Do the three government, English and history 1.Assignment One- Create a Political Party Platform Directions: Please download assignment one, type out your answers in the document provided and submit

Topic: The Market Revolution and Jacksonian America

Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

Explain the significance of the victory in the War of 1812 in terms of economic reform and the impact on the United States of the Market Revolution.

Describe the development of the second political party system and the role of Andrew Jackson.

Introductory Essay by Downs

With the victory over the British in the War of 1812, the United States and Great Britain now signed a formal trading agreement. The British no longer had much of an interest in pushing the United States around economically. It was not more beneficial to establish an equitable trading relationship. What this created for the United States was an opportunity to establish and develop a true market economy. The impediment to a market economy had been the British. Now that impediment was gone. Again, this is why many historians refer to the War of 1812 as the Second American revolution because the United States received economic independence.

Stages of the U.S. Economy

To understand the significance of the development of a market economy it is helpful to consider what the economy had been before the War of 1812. Briefly, if we think back to the colonial experience in North America, the bulk of the economy was agricultural exports to England. This included agricultural products such as tobacco from Virginia and rice from South Carolina. In addition, timber, fur and other natural resources were exported as well. From about the eve of the revolution to the War of 1812, the United States’ economy, as a whole, experienced stagnation and decline. Most of this was accounted for by the tremendous expansion west where economic activity was very limited. This is not to say that port cities like Boston or Charleston were experiencing stagnation. They were not. But we must consider the nation as a whole and that includes western territorial expansion and frontier settlements. Most western communities operated under a subsistence level of agriculture, producing most of their own food, with a little left over to trade and barter with neighbors. After all, what incentive was there to specialize and expand and grow businesses if you could not get your products to markets? Specifically out west, but throughout the country generally, there was an appalling lack of infrastructure that would allow access to markets. Few roads existed and those that did were poorly maintained. Often they did not line up from one state to the next due to the old independent and disregard for the other states back during the colonial and confederation days. If a person lived on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, it was actually cheaper and more efficient to go down one of the major rivers like the Ohio or Tennessee, into the Mississippi, out to the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida and sail up the east coast. From the Appalachians to the Rockies, almost all rivers flow into the Mississippi river and right through New Orleans. This is why New Orleans was and is so incredibly important. You could control the entire trade and commerce of the interior of North America just by controlling New Orleans.

The American System

Henry Clay proposed what became known as the American System, a plan to grow the American economy. First, the Bank of the United States must be rechartered, which it was for twenty years (1816-1836). This was a major financial institution and the interest off of loans was important. Second, Clay proposed high protective tariffs which would tax foreign products excessively high and thus encourage Americans to buy domestic products. Finally, Clay argued that the United States needed to undertake internal improvements, by which he meant build infrastructure: roads, canals and to a lesser extent railroads. This would allow farmers and businessmen to get their products to a market and thus encourage growth and expansion based upon the profit incentive. This is what allowed a market economy to develop, which led to growth, specialization, expansion. In this period of the 1820s and 1830s, the United States became known as the “Land of Opportunity.”

The Panic of 1819

After the War of 1812, the United States entered into the Era of Good Feelings led by President James Monroe. However, the United States experienced an financial crisis known as the Panic of 1819. Prior to 1819, the economy was in a boom period and farmers bought more land and expanded their farms. When the crash hit in1819, banks began to foreclose on small farmers in large numbers. Out of this development there grew an anti-banking sentiment in which small farmers blamed the banks for all of the economic troubles. No one hated the bank more than the hero of the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson. He had parlayed his fame from the war in a small fortune and then lost much of it as a real estate speculator during the Panic of 1819. Jackson, like most of the small farmers, blamed the bank for his losses. Jackson began to lead a growing movement of average citizens, particularly in the west and the south, who rallied not only to this anti-banking sentiment, but more importantly to a call for more participation in the political process. They want the right to vote. As more western territories became new states, the property requirement was eliminated in order to be able to vote. This played a huge role in the election of 1828 in which Jackson was easily elected President as the leader of a new political party that seemed to represent the “common man.” That new political party was the Democratic Party.

Jacksonian America

Andrew Jackson was perhaps the most popular sitting president of all time. He came from humble origins on the Tennessee frontier. He became famous as a war hero of the War of 1812 and specifically the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson always had a connection to the average person that politicians rarely achieve. During his inauguration, he had invited all of his supporters in Tennessee as well as the citizens of Washington, D.C. and they all showed up. The White House quickly became a drunken free-for-all in which Jackson had to escape out of one of the windows, but this only endeared him even more to the people. He was one of them. When we talk about presidential legacies, few left more of a mark on the nation then Andrew Jackson. From the mid-1820s through the 1840s is known as Jacksonian America. His influence transcended his actually years in office. His vice-President, Martin Van Buren, was elected largely due to Jackson’s popularity. Jackson had to deal with many crises while in office, many of which he brought on himself. Whether it was Indian removal or the nullification crisis (in which he threatened to hang his first vice-president John C Calhoun) or the many men he had killed (not during military service), Jackson often acted boldly but rashly. He had quite a temper and could hold a grudge better than most. I am often thankful that this man never had access to nuclear weapons. But the point is that as controversial as Jackson might be considered by today’s standards, he most loved by the Americans of his day. His attitudes reflected the majority of most Americans, which is why he was so loved by his countrymen.

Chapter Outline

9.1 Early Industrialization in the Northeast

9.2 A Vibrant Capitalist Republic

9.3 On the Move: The Transportation Revolution

9.4 A New Social Order: Class Divisions

By the 1830s, the United States had developed a thriving industrial and commercial sector in the Northeast. Farmers embraced regional and distant markets as the primary destination for their products. Artisans witnessed the methodical division of the labor process in factories. Wage labor became an increasingly common experience. These industrial and market revolutions, combined with advances in transportation, transformed the economic and social landscape. Americans could now quickly produce larger amounts of goods for a nationwide, and sometimes an international, market and rely less on foreign imports than in colonial times.

As American economic life shifted rapidly and modes of production changed, new class divisions emerged and solidified, resulting in previously unknown economic and social inequalities. This image of the Five Points district in New York City captures the turbulence of the time (Figure 9.1). Five Points began as a settlement for freed formerly enslaved people, but it soon became a crowded urban world of American day laborers and low-wage workers who lived a precarious existence that the economic benefits of the new economy largely bypassed. An influx of immigrant workers swelled and diversified an already crowded urban population. By the 1830s, the area had become a slum, home to widespread poverty, crime, and disease. Advances in industrialization and the market revolution came at a human price.

Chapter Outline

10.1 A New Political Style: From John Quincy Adams to Andrew Jackson

10.2 The Rise of American Democracy

10.3 The Nullification Crisis and the Bank War

10.4 Indian Removal

10.5 The Tyranny and Triumph of the Majority

The most extraordinary political development in the years before the Civil War was the rise of American democracy. Whereas the founders envisioned the United States as a republic, not a democracy, and had placed safeguards such as the Electoral College in the 1787 Constitution to prevent simple majority rule, the early 1820s saw many Americans embracing majority rule and rejecting old forms of deference that were based on elite ideas of virtue, learning, and family lineage.

A new breed of politicians learned to harness the magic of the many by appealing to the resentments, fears, and passions of ordinary citizens to win elections. The charismatic Andrew Jackson gained a reputation as a fighter and defender of American expansion, emerging as the quintessential figure leading the rise of American democracy. In the image above (Figure 10.1), crowds flock to the White House to celebrate his inauguration as president. While earlier inaugurations had been reserved for Washington’s political elite, Jackson’s was an event for the people, so much so that the pushing throngs caused thousands of dollars of damage to White House property. Characteristics of modern American democracy, including the turbulent nature of majority rule, first appeared during the Age of Jackson.

President Andrew Jackson's Case for the Removal Act

First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1829

It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages.

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it Promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an object of much solicitude.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the General Government in relation to the State authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the States within the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.

With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the conditions in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions. Does Humanity weep at these painful separations from everything, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their highest perfection. These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.

And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement. . . .

May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to the laws of the States, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.