What Happened Under the Different Presidencies

Question 1

Washington

Answer 1

1789-1789

• Hamilton was the political brains behind his presidency
• Washington introduced the idea that a president should serve two terms in order to avoid tyranny
• Hamilton’s 5 point plan:
  1. Create Nation’s Credit
  2. Create a National Debt
  3. Create a National Bank
  4. Whiskey Tax
  5. Tariff to encourage domestic trade
• Whiskey Rebellion
• Jay’s treaty: addresses issue with British navy and impressment (in practice it didn’t really fix anything and the problem was passed to John Adams)

Question 2

John Adams

Answer 2

1789-1801

• Federalists and Republicans: his election exposed an issue with the electoral system because Jefferson was his VP, so the pres and VP were on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum
• XYZ affair: American government turned against France and started the Quasi-War
• Alien and Sedition act: lengthened the time it took to become a citizen and made it illegal to criticize the government

Question 3

Thomas Jefferson

Answer 3

1801-1805

• This election showed that Americans really wanted a more democratic form of government
• Jefferson was a strong proponent for an agrarian nation, he wanted to expand the country. He also wanted tor educe the size of the government. He got rid of all the taxes (except the tariffs), paid off part of the national debt, shrunk the army, and made sure America would not become a centralized English style state
• 1803: Marbury vs Madison: extended the power of the Supreme court to deme laws unconstitutional
• Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson bought the land from Napoleon for $15 million dollars and doubled the size of the country (although he had no official power to do this), ensuring that every white man would have his own small farm.
• The Embargo: Jefferson imposed the embargo to punish British for impressment. The theory was that the British were so dependent on America for goods that if the US stopped trade with them, British would stop impressing. The idea was that the Americans would then trade its primary products for British manufactured goods. However, this did not work because British were too busy fighting the French.

Question 4

James Madison

Answer 4

1809-1817

• Non-intercourse act: just as ineffective as the embargo act. It contributed to the coming of the war of 1812.
• War of 1812: mostly fake, no one really won. Happened because of foreign disputes
• Treaty of Ghent: ended the war of 1812, it was signed in 1814.

Question 5

James Monroe

Answer 5

1817-1825

• Missouri Compromise: Written by Henry Clay, it addressed the issue of Missouri joining the union. Created the 36 30 line of latitude, made Maine a free state, balanced the Senate
• Monroe Doctrine: Written by John Quincy Adams, it proposed that Europe should stop colonizing other places and that US would have no party in fighting in future European wars.

Question 6

John Quincy Adams

Answer 6

1825-1829

• Eerie canal is completed
• Tariff of Abominations: designed to protect Northern US industry by taxing by taxing foreign goods. This raised the cost of living in the South. This helped seal his loss to Jackson.

Question 7

Andrew Jackson

Answer 7

1829-1837
-Known for dueling and killing Indians, but he won the presidency the second time he ran as champion for the common man.
-His policies defined the new Democratic party– but there was also a widening gap between the rich and the poor.
-Out of this sprung the Whig party: They felt Jackson was grabbing too much power from the executive branch
NULLIFICATION CRISIS: Tariff of 1828, benefited manufacturers, and it raised prices on manufactured foods made of wool and iron (being made in the North). This enraged South Carolina (because they put all their money into slaves and had to buy stuff from the North), and they threatened to nullify it. As a result, Jackson tried to pass the Tariff of 1832 (similar to the Tariff of 1828) and Palmetto nullified. Jackson responded by passing the Force Act 1838, which authorized him to use the army and navy to collect taxes. (This was very similar to a dictatorship)
-Indian Removal Act of 1830: government provided funds to relocate Indians from Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama. The tribes sued the government, but the Supreme Court ruled that it was okay.
-1832: Bank Leader Nicholas Biddle persuaded Congress to pass a bill extending the life of the second US bank for over 20 years, but Jackson used the veto power fearing the bank would use its money against him in his reelection. So, the second bank of america expired in 1836.
-Panic of 1837: the economy collapses due to inflation.
-Beginning of annexation of Texas. Santa Ana defeated American defenders of the Alamo in 1835. Rebels then fought back and defeated Santa Ana and became the Lone Star State.

Question 8

Martin Van Buren

Answer 8

1837-1841

• Trail of Tears: Thousands of Indians were forced out of their land. 1/4th of the 18,000 Indians died during this forced march
• Panic of 1837 continues
• Invented the democratic party
• First to realize that the national democratic parties could be a good thing
• In 1837, Lone Star state asked to join the Union.

Question 9

John Tyler

Answer 9

1841-1845

-On March 1, 1845, Tyler singed the Texas Annexation Bill

Question 10

James K. Polk

Answer 10

1845-1849

• The great Irish potato famine forces huge waves of starving immigrants to the United States, sparking anti-Catholic, nativist backlashes
• Mormon migration to Utah
• Declares war on Mexico for California, Santa Ana is defeated in New Mexico and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) is signed, under which Mexico confirmed the annexation of Texas and further ceded California, as well as several other places that would later become states.
• The American Party, a.k.a the “Know-Nothings”
• Gold was discovered in California, causing the Gold Rush and the great migration to San Fransisco.

Question 11

Zachary Taylor

Answer 11

1849-1850 (died of Cholera)

• Compromise of 1850: 4 part plan devised by Henry Clay addressing issues about slavery
  
  1. California would be admitted as a free state
  2. The slave trade, but not slavery, would be outlawed in Washington D.C.
  3. New Fugitive Slave Act would be enacted
  4. Popular Sovereignty

Question 12

Millard Filmore

Answer 12

1850-1853

• Fugitive Slave act is signed: Under this new law, any citizen was required to turn in anyone he or she knew to be a slave to authorities.
  
  • That made every almost every person in New England a sherif. They also found the law abhorrent.
• This law was also terrifying to slaves because even if one had been born free, say in Massachusetts, the court could send you into slavery if even one person swore before a judge that they were a specific slave.
• Many people of color responded to this new law by moving to Canada
• The most important of this Act was that in convinced some Northerners that the government was in the hands of a sinister “slave power,” a conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of pro-slavery congressmen

Question 13

Franklin Pierce

Answer 13

1853-1857

• Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854: It formalized the idea of popular sovereignty, which basically meant that (white) residents of state could decide for themselves whether the state would allow slavery. Douglas felt this was a nice way to avoid saying whether he favored slavery; instead he could jus the in favor of letting other people be in favor of it. This Act in practice repealed the Missouri Compromise: The compromise banned slavery in new states north of the 36 30 line, but since in theory, Kansas or Nebraska could become a slave state if people decided they wanted it under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, despite being north of the line. As a result, there was quite a lot of violence in Kansas, so much so that some people say that that’s where the civil war really began in 1857– hence, “Bleeding Kansas”
• Lecompton Constitution: pro-slavery doctrine permitting slavery in the state of Kansas, and allowed only male citizens to vote
• Hundreds of so-called border ruffians flocked to Kansas from pro-slavery Missouri to cast ballots in Kansas elections, which led to people coming form free states and setting up their own rival government. 200 people were killed. In fact, in 1856, pro-slavery forces laid siege to anti-slavery Lawrence, Kansas with cannons
• The Republicans: created as a result of the Kansas Nebraska Act

Question 14

James Buchanan

Answer 14

1857-1861

• Dred Scott Decision: Scott had been a slave whose master had taken him to live in Illinois and Wisconsin, both of which barred slavery. So, Scott sued arguing that if slavery was illegal in Illinois, then living in Illinois made him definitionally not a slave. The case took year to find its way to the Supreme Court, and eventually in 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney from Maryland handed down his decision. The Court held that Scott was still a slave, but it went even further attempting to settle the slavery issues once and for all. Taney ruled that black people were inherently inferior to the white race and unfit to associate with them, that black people need to be justly and lawfully reduced to slavery for his benefit. This ruling basically said that all black people anywhere in the United States could be considered property and that the court was in the business of protecting that property. This meant that a slave owner could take his slavs from Mississippi to Massachusetts and they would still be slaves. Which meant that technically there was no such thing as a free state, at least thats how republicans in the north saw it. The Dred Scott decision helped convince even more people that the entire government were in the hands of the dreaded slave power
• John Brown: In 1859, John Brown led a disastrous raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, hoping to capture guns and then give them to slaves who would rise up and use those guns against their masters. This did not work out because Brown was an awful military commander and not a terribly clear thinker in general, and the raid was an abject failure. Many of the part were killed and he was captured and stood trial and was sentenced to death. These he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause, which is probably what he wanted anyway
• South Carolina Secedes: After Abraham was elected, South Carolina secedes

Question 15

Abraham Lincoln

Answer 15

1861-1865

• Civil War begins
• Emancipation Proclamation: This order ostensibly freed all the slaves in territory currently rebelling against the United States, i.e. in areas where the US government and no authority to free slaves. Slaves in state where the US government did have the power to free slaves were NOT freed. So Lincoln didn’t free the slaves that he actually had the power to free. Lincoln may also have issued the proclamation in order to shift the focus of the war from union to slavery to prevent the British from recognized the Confederacy. Arguable, the best way for the Confederacy to win the civil war was to get some kind of foregone patron, and Britain was the likeliest choice as it was very dependent on Confederate textiles.
• 13th amendment: ended slavery in the US
• End of the Civil war: Lincoln continued the war to its conclusion and demanded that the end of slavery and the return of Southern states to the Union be conditions for peace
• Also during the Lincoln administration, during the war, they gave away 158 million acres of railroads to tie the nation together
• To finance the war, Congress passed the first progressive income tax in American history, as well as floating huge bond issues to the public.
• National Bank act of 1863: The administration began printing federal money on green paper, called green backs. These, along with notes issued by banks under the National Bank act of 1863, became the first national currency
• Pacific Railway Act of 1862: Massive land grants that helped unify the country
• The Homestead Act 1862: Encouraged settlement of the west by basically giving away land to anyone who had $18 and was wiling to live on it and farm for five years