2. ...............................................................................................
.....................................17
B. Temperance
...............................................................................................
.......................................21
C. Women’s Rights Movement
...............................................................................................
.............23
Important Terms and People (in order of
appearance): Antebellum Period; Market
Revolution; Transportation Revolution; Erie Canal;
Corporation; Textile Mills; Unions;
Interchangeable Parts; Working Class; Strike; Anti-Immigrant
Sentiment; Native American
Association/ Native American Party/ “Know-Nothing” Party;
Nativist; Abolitionism; William
Lloyd Garrison; The Liberator; American Anti-Slavery Society;
Fugitive Slaves; Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society; Petition Campaign of 1835; Antislavery
Fairs; Temperance Movement;
Susan B. Anthony; Lucy Stone; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Amelia
Bloomer; Woman’s State
Temperance Convention; Separate Spheres Ideology; Seneca
Falls Convention; Lucretia Mott;
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions; Sojourner Truth;
Frances E.W. Harper; Sarah
Redmond
Instructions for reading this lecture: This lecture is
broken into the chronologic or thematic
sections shown above in the Table of Contents. I have done this
to make it easier to follow the information being
presented. Please also note the list of Important Terms and
4. the semester as we talk about how the country moved closer and
closer to Civil War. What I’d
like to do today, then, is to begin the first of our lectures about
the antebellum period. The
antebellum period refers to the years preceding the Civil War
(“antebellum” means “before the
war”). Throughout the next three lectures, we’ll be looking
separately at the regions of the
North, the South and the West and we’ll also be spending a
little more time looking at the status
of women and slaves during this period. Today, in our first
lecture on antebellum America, we’ll
be focusing on the North—looking in particular at industry,
transportation, immigration, western
lands and agriculture— and we’ll also be looking at the women
who were making waves in the
North in this period.
I. The Market Revolution and the Transportation
Revolution, 1820s-1840s
But before we do that, we’re first going to take a very brief look
at how the North was
developing in terms of population, transportation, and industry
from the 1820s through the early
1840s, to set the stage for our separate discussions over the
coming lectures of Northern,
6. increasingly over the years, in Northern industrial centers.
So what did the world that all of these people lived in look
like? How did the nation deal
with such a rapid increase in the population? Well, disease and
epidemics abounded as the
population started to increase around the turn of the nineteenth
century, but public health
measures were quickly put into place to try and stop these
epidemics. Disease rates slowly
dropped throughout the early nineteenth century as a result, and
mortality rates dropped to an all-
time low. So, the massive population growth that took place in
the first half of the nineteenth
century could partially be accounted for by the fact that fewer
people were dying from
epidemics/ diseases.
But there were other factors involved in the massive population
growth that took place, as
well. The most significant factor was the high birth rate that
emerged in this period—the white
population found its numbers multiplying at a rapid pace. The
population growth was further
aided by a new wave of immigration that took place in the late
9. to New York City. (Check out this clip from the documentary,
New York for a great visual of
New York and it’s growth during this period:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPSCef5iQos&list=PL6B43
5B2D9E826797&index=10 ).
So, we have population growth in this period, we have the
growth of cities, and these
things set the stage for a changing economy. With the stage set,
three major developments took
place between 1820 and 1840 that provided the greatest changes
to the American economic
landscape: the proliferation of canals; the creation of railroads;
and the growth of factories.
Interestingly enough, however, these developments all primarily
occurred in the North. Canals
developed as Northern merchants looked for new ways to ship
goods from one place to the next
and the first of the major canals, the Erie Canal, was an
immediate financial success. The
Figure 2: The Erie Canal2
Canal was seen as a major technological advancement and it
meant that goods and people could
travel much faster than ever before. Now, of course, that’s
11. transportation also made the North a more desirable place to
immigrate or migrate to.
The third major economic factor that came into play between
the 1820s and the 1840s
was the growth of the factory system in the North. In the 1820s
and 1830s, business saw rapid
growth as the idea of the corporation was introduced, allowing
businessmen to come together to
make big profits. By the 1830s, corporations were cropping up
all over the North and these
corporations quickly used their massive capital to purchase or
create large manufacturing and
business enterprises.
The rise of the factory system illustrated the major industrial
changes that had been
occurring in the US in the previous 75 years. You may
remember that during the colonial
period, industry was mainly centered around the home. Most
Americans created goods that were
immediately useful and necessary to running the household
economy. People would spin cloth
and make their own clothes, people would create ceramic bowls
and cups, people would make
13. America, for the first time, became the true innovators. Other
countries were now coming to
learn techniques and get new inventions from America, rather
than the other way around.
What this new, expanding factory system meant for the
American people was not just a
cheaper way to make cloth, not just an easier way to have shoes
made, but the factory system
also had the effect of taking more people out of the homes—out
of domestic manufacturing—
and into the factories. In particular, the 1820s and 1830s saw
factory workers coming, not yet
from immigrant populations, as they would in later years, but
instead from native white
populations. Factory owners had to recruit these native
populations to leave their self-sufficient
farms, which were already being overshadowed by cheap farm
goods that could be shipped to
and from various new regions.
They recruited workers, in some cases, by moving an entire
family to a mill, or factory,
town. At these types of factories, mothers, fathers and children
would work together and
produce the factory’s goods. In other cases, and this was more
15. and many factory owners wanted
to protect the integrity and morality of their female workers via
curfews and strict supervision.
Women, at first, were also paid decent wages and given
appropriate working hours.
Figure 3: Lowell Mill Girls3
But life in the factories wasn’t all good for these female
workers. They often found
working in a more urban, factory life was difficult and strange
compared to their farm lives.
Also, the paternalistic system wherein factory owners protected
the honor and morality of their
female workers, and where they paid fair wages and had women
working reasonable hours,
didn’t last that long. By the 1830s, factory owners began
focusing instead on driving up
production and profits while reducing wages and high living
standards that were costly. Women
workers created unions and went on strike in the 1830s to
combat this, but quickly found that the
employers—the factory owners—were much more powerful,
particularly because they could
17. fair wages, as they had with
women. Accordingly, running factories became less costly and
more profitable for owners.
II. Northern Industry
Now that we’ve set the stage for the antebellum period, I’d like
to focus specifically on the
development of the North during the antebellum period. We’ll
start off where we just left off—
looking at industry. The factory owners were focused on
making big profits and by the 1840s,
Northern factories were very financially successful. In 1840,
the US was producing $483 million
worth of manufactured goods; by 1850, that number had jumped
to over $1 billion and in 1860 it
had almost doubled, had almost reached $2 billion. This
northern industry grew rapidly in the
1840s and 1850s because of technological advances, such as
interchangeable parts, which
made for dramatic changes in certain industries, like the
railroad industry and in the factories.
Likewise, around this time, coal was replacing wood as fuel and
that coal could push new steam
engines and harness water power in factories. So, industry was
seeing new technology come in
19. Workdays were often twelve or fourteen hours long and wages
were going down rather than up,
particularly for women and children.
Workers tried to improve their situation, begging state
governments to set up protective laws
or a maximum-hour workday. Some states—New Hampshire in
1847 and Pennsylvania in
1848—did pass laws that barred employers from making
employees work longer than ten hours a
day without their consent. But what do you think the problem
with a law like this would’ve
been? Laws like this were easily violated—employers could
require that a worker agree to
extended workdays as a condition of their employment and
someone desperate for work would
give the okay.
Other states passed laws limiting the number of hours children
could work, also to ten (can
you imagine children working ten hours a day in the US
today??) and employers were able to
easily circumvent these laws, as well. Workers did gain one
major legal victory in this period
and that was when the Massachusetts court ruled in 1842 that
21. period, that it was seemingly
impossible to beat the corporations, to beat industry. Industry
and the money and power it
created just seemed to grow and grow in the North in this
period.
III. Transportation
One factor that fueled this industrial economy was the growth
of transportation and
communication in the North. You know from earlier in this
lecture that America had already
implemented a canal system that changed the face of domestic
trade and production. You also
know that the railroads started to develop between the 1820s
and 1830s—not in a way that would
rival the canals, but the groundwork for a powerful network had
been laid. Businessmen had
been experimenting with steam-powered locomotives, they had
laid railroad tracks—now all
they needed to do was to connect independent lines and try to
reach out to some more inland,
rural areas.
Well, that happened from the 1840s to the 1860s in the North,
particularly in the Northeast,
where railroad use—for both human and product
23. in the North, industry was allowed to flourish, people were able
to travel, and goods had a way to
make it from raw materials to products because of the railroads.
IV. Immigration
As a result of the massive economic and industrial growth of the
North in the 1820s and
1830s, Northern cities became much larger and more powerful.
One of the factors contributing to
this growth was, of course, a population boom. In the 1840s,
1850s and 1860s, the population
growth was dramatic and those who didn’t head west made their
way into Northern cities. The
population growth from the 1840s to the 1860s was due partially
to higher birth rates in the
country, but also to increased immigration from abroad to
America. Between 1840 and 1850,
more than one and a half million people moved from Europe to
the United States and in the
1850s, the number had reached two and a half million. The
majority of the immigrants in this
period came from Ireland and Germany and almost all of the
Irish immigrants landed in a
Northeastern city like Boston or New York City (causing
intense anti-Irish sentiment).
25. Second, some Americans saw immigrants as mentally and
physically inferior and believed
immigrants were bringing the stock of the American race, if
there was such a thing, down.
Third, still others feared the job competition that immigrants
posed; they felt that immigrants
were stealing jobs from native workers because immigrants
were willing and able to work for
lower wages.
All of this anti-immigrant sentiment and paranoia led to the
creation of a number of anti-
immigrant societies. The largest of these societies was an
association known as the Native
American Association, which became a political party, the
Native American party, in 1845.
The Native American party wanted to ban immigrants from
holding public office, enact stricter
laws for immigrants to gain citizenship, and put a literacy test
for voting in place to prohibit
much of the immigrant population from voting. The party
functioned much like a fraternal
order, holding meetings in lodges and requiring members to
give a secret password for entry.
28. and the South, between slave and free. You see, the
relationship between the Northeast and the
Northwest became increasingly tight in the 1840s and 1850s;
the Northeast sold many of its
industrial products to the prospering Northwest; the Northwest
sold many of its agricultural
goods to the Northeast. This relationship strengthened the bond
between these two regions and
contributed to a growing isolation of the North from the South
(in other words, the South began
to feel unneeded and the North began to feel like they were
superior—in their self-sufficiency—
to the South).
VI. Women and the Antebellum North
With all of the dramatic changes going on in the North, the
divide between North and
South was growing ever deeper. As the North focused on
industry, commerce and economic
stability, the South continued to depend on the system of
slavery. As the South continued to
focus on maintaining traditional gender relationships and
cultural traditions, the North began to
expand and challenge the old system. And it was women,
perhaps the most, who challenged the
30. Revolution, the industrial, market economy that developed in
America (which had established
itself by the 1800s), set up a sexual division of labor in
economics that was even more
pronounced than before. In this new economy, rather than
working on small farms, many men
went to work for wages; women’s roles as workers (it was
thought), were in service to the needs
of others, particularly their husbands. Likewise, women were
forced into financial dependence
since it was only men who really had the ability to earn money.
The industrial economy was also often depicted as a corrupt,
immoral, and dangerous
world that women needed to be shielded from. The domestic
sphere provided a safe haven, it
seemed, from the masculine, grimy public sphere. Furthermore,
the feminine characteristics that
made women helpless in the face of the crafty, deceitful
business and political world highlighted
the opposing characteristics assigned to femininity, such as
morality, honesty, and safety. Ideas
about women’s nature suggested that they could only function
in the safe haven of the private
32. and position within the public one. Women found that
becoming involved in reform movements
fit with ideas about women’s nature because these reform
movements hoped to better society, to
make society moral and good. These reform movements were
often started by men, but it was
women who actually helped the reform movements gain strength
and get something done.
Women’s involvement in reform movements led to a use of
rhetoric which seemed to agree
with the separate spheres ideology, but instead justified the
public, sometimes masculine
actions of women in their reforming crusade and women’s
involvement in abolitionism and
temperance really highlights this.
A. Abolitionism
So first let’s take a look at abolitionism. Abolitionism was the
term given to the anti-
slavery movement in America. The national crusade against
slavery basically began in the
1830s, largely because of the efforts of a man named William
Lloyd Garrison and his Boston
Figure 5: Garrison and The Liberator5
34. in 1833. Just a few years later,
by the end of the 1830s, Garrison’s Antislavery Society had
over 250,000 members.
In the years after the development of the American Antislavery
Society, Garrison grew
increasingly radical in his abolitionist rhetoric and in his ideas
for ending slavery, which caused
some followers to abandon abolitionism and others to call for a
change in leadership. You see,
Garrison had begun arguing by the 1840s, that women be
allowed to participate in the antislavery
movement and the Society on terms of full equality with men
(this probably doesn’t sound very
radical to you, but in the 1840s, this was very radical stuff!).
He also began arguing that all
forms of coercion, such as prisons and asylums, should be
outlawed (imagine how this
suggestion went over!) and he called for the North to break
away from the South, thus getting rid
of slavery in the Union (secession?! Yikes!). So, as I said, as
Garrison grew more radical, the
abolitionist movement began going in different directions.
The movement split into various cohorts. Some abolitionists
tried to plead with Southern
36. being added to the US. Other
abolitionists, frustrated with how long it was taking to get
slavery abolished, took matters into
their own hands, using violence as a means to their end (that’s a
little foreshadowing of what’s to
come in future lectures—mayhem, madness, violence!!).
But women really took the reins of the abolitionist movement
from the 1830s on, helping
to make the antislavery movement a vocal and powerful one.
As I said a few minutes ago,
people thought William Lloyd Garrison’s idea that women be
granted full equality within the
American Antislavery Society was seen as extremely radical. In
response to this, female anti-
slavery societies formed alongside (and as technical
subordinates to) male-dominated societies as
a way to maintain the unwritten gender laws of the time.
Women widely participated in the
movement, citing a hatred for human suffering, which meshed
well with the roles as mother,
wife, moral guardian, and nurturer that women were expected to
follow. The best known of
these corollary female groups was the Boston Female Anti-
Slavery Society, created as an
38. male—on the ills of slavery by
sharing their own political opinions.
Not only were women involved in politics, they also played an
economic role in the
antislavery movement, a role that was supposed to fall to men.
This economic support came
largely from the antislavery fairs that women began to hold,
which were the primary fundraisers
for the antislavery movement. Though women were still not
supposed to be involved in the
economy, the public sphere or politics, at the fairs women were
selling goods (like potholders
embroidered with slogans like “any holder but a slaveholder”
and sugar bowls that read “sugar
not grown by slaves”), raising money, keeping accounting
books, meeting with people and
Figure 6: An Anti-Slavery Sugar Bowl7
7 From
http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volum
e2/february04/iotm.cfm
An inscription inside this sugar bowl read:
East IndiaSugar not made
40. antebellum temperance movement, like the early antislavery
movement, women were not
permitted as formal members in temperance societies. But male
leaders
called on women to assist the movement from a subordinate
position, and
women, particularly Protestant, middle-class women, became
increasingly
drawn to the movement. These women were drawn to
temperance because
of its focus on morality and its goal of ridding American society
of one of
its great social ills, the drinking of alcohol.8
The most notable group of women in the temperance movement
was
known as the Daughters of Temperance.9 In the first few years
of its
existence, the Daughters of Temperance focused on changing
moral
views on alcohol, mainly by telling stories about the detrimental
effects
8 Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of
Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance
43. Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, which we will talk about in
more detail in a few minutes, this
meeting made even more radical and controversial resolutions.
Most important was the Convention’s resolve to, “Let no woman
remain in the relation
of wife with a confirmed drunkard. Let no drunkard be the
father of her children…Let us
petition our State government so to modify the laws affecting
marriage and the custody of
children, that the drunkard shall have no claims on wife or
child.” Not only does this
resolution propose reforms in divorce laws that would favor
women, it insinuates that women are
capable of living, in fact, of raising children, with no help,
emotionally or economically from
men. Although the resolution was clearly designed to help
women, particularly those who were
mothers (the traditional role for women), the resolution defied
tradition, defied the separate
spheres ideology (public sphere=male world; private
sphere/home=female world), and called
into question the traditional definition of feminine difference.12
The temperance movement was
45. brought together a number of women in 1848 to the Seneca
Falls Convention13, where a
discussion was started about what rights women deserved and
needed granted by law to them, as well as a discussion about the
merits of starting a fight for women’s suffrage.
Immediately before the Seneca Falls Convention, its two
leaders, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drafted their
“Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” (also known as
the
“Declaration of Rights and Sentiments”) which was modeled
after
the Declaration of Independence, and claimed, “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created
equal.”14 “The Seneca Falls convention made this bold claim
for
full citizenship—including the right of suffrage—in a way that
claimed republicanism for women not as mothers responsible
for
rearing good little citizens but as autonomous individuals
deserving of that right.”15. So the
Seneca Falls Convention was making some pretty bold
47. a strong, central leadership and
even more importantly, many disagreed on exactly what was
being fought for. In fact, most of
the women involved in women’s rights in this period were not
all that interested in getting the
right to vote; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a few others believed
the vote was necessary, but many
more women thought that women should first fight for the
control of property and earnings,
guardianship of children in the event of a divorce, favorable
divorce laws, education and
employment rights and for legal status such as being able to sue
and bear witness. But without
the right to vote, Stanton argued, women’s rights activists found
it difficult to change conditions,
and, more importantly, get legislation passed.
Despite their disagreements, however, women’s rights activists
worked tirelessly, on the
state level to make changes for women. In New York, for
example, from 1851 to 1859 women
collected petitions calling on the New York State Legislature to
give women control over their
earnings, guardianship of their children in cases of divorce, and
the right to vote. What they got,
49. these women were simultaneously abolitionists, they powerfully
pointed out the problem with
any type of inequality—be it based on skin color, gender or
something else.
I’d like to look a little more closely at one of these African-
American women, Sojourner
Truth. Born into slavery in New York, Truth’s experience with
slavery, a system which forced
her to endure frequent beatings by her master, a forced
marriage, and the bearing of thirteen
children, most of whom she was forced to watch be sold into
slavery, was a difficult one. She
was freed in 1827, when New York State freed all of its slaves
and was a domestic worker until
the abolitionist movement drew her in. But unlike other women
in the abolitionist movement,
Truth was not immediately welcomed into the women’s rights
movement. Because she was
African-American, some women feared that she would put the
cause of anti-slavery before
women’s rights at a detriment to the women’s rights movement.
Luckily, however, Truth was given the pulpit at an 1851
women’s rights convention in
Ohio, where she easily countered the claims of an earlier
51. Further, no women’s rights movement would develop in the
South, where a dominant social code
of chivalry, paternalism and hierarchy kept women firmly
rooted in the domestic sphere.
So, where did all of this leave women and the women’s rights
movement on the brink of
the Civil War? Well, first, the development of the women’s
rights movement, beginning in the
abolitionist and moral reform societies, allowed women to
slowly enhance their position and
influence in American society. Additionally, without the
support of women in such public
activities as moral reform societies, religious groups, and the
temperance and abolitionist
movements, these reform movements may never have made it
out of their infant stages. And
though the Civil War forced women to put their demands on
hold, the lessons learned during this
first foray into politics were instrumental in the fight women
would wage after the war.
And to answer the question of where did this leave the women’s
rights movement, by 1860, the
women’s rights movement had created large, local and even a
few national populations of
54. V. Sectional Crisis: Nullification
...............................................................................................
...............14
VI. The Bank War
...............................................................................................
...................................19
VII. Indian Removal
...............................................................................................
.................................21
Important Terms and People (in order of
appearance): Panic of 1819; Speculators;
James Tallmadge; Thomas Cobb; Missouri Compromise;
Monroe Doctrine; Gibbons v. Ogden;
Presidential Election of 1824; Caucus System; William
Crawford; John Quincy Adams; Henry
Clay; Andrew Jackson; Corrupt Bargain; Presidential Election
of 1828; National Republicans;
Democratic Republicans; Era of the Common Man; Mass
Politics; Democrats; Whigs; National
Convention; John Calhoun; Tariff of Abominations;
Nullification; Robert Hayne; Daniel
Webster; states' rights versus the power of the federal
government; 1832 Tariff; Force Bill; "soft
money" faction; "hard money" faction; Presidential Election of
1832; Nicholas Biddle; Recharter
Bill; Indian Removal; Blackhawk War of 1831 and 1832; the
"Five Civilized Tribes"; Indian
Removal Act; Cherokee; Seminole; Worcester v. Georgia; Trail
of Tears; the Seminole War;
Reservations
Instructions for reading this lecture: This lecture is
56. little about politics in the period from 1819 up until Jackson’s
election to the presidency 10 years
later, focusing on domestic issues like a major sectional crisis
that took place in 1819, as well as
the growth and solidification of the power of the federal
government during the 1820s. We’ll
then take a look, specifically, at the presidency of Andrew
Jackson, to get an idea of what was
going on politically, how slavery was being dealt with, the
growing regional rift and westward
expansion and Indian Removal. But first, I’d like to pick up
where we left off last time, with the
Era of Good Feelings and the divergent economic Panic of
1819.
I. The Panic of 1819
We left off last time looking at the Era of Good Feelings—
that time during James
Monroe’s presidency where bipartisanship, economic growth
and national pride seemed
boundless. But when the economic Panic of 1819 occurred, all
of these positive developments
took a back seat. What happened to cause the Panic of 1819?
Well, the first factor was that in
the period immediately after the end of the War of 1812, there
was high demand for American
58. bank failures put people into a
panic, and a financial depression carried on for the next six
years, during which time the price of
manufactured goods and agricultural produce plummeted.
Manufacturers and farmers convinced the government to pass
relief acts and protective
tariffs to help them out and the government came through.
Though these relief acts and
protective tariffs were welcome actions in 1819, the protective
tariffs would become a hot button
issue in the 1820s, which we’ll talk about a little later in this
lecture.
II. Sectional Crisis: The Missouri Compromise
To make matters worse, the Panic of 1819 was closely followed
by a huge sectional crisis
that almost caused the southern states to break away from the
northern ones. The issue was over
a part of the Louisiana Purchase territory—the Missouri
territory—whose residents applied for
statehood in 1818 as a slave state. The major problem their
application posed was this: as
Missouri began their application for statehood, Congress had a
nice, comfortable balance
between slave and free states: there were eleven of each. But
60. concept made Southerners/Slave states feel?
This proposal outraged southerners so much that some began to
claim, like Thomas
Cobb of Georgia, “If you persist, the Union will be dissolved.”
The debate over Missouri—
really, the debate over the balance of power between free and
slave states—was growing heated
to the point of threatening the sanctity of the Union. Luckily,
however, a compromise was put
together, in which:
1. Maine was carved out of Massachusetts as a separate state;
2. both Maine and Missouri would be approved as states on the
same bill;
3. Maine would enter the Union as a free state; and
4. Missouri would enter as a slave state.
This was enough to calm the fears of both Northern and
Southern Congressmen regarding
the Missouri issue. But the Missouri statehood application had
brought up a much larger
question: should slavery be allowed in the vast Louisiana
Purchase territory, should it be limited
in any way, or should it be forbidden altogether? As I’m sure
you can imagine, people had very
different opinions on this question and in an effort to answer
the question once and for all,
62. III. A Growing Federal Government
As the Missouri Compromise was being hammered out, the
federal government began
solidifying and strengthening its power. The first
demonstration of this came in the international
arena. During the 18-teens, a number of Spanish colonies
(many of which were in the western
hemisphere—namely South and Central America, and the
Caribbean) revolted against Spanish
rule, beginning a long war between Spain’s colonies and Spain.
The United States chose, for a
short time, to remain neutral on paper, though they almost
immediately began trading with the
rebellious groups.
In 1822, the Monroe government decided to formally recognize
the colonial rebellions as
legitimate by ending the policy of neutrality and establishing
diplomatic relations with five of the
insurgent countries, what would become Argentina, Chile, Peru,
Colombia and Mexico. The
United States jumped out on a limb here; they were among the
first countries to recognize these
1 From
65. a good deal of centralized power in the international arena with
the Monroe Doctrine.
Likewise, the Supreme Court had made a number of decisions
in the 1820s that further
strengthened the power of the federal government. Perhaps the
most poignant example of this
came via the court case Gibbons v. Ogden—a case about
interstate commerce—that declared
that laws passed by the federal government were superior to
state laws. This was a major
shifting of course; prior to the 1820s, and based on a tradition
that went back to the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution, states maintained all of the
powers that weren’t specifically
designated to the federal government. But after Gibbons v.
Ogden, new laws passed by the
federal government were suddenly superior to those passed by
states!
Finally, the federal government became stronger in the 18-
teens when the Federalist
Party failed to put up a candidate to run for president, ending,
albeit briefly, the two-party
system. The dominance of the Republican Party signaled that
the “people” had much less power
67. supposedly influenced by popular will, selected one of those
two men to be president. If you
think about it, this doesn’t really provide for much power to the
people—it simply lets the
already-powerful decide who will get to run and forces popular
will to decide between the two).
As I said a few paragraphs ago, however, the two-party system
had essentially ended in
1816 when the Federalist Party failed to put up a candidate for
president—negating even the
modest democratic ideals that had been exercised with the
caucus, which had at least left voters
with two choices for president. What the Federalists’ failure
meant was that in the 1824
presidential election, only the Republican Party nominated a
presidential candidate, William H.
Crawford, who, it looked, was going to run unopposed.
But as a response to the frightening consolidation of power in
the hands of the
Republican Party and the consolidation of power in the hands of
the federal government, state
legislatures and mass meetings ignored the traditional
caucus nominating process and instead began a whole
69. exist).
In the election, Jackson received a plurality, but not a majority,
of both the popular and
electoral vote, but because he did not have a majority, he did
not automatically become
president. Instead, the final decision on who the next president
would be lay with Congress, who
was expected to choose the winner from the top three
candidates. Henry Clay had received the
lowest number of votes, so he was out of the running, but he
was a very influential guy with the
House, since he was the Speaker of the House. With this
position of influence and power, it’s no
surprise that the three other men tried to get him on their side.
Clay quickly dismissed Crawford,
the Republican candidate, because Crawford had been
debilitated by a crippling disease. So the
decision was really between Jackson and Adams.
Jackson was the more charismatic, but he was also Clay’s
biggest political opponent.
Adams, on the other hand, wasn’t that well-liked, either by the
populous or by Clay, but Clay
found Adams to be less threatening, and threw his support to
Adams’ camp. The House,
72. had been seen in previous presidencies). Others feared this
possibility; they looked to Jackson’s
humble followers as potential problems, as too ignorant and
unworldly to really participate in the
American political world. The outcome of Jackson’s two terms
as president was a little of both
ideologies—the common man certainly saw a new entrance into
politics while the common man
did not see all of his hopes for democracy realized.
One of the major ways in which the common man saw some new
power had to do with
the advent of mass politics in the late 1820s and 1830s. What
do I mean by mass politics?
Well, until the 1820s, most Americans had been unable to vote
because many states had
restricted voting to property owners or taxpayers, or both. But
in the early 1820s, this began to
change, as new, western states joined the Union and adopted
laws that were more favorable to
those men who didn’t own property or pay taxes. As a result of
this liberalization (and to keep
people and tax dollars from moving west for a vote!) many
other, older states actually got on
74. many people did not like the idea of political parties. Many
Americans thought they were
dangerous because they promoted factions and promoted
national disunity. But in the 1820s,
Americans began to change their ideas about political parties.
A new view was established that
saw stable, permanent and regular parties as a good thing, as
part of the political process, and as
a necessity in terms of ensuring democracy. Proponents of
political parties argued that the
opposition that parties created was healthy and forced
politicians to be sensitive to the issues
surrounding their constituents (obviously, a voice for the
“common man”). Likewise, they
argued that political parties would serve as a check and balance
on one another, causing the
American government to truly run as it was intended. By the
1830s, a fully operational and
permanent two-party system was put into place. This first two-
party system of the 1830s pitted
the followers of Jackson, who had now shortened their name
from Democratic Republicans to
the Democrats, against the anti-Jackson forces (many of whom
were old National Republicans),
76. Jackson actively worked
to make his definition of democracy a reality, first targeting
officeholders in the federal
government. Many of these officeholders had been in their
position for years, placed there as a
favor by that Eastern aristocracy, by the powerful elite.
Jackson felt that federal offices should,
instead, enjoy rapid turnover since the offices essentially
belonged to the people—the American
citizens—and not to the officeholders themselves. Jackson also
saw that getting these
entrenched officeholders out of their position would give him a
good deal of power because he
could put his political patrons in office, he could thank those
who supported him with federal
positions. Though Jackson really created a system where
supporters of the president in power
were able to get federal office positions, his idea that the
entrenched officeholders, the elite
officeholders, should be removed made it seem like he was the
president of the common man.
Another area in which Jackson came to be seen as the president
of the common man was
in his reform of the caucus system. Jackson didn’t like the old
78. different way for the politically powerful to nominate who they
wanted under the guise of
working in the interests of the common man.
Jackson was faced with other issues than those dealing with the
common man fairly
quickly into his presidency. I’d like to spend the rest of this
lecture talking about three of the
most notable issues that Jackson dealt with—the issue of
nullification and federal versus states’
rights; Jackson’s war over the National Bank (the Bank of the
United States); and, finally, Indian
Removal.
V. Sectional Crisis: Nullification
The issue of nullification hit Jackson very early on in his
presidency and it came from a
surprising place—his own Vice President, John Calhoun. As
Jackson’s running mate, Calhoun
was in a good position to succeed Jackson as president, but the
powerful issue of the tariff (and
subsequent threats of nullification) led Calhoun in a completely
different direction. The tariff
issue amounted to this: During the Panic of 1819, as you know,
everyone demanded high
protective tariffs (a taxation on imported goods). But though a
80. Calhoun came up with what he
thought was a viable solution; he put forth the theory of
nullification, in which he claimed that
since the federal government had actually been created by the
states, and not by the courts
or by Congress, a state could make the final decision about the
constitutionality of a federal
law. So, his idea essentially meant that if a state—say South
Carolina—thought that Congress
had passed an unconstitutional law—say the protective tariff—
then the state could hold a special
state convention in which the state could declare the federal law
null and void within the state.
South Carolinians loved this idea and many quickly jumped on
board.
Now you’re probably thinking that Calhoun’s idea was pretty
crazy given the Gibbons v.
Ogden Supreme Court decision and the growing power of the
federal government that had been
taking place in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century.
Well, Calhoun probably didn’t
think, in these early years, that the nullification theory was that
great either; in fact, he hoped it
would never be put to the test. He hoped that the federal
82. producing in the north were living in
the northeast—westward expansion created competition for
northeast markets).
At first, these two men were simply having an argument over
the North’s intentions
regarding the West; but the controversy grew when a South
Carolina Senator, Robert Hayne,
jumped on board with the western senator. Hayne allied with
the west, not because he cared that
much about land in the west, but because he and other
Southerners saw this as a way to get the
Western states on their side about lowering the tariff (it was a
sort of “you scratch the southern
back regarding the tariff, the south will scratch the western back
regarding the sale of western
lands” situation). Hayne dramatically argued that the Northeast
had a tyrannical rule over the
South and the West and suggested that the South and West
might come together to overthrow
that tyranny.
This dramatic, and technically treasonous, claim caused a
number of Northerners to speak
out; the charge was led by a senator from Massachusetts, Daniel
Webster. Webster thought that
84. 17
President Jackson toasted the table with the words “Our Federal
Union—It must be preserved”
while looking directly at Calhoun. Calhoun returned the
president’s pro-federal government
toast with his own: “The Union—next to our liberty most dear,”
putting forth the states’ rights
argument in its simplest terms.6
The federal battle lines had been drawn and it didn’t take long
for an issue to make it onto
the scene that would further pit the states’ rights advocates
against those who favored a stronger
federal government. This issue came about in 1832 over the
dreaded tariff problem and the idea
Figure 5: A Northern Cartoon Lambasts the South
for their Anti-Tariff Stance7
of nullification. South Carolinians were extremely upset when
an 1832 tariff bill was passed by
Congress that offered them no relief from the 1828 “tariff of
abominations” that had already
6 From http://bartelby.org/77/1919.html
7 From
86. that if they went forward with either nullification or, worse,
secession, he would not hesitate to
use force to get them back in line.
South Carolina was faced with a diffi cult decision, then; it was
clear that the federal
government was stronger than they were, so if they decided to
fight the federal government,
South Carolina knew they were in for a trouncing. But they
didn’t want to give in to the
government’s demands either. Luckily, Henry Clay came up
with a compromise that gradually
lowered the tariff, which appeased South Carolina to some
degree. But, South Carolina didn’t
want to let Congress have the last word, so in an act of
defiance, they nullified that
Congressional Force Bill. It didn’t really matter since the Force
Bill had to do with the tariffs
that had been lowered, but this nullification signaled that the
troubling times were far from over.
The nullification crisis also taught South Carolina that, alone,
they were too weak to take on the
federal government; next time they needed allies (this is
foreshadowing information that will
88. groups. The first group, the “soft money” faction, argued that
the national bank hurt state banks
from issuing notes more freely. The second group, the “hard
money” faction, argued that bank
notes should never be issued, since it was difficult to prove they
were supported by gold—the
real hard money. The “hard money” faction thought all banks,
including state banks and the
national bank (all banks that issued paper notes) should be
eliminated. Though these two groups
had big differences, Jackson used both of their support and
claimed that he would not renew the
charter of the Bank of the United States when it expired in four
years, in 1836. As a result of this
claim, the charter of the Bank of the United States became the
issue of the presidential election
of 1832.
In the run-up to this election, the head of the Bank of the
United States—Nicholas
Biddle—obviously didn’t want to see the bank die, so he
enlisted the support of Jackson’s
biggest political opponents: Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
They urged Biddle to apply to
Congress for a recharter of the National Bank that year, in 1832,
91. and should be destroyed. Unfortunately, the destruction of the
Bank of the United States, a bank
that had served, generally, to stabilize the national economy,
would lead to years of national
financial instability, a problem that would plague the economy
for years to come (it wasn’t until
1862, when the Union was in the midst of the Civil War, that
the bank would be rechartered).
VII. Indian Removal
The third major issue that Jackson dealt with during his
presidency, and the one he is
most vilified for, was Indian Removal. The American
population grew dramatically in the first
thirty years of the 1800s. Now, what happens when the
population grows in America? What do
people want more of? Land, of course! As people searched for
more land, they pushed out to
more western areas, where the territory seemed ripe for
expansion. As you well know by now,
westward migration did not ever mean good things for the
Indian populations of North America,
and the migration of the 1820s and 1830s was certainly no
different. In fact, the 1830s probably
saw the strongest anti-Native American sentiment that the
country had ever seen. This was due
93. settlers really wanted to get the prime land that tribes still
owned and removal was obviously the
easiest way to do that.
But how did white settlers go about removing the Indians from
desired lands, from
western lands? Well, they pressured the government to help
them get the Indians off pretty
much all land that whites lived on or wanted to live on, and the
federal government—no stranger
to pushing Indians farther and farther west—proved to be of
real assistance. For example,
federal troops and the Illinois state militia were successful in
driving out the last stronghold of
Native Americans in the Old Northwest region, those western
lands that had been expanded into
years before, by fighting the Black Hawk War of 1831 and
1832. In this series of battles, white
militias brutally attacked the Indians, even those who were
attempting to retreat or surrender (a
Figure 7: The Black Hawk War9
9 From
http://www.historycentral.com/Ant/Blachhawk.jpg
95. more like white farmers, they were
supposed to be able to keep their land.
But, not surprisingly, as land began to run out in the South,
Indian land became highly
desired. The federal government first tried, in the 1820s, to
negotiate treaties with the “Five
Civilized Tribes” to get them off of Southern land and onto
Western land in Oklahoma. The
negotiation process took longer than many southern whites
wanted, however, so President
Jackson passed the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which set aside
government funds for negotiating
treaties with the tribes and for settling the tribes in the west,
assuming that this additional money
would speed the process along. But white settlers, ever the
impatient bunch, had already taken
matters into their own hands to speed the removal of Indians
from southern land. They pressured
local and state governments, rather than wait for the federal
government, to negotiate treaties
with Indian groups, and were able to succeed in getting some
tribes to sign over their land for
small payments.
97. to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court actually granted
the Cherokee a victory, declaring
that states had no right to negotiate for tribal land. The
Supreme Court said that only the federal
government could do so and the Supreme Court declared that
the federal government had to
respect that tribes were sovereign nations, much like states
were. Unfortunately, President
Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the decision made by the
Supreme Court and did little to
protect the Cherokee from whites encroaching on their land or
from states trying to negotiate
treaties with them.
The final blow to the Cherokee came just a few short years
later. The federal government
had succeeded in negotiating their own treaty with a minority
group within the Cherokee tribe;
that treaty ceded the tribe’s land to the state of Georgia for $5
million and a reservation west of
the Mississippi River. Because the treaty had been negotiated
with a minority group of
Cherokeee, most of the 17,000 Cherokee refused to abide by the
treaty and declared that they
would not move west. Accordingly, President Jackson sent an
100. more than 100 million acres of their land east of the Mississippi
to the federal government and in
return received about $68 million and land in the far less
attractive Midwest. The Indian Land
they were granted was divided into a series of reservations,
separating different tribes from one
another and the reservations were surrounded by military forts
to keep the Indians in and, for the
most part, to keep whites out. This relocation process was
horrible for natives who were forced
off the land they knew so well—where they were able to hunt
and grow whatever food they
needed—and forced to relocate to a desert wasteland.
The first thirty years of the nineteenth century was a dramatic
and country-changing time:
the federal government grew, the nation spread further west, the
common man gained a voice,
and sectional crises began to heat up. What shape would
Americans lives take in the period after
Jackson, in the 1840s and 1850s? How would life differ for
those in the North from those in the
South or those in the West? To those stories and more, we’ll be
turning in the coming lectures.
101. CHAPTER 4: ANTEBELLUM SOUTH, Slavery and Economy,
1820-1860
Contents
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: 1
Documents: 4
Document 1, James Henry Hammond Declares “Cotton is King”
(Willis, 1858) 4
Document 2, DeBow’s Review Comments on the Economic
Relationship Between the North and the South (University of
Michigan Library, 1856) 7
Document 3, Henry Tayloe writes about the Domestic Slave
Trade (PBS.org, 1835) 10
Document 4, Slave Jacob Stroyer Talks about Being Sold to the
Deep South (PBS.org, 1890) 10
Document 5, Slave James Curry Describes Running Away to the
North, 1840 (LearnNC.org, 1840) 11
Document 6, Charles Ball discusses City Slavery (Documenting
the American South, 1859) 15
Document 7, Southern Angelina Grimke Decries the Institution
of Slavery (Digital History, 1839) 17
Document 8, George Fitzhugh Presents a Pro-Slavery Argument
(PBS.org, 1857) 17
Document 9, Senator James Henry Hammond Defends Slavery,
1858 (PBS.org, 1858) 18
Document 10, Dr. Samuel Cartwright writes about the “Diseases
and Peculiarities of the Negro Race” (PBS.org, 1851) 19
Post-Reading Exercises 21
Works Cited 21
