Historical Period 4: Part 3 Flashcards
What was Andrew Jackson’s presidency called?
The Age of the Common Man;
The Era of Jacksonian Democracy
What was the controversy behind the Election of 1824?
Jackson won more popular and electoral votes than any other candidate, but because the vote was split four ways, he lacked a majority in the Electoral College;
Clay used his influence in the House to get John Quincy Adams with enough votes to win the election and was thus accused of making a corrupt bargain
What did the Jacksonians do in the Revolution of 1828?
They smeared the president and accused Adams’s wife of being born out of wedlock
How did Jackson win the presidential election?
Via his reputation as a war hero and the discontent of the southerners and westerners towards the Adams’ presidency
How did Andrea Jackson become a symbol of the every man of the era?
He didn’t go to college and he behaved roughly due to his growing up occurring in the frontier;
He was a self-made man
What was the Peggy Eaton Affair?
In which members of Jackson’s cabinet resigned because Jackson tired to force the cabinet wives to accpet Peggy Eaton socially
How was Jackson’s interpretation fo democracy limited?
It did not extend to American Indians
What was the Indian Removal Act (1830)?
It forced the resettlement of many thousands of American Indians
What was the Trail of Tears?
The road to leaving Georgia that the Cherokees were forced to undertake by the US Army after Jackson left office
What did Jackson favor: states’ rights or federal rights?
States; rights
What was the nullification theory?
Each state had the right to decide whether to obey a federal law or to declare it null and void (of no effect)
What was the Webster-Hayne debate?
It was a dramatic exchange of speeches in which Hayne argued for the rights of the states and Webster attacked the idea that any state could defy or leave the Union
What was the Proclamation to the People of South Carolina?
It stated that nullification and disunion were treason
What did South Carolina do that was so controversial?
Its legislature declared the 1828 tariff (the Tariff of Abominations) to be unconstitutional and later on, held a special convention to nullify both the 1828 tariff and a new tariff of 1832
How did the South Carolina vs Jackson situation conclude?
South Caroline formally rescinded nullification after Congress enacted a new tariff that went along Jackson’s suggestions of lowering it
Did Jackson extend democracy to African Americans?
No
What did the Democratic-Republicans break down into?
-The Democrats: supporters of Jackson
-The Whigs: supporters of Jackson’s rival, Henry Clay
What did the Democrats believe in?
They harked back to the old Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson
What did the Whigs believe in?
Like the Federalists who supported economic growth, they supported spending federal money for internal improvements, such as roads, canals, and harbors
What did the Whigs believe in?
Like the Federalists who supported economic growth, they supported spending federal money for internal improvements, such as roads, canals, and harbors
What did Jackson do to the Bank of the United States in his second term (1832-1836)?
He withdrawed all federal banks and transferred the funds to various state banks;
This led to the prices of land and various goods becoming greatly inflated
What was the Specie Circular?
A presidential order that required that all future purchases be made in specie (gold and silver) instead of paper banknotes;
This issuing led to the Panic of 1837, when banknotes lost their value and land sales plummeted
What happened just when Martin Van Buren became the president?
The Panic of 1837 occurred
Who won the Presidential Election of 1840?
William Henry Harrison, but he passed away less than a month in office;
Thus, John Tyler, who wasn’t much of a Whig, became the first vice president to succeed to the presidency
In the 1850s, where did the American Indian population reside?
In the Great Plains
How did the introduction of horses change life for some American Indian groups?
Groups like the Cheyenne and the Sioux became nomadic hunters
How did White settlers affect the western frontier environmentally?
It exhausted the soil and brought the beaver and buffalo to the brink of extinction
How did White settlers affect the western frontier environmentally?
It exhausted the soil and brought the beaver and buffalo to the brink of extinction
How were Americans in terms of nationalism?
They were very patriotic
What was the blue-backed speller>
It was the American spelling book developed by Noah Webster to promote patriotism
What was romanticism?
It emphasized intuition, feelings, individual acts of heroism, and the study of nature;
It came after the Enlightenment era
Who were the trascendentalists?
A group of New England thinkers who embraced the ideas of romanticism;
They really valued the ideas of individualism and supported the anti-slavery movement
Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson?
The best-known transcendentalist;
His works expressed the individualistic and nationalistic spirit of Americans by urging them to create a distinctive American culture;
He was all about self-reliance and putting spiritual matters over material ones
Who was Henry David Thoreau?
He did a two-year experiment wherein he lived in the woods;
Wrote Walden while he was in the woods;
Wrote “On Civil Disobedience,” which encompassed his reflections for disobeying unjust laws and accepting the penalty
When did experiments to create a utopia arise/were very prominent?
The antebellum
What were the characteristics of American culture during this time period?
-Individualistic
-Patriotic
What were some notable writers in this period?
-Washington Irving
-James Cooper
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
-Herman Melville
-Edgar Allan Poe
What was the Second Great Awakening?
Marked a reassertion of the traditional Calvinist (Puritan) teachings of original sin and predestinations
What caused the Second Great Awakening? (Part 1)
-Growing emphasis on democracy and the individual
-Rational approach to religion favored by the Deists and Unitarians
What caused the Second Great Awakening? (Part 2)
-The market revolution
-Disruptions caused by the market revolution and the mobility of people, which led them to look for worship settings that were outside formal churches based in urban areas
Among which social class did the Second Great Awakening occur?
It began among highly educated people
Who was Thomas Dwight?
He promoted the Second Great Awakening ideals
