Download The Early National Period The Early National Period refers to

The Early National Period
The Early National Period refers to the end of the
eighteenth century (1700’s) and the first part of the
nineteenth century (1800’s).
In 1794 the enforcement of laws during the Whiskey
Rebellion validated the strength of the new American
government and showed that laws could be enforced.
Different views of economic and foreign policy issues led to
the development of political parties. The formation of Political
Parties emerged in the late 1790’s after Washington’s
Presidency.
The Federalists, led by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton typically believed in a
strong national government and an industrial economy and were supported by bankers and
business interests in the Northeast. Eventually, the Federalist Party disappeared and new
political parties such as the Whigs and Know-Nothings organized in opposition to the
Democratic Republicans.
The Democratic Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, believed in a weak national
government (States’ rights), an agricultural economy, and were supported by farmers,
artisans, and frontier settlers in the South.
Issues that led to the formation of the Democratic-Republicans.
Support for the Bank of the United States: The Federalists supported the Bank.
Southerners and Westerners (Democratic-Republicans) distrusted the Bank of the United
States because the bank controlled the interest rates and small farmers and large
landholders felt that the Bank helped only business interests in the North. The bank had
received a charter in 1816 for twenty years.
The Jay Treaty: With Britain and France at War, the Federalists made a treaty with
Britain. This was seen as a sell-out to the British and betrayal to France, who helped us
during the Revolution. The Democratic-Republicans supported peace with France.
Undeclared war on France: France, angry about Jay’s Treaty, began seizing American
ships. An undeclared naval war began France and the United States. The Federalists
wanted war, but the Democratic-Republicans wanted to have peace and diplomacy with
France.
The Election of 1800 was won by Jefferson and was the first American presidential
election in which power was transferred from one party to another.
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict
fought between the forces of the United States
of America and those of the British Empire.
The Americans declared war in 1812 for a
number of reasons, including trade restrictions,
impressment of American merchant sailors into
the Royal Navy, British support of American
Indian tribes against American expansion, and
the humiliation of American honor.
Impressment is the policy of forcing people
into the military or public service.
Federalists opposed President Madison’s war
resolution and talked of secession and
proposed constitutional amendments that were
not acted upon. It was seen by many as a
costly war that was set forth by the Democratic-Republicans. The nickname given to the
War of 1812 by critics of the war was “Mr. Madison’s War.”
Effects of the War of 1812:
1) The United States gained international respect for defeating a world power (England).
America’s independence and status in the world were reaffirmed, never again to be
seriously challenged. .
2) Free trade was able to resume and impressment stopped.
3) The war also produced a new national symbol, The Star-Spangled Banner, which
Congress made our national anthem in 1931. Francis Scott Key authored the Star Spangled
Banner.
4) The Treaty of Ghent was signed, creating peace with Britain and ending the War of
1812.
5) Andrew Jackson became a national hero during the Battle of New Orleans. The Battle
of New Orleans occurred after the Treaty of Ghent and was a lopsided American victory.
Political Changes in the 19th Century
The age of Jackson ushered a new democratic spirit in American politics. The election of
Andrew Jackson came at a time when the mass of American people, who had previously
been content with rule by the “aristocracy,” participated in the electoral process. The
distinction between “aristocrat” and common man was disappearing as new states
provided for universal manhood suffrage, while the older states were lowering property
requirements for voting.
Once elected, President Andrew Jackson employed the spoils system.
“Spoils System”: A practice of using public offices to benefit members
of the victorious party; rewarding supporters with government jobs.
Aristocracy: A government in which power is given to those believed
to be best qualified.
Suffrage (The right to vote) expanded.
Expansion of Democracy:
The US expansion and sectional differences (North and South)
prompted increased participation in state and national politics.
The number of eligible voters increased as property qualifications were eliminated. By
1828, Americans began to see Americans as equals and were more eager to participate in
the electoral process.
Increase voter turnout, the rise of interest group politics and sectional issues made its way
into politics, changing campaign styles.
Eventually, the Federalist Party disappeared and new political parties like the Whigs and
Know- Nothings, were organized in opposition to the Democratic Party.
Women’s Suffrage Movement:
At the same time the abolitionist movement grew, another reform movement took root, to
give equal rights such as voting and the right to own property to women.
The Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848 proposed equality for women. Leaders such as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Suzan B. Anthony, who became involved in women’s
suffrage before the Civil War, continued the movement after the Civil War. Women did
not get the right to vote until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Debates Over the Bank of the United States:
Southerners and Westerners distrusted the Bank of the United
States because the bank controlled the interest rates and small
farmers and large landholders felt that the Bank helped only
business interests in the North. The bank had received a
charter in 1816 for twenty years.
The Bank was a depository for federal funds and dominated
banking on the United States. President Jackson withdrew
federal deposits from it and placed them in state banks called
“pet” banks. This led to the increase in the supply of money,
causing inflation and growth in land speculation. President
Jackson issued the Specie Circular in 1836. It required
payment in gold or silver for public land.
President Jackson saw the Bank as an Undemocratic tool of
the Eastern elite and vetoed the re-chartering of the Bank in
1832.
Jackson’s bank veto (presidential denial of legislation) became the central issue in the
election of 1832, as Henry Clay, the National Republican candidate running against
Jackson, supported the bank. Jackson’s reelection brought an end to the bank, as Jackson
withdrew government money and deposited it in state banks. His
actions led to an economic depression called the Panic of 1837.
Henry Clay’s American System plan after the War of 1812
proposed three points:
1) Tariffs should be placed on foreign goods so that American mills
would grow stronger if the prices of imported goods were raised.
2) The federal government should form a second Bank of the
United States.
3) The federal government should improve transportation systems.
Territorial Expansion in the 19th Century
Economic and political interests,
supported by popular beliefs, led to
territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean.
The New American republic prior to the
Civil War experienced dramatic
territorial expansion, immigration,
economic growth, and industrialization.
Americans, stirred by their hunger for land and the ideology of “Manifest Destiny,”
flocked to new frontiers.
Political Factors Leading to Westward Expansion
Manifest Destiny: Concept that it was the destiny and the
right of the United States to expand across the continent.
It provided political support for territorial expansion.
With the political support granted by the Manifest
Destiny, many Indian groups were removed because
minerals were found on their land or their land was taken
to make farms, ranches, cattle trails, railroad routes, and
stagecoach lines.
The North supported westward expansion because then it would be able to sell
manufactured goods to settlers.
The South supported westward expansion because of new land for agriculture (Cotton).
Monroe Doctrine of 1823 established our foreign policy: No more colonization in
America! Nations in the Western Hemisphere were inherently different from those in
Eastern Hemisphere; they were republics rather than monarchies. It told European
countries if you don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you.
Events and Land Acquisitions that Led to Territorial Expansion
Louisiana Purchase: In 1803, President Jefferson
purchased the Louisiana Territory from France
which doubled the size of the United States.
Jefferson authorized the Lewis and Clark
expedition to explore the new territory west of the
Mississippi Territory. Sacajawea: An Indian
woman who served as the guide and translator for Lewis and Clark.
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After the War of 1812, US victory over the British
produced an American claim to the Oregon
territory and increased migration of the American
settlers into Florida, which was later acquired by a
treaty from Spain.
The US acquired Florida from Spain in the 1819 as part of the
Adams-Onis Treaty.
American migration into Texas led to an armed revolt against
Mexican rule and a famous battle at the Alamo. In 1836, a band of
Texans fought to the last man against a vastly superior force.
“Remember the Alamo” was the cry, as the Texans’ eventual victory
over Mexican forces eventually brought Texas into the Union.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: In 1848, this ended the Mexican
War and the US paid for the Mexican land that became California,
Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico that was called the
Mexican Cession.
Gadsden Purchase: In 1854, it was purchased from Mexico for 10
Million Dollars to provide railroad routes. It was the last major
acquisition on the contiguous United States.
Economic Factors Leading to Westward Expansion:
American settlers poured westward from the coastal
states into the Midwest, Southwest, and Texas,
seeking economic opportunity in the form of land to
own or farm. The South supported westward
migration because it meant more land for
agriculture.
Due to American mindset, the US became more industrialized after the war of 1812. More
goods were made with machines to keep up with demand. The United States kept pace
with the Industrial Revolution (making goods by machine rather than by hand) which
began in Europe.
Eli Whitney’s invention of the Cotton Gin (1796) led to the spread of the slavery-based
“Cotton Kingdom” in the South. American migration into Texas led to an
armed revolt against Mexico at the Battle of the Alamo.
Expansion Westward would require manufactured goods from the
North. This meant more money for the North. The manufactured goods
would be sold to settlers.
Railroads and canals helped the growth of an industrial
economy and supported the westward migration of settlers to
the Midwest, Southwest, and Texas seeking land to own and farm.
Encounters with Indians:
During this period of westward migration, the American Indians
were repeatedly defeated in violent conflicts with settlers and
soldiers and forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands.
The Indians were forced to march away from their homes (“Trail of Tears”) or were
confined to reservations. Many Indians died on these journeys. The forcible removal of
Indians continued throughout the nineteenth century as settlers moved west.
Divisions Between North and South
Economic Divisions
The North developed an industrial economy based on manufacturing.
The South developed an agricultural economy that consisted of a
slavery-based system of plantations in the lowlands along the Atlantic
and in the Deep South. King Cotton: The South’s primary source of
income and economic stability.
In the South, Small subsistence farmers in the foothills and valleys of the Appalachian
Mountains existed.
Tariffs:
A Tariff is a federal government tax on imports.
The North favored high protective tariffs to protect Northern manufacturers from foreign
competition.
The South opposed high tariffs which made the price of imported manufactured goods
more expensive.
Political Divisions
Tensions were caused over the nature of the Union.
South Carolinians argued that sovereign states could nullify the Tariff of 1832 and other
acts of Congress. A Union that allowed state governments to invalidate acts of the
national legislature could be dissolved by states seceding from the Union in defense of
slavery. This was called the Nullification Crisis. President Jackson threatened to send
federal troops to collect the tariff revenues.
States’ Rights: Theory that the states should retain
sovereignty/rights to self-government even within the
Union; belief that an individual state had the power to
overrule a federal law. This is also called nullification.
The nation struggled to resolve sectional issues, producing
a series of crisis and compromises. The crisis took place
over the admission of new states into the Union during the decades before the Civil War.
The issue was always whether the number of “free states” and “slave states” would be
balanced, thus affecting power in Congress.
As the United States expanded westward, the conflict over slavery grew more bitter
and threatened to tear the country apart.
The abolitionist movement grew in the North led by William Lloyd Garrison and
many New England religious leaders who saw slavery as a violation of
Christian principles.
Some Southern Abolitionists were threatened or killed for their viewpoints.
The Liberator: An antislavery newspaper published by William Lloyd
Garrison.
The wife of a New England clergyman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a best-selling novel that inflamed Abolitionist
sentiment and fear in Southerners. This came out in 1852.
The story follows the lives of two slaves: Eliza, who escapes
slavery with her son; and Tom, who must endure humiliation,
abuse, and torture inflicted by his owners, including archvillain Simon Legree.
Slave revolts in Virginia, led by Nat Turner and Gabriel
Prosser, fed white Southern fears about slave rebellions and led
to harsh laws in the South against fugitive slaves.
Compromises to Maintain the Balance of Power in
Congress:
The Missouri Compromise (1820) drew and eastwest line through the Louisiana Purchase, with
slavery prohibited above the line and allowed
below, except that slavery was allowed in Missouri,
north of the line. Maine entered the Union as a
Free State to balance out the power in Congress.
In the Compromise of 1850, California entered
as a free state, while the new Southwestern
territories acquired from Mexico would decide
on their own.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the
Missouri Compromise line by giving people in
Kansas and Nebraska the choice whether to
allow slavery in their state. This law produced
bloody fighting in Kansas as pro and anti-slavery
forces battled each other. This fighting was
called Bleeding Kansas. It also led to the birth of the Republican
Party that same year to oppose the spread of slavery.
Southerners argued that individual states could nullify laws passed by
the Congress. They also began to insist that states had entered the
Union freely and could leave (“secede”) freely if they chose.
The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court overturned efforts to
limit the spread of slavery and outraged Northerners, as did
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required slaves who escaped to
Free states to be forcibly returned to their owners in the South.
Fugitive slave acts pitted southern slave owners against outraged northerners who opposed
returning escaped slaves to bondage.
Lincoln, a Republican, and Stephan Douglas, a Northern Democrat,
conducted many debates when running in the U.S. Senate in Illinois
in 1858.
Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery into new states; Douglas stood
for “popular sovereignty.” Popular sovereignty, in this case, refers to
a state’s right to choose whether to be a slave state or a free state.