Gregory Bodenhamer Mechanicsburg American Society Culture Free Enterprise Solutions The economic expansion between 1815 and 1860 was reflected in changes in American society. The changes were most evident in the northern states, where the combined effects of the transportation revolution, urbanization, and the rise of manufacturing were keenly felt. In the northern cities, a small, wealthy percentage of the population controlled a large segment of the economy, while the working poor, whose numbers swelled by large-scale immigration, owned little or nothing. Despite the “rags-to-riches” stories that were popular during the period, wealth remained concentrated in the hands of those who already had it. Opportunities for social mobility were limited, even though personal income was rising. Certainly there were craftsmen who entered the middle class by becoming factory managers or even owners, but many skilled workers found themselves as permanent wage earners with little hope for advancement.

Changes in American Society

The economic expansion between 1815 and 1860 was reflected in changes in American society. The changes were most evident in the northern states, where the combined effects of the transportation revolution, urbanization, and the rise of manufacturing were keenly felt. In the northern cities, a small, wealthy percentage of the population controlled a large segment of the economy, while the working poor, whose numbers swelled by large-scale immigration, owned little or nothing. Despite the “rags-to-riches” stories that were popular during the period, wealth remained concentrated in the hands of those who already had it. Opportunities for social mobility were limited, even though personal income was rising. Certainly there were craftsmen who entered the middle class by becoming factory managers or even owners, but many skilled workers found themselves as permanent wage earners with little hope for advancement.

Women and the family. The legal position of women in the middle of the nineteenth century was essentially the same as it had been in the colonial period. Although New York gave married women control over their property in 1848, it was the only state to do so. The beginnings of industrialization did change the role that urban, middle-class women in particular played in society. Because of the rise of manufacturing, goods mat were once made in the home and that provided an important source of additional income (especially clothing, but also a variety of household items) were produced in factories and sold at low prices. Rather than contributing to the sustenance and economic welfare of their family, women were expected to create a clean and nurturing environment in the home, while their husbands became the sole breadwinners and dealt with the outside world. An important element of this doctrine of “separate spheres,” or “ cult of domesticity,” was the role of mothers in preparing their children for adulthood. Indeed, women were having fewer children on which to lavish their attention. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the birth rate in the United States declined steadily, the drop sharper in the urban upper and middle classes. Although considered an economic asset on the farm, children could be a financial burden in the cities, where clothing, food, and other necessities had to be purchased. Middle-class women controlled the size of their families through abstinence or the birth control methods available at the time, including abortion.

The status of free blacks. On the eve of the Civil War, there were just under half a million free blacks in the United States, and slightly more than half lived in the southern states, particularly Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Southern free blacks, or “free persons of color” as they were called, could not vote, hold office, or testify against whites in court. Most were laborers, although some were artisans, farmers, and even slaveowners themselves.

Although slavery had been abolished in the northern states by 1820, the status of free blacks there was not much different from that of free blacks in the southern part of the country. More than ninety percent of the northern blacks were denied voting rights; the notable exception was in New England. New York required blacks to own at least $250 worth of real property to vote, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut rescinded black suffrage in the early nineteenth century. Segregation was the rule, and blacks were denied civil liberties by both law and tradition. Only Massachusetts allowed blacks to sit on juries, and several Midwestern states prohibited blacks from settling within their boundaries, using laws comparable to those banning free blacks from entering the southern states. In the northern cities, competition between blacks and immigrants—mainly the Irish—for low-wage, unskilled jobs created tensions that erupted in violence. A series of race riots occurred in Philadelphia between 1832 and 1849.

Politics of the Jacksonian Era

Even though Andrew Jackson was president only from 1829 to 1837, his influence on American politics was pervasive both before and after his time in office. The years from about 1824 to 1840 have been called the “Age of Jacksonian Democracy” and the “Era of the Common Man.” By modern standards, however, the United States was far from democratic. Women could not vote and were legally under the control of their husbands; free blacks, if not completely disenfranchised, were considered second-class citizens at best; slavery was growing in the southern states. Moreover, the period witnessed the resettlement of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River and the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. But changes did occur that broadened participation in politics, and reform movements emerged to address the inequalities in American society.

Even while states were moving toward denying free blacks the right to vote, the franchise was expanding for white men. All states admitted to the Union after 1815 adopted white male suffrage, and between 1807 and 1821, others abolished the property and tax qualifications for voting. These developments had a dramatic effect on national elections. Measuring voter turnout before the presidential election of 1824 is impossible because only electoral votes were counted, but in the 1824 presidential election, 355,000 popular votes were cast, and the number more than tripled—to more than 1.1 million—just four years later, in large part due to the end of property requirements.

The method of voting also began to change. Until the 1820s, a man voted by going to his precinct's voting place and orally stating his choices. The absence of a secret, written ballot allowed intimidation; few would vote against a particular candidate when the room was crowded with his supporters. Printed ballots gave the voter a more independent voice, even though the first ballots were published by the political parties themselves. A ballot printed by the government, the so-called Australian ballot, was not introduced until the late nineteenth century. Furthermore, many political offices became elective rather than appointive, making office holders more accountable to the public. By 1832, almost all the states (South Carolina was the sole exception) shifted the selection of members of the Electoral College from their legislature directly to the voters. In 1826, the provisions of the Maryland constitution that barred Jews from practicing law and holding public office were removed.

The election of 1824. The Era of Good Feelings came to an end with the presidential election of 1824. Although Republicans dominated national politics, the party was breaking apart internally. Monroe's cabinet included no fewer than three men with presidential ambitions, each representing sectional interests. John C. Calhoun and Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford contended for the role of spokesperson for the South, while Secretary of State John Quincy Adams promoted the interests of New England. Outside the cabinet, Speaker of the House Henry Clay stood for his “American System,” and the military hero Andrew Jackson, the lone political outsider, championed western ideas.

Party leaders backed Crawford. Although a paralyzing stroke removed him from an active role in the campaign, he received almost as many votes as Clay. Calhoun removed himself from the race, settling for another terra as vice president and making plans for another run at the presidency in 1828 or 1832. Jackson received 43 percent of the popular vote compared to Adams's 31 percent, and he won 99 electoral votes to Adams's 84. Because Jackson did not receive a majority in the Electoral College, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, where Speaker Clay exercised considerable political influence. With no chance of winning himself, Clay threw his support to Adams, who shared his nationalist views. Thirteen of the twenty-one states voted for Adams, and he became president. When Adams appointed Clay his secretary of state, Jackson's supporters angrily charged that a “ corrupt bargain” had been made between the two men. Although there is no firm evidence to support the charge, it became an issue that hounded Adams during his presidency and was raised by Jackson himself during the next presidential campaign.

The Adams presidency. Few candidates were as qualified as John Quincy Adams to be president, yet few presidents have had such a disappointing term. In his first annual message to Congress (1825), he laid out an extensive program of federal spending that stretched even the most liberal definition of internal improvements. Among other things, Adams called for the creation of a national university and a national observatory. But the president faced determined opposition everywhere he turned, both from Jackson's backers and Calhoun, who filled Senate committees with men who did not support the administration's policies. When Adams asked Congress for funds to send a delegate to the Congress of Panama, a meeting of the newly independent nations of Latin America, southerners argued so vociferously against the idea that the conference had ended by the time money was actually appropriated. Adams did not help his own cause. Refusing to engage in partisan politics, he did not remove opponents from appointed office when he became president and thereby alienated his own supporters. His rather idealistic position earned him little backing for a second term.

Politics had an impact on one of the most important domestic issues—protective tariffs. The Tariff of 1824 imposed duties on woolen goods, cotton, iron, and other finished products to protect textile mills in New England and industries in the mid-Atlantic states. Four years later, Congress raised tariffs to the highest level before the Civil War and increased taxes on imports of raw wool. The Jacksonians included the duties on raw material in the legislation to weaken Adams's support from the mid-Atlantic and northern states in the upcoming election. Indeed, Jacksonians believed the bill to be so onerous to different interest groups in different parts of the country that it had no chance of passing. But the Tariff of 1828 did become law, and it was soon called the Tariff of Abominations.

The election of 1828. The factionalism within the Republican ranks led to a split and the creation of two parties—Jackson's Democratic Republicans (soon shortened to “Democrats”) and Adams's National Republicans. Martin Van Buren of New York, who preferred rivalries between parties to disputes within one party, masterminded the emergence of the Democrats.

The campaign itself was less about issues than the character of the two candidates. Jacksonians denounced Adams for being “an aristocrat” and for allegedly trying to influence Russian policy by providing Tsar Alexander I with an American prostitute during Adams's term as ambassador. Supporters of Adams vilified Jackson as a murderer (he had fought several duels), an adulterer (he and his wife had mistakenly married before her divorce from her first husband was final), and an illiterate backwoodsman. These attacks by the National Republicans did little to detract from Jackson's popularity. Ordinary Americans admired his leadership qualities and decisiveness; they preferred to remember Jackson the Indian fighter and hero of the Battle of New Orleans and forget about the important role Adams played in negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. Jackson also had clear political advantages. As a westerner, he had secure support from that part of the country, while the fact that he was a slave owner gave him strength in the South. Conversely, Adams was strong only in New England. Jackson was swept into office with 56 percent of the popular vote from a greatly expanded electorate.

Jackson as President

Jackson's inauguration celebration proved unlike that of any previous president. Long before 1829, Washington, D.C., had developed a code of proper behavior for such occasions, and the rowdy crowd that mobbed the White House to cheer on the new president left the city's social arbiters aghast. Many of those attending the inauguration were looking for jobs. Jackson mentioned “ rotation in office”—the dismissal of rival-party officeholders and installment of political supporters in their places—in his inaugural address. Although he did not invent the practice, he endorsed the rotation that his critics called the “ spoils system,” and his administration became identified with it. But Jackson did not make wholesale replacements when he became president, and the turnover during his two terms was rather modest. In any event, he relied more heavily on political allies, newspaper editors, and friends for advice. The only member of his informal advisory group, called the Kitchen Cabinet, who came from within government was Secretary of State Martin Van Buren.

With presidential aspirations of his own, Van Buren used his influence to weaken Vice President John Calhoun over the issue of internal improvements. It was Van Buren who drafted Jackson's veto message on the Maysville Road bill, which would have provided indirect federal funding for a road entirely within the state of Kentucky. Politics aside, the veto probably had less to do with Jackson's opposition to internal improvements and more with the fact that the legislation primarily benefited a single state. Indeed, during Jackson's presidency, more money was spent annually on developing the nation's infrastructure than under Adams.

The Eaton affair. The rift between Jackson and Calhoun went beyond new roads; it was personal. When John H. Eaton, Jackson's secretary of war, married a widowed waitress named Peggy O'Neale, the wives of the other cabinet members refused to receive her socially. Jackson was particularly sensitive to such snubs; he blamed the death of his own wife, Rachel, shortly after he took office on the vicious attacks against her during the 1828 campaign. He confronted Floride Calhoun as the leader of Washington's social set, and their arguments became so bitter that they contributed to the estrangement between Jackson and his vice president. The situation flared into open hostility during the nullification controversy.

The nullification controversy. To southerners, who depended more on imports than any other region of the country, the Tariff of 1828 was both discriminatory and unconstitutional. Calhoun responded to it by drafting the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which introduced the idea that states had the right to nullify (refuse to obey) any law passed by Congress they considered unjust. Jackson supported protective tariffs but agreed to a slight reduction in rates in 1832. The change did not go far enough for Calhoun. He resigned the vice presidency in protest and returned to South Carolina, whose legislature promptly sent him back to Washington as a senator.

Calhoun claimed that the only tariff permitted by the Constitution was one that raised money for the common good. Tariffs that adversely affected the economy of one part of the nation (the South) while benefiting other regions (New England and the mid-Atlantic states) were unconstitutional. In November 1832, South Carolina passed an ordinance of nullification that forbade customs duties from being collected in its port cities under the new tariff.

Jackson wasted no time in moving against South Carolina. He proclaimed nullification itself unconstitutional, stressed that the Constitution had created a single nation rather than a group of states, and threatened to use force to collect the customs duties. The forts in Charleston harbor were put on alert by the secretary of war, and federal troops in South Carolina were prepared for action. Military confrontation was prevented through the efforts of Henry Clay, who for the second time in his career achieved a major political compromise. Congress passed two bills in March 1833, both approved by Jackson, that ultimately defused the situation. The Compromise Tariff gradually reduced duties over a ten-year period, and the Force Bill authorized the president to enforce federal law in South Carolina by military means, if necessary. South Carolina withdrew its tariff nullification ordinance, crediting Clay's leadership rather than Jackson's threats. The solution was general enough that both Jackson and Calhoun claimed the victory.

The bank crisis. Jackson hated banks, paper money, and anyone who profited from them. Most of his ire was directed at the Second Bank of the United States because it was controlled by private interests and acted as a creditor of state banks. As the depository of federal revenues, it was able to lend money far beyond the capability of state institutions and require them to repay their loans in hard currency, not their own notes.

Established in 1816, the Second Bank was due for a new charter in 1836. Nicholas Biddle, its president, tried to get the bank rechartered four years ahead of the expiration. He was backed by Clay, who hoped to use the bank as an issue in his bid for the presidency in 1832. Congress passed the necessary legislation by a significant margin, but Jackson vetoed the bill, and its supporters did not have enough votes to override. Denouncing the early rechartering scheme, Jackson condemned the bank as a privileged monopoly that gave a few men far too much power. Even though the bank had been upheld by the Supreme Court (in McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819) and clearly had strong support in Congress, Jackson still considered the bank unconstitutional. His overwhelming electoral victory in 1832 gave him the political clout to take further action.

Not long into his second term, Jackson ordered that the operating expenses of the federal government be paid out of the existing deposits in the Second Bank and that new federal revenues be placed in selected state banks. These state banks became known as “ pet” banks. The short-term results of this policy were twofold. Even though the Second Bank's charter would expire in 1836 by its own terms, withdrawing from the funds already in the bank and discontinuing federal deposits bled the bank dry. Meanwhile, shifting federal deposits to the state banks empowered them to print more notes and make more loans.

Jackson's criterion for state banks to become pet banks was loyalty to the Democratic party, but his original intention to limit their number was thwarted by the banks' pressing for federal deposits. By the end of 1833, there were twenty-three pet banks. The banks issued paper money backed by federal gold and lent it to speculators to buy federal lands. Public land sales grew rapidly, and to stop excessive speculation, Jackson issued the “ Specie Circular” in 1836. It required that public land be purchased with gold or silver, not paper notes. While speculation was reduced, the new policy drew criticism from westerners, for whom hard currency was scarce. In the long run, Jackson's actions on the banks contributed to a serious economic crisis, which the president left for his hand-picked successor to shoulder.

Van Buren and New Political Alignments

By 1834, a new political coalition had emerged in opposition to Jackson's policies. Led by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Henry Clay of Virginia, the members called themselves the Whigs. Just as the Whigs during the American Revolution stood up to the tyranny of King George III, the new Whigs challenged what they considered to be the abuse of presidential power by “King Andrew I.” They drew their support from New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the upper Midwest and from southern planters who broke with the Democrats over nullification and those who favored internal improvements and high tariffs. The Whig economic program was attractive to the country's industrial and commercial elite and successful farmers. Reform advocates who called for an expansion of public education and those who wanted social change also found a political home among the Whigs. The Democrats' base was in the South and the West, particularly among the middle class and the small farmers. Those who felt their opportunity to advance was limited by the forces of monopoly and privilege—groups aligned with Jackson's attack on the Second Bank of the United States—also backed the Democrats, as did recent immigrants. Although Jackson clearly strengthened the office of the president, it was the Whigs who favored an activist national government, while the Democrats wanted greater state and local autonomy.

The Anti-Masonic party also joined ranks with the Whigs. It was the first third party in American politics and was established around a single issue—the claim that the Freemasons, a secret fraternal society that had counted George Washington among its members, were behind an anti-Christian, antidemocratic conspiracy to take over the government at all levels. The party's candidate in 1832 was chosen through the first nominating convention, and he won seven electoral votes.

The election of 1836. Despite what the Whigs may have thought of Jackson's “royal” ambitions, he honored the two-term tradition and bestowed his blessing on Vice President Martin Van Buren as the Democratic candidate in 1836. The Whigs, unable to decide on a single candidate, ran four men under their banner: William Henry Harrison, Hugh L. White, Daniel Webster, and W. P. Magnum. The idea was to prevent Van Buren from capturing a majority of the electoral vote and to throw the election into the House of Representatives, as in 1824. While the popular vote was very close (51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the Democrats, which was a sign of the growing Whig strength), Van Buren received 170 electoral votes to the combined Whig total of 124. None of the vice-presidential candidates, however, had a majority of the vote, and for the first and only time, that choice was left up to the Senate.

The Panic of 1837. No sooner had Van Buren taken office than an economic crisis gripped the nation. Although known as the Panic of 1837, economic conditions in the country remained unsettled for his entire term as president. The pet banks had been too generous in issuing paper notes and making loans; when the economy contracted and prices fell (cotton prices dropped by half in March 1837), the banks found that they could not make payouts in the hard currency that was supposed to have backed their notes, while their borrowers were defaulting on their loans. The sale of public lands declined sharply, and unemployment and prices for food and fuel rose. Estimates are that a third of Americans were out of work by late 1837, and many more were able to find only part-time jobs.

Van Buren tried to address the economic problems by using the Independent Treasury to hold government deposits and revenues. The Independent Treasury was not really a bank but simply a depository for federal gold and silver. Its creation and use meant that the money it stored was not available to banks to make loans; it also meant that hard currency that might have been used to stimulate the economy was kept out of circulation.

The election of 1840. Even though Van Buren was blamed for the depression (he was nicknamed “Van Ruin”), the Democrats nominated him for a second term. The Whigs united behind William Henry Harrison and balanced the ticket with John Tyler of Virginia, a Democrat who had broken with Jackson over nullification. While the Whigs did not present a formal platform, the Democrats put a plank in theirs opposing congressional interference with slavery. This was the first time a political party took a position on the “peculiar institution,” and it was done both in response to a growing abolitionist sentiment in the North and simply to reflect the position of the Democratic constituency in the South. But the campaign itself was not about issues.

The election of 1840 earned the name the “Campaign of Tomfoolery.” Voters cast their ballots more for personality than anything else. When Democrats made the mistake of saying that all Harrison wanted to do was sit in a log cabin and sip cider, the Whigs made the most of it. Their rallies featured portable log cabins with roofs that opened to reveal jugs of hard cider for thirsty voters. Indeed, the Whigs did everything they could to portray Harrison as a latter-day Jackson. He was a frontiersman (even though he had attended a university and studied medicine) and military hero. The campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too ! ” was intended to remind voters of Harrison's victory against the tribes in the Old Northwest. Conversely, Van Buren, who was the closest thing to a professional politician the country had yet produced, was effectively painted as an aristocrat who dined off fine china in the palatial White House.

The serious economic problems and the “log cabin and cider campaign” had their effect. More than 80 percent of the nation's eligible voters participated in the election of 1840. Harrison defeated Van Buren 234 electoral votes to 60 and took 53 percent of the popular vote. Van Buren was unable to carry even his home state of New York. With his defeat, the era of Jacksonian politics came to an end. For twenty years (1836–56), the Whigs and the Democrats, both of which were truly national parties, were fairly evenly matched in the political arena, although the growing split between North and South over slavery after 1840 weakened party loyalties and changed the party system.

Assessing Jacksonian Democracy

During the period from 1824 to 1840, the American political system came of age. Not only were more men eligible to vote, but an increasing percentage of the eligible were actually exercising their right to do so. Political parties, which the framers of the Constitution made no provision for and disdained, became an established fact of American life. Elements of the process by which presidents are chosen—the party convention and the party platform—were introduced. Even if the parties did not focus on the major questions of the day (most notably slavery), the campaigns they ran were geared to bring out as many people as possible to support a candidate.

Jackson probably viewed his two terms as president a success. He had resolved the problem of the Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River. The removal was nearing completion by the time he left office. He had forcefully met the challenge posed by nullification and, perhaps most important to him, had brought an end to the Second Bank of the United States. But the long-term influence of Jackson was less in his specific policies and more in the way he carried them out. The Whig characterization of Jackson as “King Andrew I” contrasted sharply with the idea that he represented the common man, but more important, it demonstrated that the presidency had changed under him. In the nullification controversy, he made full use of the power granted him under the Constitution and discovered that the veto and the knowledge that a president would use it was an effective tool in shaping policy. Just as the Whigs and Democrats pioneered the techniques of modern two-party politics, Jackson pointed the way toward the modern presidency.

The political system did not address the matter of equality outside the group of white males who were citizens of the United States. But movements calling for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights emerged before the middle of the century, while other reform programs addressed the social ills that came with an increasingly urban and industrial society.

Religious Revival

The term antebellum, “before the war,” is often used by historians to refer to the decades before the Civil War in the United States. “Antebellum” creates an image of a time when slavery was not only legal but an integral part of life in the South, when the first spurt of industrialization occurred in the United States, and when Americans explored and settled the trans-Mississippi West. The antebellum decades were also a period during which another religious revival swept the country, reformers sought to address many of the social questions that the politicians would not or could not, and American culture, defined through its literature and art, came into its own.

Beginning in the 1790s and continuing into the 1840s, evangelical Christianity once again became an important factor in American life. Revivalism began in earnest at the edge of the frontier with circuit riders, or itinerant preachers, bringing their message to isolated farms and small settlements. Open-air camp meetings, which could last as long as four days and attract more than ten thousand people from the surrounding countryside, were often characterized by emotional outbursts—wild gestures and speaking in tongues—from the participants. The number of women who converted at these meetings was much larger than the number of men, an indication of women's increasing role as defenders of the spiritual values in the home. The Methodist denomination, which was the driving force behind this so-called Second Great Awakening, grew from seventy thousand members in 1800 to more than one million in 1844, making it the largest Protestant group in the country.

The “Burned-Over District.” After its first sweep along the frontier, revivalism moved back east. So many fiery revivals were held in western New York during the 1820s that the region became known as the “ Burned-Over District.” Foremost among the New York preachers was Charles G. Finney, who found a receptive audience in the rapidly growing and changing communities along the Erie Canal. Finney rejected such formal doctrines as predestination and original sin and emphasized that every person is free to choose between good and evil. Conversion to him was not just an individual decision to avoid drunkenness, fornication, and other sins; if enough people found salvation, Finney believed, society as a whole would be reformed.

Despite its gains for the church rolls, the Second Great Awakening was not without its critics. The Unitarians, who included the well-educated and wealthy elite of New England among their members, declared the revivals far too emotional and questioned the sincerity of the conversion experience. While the Methodists emphasized the “heart” over the “head,” Unitarianism stressed reason, free will, and individual moral responsibility.

The Mormons. A new religious group also came out of the Burned-Over District: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose supporters were called Mormons. Its founder was Joseph Smith, who claimed that he was led by the angel Moroni to decipher the Book of Mormon, which told of the migration of ancient Hebrews to America and the founding of the true church. Smith and his followers faced persecution wherever they went because of their radical teachings, particularly their endorsement of polygamy. The Mormons settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1839, but Smith and his brother were killed by an angry mob in 1844. Leadership of the church passed to Brigham Young.

In 1847, Young led about fifteen thousand Mormons to the valley of Great Salt Lake and began to develop what he called the state of Deseret, which was organized as the Utah Territory by Congress in 1850. Young became the territorial governor, and although he was removed from the position during his second term because of an ongoing dispute between the Mormons and the federal government over polygamy, he remained the political as well as religious leader of the Mormons until his death.

The Shaker community. Founded in England in the 1770s by Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers opposed materialism and believed in an imminent Second Coming. They found converts in the Burned-Over District and, during their heyday from the 1820s to the 1840s, established communities from Massachusetts to Ohio. The Shakers did not believe in marriage or the family, and the ultimate decline of the group was due to their practicing celibacy. The Shakers are remembered for their spiritual values and their craftsmanship, particularly in their simple furniture designs, but their otherworldliness set them apart from the Protestant sects that accepted material success as compatible with religion.

Impulse for Reform

In the first half of the nineteenth century, politicians either ignored or avoided a number of social issues, including alcoholism, the quality of public education, slavery, and women's rights. Reformers, working as individuals and through organizations, were left to tackle these problems.

The temperance movement. By the early nineteenth century, the per capita consumption of hard liquor (whiskey, brandy, rum, and gin) had grown dramatically to more than five gallons a year. The high level of consumption was blamed for poverty: workingmen spent their wages on alcohol instead of rent or food and were frequently absent from their factory jobs. Alcohol abuse also contributed to the abuse of wives and children. In 1826, the American Temperance Society began a persistent campaign against the evils of drinking. Although focusing at first on persuading individuals to abstain, the advocates of temperance soon entered the political arena and sought laws to limit the sale and manufacture of alcohol. The movement caught on—particularly in New England but much less so in the South—and by the 1840s, national consumption had dropped to half of what it had been two decades earlier. The reformers were not satisfied, however, and they continued to press for a complete ban on the sale and use of all intoxicating liquor, an effort that culminated in the 1919 passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, ushering in the era of Prohibition.

Improving public education. The demand for free public education grew during the 1830s as the franchise expanded. Education was deemed important for creating an informed electorate. In addition, factory workers wanted their children to have more opportunities than they had had, and schooling was seen as a way to assimilate the children of immigrants through the inculcation of American values.

Already-existing schools generally taught the “three Rs”—reading, writing, and arithmetic—to a room full of boys and girls whose ages might have run from three to eighteen. Reformers found that system inadequate for preparing students to succeed in a rapidly changing society. Massachusetts, as it had during the early colonial period, took the lead in promoting education. In 1827, the state passed a law that provided for the establishment of high schools and set guidelines for curricula based on community size. The legislation was strictly enforced after Horace Mann was appointed the first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1837. During his tenure, state funding for schools increased, new high schools were established, compulsory school attendance laws were passed, a specified school term (six months) was delineated, and structured curricula and teacher training were designed and implemented. Mann also called for “grade” schools that would use a placement system based on the age and skills of the students.

Massachusetts pioneered popular education in addition to public education. The state was the birthplace of the lyceum (1826), an organization that attracted large audiences for its public lectures on literature, art, and science. Many of the lyceums that were developed across the country during the 1830s and 1840s also had lending libraries with books for children as well as adults.

One of the results of the changes to education was an increase in women teachers. The first high school for girls was opened in New York in 1821, and Oberlin College was established as a coeducational institution in 1833. Mount Holyoke was founded as a women's college four years later. Educational reform was more successful in the North than in the South, where even white illiteracy was high. African Americans did not benefit from improvements in public education. Free blacks attended poor segregated schools, and slaves generally received no formal education at all. Notably, one institution of higher learning, again Oberlin College, admitted blacks as well as women.

The abolitionist movement. Congress considered slavery so controversial that in 1836, the House of Representatives, largely at the insistence of southerners, passed a gag rule prohibiting discussion or debate of the subject. This move was a reaction to numerous petitions submitted to Congress that called for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, a reflection of a growing anti-slavery movement in the United States.

Not all Americans who opposed slavery favored simply putting an end to it. Some considered slavery to be wrong but were unwilling to take action against it, while others accepted slavery in the states where it already existed but opposed its expansion into new territories. An early antislavery proposal was to repatriate slaves to Africa. Farfetched as it seems, in 1822, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, the first freed slaves departed for what would become the independent nation of Liberia in West Africa. Over the next forty years, however, only about fifteen thousand blacks emigrated to Liberia, a number far below the natural increase in the slave population that accounted for most of the population's growth before the Civil War.

Advocates of an immediate end to slavery were known as abolitionists. The movement's chief spokesperson was William Lloyd Garrison, who began publishing his antislavery newspaper, the Liberator, in 1831. His American Anti-Slavery Society (organized in 1833) called for the “immediate abandonment” of slavery without compensation to slaveholders; the end to the domestic slave trade; and, radically, the recognition of the equality of blacks and whites. The abolitionists, however, were divided on how best to achieve these goals. While Garrison opposed political action, moderate abolitionists formed the Liberty party and ran James G. Birney for president in 1840. The party's strength was such that it determined the outcome of the presidential election four years later. The movement split, however, in 1840 over the appropriate role of women within the organization. Even though women, such as Angelina and Sarah Grimke, were deeply committed to the cause, many members of the society felt it was inappropriate for women to speak before predominantly male audiences. More important, there was significant opposition to the inclusion of women's rights issues under the umbrella of the abolitionist program.

Free blacks were the strongest supporters of the abolitionist movement and its most effective speakers. Escaped slaves like Frederick Douglass provided northerners with vivid firsthand accounts of slavery, and his book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) was just one of many slave autobiographies popular in abolitionist circles. While most blacks supported a peaceful end to slavery, some believed that only insurrection could actually bring it about.

Beginnings of the women's rights movement. The various reform movements of the nineteenth century gave women—particularly, middle-class women—an opportunity to participate in public life, and they were mainly successful in their efforts. A prime example is the work by Dorothea Dix to create public mental-health institutions that would provide humane care for the insane. American women turned their attention to their own situation when activists split from the abolitionists. The specific event that led to the organized push for women's rights was the exclusion of a group of American women from the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. One hundred women met in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both abolitionist activists, to draft a statement of women's rights. The Seneca Falls “ Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” called for equality for women before the law, including changes in divorce laws that automatically gave custody of children to the husband. Equal employment opportunity and the right to vote were other important demands.

The only women's rights issue that was addressed before the Civil War concerned property. Several states, but far from all, gave married women control over inherited property during the antebellum period. Women did not get the right to vote until 1920 (through the Nineteenth Amendment), and they were still limited to careers in either teaching or nursing. It took more than a century for the issues of equal employment and full legal and social equality to be seriously addressed.

The utopian communities. During the period from about 1820 to 1850, a number of people thought that creating utopian communities, which would serve as models for the world, could solve society's ills better than the reform movements. All of these utopian communities failed, usually because of the imperfections in those seeking perfection. For example, British industrialist Robert Owen, who knew firsthand the evils of the factory system, established New Harmony (Indiana) in 1825 as a planned community based on a balance of agriculture and manufacturing. The nine hundred men and women who went there either refused to work or quarreled among themselves, and New Harmony collapsed after just a few years. French Socialist Charles Fourier's idea for small mixed-economy cooperatives known as phalanxes also caught on in the United States. Brook Farm (1841–46) in Massachusetts, perhaps the best-known utopian experiment because it attracted support from writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, combined manual labor with intellectual pursuits and became a phalanx in 1844.

Utopian communities were also founded by religious groups. John Humphrey Noyes, a product of the Second Great Awakening, and disciples of the Society of Inquiry founded the Oneida Community in New York in 1848. In contrast to the celibate Shakers, Noyes's followers accepted “complex marriage,” the idea that every man and every woman in the community were married to each other. Boys and girls were trained in sexual practices when they reached puberty, but only those who accepted Jesus Christ as their savior were allowed to have sexual relations. Oneida prospered because it developed products known for their quality, first steel traps and later silver flatware. When Noyes left Oneida to avoid prosecution for adultery, the members abandoned complex marriage and formed a company to continue manufacturing tableware. It remains in business today as Oneida Community, Ltd.

Antebellum America: Literature, Art

In the first half of the nineteenth century, an American national literature was born. Naturally accompanying it was the first American reference work, Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828. While Webster's work did not create American English, the dictionary did declare the independence of American usage. Webster insisted on using American spellings, such as “plow” for “plough”; taking the “u” out of such words as “labour” and “honour”; and writing definitions taken from American life.

Another important literary milestone was Ralph Waldo Emerson's “American Scholar,” an address he gave at Harvard in 1837. At a time when many in the United States remained in awe of European culture, he argued that Americans were self-reliant enough to develop a literature reflecting their own national character. “Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close,” he told his audience. Emerson espoused transcendentalism, which proclaimed that intuition and experience provided knowledge and truth just as effectively as did the intellect, that man is innately good, and that there is unity in the entire creation.

Emerson's “American Scholar” speech and transcendentalism both influenced and reflected an impressive flowering of American literature. The country's literary centers were New England and New York. From New England came the historical works of George Bancroft ( History of the United States, ten volumes, the first published in 1834), Francis Parkman ( The Oregon Trail, 1849), and William H. Prescott ( History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1843) as well as the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Emily Dickinson (although Dickinson did most of her writing after the Civil War). Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller were the region's most noted authors. New York produced Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman; Edgar Allen Poe, though bom in Virginia, did most of his writing in New York and Philadelphia.

James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper was among the first writers to appreciate the value of the frontier as a distinctly American literary setting. Beginning with the Pioneers (1823), he created a body of work that celebrates the courage and adventuresomeness of the American character and explores the conflict between the wilderness and the advance of civilization. His five novels featuring the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, collectively known as the “Leatherstocking Tales” and including such classics as the Last of the Mohicans (1826) and the Deerslayer (1841), were all bestsellers. Cooper portrayed nature as something to be used but protected and not conquered.

Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau's fame rests on two works, neither of which received much attention during his lifetime. Walden (1854) is an account of two years he spent in his cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts. The stay was an experiment in self-sufficiency, a reaction to what the transcendentalists saw as growing commercialism and materialism in American society. Although Thoreau did not completely cut himself off from civilization during his stay, he believed that only in nature could individuals really understand themselves and the purpose of life.

In 1846, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax as a protest against the Mexican War, which he, like many abolitionists, saw as nothing more than an attempt to expand slavery. He spent one night in jail before the tax was paid by a relative. To explain his actions, he wrote “Civil Disobedience” (1849), stating, “The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right,” a position that reflected the individualism of the transcendentalists taken to an extreme. Although ignored in the nineteenth century, Thoreau's discourse influenced Mahatma Gandhi in his struggle for the independence of India and the American civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s.