CHAPTER 13- “The Rise of a Mass Democracy” (1824–1840)
AP Focus
Andrew Jackson handily wins the popular vote in the 1824 election but fails to win the necessary
electoral votes. The U.S. House of Representatives selects his opponent, John Quincy Adams. But in
1828, Jackson easily defeats Adams, ushering in what many see as a period of democratic growth.
Claiming he is attacking entrenched political forces, Jackson rewards his political supporters with
patronage positions in government.
Grassroots movements, as well as government actions and policies, help to promote democratic
reforms.
The tariff of 1832 nearly leads to military confrontation between the federal government and South
Carolina. Though resolved peacefully, the conflict pits two powerful political figures against each other,
President Andrew Jackson and Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
Cherokee Indians are forced to leave their land and travel west in what becomes known as the Trail of
Tears. Also, Sauk and Fox Indians are beaten in the Black Hawk War and Seminoles in Florida are
defeated and removed to reservations in the West.
Opponents of Jackson and the Democrats form a new political party in the early 1830s, the Whigs.
Martin Van Buren succeeds Jackson. His presidency is seriously damaged by a severe depression brought
on in part by Jackson’s Specie Circular, which ends the Bank of the United States.
Take note of the following:
1.
The conflict over the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 revealed deepening sectional differences.
Opponents of the tariff claimed that individual states could nullify federal laws deemed harmful to their
interests. Jackson disagreed and threatened to use the military to enforce federal acts and laws.
Calhoun, in essence, was making the claim that the United States was a confederation of states—see the
excerpt in The American Pageant (13th ed., p. 264/14th ed., p. 282).
2.
Seeing the Bank of the United States as a vestige of elite eastern control of the economy,
Jackson did battle with its president, Nicholas Biddle. Jackson finally defeated the Bank of the United
States with the Specie Circular. Even though the Supreme Court, in McCulloch v. Maryland, had ruled the
Bank constitutional, Jackson had his way, but it precipitated an economic collapse.
Chapter Themes
Theme: The election to the presidency of the frontier aristocrat and common person’s hero, Andrew
Jackson, signaled the end of the older elitist political leadership represented by John Quincy Adams. A
new spirit of mass democracy and popular involvement swept through American society, bringing new
energy, as well as conflict and corruption to public life.
Theme: Jackson successfully mobilized the techniques of the New Democracy and presidential power to
win a series of dramatic political battles against his enemies. But by the late 1830s, his Whig opponents
had learned to use the same popular political weapons against the Democrats, signaling the emergence
of the second American party system.
Theme: Amidst the whirl of democratic politics, issues of tariffs, financial instability, Indian policy, and
possible expansion in Texas indicated that difficult sectional and economic problems were festering
beneath the surface and not being very successfully addressed.
CHAPTER 14- “Forging the National Economy” (1790–1860)
AP Focus
Americans look to the western territories and states for new economic opportunities. Profound
innovations in transportation make distant markets accessible. As a result, the North and West are tied
economically. See The American Pageant (13th ed., pp. 312, 313/14th ed., pp. 330, 331) for maps showing
canal and railroad networks. The West also absorbs large numbers of immigrants, many from Ireland
and Germany. Economic Transformations and Demographic Changes are AP themes.
In this period, the population increases tenfold. See the textbook (13th ed., p. 290/14th ed., p. 309) for
statistics.
With industrialization, comes despair for the wage laborer, which gives rise to labor organizing. Because
they are a cheap form of labor, women penetrate the industrial workplace.
The nation’s economy matures and diversifies as people are increasingly tied to trade, industry, and
commercial farming. Historians refer to this development as the Market Revolution.
Take note of the following:
1.
Arriving in huge numbers in the antebellum period, Irish and German immigrants coalesced into
voting blocks, allowing them to play a significant role in the nation’s municipal, state, and federal
elections. Concurrently, organizations and political parties, such as the Know-Nothings, formed to fight
what they considered a weakening of American culture because of immigration.
2.
Industrialization was mainly a northern phenomenon. The southern economy was comparatively
stagnant and lacked diversity. Consequently, the two dominant classes, the industrial and merchant
capitalist in the North and the planter-slaveholder in the South, wanted political and economic
regulations and laws contrary to the other’s needs. For example, northern manufacturers favored a high
protective tariff, which was not in the interest of the planter-slaveholders.
3.
The economic interdependence between the Northeast and the West would play a role in the
debate over the expansion of slavery. This relationship grew so strong that the regions would ally
against the Confederacy—keep in mind, the AP theme Slavery and Its Legacies in North America.
Chapter Themes
Theme: The importance of the West grew in the early nineteenth century. Cheap land attracted
immigrants and natives alike, and after some technological innovations, the West became an
agricultural giant. The increased output also spurred transportation developments to tie this developing
region to the rest of the United States.
Theme: In the era of Jacksonian democracy, the American population grew rapidly and changed in
character. More people lived in the raw West and in the expanding cities, and immigrant groups, like the
Irish and Germans, added their labor power to America’s economy, sometimes arousing hostility from
native-born Americans in the process.
Theme: In the early nineteenth century, the American economy developed the beginnings of
industrialization. The greatest advances occurred in transportation, as canals and railroads bound the
Union together into a continental economy with strong regional specialization.
Chapter 15—“The Ferment of Reform and Culture” (1790–1860)
AP Focus
The Second Great Awakening releases a torrent of religious fervor, combining a belief in moral selfimprovement and a wish to expand democracy by means of evangelicalism. Religion and Reform are
among the new AP themes.
From the 1830s to 1850s, the nation experiences a burst of reform activity. Various movements set out
to democratize the nation further by combating what they see as institutions and ideas that thwart the
expression of democratic values and principles.
The Hudson River School of art celebrates, mostly through landscape painting, the nation’s endless
opportunities, uniqueness, and promise. Transcendentalism, a philosophical and literary movement,
shapes the cultural outlook of the nation by pointing out the limitations of empirical evidence and
encouraging individuals to rely on their senses and emotions to achieve moral improvement. Culture is
another AP theme.
Take note of the following:
1.
Historians debate whether the term Jacksonian democracy is accurate. Some see Jackson as a
representative of the common man and at the center of the era’s democratizing spirit. Others see
Jackson as indifferent to some reform movements (such as women’s suffrage), opposed to others
(abolitionism—he was a slave owner), or unaware of others (possibly urban reform). They hold that
grassroots movements in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s were the primary impetus for reform.
2.
Some reform movements advocated challenging the social, economic, and ideological status
quo. Advocates of women’s rights, for example, challenged the stereotypes that associated women with
a “cult of domesticity.” Abolitionists challenged the institution of slavery. For their part, temperance
advocates fumed that American civilization and culture were being undermined by “demon rum.”
Chapter Themes
Theme: The spectacular religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening reversed a trend toward
secular rationalism in American culture and helped to fuel a spirit of social reform. In the process,
religion was increasingly feminized, while women, in turn, took the lead in movements of reform,
including those designed to improve their own condition.
Theme: The attempt to improve Americans’ faith, morals, and character affected nearly all areas of
American life and culture, including education, the family, literature, and the arts—culminating in the
great crusade against slavery.
Theme: Intellectual and cultural development in America was less prolific than in Europe, but they did
earn some international recognition and became more distinctly American, especially after the War of
1812.
CHAPTER 16—“The South and the Slavery Controversy” (1793–1860)
AP Focus
The South in the antebellum period is dominated by the planter-slaveholder class, which comprises only
a small percentage of the South’s white population—approximately two-thirds of southern whites own
no slaves. See the chart in The American Pageant (13th ed., p. 353/14th ed., p. 375) for a breakdown of
slave ownership.
So important is cotton to the South’s—and, some contend, the nation’s—economy that it is referred to
as King Cotton. See a British visitor’s comment (13th ed., p. 353/14th ed., p. 375). The textbook has maps
(13th ed., p. 354/14th ed., pp. 376, 377) showing the centers of cotton production and the growth in
production from 1820 to 1860.
The life of freed slaves, while appreciably better than that of their enslaved brethren, is precarious.
Freed slaves did not find a panacea to their problems and treatment in the North either.
Abolitionism takes hold. Abolitionists, however, are not particularly popular in the North because they
are seen as troublemakers and rabble-rousers.
Thinking Globally (14th ed., pp. 388–389) charts the struggle to abolish slavery, spearheaded by the
British, and how it played out in other countries around the world.
Take note of the following:
1.
Abolitionists came in varieties. Most favored gradualism, which, for some, meant resettling
freed slaves in Africa and compensating slaveholders. Others would settle for nothing short of an
immediate end to slavery, even if violence was needed to achieve their goal. Lincoln initially identified
with gradualism. William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown identified with the second, although they
differed over the methods to be used: Garrison advocated an end to slavery through legislation, and
John Brown believed that slavery could be defeated only through violent means. Former slaves, like
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, who had experienced the degradation of
slavery firsthand, passionately and articulately expressed their disdain for the “peculiar institution.”
2.
The American Colonization Society (formed in the early nineteenth century) was at the forefront
of the movement to resettle freed slaves in Africa. Although ultimately it was not a viable remedy to the
problem, the society resettled thousands of emancipated slaves on land purchased in Africa.
Chapter Themes
Theme: The explosion of cotton production fastened the slave system deeply upon the South, creating a
complex, hierarchical racial and social order that deeply affected whites as well as blacks.
Theme: The economic benefits of an increasing production of cotton due to the cotton gin and slavery
were shared between the South, the North, and Britain. The economics of cotton and slavery also led to
bigger and bigger plantations, since they could afford the heavy investment of human capital.
Theme: The emergence of a small but energetic radical abolitionist movement caused a fierce
proslavery backlash in the South and a slow but steady growth of moderate antislavery sentiment in the
North.