Transcription
All right, so what is up, guys? This is Mr. Aleman, and what I'm going to do for you is give you just basically everything that you need to know for the STAR test.
I'm going to start off with number one, exploration. During the 1400s, people that lived in Europe, they knew about Africa, they knew about Asia, but they had no idea about North and South America. Advances in technology actually allowed these Europeans to explore the oceans a bit further than ever before. They were actually looking to find a route to Asia by sea.
The most famous explorer during this time was a man named Christopher Columbus. He was Italian, but Queen Isabella of Spain paid for his trips. Columbus landed on islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492. What he was actually trying to do is land all the way in Asia, and he even died thinking that he got to Asia, but he didn't. He actually landed in a whole new world.
This encounter between Europe and the Americas led to this thing called the Columbian Exchange. All right, now the Columbian Exchange is basically the transfer of plants, foods, animals, everything back and forth between the Old World and the New World. Europeans benefited from new foods and products, and additionally, new plants and animals were also introduced to the Americas because of this exchange. Millions of Native American Indians died from new diseases such as smallpox and measles, which were unintentionally introduced into the Americas by European explorers and settlers.
Now, during the 1500s, Spain explored and claimed more land in the Americas than any other country. Because of this, they became very, very powerful. And other European countries such as the Dutch, the French, and the British grew envious of Spain's power and wealth, and so they sought to establish their own colonies in the New World as well.
To start off with, the Netherlands established a major trading post named New Amsterdam in what today is New York City. And the French established a series of trading posts to profit from trading furs and other goods with Native Americans.
And that brings us to colonization, actually English colonization. Now, the very first British or English colony, I'll use British and English, I'll use those two terms back and forth. The very first permanent English colony was Jamestown in 1607. It was established by the Virginia Company for economic reasons, meaning they wanted to make money off of it. Despite its initial setbacks, the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, became profitable by growing tobacco for sale in Europe.
In 1619, Jamestown established the first elected representative assembly, known as the House of Burgesses. A year later, in 1620, Pilgrims established Plymouth for religious reasons. Now, this was about 400 miles north of Jamestown. They pledged themselves to self-government by signing the Mayflower Compact, actually signed it even right before they got off the boat.
Ten years later, in 1830, another group of religious immigrants came to Massachusetts. Since this new group wanted to purify the Church of England instead of just separate from it like the Pilgrims, they became known as Puritans. When more people also came for different reasons, some left their homes to escape war, and others, they just sought political or religious freedom.
Now, to pay for their trip to America, many people had to work as indentured servants to pay back the cost of their passage before gaining their freedom. Some, however, like black Africans, they arrived as slaves and could never, of course, pay back the cost of the passage and gain their freedom.
All right, so in time, these 13 colonies are going to develop three distinct regions because there's going to be the need for New England, the Middle, and the Southern colonies. Different patterns of life developed in these three regions of the colonies based, of course, on differences like geography, climate, settler origins, and just the different economic activities that they had.
So, in New England, they had a short growing season, cooler climates, rocky soil, and an influx of Puritan settlers, which encouraged the development of small farms, the growth of fishing, shipping, and handicrafts.
In the Middle Colonies, they also had fertile soil and grew many food crops. They became known as the breadbasket colonies. Furthermore, the Middle Colonies had once been under Dutch rule and were conquered by the English in 1664. Because they had been under Dutch rule, the Middle Colonies enjoyed greater ethnic and religious diversity.
In the Southern Colonies, a long growing season and warmer climates encouraged the development of large farms that often grew cash crops that were sailed to England along main water routes. Large plantations also developed. A large part of the Southern Colonies' economy was based on slave labor. These slaves, they grew cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, and they were taken by force from Africa and faced this very, very horrific Middle Passage journey across the Atlantic.
The relationships between settlers and Native Americans, which were also known as Indians, were both good and bad. In some areas, the two groups traded and were friendly. Yet, in most cases, however, as the English settlements grew bigger, the settlers forced the Indians to actually move. They'd say, "You were just like, move."
Okay, so colonial period. This brings us, this brings me to the colonial period. During the colonial period, religion played an important role in colonial life. Pilgrims and Puritans, they first came for religious reasons. Yet, other colonies were also established as homes for England's persecuted or unpopular religious groups, such as the Quakers who went to Pennsylvania, or Catholics who went to Maryland.
But in the United States, you also see this growth of toleration. So, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, they left Puritan Massachusetts and established basically the principle of religious toleration in Rhode Island. During the First Great Awakening, preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, they addressed large crowds in open fields and they stirred religious feelings. These preachers also supported religious toleration.
As time went on, all the colonies developed governments based on British political traditions like the Magna Carta, which declared that the king was no longer above the law, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which limited the power of the king and gave more power to Parliament. Instead, unique conditions in the New World, they also played a role in the development of representative government in the colonies.
In colonial times, it took several weeks or even months for ships to cross the Atlantic for England and then to return all the way back to the colonies. It fell to the colonists themselves to solve many of their local problems. Because of this, the American colonists created their own institutions of limited representative government, such as the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Mayflower Compact, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. Those are actually the big three of representative government in colonial times. You have to know all three of those.
Now, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut was established in 1863 by a man named Thomas Hooker. It was the first example of a state constitution in the English colonies, and unlike the Mayflower Compact, which only allowed church members the right to vote, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut actually extended voting rights to non-church members as well.
At first, the colonists, they wanted self-government within the British Empire. It's only later that they want independence.
Now, during the colonial period, the economy of many European countries, especially Britain or England, was based on this idea called mercantilism. Now, mercantilism was the policy of using colonies to bring wealth to the mother country. Mercantilists taught that the colonies, or that the colonists, should sell cash crops to the mother country and buy more expensive finished goods in return.
Because of this economic system, colonists brought sugar from the West Indies, turned it into rum in the colonies, and shipped the rum to England or Africa, and obtained manufactured goods from England and slaves from Africa. Historians refer to these exchanges across the Atlantic as the triangular trades.
Now, we're going to go ahead and get to the road to revolution. What makes the United States, or what makes these colonies, these 13 colonies, actually want to become an independent country? Right? So, road to revolution. The idea of republicanism, which means electing government representatives to pass laws, is the basis of the United States' political system. As the colonists built their new society, they believed more strongly in this idea.
Britain's thirteen colonies grew in population and economic strength during the 1700s because the colonies were ruled by a distant government through salutary neglect. Now, salutary neglect basically, like a hands-off policy, or hands, yeah, like Britain did not even touch the colonies. They just basically say, "Hey, you guys do what you want to do." So, the colonists governed many local affairs themselves, and for this reason, they developed a strong tradition of self-government.
After Britain won a costly war with France, the French and Indian War, the colonists were asked to help pay for the war, and this ended, this effectively ended salutary neglect, that hands-off policy. So, British economic policies after the French and Indian War, they started to restrict the colonists' way of life, and this caused many American colonies to be dissatisfied with Great Britain.
So, for example, the Proclamation of 1763, after the French and Indian War, restricted the colonists from settling new lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, these new lands that they had just fought for.
Now, the Sugar Act, this lowered the tax on sugar and molasses but called for harsher punishments for smuggling. The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed all legal papers, licenses, newspapers, and leases. And the Sugar Act and Stamp Act united the colonists in an organized resistance. The main problem for the colonists was that they weren't allowed to participate in the government that actually taxed them. Colonists rallied against these economic policies by protesting and shouting, "No taxation without representation." Additionally, Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, he wrote newspaper articles and made speeches against the British. The groups that he helped to organize, like the Sons of Liberty, became a big part of the revolutionary movement.
In response to growing colonial protest, the British, they're going to repeal the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act instead. Now, the Declaratory Act, it claims that they had the right, right, the British would have the right to tax the American colonies if they wanted to. They say, "We're not going to do it now, but we will." And they did.
The following year, the British passed the Townshend Acts, which placed a tax on goods like glass, lead, and paint, but it also put a tax on tea. And colonists disliked the new Townshend Acts for that very reason. So much so that in 1770, an angry mob attacked British soldiers in Boston. In an effort to protect themselves, these British soldiers shot into the angry mob and killed five colonists, including a guy named Crispus Attucks. Now, he was a sailor of mixed Native American and African ancestry. This event encouraged a colonist named Paul Revere to engrave a picture that showed British soldiers killing innocent civilians.
As a result, tensions in Boston remained high, and in the same year, 1773, a group of men dressed as Mohawk Indians sneak down to three British ships in Boston Harbor and then they started to throw the cargo of tea overboard to protest that tax on tea. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party.
In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British were angry, so they punished Massachusetts by passing a series of laws restricting local authority, prohibiting meetings, and closing Boston's port. Colonists called these new acts, or these new laws, the Intolerable Acts.
In response to the Intolerable Acts, all the colonies, they sent representatives or delegates to Philadelphia in September 1774 to talk about the present unhappy state. This meeting became known as the very first Continental Congress. Colonists were angry with the British for taking away their rights, but not everyone agreed on the solution. Loyalists, they actually wanted to stay subjects under the king. Patriots, however, they want complete independence. So, you can think about it like this: Loyalists, they want to stay loyal to the king. Patriots, they just want to completely be independent. Patriots began collecting weapons and getting men ready, waiting for this fight for independence.
Which brings us to the actual war. Now, the American Revolution, also known as the War for Independence from Britain, began with a small fight between British troops and colonists on April 19, 1775. The British troops left Boston, Massachusetts, planning to take weapons and ammunition from Patriot colonists at Lexington. At Lexington, however, they were met by armed colonists who were called Minutemen. Now, they were called Minutemen because they could supposedly be ready to fight within a minute. The British ordered the Minutemen to leave, and the colonists actually obeyed, but actually left. Someone fired a shot, which became known as a shot heard around the world. Now, everybody knows it as the shot heard round the world.
Fighting continued along the way as the British soldiers in their bright red uniforms, which is why they were called Redcoats, made their way back to Boston. More than 250 Redcoats were actually killed or wounded. The Americans, they only lost 93 men. And colonial representatives, because of this, they heard to meet again in Philadelphia in what became known as the Second Continental Congress. More than half ordered to go to work in spring. They decided to form one army from the colonial forces. They elected George Washington of Virginia to become the commander-in-chief of that army.
The Second Continental Congress also created a committee to write a document that outlined the colonies' grievances, which are complaints, right? Grievances are like complaints, or are complaints against the king, and explain their decision to separate from Britain. The reasons listed in the Declaration of Independence were based on the Enlightenment ideals. Thomas Jefferson was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence told the world of a new nation and its beliefs about human freedom. Jefferson made the case that political rights are basic human rights. These are rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Second Continental Congress accepted this document on July the 4th, 1776. This is why we celebrate Independence Day on the 4th of July.
So, as the colonies and Britain prepared for war, the desire for independence increased. In the next few months, Thomas Paine argued for independence in his pamphlet called Common Sense. He described two possible conditions for America: that people could remain unequal citizens under a king, or that they could live in an independent country with the hopes of liberty and happiness.
The British, they respond by hiring lots of soldiers. They hired these soldiers from Germany, and they're going to be called Hessians. So, they get all these guys from Germany. All right, and they're going to get them to fight against the Patriots. And effectively, they do. These British soldiers defeated General Washington's forces in New York, and with the help of the Hessians, the British also took control of Philadelphia, forcing the Second Continental Congress to flee.
George Washington had problems getting the men and materials he needed to fight the war. On Christmas night, however, in 1776, Washington ordered his troops to surprise attack the Hessian troops that were stationed at Trenton, New Jersey. This became known as the Battle of Trenton, and it helped Washington retain command of the Continental Army. Washington's main objective was to keep his army together and avoid getting captured by the British forces who were trying to surround him.
The turning point of the war came when American forces won the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. In response, France recognized the United States as an independent country and signed a treaty of alliance. Now, France, the reason they helped the United States is because that was a way for them to get back at Britain. They wanted to weaken Britain, which was its longtime enemy. France also convinced Spain to support the Americans.
In a desperate move to keep his army together, Washington retreated to Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 to 1778. Their officers like Frederick von Steuben from Germany and Marquis de Lafayette from France helped train these colonial troops. In 1781, with the help of the French Navy, Washington defeated the British at Yorktown. British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered because he was surrounded, bringing the war to an end.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 officially ended the war. The treaty defined the borders of the United States and recognized American independence. The Treaty of Paris turned these 13 colonies into states, but the main job of becoming actually remained.
This brings us to forming a national government. In 1783, the 13 colonies became the United States. Before the war ended, however, the colonies had developed the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was a plan to work together as one nation, but the connections amongst those 13 states were very loose. Delegates writing the Articles, they wanted a government that prevented the executive or federal government from becoming too powerful. Because of this, each state had its own money, its own army, its own navy, even, and each state traded and worked directly with other countries. Each state actually collected taxes in its own way, and each state only had one vote in Congress, which angered more populous states who felt that they should have greater representation. In effect, under the Articles of Confederation, the United States was a nation of 13 countries.
Despite its weaknesses, the Articles of Confederation did have three major achievements, and you need to know these. It negotiated the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which of course made us the United States. It also passed the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance is super important. It establishes principles for the orderly expansion of the United States by allowing territory to become new states instead of just increasing the size of those 13 original states.
In 1786, farmers from Massachusetts, they rose up in what is called Shays' Rebellion. Although that rebellion was put down by state militia, there was no national army. If they had spread, Shays' Rebellion prompted national leaders to revise the Articles of Confederation or completely restructure the federal government by creating a new Constitution. National leaders suggested a large meeting to do this, and in May of 1787, 55 delegates will meet again in Philadelphia. They propose a Constitution describing a new form of government based on separate legislative, executive, and judicial authorities.
However, the delegates did not fully agree on all the details. Delegates from small states presented the New Jersey Plan, which allowed each state to have equal representation in this new Congress. Delegates from big states demanded that their states have more influence, so they instead proposed the Virginia Plan, which called for representation in Congress to be based on population.
Some delegates from northern states, where slavery was not widely used, wanted slavery to be unlawful and wanted to abolish it throughout the nation. Delegates from southern states, however, where slave labor was very important, they refused and instead wanted slavery to spread across the whole United States. The delegates debated for four months before reaching two major compromises. The Great Compromise creates a bicameral Congress with a House of Representatives based on population, just the Virginia Plan, and a Senate based on equal representation, just like the New Jersey Plan. The Three-Fifths Compromise settles the issue of how slaves would be counted.
The Constitution provided the framework for the new government. The national government could create money, impose taxes, wage war, keep an army, create a postal system, and of course, wage war. To keep the government from becoming too strong, the United States Constitution divided it into three equal parts: a legislature, which would be Congress, they would make laws; an executive, which would be the President, he would execute, or of course, enforce laws; and a judicial branch, which is the Supreme Court, which would interpret the law. Each part worked to make sure that the other parts did not take power that belonged to the others. They would check and balance each other out. For example, if Congress passes a bill and the President vetoes the bill, Congress could then override the presidential veto with a two-thirds vote.
Additionally, the new Constitution would be able to be amended or changed if two-thirds of both congressional houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate, vote in favor of proposing the amendment, or by constitutional convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
On September 17, 1787, most of the delegates signed this new Constitution. They agreed the Constitution would become the law of the United States when nine of these thirteen states ratified or accepted it. It took about a year to ratify the Constitution because the country was divided into two major groups: the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.
The Federalists, they wanted a strong central government. They supported the Constitution and believed that having a stronger central government would make the country more stable and prosperous. Additionally, the Federalists wrote a series of essays called the Federalist Papers, which sought to convince the American public to support this new Constitution.
On the other side, you have the Anti-Federalists. They wanted a weak federal government and feared that under the new proposed Constitution, the states would surrender too much power to the federal government. Additionally, Anti-Federalists believed the new Constitution did not adequately protect individuals from potential government abuse, which would possibly make the government become tyrannical. The only reason that Anti-Federalists agreed to sign the new Constitution was because they were promised that a series of rights would be added to protect individual freedoms from the federal government.
When the first United States Congress met in New York in September 1789, the Federalists actually kept their promise, and together with the Anti-Federalists, they added the first ten amendments to the Constitution, which are known as the Bill of Rights.
And this brings us to the early republic. Now that we have our Constitution, now that we have our whole new government, now we're going to actually start with our first president. So, Americans and their leaders, they faced many challenges in the years after the ratification of the United States Constitution. George Washington became the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789. As president, his job was to create a working government. And with Congress, Washington passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, completing the nation's federal court system. Three circuit courts and thirteen district courts were created during this time.
Additionally, Washington created a cabinet. A cabinet is like a group of advisors. One of Washington's most important cabinet members was a man named Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was Washington's Secretary of the Treasury. To create a stable economic system, Hamilton proposed an economic plan in which the federal government would assume the debts of the state governments, creating a national bank, passing a whiskey tax, and also establishing a protective tariff to help American manufacturers. All of Hamilton's financial plan was accepted except for the tariffs. Western farmers rebelled against the new whiskey tax. However, the Whiskey Rebellion collapsed when Washington made a show of force.
Another one of Washington's cabinet members was a guy named Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was Washington's Secretary of State. Jefferson disagreed with Hamilton's financial plan, especially the creation of a national bank. Additionally, both Jefferson and Hamilton had different ideas about the role of government. Jefferson wanted a stronger state government, and Hamilton wanted a stronger federal government. The most profound disagreement, however, was over how the nation should develop economically. Jefferson wanted a United States based on agriculture. Hamilton, he wanted a United States based on manufacturing and trade.
Additionally, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed on the French Revolution. Now, the French Revolution occurred when French citizens overthrew or dethroned the French King. After years of bloodshed and head-chopping, France ended up under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte. Jefferson supported the French Revolution, yet Hamilton, he supported the British, who declared war on France because they feared that Napoleon would try to take over all of Europe.
The disagreements between Jefferson and Hamilton gave rise to the very first American political parties: the Democratic-Republicans under Jefferson and the Federalists under Hamilton. George Washington served two four-year terms as president before leaving office. In his farewell address, Washington warned against the accumulation of debt, the formation of political parties, and the formation of alliances with European countries.
The second president of the United States, John Adams, was a Federalist who continued many of Washington's policies. Because of the XYZ Affair and the Alien and Sedition Acts, though, John Adams did not serve a second term as president. He actually lost his reelection to Thomas Jefferson in 1800. This peaceful transition of power from Federalists to Democratic-Republicans was known as the Revolution of 1800.
In 1803, Jefferson approved the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size, doubling the nation's size and giving America control of the Mississippi River. Although Jefferson wasn't certain whether the Constitution allowed the federal government to buy new territory, he went ahead with the purchase and later sent Lewis and Clark to explore the vast region.
Another major event that happened in 1803 was a landmark decision issued by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. Marbury v. Madison is very important. It's very important because in that decision, the Supreme Court gave itself the power of judicial review, which allows it to uphold or invalidate federal laws. We think today that the main job of the Supreme Court is being able to declare laws unconstitutional, but that power isn't anywhere in the Constitution itself. Marbury v. Madison gave the court that power, and without it, the Supreme Court would have remained the weakest branch of the federal government.
During Jefferson's second term as president, he tried to continue Washington's policy of neutrality with Europe. But since war between Britain and France continued, staying neutral was actually quite impossible. The British Navy seized American ships going to France, and the French Navy seized American ships going to Britain. To avoid war, Jefferson pushed the Embargo Act of 1807 through Congress. Under the Act, American ships were prohibited from trading with all European nations, especially France and especially Britain. The Embargo Act of 1807 hurt the United States more than it did France or Britain. However, after Jefferson served two terms as president, he followed the precedent set by Washington and stepped down from the presidency.
Wow, that sounds crazy. His good friend and fellow Democratic-Republican, James Madison, became the nation's fourth president in 1809. The first issue Madison had to deal with was Britain's continued impressment of American sailors. Additionally, Britain also supplied and encouraged Native American Indians to attack American settlements. After three years of unsuccessful diplomacy with Britain and mounting pressure from members of Congress who wanted the United States to take over Canada, Madison asked Congress to declare war on Britain in what became known as the War of 1812.
The battles took place mostly in northeastern Ohio and along the East Coast. After Britain finally defeated Napoleon's France, Britain shifted most of its army and navy to face the United States. When part of the British Army actually reached Washington D.C., the new United States Capitol, soldiers there set fire to the President's mansion. Madison fled as the White House burned.
In December 1814, a peace treaty was finally signed between Britain and the United States. Communication from Europe was so slow that the bloodiest battle of the war was actually fought two weeks after the treaty was signed. General Andrew Jackson defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The War of 1812 proved the United States could defend itself. European rulers realized they could not interfere with American trade. The morale of American citizens increased greatly. They had fought against the greatest military power in the world and managed to survive. One major legacy of the war was Francis Scott Key's "The Star-Spangled Banner," the poem which was written during the war, later became the United States national anthem.
And this brings us to the Era of Good Feelings and the start of the American Revolution. The most important outcome of the War of 1812 was that it spurred the economic growth of the United States. Since the United States couldn't trade with Britain during the war, the U.S. had to manufacture many goods themselves, and this gave rise to the Industrial Revolution in the United States.
During the start of the American Industrial Revolution, work shifted from homes to factories where workers could be supervised and where water and steam could be used to run machines. As a result, workers moved closer to manufacturing centers. Because of this, the nation will enter a period of urbanization, which means that people, both men and women, started moving from rural areas like farms to urban areas like cities in search of economic opportunity.
After the War of 1812, Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, became the nation's fifth President. Monroe's presidency from 1817 to 1825 is commonly referred to as the Era of Good Feelings, a period in which all Americans belonged to the same political party, the Democratic-Republicans. Support for the other party, the Federalist Party, actually collapsed by the end of the War of 1812.
There are many important events that occur during James Monroe's Era of Good Feelings presidency. The most important event is the Missouri Compromise in 1819. Missouri has to become a state. Instead of everyone in Congress being happy and excited to add a new state to the Union, everyone was instead arguing whether to make Missouri a slave state or a free state. Because the Constitution allowed each new state to elect two senators, new states could change the political balance between free and slave states. In 1820, Congressman Henry Clay suggested a way to make the North and the South happy: Missouri would become a state with slaves, and Maine would become a state without slaves. This became known as the Missouri Compromise.
Another important event during the Era of Good Feelings is the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The Monroe Doctrine is an important addition to foreign policy because it announced to the world that the United States would oppose or be against any attempt by Europeans to establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere, also known as the Americas or the New World.
Two other major events during the Era of Good Feelings are the purchase of Florida from Spain for five million dollars in 1819 and the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Northeast to the Great Lakes, effectively reducing the cost of shipping goods from the entire Midwest. The Erie Canal also promoted rapid growth of many northern cities or northeastern cities. As a result, New York City became the nation's largest city.
Additionally, there are two Supreme Court cases that occurred during the Era of Good Feelings. Number one is McCulloch v. Maryland. This happens in 1819, which stated that the federal government had the right to establish a bank, and Maryland had no right to interfere by trying to tax it. And then we have the second one, Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824. This establishes, this established the federal government's right to regulate anything that involves interstate commerce. Both court cases actually increase the power of the federal government over state governments.
As the Era of Good Feelings comes to an end, the Industrial Revolution actually intensifies. New inventions improved transportation and communication. Robert Fulton invented the steamboat that could move against the current or strong winds, which allowed more efficient movement of goods. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, which allowed messages to travel between cities in seconds.
In New England, Samuel Slater had begun producing cotton thread by machine, and Francis Cabot Lowell established the factory system, which made the production of goods more efficient in a town he founded named Lowell, Massachusetts. In Lowell, women worked in harsh conditions in what later became known as the Lowell Mills.
In the Midwest, John Deere invented the steel plow, which made it easier for farmers to prepare thick and heavy Midwestern soil for planting. As a result, more farmers began moving west. In the South, Eli Whitney invented interchangeable parts, which made production faster and repairs easier. Interchangeable parts led directly to the use of mass production techniques we see today. Whitney also invented the cotton gin, which made the cotton cleaning process much quicker, and this would eventually lead to the expansion of slavery all throughout the South.
Now, the Industrial Revolution also gave rise to what we call the free enterprise system. In a free enterprise system, individuals are free to purchase and sell whatever they wish. They are also free to buy and use whatever they can afford. In a free enterprise system, there's also very minimal or limited government interference in the economy, and the prices of goods are not set by the government, but they are set by the interaction of consumer demand and the available supply. Basically, the economy is free from government regulation and oversight. The Industrial Revolution would continue to intensify into the next time period, the Age of Jackson.
In the election of 1824, General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, won the popular vote but did not have enough votes to win through the electoral college system. Instead, the election was to be decided by the House of Representatives. In the House of Representatives, however, Henry Clay urged all of his supporters to vote for John Quincy Adams. Adams won the election, making him the sixth president, and as a result, appointed Clay as Secretary of State. Jackson was furious and accused Adams and Clay of making a corrupt bargain.
After his defeat in the election of 1824, Jackson and his supporters, who called themselves Democrats, spent the next four years campaigning for the presidency, and in the election of 1828, Jackson was finally elected president. His supporters were the common people: laborers, farmers, and frontiersmen. Jackson saw himself as a spokesperson for the common man, the average American.
The first major issue during Jackson's presidency was the war on Native Americans. After successfully replacing government officials with his own supporters, a policy known as the spoils system, Jackson immediately proposed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Act required Native American Indians to move west. The Cherokees, however, refused to do so, appealing their case to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Georgia also passed a law in 1830 stating that any white person living among Indians without a license from the governor would be sent to prison. As a result, a man named Samuel Worcester was sent to prison and later sued to obtain his freedom. In both cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall actually ruled in favor of the Cherokees. Yet, Andrew Jackson ignored the ruling, refused to enforce any other Supreme Court decisions, and effectively began removing Cherokees by force. In 1837, 1/4 of the 16,000 Cherokees who were forced to move west to what is now Oklahoma died along the 800-mile journey. This event became known as the Trail of Tears.
The second major issue during Jackson's presidency was the nullification crisis. In 1828, a new tariff, which is a tax on imported goods, was passed, and this angered many Southerners so much so that they called it the Tariff of Abominations. Jackson's Vice President, John C. Calhoun, argued that states had the right to nullify or cancel any federal law which it considered unconstitutional. Jackson disagreed with Calhoun and threatened to kill him. Fearing for his life, Calhoun resigned from his post as Vice President. In 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union but backed down when President Jackson threatened to use force and hang the first person he could get his hands on that supported states' rights.
The third major issue during Jackson's presidency was his war on the Second National Bank. Many felt that Jackson hated the bank mainly because he hated the president of the bank, a man named Nicholas Biddle. Although the bank was considered to be constitutional because of the Supreme Court decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, Jackson sought to destroy the bank anyways because he felt that it favored the rich and took advantage of the poor. Jackson removed funds from the National Bank and placed those funds in smaller state banks that were more inclined to lend money to poor farmers. This move by Jackson angered the wealthy elite, yet he gained praise and became even more popular with the common people.
Although many Americans admired Jackson, his style was far too dictatorial in the way that he ran the nation. As a result, a new political party, the Whig Party, was formed. Now, in Britain, they had a Whig Party, and that basically was always against the king. So, in the United States, the Whig Party was against the king, right? They hated Jackson so much so that they named him "King Andrew" and even called him a jackass. Jackson liked the name so much that he made the donkey the symbol of his Democratic Party.
After serving two terms as president, Andrew Jackson pressed his supporters to elect Martin Van Buren in 1836 to the presidency. Van Buren won the election. While his presidency was plagued by economic problems caused by Jackson's economic policies, the nation suffered from severe inflation, or an increase in prices and the decrease in the value of money. As a result, Van Buren lost his reelection to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. At his inauguration, Harrison came down with a cold that developed into pneumonia. He died one month after being inaugurated, and his Vice President, John Tyler, became president.
As the Age of Jackson came to an end, more and more Americans came to believe that it was their manifest destiny, or faith, to extend the borders of the nation to the shores of the Pacific. The idea of manifest destiny became so popular that in 1844, Democrats supported making it an official federal policy.
And this brings us, of course, to Manifest Destiny, also known as westward expansion. The United States expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean by acquiring a series of new territories. These territories included the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, the purchase of Florida from Spain in 1819, the annexation of Texas in 1845, which led to border disputes between the United States and Mexico, the acquisition of part of the Oregon Territory from Britain, which achieved the United States' goal of expanding westward all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and the Mexican Cession, which resulted, or which was a result of the United States-Mexican War, and the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico to build a railroad.
Many settlers moved west along trails such as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail. Both ended up in California, especially when gold was discovered there in 1848. As well as a result, many people moved out to California in 1849, and they became known as 49ers. The gold rush also attracted many Chinese immigrants who wanted a piece of the economic boom in the West. As thousands of settlers and immigrants moved to the western frontiers of the United States, the government began building roads and railroads to improve the transportation network and promote the free enterprise system. Additionally, the growth of railroads during the 19th century affected United States businesses by opening new markets for goods.
As more people moved west, more and more immigrants began to pour into the northeastern cities like Boston and New York. In the 1840s, thousands of Irish immigrants came to the United States seeking to escape a famine caused by the failure of their main staple food crop, the potato. Additionally, many German immigrants came to the United States to escape political repression. Unlike the Irish, however, most Germans settled in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The United States population, the United States population grew from about 5 million in 1800 to over 23 million by 1850.
And this brings us to the Reform Era. By 1850, the United States was a large, emerging country full of contrasts. New England and the Mid-Atlantic states were the centers of finance, trade, shipping, and manufacturing. Their products included lumber, machinery, and textiles. The Lower South had more land devoted to plantations that used slave labor to grow tobacco, sugar, and especially cotton. Western territories had inexpensive land and abundant natural resources.
As the United States developed its own identity, a period known as the Golden Age of literature and art was born. A group of New York-based landscape painters known as the Hudson River School was started by Thomas Cole. Rather than using nature as a mere backdrop for history paintings or portraits, nature took center stage in their canvases. During this period, great masterpieces of literature were also written. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" reflected what life was like in Puritan New England. Herman Melville's novel about whaling, "Moby Dick," is considered by many to be the greatest American novel ever written. The whaling ship is actually seen as a metaphor for the United States. Edgar Allan Poe perfected the art of writing suspenseful short stories.
Yet, of all the great books written, the one that had the most profound effect on the United States was a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" depicted the evils of slavery and stirred the public conscience of the North. As a result, many Northerners thought slavery was wrong and joined the abolitionist movement, which sought to end slavery.
During this time, the Second Great Awakening, which was a movement that promoted spiritual revival and the need for social reform, pushed many people to try and make the United States a better place. William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists, including former slaves like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, they published anti-slavery writings and delivered speeches all throughout the North. Another guy named Henry David Thoreau wrote a very famous essay entitled "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," in which he argues the moral necessity of resisting slavery. Thoreau believed that it was the duty of citizens to disobey unjust government policies through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. Later, this whole civil disobedience is going to be used by Gandhi, and it's also going to be used by Martin Luther King.
Now, Henry David Thoreau, he hated slavery and felt strongly that the United States had wrongly gone to war with Mexico to extend slavery. Other reformers like Dorothea Dix campaigned to improve the conditions of mental hospitals and prisons. Horace Mann advocated for free public education. As a result, the push for women's rights also began during this period. Many women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, met at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, where they demanded equality with men, including the right to vote. Many of these women were also members of the temperance movement, which sought to ban the consumption of alcohol.
Of all the reform movements that began during this period, the abolitionist movement was the most important. Thousands of slaves escaped to the North with the help of people along secret routes called the Underground Railroad. In 1860, however, 90% of all African Americans were slaves.
And this leads to the road to the Civil War. Most Northerners did not care about slavery in the South, but they did not want slavery in the new territories. Most white Southerners considered slavery part of their way of life. The Southerners believed that each state had the right to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed. Additionally, many Southerners argued that slavery was justified by the Bible.
After the U.S.-Mexican War, Congress began to ask whether the new land of the Mexican Cession would be slave or free states. After bitter debate, Henry Clay came up with his last compromise, his Compromise of 1850. It admitted California as a free state, and in exchange, Congress passed a tighter Fugitive Slave Law, letting southern slave owners hunt down slaves who escaped north. The Fugitive Slave Act effectively allowed slave owners to kidnap any African Americans, slave or free, living in the North.
Both of Henry Clay's compromises, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, temporarily kept the peace. However, in the late 1850s, these compromises broke down, making the conflict between the North and the South inevitable.
The period of compromise started to unravel in 1854 when Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed a new doctrine of popular sovereignty, which allowed people in a territory to decide for themselves whether the area should have slavery. That same year, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers to decide whether or not to permit slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to bloodshed in Kansas between supporters and opponents of slavery. Both sides sent supporters to Kansas to win the vote. It resulted in over 300 murders. This event became known as Bleeding Kansas because of all the fighting between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups.
Critics of the failed Kansas-Nebraska Act formed a new political party, the Republican Party. Republicans agreed to let slavery continue in the South, but they opposed any further extension of slavery into any of the new territories.
In 1857, a southern slave, Dred Scott, was taken by his owners to the North and then back into slavery in the South. Scott sued for his freedom, having been on free soil. He argued that he could not be taken back into slavery. However, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared Dred Scott was a non-citizen and therefore was not entitled to bring a lawsuit before the court. Taney further asserted that African Americans could never become United States citizens. Blacks were only to be considered property that Congress had no right to take away. This ruling by the United States Supreme Court overturned all previous compromises. Additionally, the decision meant that slavery could spread practically anywhere in the United States.
Outraged by the Supreme Court decision, a man named John Brown launched a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. His uprising was quickly crushed by the United States government, and Brown was tried and executed. His act of violence, however, demonstrated that the slave question had brought the country to the verge of Civil War.
And this brings us to the actual Civil War. During the election of 1860, the Democrats were divided and nominated two candidates to the presidency. As a result of this split, Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln actually won the election. Lincoln agreed that the South could keep its slaves, but he wanted to keep slavery from spreading any further. Lincoln thought that over time, slavery would end. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said. "This government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Because of Lincoln's reputation as an opponent of slavery, South Carolina seceded from the United States. By the time of Lincoln's inauguration, another five southern states seceded to join South Carolina and form the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy. In his inaugural address, Davis claimed southern states had the right to secede. When Lincoln tried to reinforce Fort Sumter in April 1861, South Carolina fired on the fort, effectively starting the Civil War. President Lincoln was determined to stop the rebellion and keep the country united. When he called on all states to contribute militia to put down the rebellion, Virginia and three more southern states seceded and joined the Confederacy. The North fought to keep the Union.
Together and end slavery, the South fought to preserve the way of life, just like the American colonists had once resisted Britain. The North had more people, more raw materials for producing war supplies, more industry, more money, a better railway system, and a much larger Navy than the South. The South, however, had more experienced military leaders like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and the South also had better knowledge of the battlefields because most of the war was fought in the South.
The Union war strategy was called the Anaconda Plan. The North wanted to strangle the South with a naval blockade. The Confederate war strategy was to drag the war out in hopes that the North would get tired of fighting and recognize Southern independence.
Tens of thousands of soldiers fought on land and sea. The North failed in its early attempts to take the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. September 17th, 1862, was the bloodiest day of the war. The two armies met at Antietam, or Antietam Creek, in Maryland. The battle was not decisive, but it was politically important. Britain and France had plans to neither Confederacy, but they delayed. The South never received the help it desperately needed.
Later in 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the Confederate states. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in Southern states that were still aligned with the Union, but it did allow African-Americans to serve in the Union Army.
In early 1863, the United States government passed a draft law requiring men to serve in the army. The draft was unpopular among many Northerners. Draft riots broke out in New York City protesting the law. Angry mobs attacked abolitionists and an African orphanage. Many rioters blamed African Americans for the draft.
The turning point of the war was the Battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863. General Lee had attempted to push the war north in a bold attempt to cut off Washington D.C. from the rest of the Union. After three days of fighting, Lee was forced to retreat. Lee's army would never invade the North again.
Within a week of Gettysburg, the North took Vicksburg, which split the Confederacy in half, gave control of the Mississippi to the North, and accelerated the Anaconda Plan. Additionally, the siege of Vicksburg showcased the military prowess of Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln was so pleased with Grant's success at Vicksburg that he placed him in charge of all Union forces. The North had no one that could match up against Lee, who had out-strategized and even embarrassed earlier Union commanders. Yet, Grant was unlike earlier commanders. Grant made his goal the total destruction of Confederate forces.
In November of 1863, Lincoln gave the most famous speech in American history, the Gettysburg Address. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln argued that the war had become a struggle to see if the system of democracy could survive.
The following year, Grant sent General William T. Sherman with a Union Army across Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah on a total war march. As Sherman's army moved through the South, they destroyed and killed everything in their path. The devastation caused by the Union armies in the South cost many Confederates to lose hope. As a result, General Lee's army slowly dwindled.
By April 1865, Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, fell to Union armies. A few days later, Lee met Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse. Both generals signed a document of surrender, and the war was finally over. In four years of fighting, about six hundred and twenty thousand soldiers died. Some estimates have it up to eight hundred. More Americans died in the Civil War than in any other U.S. conflict. William Carney and Philip Bazaar both were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their acts of bravery during the war. Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" became the most popular song in the nation.
Yet, less than a week after the South's surrender, a Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln. Vice President Andrew Johnson became president with the job of reconstructing the country, and this brings us to Reconstruction.
During the Reconstruction era, Southern states needed to rebuild their economy and be readmitted into the Union. After Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Courthouse, the main priority of the United States was to implement a plan to bring Confederate states back into the Union. Lincoln had a plan that sought to treat the South leniently by asking only 10% of its voters to take an oath of allegiance and have each state ratify the 13th Amendment, which officially banned slavery in the United States. When he was assassinated, his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, sought to follow Lincoln's plans.
One of the biggest issues facing the South was the fate of freedmen. Despite several attempts during the war, the freedmen were not given their own land. The federal government set up the Freedmen's Bureau with offices throughout the South to help the newly freed slaves adjust and to set up schools to educate them. Southern state legislatures, in response, created Black Codes based on older slave codes. These limited the civil rights and freedom of movement of the freedmen.
Radical Republicans in Congress were outraged by these Black Codes. They passed the Civil Rights Bill, granting freedmen their civil rights. This act later became the Fourteenth Amendment, which stated that all people born in the United States were citizens and had the same rights. Then, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denial of voting rights on the basis of race. Additionally, Congress passed military reconstruction, which divided the South into districts governed by the United States Army. Former Confederate leaders lost their political rights, while the freedmen were given the right to vote. This led to Hiram Rhodes Revels, or Hyrum Rhodes Revels, becoming the first African American elected to Congress.
Reconstruction governments built roads, schools, and took steps towards racial equality. However, after northern troops were withdrawn, Southern states passed segregation laws and a new set of Black Codes to limit the effects of the Reconstruction Amendments. Additionally, Black Codes sought to restrict African American voting, civil rights, and liberties.
Reconstruction also saw the opening of the Great Plains to settlement in the West. Congress passed the Homestead Act, which gave free land to anyone that had never taken arms against the Union. Additionally, the Morrill Act set funds aside to build more agricultural colleges and universities. Then, the Bessemer process of producing steel much faster and efficiently helped aid the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. The Indian Wars forced Indians onto government reservations, while widespread massacres of the Buffalo on the Great Plains destroyed their food supply. Finally, the Dawes Act led to the loss of most of the remaining land Native Americans still had.
In many ways, the effects of Reconstruction are still with us today. After many years of bloodshed, mayhem, violence, murder, massacres, racism, discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance, the United States remains the one true experiment of democracy in this world.