Second Party System [1828–1854] II Flashcards
Review - Timeline: Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800–1850
1807: Robert Fulton builds first successful steamboat. 1813: Francis Cabot Lowell founds ‘Boston Manufacturing Company’. 1819: Bank panic leads to depression. 1825: Erie Canal opens. 1831: Cyrus McCormick invents mechanical reaper; Mohawk and Hudson Railroad begins service. 1838: Samuel Morse first demonstrates the telegraph. 1841: P.T. Barnum’s ‘American Museum’ opens in NYC.
Review - Timeline: Jacksonian Democracy, 1820–1840
1824: John Q. Adams elected president in “corrupt bargain”. 1828: “Tariff of Abominations” protects northern manufacturers; Andrew Jackson wins popular and electoral votes. 1830: Congress passes Indian Removal Act. 1832: Nullification crisis risks violent secession; President Jackson vetoes renewal of 2nd Bank of U.S. 1834: Whig Party forms in opposition to the Democratic Party. 1837: Financial panic prompts extended recession. 1840: Whig candidate William Henry Harrison elected president.
Timeline: Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 1820-1860
1827: American Temperance Society is formed. 1830: Joseph Smith founds ‘Church of the Latter Day Saints’. 1831: Nat Turner leads slave rebellion. 1833: William Lloyd Garrison founds American Anti-Slavery Society. 1841: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism and ‘Self-Reliance’. 1848: Supporters of women’s rights gather at Seneca Falls. 1854: Henry David Thoreau publishes ‘Walden’ (or, ‘Life in the Woods’). 1855: Most northeastern states “go dry” by prohibiting alcohol.
Martin Van Buren (D)
Unlike the seven men who preceded him in the White House, Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) was the first president to be born a citizen of the United States and not a British subject. He rose quickly in New York politics, winning a U.S. Senate seat in 1821 and presiding over a sophisticated state political organization. Van Buren helped form the new Democratic Party from a coalition of Jeffersonian Republicans who backed the military hero and president Andrew Jackson. A favorite of Jackson’s, Van Buren won the White House himself in 1836, but was plagued by a financial panic that gripped the nation the following year. After losing his bid for reelection in 1840, Van Buren ran again unsuccessfully in 1844 (when he lost the Democratic nomination to the pro-southern candidate James K. Polk) and 1848 (as a member of the antislavery Free Soil Party).
Paraphrase Martin Van Buren’s personal and political background.
Although Van Buren had served as Secretary of State under Jackson and replaced Calhoun as VP after the Nullification Crisis of 1832, he was unique because he was the first U.S. president to have been born in the U.S. after the American Revolution; as such, he represented a new breed, opposed to the war heroes, soldier-scholars, the landed gentry, and career diplomates of the past. He was the son of Dutch immigrants who settled in New York. He never lost his Dutch accent into adulthood. He ascended through the political world through a combination of intelligence, political acumen, and the ability to choose allies that would benefit him personally.
Summarize the election of 1836 and the events of Van Buren’s administration, including his stance on certain issues and the Panic of 1837.
By 1835, Van Buren had become the front runner to replace Jackson in the Democrat Party. He easily won the nomination and election for president. He was expected to continue Jacksonianism. While an able president, Van Buren’s administration was not marked by any great accomplishment or event that would set him apart from his predecessors. He implemented the Trail of Tears, turned down a petition from Texas to join the United States in 1837 (seeking to ease tensions with Mexico), he felt slavery was morally wrong but believed the Constitution justified its existence, etc. The Panic of 1837 and following five year economic depression made him very unpopular.
William Henry Harrison (W)
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), America’s ninth president, served just one month in office before dying of pneumonia. His tenure, from March 4, 1841, to April 4, 1841, is the shortest of any U.S. president. Harrison, who was born into a prominent Virginia family, joined the Army as a young man and fought American Indians on the U.S. frontier. He then became the first congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, a region encompassing much of the present-day Midwest. In the early 1800s, Harrison served as governor of the Indiana Territory and worked to open American Indian lands to white settlers. He became a war hero after fighting Indian forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Harrison went on to serve as a U.S. congressman and senator from Ohio. He was elected to the White House in 1840, but passed away a month after his inauguration, the first U.S. president to die in office.
List some of the reasons the Whig party nominated William Henry Harrison for the 1840 election and explain their strategy for his campaign.
Van Buren lost to Henry Harrison for two primary reasons. The first is that an economic depression, starting with Panic of 1836, persisted since Van Buren was elected in 1836. The second is that the Whigs figured out how to run campaigns at the grassroots level and build a myth around their candidate. This election is considered to be the first ‘political circus’, meaning it had all the trappings of a modern campaign. John Tyler was made Harrisons running mate to help secure the South. Harrison won 234 to 60.
Describe Harrison’s brief presidency.
Harrison believed in strict separation of powers and planed to make the executive branch weaker than in previous administrations. This would give the Whigs the ability to push their agenda through Congress. Only weeks into his presidency he contracted pneumonia and died. He was oldest president to take office at the time and has the shortest presidency in history. His last words to VP John Tyler before he died were “Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.”
*An Awakening of Religion and Individualism*
Evangelical Protestantism pervaded American culture in the antebellum era and fueled a belief in the possibility of changing society for the better. Leaders of the Second Great Awakening like Charles G. Finney urged listeners to take charge of their own salvation. This religious message dovetailed with the new economic possibilities created by the market and Industrial Revolution, making the Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening, with its emphasis on individual spiritual success, a reflection of the individualistic, capitalist spirit of the age. Transcendentalists took a different approach, but like their religiously oriented brethren, they too looked to create a better existence. These authors, most notably Emerson, identified a major tension in American life between the effort to be part of the democratic majority and the need to remain true to oneself as an individual.
Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism, and nationalism.
American Renaissance - Romanticism in America
In the half century before the Civil War, Americans began to mature culturally, creating several of their own new phenomena and transforming some European trends into something bigger. Romanticism didn’t necessarily throw out the Enlightenment, rather it validated emotional experience as well. Its style fit well with American ideals of individualism, freedom, the goodness of nature, and morality over religion. It influenced American nationalism. It was especially influential in American painting and literature. In America, romantic themes were translated into a philosophical movement called transcendentalism. Religion reflected the same trends with the creation of utopian communes and Mormonism.
American Renaissance - American Romanticism and the Hudson River School.
Romanticism took root in American painting. The Hudson River School popularized landscape painting and introduced art museums to the American people. It was started by Thomas Cole who was inspired to paint the Hudson River Valley in 1825. A second generation of artists painted beyond the geographic borders of the Hudson, depicting the grandeur of the American frontier and nationalistic themes of discovery, exploration, and settlement. Their works helped captivate people about a new and expanding nation. They also opened up the art world to the middle class. A group of Hudson River School artists founded New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870, introducing a new form of public entertainment.
American Renaissance - American Romanticism and Literature.
Romantic literature reached great heights in America, making household names out of several authors. In this period, we see novels, short stories, and poems, instead of the sermons and essays of the colonial period. Just like the visual art, Romantic literature emphasizes emotion, freedom, personal experience, and morality. Unlike the painters, many American authors and their works are household names: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, many poems by Walt Whitman, and countless stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Several notable authors were also women, including Louisa May Alcott. Her book called ‘Little Women’, on a deeper level, explored the struggle between women’s traditional, subservient social role and the growing desire to pursue their own goals in life and to achieve political equality.
American Renaissance - Explain Transcendentalism and illustrate its effects on American culture.
Many Romantic themes were translated into a philosophical movement called transcendentalism, founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and popularized by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) [picture]. At its core, transcendentalism emphasized the belief that by communing directly with nature, humans could transcend the sensory world and reach the supernatural. Intuition was much more important than fact, imagination better than the senses. People were born good but were corrupted by the institutions of society. As such, the transcendentalists inspired a number of very progressive reform movements aimed at improving society such as abolition, feminism, and education. Transcendentalism’s legacy can still be seen in Americans’ tendency toward self-reliance. Emerson told Americans to stop imitating other people and just be themselves. He wrote the essays ‘Nature’ (1836) and ‘Self-Reliance’ (1841). Thoreau put his theories into practice by living in the wilderness for two years and wrote about in ‘Walden’ (1854). He also wrote ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), which encouraged Americans to stop paying taxes when government was corrupt.
*Antebellum Communal Experiments*
Reformers who engaged in communal experiments aimed to recast economic and social relationships by introducing innovations designed to create a more stable and equitable society. Their ideas found many expressions, from early socialist experiments (such as by the Fourierists and the Owenites) to the dreams of the New England intellectual elite (such as Brook Farm). The Second Great Awakening also prompted many religious utopias, like those of the Rappites and Shakers. By any measure, the Mormons emerged as the most successful of these.
American Renaissance - Describe the emergence of utopian communities and Mormonism.
Religion reflected the same trends in Romanticism’s and the Great Awakening’s influence, and several new religious groups were founded. Several utopian communes were formed. ‘Brook Farm’ was founded on transcendental ideals and agricultural communism and failed. The Oneida Community (a religious community) thrived. It became infamous for very progressive beliefs about open sexual relationships. Mormonism was founded in New York and made its stronghold in present day Utah. It has since abandoned communal living and polygamy.
American Renaissance - Pop Culture
In general, American pop culture included joining groups and witnessing amazing spectacles. Americans loved a good spectacle: traveling performers, circus acts, and freak shows. Charles Blondin delighted crowds with daredevil stunts, such as walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls in 1859. America made new contributions to show business. Black-faced minstrel shows were introduced as a uniquely American genre. And P.T. Barnum made a rock star out of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind and his marketing model would be copied for generations.
American Renaissance - P.T. Barnum’s ‘American Museum’ opens in NYC.
P.T. Barnum converted the five-story exterior of his ‘American Museum’ into an advertisement lit with limelight. The museum opened on January 1, 1842. Its attractions made it a combination of a zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater, and freak show, in what was, at the same time, a central site in the development of American popular culture. At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day. Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to visit the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million.
Reform Movements of the 19th Century - Understand how the Second Great Awakening and transcendentalism influenced social reform in the 19th century.
In the decades before the Civil War, transcendentalists (inspired by their belief in human goodness) and Christians from the Second Great Awakening began a number of reform movements in an effort to improve American society. Of these, temperance was a movement to ban alcohol; reformers sought to establish public schools and expand higher education throughout the states; prison conditions were improved and asylums for the mentally ill were established; abolition took on a new urgency; and women pushed for more equality.
*Reforms to Human Health*
Reformers targeted vices that corrupted the human body and society: the individual and the national soul. For many, alcohol appeared to be the most destructive and widespread. Indeed, in the years before the Civil War, the United States appeared to be a republic of drunkenness to many. To combat this national substance abuse problem, reformers created a host of temperance organizations that first targeted the middle and upper classes, and then the working classes. Thanks to Sylvester Graham and other health reformers, exercise and fresh air, combined with a good diet, became fashionable. Phrenology was pseudoscience which involved the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. In a fast-paced world, it offered the possibility of knowing different human characteristics.
focused on revealing the secrets of the mind and personality. In a fast-paced world, phrenology offered the possibility of knowing different human characteristics.
Reform Movements of the 19th Century - Describe the temperance movement and name the amendment that resulted from it.
The temperance movement started in the 1830s and sought to limit or even ban the consumption of alcohol. It was strongly supported by American Protestants, but it was mostly a bipartisan movement. Alcohol was considered a social evil and was blamed for more of society’s problems than any other vice. New Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany opposed this movement and, thus, this led temperance to become linked to some degree with nativism and anti-immigrant sentiments. This movement was eventually successful with the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919, but it was later repealed in 1933 with the 21st Amendment due to unforeseen problems with it during the Great Depression.
Reform Movements of the 19th Century - Summarize education reform.
Other reformers worked to establish public schools and expand higher education throughout the states, at least for white boys, including Oberlin College, which opened its doors to women. In 1837, Horace Mann began an education reform movement that pursued free, equal, non-religious schooling for all social classes, provided by trained, well-paid, professional teachers. By 1870, all states had some free elementary schools. Oberlin College in Ohio was the first coeducation college in America.
Reform Movements of the 19th Century - Summarize prison and asylum reform.
Prison conditions were improved in the early 1800s. Criminals in the early 1700s were publicly whipped or hanged, but by the early 1800s they would be put into a large common cell. Reformers, influenced by transcendentalism, believed in more humane ways, such as including literacy programs, prison libraries, and less physical punishment.
