Period 4

• Jefferson’s Presidency 

  • Jefferson reduced the size of the military, repealed excise taxes (including the whiskey tax), and lowered national debut 
  • Suspended the Alien and Sedition Acts
  • Maintained the national bank & neutral foreign policy
• Jefferson adopted a loser interpretation of the Constitution in order to purchase the Louisiana Territory - strengthened Jefferson’s hopes that the US would be based on an agrarian society of independent farmers.
• Aaron Burr’s Quids - accused Jefferson of abandoning Democratic-Republican principles
• • British warship fired on the US Chesapeake which killed three Americans. Led to Anti-British feelings. 
  • In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo Acts in hopes of pressuring the British out of impressment - backfired & bought greater economic hardship to the US 
• Embargo Act: No trade with any nations.

  Was later revised to non-intercourse Act. Americans could now trade with any nation other than Britain & France
• Election of 1808 - Federalists gained seats in Congress as a result of the effects of the embargo
• • War of 1812 - 
  • British presence on the western frontier & interference with US expansion 
  • British allied with Natives included Tecumseh & his brother who attempted pan-tribal cooperation 
  • War ended with no gain or boundary change for either side
  • For its opposition to the war & the timeliness of the Hartford Convention the Federalist party came to an end
• • After War of 1812: US gained respect among other nations, Natives forced to cede land, US moved toward industrial self-sufficiency, Jackson emerged as a war hero, nationalism grew stronger
• During the war of 1812,

  • War hawks - young Democratic-Republicans led by Clay & Calhoun - argued that the only way to defend American honor was to go to war with Britain & destroy Native resistance
  • New England merchants, quids, and federalist politicians were against the war because they feared losing trading relationships 
  • Quids criticized the war because it opposed Democratic-Republican ideas of limited federal power & the maintenance of peace
• Era of Good Feeling

  • End of division & the Federalist party 
  • Spirit of nationalism & optimism 
  • Democratic-Republican party adopted some Federalist policies 
  • Sectional tensions over slavery
  • Monroe represented the growing nationalism of Americans - younger American believed the nation was entering an era of unlimited prosperity
  • Patriotic themes infused in art, literature, etc.
• During the era of good feelings, there were debates over tariffs, national bank, internal improvements, and public land sales
• • American System -
  • Proposed by Henry Clay
  • Protective tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements 
  • Individual states were left to make internal improvements on their own - Monroe vetoed because he believed the Constitution did not give the federal government power for internal improvements
• • Panic of 1819 - first major financial panic
  • caused by the Second Bank tightening credit in an effort to control inflation
• • The Missouri Compromise -
  • Congress attempting to preserve a sectional balance between the North & South 
  • Admit Missouri as a slave state, admit Maine as a free state, prohibit slavery North of the latitude 36 degrees 
  • Preserved sectional balance for about 30 years
  • Americans torn between feelings of nationalism & sectionalism 
• Treaty of 1811 - improved relations between the US & Britain - established the western US-Canada boundary line
• Florida purchase treaty of 1819 - Spain gave up all it’s land claims to the US except for Texas
• Monroe Doctrine - asserted the Western Hemisphere as a US sphere of influence - warned European nations against colonization in the Americas
• The Marshall Court laid the foundation to multiple laws in America
• Second Great Awakening 

  • Religious revivals that swept through the United States in the early 19th century
  • Successful preachers were audience-centered and easily understood by the uneducated - spoke about the opportunity for salvation for all
• • On the frontier - Finney appealed to people’s emotions of fear of damnation - every individual could be saved through faith & hard work - appealed mainly to the middle class - located in upstate New York
• Activist religious groups provided the leadership & organized societies that drove many reform movements
• • Romanticism - writers & artists shifted away from Enlightenment emphasis on balance, order, & reason toward feeling, intuition, individual acts of heroism, & the study of nature 
  • Expressed in the United States by transcendentalists
• • Emerson - encouraged a nationalistic spirit of Americans by urging to create a distinctive American culture
  • Argued for self-reliance, independent thinking, & the primacy or spiritual matters 
  • Thoreau - used observation of nature to discover essential truths about life & the universe 
  • Essys and actions would inspire the nonviolent movements of both Mohandas Gandhi & Martin Luther King Jr.
• Arts & Literature 

  • Painting - portrayed the everyday life of ordinary people 
  • Hudson River School - expressed romantic age’s fascination with the natural world
  • Literature - American people became more eager to read works of American authors about American themes
• Temperance - Because of social ills & high alcohol consumption, reformers & Protestant ministers founded the American
• • Humanitarian Reforms - called attention to the increasing number of criminals & emotionally disturbed persons
  • Reformers proposed setting up new public institutions, mental hospitals, & state-supported prisons
• • Social reforms to establish free public schools for children of all classes
  • Many educational reformers wanted children to learn moral principles
• • Religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening fueled the growth of private colleges
• Cult of Domesticity - idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home
• Seneca Falls Convention - first women’s rights convention in American history - issued the Declaration of Sentiments & listed women’s grievances
• Stanton & Susan B. Anthony led the campaign for equal voting, legal, & property rights for women
• Second Great Awakening led many Christians to view slavery as a sin
• Liberty Party - campaign pledge to bring about the end of slavery by political & legal means
• Frederick Douglass - advocated both political & direct action to end slavery & racial prejudice
• • Nat Turner - led a revolt in which 55 whites were killed
  • Hundred of African Americans killed to put down revolt 
  • Fear of future uprisings put an end to antislavery talk in the South
• Improved transportation = lower food prices in the East, more immigrants settling in the West, stronger economic ties between the two sections
• Railroads changed small western towns into booming commercial centers & created rapid reliable links between cities
• Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 & devised a system for making rifles with a system of interchangeable parts - basis of mass production methods in Northern factories
• Lowell system: employed women. Only in a small town
• Northern manufacturers began to employ immigrants