Key Concept 4.1

The United States developed the world's first modern mass democracy and celebrated a new national culture, while Americans sought to define the nation's democratic ideals and to reform its institutions to match them.

I. The nation's transformation to a more participatory democracy was accompanied by continued debates over federal power, the relationship between the federal government and the states, the authority of different branches of the federal government, and the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens.

    • As various constituencies and interest groups coalesced and defined their agendas, various political parties, most significantly the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in the 1790s and the Democrats and Whigs in the 1830s, were created or transformed to reflect and/or promote those agendas.
    • Supreme Court decisions sought to assert federal power over state laws and the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the Constitution.
      • McCulloch v. Maryland, Worcester v. Georgia
    • With the acceleration of a national and international market economy, Americans debated the scope of government's role in the economy, while diverging economic systems meant that regional political and economic loyalties often continued to overshadow national concerns.
      • New England opposition to the Embargo Act, debates over the tariff and internal improvements.
    • Many white Americans in the South asserted their regional identity through pride in the institution of slavery, insisting that the federal government should defend that institution.

II. Concurrent with an increasing international exchange of goods and ideas, larger numbers of Americans began struggling with how to match democratic political ideals to political institutions and social realities.

    • The Second Great Awakening, liberal social ideas from abroad, and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility fostered the rise of voluntary organizations to promote religious and secular reforms, including abolition and women's rights.
      • Charles G. Finney, Seneca Falls convention, Utopian communities
    • Despite the outlawing of the international slave trade, the rise in the number of free African Americans in both the North and the South, and widespread discussion of various emancipation plans, the U.S. and many state governments continued to restrict African Americans' citizenship possibilities.
      • American Colonization Society, Frederick Douglass
    • Resistance to initiatives for democracy and inclusion included proslavery arguments, rising xenophobia, antilock sentiments in political and popular culture, and restrictive anti-Indian policies.

III. While Americans celebrated their nation's progress toward a unified new national culture that blended Old World forms with New World ideas, various groups of the nation's inhabitants developed distinctive cultures of their own.

    • A new national culture emerged, with various Americans creating art, architecture, and literature that combined European forms with local and regional cultural sensibilities.
      • the Hudson River School, John James Audubon
    • Various groups of American Indians, women, and religious followers developed cultures reflecting their interests and experiences, as did regional groups and an emerging urban middle class.
    • Enslaved and free African Americans, isolated at the bottom of the social hierarchy, created communities and strategies to protect their dignity and their family structures, even as some launched abolitionist and reform movements aimed at changing their status.
      • Richard Allen, David Walker, slave music