Chapter 9
Nation Building and Nationalism
 Life in the 1820s was very different from that
of the 1780s and 1790s
 Lafayette noticed this when he visited in 1824
 Then on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence, both
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died
 The old world was ending and a new one
beginning
Population
 Between 1760 and 1880, our population grew
by 1290%
 Our population had doubled every 23 years
 European population doubled every 100
years
 We can attribute this to both natural increase
and immigration
 There was a baby boom right after the
revolution
 Availability of land encouraged men and
women to marry young
 The more children one had, the more hands
there were to work the land
 As fewer children died during childhood,
parents started to limit the size of their
families
 By 1830, 1/3 of the population was under the
age of 10
 Immigration also caused a rise in population
 U.S. ideals seemed to promote immigration
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Asylum for the oppressed
All were welcome
Some came for political reasons
Others came for economic reasons
Citizenship only given to whites, mostly
Europeans
James Monroe
 During his presidency, land was peacefully
acquired
 This land offered new opportunities to those
willing to move
 He served 2 terms, 1816 – 1824
 Monroe’s time in office was known as the
“Era of Good Feelings”
 Monroe was a
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A Virginian
Eccentric in dress
Successful as president
Had political good luck
Got to preside over the calm before the next
storm
John Quincy Adams was his Sec. of State
John Quincy Adams
 Son of John and Abigail Adams
 Diplomat to Russia
 Senator
 Later became the 6th president of the United
States
 After the presidency, he bacame a member of
the House of Representatives
 Brilliantly successful as Secretary of State
 Strove for peaceful expansion
J.Q.A.’s Accomplishments
 Gained political distance from Europe by
acquiring territory from Spain
 Gained fishing rights in the Atlantic
 Got land through negotiation, not war
 Rush-Bagot Treaty, 1817
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An agreement with Britain to limit Great Lakes
Naval Forces; 1st disarmament treaty
 Convention of 1818
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Fixed the U.S. – Canadian border west to the
Rocky Mountains at the 49th parallel
 Adams-Onis Treaty or the Transcontinental
Treaty, 1819
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Spain ceded Florida to The U.S. for $5 million
It defined the southern border of the Louisiana
purchase
It gave the U.S. territorial claims extending to
the Pacific
Map, p. 257
 Monroe Doctrine, 1823
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Written by John Quincy Adams
Issued in response to the independence of
Latin American republics
Initially, Britain made a proposal for joint action
with U.S.; Adams rejected this insisting that
U.S. must act independently to avoid foreign
entanglements
Announced by Monroe in his last message to
Congress
 Monroe said there was to be no more
colonization of the Western Hemisphere by
European nations
 There was to be no intervention by Europe in
the affairs of the independent New World
nations
 This was to be the foundation of American
foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere
 We weren’t really strong enough in in 1823 to
enforce this
Missouri Compromise
 In 1819 the question of slavery was brought
before the Congress when Missouri asked to
be admitted to the Union as a slave state
 At this time, there were 22 states in the Union
 11 states were free : Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island Vermont, New
Hampshire, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, & Illinois
 11 states were slave : Virginia, Maryland,
Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, & Louisiana
 Political balance had been kept by admitting
alternately from 1802 – 1819, a slave and
then a free state
 Even with the 3/5 ratio operating in the slave
states’ favor, they only had 81 votes in the
House of Representatives; free states
had105
 And the population of the North seemed to be
growing faster than that in the South
 To preserve sectional balance, the South
looked to its equal vote in the Senate
 February, 1819, when the House was
considering admitting Missouri to the Union
as a slave state, Representative James
Tallmadge, Jr. of New York offered an
amendment
 The amendment prohibited the further
introduction of slaves into Missouri and
provided for the emancipation at age 25 of all
slave offspring born after Missouri became a
state
 There was bitter debate
 The House passed the Tallmadge
Amendment
 The Senate struck it from the Missouri bill
 Missouri was admitted as a slave state and
Maine was then admitted as a free state to
keep the balance; it was then 12 free, 12
slave
 Slavery was then forever prohibited in the
rest of the Louisiana Territory north of 36
degrees, 30’ latitude of Missouri’s southern
border
 Map, p. 273
Settlement
 Many wished to settle in all this new territory
 It was generally thought that Native
Americans would have to be displaced
 As a result of military defeats, there were only
small pockets of Indians in the Ohio Valley
and in the N.W. Territories
 Many Native Americans had already moved
west of the Mississippi
 The last stand of Indians in this region was
from 1831-1832 when the Sac and Fox
Indians under Chief Black Hawk refused to
move from their lands east of the Mississippi
 They were pushed west to the river’s edge
where they were almost exterminated by
federal troops & the Illinois militia while trying
to cross and go west; they were doomed
 The federal government used a combination
of deception, bribery, and threats to get the
Indians to move further west
 Settlers poured in
 By 1840, 1/3 of Americans lived beyond the
Appalachians
 Many bought land for $1.25 per acre
 People moved in groups looking for
something familiar
 Mountain men like Kit Carson, Jedidiah
Smith, and Jim Beckwourth struck out on their
own; pictures, p. 258
 Mountain men would meet up with Native
Americans and company agents at a
Rendezvous in Pinedale, Wyoming to trade
furs in exchange for food, ammunition, and
needed goods
 There was a growing need for more food to
feed those in the ever-growing cities
 So transportation needed to be improved:
roads, railroads, & canals
 These resulted from the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
 Did more than just change the way products
were made
 Changed people’s jobs, how they lived, and
what they used in their daily lives
 Changed transportation systems and created
towns
 Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in
1764 when new machines were invented and
introduced
 Spinning Jenny -- by James Hargreaves in
1764; used for spinning yarn but of poor
quality
 Water Frame -- by Richard Arkwright; spun
multiple strands of yarn at one time; was of
higher quality
 Steam Engine -- by James Watts; used to
power the inventions so water power was no
longer necessary
 Spinning Jenny
 Water frame
 Steam engine
 By early 1800s, most spinning was being
done in factories called “safe houses”
 Britain tried to keep their technology secret,
but British immigrants brought their
knowledge to the U.S.
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Samuel Slater in 1790 started the first textile
mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island
 Industry really didn’t take hold until we were
cut off from imported goods during the War of
1812
 Francis Cabot Lowell and the Boston
Associates set up industry in Massachusetts
after visiting Britain in 1811
 Lowell felt the U.S. could set up a better
system of factories
 They eventually did in Lowell, Lawrence, and
Chicopee, Massachusetts; used Mill Girls
U.S. was a good place for industry
 We had a shortage of labor and machines
could do the work of several men
 We had natural resources: rivers, streams, &
coal
 We had investors
 We had inventors and inventions:
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Cyrus McCormick and his reaper
Samuel F.B. Morse and the telegraph, 1832
Charles Goodyear & vulcanized rubber,1844
Eli Whitney and his interchangeable parts
 We improved transportation to get raw
materials to the factories and the finished
goods to market
 We created railroads, roads, and canals
 Our rivers ran mainly north to south
 We needed routes from east to west
 So the Erie Canal was built in New York
1817-1825
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Artificial water route, 364 miles long
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It connected Buffalo to Albany and the Hudson
River, then on to New York City
End result was an unbroken water route from
the Atlantic to the Great Lakes
The canal cut transportation costs
It also cut the time involved from 26 days to 6
days
Other canals were built, like the C & O that
connects Washington, D.C. with Cumberland,
but it wasn’t as successful
Railroads
 Began in Britain in 1825
 Soon after track were also laid in America
 By 1830s, builders laid 3,000 lines of track
 By 1860s, there were 30,000 miles of track
 Railroads were more reliable than waterways
– no freezing
 But there were some problems
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Different gauge track (different sizes)
Railroad bridges took long time to build
 Roads ---
National Road (Rt. 40)
 Wherever one found roads, railroads, or
canals, towns would spring up
 If a town was bypassed, then that town would
probably become a ghost town
 Immigrants often supplied the labor for the
building of these roads, railroads, and canals
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Irish – sometimes the only job open to them
Chinese – not many job choices open to them
Classes
 Distinct classes began forming
 Upper Class – lived away from factories and
town centers, belonged to clubs, and had
indoor plumbing
 Working Class – lived near factories and
made low wages
 There was a new class emerging, the Middle
Class
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Salesmen, clerks, bookkeepers, accountants,
& other white collar workers
 The middle class gave hope to the working
class
 One could work his way up the ladder of
success:
Through education
 Moving west for new opportunities
 Through the lyceum movement
 Libraries
 Museums
Life was changing; the old world was gone
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