2.2 Growing Division and Reform

Sectionalism

• 1819: Missouri applies for statehood as a slave state.
• The Problem? The Union had 11 free states and 11 slave states. Letting in any new state, either slave or free, would upset the balance of power in the Senate.
• Missouri Compromise: the solution, written by Henry Clay
• let in Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.
• prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of Missouri’s southern border.
• Sectionalism: a division within the party
• 1824: 4 Republican candidates ran for president
• Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but no one won a majority in the Electoral College.
• The election then went to the House of Representatives, who chose from the with highest votes. Henry Clay was eliminated, so he threw his support to John Quincy Adams. Adams won the House vote, and became president.

A New Party is Created

• Jackson’s supporters accused Adams and Clay of a “corrupt bargain,” in which Clay was accused of winning votes for Adams in return for the cabinet post of secretary of state.
• Jackson and his supporters took the name Democratic Republicans, later shortened to Democrats. Adams and his followers became known as National Republicans.
• In the early 1800s, many states eliminated property ownership as a qualification for voting.
• hundreds of thousands of white males gained the right to vote.
• 1828: John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson for president.
• The candidates resorted to mudslinging, criticizing each other’s personalities and morals.
• Jackson won.
• Many voters who supported him were from the West and South, rural and small-town men who thought Jackson would represent their interests.

JACKSON’S CHANGES

• Jobs given based on the Spoils System
• Jobs given based on party loyalty and support. He believed that this practice extended democracy and opened up the government to average citizens.
• New way to choose presidential candidates.
• Old way: chosen through a closed meeting, or caucus, in which congressional party members would choose the nominee.
• New way: the national nominating convention, where delegates from the states met at conventions to choose the party’s presidential nominee

Problems with South Carolina

• South Carolina’s economy was weakening – tariffs took the blame.
• Most goods bought from England = higher price
• 1828: new tariff (“Tariff of Abominations”) passed South Carolina threatened to secede, or withdraw, from the Union.
• John C. Calhoun (VP) proposed the idea of nullification.
• - because states had created the federal union, they had the right to declare a federal law null, or not valid.
• Jackson defended the Union (OBVIOUSLY).
• 1832: SC’s special convention declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional.
• Jackson considered the declaration an act of treason.
• After Senator Henry Clay wrote a bill that would lower tariffs gradually until 1842, South Carolina repealed its nullification of the tariff law.

The Whigs

• New political party. Formed to oppose Jackson. Henry Clay – head whig
• 1835/6: couldn’t pick just one candidate, so they ran 3, but none of them won.
• Jackson’s popularity and the nation’s continued economic prosperity helped Democrat Martin Van Buren win.
• The Panic of 1837, when thousands of farmers lost their land in foreclosures and unemployment soared, gave the Whigs a 2nd chance to beat the Democrats.
• 1840 election: they nominated General William Henry Harrison for president and John Tyler for vice president.
• They won, but Harrison died one month after his inauguration, and Tyler became pres.
• Tyler was a bad Whig
• refused to support a new national bank or a higher tariff.
• established a firm boundary between the United States and Canada in the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

The Reform Spirit

• mid-1800s: Americans worked to reform different parts of society.
• Dorothea Dix: improved treatment of the mentally ill.
• 2nd Great Awakening: revived religion
• Charles Finny – father of modern revivalism
• New religions: Unitarians, Universalists, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons)
• Women were big in religion and religion-based reform groups
• Many reformers believed that alcohol was one of the major causes of crime and poverty.
• These reformers advocated temperance, or abstinence from alcohol. 1833: American Temperance Union formed. Temperance groups also pushed for laws to prohibit the sale of liquor.
• Some reformers focused on improving prison conditions in the nation. Others advocated for better schools.

Women's Rights Movement

• women began to believe that they had an important role to improve society, and needed greater rights or equal rights.
• 1848 Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention
• focused on equal rights for women
• the beginning of the women’s movement.
• wrote the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,
• Throughout the 1850s, women organized more conventions to promote greater rights for women.

Abolition

• Abolition: the end of slavery
• New movement that divided the nation
• Some antislavery societies believed that the best solution was to send African Americans back to Africa.
• American Colonization Society (ACS)’s goal was to move African Americans to Africa.
• They bought land in West Africa, chartered ships, and moved some free African Americans to a colony in West Africa that eventually became the nation of Liberia.
• Most African Americans regarded the United States as their home and had no desire to migrate to another continent.
• 1830s: large national abolitionist movement attributed to William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the Liberator, an antislavery newspaper.
• he founded the American Antislavery Society in 1833.
• He called for emancipation, or freeing, of enslaved persons.
• Free African Americans also played a prominent role in the abolitionist movement.
• The most prominent was Frederick Douglass, who published his own antislavery newspaper, the North Star.
• Sojourner Truth was another important African American abolitionist.

North and South

• Many Northerners opposed abolitionism. Why?
• a threat to the existing social system.
• produce conflict between the North and South.
• possible huge influx of African Americans to the North.
• destroy the Southern economy, and thereby affect their own economy.
• Most Southerners viewed slavery as essential to their economy, so they opposed abolition.
• Their defense: claiming that most enslaved people had no desire for freedom because they benefited from their relationship with slaveholders.
• 1831: a revolt by enslaved people killed more than 50 white Virginians. Southerners demanded the suppression of all abolitionist publications. Southern postal workers refused to deliver such publications, and the House of Representatives, under pressure from the South, shelved all abolitionist petitions. The North-South split continued to widen.