Time Period #4 [1800-1848]
The new republic struggled to define and extend democratic ideals in the

face of rapid economic, territorial, and demographic changes.

 

After a decade of intense partisan conflict, exacerbated by strong differences of opinion over maintaining our neutrality with regard to the Anglo-French wars, Jefferson, Madison and their supporters prevailed in the Election of 1800 and tried to put an end to both "faction" and Hamilton's policies.  Ironically, Madison and his supporters not only found it necessary to go to war in 1812 to defend our neutral rights, in the after-math of that war they abandoned their previous scruples about strengthening the power of the central government and embraced many of the measures they had so strongly opposed in 1790 and 1791.  In 1816 they approved the nation’s first protective tariff and the rechartering of the Bank of the United States.

 

National feeling increased markedly as a result of the War of 1812, especially after Andrew Jackson's decisive victory at the Battle of New Orleans.   However, sectional tensions also increased significantly as resentment at the policies of the Second Bank of the United States during the Panic of 1819 grew stronger, divisions over slavery as both a moral and a political issue grew wider and Southern objections to the protective tariff led to the revival of the states right doctrine of nullification, first proposed in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-1799.   The Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, asserted its authority as a co-equal branch of the federal government with primary responsibility for interpreting the Constitution.  In a long series of often unanimous decisions, beginning with Marbury v. Madison (1803) and continuing through Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Mar-shall Court repeatedly asserted the superiority of federal power over state laws and the federal over the state courts, while reaffirming the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the Constitution.

 

After a brief respite from partisan politics during the "Era of Good Feelings," political conflict intensified as Andrew Jackson and his supporters built a new and stronger political organization in an effort to de-fend democracy and the interests of the "common man" against those who were allegedly using the federal government to secure monopolistic privileges.  Popular participation in politics reached new heights as new campaign tactics, stronger, more widespread organization led by professional politicians and increasing involvement in a money economy combined to give birth to a second, better organized national party system.

 

Because the major parties did not address many of the issues most important to ordinary Americans, a variety of reform movements in the form of voluntary associations were organized during the generation after the War of 1812.  Women, inspired to improve society by the teachings of evangelical Protestant ministers during the Second Great Awakening, were among the most dedicated and determined reformers, taking part in organizations that worked to feed the poor, care for the mentally ill, abolish slavery, institute moral re-form, encourage temperance and promote equal rights for women.  The lives of many women were also significantly altered by the market revolution, which caused an increasing separation between home and workplace, and helped foster dramatic transformations in gender and family roles and expectations.

 

Westward expansion in the aftermath of the War of 1812 accelerated the nascent "Transportation Revolution."   Roads and turnpikes were succeeded after 1815 by the increased use of steamboats on the nation's rivers and an era of canal building inspired by the success of New York's Erie Canal, completed in 1825.  Railroad building increased significantly after 1840, but only after 1850 did railroads surpass canals and steamboats as the primary means of transporting goods and passengers in the United States.

 

Regional economic specialization, especially the cultivation of cotton in the South, shaped settlement patterns and the national and international economy.  Southern cotton furnished the raw material for manufacturing in the Northeast, while the growth in cotton production and trade promoted the development of national economic ties, shaped the international economy, and fueled the internal slave trade.  Despite some governmental and private efforts to create a unified national economy, most notably the American System, the shift to market production linked the North and the Midwest more closely than either was linked to the South.  Regional interests continued to trump national concerns as the basis for many political leaders’ positions on economic issues including slavery, the national bank, tariffs, and internal improvements.

 

 

While some Americans celebrated their nation’s progress toward a new, unified national culture, a number of groups of the nation’s inhabitants developed distinctive cultures of their own.  Many white Americans in the South asserted their regional identity through pride in the institution of slavery, insisting that the federal government should defend that institution.  Enslaved and free African Americans, isolated at the bottom of the social hierarchy, created communities and strategies to protect their dignity and their family structures, even as some launched abolitionist and reform movements aimed at changing their status.  Moreover, despite the outlawing of the international slave trade, the rise in the number of free African Americans in both the North and the South, and widespread discussion of various emancipation plans, the U.S. and many state governments continued to restrict African Americans’ citizenship possibilities, heightening the feeling among African Americans that they constituted a separate and distinct subculture.

 

The American acquisition of new lands in the West, beginning with the Louisiana Purchase, gave rise to a contest over the extension of slavery into the western territories as well as a series of attempts at national compromise.  The 1820 Missouri Compromise created a truce over the issue of slavery that gradually broke down after 1846, when confrontations over the expansion of slavery became increasingly bitter.  In the meantime, over cultivation had already depleted arable land in the Southeast, spurring slaveholders to relocate their agricultural enterprises to the new Southwest, increasing sectional tensions over the institution of slavery and sparking a broad scale debate about how to set national goals, priorities, and strategies.

 

 

The revival and reform movements of the antebellum period made an indelible mark on the American landscape. The Second Great Awakening ignited Protestant spirits by connecting evangelical Christians in national networks of faith. Social reform spurred members of the middle class to promote national morality and the public good. Not all reform projects were equally successful, however. While the temperance movement made substantial inroads against the excesses of alcohol consumption, the abolitionist movement proved so divisive that it paved the way for sectional crisis. Yet participation in reform movements, regardless of their ultimate success, encouraged many Americans to see themselves in new ways. Black activists became a powerful voice in antislavery societies, for example, developing domestic and transnational connections to pursue the cause of liberty. Middle-class women’s dominant presence in the benevolent empire encouraged them to pursue a full-fledged women’s right movement that has lasted in various forms up through the present day. In their efforts to make the United States a more virtuous and moral nation, nineteenth-century reform activists developed cultural and institutional foundations for social change that have continued to reverberate through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

 

 

 

MODULE A [1800 to 1825]

 

American Sphinx: Thomas Jefferson’s First Term as President [1800-1804]  
Jefferson's first term brings electoral reform and major changes in national policy that directly contradict his strict construction of the US Constitution. 

 

“The Empire of Liberty”

Louisiana Purchases|1803| 15 for 15

Strict vs. Loose Interpretation [Treaty making powers]

The Negotiators|Robert Livingston and James Monroe

Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery

 

 

Supreme Justice: John Marshall and Judicial Activism - [1801-1803]

Chief Justice John Marshall uses the bench to promote many of Hamilton's ideas - including supremacy of the federal government and an independent judiciary to interpret laws of the young nation.

 

William Marbury|James Madison

Original vs. Appellate Jurisdiction

Writ of Mandamus “ to order a task to be completed”
Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was declared unconstitutional

Marbury v. Madison |1803| Judicial Review

 

 

The Travails of the Jeffersonian Republic, 1804-1808
Foreign entanglements during Jefferson's second term leads to a highly unpopular and failed embargo that revived the moribund Federalist Party.

 

Berlin-Milan Decree |1805

Orders in Council|1805
Chesapeake Affair |1807
Embargo Act |1807
Non-Intercourse Act|1809

 

 

                                            

What So Proudly We Hailed - James Madison and The War of 1812
British harassment of American commerce on the high-seas leading to the Second War for Independence and the development of a national identity.   

Macon’s Bill #2
War Hawks
Tecumseh vs. William Henry Harrison
Hartford Convention|1814-1815
Battle of New Orleans|1815

 

 

Nascent Nationalism and Post War Expansion [1815 to 1825]

The War of 1812 stimulated America’s economic growth and gave birth to the “American System,” leading to specialization and interregional dependency.

 

Geographic Growth and Western Expansion

Henry Clay and the “American System” [R.P.I] 1824

Transportation Revolution: Erie Canal/ Robert Fulton/Steamboat

The Lowell System

Panic of 1819|Overspeculation 

 

 

The Marshall Court and Federal Supremacy [1819-1824]

Chief Justice John Marshall establishes the judiciary as a powerful branch of the federal government, and strengthens the national government’s supremacy over the states.

 

Chief Justice Marshall

Federal Supremacy

[Contracts] Dartmouth College vs. Woodward (1819)

[Supremacy] McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819)
[Interstate Commerce] Gibbons vs. Ogden (1824)

 

 

 

James Monroe and the Era of Good Feelings (?) [1816 to 1825]

A period of peace, prosperity, and liberty is often conveyed with irony or skepticism as a result of significant troubles that were roiling not far below the surface.

 

Rush -Bagot Treaty |1817

Adams-Onis Treaty|1819

Panic of 1819| Over speculation West

Missouri Statehood|1820 |SLAVERY !!!

Tallmadge Amendment|1820

Monroe Doctrine |1823

 

 

MODULE B [1824-1846]

 

John Quincy Adams and the Corrupt Bargain [1824-1828]

The election of 1824 is decided in the House of Representatives and ushers in the age of the common man.

 

John Quincy Adams

Election of 1824|99|84|14

House of Representatives 

Henry Clay

The Corrupt Bargain

 

 

Vindicating Jackson -The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two-Party System 

The presidential election of 1828 witnessed Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans,

bounce back from his controversial loss four years earlier to unseat John Quincy Adams.

 

The Jacksonian C.U.S.P (1828)

Conventions replace "King Caucus”

Universal male Suffrage

Popular elections
Age of the Common man

 

Liberty and Power: Politics in the Age of Jackson [1828-1836]

Understanding Andrew Jackson, requires an ability to resist either vilification or veneration,

to see the man whole – his failings as well as his successes.

 

King Andrew I

The Spoils System

John C. Calhoun and the Tariff battle|Compromise of 1833

Nicholas Biddle and the bank battle | Jackson’s Veto

Native Americans and the Trail of Tears [GPS]

 

 

The North and the Market Revolution
The acceleration of a national and international market economy created regional political and economic loyalties that often continued to overshadow national concerns.

 

Market Revolution [i - T- R - I – P]

inventions
Transportation Revolution
Immigration
Population explosion

 

 

Immigration and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum (Pre War) America
Pushed from their country of birth by civil unrest, severe unemployment or inconceivable hardships, this wave of antebellum immigrants affected almost every city in America.

 

Irish Immigration
German Immigration

"Nativism in 3D"    Distrust, Discrimination and Destruction

N.I.N.A

The American Party |AKA the Know – Nothing Party|

 

 

The South and the Growth of King Cotton [1830 to 1865] 

The continuing dominance of large-scale plantation agriculture in the South affects the social, political, and economic fabric of southern life 

 

Indentured Servitude

Three-Fifths Compromise

Northwest Ordinance |1787

The Industrial Revolution

Eli Whitney and the Cotton Engine
50|50|50 

 

 

 

MODULE C [1824 to 1848]

 

Slavery in Antebellum America: All Night Forever
No issue has more scarred our country nor had more long-term effects than slavery. When we celebrate American freedom, we must also be mindful of the long and painful struggle to share in those freedoms that faced and continue to face generations of African Americans.

 

Living Conditions|Pnemonia|Typhus|Cholera|Lockjaw|Tuberculosis
Field Hand at 12|Rotten Teeth|Worms|Dysentary|Malaria

Fewer than 4 out of 100 slaves lived to be 60

Sunrise to Sunset|14 hour shifts
Dehumanizing Auction block
Marriage Vows|Death or Distance

 

 

 

The Invisible War: African American Anti-Slavery Resistance [1800 -1831]

A sizeable and politically significant movement of African Americans organized collective resistance against-institutionalized slavery.

 

Stono Rebellion |1739

NYC Conspiracy |1741
Gabriel Prosser |1800

Denmark Vesey |1822
Nat Turner| 1831

 

Slavery a Positive Good- Southern Ideologies in Defense of Slavery 

In the antebellum period, pro-slavery forces moved from defending slavery as a necessary evil to expounding it as a positive good

 

 South Carolina Senator James Hammond (1807 to 1864) The "Mud-Sill" Theory 

American Social Theorist George Fitzhugh (1806-1881) 

South Carolina Politician William Joseph Harper (1790 to 1847) 

South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun's “Slavery a Positive Good”

 

 

 

The Second Great Awakening [1820-1860]

Charles Grandison Finney continues the tradition begun by George Whitefield in the colonial era and reshaped the message to suit the expansive commercial society of the early 19th century fostering the rise of voluntary organizations to promote religious and secular reforms.

 

Review: First Great Awakening 1730’s

Charles G. Finney

Impact of Second Great Awakening

 

 

Creating a Culture of Reform in Antebellum America [1820-1860]

Activists and reformers mobilize the instruments of mass media to structure an ideological debate about religion, women s rights, and antislavery.

 

Temperance Movement

Women’s Rights Movement

Education Reform

Prison Reform

The Abolitionist Movement 

 

 

Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery [1820 to 1865]

The campaign to abolish slavery in the United States, the most powerful and effective social movement of the nineteenth century, will serve as a recurring source of inspiration for every subsequent struggle against injustice. 

 

Sojourner Truth

William Lloyd Garrison

Frederick Douglass   

Harriet Tubman

The Grimke Sisters

 

 

Antebellum Non Conformists - Transcendentalists and Mormon Pioneers [1820-60] 

Two unconventional utopian experiments founded on individual inspiration, self-reliance, dissent, and nonconformity create a strong sense of unity and shape the American identity

 

Shakers

Mormons

The Transcendentalists| “Spiritual matters over material matters”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau