Jessica Paiz
ChS 245 OL
Class#: 17981
History of the Americas
Professor: Dr. Gabriel Buelna
Chapter 10: The Other
Civil War

 Anti-Renter Movement
 Dorr Rebellion
 Jacksonian Democracy
 Flour Riot
 Lowell Girls Movement
 Shoemakers Strike
 Great Railroad Strike
Anti-Rent Movement
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What? Anti-Rent Movement
When? Started in the summer of
1839
Where? Hudson Valley/ New
York
Why? Tenants revolted because
they wanted to prevent the
landlords/owners from evicting
them.
Petitions for an anti-rent bill was
put before legislature in 1845.
It was signed by 25,000 tenants.
In 1845, the Anti-Renters elected
14 members to the state
legislature.
Legislature voted to make illegal
the selling of tenant property for
nonpayment of rent.
Dorr Rebellion

 Rhode Island 1841
 Leader: Thomas Dorr, lawyer
 Movement for electoral reform because Dorr and working
people who supported this rebellion wanted change in the
system because they believed that it wasn’t fair that only
owners of land could vote.
 There were even people who had the right to vote, because they
owned property, supported this revolt.
 Zinn states was “a new constitution that had some reform
because it still gave overrepresentation to the rural areas,
limited the vote to property owners or those who paid a onedollar poll tax, and would let naturalized citizens vote only if
they had $134 in real estate.
 (Zinn 214)
Timeline of the Dorr Rebellion

 1841- Electoral Reform supporters paraded in Providence and organized
their own “People’s Convention”.
 Early 1842-invited votes on the constitution, held an unofficial election
 May 3, 1842- Dorr forces held an inauguration through Providence,
Dorr led an attack on the state arsenal, governor ordered Dorr’s arrest,
but he hid instead
 1843-Law and Order group used intimidation to get out their vote, Dorr
came out of hiding, was arrested, and served jail time.
 (Zinn 214-216)
Jacksonian Democracy

 Andrew Jackson spoke for the common man which meant
that he wanted to develop a better system to help those
who need help (mostly for the lower and middle class)
 The author states that “but the tensions aroused by the
developing system, the growing immigration, required
that the government develop a mass base of support
among whites. Jacksonian Democracy did just that” (Zinn
216).
 Achieve stability and control
 The only thing that seemed weird was that obviously
blacks, Indians, women, and foreigners were clearly
outside the consensus
Andrew Jackson

Flour Riot

 1837-People went to riot because prices went up
 Prices of flour went from $5.62 to $12 a barrel which
went up double the price.
 During this crisis there were 50,000 people out of
work in NYC
 200,000 were living in very horrible conditions.
 Not a lot of information is known on this riot
because it has been ignored through history.
Flour Riot cont’d

 Zinn writes about the flour riot that “Mr. Hart, an
extensive flour dealer on commission, has now
53,000 barrels of flour in his store; let us go and offer
him eight dollars a barrel, and if he does not take
it…”(224)
 So they marched down to his business and “Barrels
of flour, by dozens, and thrown in rapid succession
from the windows…About one thousand bushels of
wheat, and four or five hundred barrels of flour,
were thus wantonly and foolishly as well as
wickedly destroyed” (Zinn 225).
Lowell Girls Movement

 Women demanded higher wages, new rules in
factory that would benefit them and were fair
 This inequality created the United Tailoresses of
New York, Factory Girl’s Association, and Female
Labor Reform Association
 Women would work in the mills and lived in the
dormitories. It seems very fair and helpful but the
“dormitories became prisonlike, controlled by rules
and regulation… were fed only a piece of bread and
gravy”(Zinn 228).
Lowell cont’d

 They protested against the
mills because the weaving
rooms were poorly lit, badly
ventilated, their wages were
terrible, worked from really
morning and ended at night
(Zinn 229)
 They protested and went on
strike but when they didn’t
have money they went back
to work
 In total their were 140
strikes
Shoemakers of
Lynn, Massachusetts
in 1857

 1857- New England
 Shoemakers went on strike because many lost their
jobs, prices went up, wages went down.
 Shoemakers were replaced by machines.
 1860- The Mechanics Association made a meeting to
discuss about the issues
 Shoemakers went on strike down the streets
protesting and making sure that unfinished shoes
would not be sent somewhere else to be finished.
Shoemakers cont’d

 Thousands of men and
women went on strikes
and marched through
cities to stop people
from buying, selling
and even from
manufacturing.
Great Railroad Strike

 1877-Began cutting salaries and wages eg. ($1.75 for working 12
hours), scheming and profiteering by the railroad companies
(Zinn 245) started strikes and violence.
 Railroad employees hated that they were paid a little and
worked so many hours, but what they hated the most was that
when they would get injured, like if their hands were chopped
by machines, or coworkers would die from their injuries or
incidents in the workplace, that the company ignored it and
didn’t care and instead fired them knowing that they
permanently couldn’t work anymore due to this.
 Many strikers died and others went to jail.
 “Workers determined to fight the wage cut, went on strike,
uncoupled the engines, ran them into the roundhouse, and
announced no more trains would leave Martinsburg until the
10% cut was canceled” (Zinn 245).
Railroad cont’d

 “More than half the
freight on the nation’s
75,000 miles of track had
stopped running at the
height of the strikes”
(Zinn 251).
 One of the incidents that
happened during this
strike is that the angry
strikers, “set engines,
buildings, and equipment
ablaze” (digital history
website).
Works Cited

 libcom.org/history/dorr-rebellion-1833-1849
 www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtI
D=2&psid=3189
 www.massaflcio.org/1860-showmakers-strike-lynn
 Zinn, Howard (2005). People’s History of the United
States, Pennsylvania.