Unit Three Sources: 1800-1848

These sources are not in chronological order. For each source, provide the following:

I. Provide context of the source. Also consider POV, audience, purpose.

II. How is it related to Market Revolution?

III. What is the nature of the source? Is the source religious, political, social, diplomatic, or economic and how so? Each source could be more than one; pick primary one.

IV. List some (more than one) external SFI (specific factual information) relating to it AND EXPLAIN HOW IT APPLIES.

V. As always, talk to yourself of how the source fits in with the larger context of what is happening in this era.

I.

“I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane and idiotic men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings wretched in our Prisons, and more wretched in our Alms-Houses.…I proceed, Gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience!...The crying evil and abuse of institutions, is not confined to our almshouses. The warden of a populous prison near this metropolis, populous, not with criminals only, but with the insane in almost every stage of insanity…has declared that: “the prison has often more resembled the infernal regions than any place on earth!”…Gentlemen, I commit to you this sacred cause. Your action upon this subject will affect the present and future condition of hundreds and of thousands. In this legislation, as in all things, may you exercise that “wisdom which is the breath of the power of God.”

Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 1843

Dorothea L. Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts (Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1843).

I. Context: Reform era; many different reform movements took place in the early 1800’s. These included temperance, abolition, woman, and in this case, fighting for the rights of the mentally ill. POV: Dix is a reformer, dedicated to making change through democratic means. Audience: Legislature; she hopes they will pass laws to help the mentally ill and their treatment at the hands of asylums.

II. The market revolution created a more stable economy and a middle class. You will see that most reformers were from that middle class. Had it not been for the market revolution, Dix might have been stuck on a farm trying to grow food, unable to fight for rights.

III. social—others’ well being. Political—laws can help others’ well being.

IV. Second Great Awakening: a religious movement arguing, among other things, that one’s acts here on earth determine your soul’s fate. You must do the work of Jesus in His physical absence.

A slew of other movements such as temperance and abolition would fit this same type of crusade. Remember your reformer that you studied and shared earlier in the year.

II.

I. Context is the election of 1840, when Whig candidate William Henry Harrison tries to make himself more appealing to the type of common man voter that might typically vote Democrat. POV: campaign poster maker, probably paid to create this. Audience: common Americans (ie most Americans who could vote—of course that would be white men only at this time.

II. Market revolution began to create more wealth, which heightened the suspicion among many voters that politicians would be more favorable to the wealthy and not them.

III. Political : Democrats vs Whigs

IV. Second Party System: with the death of the Federalist party in 1816, the Democratic Party was the only party until Jackson’s two terms, when the Whig party arose to oppose him.

Whig Party: made up of many of the old Federalist elements—those that supported business, the Bank of the US, and a more powerful central government.

Universal male suffrage: The old property owning requirement of the 18th century gave way to all white men being able to vote by the 1830’s. Thus, the need to appeal to them.

III.

“With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling…by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States…

“Our policy in regard to Europe…which is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers…but in regard to those continents [the Americas], circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord.”

--James Monroe, The Monroe Doctrine, 1823

I. Context: the heightened American confidence and nationalism after the War of 1812 and its satisfactory conclusion. POV: President of US. Audience: Congress, yes, but moreover Europe.

II. Market revolution made US more competitive, thus moving it closer to equality, at least economically, with Europe.

III. Diplomacy: this is the bulwark of US foreign policy through into the 1940’s.

IV. Isolationism: the Monroe Doctrine heeds Washington’s Farewell Address by saying that we will stay out of their affairs as long as they stay out of our hemisphere’s affairs.

War of 1812: without our ‘victory’ against Britain, we would never have been bold enough to offer this announcement.

IV.

I. Context: the first major wave of migration to the US occurred in the 1840’s. Note the decline as we moved into Civil War.

II. Market Revolution and its increase in jobs available in the textile mills of New England provided employment for these immigrants, particularly the Irish who could not afford to move inland to get land.

III. Social: this is primarily a wave of people moving here from different backgrounds. BTW, immigration is not diplomatic! Who we let into our country is our business, not beholden to other countries.

IV. Old Immigration: Prior immigration had been a constant, random trickle. This was an immigration wave, made up of Irish escaping potato famine and Germans escaping political chaos.

Know Nothing Party/nativism: such an influx sparked resentment, particularly due to the fear that the largely Catholic Irish and Germans would not become American, but would rather stay beholden to the Pope and Catholic Church.

V.

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government…In the full enjoyment of the gifts of heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law.

“But when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions…to make the rich richer…the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers--…have a right to complain of the injustices of their government.

“There are no necessary evils in government…If it would confine itself to equal protection…the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”

--President Andrew Jackson, Message vetoing the Bank, July 10, 1832

I. Context: Jackson killing the US Bank, the national bank created by Hamilton and favored by the commerce/industrial driven NorthEast because it led stability to the overall economy. Audience/Purpose: he is speaking to Congress, but moreover he is speaking to his constituency, the common man. The US Bank had been blamed for foreclosures on farmers, and had become the scapegoat in the never-ending big business vs little guy argument (hello Bernie).

II. Market Revolution benefitted from the Bank; when it was killed, the US soon suffered an economic depression, the Panic of 1837. In today’s Covid economic collapse, the Treasury stimulus checks are great but the Federal Reserve Bank, the reincarnation of the US Bank during Wilson’s administration in 1913, is behind much more of the important but unpublicized actions to prevent total collapse.

III. This might seem economic, but it is more political: Jackson is appealing to his party’s voters by doing what they want and moreover, getting into the craw of his political opponents like Henry Clay who love the bank.

IV. Jacksonian Democracy: appealing to and representing the common man, now a major voting block.

Spoils System: another action appealing to the common man.

Indian Removal Act (passed by Congress but supported by Jackson despite the Supreme Courts opposition to the Act): another action appealing to the common man (assuming of course that Native Americans did not qualify as such). REMEMBER: ANY ARGUMENT ON A DBQ RELATING TO THIS CAN BE QUALIFIED BY DISCUSSING HOW MANY PEOPLE DID NOT QUALIFY AS COMMON MAN—that’s argumentation.

VI.

--“View on the Erie Canal” (1830-32) by John William Hill

I. Context: The construction of the Erie Canal linked Lake Erie in Western New York to the Hudson River, and thus, NYCity. There were many such canals built during the early 19 th century. This enabled those living in the ‘west’ to get their wares to market and export, a boon to that region. POV/Purpose: This artist is reflecting the importance and prosperity related to the canal.

II. Canals, and more importantly steamboats, revolutionized transportation and thus the economy, making economic activity in the ‘west’ (at this time, Tennessee, Illinois, Alabama, etc) viable and lucrative.

III. economic

IV. American System: Henry Clay’s audacious (but failed) attempt to get the Federal government more involved in helping to create a network of canals, highways, the US Bank, and tariffs to bolster the economy of the US. Largely failed due to opposition by Jackson, who hated him, and by the idea that it was not the power of the federal government but rather the states to do such things.

VII.

“Free should the scholar be,---free and brace…We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. …We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. Then shall man be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence…A nation of men will for the first time exist.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalist writer, 1837.

I. Context: The era of Romanticism, of growing self-awareness, self-creation, and individualism not only on an individual level but also on a national level: we are becoming our own culture, unique and separate from the European culture we had hitherto followed as a beacon. POV: philosopher with millions of great quotes on how to live, waste not life, etc. Audience: Americans and our growing sense of pride.

II. Without the prosperity of a newly market/industrial society, dudes like Ralph would not have time to sit around thinking and pontificating—they would starve to death.

III. Social

IV. Second Great Awakening: similar to transcendental thought in that we are in charge of our own soul’s journey.

Reform era: How better to be an individual than to protest institutions bigger than you and yet evil?

Perfectionism: Another word for this Romantic thought pattern of self-improvement—was all the rage during this time.

VII.

I. Context: Industrialization of America is shown in the Northeast, particularly around Lowell, Massachusetts but also Conn. and Rhode Island, by the huge growth in America’s first major industry, the textile industry.

II. Textiles drove the early market revolution, and steam power allowed cotton to ship by steamboat to New England and clothes/fabric back to the South. Money flowing all around.

III. economic

IV. King Cotton: The more textile mills, the more cotton needs to be grown. This makes cotton production swell in the South, and with it the belief that Cotton’s importance would protect slavery’s existence.

Lowell Girls: unmarried girls worked at the mills in large numbers until they got married. Old spinsters (22 year old unmarried girls) were pitied but at least were able to support themselves, and their parents did not want to support them. Once again, don’t fall prey to the notion that respectable women did not work; respectable middle class and wealthy women did not work. POOR WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS WORKED.

Sarah Bagley: the labor union movement arose largely in the 2nd industrial revolution of the Gilded Age, but it’s very earliest incarnation can be traced to Sarah Bagley, a mill worker who early on fought for better conditions and pay for textile workers, male and female.

ANY ESSAY ABOUT THIS ERA SHOULD NOTE ACTIVITIES OF WOMEN WHETHER THE QUESTION SPECIFICALLY ASKS FOR IT OR NOT.

VIII.

“Is there no danger to the Democracy of the country from such formidable foes arrayed against it? Is Metternich its friend? Is the Pope its friend? Are his official documents, now daily put forth, Democratic in their character? O there is no danger to the Democracy; for those most devoted to the Pope, the Roman Catholics…are all on the side of Democracy. Yes; to be sure they are on the side of Democracy. They are just where I should look for them. Judas Iscariot joined with the true disciples.

-Samuel F. B. Morse, Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States, 1835

The title of the book would have been visible to you on the exam and would have made this easier to analyze…

See source IV; this is simply nativism put into words by the creator of Morse Code no less!

IX.

I. Context: in the lead up to the War of 1812, War Hawks in the west demanded that we go to war with Britain not only because they were arming Indians in the west, but also because of impressment. POV: pro-war anti-british poltical cartoonist. Purpose: to get common people to support the war.

II. Related to market revolution because one of our beefs with Britain is that they were interfering with our ability to ship goods to other ports and countries by their overactive navy.

III. Diplomatic (war), but also political.

IV. War of 1812, War Hawks, Impressment.

Hartford Convention (1816): nearing the end of the war, Federalist Party stronghold New England which had ironically be so pro-war with Britain in the revolution but now was anti-war of 1812 due to commerce disruption, creates a list of demands. These include repayment for lost commerce and even a hint of secession if they don’t get their way. Federalist party looks bad to the rest of America, especially as the convention takes place around the time of the glorious defeat of the British at New Orleans under the command of Andrew Jackson. Jackson becomes a hero, the Federalist Party dies.

X.

“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

“He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

“He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice…

“Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides…

“He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.”

-Seneca Falls Convention, Declration of Sentiments and Resolutions, 1848

I. Context: Woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls. Women were somewhat fighting for the idea of equal suffrage, but were more interested in gaining property rights in the case of divorce and other more mundane (in our modern eyes) rights. POV: women who were on the cutting edge; all men and the majority of women thought they were mannish freaks to fight for more rights. Audience: anyone who would listen to them, but primarily themselves. Women like Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth were attempting to get their own thoughts organized for the coming push for more rights. Most of these women were involved in all the movements of the time.

II. Again, the creation of a middle class thanks to the market revolution made such gatherings and efforts possible. A hundred years earlier they would never have come into contact with each other due to the lack of roads and the need for incessant weeding and hog slopping.

III. Social

IV. Reform era, Romanticism, Second Great Awakening.

Declaration of Sentiments: the document drafted at the convention was patterned after the Declaration of Independence, the He in this one referring to Men as opposed to the He in the original referring to King George III.

XI.

I. Context: the perfect family, circa 1830. Nice home, well behaved Christian children, and two parents who did their part; he at the business and she with the children. POV: artist, perhaps portrait. Audience: he’s trying to make a buck!

II. Middle class!

III. Social

IV. Cult of Domesticity: while the wild few Susan B Anthony’s were out there fighting, they were the definite exception. The feminine ideal for women during this time was to raise and nurture the children. Republican Motherhood 2.0.

XII.

See VII; this is a painting representative of the Hudson River school of art (not school as in school, but school as in school). This again shows a unique American perspective in art and literature.

XIII.

“[W]e view with great concern, both nationally and individually, certain late attempts, on the part of various descriptions of domestic manufacturers, to induce your honorable body to increase the duties upon imports, already so high as to amount, upon many articles, nearly to a prohibition. This increased cost upon some of these may truly be designated a tax upon knowledge, if not a bounty to ignorance.…That, although these attempts are sustained under the plausible pretext of ‘promoting national industry,’ they are calculated…to produce a tax highly impolitic in its nature, partial in its operation, and oppressive in its effects: a tax, in fact to be levied principally on the great body of agriculturists, who constitute a large majority of the whole American people, and who are the chief consumers of all foreign imports.…it is the duty of every wise and just government to secure the consumers against both exorbitant profits and extravagant prices by leaving competition as free and open as possible.”

Virginia Agricultural Society, Petition to the House of Representatives, 1820

"Remonstrance against Increase of Duties on Imports," House of Representatives, January 17, 1820, no. 570, 16th Cong., 1st sess., American State Papers: Finance, 3:447–48.

I. Context: a protest to the Tariff of 1816, the first tariff created solely to protect American industry by making foreign products more expensive. This angered the South, which had no industry to protect and thus was dependent on the very imports that were being taxed, and moreover feared the influence of the increasingly anti-slave North’s power. POV: a group of southern planters opposed to tariffs. Audience: Congress in hopes of reversing the tariff.

II. Tariffs were created to protect infant American industries.

III. political; while tariffs are economic, this is an early glimpse at the developing North/South rift.

IV. Tariff of 1828/Tariff of Abominations: the tariff dispute reached its height with the highest protective tariff ever, pushed by Henry Clay and the North.

South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1832): South Carolina threatens to secede if the tariff isn’t lowered.

Force Act 1833: Jackson threatens to kill everyone in South Carolina and this act will let him do it unless South Carolina backs down. They do, this time… For all the bad things Jackson is associated with, this shows his beneficial side, which is that of a devoted Unionist who prevents a war, if only actually postponing it long enough for Lincoln to come along.

Nullification: South Carolina hoped to nullify an act of Congress, much like the VA/KY Resolutions during the Alien and Sedition Acts of the Adams administration, 1798. It didn’t work then, and doesn’t really work now either.