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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED
STATES
• Concept of self-made man: individualism, Puritan influence
(hard work, self-examination). Central concept in American
culture. Establishment of a capitalistic economy.
• Causes of the Industrial Revolution:
- markets to consume production: growth of the
population due to immigration.
- Labour force produced by immigration: before 1840
most of the immigrants came from Germany, Ireland
and England. They were either artisans or farmers
with some material wealth.
After 1840 most of the immigrants were poor
because of famines in Ireland and crop failures in
Germany. They formed a working class that worked
in factories and the docks.
- Improvement of existing transports and appearance
of new ones: roads, steamboats, artificial canals
linking the Midwest with the Atlantic ports. 1840s1850s: Introduction of the railway.
• Industrial North vs. Agricultural South:
South: Cotton production for the textile factories in England
and the North-Eastern United States. The South relied upon
Northern business for most of its manufactured goods.
Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas: sugar cane
and cotton
Old South: wheat and corn.
• Great plantations and slavery. Southern “aristocracy”.
1808: The Congress implemented the Constitutional prohibition of
the slave trade.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
• A body of ideas derived partly from the philosophy of Kant,
partly from Coleridge and Carlyle, and adhered to by a group of
young Boston intellectuals.
• Man is capable of aprehending the truth intuitively, without the
intervention of established authority.
• Escape from materialism into the realm of idealistic action.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: optimism and self-reliant individualism.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
• Women considered simultaneously superior beings and helpless
subordinates (Patriarchal myth of virgin and whore): They were
uniformly denied social and political equality.
• A married woman had no legal right to her own belongings or
her own earnings, nor without her husband’s consent could she
make a will or even assume guardianship over her own children.
Married or not, a woman could neither hold office nor vote.
• EDUCATION: limited.
- 1820s: Emma Willard and Catherine E. Beecher
established female academies and refuted the belief
that girls could not master mathematics or
philosophy without loss of health or femininity.
- 1837: Mary Lyon founded the first American women’s
college, Mount Holyoke.
- Up to mid-century Oberlin College, founded on a
coeducational basis in 1833, was the only institution
of standing to admit women.
• Women were active in reform: a majority of members of
abolitionist and temperance societies, but they were denied
prominent roles in such movements.
• Rise of feminism: Ministers objected to the appearance of the
Grimké sisters on abolitionist lecture platforms. Sarah Grimké
responded with her Letter on the Equality of the Sexes and the
Condition of Women (1838)
• The denial of seats to American women attending the World
Anti-Slavery Conference in London in 1840 had striking
consequences: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in
1848 summoned a convention of women at Seneca Falls, New
York.
• By 1860 about half the states had passed laws recognising
married women’s property rights, but other social and political
disabilities remained.
THE FRONTIER
• The frontier as a cultural concept: The Pioneers as “new
Adams”. Boundless possibilities of national regeneration: Free
from corrupting institutions, the vast spaces represented the
land of innocence, where the American nation would fulfil its
destiny.
• MANIFEST DESTINY: American superiority. Nineteenth-century
expansionists were proud of their Republican government and
exalted the blessings of political liberty. By carrying these
institutions across the continent, American expansion would
broaden the foundations of liberty, extend the area of freedom
and elevate those people who still lived under inferior forms of
government.
• THE MONROE DOCTRINE. Russia, Prussia, Austria and France
had formed the “Holy Alliance” to suppress liberalism and
uphold monarchy; 1821: Russian edict extending the boundary
of Alaska southward into the Oregon country and claiming the
west coast of North America as a possible field for Russian
colonization.
• 1794: Battle of Fallen Timbers (Northwest Territory). General
Wayne destroyed a native coalition.
• 1795: Treaty of Greenville. A boundary line separating the two
people in Ohio State.
• TECUMSEH and the Alliance of all the Mississippi Valley tribes.
He died in 1813 in the Battle of the Thames.
• CREEKS AND CHEROKEES. War against Britain, the Cherokees
supported the American army against Great Britain and the
Creeks. The Creeks surrendered most of their lands and went to
live with the Seminoles in Spanish Florida. Florida became
territory of the U.S.A. in 1819.
The Cherokees of Georgia assimilated the Christian religion,
adopted American agricultural techniques, imitated white styles
of dress and struggled to maintain their lands. They even
drafted a constitution and declared their independence. They
were expelled from Georgia first and then from Tennessee west
of the Mississippi River.
• 1803: Louisiana became part of the U.S.A. 1820s: Americans
were crossing into the Mexican province of Texas. The Mexican
government tried to stop that immigration. Rebellion of the
Americans and proclamation of an Independent Republic of
Texas (1836). Texas entered the Union in 1845.
MEXICAN WAR: 1846-48. Mexico was defeated. Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo: The United States obtained New Mexico,
California and the Rio Grande area.
POLITICS UP TO THE CIVIL WAR
•
•
1789: George Washington, President of the United States
All national leaders acknowledged the importance of balancing liberty
and authority, but they disagreed about where one ended and the
other began:
-
ALEXANDER HAMILTON (Secretary of the Treasury):
Property
-
THOMAS JEFFERSON (Secretary of State) and JAMES
MADISON (Speaker of the House of Representatives):
Liberty
•
HAMILTON wanted to give strength to the national government: Bank of
•
FRENCH REVOLUTION and War between France and Great Britain:
the United States.
Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, but Hamilton backed
Great Britain and Jefferson and Madison backed France because of the
revolutionary spirit.
•
Washington endorsed JAY’S TREATY (commercial agreement between
Great Britain and the U.S.). Hamilton organised support for the treaty
in Congress and in the States (FEDERALIST PARTY). Jefferson and
Madison opposed the treaty (DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY)
•
After 1814: Political reforms: Significant expansion of the suffrage in
most states. ANDREW JACKSON and Populism (1828). Jackson identified
his program with the will of the majority and depicted his opponents as
exponents of aristocracy and privilege.
•
•
WHIG PARTY: they shared a commitment to economic individualism.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH: 1830s: Abolitionism in the
North vs. Slavery as a positive good in the South. Annexation of Texas,
Mexican War and expansionist designs on Cuba perceived as an
“aggressive slaveocracy”.
•
BALANCE OF POWER. The Senate was divided equally into free and
slave constituencies: If California was admitted as a new free state the
balance would break. COMPROMISE OF 1850. Disintegration of the Whig
Party because of the confrontations North and South
•
1854: Senator Stephen Douglas and the “popular sovereignty” in Kansas
and Nebraska. Northern Democrats dissented. Creation of the
REPUBLICAN PARTY (Former Whigs and Northern Democrats): Frontal
opposition to the expansion of slavery.
•
1860: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, a Republican, won the Presidency. The
legislature of South Carolina summoned a special session to consider
secession. Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas
followed out of the Union.
•
February, 1861: The seven seceded States met in Montgomery,
Alabama: THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, Jefferson Davis as
President. Their Constitution defended the sovereign and independent
character of each State and guaranteed the preservation of slavery
• April 12, 1861: The Confederate States decided the attack of FORT
SUMTER in Charleston, South Carolina. Lincoln called for volunteers to
end the rebellion. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina
voted for secession.
THE CIVIL WAR (1861-1865)
• As the number of dead men increased and the Union army
seemed incapable of achieving a decisive victory, the North
started becoming dissatisfied with the war.
• Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union. He approved the
banishment to the South of leading Democrat politicians and
was against the Peace societies that sprang up throughout the
North. He opposed the radical Republicans who wanted the
emancipation of all slaves owned by Missouri rebels.
• Autumn 1862: Lincoln proclaimed his intention to free all the
slaves in the areas of rebellion (the radical Republicans
threatened with the creation of a third party). EMANCIPATION
PROCLAMATION. It did not touch slavery in the loyal border
states and the federally controlled areas of the South.
• THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT: Intended by Lincoln only for the
Confederate States. The republican Congress endorsed it
prohibiting slavery throughout the United States. The
Amendment was ratified in December 1865. The Amendments
passed between 1865 and 1870 proclaimed the former slave
population as citizens of the U.S.
• The defeat of the South: The Confederacy could not match the
industrial superiority of the North and lacked a national
commitment. The national commitment was present in the
North.
• April 9, 1865, Generals Ulysses S. Grant (North) and Robert E.
Lee (South) declared the war over. Lincoln was assassinated by
JOHN WILKES BOOTH in a theatre in Washington. He was buried
in Springfield, Illinois.