Causation in Period 4 in two minutes
- Politics unified Americans: the vote spread to nearly every white man, nominating conventions replaced the caucus, and by 1840 two national parties competed for 2.4 million voters.
- The economy tied regions together. Canals and railroads bound the Midwest to the Northeast, and Southern cotton fed Northern and British mills.
- Foreign policy built pride. The War of 1812, though a draw, discredited the Federalists, and the Monroe Doctrine (1823) warned Europe against new colonies in the Americas.
- Voting widened for white men, but New Jersey (1807) and Pennsylvania (1838) took it from women or Black men. The excluded built their own institutions, from Freedom's Journal to Seneca Falls.
- Cotton tied the South to slavery and gave it a distinct identity. Calhoun moved from urging roads and canals in 1817 to calling slavery a positive good in 1837.
- War with Mexico (1846–1848) reopened the question of slavery's expansion. David Wilmot proposed banning slavery in the new land, and Northerners and Southerners voted by section, not party.
- On the exam: causation prompts ask how far politics, the economy or foreign policy united Americans. Strong answers link each cause to a specific effect and note its limits, especially slavery.
Topic 4.14 key terms
- Jubilee
A fiftieth anniversary. The word comes from the Bible (Leviticus 25), where every fiftieth year was a year of liberty.
- Declaration of Independence
The document adopted on July 4, 1776 announcing that the American colonies were free of Britain. Jefferson drafted it; Adams pushed it through Congress.
- Providence
The belief that God guides events in human affairs. In 1826 many Americans took the two deaths on the Fourth as a sign that God favored their republic.
- Nationalism
Pride in, and loyalty to, the nation as a whole. After the War of 1812 it showed up in roads and banks, in paintings and dictionaries, even in parades for an old French general.
- Cultural nationalism
Pride in things that were American, not European: American animals, scenery, books, spelling and heroes.
- American identity
What Americans believed made them one people: shared ideas, a shared past, shared institutions and, often, shared enemies.
- Causation
Explaining how one development led to another, and why.
- Market revolution
From about 1815 to 1850, more Americans made goods to sell far away instead of growing or making what they used at home. Canals, mills, banks and steamboats drove the change.
- Democrats and Whigs
The two national parties of the 1830s and 1840s. Democrats (Andrew Jackson) and Whigs (Henry Clay) fought over the national bank, tariffs and federal money for roads and canals.
- Monroe Doctrine (1823)
Monroe's message to Congress: the Americas were closed to new European colonies, and the United States would stay out of Europe's wars. Britain's navy, more than U.S. power, made it stick.
- Universal white male suffrage
By the 1830s most states let almost every adult white man vote. The same reforms often wrote women and free Black men out.
- Domestic slave trade
The sale and forced movement of enslaved people from the Upper South to the cotton states. It tore apart families on a huge scale.
- Sectionalism
Putting your own region (the North, the South or the West) ahead of the nation.
- “Positive good” (a claim)
Calhoun's 1837 claim that slavery was good for enslaved people and for society. It replaced the older Southern line that slavery was a necessary evil.
- Second Great Awakening
The revivals of about 1800–1840 that told Americans they could choose to be saved. They built national churches and reform societies (temperance, schools, asylums, abolition).
- Mexican Cession (1848)
The land Mexico gave up in the treaty that ended the war: California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of four more future states.
- Missouri Compromise line (36°30′)
The 1820 line across the Louisiana Purchase: slavery was banned north of it, except in Missouri, and allowed south of it.
- Wilmot Proviso (1846)
A proposal to ban slavery in any territory taken from Mexico. It passed the House and failed in the Senate. Members voted by section, not by party.
- Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
The first women's rights convention. Its Declaration of Sentiments rewrote the Declaration of Independence to include women.
- Thesis
A claim that answers the question and takes a position on how much. The best ones say what complicates them.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The Fourth
July 4, 1826
Key terms: Jubilee, Declaration of Independence, Providence
July 4, 1826. Fifty years since the Declaration of Independence. Americans called it the Jubilee.
The Declaration's author lay dying in this house. Since the night before, he'd kept asking whether it was the Fourth yet.
Thomas Jefferson died at about ten minutes to one.
Five hundred miles away, John Adams was 90. Quincy, his hometown, had asked him for a toast.
John Adams
Independence forever!
Anything to add?
John Adams
Not a word.
He died that evening. The people in the room heard his last words as "Thomas Jefferson survives." Jefferson had been dead about five hours.
Ten days earlier, he wrote his last letter.
Thomas Jefferson
the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs
Six months after he died, his estate sold more than a hundred people he had enslaved, to pay his debts.
The time, the manner, the coincidence with the decease of Jefferson, are visible and palpable marks of Divine favor…
The president, John Adams's son, called it a sign of God's favor. Many Americans agreed.
John Quincy Adams
visible and palpable marks of Divine favor
Fifty years in, what made Americans one people? And what was already pulling them apart?
The Long Room
1753–1826
Key terms: Nationalism, Cultural nationalism, American identity, Causation
To find out, go to Philadelphia.
The Pennsylvania State House. Congress voted for independence here, fifty years before.
In the tower hung a bell ordered for another fiftieth anniversary, that of Pennsylvania's charter. Its verse comes from the Bible's jubilee.
In 1824 the city restored the Assembly Room for Lafayette, who was touring all 24 states. Philadelphians began calling it the Hall of Independence.
Upstairs from the Declaration was a museum. Its keeper, Charles Willson Peale, painted himself there at 81, lifting the curtain for you.
He named his children Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian, after painters. Another son, Linnaeus, was named for the Swedish scientist who sorted living things into kinds.
Peale sorted his birds by kind, case after case.
The star was a mastodon, dug out of a New York farm in 1801. A famous French naturalist had written that American animals were small and weak. Americans pointed at this.
Between 1800 and 1848, the country grew from sixteen states to thirty, and from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
To what extent did politics, the economy and foreign policy make Americans one people, 1800–1848?
Here's the exam's question about this period. How far did politics, the economy and foreign policy make Americans one people?
Peale sorted the world by kind. Historians sort it by cause. So imagine one more row of cases, with one object from each part of this unit.
Tie the Threads
1800–1848
Key terms: Market revolution, Democrats and Whigs, Monroe Doctrine (1823)
Your thread comes off a Lowell bobbin. It's cotton. An object becomes evidence when you can say how it led to the next one. Tie three chains of cause and effect: one for politics, one for the economy, one for foreign policy.
Three threads, three causes, one people. That's the case for unity, and it's a strong one.
Look closer. Every thread you tied has a second end.
The Second End
1807–1845
Key terms: Universal white male suffrage, Domestic slave trade, Sectionalism, “Positive good” (a claim), Second Great Awakening
Politics first. The years that gave the vote to nearly every white man took it from others.
New Jersey's 1807 law left out women and Black men. New York kept a $250 property test for Black men alone.
Pennsylvania wrote the word “white” into its constitution in 1838.
Freedom's Journal's editors
We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.
So they built their own churches, schools and papers.
The cotton behind Lowell's cloth grew on land taken from the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw.
Enslaved people picked that cotton. Hundreds of thousands were sold south from Virginia and Maryland.
Canals and railroads pulled the West toward the North. The South sold cotton abroad and built an identity of its own.
In 1817 a young South Carolinian wanted roads and canals to bind the Union.
John C. Calhoun
Let us conquer space.
Twenty years later, in the Senate, the same man called slavery
John C. Calhoun
a good—a positive good.
Most white Southerners owned no one. Their leaders defended slavery anyway, because the South's cotton and power rested on it.
Even the churches split. Over slavery, the Methodists divided in 1844 and the Baptists in 1845.
Every thread that tied Americans together also pulled on something else. One thread is still loose.
Irreparably Cracked
1846–1848
Key terms: Mexican Cession (1848), Missouri Compromise line (36°30′), Wilmot Proviso (1846), Seneca Falls Convention (1848), Thesis
Monday, February 23, 1846. Philadelphia rang the old State House bell for Washington's Birthday.
Workmen had filed the crack's edges so it wouldn't buzz. It rang clear until noon. Then it split. A newspaper called it “irreparably cracked and dumb.”
Eleven weeks later, the United States went to war with Mexico. By 1848 Mexico had lost more than half its territory, counting Texas.
Here's the thread nobody tied. Louisiana led to Missouri's line. The land from Mexico asked Missouri's question again: slave or free?
In 1846, Congressman David Wilmot moved to ban slavery from any land taken from Mexico. Northerners mostly voted yes, Southerners no, whatever their party.
The people left out kept reaching for the same words.
David Walker
See your Declaration Americans!!!
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
all men and women are created equal
So here's one answer. Politics, the economy and foreign policy made Americans one people as never before. Each also sharpened the regions. And new land reopened slavery, the question that could break them.
Abolitionists had already renamed it the Liberty Bell. They took the verse at its word: all the inhabitants. The bell went quiet in 1846. The question on it didn't.