AGE OF THE BIRTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY, 1815-1840

“ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS”

• The last president who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention was James Monroe

• Last, as well, of the “Virginia Dynasty” (three-fifths clause)

• With the Federalists on life support as a meaningful national political movement, the nation effectively had one major political “party”: Jefferson’s heirs, the Democratic Republicans

• A brief span in US history before the creation of the “Second American Party System” during which Americans felt both a sense of unity and a great pride in their nation

JAMES MONROE

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

• Articulated by outgoing President James Madison at the close of the War of 1812

• Fusion of the old Federalist economic ideas with those of the Jeffersonians

• Bank of the United States to provide a sound financial footing for a mixed economy

• Federally-funded internal improvements to link the westward expanding nation via roads, bridges and canals

• Protective tariff to foster infant American factories

• Described by Madison as a “nationalist” program: Americans flush with a perception of “victory over England” in the War of 1812 and “independence preserved,” as well as US honor vindicated

Cont…

• Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led the way in Congress in promoting the American System, believing it would strengthen and unite the nation, bridging the sectional divide rooted in slavery

• New England, as the heart of early American manufacturing, could use new transportation networks, funded by tariff revenues, to market their products in the West and South

• While the same roads, bridges and canals could bring western foodstuffs and southern cotton to factory towns in the northeast

CLAY/CALHOUN

SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

• Absent for five years, it was re-chartered by Congress in 1816

• Heirs of Jefferson now embracing a cornerstone of their old Federalist opponents’ program

• A place to deposit federal government money

• BUS will print and control the supply of US paper money, thereby keeping a strong currency

• The Second Bank was also created to provide a strong central financial institution to help safeguard the US economy given ups and downs of a market economy

PROTECTIVE TARIFF

• Passed by Congress to aid beginning US manufacturing companies that had surfaced in the wake of the foreign trade embargoes and stoppages during the era of the War of 1812

• Different from a “revenue tariff” which sought to raise money for the US government, these seek to place high import duties on British goods flowing into the country in order to encourage American consumers to buy American

• Congressional unifiers hoped the monies raised would be used to fund internal improvements linking the nation, but the high protective tariffs proved divisive, angering southern leaders

• Who felt their region received little benefit as southern consumers paid more for consumer goods; they also feared tariff retaliation against US grown cotton in British markets

BRITISH BASEBALL BATS

• British baseball bats are the best manufactured bats in the world and can be profitably marketed in the US for a buck

• American baseball bat companies, just beginning to manufacture, cannot profitably sell their bats under $1.25

• Therefore Congress slaps a 30% protective tariff on incoming British bats, increasing their price in the stores to $1.30, thus making the US made bats agreeable to US consumers (Jefferson the agrarian would never have approved)

• Thus increasing the market share of US baseball bat manufacturers by allowing them to “compete,” albeit with artificial government interference in the marketplace

• The eventual goal is a decrease in the US dependence on British industrial goods

• Classical Liberals were scandalized: they prefer laissez faire• Hamilton would have approved (use the US government to build the

American economy)

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

• Although outgoing President Madison vetoed Calhoun’s bill in Congress to federally fund roads and canals, most Federalists and Democratic-Republicans (the Jeffersonians) agreed on the need for internal improvements

• They usually were funded by state funds and/or private investors

• Severely weakened Federalists see roads, bridges, and canals as the means to expand commercial development

• Jeffersonians see them as the link to distant US agricultural markets and as the way to spur westward expansion

ERIE CANAL

• The most famous American canal from the brief era in which canals were popular

• Built over an eight year period, it ran more than 360 miles westward from Albany to Buffalo, transforming the latter into a major commercial center. Goods were then shipped down the Hudson to New York City, another 150 miles

• The Erie was only about 4 feet deep, meaning flatboats pushed along by poles or pulled by mules along the banks (tended by child labor) were the primary means of transporting goods

• System of locks allowed the journey to ascend/descend 675 feet• Thus shortening the journey from 20 days to 6, and shrinking the cost

from $1.00 to 5 cents!!• Goods once scarce in the west could now be shipped there quickly and

cheaply• Unlike George Washington’s failed privately owned Virginia canal, the Erie

was the product of the government of the state of New York: another successful example of government intervention in the marketplace

• By 1840 3,300 miles of canals crisscrossed the nation, but soon they were replaced by the more efficient and flexible railroad: their brief heyday passed into history

STEAMBOATS

• Although limited to existing rivers, steamboats proved another vital way to link the east to the west for transporting goods and people

• Common well into the nineteenth century (Mark Twain)

EARLY US RAILROAD

ADAMS-ONIS TREATY, 1819

• Spain now a declining world power that has suffered the indignity in recent years of seeing several of their Latin American colonies gaining independence…Mexico soon did the same

• Madrid therefore employed “sun and moon” diplomacy through their ambassador Luis de Onis

• He ceded Spanish West Florida, a narrow strip of land touching the Caribbean, and Florida proper to the US for a few million in damage claims, a moot point after General Andrew Jackson’s recent rampage through Florida

• Onis also abandoned all Spanish claims to the disputed Oregon Country, thus giving the US a less contested transcontinental foothold on the Pacific coast

• A brilliant coup by the nation’s savvy and astute secretary of state, John Quincy Adams

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

ADAMS-ONIS TREATY

1819 ADAMS-ONIS TREATY

1819 ADAMS-ONIS TREATY

MONROE DOCTRINE, 1823

• John Quincy Adams rejected suggestions that the US issue a “joint statement” with Great Britain (“a cockboat in the wake of a British man-of-war”)

• A series of ideas interspersed throughout President Monroe’s 1823 State of the Union message to Congress

• Non-colonization idea aimed at Russian incursions in California (luckily for Adams, a revolution in Russia brought in a new tsar who, as part of a reactionary crackdown, abandoned the outposts in North America

• Non-intervention was Adams’ insistence that European states not bully their way back into this hemisphere (was this self-interested or benevolent?)…their compliance had much more to do with the Royal British navy than fear of the US

• Non-interference: Adams’ promise that the US would not meddle in European affairs, a hollow pledge given our military weakness

• Well received at home as a further statement of US national pride, but all but ignored in Europe

MONROE DOCTRINE

MARSHALL’S SUPREME COURT

• Federalist Chief Justice a “judicial nationalist” who never missed an opportunity to elevate the power of the national government at the expense of mere states

• He also grasped the legal foundation for the growth of the market economy: the sanctity of contracts

• An iron will that successfully “marshaled” the vast bulk of “the brethren” to support his judicial views and decisions over an almost 35 year reign as chief justice

• Appellate Jurisdiction

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL

BURR TREASON TRIAL

FLETCHER V. PECK, 1810

• The Yazoo Land Company swindled Georgia Indians out of 35,000 acres of land using the “deed game”

• They then bribed the Georgia legislature to make sure the land sale went through without a hitch

• The bribery scandal was exposed and angry voters ousted the bribed legislators in the next election…the new incoming legislature then voided the original purchase

• The Yazoo Land Company sued in federal court, citing the contracts clause of the Constitution

McCULLOUGH V. MARYLAND, 1819

• The state of Maryland began to tax the profits earned by the Baltimore branch of the Second Bank of the United States

• The Bank sued in federal court, citing the supremacy clause in the Constitution

• “the power to tax is the power to destroy”

• Marshall, in the spirit of Hamilton, cited the elastic clause of the Constitution in ruling for the plaintiffs

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE V. WOODWARD, 1819

• New Hampshire attempted to turn Dartmouth, a private college into a state-run institution

• The college hired Senator Daniel Webster, a graduate, and sued to maintain their private status, as granted in a 1769 charter issued by King George III

• Marshall ruled that…, citing the contracts clause in the Constitution

DANIEL WEBSTER

GIBBONS V. OGDEN, 1824

• New York state had granted a transport monopoly to a steamship line along the Hudson River begun by Robert Fulton and now owned by Aaron Ogden

• A rival steamship company sued in federal court to break the monopoly granted by New York

• Marshall ruled that…., citing the “interstate commerce” clause in the Constitution

WORCESTER V. GEORGIA, 1832

• Found for the Cherokee in their struggle with Georgia, which had systematically whittled away at their sovereignty for decades

• Cherokee sued to enforce their treaty with the US• Marshall designated the Indians as “domestic, dependent nations” where “the

laws of Georgia have no force,” thus making them the domain of the federal government

• Another attempt by the Chief Justice to weaken the power of states and strengthen the reach of the US government

• Agreements between nations are treaties• President Jackson, furious, said “Marshall as made his decision-now let him

enforce it”• Which of course Marshall could not do

CHARLES RIVER BRIDGE CASE

• Roger B. Taney, a slave-owning Marylander, succeeded Marshall as chief justice

PANIC OF 1819

• Nature of “boom and bust” cycles in a mostly laissez faire market economy

• Supply chasing demand…supply eventually overtaking demand…..demand overtaken by supply

• Poor weather in post-Napoleonic-Europe over several years created a significant demand for US farm products, which in turn drove up land values in the US

• As did the insatiable demand from English textile mill owners for southern cotton (Eli Whitney’s cotton gin)

• Thus farmland prices rose, touching off widespread speculation in western lands, built on easy credit and far too much paper money

• Europe recovered, and British Corn Laws placed a high tariff on imported agricultural products to protect British growers, thus lessening the demand for US agricultural supplies: western land values plummeted (50-75%)

• Second Bank of the US contracted by calling in outstanding loans, straight-jacketing numerous state banks and individuals

• Resulting in widespread bankruptcies, foreclosures, unemployment, bringing devastation to workers, farmers, and their families

WHAT IS A “MARKET ECONOMY?”

• Governed by the “laws of supply and demand”• Ready access to credit is essential (banks/private capital)• Entrepreneurial ethos (risk-taking)• Cultural support for Individualism and Self-Reliance• Corporations: “limited liability”• Specialization of labor• Urbanization• Ready sources of cheap labor (failed farmers/immigrants)• “Boom and Bust” cycles• Society rooted in a firm respect for the law• Strong legal foundations for the sanctity of contracts• Laissez Faire with a great deal of government intervention to aid

businesses

Cont…

• “we are all buyers, we are all sellers”

• Hamburger stand model

• Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”

• Market sets prices, wages, compensation

• Individual spontaneity (homo economicus loyolus)

• Planned economy

ELI WHITNEY

COTTON GIN

SLAVES AND A COTTON GIN

REJUVENATION OF SLAVERY

• The insatiable demands of European mills for American cotton, coupled with Whitney’s gin, completely re-energized an institution that many in the North though might gradually fade from view over the course of the 19th century

• Once largely confined to a coastal strip it now thrived and threatened to spread vigorously westward across the continent as slave owners prospered

MISSOURI COMPROMISE, 1820

• A bid by Congress to manage the sectional situation by balancing slave and free states, rooted in the massive westward movement after the War of 1812

• Tallmadge of New York vs. Cobb of Georgia• Speaker of the House Henry Clay stitched together an agreement allowing

Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state although it was situated north of the Mason-Dixon line

• To achieve balance Congressional leaders carved free state Maine out of Massachusetts Bay, thus preserving the delicate balance in Congress: twelve free and slave states

• The principle in place for over thirty years, that slave states henceforward could only enter the Union from lands below 36 degrees-30 minutes became enshrined (Missouri became the one-time exception)

• Each new entering slave state would also be accompanied by a free state, thus preserving the balance in Congress and fooling national leaders into believing that westward expansion could be accomplished while meeting both northern and southern political concerns over representation, particularly in the US Senate

Cont…

• The nation was becoming more dividied, however, along an east-west axis as western farmers had very different goals and concerns than did eastern merchants, manufacturers, and laborers

• New cleavage over the westward spread of slavery further divided the nation as well in the wake of the Missouri Compromise

• The Jeffersonian-Republicans failed to offer a coherent ideology that unified the divided nation, and thus ended the brief “era of good feelings”

“THE GREAT COMPROMISER”

JOHN C. CALHOUN

MISSOURRI COMPROMISE

SLAVE TOTALS, 1820

SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

• Many ordinary Americans felt adrift amidst the sweeping changes wrought by the westward movement, the market economy and early urbanization, Catholic immigration, and the cotton-induced rejuvenation of slavery

• Revivalists embraced the idea that all the uncertainty and drift felt by Americans could be explained by “sin” and that the answer was “repentance”

• Rejecting sin and embracing Christ would transform one into a tee-totaling, sober-minded, hard-working, self-reliant, and frugal individual: the very values that position one to succeed in the emerging market economy

• Charles Grandison Finney, a charismatic preacher who swept through the “burned-over” district of western New York (transformed by the Erie Canal)

CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY

Cont…

• MILLENNARIANISM a key aspect for many of the revivalists of the Second Great Awakening

• A belief that Christ’s second coming was immanent, and that his arrival would usher in a long period of peace on earth

• The task of mankind, and of Americans in particular (US Exceptionalism), was to purge sin from the world in preparation for Christ’s return: Human Perfectibility

• Favorite targets of the Evangelical reformers: drinking, swearing, slavery, Sabbath-breakers, laziness, prostitution, and general licentiousness

Cont….

• Fiery sermons at camp meetings about sin and redemption, about rejection of the Devil and embrace of Christ, provided both the entertainment and social gathering opportunities of their day

• Especially attractive to (marginalized) women

• Southern evangelical ministers white and black initially found common cause, but by the 1840s white evangelical congregations had separated from black revivalist churches, parting ways largely over slavery and its role in human perfectibility

Cont…

• Northern evangelical revivalists like Charles Grandison Finney and Lyman Beecher preached that the embrace of Christ was meaningless without pious deeds and social reform

• Further stressing that anyone could be saved if they made a personal decision to live according to the Bible (as humans, they argued, we are free to choose sin or salvation)

• Financed by affluent Americans interested in Social Control

• Many of the Antebellum Reform Crusaders emerged from the Second Great Awakening

• Parallels in contemporary Los Angeles??

REVIVAL MEETING

REVIVALIST PREACHER

1824 ELECTION

• Crawford of Georgia, the choice of the caucus, suffered a debilitating stroke, thus opening up the election

• Three other candidates emerged: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson

• Although Jackson earned a plurality of votes he did not win an outright majority, thus throwing the election into the House of Representatives

• Where Clay, the lowest vote getter, was Speaker• Adams emerged from this process as president, incurring the wrath of

Jacksonians, who claimed a “corrupt bargain” had been struck between the ambitious Clay and Adams

• This result set the stage for the “Second American Party” system as Jackson’s supporters dedicated themselves over the next four years to righting this “wrong”

THE “OLD HERO”

RUG PULLED OUT…

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS PENNY

ELECTORAL VOTE GRAPH

ADAMS’PRESIDENCY

• A superb secretary of state but a mediocre president who was still tied to the ever more outdated notion that a natural aristocracy should govern while above mere partisan politics

• Adams was also enmeshed in the old republican idea of a limited executive inherited from the revolutionary generation at a time when new issues faced the nation that called for more decisive executive action (westward expansion, tariff policy, the spread of slavery, how to manage the market economy, industrialism)

1828 ELECTION

• Jackson’s supporters were extremely well-organized throughout the nation, marketing their candidate as the “Old Hero,” a living link to the American Revolution, who had arrived to clean up the cesspool of corruption in Washington

• They accused President Adams of being the “Saint Petersburg pimp” and campaigned on a platform of less federal government

• Adams’ supporters, not to be outdone, accused Jackson’s beloved wife Rachel of bigamy

• Jackson’s larger-than-life wide appeal as an Indian fighter, the hero of New Orleans, conqueror of Florida, and a wealthy slave owner carried the day

• Jackson’s supporters used a variety of means to insure his election in 1828, capitalizing on his enormous charisma and reputation

• And also employing new tactics to win over the increasing number of white male voters and the many states that now tied their electoral vote to the popular vote

• Parades, barbecues, stump speeches, alcohol, newspaper advertising• All to use the “corrupt bargain” and Jackson’s humble roots and remarkable

rise to portray themselves as the party of the common man against the aristocratic special interests

• Given the three way regional split within the nation, they knew they could offer no unifying national agenda

• Rewarding their key supporters across the nation who had delivered the vote with important patronage jobs in the post office and land office

KEY MOMENTS IN JACKSON’S PRESIDENCY

• Peggy Eaton affair

• Nullification Crisis

• Bank War

• Rise of the Whig party

• Maysville Road veto

• Indian Removal

PEGGY EATON AFFAIR

• Peggy, the daughter of a very popular inn owner in Washington, became engaged to the dashing secretary of war, John Eaton, shortly after the mysterious death of her husband, a naval officer, while on duty in the Mediterranean

• Cabinet wives then snubbed Peggy, led by the spouse of vice-president John C. Calhoun

• Jackson became enraged, seeing in the shunning of Peggy echoes of the shameful treatment of his wife in the recent presidential election

• Martin van Buren, the only bachelor in the cabinet, cleverly sided with Jackson in defending her purity and honor, and seduced the president into firing his entire cabinet

NULLIFICATION CRISIS

• Rooted not just in high protective tariffs but in the growing malaise among the planter-aristocrat leaders of South Carolina that sinister forces threatened them and their beloved state

• Significant white out-migration because of the soil erosion and the promise of cheaper western cotton lands further were the backdrop to their sense of an evil conspiracy threatening their way of life

• As did the very high percentage of slaves to whites in the state, the highest in the South, during the era of the Denmark Vessey conspiracy, the Nat Turner revolt, and David Walker’s Appeal

Cont.

• Couple these fears among the planter elite of South Carolina with their still very active gentlemen’s code and there could be but one outcome: a defiant stand in defense of the honor of the state

• In the form of Nullification, echoing the sentiments of the Federalists at the Hartford Convention about 15 year earlier, which asserted that a state could refuse to obey federal laws if those statutes violated the restrictions imposed on the US government by the 1787 Constitution

• Jackson, who also lived by the gentleman’s code, saw the honor of the Union besmirched by the actions of the South Carolina Nullifiers and threatened an armed invasion to suppress the insurrection if the state’s leaders did not stand down

• Clay, Webster, and Calhoun engineered a compromise tariff that reduced rates significantly over a ten year period, which satisfied the honor of the Nullifiers to the point where they could step back from the precipice

• Jacksonians then persuasively spun the episode to the credit of the president for championing the Union over treason

BANK CRISIS

• Henry Clay, who mistakenly saw the Second Bank of the US as a popular institution, called for its early re-charter in an effort to discredit Jackson and position himself to win the presidency in 1832

• Jacksonians had long loathed the Bank as a tool of the eastern establishment and as an engine of special privileges

• Jackson himself despised Clay as “Judas” from the 1824 election and saw in this re-charter ploy naked political ambition

• He twice vetoed re-charter bills passed by a Congress unable to override them and then withdrew federal funds from the Bank, in effect crippling it

• Historians are still debating the efficacy of this decision by Jackson, with more than a few ranking it as among the most ill-advised decisions of his presidency, although it did win him support from many ordinary Americans who had a love/hate relationship with banks in general

NICHOLAS BIDDLE

MAYSVILLE ROAD VETO

• Although the Jacksonians generally championed federal support for internal improvements, the president vetoed this appropriations bill on the grounds that the road lay entirely within the state of Kentucky, the home of his arch-enemy Henry Clay, thus violating the interstate commerce clause

• Clay countered that the bill merely funded an extension of an already existing road that lay outside of Kentucky, thus making addition constitutional

• Many historians view this penchant by Jackson to take every political concern personally as another strike against him

RISE OF THE WHIG PARTY

• The political party that surfaced in opposition to what its leaders saw as the tyrannical demagoguery of Andrew Jackson (12 vetoes, Force Bill, War on the Bank), ridiculed in cartoons as “King Andrew”

• Term itself originated in 17th century England with the party that opposed royal power

• Whigs saw the nation imperiled with a duelist in the White House who bragged about not being able to spell properly

• In an age of what they saw as “mob rule” they longed for the earlier, republican concept of an enlightened leadership of gentlemen drawn from the uppermost ranks of society (Hamilton echo)

KING ANDREW I

• Cartoonist takes a Whig perspective in seeing Jackson as a tyrant

• In the wake of the removal of the Cherokee without Congressional consent

• As well as his veto of the bill to re-charter the Second Bank of the United States, and his creation of “pet banks” to siphon monies from the Bank in order to drain it of its assets

INDIAN REMOVAL

• About 4,000 Cherokee died on the infamous “Trail of Tears” during the removal process

• Historians are divided on Andrew Jackson’s approach to the problem• Some applaud the president for intervening and saving the Indians from

destruction at the hands of greedy and cotton land-hungry Georgians• Others condemn him for giving in to their greed and insist that, instead

he should have pursued a Nullification Crisis style intervention to preserve treaty promises previously made to the tribes, and to honor Marshall’s Supreme Court decision

THE LOWELL GIRLS

• Refer to the essay in Portraits of America by Professor Stephen Yafa (20)

• This essay and related issues were discussed in class about December 10

• And will appear on Exam IV just before the holiday break

THE TEXAS QUESTION

• The roots of the problem go back to Mexico’s winning of independence from Span in the early 1820s

• The leaders of the new republic were faced with an immediate foreign policy question: what to do with the vast and sparsely inhabited northern stretches of the new nation in the face of the cotton land hunger of the USA, directly to the east

• Lacking a viable middle class of potential settlers, and with the younger sons of the well-to-do unwilling to dodge Comanche arrows while creating haciendas in Texas, Mexico’s leaders somewhat reluctantly adopted a “Third Way” approach

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN

Cont…

• Invite American pioneers, frustrated at high land prices in the western US, into Mexico with offers of vast estates (about 4,000 acres) for about $200, payable in installments

• The new settlers (recruited by “empresarios” like Stephen F. Austin) promised to renounce US citizenship, learn and speak Spanish, convert to Catholicism, and abide by the laws and customs of Mexico (a small price to pay for 4,000 acres)

• Thus, Mexican authorities hoped, populating the northern sections of the country with new Mexican citizens and possibly staving off Yankee occupation

• Most of the new citizens, however, had little intention of following through on their promises and did not see themselves as “Mexican”

• Driven in part by a strong sense of white supremacy, and by anti-government attitudes, they flouted Mexican laws, customs, and traditions, gradually alienating their supporters in Mexico City

• Mexico finally tried to corral them by outlawing slavery in 1829, in part a thinly-veiled attempt to reign in the former Americans, who had come to rely on slaves for their cotton and cattle empires

• The ban on slavery, and other attempts to force the settlers to honor their sworn promises to the Mexican republic, led to their revolt for independence in 1835

• In direct violation of their commitment to Mexico and in order to protect slavery, as well as to divorce themselves from obedience to what they considered “inferior” Mexicans

• General Santa Ana was dispatched to crush their insurrection (interestingly, many Texicans worshipped Andrew Jackson but despised Santa Ana)

GENERAL SANTA ANA

THE ALAMO

• From Mexico’s perspective the defenders of the Alamo were lawless revolutionaries, many of whom were not even residents of Texas

• General Santa Ana (the Andrew Jackson of Mexico) gave those inside the Alamo the chance to surrender and live

• Or fight on and face certain death, which was the choice of of those holed up inside the old mission (they were not martyrs, but rather expected reinforcements)

• Santa Ana, with an armed rebellion to crush, insisted he had to make a harsh example of those who broke their solemn oaths, defied the law, and rose in open rebellion against legitimate government, and had his troops cut them down to the last man

• New research indicates Davy Crockett and some of the others may not all have died as heroically as Hollywood legend has suggested in countless films

THE ALAMO

Cont…

• Next to be dealt with were the defenders of Goliad, who were surrounded and captured…Santa Ana ordered their execution and 341 were slain, further fuelling Texican anger

• General Fannin, their commander, had refused to send reinforcements to the Alamo (for some historians proof of the lack of unity and common purpose among the Texican rebels)

• Over 40% of the Texican forces were Southerner outsiders who brought with them a strong belief in slavery and a racist contempt for Mexicans

SAM HOUSTON

BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO

• Sam Houston, a fairly recent arrival, led the Texan forces that defeated the reviled Santa Ana several weeks later after the latter divided his army in an attempt to locate Houston’s forces

• Houston had been pursuing a policy of retreat (reminiscent of George Washington?) that his supporters labeled as wise and his detractors described as cowardice)

• Until receiving intelligence on the Mexican camp, which he then attacked at siesta time, killing about 650 in less than 20 minutes, and taking an additional 700 prisoners

LETTER FROM SAM HOUSTON

INDEPENDENCE

• Houston then forced Santa Ana to sign a treaty at bowie knife point granting independence to Texas (the Lone Star Republic)

• Which the Mexican Congress soon repudiated as invalid, on the grounds that it had been singed under the duress of a death threat

• Adding to the uproar and insult, the leaders of Texas claimed a southern boundary all the way to the Rio Grande, 150 miles south of the original border, further infuriating many patriotic Mexicans

EVOLUTION OF THE WHIGS

• Attracted those who favored the positive use of government power to promote economic growth (internal improvements, tariffs, banks)

• As well as those who wanted to control and regulate the social consequences of those changes (immigration, territorial expansion)

• Including native-born Protestants, the old merchant elite, aspiring and prosperous farmers tied to the market, artisan-entrepreneurs, the new market-created middle class, evangelical reformers, advocates of compulsory public schools, and temperance supporters

ANTIMASONIC PARTY

• Strong in western New York where the creation of the Erie Canal had brought rapid and upsetting change

• Needing scapegoats, some believed that those with special privileges (ie. Masons) were unfairly dominating society

• The Anti-Masonic Party surfaced advancing this conspiracy theory about the supposed skullduggery perpetrated by the secret and powerful Masons, who made a ready target for popular suspicions and anxieties

• They further that the Masons violated the old republican spirit of equal opportunity with their aristocratic and clandestine nature

• Andrew Jackson was a Mason• Thus creating “strange bedfellows” in the elitist Whig leader Daniel Webster

and the avowedly anti-elitist Anti-Masonic party• Whigs, then, were a diverse and often contradictory party• Inability to match the Jacksonian’s genius for organizing at the grass roots

voter level• The end of the enormously popular presidency of Jackson, coupled with the

side effects of the Panic of 1837, opened the door for the Whigs, who finally broke through in the election of 1840 with a war hero of their own, William Henry Harrison, while portraying Jackson’s hand-picked successor, Martin Van Buren, as the snobby John Quincy Adams of his day

• 70% of the eligible voters turned out, responding favorably to the Whigs’ parades, slogans, and pomp (sound familiar?)

EVOLUTION OF THE DEMOCRATS

• If the Whigs gathered those afraid of the disorders inherent in an expansionist, market economy nation, the Democrats spoke to the victims of the market who feared the loss of personal independence and favored the weak use of government power

• The Market meant liberating prosperity to a Whig and crushing dependency and loss of autonomy to a Democrat, whose rallying point was resentment

• Including recent Irish and German immigrants, states’ rights Southerners, who shared a common fear that government power would be used against them (temperance, Sabbatarian laws), and those not thriving in the economic marketplace

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON

ELECTION OF 1844

• Arguably one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American History• Clay very narrowly defeated, thanks to the votes of a small splinter party in

New York• Had he been elected there would have been no war with Mexico and,

hence, quite possibly, no Civil War 15 years later• The winner, Polk of Tennessee, rode a groundswell of support for aggressive

territorial expansion, what was soon dubbed “manifest destiny,” specifically the acquisition from Mexico of California and all that lay between it and Texas, as well as the Oregon country (thus winning enthusiastic support for expansion from both Northern and Southern voters)

• Clay the Whig, barely defeated, did not support expansion and would not have sought California

HENRY CLAY

JAMES K. POLK

LONE STAR REPUBLIC

• Though ardently championed by many of its leaders who passionately supported the idea of autonomy from both Mexico and the US, it eventually collapsed of its own contradictions

• Attractive to many Texas residents because pesky abolitionists were banned, as were high protective tariffs that were driving up the cost of consumer goods in the American South

• The commitment to minimal central government also suited the beliefs of many of its leaders and citizens

LONE STAR REPUBLIC

JOHN TYLER

ANNEXATION OF TEXAS

• But the inability to tax and a chronic shortage of specie, coupled with (unfounded) fears of a potential British takeover, eventually drove the leaders to seek annexation to the US

• Something which Jackson had secretly supported while president, now, ten years later, enthusiastically approved by many Southern leaders

• Some Northern leaders saw in the annexation of Texas evidence of a “slave power conspiracy” to control the Union

• Accomplished by lame duck President John Tyler, a Southern slaveholder, via a joint resolution in Congress (“wackos in Waco”)

BOWIE KNIFE (TEXAS TOOTHPICK)

THE MEXICAN WAR, 1846-1848

ORIGINS

• President James K. Polk had successfully campaigned on a platform of territorial expansion, cleverly pitched to voters both North and South through an appeal to pro-slavery interests and to those opposed to the extension of slavery via the Oregon territory

• He then proceeded to manufacture a war by sending US forces well into Mexico (the international border was at the Nueces River about 150 miles north of the Rio Grande)

• Mexican forces fired on an American patrol along the Rio Grande, giving Polk his “causus belli” that “American blood had been shed on US soil”

• Debate in Congress on Polk’s request for war was closed after only a few hours and both houses voted overwhelmingly for war

• Senate voted 40-2 and the House vote was 174-14 in favor of the President’s call

• Supporters spoke of bringing the blessings of liberty and democracy westward, that God willed the enterprise

• Impossible to determine the public support for the War: clearly the nation’s newspapers were solidly behind the it

• As with the case today, much easier to support a war fought by a volunteer army

• Odds-makers installed Mexico as the favorite at the beginning of the War: 1) the home team, 2) superb cavalry force, 3)European-trained officer corps, 4) suspicions over the vitality of the volunteer US army

• Despite this, the US forces won virtually every battle and routed the Mexican forces: WHY?

• Far better weaponry for the American troops, especially artillery and rifles

• Further, the War exposed the oligarchic, and even despotic nature of Mexico, where the masses had little or no stake in the fight

WAR MAP

COMMERCIAL WHIGS

• Supported the Mexican War not out of a desire to acquire more farmland, territory for slavery, or even from a sense of national pride in expansion and “manifest destiny”

• Rather, their support was driven by a desire to attain the ports of the Pacific coast, especially the harbor in San Francisco

• As the jumping off point for the profits to be gained in the Asia trade

FAMOUS OPPONENTS

• The fiery advocate of states’ rights, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, did not support the war on the grounds that the arid southwest climate and soil would not support a plantation style economy and was therefore of little use to the southern slave system

• Rookie congressman from Illinois, Whig Abraham Lincoln, offered several sarcastic “show me the spot” speeches on the floor of the House, openly challenging Polk’s war message (he was not re-elected by the pro-expansionist voters from his home district

• Henry David Thoreau• Abolitionists (Garrison’s Liberator openly editorialized for a military defeat of

US troops)• Frederick Douglass opined in his abolitionist newspaper the “North Star,

about “the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic”

THOREAU

EMERSON

EMERSON AND THOREAU

• Thoreau went to jail for not paying taxes to support the Mexican War

• Emerson, while visiting his Transcendentalist friend in jail, said with exasperation, “Henry-what are doing in there?

• Thoreau famously shot back “what are you doing out there?”

WILMOT PROVISO

• A rider attached to a war funding bill that called for slavery to be barred in any lands seized during the War

• Eventually voted down, but the rider gained widespread support in the North and became the divide over the next 15 years, culminating in secession and civil war

• The Wilmot idea became a rallying point for the growing number of Northerners angered by a perception that Southerners controlled the government of the United States (the “slave power conspiracy”), and idea given further energy by abolitionists

SAN PATRICIO BRIGADE

• Many recent Irish immigrants fought for the US in the War, partly to impress their new country with their commitment and partly for the farmland bonus they were promised for service

• Some became disillusioned during the fighting, particularly at the idea of Catholics killing Catholics, and also at the realization that Americans mocked and reviled both the Irish and Mexicans as “inferiors”

• They switched sides and formed this brigade in the Mexican army, fighting with distinction

• But were captured and the end of the War and hanged by American military authorities

FLAG OF THE SAN PATRICIOS

TAYLOR CARTOON

GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR

WAR NEWS FROM MEXICO

BATTLE OF CERRO GORDO

BATTLE MAP

TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO

• The United States essentially seized almost half of Mexico as a prize of war

• The most important portion of which was California

• US gained half a million square miles at a cost of 48 cents per mile

• The American political system choked to death over the next 15 years, unable to “swallow” half of Mexico, culminating in secession and civil war

TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO

ANTEBELLUM REFORM GROUPS

• Revisit the uploaded power point presentation on the “historiography of the ante-bellum reformers” currently on the website

THE TEMPERANCE CRUSADE

• At the heart of the reformers’ message was the necessity of self control, something the drunkard clearly lacked

• The necessities of the emerging market economy also fed this notion, as did the evangelical message of the Second Great Awakening

• All of which drove the impression among reformers that the drinker was a lazy sinner, as well as the source of crime, pauperism, laziness, irresponsibility, and shiftless work habits

• The powers of the state now had to be employed, to end this curse, for the good of individuals and the nation

TEMPERANCE

• Women’s groups very visible in the antebellum efforts to reduce or ban alcoholic beverages

• Assertive and articulate women, yearning to escape the “velvet cage” of “home and hearth, obedient wife and nurturing mother” demands of a patriarchal society

• Working to ban liquor did not threaten male bastions of power such as political office-holding, the business and legal world, or the military

• Thus a flank attack rather than a frontal assault on male authority

FEMALE TEMPERANCE CRUSADERS

Cont…

• Women had a deeper stake in temperance reform as well: husbands frittering away the rent or milk money at the local saloon

• Episodes of spousal and child battery were on the rise, due in part to the ups and downs of the market economy and the numerous unskilled jobs that left many a man feeling small and unimportant

• Also complicating the situation, prostitution was also associated with the saloon culture, thus further threatening a diverse coalition of women

Cont….

• The largest single reform effort in antebellum America• Liquor was cheap during this era• Alcoholic beverage consumption during the period averaged about 5 gallons

per capita annually• Imbibing of liquor an integral part of social behavior that cut across class

lines, with heavy drinking a matter of course on important public days like elections

• Drinking was also an integral part of the pre-industrial workplace• Lack of a suitable alternative to alcoholic drinks

TEMPERANCE MEETS JOAN OF ARC

NATIVIST CARTOON

ANTI-IRISH CARTOON

ANTI-IRISH CARTOON

ANTI CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

LUCRETIA MOTT

SENECA FALLS CONVENTION, 1848

SENECA FALLS

ABOLITIONISM

“SLAVE POWER CONSPIRACY”

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

GARRISON’S LIBERATOR

ABOLITIONIST HANDBILL

• Perhaps 35,000 active abolitionists in the decade before secession and civil war

• The vast majority were “gradualists” who hoped for a slow and relatively painless process of ending slavery that did not rock the boat and gave owner ample opportunity to accommodate to a free labor system

• Immediatists like William Lloyd Garrison, although a minority within the movement, were the loudest and most uncompromising, and aroused the most fear and wrath among slave-owners and non-slave owners alike

• Many ordinary white Northerners hated abolitionists, fearing a mass out-migration from the slave South of freed bondsmen

• That, presumably, would take their jobs, live in their neighborhoods, and sexually ravage their daughters and sisters

• Ordinary white Southerners, on the principle that “I may be poor, but I’m white,” did not want to lose a black large slave population that could lord it over

• Slave-owners obviously opposed abolitionists, citing private property guarantees in the US Constitution

• And their recognition that their status, income, and way of life depended on maintaining slavery

SCHOOL REFORM

• Tax-supported, free, compulsory public schools originated in the Jacksonian period

• Education before 1815 was centered around the family and the church (republican motherhood)

• Teachers and students were unregulated and transient

• Reformers argued that the very future of the republic depended upon an educated citizenry, an especially important concern as the nation became divided by westward expansion, increasing sectionalism, and the growth of the market economy

• Horace Mann of Massachusetts the key voice in the debates to establish “public schools” doing so in part to maintain an idyllic but vanishing New England village culture of social harmony and Puritan values

• Mann’s idea of universal education promised to create a renewed America in which economic and social inequalities would all but disappear

• Education reform gained further momentum in the 1840s with the increasing influx of Catholic immigrants who must, in the words of the Protestant leaders, be “Americanized”

• As well as taught the importance of self-control and moral character so vital to success in the market economy

• United in the belief that self-control and hard work would lead to economic vitality, good citizenship, and a unified nation of shared values