Test: #4 Jefferson (1800) to The Mexican War (1848)
Format: 55  AP Style Multiple Choice

Chapters Covered: #11 -#17

Chapter 11: The Triumphs and Travails of the Jeffersonian Republic

In the critical presidential contest of 1800, the firs tin which Federalists and Democratic-Republicans functioned as two national political parties, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson again squared off against each other. The choice seemed clear and dramatic: Adams’s Federalists waged a defensive struggle for strong central government and public order. Their Jeffersonian opponents presented themselves as the guardians of agrarian purity, liberty, and states’ rights. The next dozen years, however, would turn what seemed like a clear-cut choice in 1800 into a messier reality, as the Jeffersonians in power were confronted with a series of opportunities and crises requiring the assertion of federal authority. As the first challengers to rout a reigning party, the Republicans were the first to learn that it is far easier to condemn from the stump than to govern consistently

Chapter 12: The Second War for Independence and the Upsurge of Nationalism

The War of 1812, largely because of widespread disunity, ranks as one of America’s worst-fought wars. There was no burning national anger, as there had been in 1807 following the Chesapeake outrage. The supreme lesson of the conflict was the folly of leading a divided and apathetic people into war. And yet, despite the unimpressive military outcome and even less decisive negotiated peace, Americans came out of the war with a renewed sense of nationhood. For the next dozen years, an awakened spirit of nationalism would inspire activities ranging from protecting manufacturing to building roads to defending the authority of the federal government over the states.

Chapter 13: The Rise of a Mass Democracy

The so-called Era of Good Feelings was never entirely tranquil, but even the illusion of national consensus was shattered by the panic of 1819 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Economic distress and the slavery issue raised the political stakes in the 1820s and 1830s. Vigorous political conflict, once feared, came to be celebrated as necessary for the health of democracy. New political parties emerged. New styles of campaigning took hold. A new chapter opened in the history of American politics. The political landscape of 1824 was similar, in its broad outlines, to that of 1796. By 1840 it would be almost unrecognizable. The deference, apathy, and virtually nonexistent party organizations of the Era of Good Feelings yielded to the boisterous democracy, frenzied vitality, and strong political parties of the Jacksonian era. The old suspicion of political parties as illegitimate disrupters of society’s natural harmony gave way to an acceptance of the sometimes wild contentiousness of political life. In 1828 an energetic new party, the Democrats, captured the White House. By the 1830s the Democrats faced an equally vigorous opposition party in the form of the Whigs. This two-party system institutionalized divisions that had vexed the Revolutionary generation and came to constitute an important part of the nation’s checks and balances on political power.  New forms of politicking emerged in this era, as candidates used banners, badges, parades, barbecues, free drinks, and baby kissing to “get out the vote.” Voter turnout rose dramatically. Only about one-quarter of eligible voters cast a ballot in the presidential election of 1824, but that proportion doubled in 1828, and in the election of 1840 it reached 78 percent. Everywhere the people flexed  their political muscles.

Chapter 14: Forging the National Economy  The new nation went bounding into the nineteenth century in a burst of movement. New

England Yankees, Pennsylvania farmers, and southern yeomen all pushed west in search of cheap land and prodigious opportunity, soon to be joined by vast numbers of immigrants from Europe, who also made their way to the country’s fast-growing cities. But not only people were in motion. Newly invented machinery quickened the cultivation of crops and the manufacturing of goods, while workers found themselves laboring under new, more demanding expectations for their pace of work. Better roads, faster steamboats, farther-reaching canals, and tentacle- stretching railroads all helped move people, raw materials, and manufactured goods from coast to coast and Gulf to Great Lakes by the mid nineteenth century. The momentum gave rise to a more dynamic, market-oriented, national economy.

Chapter 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture A third revolution accompanied the reformation of American politics and the transformation of the American economy in the mid-nineteenth century. This was a diffuse yet deeply felt commitment to improve the character of ordinary Americans, to make them more upstanding, God-fearing, and literate. Some high-minded souls were disillusioned by the rough-and-tumble realities of democratic politics. Others, notably women, were excluded from the political game altogether. As the young Republic grew, increasing numbers of Americans poured their considerable energies into religious revivals and reform movements. Reform campaigns of all types flourished in sometimes bewildering abundance. There was not “a reading man” who was without some scheme for a new utopia in his “waistcoat pocket,” claimed Ralph Waldo Emerson. Reformers promoted better public schools and rights for women, as well as miracle medicines, polygamy, celibacy, rule by prophets, and guidance by spirits. Societies were formed against alcohol, tobacco, profanity, and the transit of mail on the Sabbath. Eventually overshadowing all other reforms was the great crusade against slavery ). Many reformers drew their crusading zeal from religion. Beginning in the late 1790s and boiling over into the early nineteenth century, the Second Great Awakening swept through America’s Protestant churches, transforming the place of religion in American life and sending a generation of believers out on their missions to perfect the world

Chapter 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy  At the dawn of the Republic, slavery faced an uncertain future. Touched by Revolutionary idealism, some southern leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, were talking openly of freeing their slaves. Others predicted that the iron logic of economics would eventually expose slavery’s unprofitability, speeding its demise. But the introduction of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1793 scrambled all those predictions. Whitney’s invention made possible the wide-scale cultivation of short-staple cotton. The white fiber rapidly became the dominant southern crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice, and sugar. The explosion of cotton cultivation created an insatiable demand for labor, chaining the slave to the gin, and the planter to the slave. As the nineteenth century opened, the reinvigoration of southern slavery carried fateful implications for blacks and whites alike—and threatened the survival of the nation itself.

Chapter 17: Manifest Destiny and Its Legacy  Territorial expansion dominated American diplomacy  and politics in the 1840s. Settlers swarming into the still-disputed Oregon Country aggravated relations with Britain, which had staked its own claims in the Pacific Northwest. The clamor to annex Texas to the Union provoked bitter tension with Mexico, which continued to regard Texas as a Mexican province in revolt. And when Americans began casting covetous eyes on Mexico’s northernmost province, the great prize of California, open warfare erupted between the United States and its southern neighbor. Victory over Mexico added vast new domains to the United States, but it also raised thorny questions about the status of slavery in the newly acquired territories—questions that would be answered in blood in the Civil War of the 1860s

SUPPLEMENTAL READING OMITS

Avast! How the US built a Navy, Sent in the Marines, and Faced Down the Barbary Pirates
by Christopher L. Miller

The Legal Status of Women, 1776-1830
by Marylynn Salmon

The Presidential Election of 1800: A Story of Crisis, Controversy, and Change 
By Joanne B. Freeman

Andrew Jackson and the Constitution
by Matthew Warshauer

The Indian Removal Act
by Elliott West

PODCAST OMITS 

The Louisiana Purchase Talking History's host, Bryan Le Beau, discusses how the reality of the Louisiana Purchase compares to Thomas Jefferson's vision of the United States as a land of cultivators of the earth and of slavery with Roger Kennedy, author of Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery and the Louisiana Purchase. Airdate: December 1, 2003.

Lewis and Clark William Clark called his expedition a "vast . . . enterprise." Two hundred years later, the scholarly investigation of Lewis and Clark is itself a vast undertaking. Talking History's Fred Nielsen is joined by James Ronda, the Barnard Chair professor in western history at the University of Tulsa. Ronda's books include Lewis and Clark among the Indians and Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Airdate: May 17, 2004.

William Clark
Fred Nielsen discusses William Clark with his guest, Landon Jones, the author of William Clark and the Shaping of the American West Jones is also the editor of The Essential Lewis and Clark, an edition of the explorers’ journals. Airdate: June 6, 2005.

How Thomas Jefferson worked (Download File - 9.3 MB)
Thomas Jefferson's life was peppered with accomplishments -- but what about the disparity between his public image and private life? Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the fact and fiction surrounding Thomas Jefferson.

How Thomas Jefferson's Bible Worked Download File - 7.1 MB
Thomas Jefferson, one of America's founding fathers, was a very unorthodox thinker. His revision of the Bible was one of his most controversial projects -- tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn why.

How the Louisiana Purchase Worked (Download File - 7.7 MB)
When Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory for 15 million dollars, the US nearly doubled in size. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the effects of the Louisiana Purchase.

How did a shipwreck double the size of the US?  Download File - 5.6 MB
Originally, Spanish silver was meant to stabilize the Louisiana territory -- but the ship carrying the necessary funds sank in the Gulf of Mexico. Find out more about the El Cazador shipwreck in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

The Bombardment of Baltimore Download File - 12.3 MB
Years after the American Revolution, Britain and the United States were still locked in conflict. Listen in as Katie and Sarah explore the British bombardment of Baltimore in 1814 -- and how it inspired a lawyer named Francis Scott Key -- in this podcast.