Frances Wright visited the U.S. from Europe. She wrote of the new American Republic: "Women are assuming their place as thinking beings, not in despite of the men, but chiefly in consequence of their enlarged views and exertions as fathers and legislators."
The rise of political parties as the fundamental organizing unit of the Second (Two) Party System represented a sharp break from the values that had shaped Republican and Federalist political competition. Leaders in the earlier system remained deeply suspicious that parties could corrupt and destroy the young republic. At the heart of the new legitimacy of parties, and their forthright celebration of democracy, was the dramatic expansion of voting rights for white men.
Immediately after the Revolution most states retained some property requirements that prevented poor people from voting. Following republican logic, citizens were believed to need an economic stake in society in order to be trusted to vote wisely. If a voter lacked economic independence, then it seemed that those who controlled his livelihood could easily manipulate his vote.
Ironically, just as industrial wage labor began to create dependent laborers on a large new scale, the older republican commitment to propertied voters fell out of favor. As property requirements for voting were abolished, economic status disappeared as a foundation for citizenship. By 1840 more than 90 percent of adult white men possessed the right to vote.
Not only that, voters could now cast their opinion for more offices. Previously, governors and presidential electors had usually been selected by state legislatures as part of a republican strategy that limited the threat of direct democratic control over the highest political offices. The growing democratic temper of the first decades of the 19th century changed this and increasingly all offices were chosen by direct vote. The United States was the world leader in allowing popular participation in elections. This triumph of American politics built upon, but also expanded, the egalitarian ideals of the American Revolution.
This democratic triumph, however, also had sharp limitations that today seem quite shocking. At the same time that state legislatures opened suffrage (that is, the right to vote) to all white men, they simultaneously closed the door firmly on white women and free African Americans. This movement was especially disappointing since it represented a retreat from a broader sense of political rights that had been included in some early state constitutions.
James Monroe nearly shut out his Presidential opponent, John Quincy Adams in the election of 1820. Monroe beat Adams 231 to 1 with 3 abstentions (electoral college votes).
For example, New Jersey revised its state constitution to abolish property requirements in 1807, but at the same time prevented all women from voting (even wealthy ones who had been allowed to vote there since 1776) as well as all free blacks. New York acted similarly in 1821 when its legislature extended the franchise to almost all white men, but simultaneously created high property requirements for free blacks. As a result, only 68 of the 13,000 free African Americans in New York City could vote in 1825. When Pennsylvania likewise denied free blacks the right to vote in the late 1830s, a state legislator explained that "The people of this state are for continuing this commonwealth, what it has always been, a political community of white persons." While he was correct about the prevailing racist sentiment among white voters, free blacks with property had not been excluded from the franchise by the earlier Revolutionary state constitution.
Tragically, the democratization of American politics to include nearly universal white manhood suffrage also intensified discrimination by race and gender. The idea of total democracy remained too radical for full implementation.
Period 4: (1800-1848)
Chapters 9-12
Key Concepts - from College Board
The new republic struggled to define and extend democratic ideals in the face of rapid economic, territorial, and demographic changes.
Key Concept 4.1: The United States began to develop a modern democracy and celebrated a new national culture, while Americans sought to define the nation’s democratic ideals and change their society and institutions to match them.
I. The nation’s transition to a more participatory democracy was achieved by expanding suffrage from a system based on property ownership to one based on voting by all adult white men, and it was accompanied by the growth of political parties.
A) In the early 1800s, national political parties
continued to debate issues such as the tariff, powers of the federal government, and relations with European powers.
B) Supreme Court decisions established the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the Constitution and asserted that federal laws took precedence over state laws.
C) By the 1820s and 1830s, new political parties arose — the Democrats, led, by Andrew Jackson, and the Whigs, led by Henry Clay - that disagreed about the role
and powers of the federal government and issues such as the national bank, tariffs, and federally funded internal improvements.
D) Regional interests often trumped national concerns as the basis for many political leaders’ positions on slavery and economic policy.
Key Concept 4.1: The United States began to develop a modern democracy and celebrated a new national culture, while Americans sought to define the nation’s democratic ideals and change their society and institutions to match them.
II. While Americans embraced a new national culture, various groups developed distinctive cultures of their own.
A) The rise of democratic and individualistic beliefs, a response to rationalism, and changes to society caused by the market revolution, along with greater social and geographical mobility, contributed to a Second Great Awakening among Protestants that influenced moral and
social reforms and inspired utopian and other religious movements.
B) A new national culture emerged that combined American elements, European influences, and regional cultural sensibilities.
C) Liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture.
D) Enslaved blacks and free African Americans created communities and strategies to
protect their dignity and family structures, and they joined political efforts aimed at changing their status.
Key Concept 4.1: The United States began to develop a modern democracy and celebrated a new national culture, while Americans sought to define the nation’s democratic ideals and change their society and institutions to match them.
III. Increasing numbers of Americans, many inspired by new religious and intellectual
movements, worked primarily outside of government institutions to advance their ideals.
A) Americans formed new voluntary organizations that aimed to change individual behaviors and improve society through temperance and other reform efforts.
B) Abolitionist and antislavery movements gradually achieved emancipation in the North, contributing to the growth of the free African American population, even as many state governments restricted
African Americans’ rights. Antislavery efforts in the South were largely limited to unsuccessful slave rebellions.
C) A women’s rights movement sought to create greater equality and opportunities for women, expressing its ideals at the Seneca Falls Convention.
Key Concept 4.2: Innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce powerfully accelerated the American economy, precipitating profound changes to U.S. society and to national and regional identities.
I. New transportation systems and technologies dramatically expanded manufacturing and agricultural production.
A) Entrepreneurs helped to create a market revolution in production and commerce, in which market relationships between producers and consumers came to prevail as the manufacture of goods became more organized.
B) Innovations including textile machinery, steam engines, interchangeable
parts, the telegraph, and agricultural inventions increased the efficiency of production methods.
C) Legislation and judicial systems supported the development of roads, canals, and railroads, which extended and enlarged markets and helped foster regional interdependence. Transportation networks linked the North and Midwest more closely than either was linked to the South.
Key Concept 4.2: Innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce powerfully accelerated the American economy, precipitating profound changes to U.S. society and to national and regional identities.
II. The changes caused by the market revolution had significant effects on U.S. society, workers’ lives, and gender and family relations.
A) Increasing numbers of Americans, especially women and men working in factories, no longer relied on semi-subsistence agriculture; instead they
supported themselves producing goods for distant markets.
B) The growth of manufacturing drove a significant increase in prosperity and standards of living for some; this led to the emergence of a larger middle class and a small but wealthy business elite but also to a large and growing population of laboring poor.
C) Gender and family roles changed in response to the market revolution, particularly with the growth of definitions of domestic ideals that
emphasized the separation of public and private spheres.
Key Concept 4.2: Innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce powerfully accelerated the American economy, precipitating profound changes to U.S. society and to national and regional identities.
III. Economic development shaped settlement and trade patterns, helping to unify the nation while also encouraging the growth of different regions.
A)
Large numbers of international migrants moved to industrializing northern cities, while many Americans moved west of the Appalachians, developing thriving new communities along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
B) Increasing Southern cotton production and the related growth of Northern manufacturing, banking, and shipping industries promoted the development of national and international commercial ties.
C) Southern business leaders continued to rely on
the production and export of traditional agricultural staples, contributing to the growth of a distinctive Southern regional identity.
D) Plans to further unify the U.S. economy, such as the American System, generated debates over whether such policies would benefit agriculture or industry, potentially favoring different sections of the country.
Key Concept 4.3: The U.S. interest in increasing foreign trade and expanding its national borders shaped the nation’s foreign policy and spurred government and private initiatives.
I. Struggling to create an independent global presence, the United States sought to claim territory throughout the North American continent and promote foreign trade.
A) Following the Louisiana Purchase, the United States government sought influence and control over North America and the Western Hemisphere through a variety of means, including
exploration, military actions, American Indian removal, and diplomatic efforts such as the Monroe Doctrine.
B) Frontier settlers tended to champion expansion efforts, while American Indian resistance led to a sequence of wars and federal efforts to control and relocate American Indian populations.
Key Concept 4.3: The U.S. interest in increasing foreign trade and expanding its national borders shaped the nation’s foreign policy and spurred government and private initiatives.
II. The United States’ acquisition of lands in the West gave rise to contests over the extension of slavery into new territories.
A) As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast, slaveholders began relocating their plantations to more fertile lands west of the Appalachians, where the institution of slavery continued to grow.
B) Antislavery efforts increased in the
North, while in the South, although the majority of Southerners owned no slaves, most leaders argued that slavery was part of the Southern way of life.
C) Congressional attempts at political compromise, such as the Missouri Compromise, only temporarily stemmed growing tensions between opponents and defenders of slavery.
Related Thematic Learning Objectives (Focus of Exam Questions)
NAT-2.0: Explain how
interpretations of the Constitution and debates over rights, liberties, and definitions of citizenship have affected American values, politics, and society.
NAT-4.0: Analyze relationships among different regional, social, ethnic, and racial groups, and explain how these groups’ experiences have related to U.S. national identity.
POL-1.0: Explain how and why political ideas, beliefs, institutions, party systems, and alignments have developed and
changed.
WXT-2.0: Explain how patterns of exchange, markets, and private enterprise have developed, and analyze ways that governments have responded to economic issues.
CUL-1.0: Explain how religious groups and ideas have affected American society and political life.
CUL-2.0: Explain how artistic, philosophical, and scientific ideas have developed and shaped society and institutions.
CUL-4.0: Explain
how different group identities, including racial, ethnic, class, and regional identities, have emerged and changed over time.
NAT-1.0: Explain how ideas about democracy, freedom, and individualism found expression in the development of cultural values, political institutions, and American identity.
POL-2.0: Explain how popular movements, reform efforts, and activist groups have sought to change American society and institutions. CUL-3.0: Explain
how ideas about women’s rights and gender roles have affected society and politics.
POL-3.0: Explain how different beliefs about the federal government’s role in U.S. social and economic life have affected political debates and policies.
WXT-2.0: Explain how patterns of exchange, markets, and private enterprise have developed, and analyze ways that governments have responded to economic issues.
WXT-3.0: Analyze how
technological innovation has affected economic development and society.
WXT-1.0: Explain how different labor systems developed in North America and the United States, and explain their effects on workers’ lives and U.S. society.
MIG-1.0: Explain the causes of migration to colonial North America and, later, the United States, and analyze immigration’s effects on U.S. society.
MIG-2.0: Analyze causes of internal
migration and patterns of settlement in what would become the United States, and explain how migration has affected American life.
WOR-1.0: Explain how cultural interaction, cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, nations, and peoples have influenced political, economic, and social developments in North America.
WOR-2.0: Analyze the reasons for, and results of, U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military initiatives in North America
and overseas.
GEO-1.0: Explain how geographic and environmental factors shaped the development of various communities, and analyze how competition for and debates over natural resources have affected both interactions among different groups and the development of government policies.