Political parties

1. America’s first two political
parties were the federalists
who favoured a strong
President and central
government and the
Democratic Republicans who
defended the rights of the
individual states.

2. The first president of the United
States, George Washington,
governed in a Federalist style.
When Pennsylvania farmers
refused to pay a federal liquor tax
Washington sent an army of
15,000 men to put down the
“Whiskey Rebellion”. Under his
Secretary of the Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, the federal
government set up a national
bank. These financial measures
were made to encourage
investment and to persuade
business interests to support the
new government.
.

3. In 1797 Washington was
succeeded by another
federalist, John Adams. In
1801 Thomas Jefferson, a
Republican, was elected
President. In 1803 he bought
the huge Louisiana territory
from France for $ 15 million.
Now the United States would
extend as far as the Rocky
Mountains

4. In 1812 President James Madison went to war with Britain. During the War of
1812 American warships had some impressive victories but British Navy
blockaded American ports. Attempts to invade British Canada ended in disaster,
and British forces captured and burned Washington, the nation’s new capital
city. Britain and the United States agreed on a compromise peace in December
1814. After the war the United States enjoyed a period of rapid economic
expansion. A national network of roads and canals was built, steamboats
traveled the rivers and the first steam railroad opened in Baltimore, Maryland, in
1830.

5. The Industrial Revolution
reached America. There
were textile mills in New
England, iron foundries in
Pennsylvania. By the
1850s factories were
producing rubber goods,
sewing machines, shoes,
clothing, farm implements,
guns and clocks.

6. Portrait of Andrew
Jackson by Thomas Sully in
1824.
The frontier of settlement was pushed west to the
Mississippi River and beyond. In 1828 Andrew Jackson
became the first man born in a poor family and born in the
West to be elected President.

7. Jackson and his new
Democratic party promoted
democracy and appealed to
the humble members of the
society – farmers and laborers.
Jackson broke the power of
the Bank of the United States,
which had dominated the
nation’s economy He made
land available to western
settlers – mainly by forcing
Indian tribes to move west of
the Mississippi.
1837 cartoon shows the
Democratic Party as donkey.

8. Civil war and Reconstruction
The Jacksonian era of optimism was clouded by the
existence in the United States of a social contradiction –
slavery. The words of the Declaration of Independence
“that all men are created equal” were meaningless for the
1,5 million black people who were slaves.

9. In 1828 Southern and Northern
politicians disputed the question
of whether slavery would be
legal in the western territories.
Congress agreed on a
compromise: slavery was
permitted in the new states of
Missouri and the Arkansas
territory, and it was barred
everywhere west and north of
Missouri.

10. Abraham Lincoln
In 1846 the United States got the southern
part of the Oregon Country: the present
states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
Thus America became a truly
continental power, stretching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific.
In 1861 Abraham Lincoln was elected
President. South Carolina voted to leave
the Union. It was soon joined by
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas,
Tennessee and North Carolina. These 11
states proclaimed themselves an
independent nation – the Confederate
States of America – and the American
Civil War began. Southerners proclaimed
that they were fighting not just for slavery.
The war was for independence.

11. Lincoln’s two concerns were to keep the United States one country and to rid the
nation of slavery. He realized that by making the war a battle against slavery that
is why he could win support for the Union at home and abroad. On January, 1,
1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted freedom to all
slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy.

12. The Civil War was the most dramatic episode in American history. This conflict
devastated the South and subjected that region to military occupation. America lost
more soldiers in this war than in any other – a total of 635,000 dead on both sides.
The war resolved two fundamental questions that had divided the United States
since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided, once and for all, that America
was not a collection of semi-independent states, but a single indivisible nation.

13. President Andrew Johnson
Immediately after a Civil War, legislatures in
the Southern States attempted to block blacks
from voting. They did this by enacting “black
codes” to restrict the freedom of former
slaves.
Although “radical” Republicans in Congress
tried to protect black civil rights and to bring
blacks into the mainstream of American life,
their efforts were opposed by President Andrew
Johnson, a Southerner who had served as the
Republican vice president, and became the
President after assassination of Abraham
Lincoln.

14. Nevertheless, by 1870, many Southern blacks were
elected to state legislatures and to the Congress.
These “reconstructed” state governments did much to
improve education, develop social services and protect
civil rights.
Reconstruction was disliked by most Southern whites,
some of which formed the Ku Klux Klan, a violent
secret society that hoped to protect white interests and
advantages by terrorizing blacks and preventing them
from making social advances. By 1872, the federal
government had put an end to the Klan, but white
Democrats continued to use violence and fear to return
control to their state governments. Reconstruction
came to an end in 1877, when new constitutions were
ratified in all Southern states and all federal troops
were withdrawn from the South.

15. Toward the end of the century, the
system of segregation and oppression
of blacks grew far more rigid. Blacks
accused of minor crimes were
sentenced to hard labour, and violence
was sometimes used against them.
Most Southern blacks, as a result of
poverty and ignorance, continued to
work as tenant farmers.
Although blacks were legally free,
they still lived and were treated very
much like slaves.

16. Despite Constitutional guarantees,
Southern blacks were now
“second-class citizens” – that is,
they still had limited civil rights.
There was racial segregation in
schools and hospitals, but trains,
parks and other public facilities
could still generally be used by
people of both races.