructure and communication—the telegraph, railroads, the post office, and an expanding print industry. They made possible the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
, the expansion of education and social reform. They modernized party politics, as speeded up business by enabling the fast, efficient movement of goods, money and people across an expanding nation. They transformed a loose-knit collection of parochial agricultural communities into a powerful cosmopolitan nation Economic modernization proceeded rapidly, thanks to highly profitable cotton crops in the South, new textile and machine-making industries in the Northeast, and a fast developing transportation infrastructure.
Breaking loose from European models, the Americans developed their own high culture, notably in literature and in higher education. The Second Great Awakening
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
brought revivals across the country, forming new denominations and greatly increasing church membership, especially among Methodists and Baptists. By the 1840s increasing numbers of immigrants were arriving from Europe, especially British, Irish, and Germans. Many settled in the cities, which were starting to emerge as a major factor in the economy and society.
The Whigs had warned that annexation of Texas would lead to a crisis over slavery, and they were proven right by the turmoil of the 1850s that led to civil war.
Washington Administration: 1789–1797
George Washington, a renowned hero of the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, commander of the Continental Army
Continental Army
The Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in...
, and president of the Constitutional Convention
Philadelphia Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from...
, was unanimously chosen as the first President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
under the new U.S. Constitution. All the leaders of the new nation were committed to republicanism
Republicanism in the United States
Republicanism is the political value system that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and inalienable rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, supports activist government to promote the common good, rejects...
, and the doubts of the Anti-Federalists of 1788 were allayed with the passage of a Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in 1791.
The first census, conducted by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, enumerated a population of 3.9 million, with a density of 4.5 people per square mile of land area. There were only 12 cities of more than 5,000 population, as the great majority of the people were farmers.
Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789
Judiciary Act of 1789
The United States Judiciary Act of 1789 was a landmark statute adopted on September 24, 1789 in the first session of the First United States Congress establishing the U.S. federal judiciary...
, which established the entire federal judiciary
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
. At the time, the act provided for a Supreme Court of six justices, three circuit courts
United States circuit court
The United States circuit courts were the original intermediate level courts of the United States federal court system. They were established by the Judiciary Act of 1789. They had trial court jurisdiction over civil suits of diversity jurisdiction and major federal crimes. They also had appellate...
, and 13 district courts
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
. It also created the offices of U.S. Marshal
United States Marshals Service
The United States Marshals Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice . The office of U.S. Marshal is the oldest federal law enforcement office in the United States; it was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789...
, Deputy Marshal, and District Attorney
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...
in each federal judicial district
United States federal judicial district
For purposes of the federal judicial system, Congress has divided the United States into judicial districts. There are 94 federal judicial districts, including at least one district in each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico...
. The Compromise of 1790
Compromise of 1790
The Compromise of 1790 was the first of three great political compromises made in the United States by the Northern and Southern states, occurring every thirty years, in an attempt to keep the Union together and prevent civil war...
located to the national capital in the southern state of Maryland (now the District of Columbia), and enabled the federal assumption of state debts.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, with Washington's support and Jefferson's opposition, convinced Congress to pass a far-reaching financial program that funded the debts of the American Revolution, set up a national bank, and set up a system of tariffs and taxes to pay for all. His policies had the effect of linking the economic interests of the states, and of wealthy Americans, to the success of the national government, as well as enhancing the international financial standing of the new nation.
The Whiskey Rebellion
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion, or Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States in the 1790s, during the presidency of George Washington. Farmers who sold their corn in the form of whiskey had to pay a new tax which they strongly resented...
in 1794—when settlers in the Monongahela Valley of western Pennsylvania protested against the new federal tax on whiskey, which the settlers shipped across the mountains to earn money. It was the first serious test of the federal government. Washington ordered federal marshals to serve court orders requiring the tax protesters to appear in federal district court. By August 1794, the protests became dangerously close to outright rebellion, and on August 7, several thousand armed settlers gathered near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
. Washington then invoked the Militia Law of 1792 to summon the militias of several states. A force of 13,000 men was organized, and Washington personally led it to Western Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania consists of the western third of the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the region, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic and cultural center. Erie, Altoona, and Johnstown are its...
. The revolt immediately collapsed, and there was no violence.
Foreign policy unexpectedly took center stage starting in 1793, when revolutionary France and conservative Britain went to war, opening a period of intense European conflict that lasted until 1815. The American policy was, "remain neutral", but the Jeffersonians strongly favored France, and deeply distrusted the British, who they saw as enemies of Republicanism. Hamilton and the business community favored Britain, which was by far America's largest trading partner. The tensions with Britain were resolved with the Jay Treaty of 1794, which opened up 10 years of prosperous trade, and forced the British to withdraw from their forts in the American Far West. The Jeffersonians tried to defeat the treaty, but failed when Washington threw his prestige into the conflict.
Continuing conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson, especially over foreign policy, led to the formation of the Federalist and Republican parties. Although Washington warned against political parties in his farewell address
George Washington's Farewell Address
George Washington's Farewell Address was written to "The People of the United States" near the end of his second term as President of the United States and before his retirement to his home at Mount Vernon....
, he generally supported Hamilton and Hamiltonian programs over those of Jefferson. After his death in 1799 he became the great symbolic hero of the Federalists.
Emergence of political parties
The First Party System between 1792 and 1824 featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states: the Federalist PartyFederalist Party (United States)
The Federalist Party was the first American political party, from the early 1790s to 1816, the era of the First Party System, with remnants lasting into the 1820s. The Federalists controlled the federal government until 1801...
was created by Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
and was dominant to 1800. The rival Republican Party
Democratic-Republican Party (United States)
The Democratic-Republican Party or Republican Party was an American political party founded in the early 1790s by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Political scientists use the former name, while historians prefer the latter one; contemporaries generally called the party the "Republicans", along...
(Democratic-Republican Party) was created by Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
, and was dominant after 1800. Both parties originated in national politics but moved to organize supporters and voters in every state. These comprised "probably the first modern party system in the world" because they were based on voters, not factions of aristocrats at court or parliament. The Federalists appealed to the business community, the Republicans to the planters and farmers. By 1796 politics in every state was nearly monopolized by the two parties.
Jefferson wrote on Feb. 12, 1798:
- Two political Sects have arisen within the U. S. the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support; the other that like the analogous branch in the English Government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution; and therefore in equivocal cases they incline to the legislative powers: the former of these are called federalists, sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes tories, after the corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same definition: the latter are stiled republicans, whigs, jacobins, anarchists, disorganizers, etc. these terms are in familiar use with most persons."
The Federalists promoted the financial system of Treasury Secretary Hamilton, which emphasized federal assumption of state debts, a tariff to pay off those debts, a national bank to facilitate financing, and encouragement of banking and manufacturing. The Republicans, based in the plantation South, opposed a strong executive power, were hostile to a standing army and navy, demanded a limited reading of the Constitutional powers of the federal government, and strongly opposed the Hamilton financial program. Perhaps even more important was foreign policy, where the Federalists favored Britain because of its political stability and its close ties to American trade, while the Republicans admired the French and the French Revolution. Jefferson was especially fearful that British aristocratic influences would undermine republicanism
Republicanism in the United States
Republicanism is the political value system that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and inalienable rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, supports activist government to promote the common good, rejects...
. Britain and France were at war 1793–1815, with one brief interruption. American policy was neutrality, with the federalists hostile to France, and the Republicans hostile to Britain. The Jay Treaty
Jay Treaty
Jay's Treaty, , also known as Jay's Treaty, The British Treaty, and the Treaty of London of 1794, was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain that is credited with averting war,, resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution,, and...
of 1794 marked the decisive mobilization of the two parties and their supporters in every state. President Washington, while officially nonpartisan, generally supported the Federalists and that party made Washington their iconic hero.
Adams Administration: 1797–1801
ppoooopopJohn Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
was elected the new President, narrowly defeating Jefferson. Even before he entered the presidency, Adams had quarreled with Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
—and thus was handicapped by a divided Federalist party.
These domestic difficulties were compounded by international complications: France, angered by American approval in 1795 of the Jay Treaty
Jay Treaty
Jay's Treaty, , also known as Jay's Treaty, The British Treaty, and the Treaty of London of 1794, was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain that is credited with averting war,, resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution,, and...
with its great enemy Britain proclaimed that food and war material bound for British ports were subject to seizure by the French navy. By 1797, France had seized 300 American ships and had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States. When Adams sent three other commissioners to Paris to negotiate, agents of Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (whom Adams labeled "X, Y and Z" in his report to Congress) informed the Americans that negotiations could only begin if the United States loaned France $12 million and bribed officials of the French government. American hostility to France rose to an excited pitch. Federalists used the "XYZ Affair
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a 1798 diplomatic episode during the administration of John Adams that Americans interpreted as an insult from France. It led to an undeclared naval war called the Quasi-War, which raged at sea from 1798 to 1800...
" to create a new American army, strengthen the fledgling United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, impose the Alien and Sedition Acts
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
to stop pro-French activities (which had severe repercussions for American civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
), and enact new taxes to pay for it. The Naturalization Act
Naturalization Act of 1798
The Naturalization Act, passed by Congress on June 18, 1798, increased the amount of time necessary for immigrants to become naturalized citizens in the United States from five to fourteen years...
, which changed the residency requirement for citizenship from five to 14 years, was targeted at Irish and French immigrants suspected of supporting the Republican Party
Democratic-Republican Party (United States)
The Democratic-Republican Party or Republican Party was an American political party founded in the early 1790s by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Political scientists use the former name, while historians prefer the latter one; contemporaries generally called the party the "Republicans", along...
. One of the Alien acts, still in effect in the 21st century, gave the President the power to expel or imprison aliens in time of war. The Sedition Act proscribed writing, speaking or publishing anything of "a false, scandalous and malicious" nature against the President or Congress. The few convictions won under the Sedition Act only created martyrs to the cause of civil liberties and aroused support for the Republicans. Jefferson and his allies launched a counterattack, with two states stating in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional...
that state legislatures could nullify acts of Congress. However, all the other states rejected this proposition, and nullification—or it was as it was called, the "principle of 98"—became the preserve of a faction of the Republicans
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian Democracy, so named after its leading advocate Thomas Jefferson, is a term used to describe one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The term was commonly used to refer to the Democratic-Republican Party which Jefferson...
called the Quids.
In 1799, after a series of naval battles with the French (known as the Quasi-War
Quasi-War
The Quasi-War was an undeclared war fought mostly at sea between the United States and French Republic from 1798 to 1800. In the United States, the conflict was sometimes also referred to as the Franco-American War, the Pirate Wars, or the Half-War.-Background:The Kingdom of France had been a...
), full-scale war seemed inevitable. In this crisis, Adams broke with his party and sent three new commissioners to France. Napoleon, who had just come to power, received them cordially, and the danger of conflict subsided with the negotiation of the Convention of 1800, which formally released the United States from its 1778 wartime alliance with France. However, reflecting American weakness, France refused to pay $20 million in compensation for American ships seized by the French navy.
In his final hours in office, Adams appointed John Marshall
John Marshall
John Marshall was the Chief Justice of the United States whose court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of the United States a coequal branch of government along with the legislative and executive branches...
as chief justice. Serving until his death in 1835, Marshall dramatically expanded the powers of the Supreme Court and provided a Federalist interpretation of the Constitution that made for a strong national government.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson had steadily gathered behind him a great mass of small farmers, shopkeepers and other workers which asserted themselves as Democratic-Republicans in the election of 1800. Jefferson enjoyed extraordinary favor because of his appeal to American idealism. In his inaugural address, the first such speech in the new capital of Washington, DC, he promised "a wise and frugal government" to preserve order among the inhabitants but would "leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry, and improvement".
Jefferson encouraged agriculture and westward expansion, most notably by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, or ″Corps of Discovery Expedition" was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William...
. Believing America to be a haven for the oppressed, he reduced the residency requirement for naturalization back to five years again.
By the end of his second term, Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin
Albert Gallatin
Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin was a Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, politician, diplomat, congressman, and the longest-serving United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 1831, he founded the University of the City of New York...
had reduced the national debt to less than $560 million. This was accomplished by reducing the number of executive department employees and Army and Navy officers and enlisted men, and by otherwise curtailing government and military spending.
To protect its shipping interests overseas, the U.S. fought the First Barbary War
First Barbary War
The First Barbary War , also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War, was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Berber Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States...
(1801–1805) in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
. This was followed later by the Second Barbary War
Second Barbary War
The Second Barbary War , also known as the Algerine or Algerian War, was the second of two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Empire's North African regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria known collectively as the Barbary states. The war between the Barbary States and the U.S...
(1815).
With the upcoming expiration of the 20-year ban on Congressional action on the subject, Jefferson, a lifelong enemy of the slave trade, calls on Congress to criminalize the international slave trade, calling it "violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."
Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave Western farmers use of the important Mississippi River waterway, removed the French presence from the western border of the United States, and provided U.S. settlers with vast potential for expansion. A few weeks afterward, war resumed between Britain and Napoleon's France. The United States, dependent on European revenues from the export of agricultural goods, tried to export food and raw materials to both warring Great PowerGreat power
A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...
s and to profit from transporting goods between their home markets and Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
colonies. Both sides permitted this trade when it benefited them but opposed it when it did not. Following the 1805 destruction of the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
, Britain sought to impose a stranglehold over French overseas trade ties. Thus, in retaliation against U.S. trade practices, Britain imposed a loose blockade
Orders in Council (1807)
The Orders in Council were a series of legislative decrees made by the United Kingdom in the course of the wars with Napoleonic France which instituted its policy of commercial warfare. Formally, an "Order in Council" is simply the type of legislation by which the British government decreed these...
of the American coast. Believing that Britain could not rely on other sources of food than the United States, Congress and President Jefferson suspended all U.S. trade with foreign nations in the Embargo Act of 1807
Embargo Act of 1807
The Embargo Act of 1807 and the subsequent Nonintercourse Acts were American laws restricting American ships from engaging in foreign trade between the years of 1807 and 1812. The Acts were diplomatic responses by presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison designed to protect American interests...
, hoping to get the British to end their blockade of the American coast. The Embargo Act, however, devastated American agricultural exports and weakened American ports while Britain found other sources of food.
James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
won the U.S. presidential election of 1808, largely on the strength of his abilities in foreign affairs at a time when Britain and France were both on the brink of war with the United States. He was quick to repeal the Embargo Act, refreshing American seaports.
Impressment
Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
of American sailors into the British Navy), and to British aid to American Indians in the Old Northwest, the Twelfth Congress—led by Southern and Western Jeffersonians—declared war on Britain in 1812. Westerners and Southerners were the most ardent supporters of the war, given their concerns about defending national honor and expanding western settlements, and having access to world markets for their agricultural exports. New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
was making a fine profit and its Federalists opposed the war, almost to the point of secession. The Federalist reputation collapsed in the triumphalism of 1815 and the party no longer played a national role.
The United States and Britain came to a draw in the war after bitter fighting that lasted even after the Burning of Washington
Burning of Washington
The Burning of Washington was an armed conflict during the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America. On August 24, 1814, led by General Robert Ross, a British force occupied Washington, D.C. and set fire to many public buildings following...
in August 1814 and Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
's smashing defeat of the British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans
Battle of New Orleans
The Battle of New Orleans took place on January 8, 1815 and was the final major battle of the War of 1812. American forces, commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson, defeated an invading British Army intent on seizing New Orleans and the vast territory the United States had acquired with the...
in January 1815. The Treaty of Ghent
Treaty of Ghent
The Treaty of Ghent , signed on 24 December 1814, in Ghent , was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
, officially ending the war, returned to the status quo ante bellum
Status quo ante bellum
The term status quo ante bellum is Latin, meaning literally "the state in which things were before the war".The term was originally used in treaties to refer to the withdrawal of enemy troops and the restoration of prewar leadership. When used as such, it means that no side gains or loses...
, but Britain's alliance with the Native Americans ended, and the Indians were the major losers of the war. News of the victory at New Orleans over the best British combat troops came at the same time as news of the peace, giving Americans a psychological triumph and opening the Era of Good Feelings
Era of Good Feelings
The Era of Good Feelings was a period in United States political history in which partisan bitterness abated. It lasted approximately from 1815 to 1825, during the administration of U.S...
. The war destroyed the Federalist Party, and opened roles as national candidates to generals Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
and William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States , an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. He was 68 years, 23 days old when elected, the oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the...
among others, as well as civilian leaders James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay.
Era of Good Feelings and the Rise of Nationalism
Following the War of 1812War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
, America began to assert a newfound sense of nationalism. America began to rally around national heroes such as Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
and patriotic feelings emerged in such works as Francis Scott Key
Francis Scott Key
Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer, author, and amateur poet, from Georgetown, who wrote the lyrics to the United States' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".-Life:...
's poem The Star Spangled Banner. Under the direction of Chief Justice John Marshall
John Marshall
John Marshall was the Chief Justice of the United States whose court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of the United States a coequal branch of government along with the legislative and executive branches...
, the Supreme Court issued a series of opinions reinforcing the role of the national government. These decisions included McCulloch v Maryland and Gibbons v Ogden; both of which reaffirmed the supremacy of the national government over the states. The signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty
Adams-Onís Treaty
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty or the Purchase of Florida, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that gave Florida to the U.S. and set out a boundary between the U.S. and New Spain . It settled a standing border dispute between the two...
helped to settle the western border of the country through popular and peaceable means.
Sectionalism
Even as nationalismNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
increased across the country, its effects were limited by a renewed sense of sectionalism
Sectionalism
-Defined:Sectionalism is loyalty to the interests of one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole.-United States:...
. The New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
states that had opposed the War of 1812 felt an increasing decline in political power with the demise of the Federalist Party. This loss was tempered with the arrival of a new industrial movement and increased demands for northern banking. The industrial revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
in the United States was advanced by the immigration of Samuel Slater
Samuel Slater
Samuel Slater was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution", or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. He learned textile machinery as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British...
from Great Britain and arrival of textile mills beginning in Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...
. In the south, the invention of the cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
by Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
radically increased the value of slave labour. The export of southern cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
was now the predominant export of the U.S. The western states continued to thrive under the "frontier spirit." Individualism was prized as exemplified by Davey Crockett and James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
's folk hero Natty Bumpo from The Leatherstocking Tales. Following the death of Tecumseh
Tecumseh
Tecumseh was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812...
in 1813, Native Americans lacked the unity to stop white settlement.
Era of Good Feelings
Domestically, the presidency of James MonroeJames Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
(1817–1825) was hailed at the time and since as the "Era of Good Feelings" because of the decline of partisan politics and heated rhetoric after the war. The Federalist Party collapsed, but without an opponent the Republican party decayed as sectional interests came to the fore.
The Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
was drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...
in collaboration with the British, and proclaimed by Monroe in late 1823. He asserted the Americas should be free from additional European colonization and free from European interference in sovereign countries' affairs. It further stated the United States' intention to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies but to consider any new colonies or interference with independent countries in the Americas as hostile acts towards the United States. No new colonies were ever formed.
Emergence of Second Party System
Monroe was reelected without opposition in 1820, and the old caucus system for selecting Republican candidates collapsed in 1820. In the presidential election of 1824, factions in Tennessee and Pennsylvania put forth Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
. From Kentucky came Speaker of the House
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...
Henry Clay
Henry Clay
Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
, while Massachusetts produced Secretary of State Adams; a rump congressional caucus put forward Treasury Secretary
United States Secretary of the Treasury
The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, which is concerned with financial and monetary matters, and, until 2003, also with some issues of national security and defense. This position in the Federal Government of the United...
William H. Crawford
William H. Crawford
William Harris Crawford was an American politician and judge during the early 19th century. He served as United States Secretary of War from 1815 to 1816 and United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1816 to 1825, and was a candidate for President of the United States in 1824.-Political...
. Personality and sectional allegiance played important roles in determining the outcome of the election. Adams won the electoral votes from New England and most of New York; Clay won his western base of Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri; Jackson won his base in the Southeast, and plus Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey; and Crawford won his base in the South, Virginia, Georgia and Delaware. No candidate gained a majority in the Electoral College, so the president was selected by the House of Representatives, where Clay was the most influential figure. In return for Clay's support, which won him the presidency, John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...
appointed Clay as secretary of state in what Jacksonians denounced as The Corrupt Bargain
Corrupt Bargain
The term Corrupt Bargain refers to three separate events that each involved a United States presidential election and a deal that was struck that many viewed to be corrupt from many standpoints, such as in the Election of 1824 controversy over the House of Representative's choice for president with...
.
During Adams' administration, new party alignments appeared. Adams' followers took the name of "National Republicans
National Republican Party (United States)
The National Republicans were a political party in the United States. During the administration of John Quincy Adams , the president's supporters were referred to as Adams Men or Anti-Jackson. When Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States in 1828, this group went into opposition...
", to reflect the mainstream of Jeffersonian Republicanism. Though he governed honestly and efficiently, Adams was not a popular president, and his administration was marked with frustrations. Adams failed in his effort to institute a national system of roads and canals as part of the American System
American System (economic plan)
The American System, originally called "The American Way", was a mercantilist economic plan that played a prominent role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century...
economic plan. His coldly intellectual temperament did not win friends.
Jacksonian democracy
Charismatic Andrew Jackson, by contrast, in collaboration with strategist Martin Van BurenMartin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....
rallied his followers in the newly emerging Democratic Party. In the election of 1828, Jackson defeated Adams by an overwhelming electoral majority. The election saw the coming to power of Jacksonian Democracy
Jacksonian democracy
Jacksonian democracy is the political movement toward greater democracy for the common man typified by American politician Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated the previous political era. The Democratic-Republican Party of...
, thus marking the transition from the First Party System
First Party System
The First Party System is a model of American politics used by political scientists and historians to periodize the political party system existing in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states:...
(which reflected Jeffersonian Democracy
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian Democracy, so named after its leading advocate Thomas Jefferson, is a term used to describe one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The term was commonly used to refer to the Democratic-Republican Party which Jefferson...
) to the Second Party System
Second Party System
The Second Party System is a term of periodization used by historians and political scientists to name the political party system existing in the United States from about 1828 to 1854...
. Historians debate the significance of the election, with many arguing that it marked the beginning of modern American politics, with the decisive establishment of democracy and the formation of the two party system.
Suffrage of all white men
Starting in the 1820s, American politics became less aristocratic and enfranchisement increased as many state and local offices went from being appointed to elective, and the old requirements for voters to own property were abolished. Voice voting in states gave way to printed ballots, and by the 1830s only South Carolina did not have popularly chosen presidential electors. Jacksonian Democracy drew its support from the small farmers of the West, and the workers, artisans and small merchants of the East. They favored geographical expansion to create more farms for people like them, and distrusted the upper classes who envisioned an industrialIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
nation built on finance and manufacturing. The entrepreneurs, for whom Henry Clay
Henry Clay
Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
and Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests...
were heroes, fought back and formed the Whig party.
Political machines appeared early in the history of the United States, and for all the exhortations of Jacksonian Democracy, it was they and not the average voter that nominated candidates. In addition, the system supported establishment politicians and party loyalists, and much legislation was designed to reward rich men and businesses who supported a particular party or candidate. Also during this period, a series of reforms resulted in changes to the electoral system which rewarded winners or plurality getters in smaller districts instead of the old method of dividing state offices among the biggest vote getters. As a consequence, the chance of single issue and ideology-based candidates being elected to major office dwindled and so those parties who were successful were pragmatist ones with no fixed beliefs.
Examples of single issue parties included the Anti-Masons, who emerged as a group set to outlaw Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
in the United States after a man who threatened to expose the Masons' secrets was kidnapped and murdered. They ran a candidate for president (William Wirt
William Wirt
William Wirt may refer to:* William Wirt * William Wirt...
) in 1832, but succeeded in only winning the state of Vermont and then quietly disappeared. Others included abolitionist parties, socialists like the Workingmen's Party, the Locofocos
Locofocos
The Locofocos were a radical faction of the Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s. The faction was originally named the Equal Rights Party, and was created in New York City as a protest against that city’s regular Democratic organization . It contained a mixture of...
(who opposed monopoly capitalism), and assorted nativist parties whose chief object was opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in the US. As pointed out above, none of these parties were capable of mounting a broad enough appeal to voters or winning major elections.
The election of 1828 was a significant benchmark marking the climax of the trend toward broader voter eligibility and participation. Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
had universal male suffrage since its entry into the Union, and Tennessee permitted suffrage for the vast majority of taxpayers. New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina all abolished property and tax-paying requirements between 1807 and 1810. States entering the Union after 1815 either had universal white male suffrage or a low taxpaying requirement. From 1815 to 1821, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, Massachusetts and New York abolished all property requirements. In 1824, members of the Electoral College were still selected by six state legislatures. By 1828, presidential electors were chosen by popular vote in every state but Delaware and South Carolina. Nothing dramatized this democratic sentiment more than the election of Andrew Jackson.
Trail of Tears
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal ActIndian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the Five Civilized Tribes. In particular, Georgia, the largest state at that time, was involved in...
, which authorized the President to negotiate treaties that exchanged Indian tribal lands in the eastern states for lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1834, a special Indian territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
was established in what is now the eastern part of Oklahoma
History of Oklahoma
The history of Oklahoma refers to the history of the state of Oklahoma and the land that the state now occupies. Areas of Oklahoma east of its panhandle were acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, while the Panhandle was not acquired until the U.S...
. In all, Native American tribes signed 94 treaties during Jackson's two terms, ceding thousands of square miles to the Federal government.
The Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
s insisted on their independence from state government authority and faced expulsion from their lands when a faction of Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota
Treaty of New Echota
The Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835, in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction, known as the Treaty Party...
in 1835, obtaining money in exchange for their land. Despite protests from the elected Cherokee government and many white supporters, the Cherokees were forced to trek to the Indian Territory in 1838. Many died of disease and privation in what became known as the "Trail of Tears".
Nullification Crisis
Toward the end of his first term in office, Jackson was forced to confront the state of South Carolina on the issue of the protective tariffTariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
. The protective tariff passed by Congress and signed into law by Jackson in 1832 was milder than that of 1828, but it further embittered many in the state. In response, several South Carolina citizens endorsed the "states rights" principle of "nullification", which was enunciated by John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent...
, Jackson's Vice President until 1832, in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest
South Carolina Exposition and Protest
The South Carolina Exposition and Protest, also known as Calhoun's Exposition, was written in December 1828 by John C. Calhoun, then vice president under John Quincy Adams and later under Andrew Jackson. Calhoun did not formally state his authorship at the time, though it was known.The document was...
(1828). South Carolina dealt with the tariff by adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both the Tariff of 1828
Tariff of 1828
The Tariff of 1828 was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States...
and the Tariff of 1832
Tariff of 1832
The Tariff of 1832 was a protectionist tariff in the United States. It was largely written by former President John Quincy Adams, who had been elected to the House of Representatives and been made chairman of the Committee on Manufactures, and reduced tariffs to remedy the conflict created by the...
null and void within state borders.
Nullification was only the most recent in a series of state challenges to the authority of the federal government. In response to South Carolina's threat, Jackson sent seven small naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
in November 1832. On December 10, he issued a resounding proclamation against the nullifiers. South Carolina, the President declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason", and he appealed to the people of the state to reassert their allegiance to that Union for which their ancestors had fought.
Senator Henry Clay, though an advocate of protection and a political rival of Jackson, piloted a compromise measure through Congress. Clay's 1833 compromise tariff specified that all duties more than 20% of the value of the goods imported were to be reduced by easy stages, so that by 1842, the duties on all articles would reach the level of the moderate tariff of 1816.
The rest of the South declared South Carolina's course unwise and unconstitutional. Eventually, South Carolina rescinded its action. Jackson had committed the federal government to the principle of Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
supremacy. South Carolina, however, had obtained many of the demands it sought and had demonstrated that a single state could force its will on Congress.
Banking
Even before the nullification issue had been settled, another controversy arose to challenge Jackson's leadership. It concerned the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United StatesSecond Bank of the United States
The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, five years after the First Bank of the United States lost its own charter. The Second Bank of the United States was initially headquartered in Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, the same as the First Bank, and had branches throughout the...
. The First Bank of the United States
First Bank of the United States
The First Bank of the United States is a National Historic Landmark located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania within Independence National Historical Park.-Banking History:...
had been established in 1791, under Alexander Hamilton's guidance and had been chartered for a 20-year period. After the Revolutionary War, the United States had a large war debt to France and others, and the banking system of the fledgling nation was in disarray, as state banks printed their own currency, and the plethora of different bank notes made commerce difficult. Hamilton's national bank had been chartered to solve the debt problem and to unify the nation under one currency. While it stabilized the currency and stimulated trade, it was resented by Westerners and workers who believed that it was granting special favors to a few powerful men. When its charter expired in 1811, it was not renewed.
For the next few years, the banking business was in the hands of State-Chartered banks, which issued currency in excessive amounts, creating great confusion and fueling inflation and concerns that state banks could not provide the country with a uniform currency. the absence of a national bank during the War of 1812 greatly hindered financial operations of the government; therefore a second Bank of the United States was created in 1816.
From its inception, the Second Bank was unpopular in the newer states and territories and with less prosperous people everywhere. Opponents claimed the bank possessed a virtual monopoly over the country's credit and currency, and reiterated that it represented the interests of the wealthy elite. Jackson, elected as a popular champion against it, vetoed a bill to recharter the bank. He also personally detested banks due to a brush with bankruptcy in his youth. In his message to Congress, he denounced monopoly and special privilege, saying that "our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress".
In the election campaign that followed, the bank question caused a fundamental division between the merchant, manufacturing and financial interests (generally creditors who favored tight money and high interest rates), and the laboring and agrarian sectors, who were often in debt to banks and therefore favored an increased money supply
Money supply
In economics, the money supply or money stock, is the total amount of money available in an economy at a specific time. There are several ways to define "money," but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits .Money supply data are recorded and published, usually...
and lower interest rates. The outcome was an enthusiastic endorsement of "Jacksonism". Jackson saw his reelection in 1832 as a popular mandate to crush the bank irrevocably; he found a ready-made weapon in a provision of the bank's charter authorizing removal of public funds.
In September 1833 Jackson ordered that no more government money be deposited in the bank and that the money already in its custody be gradually withdrawn in the ordinary course of meeting the expenses of government. Carefully-selected state banks, stringently restricted, were provided as a substitute. For the next generation, the US would get by on a relatively-unregulated state banking system. This banking system helped fuel westward expansion through easy credit, but kept the nation vulnerable to periodic panics. It was not until the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
that the Federal government again chartered a national bank.
Jackson groomed Martin van Buren
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....
as his successor, and he was easily elected president in 1836. However, a few months into his administration, the country fell into a deep economic slump known as the Panic of 1837
Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis or market correction in the United States built on a speculative fever. The end of the Second Bank of the United States had produced a period of runaway inflation, but on May 10, 1837 in New York City, every bank began to accept payment only in specie ,...
, caused in large part by excessive speculation. Banks failed and unemployment soared. Although the depression had its roots in Jackson's economic policies, van Buren was blamed for the disaster. In the 1840 presidential election, he was defeated by the Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. However, his presidency would prove a non-starter when he fell ill with pneumonia and died after only a month in office. John Tyler, his vice president, succeeded him. Tyler was not popular since he had not been elected to the presidency, and was widely referred to as "His Accidency". The Whigs expelled him, and he became a president without a party.
Age of Reform
Spurred on by the Second Great AwakeningSecond Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
, Americans entered a period of rapid social change and experimentation. New social movements arose, as well as many new alternatives to traditional religious thought. This period of American history was marked by the destruction of some traditional roles of society and the erection of new social standards. One of the unique aspects of the Age of Reform was that it was heavily grounded in religion, in contrast to the anti-clericalism that characterized contemporary European reformers.
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great AwakeningSecond Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
was a Protestant religious revival movement that flourished in 1800–1840 in every region. It expressed Arminian theology
Arminianism
Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius and his historic followers, the Remonstrants...
by which every person could be saved through a direct personal confrontation with Jesus Christ during an intensely emotional revival meeting. Millions join the churches, often new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age
Millennialism
Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...
, so that the Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. For example, the charismatic Charles Grandison Finney
Charles Grandison Finney
Charles Grandison Finney was a leader in the Second Great Awakening. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism. Finney was best known as an innovative revivalist, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor...
, in upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
and the Old Northwest was highly effective. At the Rochester
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
Revival of 1830, prominent citizens concerned with the city's poverty and absenteeism had invited Finney to the city. The wave of religious revival contributed to tremendous growth of the Methodist, Baptists, Disciples, and other evangelical denominations.
Utopians
As the Second Great AwakeningSecond Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
challenged the traditional beliefs of the Calvinist faith, the movement inspired other groups to call into question their views on religion and society. Many of these utopianist groups also believed in millennialism
Millennialism
Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...
which prophesied the return of Christ and the beginning of a new age. The Harmony Society
Harmony Society
The Harmony Society was a Christian theosophy and pietist society founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. Due to religious persecution by the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg, the Harmony Society moved to the United States on October 7, 1803, initially purchasing of land in Butler...
made three attempts to effect a millennial society with the most notable example at New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana, United States. It lies north of Mount Vernon, the county seat. The population was 916 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. Many of the old Harmonist buildings still stand...
. Later, Scottish industrialist Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
bought New Harmony and attempted to form a secular Utopian community there. Frenchman Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
began a similar secular experiment with his "phalanxes" that were spread across the Midwestern United States. However, none of these utopian communities lasted very long except for the Shakers.
One of the earliest movements was that of the Shakers
Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends...
in which members of a community held all of their possessions in "common
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
" and lived in a prosperous, inventive, self-supporting society, with no sexual activity. The Shakers, founded by an English immigrant to the United States Mother Ann Lee
Ann Lee
Mother Ann Lee was the leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or Shakers....
, peaked at around 6,000 in 1850 in communities from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers condemned sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
and demanded absolute celibacy
Celibacy
Celibacy is a personal commitment to avoiding sexual relations, in particular a vow from marriage. Typically celibacy involves avoiding all romantic relationships of any kind. An individual may choose celibacy for religious reasons, such as is the case for priests in some religions, for reasons of...
. New members could only come from conversions, and from children brought to the Shaker villages. The Shakers persisted into the 20th century, but lost most of their originality by the middle of the 19th century. They are famed for their artistic craftsmanship, especially their furniture and handicrafts.
The Perfectionist movement, led by John Humphrey Noyes
John Humphrey Noyes
John Humphrey Noyes was an American utopian socialist. He founded the Oneida Community in 1848. He coined the term "free love".-Early activism:...
, founded the utopian Oneida Community
Oneida Community
The Oneida Community was a religious commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. The community believed that Jesus had already returned in the year 70 AD, making it possible for them to bring about Jesus's millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this...
in 1848 with fifty-one devotees, in Oneida, New York
Oneida, New York
Oneida is a city in Madison County located west of Oneida Castle and east of Canastota, New York, United States. The population was 10,987 at the 2000 census. The city, like both Oneida County and the nearby silver and china maker, takes its name from the Oneida tribe...
. Noyes believed that the act of final conversion led to absolute and complete release from sin. Though their sexual practices were unorthodox, the community prospered because Noyes opted for modern manufacturing. Eventually abandoning religion to become a joint-stock company, Oneida thrived for many years and continues today as a silverware
Silver (household)
Household silver or silverware includes dishware, cutlery and other household items made of sterling, Britannia or Sheffield plate silver. The term is often extended to items made of stainless steel...
company.
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith was founder of what later became known as the Latter Day Saint movement or Mormons.Joseph Smith may also refer to:-Latter Day Saints:* Joseph Smith, Sr. , father of Joseph Smith...
also experienced a religious conversion in this era; under his guidance Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
history began. Because of their unusual beliefs, which included recognition of the Book of Mormon
Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement that adherents believe contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from approximately 2600 BC to AD 421. It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr...
as a supplement to the Bible, Mormons were rejected by mainstream Christians and forced to flee en masse from upstate New York to Ohio, to Missouri and then to Nauvoo, Illinois
Nauvoo, Illinois
Nauvoo is a small city in Hancock County, Illinois, United States. Although the population was just 1,063 at the 2000 census, and despite being difficult to reach due to its location in a remote corner of Illinois, Nauvoo attracts large numbers of visitors for its historic importance and its...
, where Smith was killed and they were again forced to flee. They Settled around the Great Salt Lake
Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake, located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere, the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world. In an average year the lake covers an area of around , but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its...
, then part of Mexico. In 1848, the region came under American control and later formed the Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
Territory. National policy was to suppress polygamy, and Utah was only admitted as a state in 1896 after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints backtracked from Smith's demand that all the leaders practice polygamy.
For Americans wishing to bridge the gap between the earthly and spiritual worlds, spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
provided a means of communing with the dead. Spiritualists used mediums to communicate between the living and the dead through a variety of different means. The most famous mediums, the Fox sisters
Fox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The three sisters were Leah Fox , Margaret Fox and Kate Fox . The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their much older sister and others that they were communicating with...
claimed a direct link to the spirit world. Spiritualism would gain a much larger following after the heavy number of casualties during the Civil War; First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Ann Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865.-Life before the White House:...
was a believer.
Other groups seeking spiritual awaking gained popularity in the mid-19th century. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
began the American transcendentalist
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
movement in New England, to promote self-reliance and better understanding of the universe through contemplation of the over-soul
Over-soul
“The Oversoul” is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in 1841. The broad subject of the essay, considered one of Emerson's best, is the human soul...
. Transcendentalism was in essence an American offshoot of the Romantic movement in Europe. Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that "transcends" the physical, and is only realized through intuition
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
rather than doctrine. Like many of the movements, the transcendentalists split over the idea of self-reliance. While Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
promoted the idea of independent living, George Ripley brought transcendentalists together in a phalanx at Brook Farm
Brook Farm
Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education, was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s...
to live cooperatively. Other authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
rejected transcendentalist beliefs.
So many of these new religious and spiritual groups began or concentrated within miles of each other in upstate New York that this area was nicknamed "the burned-over district
Burned-over district
"Burned-over district" refers to the religious scene in western and central region of New York, in the early 19th century, where religious revivals and Pentecostal movements of the Second Great Awakening took place....
" because there were so few people left who had not experienced a conversion.
Public schools movement
Education in the United States had long been a local affair with schools governed by locally elected school boards. As with much of the culture of the United States, education varied widely in the North and the South. In the New England states public educationPublic education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
was common, although it was often class-based with the working class receiving little benefits. Instruction and curriculum were all locally determined and teachers were expected to meet rigorous demands of strict moral behaviour. Schools taught religious values and applied Calvinist philosophies of discipline which included corporal punishment
Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...
and public humiliation. In the South, there was very little organization of a public education system. Public schools were very rare and most education took place in the home with the family acting as instructors. The wealthier planter families were able to bring in tutors for instruction in the classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
but many yeoman farming families had little access to education outside of the family unit.
The reform movement in education began in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
when Horace Mann
Horace Mann
Horace Mann was an American education reformer, and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833. He served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1834 to 1837. In 1848, after serving as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education since its creation, he was...
started the common school movement. Mann advocated a statewide curriculum and instituted financing of school through local property taxes. Mann also fought protracted battles against the Calvinist influence in discipline, preferring positive reinforcement to physical punishment. Most children learned to read and write and spell from Noah Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
's Blue Backed Speller and later the McGuffey Readers
McGuffey Readers
McGuffey Readers were a series of graded primers that were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and are still used today in some private schools and in homeschooling....
. The readings inculcated moral values as well as literacy. Most states tried to emulate Massachusetts, but New England retained its leadership position for another century. German immigrants brought in kindergartens and gymnasiums, while Yankee orators sponsored the Lyceum
Lyceum
The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies between countries; usually it is a type of secondary school.-History:...
movement that provided popular education for hundreds of towns and small cities.
Asylum movement
The social conscience that was raised in the early 19th century helped to elevate the awareness of mental illness and its treatment. A leading advocate of reform for mental illness was Dorothea DixDorothea Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums...
, a Massachusetts woman who made an intensive study of the conditions that the mentally ill were kept in. Dix's report to the Massachusetts state legislature along with the development of the Kirkbride Plan
Kirkbride Plan
The Kirkbride Plan refers to a system of mental asylum design advocated by Philadelphia psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride in the mid-19th century.-History:The establishment of state mental hospitals in the U.S...
helped to alleviate the miserable conditions for many of the mentally ill. Although these facilities often fell short of their intended purpose, reformers continued to follow Dix's advocacy and call for increased study and treatment of mental illness.
Women
Zagarri (2007) argues the Revolution created an ongoing debate on the rights of woman and created an environment favorable to women’s participation in politics. She asserts that for a brief decades, a "comprehensive transformation in women’s rights, roles, and responsibilities seemed not only possible but perhaps inevitable" (p. 8) However the opening of possibilities also engendered a backlash that actually set back the cause of women’s rights and led to a greater rigidity that marginalized women from political life.During the building of the new republic, American women were able to gain a limited political voice in what is known as republican motherhood
Republican motherhood
"Republican Motherhood" is a 20th century term for an attitude toward women's roles present in the emerging United States before, during, and after the American Revolution . It centered on the belief that the patriots' daughters should be raised to uphold the ideals of republicanism, in order to...
. Under this philosophy, as promoted by leaders such as Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, who was the second President of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth...
, women were seen as the protectors of liberty and republicanism. Mothers were charged with passing down these ideals to their children through instruction of patriotic thoughts and feelings. During the 1830s and 1840s, many of the changes in the status of women that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period—such as the belief in love between spouses and the role of women in the home—continued at an accelerated pace. This was an age of reform movements, in which Americans sought to improve the moral fiber of themselves and of their nation in unprecedented numbers. The wife's role in this process was important because she was seen as the cultivator of morality in her husband and children. Besides domesticity, women were also expected to be pious, pure, and submissive to men. These four components were considered by many at the time to be "the natural state" of womanhood, echoes of this ideology still existing today. The view that the wife should find fulfillment in these values is called the Cult of True Womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity
Cult of Domesticity
The Cult of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood was a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain. Although all women were supposed to emulate this ideal of womanhood, it was assumed that only white women could...
.
In the South, tradition still abounded with society women on the pedestal and dedicated to entertaining and hosting others. This phenomenon is reflected in the 1965 book, The Inevitable Guest, based on a collection of letters by friends and relatives in North
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
to Miss Jemima Darby, a distant relative of the author.
Under the doctrine of two spheres, women were to exist in the “domestic sphere” at home while their husbands operated in the “public sphere” of politics and business. Women took on the new role of “softening” their husbands and instructing their children in piety and not republican values, while men handled the business and financial affairs of the family. Some doctors of this period even went so far as to suggest that women should not get an education, lest they divert blood away from the uterus to the brain and produce weak children. The coverture
Coverture
Coverture was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights were subsumed by those of her husband. Coverture was enshrined in the common law of England and the United States throughout most of the 19th century...
laws ensured that men would hold political power over their wives.
Anti-slavery movements
By 1800, many political leaders were convinced that slavery was undesirable, and should eventually be abolished, and the slaves returned to their natural homes in Africa. The American Colonization SocietyAmerican Colonization Society
The American Colonization Society , founded in 1816, was the primary vehicle to support the "return" of free African Americans to what was considered greater freedom in Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 as a place for freedmen...
, which was active in both North and South, tried to implement these ideas and established the colony of Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
in Africa as a means to repatriate slaves out of white society. Prominent leaders included Henry Clay
Henry Clay
Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
and President James Monroe
James Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
—who gave his name to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. However after 1840 the abolitionists rejected the idea of repatriation to Africa.
The slavery abolitionist
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
movement among white Protestants was based on evangelical principles of the Second Great Awakening
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
. Evangelist Theodore Weld led abolitionist revivals that called for immediate emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
of slaves. William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
founded The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper, and the American Anti-Slavery Society
American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass was a key leader of this society and often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was another freed slave who often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had...
to call for abolition. A controversial figure, Garrison often was the focus of public anger. His advocacy of women's rights and inclusion of women in the leadership of the Society caused a rift within the movement. Rejecting Garrison's idea that abolition and women's rights were connected Lewis Tappan
Lewis Tappan
Lewis Tappan was a New York abolitionist who worked to achieve the freedom of the illegally enslaved Africans of the Amistad. Contacted by Connecticut abolitionists soon after the Amistad arrived in port, Tappan focused extensively on the captive Africans...
broke with the Society and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society split off from the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 over a number of issues, including the increasing influence of anarchism , hostility to established religion, and feminism in the latter...
. Most abolitionists were not as extreme as Garrison, who vowed that "The Liberator" would not cease publication until slavery was abolished.
White abolitionists did not always face agreeable communities in the North. Garrison was almost lynched in Boston while newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy was killed in Alton, Illinois
Alton, Illinois
Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 27,865 at the 2010 census. It is a part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area in Southern Illinois...
. The anger over abolition even spilled over into Congress where a gag rule
Gag rule
A gag rule is a rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration or discussion of a particular topic by members of a legislative or decision-making body.-Origin and pros and cons:...
was instituted to prevent any discussion of slavery on the floor of either chamber. Most whites viewed African-Americans as an inferior race and had little taste for abolitionists, often assuming that all were like Garrison. African-Americans had little freedom even in states where slavery was not permitted, being shunned by whites, subjected to discriminatory laws, and often forced to compete with Irish immigrants for menial, low-wage jobs. In the South meanwhile, planters argued that slavery was necessary to operate their plantations profitably and that emancipated slaves would attempt to Africanize the country as they had done in Haiti.
Both free-born African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
citizens and former slaves took on leading roles in abolitionism as well. By far the most prominent spokesperson for abolition in the African American community was Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
, an escaped slave whose eloquent condemnations of slavery drew both crowds of supporters as well as threats against his life. Douglass was a keen user of the printed word both through his newspaper The North Star and three best-selling autobiographies.
At one extreme David Walker
David Walker (abolitionist)
David Walker was an outspoken African American activist who demanded the immediate end of slavery in the new nation...
published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World calling for African American revolt against white tyranny. The Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
helped some slaves out of the South through a series of trails and safe houses known as “stations.” Known as “conductors”, escaped slaves volunteered to return to the South to lead others to safety; former slaves, such as Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
, risked their lives on these journeys.
Women as abolitionists
Angelia and Sarah GrimkéGrimké sisters
Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké , known as the Grimké sisters, were 19th-century American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights....
were southerners who moved North to advocate against slavery. The American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women. Garrison along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
and Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Coffin Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, social reformer, and proponent of women's rights.- Early life and education:...
were so appalled that women were not allowed to participate at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London that they called for a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York
Seneca Falls (village), New York
Seneca Falls is a village in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 6,861 at the 2000 census. The village is in the Town of Seneca Falls, east of Geneva, New York. On March 16, 2010, village residents voted to dissolve the village, a move that would take effect at the end of 2011...
. It was at this convention that Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...
became recognized as a leading spokesperson for both abolition and women's rights. Women abolitionists increasingly began to compare women's situation with the plight of slaves. This new polemic squarely blamed men for all the restrictions of women's role, and argued that the relationship between the sexes was one-sided, controlling and oppressive. There were strong religious roots; most feminists emerged from the Quaker and Congregationalist churches in the Northeast.
Prohibition
Alcohol consumption was another target of reformers in the 1850s. Americans drank heavily, which contributed to violent behaviour, crime, health problems, and poor workplace performance. Groups such as the American Temperance SocietyAmerican Temperance Society
The American Temperance Society , also known as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was a society established on February 13, 1826 in Boston, MA. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking...
condemned liquor as being a scourge on society and urged temperance among their followers. The state of Maine attempted in 1851 to ban alcohol sales and production entirely, but it met resistance and was abandoned. The prohibition movement was forgotten during the Civil War, but would return in the 1870s.
Economic growth
In this period, the United States rapidly expanded economically from an agrarian nation into an industrial power. Industrialization in America involved two important developments. First, transportation was expanded. Second, improvements were made to industrial processes such as the use of interchangeable partsInterchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting...
and railroads to ship goods more quickly. The government helped protect American manufacturers by passing a protective tariff.
Westward expansion
After 1815 the United States shifted its attention away from foreign policy to internal development. With the end of the wartime British alliance with Native Americans east of the Mississippi River, American settlers moved in great numbers into the rich farmlands of the Midwest. In the 1830s, the federal government forcibly deported the southeastern tribes to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) via the the "Trail of TearsTrail of Tears
The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830...
".
The steady expansion and rapid population growth of the United States after 1815 contrasted sharply with static European societies, as visitors described the rough, sometimes violent, but on the whole hugely optimistic and forward-looking attitude of most Americans. While land ownership was something most Europeans could only dream of, contemporary accounts show that the average American farmer owned his land, fed his family afar more than European peasants, and could make provisions for land for his children. Europeans commonly talked of the egalitarianism of American society, which had no landed nobility and which theoretically allowed anyone regardless of birth to become successful. For example in Germany, the universities, the bureaucracy and the army officers required high family status; in Britain rich families purchased commissions in the army for their sons for tens of thousands of pounds. Rich merchants and factory owners did emerge in Europe, but they seldom had social prestige of political power. By contrast the US had more millionaires than any country in Europe by 1850. Most rich Americans had well-to-do fathers, but their grandfathers were of average wealth. Poor boys of the 1850s like Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
and John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
were two of the richest men in the world by 1900. Historians have emphasized that upward social mobility came in small steps over time, and over generations, with the Carnegie-like rags-to-riches scenario a rare one. Some ethnic groups (like Yankees, Irish and Jews) prized upward mobility, and emphasized education as the fastest route; other groups (such as Germans, Poles and Italians) emphasized family stability and home ownership more. Stagnant cities offered less mobility opportunities, leading the more ambitious young men to head to growth centers, often out west.
Westward expansion was mostly undertaken by groups of young families. Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...
was one frontiersman who pioneered the settlement of Kentucky. This pattern was followed throughout the West as American hunters and trappers traded with the Indians and explored the land. As skilled fighters and hunters, these Mountain Men trapped beaver in small groups throughout the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
. After the demise of the fur trade
Fur trade
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of world market for in the early modern period furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most valued...
, they established trading posts throughout the west, continued trade with the Indians and served as guides and hunters for the western migration of settlers to Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
Americans asserted a right to colonize vast expanses of North America beyond their country's borders, especially into Oregon, California, and Texas
Republic of Texas
The Republic of Texas was an independent nation in North America, bordering the United States and Mexico, that existed from 1836 to 1846.Formed as a break-away republic from Mexico by the Texas Revolution, the state claimed borders that encompassed an area that included all of the present U.S...
. By the mid-1840s, U.S. expansionism was articulated in the ideology of "Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
". The Oregon Territory had been jointly administered by the US and Great Britain since 1819, but the two nations fell into disputes over the territory. President Polk (Democrat) negotiated a compromise that gave half the area to the US, along the line of the current border with Canada.
American annexation of the Republic of Texas
Republic of Texas
The Republic of Texas was an independent nation in North America, bordering the United States and Mexico, that existed from 1836 to 1846.Formed as a break-away republic from Mexico by the Texas Revolution, the state claimed borders that encompassed an area that included all of the present U.S...
in 1845 was unacceptable to Mexico and led to war. In May 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico after a border incident. Troops under the command of General Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
defeated Santa Anna's army in northern Mexico while other American troops took possession of New Mexico and California. Mexico continued to resist despite a chaotic political situation, and so Polk launched an invasion of the country's heartland. An army led by Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852....
occupied the port of Veracruz, and pressed inland amid bloody fighting. Santa Anna offered to cede Texas and California north of Monterrey Bay, but negotiations broke down and the fighting resumed. In September 1847, Scott's army captured Mexico City. Santa Anna was forced to flee and a provisional government began the task of negotiating peace. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican-American War on February 2, 1848...
was signed on February 2, 1848. It recognized the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
as the southern boundary of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
and ceded what is now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico to the United States, while also paying Mexico $15,000,000 for the territory. The war was opposed by Whigs in the US (including Congressman Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
) who considered it a European-style war of conquest and imperialism. In the presidential election of 1848, Zachary Taylor ran as a Whig and won easily when the Democrats became split, even though he was an apolitical military man who never voted in his life.
With Texas and Florida having been admitted to the union as slave states in 1845, California was made a free state in 1850.
Major events in the western movement of the U.S. population were the Homestead Act
Homestead Act
A homestead act is one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River....
, a law by which, for a nominal price, a settler was given title to 160 acres (65 ha) of land to farm; the opening of the Oregon Territory
Oregon Territory
The Territory of Oregon was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. Originally claimed by several countries , the region was...
to settlement; the Texas Revolution
Texas Revolution
The Texas Revolution or Texas War of Independence was an armed conflict between Mexico and settlers in the Texas portion of the Mexican state Coahuila y Tejas. The war lasted from October 2, 1835 to April 21, 1836...
; the opening of the Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a historic east-west wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between.After 1840 steam-powered riverboats and steamboats traversing up and down the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers sped settlement and development in the flat...
; the Mormon Emigration to Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
in 1846–47; the California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...
of 1849; the Colorado Gold Rush
Colorado Gold Rush
The Pike's Peak Gold Rush was the boom in gold prospecting and mining in the Pike's Peak Country of western Kansas Territory and southwestern Nebraska Territory of the United States that began in July 1858 and lasted until roughly the creation of the Colorado Territory on February 28, 1861...
of 1859; and the completion of the nation's First Transcontinental Railroad
First Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska The First...
on May 10, 1869.
See also
- Timeline of United States history (1790–1819)
- History of the United States (1849–1865)History of the United States (1849–1865)Industrialization went forward in the Northeast and a rail network linked the nation economically, opening up new markets. Immigration brought millions of European workers and farmers to the North...
- First Party SystemFirst Party SystemThe First Party System is a model of American politics used by political scientists and historians to periodize the political party system existing in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It featured two national parties competing for control of the presidency, Congress, and the states:...
- First Great AwakeningFirst Great AwakeningThe First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
- Second Party SystemSecond Party SystemThe Second Party System is a term of periodization used by historians and political scientists to name the political party system existing in the United States from about 1828 to 1854...
- Interregional slave tradeInterregional slave tradeThe interregional slave trade was the trade of slaves within the United States that reallocated slaves across states during the antebellum period...
Surveys
- Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: the First Generation of Americans. 2000. Covers the period from 1790 to 1830 through the lives of those born after 1776.
- Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford History of the United States) (2007); Pulitzer prize excerpt and text search
- Wood, Gordon. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford History of the United States) (2009) excerpt and text search
Cultural and intellectual history
- Perry, Lewis. Intellectual Life in America
- Henry Steele CommagerHenry Steele CommagerHenry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...
, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment
Interpretations of the spirit of the age
Henry Adams: History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison v. 1 ch. 1–5 on America in 1800- C. Edward Skeen, 1816: America Rising. 2004 surveys postwar America & sees a new nation being born
- Perry Miller. The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to The Civil War (1965)
- Vernon Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (1927) online (Vol 2: the Romantic Revolution, 1800–1860)
- Sellers, Charles. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America 1815–46
- Smith, Page. The Shaping of America: A People's History of the Young Republic (1980). popular
Studies
- Steven Watts. The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820 (1987) (a richly documented study which offers dozens of case studies and snapshots of life in the early republic)
- Kastor, Peter J. The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America. 2004.
- Ratcliffe, D. J.: Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793–1821 (1998)
- Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. 2005. 'An excellent cultural history of New England and upstate New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, as well as full biography of a most interesting American from 1805 to 1844'
From a legal perspective
- Horwitz, Morton J. The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (1977) (uses the evolution of the law, especially as seen in the decisions of state courts in the north, as a way of measuring intellectual and cultural changes in the whole society)
- Friedman, Lawrence M. A History of American Law, 2d Ed. (1985)
- White, G. Edward. The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835 (1990)
Social history
- Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The National Experience (1967) excerpt and text search
- Clark, Christopher. Social Change in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (2007) excerpt and text search
- Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (1988) excerpt and text search
External links
- Frontier History of the United States at Thayer's American History site
- A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825