Matakuliah : G0862/American Culture and Society
Tahun
: 2007
The Growth of American Society
(1800 – 1865)
Meeting 4
Contents
• American Romance: Mark Twain
• Industrialization: The growth of American
economy
• Slavery and the separation of American South
• The Nation is divided: the Civil War
Review on Huckleberry Finn
In his latest story, Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's
Comrade), by Mark Twain, Mr. Clemens has made a
very distinct literary advance over Tom Sawyer, as an
interpreter of human nature and a contributor to our
stock of original pictures of American life. Still adhering
to his plan of narrating the adventures of boys, with a
primeval and Robin Hood freshness, he has broadened
his canvas and given us a picture of a people, of a
geographical region, of a life that is new in the world.
The scene of his romance is the Mississippi river.
Review on Huckleberry Finn
Mr. Clemens has written of this river before specifically, but he has
not before presented it to the imagination so distinctly nor so
powerfully. Huck Finn's voyage down the Mississippi with the run
away nigger Jim, and with occasionally other companions, is an
adventure fascinating in itself as any of the classic outlaw stories,
but in order that the reader may know what the author has done for
him, let him notice the impression left on his mind of this lawless,
mysterious, wonderful Mississippi, when he has closed the book.
But it is not alone the river that is indelibly impressed upon the mind,
the life that went up and down it and went on along its banks are
projected with extraordinary power. Incidentally, and with a true
artistic instinct, the villages, the cabins, the people of this river
become startlingly real.
The Hartford Courant Feb. 20, 1885 p. 2
American Industrialization (1790 and 1820 )
According to geographer David R. Meyer, In The Roots
of American Industrialization, he argues that it was the
prosperity of eastern agriculture that sparked the
industrial transformation of the antebellum era. Once a
manufacturing base had been established in the East,
moreover, the region’s urban metropolises further fueled
demand and supplied capital. Finally, within each
industry, entrepreneurs developed a variety of innovative
organizational, technological, and marketing strategies to
ensure that the region retained its premier industrial
position and eventually expanded into national markets.
American Industrialization (1790 and 1820 )
Meyer argues that between 1790 and 1820 “significant changes” in
commerce, agriculture, and manufacturing “set the stage for faster
growth from 1820 to 1860” (p. 281). Foremost among the changes
was the increasing commercialization and prosperity of eastern
agriculture, which led to a growing rural population and labor force
and to rising per capita incomes, wages, and capital investment.
Though Meyer recognizes that some rural areas—particularly less
fertile, hilly regions—experienced economic decline and
outmigration, most eastern farmers “responded to local
opportunities” (p. 35), transporting farm produce to nearby markets
by wagon and embracing new agricultural techniques. According to
Meyer, the prosperous agricultural economy that resulted spurred
capital accumulation; inspired the creation of a hierarchy of urban
places that provided retail outlets and commercial services for
farmers; opened up markets for manufactured goods as prosperous
farmers
Slavery
From about the 1640s until 1865, people of African descent were
legally enslaved within the boundaries of the present U. S. mostly by
whites, but also by a comparatively small number of American
Indians and free blacks. The wealth of the U.S. was greatly
enhanced by the exploitation of African American slaves.
While estimates of the number of slaves brought to North America
vary from a few hundred thousand to a few million, the slave
population in the U.S. had grown to 4 million by the 1860 Census. In
other countries, the slave population barely reproduced itself. From
the later 18th century, and possibly before that even, and until the
Civil War, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was
much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and
was nearly twice as rapid as that of England.
Slavery
Treatment of slaves, primarily African Americans, was both harsh
and inhumane. Whether laboring or walking about in public, people
living as slaves were regulated by legally authorized violence. On
large plantations, slave overseers were authorized to whip and
brutalize noncompliant slaves.
Because they were the legal property of their owners, it was not
unusual for enslaved African American women to be raped by their
owners, members of their owner's families, or their owner's friends.
Children who resulted from such rapes generally were slaves as
well
In addition to physical abuse and murder, slaves were at constant
risk of losing members of their families if their owners decided to
trade them for profit, punishment, or to pay debts. A few slaves
retaliated by murdering owners and overseers, burning barns, killing
horses, or staging work slowdowns.
.
Civil War:
In U.S. history, the conflict (1861 – 65) between the
Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that
seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. It
is generally known in the South as the War between the
States and is also called the War of the Rebellion (the
official Union designation), the War of Secession, and
the War for Southern Independence.
The chronology of Civil War
The “wedges of separation” caused by slavery split large Protestant
sects into Northern and Southern branches and dissolved the Whig
party (One of the two major political parties of the United States in
the second quarter of the 19th century ) . Most Southern Whigs
joined the Democratic party, one of the few remaining, if shaky,
nationwide institutions. The new Republican party, heir to the FreeSoil party and to the Liberty party, was a strictly Northern
phenomenon.
The crucial point was reached in the presidential election of 1860, in
which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated three
opponents—Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C.
Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell of the
Constitutional Union party.
The chronology of Civil War
Lincoln's victory was the signal for the secession of South Carolina
(Dec. 20, 1860), and that state was followed out of the Union by six
other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Texas. Immediately the question of federal property in these states
became important, especially the forts in the harbor of Charleston,
S.C. The outgoing President, James Buchanan, a Northern
Democrat who was either truckling to the Southern, proslavery wing
of his party or sincerely attempting to avert war, pursued a vacillating
course. At any rate the question of the forts was still unsettled when
Lincoln was inaugurated, and meanwhile there had been several
futile efforts to reunite the sections, notably the Crittenden
Compromise offered by Sen. J. J. Crittenden. Lincoln resolved to
hold Sumter. The new Confederate government under President
Jefferson Davis and South Carolina were equally determined to oust
the Federals.