"GO WEST, YOUNG MAN, AND GROW UP WITH THE COUNTRY,"
John Soule, 1851 The War of 1812 was, in a sense, a second war of independence,
for before that time the United States had not been accorded
equality in the family of nations. With its conclusion, many of
the serious difficulties that the young republic had faced since
the Revolution now disappeared. National union under the
Constitution brought a balance between liberty and order. With a
low national debt and a continent awaiting exploration, the
prospect of peace, prosperity and social progress opened before
the nation. BUILDING UNITY Commerce was cementing national unity. The privations of war
convinced many of the importance of protecting the manufacturers
of America until they could stand alone against foreign
competition. Economic independence, many argued, was as essential
as political independence.To foster self-sufficiency,
congressional leaders Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun
of South Carolina urged a policy of protectionism -- imposition
of restrictions on imported goods to foster the development of
American industry. The time was propitious for raising the customs tariff. The
shepherds of Vermont and Ohio wanted protection against an influx
of English wool. In Kentucky, a new industry of weaving local
hemp into cotton bagging was threatened by the Scottish bagging
industry. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, already a flourishing center
of iron smelting, was eager to challenge British and Swedish iron
suppliers. The tariff enacted in 1816 imposed duties high enough
to give manufacturers real protection. In addition, Westerners
advocated a national system of roads and canals to link them with
Eastern cities and ports, and to open frontier lands for
settlement. However, they were unsuccessful in pressing their
demands for a federal role in internal improvement because of
opposition from New England and the South. Roads and canals
remained the province of the states until the passage of the
Federal Highways Act of 1916. The position of the federal government at this time was
greatly strengthened by several Supreme Court decisions. A
committed Federalist, John Marshall of Virginia, became chief
justice in 1801 and held office until his death in 1835. The
court -- weak before his administration -- was transformed into a
powerful tribunal, occupying a position co-equal to the Congress
and the president. In a succession of historic decisions,
Marshall never deviated from one cardinal principle: upholding
the sovereignty of the Constitution. Marshall was the first in a long line of Supreme Court
justices whose decisions have molded the meaning and application
of the Constitution. When he finished his long service, the court
had decided nearly 50 cases clearly involving constitutional
issues. In one of Marshall's most famous opinions -- Marbury v.
Madison (1803) -- he decisively established the right of the
Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of any law of
Congress or of a state legislature. In McCulloch v. Maryland
(1819), which dealt with the old question of the implied powers
of the government under the Constitution, he stood boldly in
defense of the Hamiltonian theory that the Constitution by
implication gives the government powers beyond those expressly
stated. EXTENSION OF SLAVERY Slavery, which had up to now received little public attention,
began to assume much greater importance as a national issue. In
the early years of the republic, when the Northern states were
providing for immediate or gradual emancipation of the slaves,
many leaders had supposed that slavery would die out. In 1786
George Washington wrote that he devoutly wished some plan might
be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure
and imperceptible degrees." Jefferson, Madison and Monroe,
all Virginians, and other leading Southern statesmen, made
similar statements. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had banned
slavery in the Northwest Territory. As late as 1808, when the
international slave trade was abolished, there were many
Southerners who thought that slavery would soon end. The
expectation proved false, for during the next generation, the
South became solidly united behind the institution of slavery as
new economic factors made slavery far more profitable than it had
been before 1790. Chief among these was the rise of a great cotton-growing
industry in the South, stimulated by the introduction of new
types of cotton and by Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the
cotton gin, which separated the seeds from cotton. At the same
time, the Industrial Revolution, which made textile manufacturing
a large-scale operation, vastly increased the demand for raw
cotton. And the opening of new lands in the West after 1812
greatly extended the area available for cotton cultivation.
Cotton culture moved rapidly from the Tidewater states on the
East coast through much of the lower South to the delta region of
the Mississippi and eventually to Texas. Sugarcane, another labor-intensive crop, also contributed to
slavery's extension in the South. The rich, hot lands of
southeastern Louisiana proved ideal for growing sugarcane
profitably. By 1830 the state was supplying the nation with about
half its sugar supply. Finally, tobacco growers moved westward,
taking slavery with them. As the free society of the North and the slave society of the
South spread westward, it seemed politically expedient to
maintain a rough equality among the new states carved out of
western territories. In 1818, when Illinois was admitted to the
Union, 10 states permitted slavery and 11 states prohibited it;
but balance was restored after Alabama was admitted as a slave
state. Population was growing faster in the North, which
permitted Northern states to have a clear majority in the House
of Representatives. However, equality between the North and the
South was maintained in the Senate. In 1819 Missouri, which had 10,000 slaves, applied to enter
the Union. Northerners rallied to oppose Missouri's entry except
as a free state, and a storm of protest swept the country. For a
time Congress was deadlocked, but Henry Clay arranged the
so-called Missouri Compromise: Missouri was admitted as a slave
state at the same time Maine came in as a free state. In
addition, Congress banned slavery from the territory acquired by
the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri's southern boundary. At
the time, this provision appeared to be a victory for the
Southern states because it was thought unlikely that this
"Great American Desert" would ever be settled. The
controversy was temporarily resolved, but Thomas Jefferson wrote
to a friend that "this momentous question like a firebell in
the night awakened me with terror. I considered it at once as the
knell of the Union." LATIN AMERICA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE During the opening decades of the 19th century, Central and
South America turned to revolution. The idea of liberty had
stirred the people of Latin America from the time the English
colonies gained their freedom. Napoleon's conquest of Spain in
1808 provided the signal for Latin Americans to rise in revolt.
By 1822, ably led by Simon Bolivar, Francisco Miranda, Jose de
San Martin and Miguel Hidalgo, all of Hispanic America -- from
Argentina and Chile in the south to Mexico and California in the
north -- had won independence from the mother country. The people of the United States took a deep interest in what
seemed a repetition of their own experience in breaking away from
European rule. The Latin American independence movements
confirmed their own belief in self-government. In 1822 President
James Monroe, under powerful public pressure, received authority
to recognize the new countries of Latin America -- including the
former Portuguese colony of Brazil -- and soon exchanged
ministers with them. This recognition confirmed their status as
genuinely independent countries, entirely separated from their
former European connections. At just this point, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an
association called the Holy Alliance to protect themselves
against revolution. By intervening in countries where popular
movements threatened monarchies, the Alliance -- joined at times
by France -- hoped to prevent the spread of revolution into its
dominions. This policy was the antithesis of the American
principle of self-determination. As long as the Holy Alliance confined its activities to the
Old World, it aroused no anxiety in the United States. But when
the Alliance announced its intention of restoring its former
colonies to Spain, Americans became very concerned. For its part,
Britain resolved to prevent Spain from restoring its empire
because trade with Latin America was too important to British
commercial interests. London urged the extension of
Anglo-American guarantees to Latin America, but Secretary of
State John Quincy Adams convinced Monroe to act unilaterally:
"It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow
our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in
as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war." In
December 1823, with the knowledge that the British navy would
defend Latin America from the Holy Alliance and France, President
Monroe took the occasion of his annual message to Congress to
pronounce what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine -- the
refusal to tolerate any further extension of European domination
in the Americas: The American continents...are henceforth not to be considered
as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their
[political] system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous
to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European
power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with
the governments who have declared their independence and
maintained it, and whose independence we have...acknowledged, we
could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing
them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any
European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an
unfriendly disposition toward the United States. The Monroe Doctrine expressed a spirit of solidarity with the
newly independent republics of Latin America. These nations in
turn recognized their political affinity with the United States
by basing their new constitutions, in many instances, on the
North American model. FACTIONALISM AND POLITICAL PARTIES Domestically, the presidency of Monroe (1817-1825) was termed
the "era of good feelings." In one sense, this term
disguised a period of vigorous factional and regional conflict;
on the other hand, the phrase acknowledged the political triumph
of the Republican Party over the Federalist Party, which
collapsed as a national force. The decline of the Federalists brought disarray to the system
of choosing presidents. At the time, state legislatures could
nominate candidates. In 1824 Tennessee and Pennsylvania chose
Andrew Jackson, with South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun as
his running mate. Kentucky selected Speaker of the House Henry
Clay; Massachusetts, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams; and a
congressional caucus, Treasury Secretary William Crawford. Personality and sectional allegiance played important roles in
determining the outcome of the election. Adams won the electoral
votes from New England and most of New York; Clay won Kentucky,
Ohio and Missouri; Jackson won the Southeast, Illinois, Indiana,
the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey; and
Crawford won Virginia, Georgia and Delaware. No candidate gained
a majority in the Electoral College, so, according to the
provisions of the Constitution, the election was thrown into the
House of Representatives, where Clay was the most influential
figure. He supported Adams, who gained the presidency. During Adams's administration, new party alignments appeared.
Adams's followers took the name of "National
Republicans," later to be changed to "Whigs."
Though he governed honestly and efficiently, Adams was not a
popular president, and his administration was marked with
frustrations. Adams failed in his effort to institute a national
system of roads and canals. His years in office appeared to be
one long campaign for reelection, and his coldly intellectual
temperament did not win friends. Jackson, by contrast, had
enormous popular appeal, especially among his followers in the
newly named Democratic Party that emerged from the Republican
Party, with its roots dating back to presidents Jefferson,
Madison and Monroe. In the election of 1828, Jackson defeated
Adams by an overwhelming electoral majority. Jackson -- Tennessee politician, Indian fighter and hero of
the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 -- drew his
support from the small farmers of the West, and the workers,
artisans and small merchants of the East, who sought to use their
vote to resist the rising commercial and manufacturing interests
associated with the Industrial Revolution. The election of 1828 was a significant benchmark in the trend
toward broader voter participation. Vermont had universal male
suffrage from its entry into the Union and Tennessee permitted
suffrage for the vast majority of taxpayers. New Jersey, Maryland
and South Carolina all abolished property and tax-paying
requirements between 1807 and 1810. States entering the Union
after 1815 either had universal white male suffrage or a low
taxpaying requirement. From 1815 to 1821, Connecticut,
Massachusetts and New York abolished all property requirements.
In 1824 members of the Electoral College were still selected by
six state legislatures. By 1828 presidential electors were chosen
by popular vote in every state but Delaware and South Carolina.
Nothing dramatized this democratic sentiment more than the
election of the flamboyant Andrew Jackson. NULLIFICATION CRISIS Toward the end of his first term in office, Jackson was forced
to confront the state of South Carolina on the issue of the
protective tariff. Business and farming interests in the state
had hoped that Jackson would use his presidential power to modify
tariff laws they had long opposed. In their view, all the
benefits of protection were going to Northern manufacturers, and
while the country as a whole grew richer, South Carolina grew
poorer, with its planters bearing the burden of higher prices. The protective tariff passed by Congress and signed into law
by Jackson in 1832 was milder than that of 1828, but it further
embittered many in the state. In response, a number of South
Carolina citizens endorsed the states' rights principle of
"nullification," which was enunciated by John C.
Calhoun, Jackson's vice president until 1832, in his South
Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828). South Carolina dealt with
the tariff by adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which
declared both the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within
state borders. The legislature also passed laws to enforce the
ordinance, including authorization for raising a military force
and appropriations for arms. Nullification was only the most recent in a series of state
challenges to the authority of the federal government. There had
been a continuing contest between the states and the national
government over the power of the latter, and over the loyalty of
the citizenry, almost since the founding of the republic. The
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, for example, had
defied the Alien and Sedition Acts, and in the Hartford
Convention, New England voiced its opposition to President
Madison and the war against the British. In response to South Carolina's threat, Jackson sent seven
small naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston in November
1832. On December 10, he issued a resounding proclamation against
the nullifiers. South Carolina, the president declared, stood on
"the brink of insurrection and treason," and he
appealed to the people of the state to reassert their allegiance
to that Union for which their ancestors had fought. When the question of tariff duties again came before Congress,
it soon became clear that only one man, Senator Henry Clay, the
great advocate of protection (and a political rival of Jackson),
could pilot a compromise measure through Congress. Clay's tariff
bill -- quickly passed in 1833 -- specified that all duties in
excess of 20 percent of the value of the goods imported were to
be reduced by easy stages, so that by 1842, the duties on all
articles would reach the level of the moderate tariff of 1816. Nullification leaders in South Carolina had expected the
support of other Southern states, but without exception, the rest
of the South declared South Carolina's course unwise and
unconstitutional. Eventually, South Carolina rescinded its
action. Both sides, nevertheless, claimed victory. Jackson had
committed the federal government to the principle of Union
supremacy. But South Carolina, by its show of resistance, had
obtained many of the demands it sought, and had demonstrated that
a single state could force its will on Congress. BATTLE OF THE BANK Even before the nullification issue had been settled, another
controversy occurred that challenged Jackson's leadership. It
concerned the rechartering of the second Bank of the United
States. The first bank had been established in 1791, under
Alexander Hamilton's guidance, and had been chartered for a
20-year period. Though the government held some of its stock, it
was not a government bank; rather, the bank was a private
corporation with profits passing to its stockholders. It had been
designed to stabilize the currency and stimulate trade; but it
was resented by Westerners and working people who believed, along
with Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, that it was a
"monster" granting special favors to a few powerful
men. When its charter expired in 1811, it was not renewed. For the next few years, the banking business was in the hands
of state-chartered banks, which issued currency in excessive
amounts, creating great confusion and fueling inflation. It
became increasingly clear that state banks could not provide the
country with a uniform currency, and in 1816 a second Bank of the
United States, similar to the first, was again chartered for 20
years. From its inception, the second Bank was unpopular in the newer
states and territories, and with less prosperous people
everywhere. Opponents claimed the bank possessed a virtual
monopoly over the country's credit and currency, and reiterated
that it represented the interests of the wealthy few. On the
whole, the bank was well managed and rendered valuable service;
but Jackson, elected as a popular champion against it, vetoed a
bill to recharter the bank. In his message to Congress, he
denounced monopoly and special privilege, saying that "our
rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal
benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of
Congress." The effort to override the veto failed. In the election campaign that followed, the bank question
caused a fundamental division between the merchant, manufacturing
and financial interests (generally creditors who favored tight
money and high interest rates), and the laboring and agrarian
elements, who were often in debt to banks and therefore favored
an increased money supply and lower interest rates. The outcome
was an enthusiastic endorsement of "Jacksonism."
Jackson saw his reelection in 1832 as a popular mandate to crush
the bank irrevocably -- and found a ready-made weapon in a
provision of the bank's charter authorizing removal of public
funds. In September 1833 he ordered that no more government money
be deposited in the bank, and that the money already in its
custody be gradually withdrawn in the ordinary course of meeting
the expenses of government. Carefully selected state banks,
stringently restricted, were provided as a substitute. For the
next generation the United States would get by on a relatively
unregulated state banking system, which helped fuel westward
expansion through cheap credit but kept the nation vulnerable to
periodic panics. It wasn't until the Civil War that the United
States chartered a national banking system. WHIGS, DEMOCRATS AND "KNOW-NOTHINGS" Because Jackson's political opponents had no hope of success
so long as they remained at cross purposes, they attempted to
bring all the dissatisfied elements together into a common party
called the Whigs. Although they organized soon after the election
campaign of 1832, it was more than a decade before they
reconciled their differences and were able to draw up a platform.
Largely through the magnetism of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster,
the Whigs' most brilliant statesmen, the party solidified its
membership. But in the 1836 election, the Whigs were still too
divided to unite behind a single man or upon a common platform.
New York's Martin Van Buren, Jackson's vice president, won the
contest. An economic depression and the larger-than-life personality of
his predecessor obscured Van Buren's merits. His public acts
aroused no enthusiasm, for he lacked the compelling qualities of
leadership and the dramatic flair that had attended Jackson's
every move. The election of 1840 found the country afflicted with
hard times and low wages -- and the Democrats on the defensive. The Whig candidate for president was William Henry Harrison of
Ohio, vastly popular as a hero of Indian conflicts as well as the
War of 1812. He was regarded, like Jackson, as a representative
of the democratic West. His vice presidential candidate was John
Tyler -- a Virginian whose views on states' rights and a low
tariff were popular in the South. Harrison won a sweeping
victory. Within a month of his inauguration, however, the 68-year-old
Harrison died, and Tyler became president. Tyler's beliefs
differed sharply from those of Clay and Webster, still the most
influential men in the country. Before Tyler's term was over,
these differences led to an open break between the president and
the party that had elected him. Americans, however, found themselves divided in more complex
ways than simple partisan conflicts between Whigs and Democrats.
For example, the large number of Catholic immigrants in the first
half of the 19th century, primarily Irish and German, triggered a
backlash among native-born Protestant Americans. Immigrants brought more than strange new customs and religious
practices to American shores. They competed with the native-born
for jobs in cities along the Eastern seaboard. Moreover,
political changes in the 1820s and 1830s increased the political
clout of the foreign born. During those two decades, state
constitutions were revised to permit universal white-male
suffrage. This led to the end of rule by patrician politicians,
who blamed the immigrants for their fall from power. Finally, the
Catholic Church's failure to support the temperance movement gave
rise to charges that Rome was trying to subvert the United States
through alcohol. The most important of the nativist organizations that sprang
up in this period was a secret society, the Order of the
Star-Spangled Banner, founded in 1849. When its members refused
to identify themselves, they were swiftly labeled the
"Know-Nothings." In 1853 the Know-Nothings in New York
City organized a Grand Council, which devised a new constitution
to centralize control over the state organizations. Among the chief aims of the Know-Nothings were an extension in
the period required for naturalization from five to 21 years, and
the exclusion of the foreign-born and Catholics from public
office. In 1855 the organization managed to win control of
legislatures in New York and Massachusetts; by 1855, about 90
U.S. congressmen were linked to the party. Disagreements over the slavery issue prevented the party from
playing a role in national politics. The Know-Nothings of the
South supported slavery while Northern members opposed it. At a
convention in 1856 to nominate candidates for president and vice
president, 42 Northern delegates walked out when a motion to
support the Missouri Compromise was ignored, and the party died
as a national force. STIRRINGS OF REFORM The democratic upheaval in politics exemplified by Jackson's
election was merely one phase of the long American quest for
greater rights and opportunities for all citizens. Another was
the beginning of labor organization. In 1835 labor forces in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, succeeded in reducing the old
"dark-to-dark" workday to a 10-hour day. New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, Ohio and the new state of California, admitted to
the Union in 1850, undertook similar reforms. The spread of suffrage had already led to a new concept of
education, for clear-sighted statesmen everywhere perceived the
threat to universal suffrage from an untutored, illiterate
electorate. These men -- DeWitt Clinton in New York, Abraham
Lincoln in Illinois and Horace Mann in Massachusetts -- were now
supported by organized labor, whose leaders demanded free,
tax-supported schools open to all children. Gradually, in one
state after another, legislation was enacted to provide for such
free instruction. The public school system became common
throughout the northern part of the country. In other parts of
the country, however, the battle for public education continued
for years. Another influential social movement that emerged during this
period was the opposition to the sale and use of alcohol, or the
temperance movement. It stemmed from a variety of concerns and
motives: religious beliefs, the effect of alcohol on the work
force, and the violence and suffering women and children
experienced at the hands of heavy drinkers. In 1826 Boston
ministers organized the Society for the Promotion of Temperance.
Seven years later, in Philadelphia, the Society convened a
national convention, which formed the American Temperance Union.
The Union called for the renunciation of all alcoholic beverages,
and pressed state legislatures to ban their production and sale.
Thirteen states had done so by 1855, although the laws were
subsequently challenged in court. They survived only in northern
New England, but between 1830 and 1860 the temperance movement
reduced Americans' per capita consumption of alcohol. Other reformers addressed the problems of prisons and care for
the insane. Efforts were made to turn prisons, which stressed
punishment, into penitentiaries, where the guilty would undergo
rehabilitation. In Massachusetts, Dorothea Dix led a struggle to
improve conditions for insane persons, who were kept confined in
wretched almshouses and prisons. After winning improvements in
Massachusetts, she took her campaign to the South, where nine
states established hospitals for the insane between 1845 and
1852. WOMEN'S RIGHTS Such social reforms brought many women to a realization of
their own unequal position in society. From colonial times,
unmarried women had enjoyed many of the same legal rights as men,
although custom required that they marry early. With matrimony,
women virtually lost their separate identities in the eyes of the
law. Women were not permitted to vote and their education in the
17th and 18th centuries was limited largely to reading, writing,
music, dancing and needlework. The awakening of women began with the visit to America of
Frances Wright, a Scottish lecturer and journalist, who publicly
promoted women's rights throughout the United States during the
1820s. At a time when women were often forbidden to speak in
public places, Wright not only spoke out, but shocked audiences
by her views advocating the rights of women to seek information
on birth control and divorce. By the 1840s a group of American women emerged who would forge
the first women's rights movement. Foremost in this distinguished
group was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1848 Cady Stanton and
Lucretia Mott, another women's rights advocate, organized a
women's rights convention -- the first in the history of the
world -- at Seneca Falls, New York. Delegates drew up a
declaration demanding equality with men before the law, the right
to vote, and equal opportunities in education and employment. That same year, Ernestine Rose, a Polish immigrant, was
instrumental in getting a law passed in the state of New York
that allowed married women to keep their property in their own
name. Among the first laws in the nation of this kind, the
Married Women's Property Act, encouraged other state legislatures
to enact similar laws. In 1869 Rose helped Elizabeth Cady Stanton and another leading
women's rights activist, Susan B. Anthony, to found the National
Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which advocated a
constitutional amendment for women's right to the vote. These two
would become the women's movement's most outspoken advocates.
Describing their partnership, Cady Stanton would say, "I
forged the thunderbolts and she fired them." WESTWARD The frontier did much to shape American life. Conditions along
the entire Atlantic seaboard stimulated migration to the newer
regions. From New England, where the soil was incapable of
producing high yields of grain, came a steady stream of men and
women who left their coastal farmsand villages to take advantage
of the rich interior land of the continent. In the backcountry
settlements of the Carolinas and Virginia, people handicapped by
the lack of roads and canals giving access to coastal markets,
and suffering from the political dominance of the Tidewater
planters, also moved westward. By 1800 the Mississippi and Ohio
River valleys were becoming a great frontier region. "Hi-o,
away we go, floating down the river on the O-hi-o," became
the song of thousands of migrants. The westward flow of population in the early 19th century led
to the division of old territories and the drawing of new
boundaries. As new states were admitted, the political map
stabilized east of the Mississippi River. From 1816 to 1821, six
states were created -- Indiana, Illinois and Maine (which were
free states), and Mississippi, Alabama and Missouri (slave
states). The first frontier had been tied closely to Europe, the
second to the coastal settlements, but the Mississippi Valley was
independent and its people looked west rather than east. Frontier settlers were a varied group. One English traveler
described them as "a daring, hardy race of men, who live in
miserable cabins.... They are unpolished but hospitable, kind to
strangers, honest and trustworthy. They raise a little Indian
corn, pumpkins, hogs and sometimes have a cow or two.... But the
rifle is their principal means of support." Dexterous with
the axe, snare and fishing line, these men blazed the trails,
built the first log cabins and confronted Native American tribes,
whose land they occupied. As more and more settlers penetrated the wilderness, many
became farmers as well as hunters. A comfortable log house with
glass windows, a chimney and partitioned rooms replaced the
cabin; the well replaced the spring. Industrious settlers would
rapidly clear their land of timber, burning the wood for potash
and letting the stumps decay. They grew their own grain,
vegetables and fruit; ranged the woods for deer, wild turkeys and
honey; fished the nearby streams; looked after cattle and hogs.
Land speculators bought large tracts of the cheap land and, if
land values rose, sold their holdings and moved still farther
west, making way for others. Doctors, lawyers, storekeepers, editors, preachers, mechanics
and politicians soon followed the farmers. The farmers were the
sturdy base, however. Where they settled, they intended to stay
and hoped their children would remain after them. They built
large barns and brick or frame houses. They brought improved
livestock, plowed the land skillfully and sowed productive seed.
Some erected flour mills, sawmills and distilleries. They laid
out good highways, built churches and schools. Incredible
transformations were accomplished in a few years. In 1830, for
example, Chicago, Illinois, was merely an unpromising trading
village with a fort; but long before some of its original
settlers had died, it had become one of the largest and richest
cities in the nation. Farms were easy to acquire. Government land after 1820 could
be bought for $1.25 for about half a hectare, and after the 1862
Homestead Act, could be claimed by merely occupying and improving
it. In addition, tools for working the land were easily
available. It was a time when, in a phrase written by John Soule
and popularized by journalist Horace Greeley, young men could
"go west and grow with the country." Except for a migration into Mexican-owned Texas, the westward
march of the agricultural frontier did not pass Missouri until
after 1840. In 1819, in return for assuming the claims of
American citizens to the amount of $5 million, the United States
obtained from Spain both Florida and Spain's rights to the Oregon
country in the Far West. In the meantime, the Far West had become
a field of great activity in the fur trade, which was to have
significance far beyond the value of the skins. As in the first
days of French exploration in the Mississippi Valley, the trader
was a pathfinder for the settlers beyond the Mississippi. The
French and Scots-Irish trappers, exploring the great rivers and
their tributaries and discovering all the passes of the Rocky and
Sierra Mountains, made possible the overland migration of the
1840s and the later occupation of the interior of the nation. Overall, the growth of the nation was enormous: population
grew from 7.25 million to more than 23 million from 1812 to 1852,
and the land available for settlement increased by almost the
size of Europe -- from 4.4 million to 7.8 million square
kilometers. Still unresolved, however, were the basic conflicts
rooted in sectional differences which, by the decade of the
1860s, would explode into civil war. Inevitably, too, this
westward expansion brought settlers into conflict with the
original inhabitants of the land: the Indians. In the first part of the 19th century, the most prominent
figure associated with these conflicts was Andrew Jackson, the
first "Westerner" to occupy the White House. In the
midst of the War of 1812, Jackson, then in charge of the
Tennessee militia, was sent into southern Alabama, where he
ruthlessly put down an uprising of Creek Indians. The Creeks soon
ceded two-thirds of their land to the United States. Jackson
later routed bands of Seminole Indians from their sanctuaries in
Spanish-owned Florida. In the 1820s, President Monroe's secretary of war, John C.
Calhoun, pursued a policy of removing the remaining tribes from
the old Southwest and resettling them beyond the Mississippi.
Jackson continued this policy as president. In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, providing
funds to transport the eastern tribes beyond the Mississippi. In
1834 a special Indian territory was set up in what is now
Oklahoma. In all, the tribes signed 94 treaties during Jackson's
two terms, ceding millions of hectares to the federal government
and removing dozens of tribes from their ancestral homelands. Perhaps the most egregious chapter in this unfortunate history
concerned the Cherokees, whose lands in western North Carolina
and Georgia had been guaranteed by treaty since 1791. Among the
most progressive of the eastern tribes, the Cherokees' fate was
sealed when gold was discovered on their land in 1829. Even a
favorable ruling from the Supreme Court proved little help. With
the acquiescence of the Jackson administration, the Cherokees
were forced to make the long and cruel trek to Oklahoma in 1835.
Many died of disease and privation in what became known as the
"Trail of Tears." =================================================================
SIDEBAR: SENECA FALLS The early feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, found an ally in
Lucretia Mott, an ardent abolitionist, when the two met in 1840
at an anti-slavery conference in London. Once the conference
began, it was apparent to the two women that female delegates
were not welcome. Barred from speaking and appearing on the
convention floor, Cady Stanton and Mott protested by leaving the
convention hall, taking other female delegates with them. It was
then that Cady Stanton proposed to Mott a women's rights
convention that would address the social, civil and religious
rights of women. The convention would be put on hold until eight
years later, when the two organized the first women's rights
convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. At that meeting, Cady Stanton presented a "Declaration of
Sentiments," based on the Declaration of Independence, and
listing 18 grievances against male suppression of women. Among
them: married women had no right to their children if they left
an abusive husband or sought a divorce. If a woman was granted a
divorce, there was no way for her to make a professional living
unless she chose to write or teach. A woman could not testify
against her husband in court. Married women who worked in
factories were not entitled to keep their earnings, but had to
turn them over to their husbands. When a woman married, any
property that she had held as a single woman automatically became
part of her husband's estate. Single women who owned property
were taxed without the right to vote for the lawmakers imposing
the taxes -- one of the very reasons why the American colonies
had broken away from Great Britain. Convention attendees passed the resolutions unanimously with
the exception of the one for women's suffrage. Only after an
impassioned speech in favor of women's right to vote by Frederick
Douglass, the black abolitionist, did the resolution pass. Still,
the majority of those in attendance could not accept the thought
of women voting. At Seneca Falls, Cady Stanton gained national prominence as an
eloquent writer and speaker for women's rights. Years later, she
declared that she had realized early on that without the right to
vote, women would never achieve their goal of becoming equal with
men. Taking the abolitionist reformer William Lloyd Garrison as
her model, she saw that the key to success in any endeavor lay in
changing public opinion, and not in party action. By awakening
women to the injustices under which they labored, Seneca Falls
became the catalyst for future change. Soon other women's rights
conventions were held, and other women would come to the
forefront of the movement for political and social equality. Embassy of the United States of America
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