UNIT 2

Jefferson's Presidency - Reconstruction

PERIOD 4: 1800 - 1848

PERIOD 5: 1844 - 1877

Text: Chapters 9 - 16

• A People’s History of the United States: Chapters 7- 9

• Video: How the West was Lost: The Trail of Tears

• Video: How the West was Lost: The Dakota Conflict

• Handouts

PERIOD 4: 1800 - 1848

Themes and Content:

1. The nation's transition to a more participatory democracy was achieved by expanding suffrage from a system based on property ownership to one based on voting by all adult white men, and it was accompanied by the growth of political parties.

   • In the early 1800s, national political parties continued to debate issues such as the tariff, powers of the federal government, and relations with European powers.

   • Supreme Court decisions established the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the Constitution and asserted that federal loaws took precedence over state laws.

   • By the 1820s and 1830s, new political parties arose -- the Democrats, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whigs, led by Henry Clay -- that desagreed about the role and powers of the federal government and issues such as the national bank, tariffs, and federally funded internal improvements.

   • Regional interests often trumped national concerns as the basis for many political leaders' positions on slavery and economic policy.

2. While Americans embraced a new national culture, various groups developed distinctive cultures of their own.

   • The rise of democratic and individualistic beliefs, a response to rationalism, and changes to society caused by the market revolution, along with greater social and geographical mobility, contributed to a Second Great awakening among Protestants that influenced moral and social reforms and inspired utopian and other religious movements.

   • A new national culture emerged that combined American elements, European influences, and regional cultural sensibilities.

   • Liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture.

   • Enslaved blacks and free African Americans created communities and strategies to protect their dignity and family structures, and they joined political efforts aimed at changing their status.

3. Increasing numbers of American, many inspired by new religious and intellectural movements, worked primarily outside of government institutions to advance their ideals.

   • Americans formed new voluntary organizations that aimed to change individual behaviors and improve society through temperance.

   • Abolitionist and antislavery movements gradually achieved emancipation in the North, contributing to the growth of the free African American population, even as many state governments restricted African Americans' rights. Antislavery efforts in the South were largely limited to unsucessful slave rebellions.

   • A women's rights movement sought to create greater equality and opportunities for women, expressing its ideals at the Seneca Falls Convention.

4. New transportation systems and technologies dramatically expanded manufacturing and agricultural production.

   • Entrepreneurs helped to create a market revolution in production and commerce, in which market relationships between producers and consumers came to prevail as the manufacture of goods became more organized.

   • Innovations including textile machinery, steam engines, interchangeable parts, the telegraph, and agricultural inventions increased the efficiency of production methods.

   • Legislation and judicial systems supported the development of roads, canals, and railroads, which extended and enlarged markets and helped foster regional interdependence. Transportation networks linked the north and Midwest more closely than either was linked to the South.

5. The changes caused by the market revolution had signifcant effects on U.S. society, workers' lives, and gender and family relations.

   • Increasing numbers of Americans, especially women and men working in factories, no longer relied on semisubsistence agriculture; instead they supported themselves producing goods for distant markets.

   • The growth of manufacturing drove a significant increase in prosperity and standards of living for some; this led to the emergence of a larger middle class and a small but wealthy business elite but also to a large and growing population of laboring poor.

   • Gender and family roles changed in response to the market revolution, particularly with the growth of definitions of domestic ideals that emphasized the separation of public and private spheres.

6. Economic development shaped settlement and trade patterns, helping to unify the nation while also encouraging the growth of different regions.

   • Large numbers of international migrants moved to industrializing northern cities, while many Americans moved west of the Appalachians, developing thriving new communities along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

   • Increasing Southern cotton production and the related growth of Northern manufacturing, banking, and shipping industries promoted the development of national and international commercial ties.

   • Southern business leaders continued to rely on the production and export of traditional agricultural staples, contributing to the growth of a distinctive southern regional identity.

   • Plans to further unify the U.S. economy, such as the American System, generated debates over whether such policies would benefit agriculture or industry, potentially favoring different sections of the country.

7. Struggling to create an independent global presence, the United States sought to claim territory throughout the North American continent and promote foreign trade.

   • Following the Louisiana Purchase, the United States government sought influence and control over North America and the Western Hemisphere through a vaiety of means, including exploration, military actions, American Indian removal, and diplomatic efforts such as the Monroe Doctrine.

   • Frontier settlers tended to champion expansion efforts, while American Indian resistance led to a sequence of wars and federal efforts to control and relocate American Indian populations.

8. The United States' acquisition of lands in the West gave rise to contests over the extension of slavery into new territories.

   • As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast slaveholders began relocating their plantations to more fertile lands west of the Appalachians, where the institution of slavery continued to grow.

   • Antislavery efforts increased in the North, while in the South, although the majority of Southerners owned no slaves, most leaders argued that slavery was part of the Southern way of life.

   • Congressional attempts at political compromise, such as the Missouri Compromise, only temporarily stemmed growing tensions between opponents and defenders of slavery.

PERIOD 5: 1844 - 1877

Themes and Content:

1. Popular enthusiasm for U.S. expansion, bolstered by economic and security interests, resulted in the acquisition of new territories, substantial migration westward, and new overseas initiatives.

   • The desire for access to natural and mineral resources and the hope of many settlers for economic opportunities or religious refuge led to an increased migration to and settlement in the West.

   • Advocates of annexing western lands argued that Manifest Destiny and the superiority of American institutions compelled the United States to expand its borders westward to the Pacific Ocean.

   • The U.S. added large territories in the West through victory in the Mexican-American War and diplomatic negotiations, raising questions about the status of slavery, American Indians, and Mexicans in the newly acquired lands.

   • Westward migration was boosted during and after the Civil War by the passage of new legislation promoting western transportation and economic development.

   • U.S. interest in expanding trade led to economic, diplomatic, and cultural initiatives to create more ties with Asia.

2. In the 1840s and 1850s, Americans continued to debate questions about rights and citizenship for various groups of U.S. inhabitants.

   • Substantial numbers of international migrants continued to arrive in the United States from Europe and Asia, mainly from Ireland and Germany, often settling in ethnic communities where they could preserve elements of their languages and customs.

   • A strongly anti-Catholic nativist movement arose that was aimed at limiting new immigrants' political power and cultural influence.

   • U.S. government interaction and conflict with Mexican Americans and American Indians increased in regions newly taken from American Indians and Mexico, altering these groups' economic self-sufficiency and cultures.

3. Ideological and economic differences over slavery produced an array of diverging responses from Americans in the North and the South.

   • The North's expanding manufacturing economy relied on free labor in contrast to the Southern economy's dependence on slave labor. Some Northerners did not object to slavery on principle but claimed that slavery would undermine the free-labor market. As a result, a free-soil movement arose that portrayed the expansion of slavery as incompatible with free labor.

   • African American and white abolitionists, although a minority in the North, mounted a highly visible campaign against slavery, presenting moral arguments against the institution, assisting slaves' escapes, and sometimes expressing a willingness to use violence to achieve their goals.

   • Defenders of slavery based their arguments on racial doctrines, the view that slavery was a positive social good, and the belief that slavery and states' rights were protected by the Consitution.

4. Debates over slavery came to dominate political discussion in the 1850s, culminating in the bitter election of 1860 and the secession of Southern states.

   • The Mexican Cession led to heated controversies over whether to allow slavery in the newly acquired territories.

   • The courts and national leaders made a variety of attempts to resolve the issue of slavery in the territories, including the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision, but these ultimately failed to reduce conflict.

   • The Second Party System ended when the issues of slavery and anti-immigrant nativism weakened loyalties to the two major parties and fostered the emergence of sectional parties, most notably the Republican Party in the North.

   • Abraham Lincoln's victory on the Republicans' free-soil platform in the presiedential election of 1860 was accomplished without any Southern electoral votes. After a series of contested debates about secession, most slave states voted to secede from the Union, precipitating the Civil War.

5. The North's greater manpower and industrial resources, the leadership of Abraham Lincoln and others, and the decision to emancipate slaves eventually led to the Union military victory over the Confederacy in the devastating Civil War.

   • Both the Union and the Confederacy mobilized their economies and societies to wage the war even while facing considerable home front opposition.

   • Lincoln and most Union supporters began the Civil War to preserve the Union, but Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation reframed the purpose of the war and helped prevent the Confederacy from gaining full diplomatic support from European powers. Many African Americans fled southern plantations and enlisted in the Union Army, helping to undermine the Confederacy.

   • Lincoln sought to reunify the country and used speeches such as the Gettysburg Address to portray the struggle against slavery as the fulfillment of America's founding democratic ideals.

   • Although the Confederacy showed military initiative and daring early in the war, the Union ultimately succeeded due to improvements in leadership and strategy, key victories, greater resources, and the wartime destruction of the South's infrastructure.

6. Reconstruction and the Civil War ended slavery, altered relationships between the states and the federal government, and led to debates over new definitions of citizenship, particularly regarding the rights of African Americans, women, and other minorities.

   • The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, while the 14th and 15th amendments granted African Americans citizenship, equal protection under the laws, and voting rights.

   • The women's rights movement was both emboldened and divided over the 14th and 15th amendments to the Consitution.

   • Efforts by radical and moderate Republicans to change the balance of power between Congress and the presidency and to reorder race relations in the defeated South yielded some short-term successes. Reconstrruction opened up political opportunities and other leaderhip roles to former slaves, but it ultimately failed, due both to determined Southern resistance and the North's waning resolve.

   • Southern plantation owners continued to own the majority of the region's land even after Reconstruction. Former slaves sought land ownership but generally fell short of self-sufficiency, as an exploitative and soil-intensive sharecropping system limited blacks' and poor whites' access to land in the South.

   • Segregation, violence, Supreme Court decisions, and local political tactics progressively stripped away African American rights, but the 14th and 15th amendments eventually became the basis for court decisions upholding civil rights in the 20th century.

Deeper Discussions:

1. What should be the ultimate role and authority of the president?

2. Should govt. positions be given to party loyalists or the best resumés?

3. Is the government our parent or our child?

4. Was the cause of slavery southern racism or economics?

5. How do economic trends affect us, today, and do we have a choice in them?

6. Which social class leads reform movements today? Why?

7. Was the Civil War its own play or just a scene in a larger play called “Expansion”?

8. Why does the Civil War get three chapters in most textbooks, while the Indian Wars (lasting 30 years) only receive one section within a chapter?

9. Should Lincoln be remembered as the “great emancipator” or just a pragmatic politician, who really only wanted to save the Union?

10. Has Reconstruction ended?

Movies:

Lewis & Clark: Journey of the Corps of Discovery(Documentary) - The most important exploration in American history and the participants in it. Uses their actual journal.

A Man Called Horse- In 1825, Indians capture an English aristocrat. He lives with them and begins to understand & adopt their lifestyle.

The Color Purple - The heartbreaking life of a young black girl in the early 1900's.

Roots (mini series)- A dramatization of an African American family line, from ancestor Kunta Kinte's enslavement to his descendents' liberation.

Amistad – The true story of an 1839 mutiny aboard a slave ship. Much of the story involves a courtroom drama about the free man who led the revolt.

Jeremiah Johnson - one man's rugged effort to shed the burden of civilization and learn to survive in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains

Andersonville - The most infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp in the Civil War.

Gods & Generals - Gods and Generals follows the rise and fall of "Stonewall Jackson".

Gettysburg - In 1863, the North & South fought in the most decisive battle of the Civil War.

Gangs of New York - The most powerful NY gang was the Natives, who believed America should belong to native-born Americans and opposed the waves of immigrants.

Glory - Robert Gould Shaw leads the Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both their own Union army and the Confederates.

Little Women– As their father fights in the Civil War, four sisters grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances.

Cold Mountain- In the last days of the Civil War, a wounded soldier goes on a perilous journey back home to North Carolina, to reunite with his love.