Chapter 11
In This Chapter
● Getting the drop on Manifest Destiny
● Checking out Andy Jackson’s tough guy act
● Discovering how the Supreme Court shaped the law
● Connecting inventions to events in young America
The years between 1816 and 1845 were a time of tremendous growth and expansion for the United States. In this chapter, you find out about events that changed the landscape of the country, pointing the U.S. in the direction it still follows today. AP tests always have questions on Jacksonian democracy; this chapter contains what you need to know to be ready for them.
As you review this period of U.S. History, remember the power of PES: political events, economic realities, and social trends (see Chapter 1). Don’t just memorize names, dates, and places. When you see themes, connect them: Manifest Destiny was the social trend connected to American Indian removal. The Gibbons v. Ogden decision on interstate commerce was the economic reality brought about by the invention of the steamship and better transportation. Jacksonian democracy was the consequence that stemmed from the shift toward more universal voting rights. Connect themes as you review so you’ll be ready to connect to a high score on the big day.
Manifestin' Destiny
You’re almost sure to see a question on the AP test about Manifest Destiny, a theme that runs through much of U.S. History. Manifest Destiny means that lots of Americans felt God obviously meant for their country to control all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. With the giant Louisiana Purchase speeding America toward the West Coast while the country was still only on its third president, the U.S. seemed to be on a transcontinental roll. (See Chapter 10 for more on the Louisiana Purchase.)
Manifest means a fact any kid can tell just by looking at it (like it’s manifest that this book is meant to get you past the AP exam), and Destiny is a fate nobody can avoid. Because Manifest Destiny meant that citizens of the U.S. would have to fight not just the British but thousands of American Indians and Mexicans as well, a substantial minority of citizens was against the idea at any given time and would have been just as happy to pass up the honor. Many more thought America was doing the non-Americans a favor by forcibly inviting them to the party.
Manifesting on the AP exam
For the AP exam, remember that Manifest Destiny showed up early in the 1800s, supercharged by Jefferson’s huge Louisiana Purchase, and hung around until the U.S. finished grabbing land during the Spanish-American War at the end of the 1800s. You can use the concept as part of the official AP theme of American exceptionalism: Americans thought they were so special that they deserved to rule the continent.
Hooking up Manifest Destiny to the big picture
When you think you’re driving Destiny’s limo, you’re on a mission, and nothing can get in your way. To show this strong trend on an essay question, you could mention Manifest Destiny in the context of the Trail of Tears (covered later in this chapter), the long trail West (Chapter 12), and the willingness of both sides to fight to the death in the Civil War (Chapter 13), and as a cultural influence on America becoming a world power (Chapter 17). Hooking up a trend to later events warms the heart of test-grading teachers.
On multiple-choice questions, watch out for wrong choices that tie Manifest Destiny to slavery, independence, or an overseas empire. Manifest Destiny is just about territorial expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific, sometimes called overspreading the continent. Manifest Destiny is part of the larger topic of American exceptionalism. Consider this when writing the inevitable social history essay involving Manifest Destiny: All nations think they’re special; powerful nations have in the past expressed their exceptionalism by taking over more land. Manifest Destiny was an American expression of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism can be good; feeling moral has inspired America to help other nations, and feeling free has led the U.S. to support freedom for other people. You can still hear the ghost of Manifest Destiny/ exceptionalism in talk of using force to bring American values to other countries.
Even the name of the subject you’re studying changed from American History to U.S. History to avoid sounding like exceptionalism. Professors realized, duh, 20 other countries in North and South America have claim to being Americans, too. For easy understanding, I still refer to U.S. citizens as Americans in this text, but be ready to write sensitively to score points on essay questions.
Kick-Starting Political Action
History shows how social developments influence political outcomes. Factories allowed for the growth of towns. The growth of towns provided a place for social movements like abolition, labor unions, and temperance organizations. Women who came together for the Second Awakening got interested in women’s rights and abolition, often at the same time. (See “Transcendentalism and the Second Great Awakening” later in this chapter.) The U.S. grew and changed rapidly, which may explain why the country went through so many different presidents, and why the Supreme Court gained so much power during this era.
Question: Some artists say, “I don’t care who makes the laws as long as I can write the songs.” How did social developments in the 1820s and 1830s influence the development of the United States?
Answer: In addition to the connections outlined just before this sample question, you can also point to the growth in Jacksonian democracy that brought down the Bank of the U.S. (see “War on the Bank of the U.S.”), the cotton farming that pushed American Indians off southern land (see “Slavery Grows with Cotton” and “Ethnic Cleansing, American-Style: The Trail of Tears”), and the improvements in transportation that allowed the spread of culture (see “Early Emo: Feeling in Art, Education, and Belief”).
The Presidential parade
Besides Andy Jackson, only one president in this period stuck around for a full two terms.
That would be James Monroe, Mr. Era-of-Good-Feelings (1817 to 1825). Other than presiding over the Missouri Compromise and issuing the Monroe Doctrine, Monroe had a cruise (literally. He was the first president to ride on a steamboat.)
Other Presidents of this era:
● John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) had the honor of losing to Andy Jackson twice. The first time, it didn’t take; Adams squeezed into the White House. (Check out the section “Looking at the Back Story on Jackson” later in this chapter.) During his one term, the U.S. got a ride on the Erie Canal and the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, revolutionizing transportation.
● Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) was the superstar of this era and the godfather of Jacksonian democracy. Andy threw such a big populist party on inauguration day that he had to crawl out a back window of the White House to find a place to sleep. Check out “Andy Jackson: Bringing Tough-Guy Democracy to Washington” later in this chapter for more info.
● Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) had the bad luck to be president during the depression economy following the Panic of 1837 and during the infamous Trail of Tears. With bad vibes like that, one term was enough.
● William Henry Harrison (1841) didn’t even have time to get to the buffet. He delivered an almost two-hour inauguration speech, caught pneumonia, and died. Vice President John Tyler (1841-1845) took over, annexed Texas, fought against a national bank, and found time to have 15 children. The population of the nation grew almost as fast as Tyler’s family.
The Marshall Court shows it's supreme
The Supreme Court became a powerful third branch of government largely through the 34 years of service of John Marshall. Marshall was Chief Justice from when the United States was a baby in 1801 until the country and its government were pretty grown up in 1835. In Chapter 10, I discuss the establishment of judicial review with the Marbury v. Madison decision in 1803. Here are a few more key decisions from the Marshall era:
McCulloch v. Maryland: 1819
Maryland didn’t much like the Bank of the United States doing business in its state. Maryland couldn’t shoot the bank, so it decided to tax the bank out of existence. James McCulloch, the bank’s cashier, refused to pay tax to Maryland because his bank was chartered by the United States government. Maryland said that it didn’t see anything in the U.S. Constitution about a national bank and that the bank was therefore illegal and certainly couldn’t hide behind the robes of the U.S. Supreme Court.
McCulloch v. Maryland held for implied powers in 1819. In its 1819 decision, John Marshall’s court held that the Constitution doesn’t have to flat-out specify everything the government can do; Congress has implied powers for Congress. After all, the Constitution says the U.S. government can do anything “necessary and proper” to carry out its specifically listed duties. In this case, the specific duties were to tax, borrow, and coin money. If the Marshall court hadn’t established implied powers, the Feds wouldn’t be building roads or flying rockets because none of that’s in the Constitution.
Cohens v. Virginia: 1821
Lotteries didn’t start behind the counter at the gas station; they were big business even in the early days of the U.S. The Cohens got busted selling illegal lottery tickets, and they appealed their Virginia criminal conviction to the Supreme Court. The Marshall court heard the appeal and thus established the principle that state criminal decisions could be appealed to the federal Supreme Court. This allows mobsters to yell: “Mess with me, and I’ll take you all the way to the Supreme Court!”
Gibbons V. Ogden: 1824
Gibbons v. Ogden held for interstate commerce in 1824. Imagine if everybody in New York had to pay one person to get to New Jersey. Aaron Ogden had that kind of a deal with New York State; before the area had bridges, crossing meant taking Ogden’s boat or swimming.
Trouble was, Thomas Gibbons had a license from the Feds for the same route. Ogden sued Gibbons, and the New York state court said Ogden had the power to stop the Fed’s guy Gibbons. The federal Supreme Court said no way: Federal law is supreme, especially in interstate commerce (also known as trade that crosses state lines.)
You will see questions on Supreme Court decisions on the AP exam. Memorize the key decisions, which you can find in Chapter 27.
Question: What Supreme Court decision established the principle of federal regulation of interstate commerce?
Answer: Gibbons v. Ogden determined that the federal government had jurisdiction over trade that crossed state lines.
Nobody’s Happy: Missouri Compromise of 1820
As early as the beginning of the 1800s, the increasingly industrial Northern states and the slaveholding agricultural Southern states were anxiously watching the balance of power between them. They each had exactly 11 states, so the balance of power in the U.S. Senate was even. Problem: Missouri wanted to be admitted as a slave state, throwing the balance of power to the South. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, was sort of neutral because he came from what was then the Wild West of Kentucky. He came up with this deal:
Missouri would come in as a slave state, but Maine would enter as a free state to keep the balance. From then on, an imaginary line would cross the middle of the U.S. Any territory north of that line would be free; anything south would be open to slavery. This was called the Mason-Dixon line.
Question: What new free state was added as the result of the Missouri Compromise? Answer: Under the Missouri Compromise, Maine entered the Union as a free state.
Neither side liked the Missouri Compromise (1820), but both sides lived with it for the next 30 years. That makes it important and a cinch to get on the AP test. The Compromise led to fights within the previously united Democratic-Republican party. Things had been so mellow before the Missouri Compromise that the country had only one political party; the period was even called the Era of Good Feelings. Afterwards, the good feelings wore off in a political fight between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. The states’-rights issue had been hidden in the closet with the failure of the Articles of Confederation (see Chapter 10). Now it came out of the closet and became part of the law.
Remember, the Missouri Compromise is early — 1820 — and it deals directly only with Missouri and Maine. It helps divide, not unite, the political process, but it remained the general law of the land for 30 years. After that, the new Compromise of 1850 took over and dealt with the Western states and the Fugitive Slave Law.
Keep Your Hands Off Our Hemisphere:
The Monroe Doctrine
Although it had once been the playground of the European powers (see Chapters 8 and 9), the New World of North and South America was relatively free of colonial ownership by 1820.
Following the American Revolution, most countries gained their independence from foreign masters.
As a small but aspiring big dog, the United States wanted to keep it that way. To this end,
President James Monroe posted a stay-out warning on the Western Hemisphere to the rest of the world. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) said the United States wouldn’t tolerate further attempts by European powers (the only powers there then were) to colonize the New World.
That it worked in the 1800s was more bark than bite, but it established a precedent still cited to this day.
Question: What was the Monroe Doctrine?
Answer: The Monroe Doctrine was a declaration issued by President James Monroe warning European powers not to establish any more colonies in the New World.
Ethnic Cleansing, American-Style:
The Trail of Tears
American renewal usually meant American Indian removal. In fact, President Andrew Jackson made his reputation as a frontier American Indian fighter and signed a bill called the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The act set aside a big share of the federal budget to have the Army force all the American Indian tribes to move out of the fertile river valleys the settlers wanted and into dusty prairies west of the Mississippi River. By 1850, most of the American Indians east of the Mississippi were gone, forced to either move west or die along the way. For more than 100,000 American Indians, including civilized tribes who had their own schools, newspapers, and farms, this journey west was called the Trail of Tears (1838).
In 1832, the Supreme Court held for the American Indians in the case of Worcester v. Georgia.
A lot of anti-Manifest Destiny people applauded this decision, but that didn’t stop President Jackson. He declared that Chief Justice John Marshall could say anything he wanted to, but “let’s see him enforce it.”
After gunpoint negotiations, the Cherokee families were forced to leave their homes in 1838 to 1839 and walk the 1,200 mile Trail of Tears to barren land in Oklahoma. With no supplies, half of the families died on the forced march to what was then called Indian Territory. Later on, even that would be taken away from them (see Chapter 15).
Andy Jackson: Bringing Tough-Guy Democracy to Washington
Andrew Jackson never went to college, and he’s in good company — neither did Washington or Lincoln. Although he wasn’t as nice a guy as Washington or Lincoln, he did usher in the age of the common man. The emphasis here is on the word man, because Jacksonian democracy certainly didn’t include blacks or women. But under Jackson, a majority of white men voted for president for the first time; previously, you had to own property to vote in many states.
Jackson was a self-made Western fighter with few ideas but strong convictions. He ignored his appointed Cabinet officers and relied on the advice of a shifting group of buddies known as the Kitchen Cabinet. He had no problem appointing friends to government jobs in what was called the spoils system, as in “to the victor belong the spoils.” Jackson didn’t even think this system was wrong because to him any man should be equal to doing any job. The Founding Fathers said they believed in equality, but those were just words — most of them, including Washington, were rich guys. Jackson made the little guys feel like they owned the government.
After the U.S. allowed greater voting participation under Jacksonian democracy, it started to have issues that until then had been swept under the parlor rug. These problems included the right of individual states to nullify or ignore federal laws, fights within the administration, and the future of an unpopular national bank.
Looking at the back story on Jackson
Andrew Jackson was a popular guy who had actually won the most votes for president in 1824, the first time the whole country voted directly for the presidential electors. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have a majority — the three other candidates pooled their support in the House of Representatives to elect John Quincy Adams. Adams had ties to the beginning of the country: His father was the second U.S. president.
Just say no, no, nullification
John Quincy Adams did what he could to protect the American Indians, but the pressure from Jackson and his followers never let up. Plus, Adams had his hands full with a Civil War prequel led by his own vice president (John Calhoun) protesting tariffs (federal taxes on imports). Southerners called the 1828 tax the Tariff of Abominations because it made stuff that Southern planters bought from overseas more expensive (and an abomination is something you consider hateful, which is how the South felt about the tariff). By beginning to challenge the right of the national government to make laws the South didn’t like, Southerners came up with a political time bomb that would tick for 30 years until it blew up in the real Civil War of 1861.
Here’s how the South saw the situation: The federal government was a collection of independent states that had united under the catchy name United States to get a few things done. If states felt like de-uniting over a certain issue, they could just sit that game out (or even leave the team if necessary). Nullification (1830) meant any state could just refuse to follow (as in nullify or declare null and void) any federal law with which it didn’t agree.
The nullification time bomb ticked on in a debate over selling cheap land to settlers in the west. Jackson supported cheap land. He was the first president from outside the original 13 colonies, the first tough-guy frontiersman with no ties to the polite, educated founders of the country. On the possibility of nullification, he had support from the best people. When states talked about nullification if they didn’t get their way, famous Congressman Daniel Webster spoke against it, crying, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
Threatening to hang the vice president over tariffs
Jackson was stuck with the same uncooperative Vice President Calhoun his rival John Quincy Adams had endured (you can see why presidents now pick their own vice presidents). Calhoun quit over a new tariff bill and went home to South Carolina, where he got an Ordinance of Nullification passed ordering federal customs officials in that state to stop following federal law.
Old General Jackson never blinked; he had Congress authorize a Force Bill to use the army to enforce the collection of taxes. Jackson talked loudly about hanging his former vice president. Having learned a few things in politics, he also offered some cuts in the tariff. South Carolina backed down, and both sides claimed victory.
War on the Bank of the U.S.
Currently, the U.S. has a Treasury Department that works with independent banks, but when Jackson was president, it had an official Bank of the United States. Jackson hated the national bank because it was tight about loaning money that expansion-minded Americans needed.
He abolished the bank and sold Western land to settlers on a low payment plan. When money and good land started to run out, Jackson changed the rules to cash-only. That move burst the real-estate bubble, and the country went into a recession that lasted for years beyond Jackson’s presidency (and made voters think twice about tough-guy presidents).
Question: Which event best illustrates Andrew Jackson’s idea of expanded democracy?
Answer: Jackson saw the Bank of the U.S. as a rip-off by rich guys (and he wasn’t too far off). His abolition of the bank is a great example of his view of expanded democracy.
Watch out for smart-aleck professor questions on Jackson. He marks a turning point in U.S. politics because he’s the first president to come from a Western state (Tennessee looked Western back then), and he fought the American Indians, nullification, and the Bank of the United States. Because we teachers like to have our cynical little laughs in the teacher’s lounge, we often try to fool you with a multiple-choice question that has Jackson as a founder of the country or in favor of one of the issues he fought. Don’t fall for it.
Embracing Modern Conveniences
In the days before today’s modern transportation, telephones, and TV, messages and products had to arrive on foot. The Battle of New Orleans took place after the War of 1812 was over — the news of peace was a little slow getting around. You could own the best crops or raw materials in the world, but having stuff wouldn’t do you any good if you couldn’t get it to where somebody was ready to buy it. In the early days of the U.S., transportation moved as slowly as it had thousands of years ago in the Roman Empire.
Several inventions helped the U.S. grow. In 1838, an Illinois blacksmith named John Deere invented the steel plow, good for helping grow crops. For harvesting crops, Pennsylvania farmer Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical thresher that did the work of 15 men. A New York painter named Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1844, and the world became instantaneously connected. In new factories, the same kind of steam engines that chugged along in boats and trains helped make new jobs.
These inventions changed the world more than battles, bills, or presidents. They’re concrete examples of the non-political themes that will be the key to your success on the AP U.S. History exam.
Got me a job in the factory
Commuting wasn’t really an issue before the Civil War. Most people worked where they lived: down on the farm. Sounds nice now, but back then for a lot of people it was boring and made them a little short on cash. With improved transportation for products and steam power to run machines, factories in New England began making cloth, tools, and guns. For example, the whole town of Lowell, Massachusetts, popped up around a cloth factory that supplied jobs for hundreds of Lowell girls who came from farms and immigrant ships beginning in 1813.
Getting ahead 1.0
People chose to work in factories and stores because, hard as the work was, it gave them some freedom to change their lives. Before the Industrial Revolution, most of the money and power belonged to the people who owned land. People were stuck where they were born: lucky landholder or landless farm laborer. The Industrial Revolution gave people the chance to move around, change jobs, and maybe even save up enough money to start a small business. Most poor people stayed poor, but some of them managed to get ahead — in the U.S., no fixed social classes held them back. The Industrial Revolution, with all its pollution and overwork, was the beginning of the American Dream.
Cruising along canals
The Dutch, French, and British all had big canal systems before the American Revolution.
The United States was late to the party but made up for it with enthusiasm, beginning in 1825 with the completion of the Erie Canal (1825), which connected over 300 miles between the Hudson River in New York and Lake Erie. Between 1825 and 1840 the United States dug more than 3,000 miles of canals. Making an artificial river may not seem that high tech, but canals were a hundred times faster and stronger than trying to get little wagons down muddy and often-frozen dirt roads. Before canals, crops and resources never got far from home; after canals, the idea of a national marketplace emerged.
Churning the sea with steamships
In 1807, American inventor Robert Fulton (1810) built the double-paddle-wheeled steamboat Clermont which went smoking up the Hudson River from New York way faster than a canal or horse wagon. By the mid-1850s, steamboats driven by large paddle wheels were carrying passengers on all major U.S. rivers. Oceangoing steamships, constructed with strong iron hulls, reduced the time needed to travel to Europe from weeks to days. The Savannah in 1819 was the first ship equipped with a steam engine to cross the Atlantic Ocean. By 1838, several steam-powered paddle wheelers were crossing the Atlantic, and in 1840, the first regularly scheduled steamship service began.
Riding the rails
Canals got to be cool for only about 25 years, because railroads were faster and could go anywhere. In 1830, the first little American steam engine pathetically lost a race with a horse.
Getting it right didn’t take long: By 1840, the U.S. boasted 400 railroads and more miles of track than canal. By the time of the Civil War, America was the railroad leader with close to 30,000 miles of track.
No guns necessary — it's an industrial revolution
Industrial work was a new way of life — not exactly fun, but at least a ticket to town. Men, women, and children worked 12-hour days, six days a week. The first labor unions originated to fight for better working conditions, but that battle took decades to win. Factories made products people wanted, and people made money they needed to buy the products. Skilled workers like steam engine builders, printers, and carpenters did much better than the more common unskilled workers, who had to take any job they could get and were easy to replace.
The first Industrial Revolution in the United States started off, humbly enough, making thread in small water-powered mills at the time of the American Revolution. Fast forward 30 years, and steam-powered factories provided jobs off the farm for around 5 percent of the people. This was the small beginning of the get-ahead capitalist spirit that still drives Americans.
Slavery Grows with Cotton
There was no American Dream during this period, only an endless nightmare for human beings stolen from Africa and forced to work all their lives without pay as slaves. They were beaten, raped, and killed with no protection and no hope for the future; they’d work until they died, and their children were doomed to be slaves like them.
The irony of proclaiming freedom in a land where one out of four people were slaves wasn’t lost on the leaders of the American Revolution. The U.S. banned the importation of new slaves from Africa after 1808 and waited for what they called the peculiar institution to go away, much like people now wait for someone else to fix global warming. Slavery was too much a part of the country to deal with right away; eight of the first ten presidents owned slaves. Enslaving people while fighting a revolution for freedom was bad, but then it got worse.
While George Washington was president, a teacher named Eli Whitney invented a cotton engine (cotton gin for short) that got the seeds out of cotton balls and allowed Southern plantations to grow 50 times more cotton than they ever had before. Trouble was, without ready labor or machinery, every 10 acres of cotton needed another slave to grow it.
A technical invention like the cotton gin led to millions of people being enslaved, and that growth in slavery plus the social movement of abolition eventually brought about the Civil War, which I discuss more thoroughly in Chapter 13.
Slavery becomes synonymous with power
Slavery became big money; by the Civil War, the U.S. had five times more enslaved people than it did during the Revolution. A slave was worth as much in modern money as an SUV costs today. The slave states had extra political power grandfathered into the Constitution — slaves counted as 3/5 of a person in determining representation for slave states. This kind of power forced careful balancing legislation like the Missouri Compromise outlined earlier; slave state representatives wouldn’t even let the subject of abolition come up in Congress. The few slave rebellions like that of Nat Turner in 1831 were put down with devastating force. Most Southern states made it illegal for a slave to learn to read and write.
Waking up to the evil
Northern blacks lived with racism even though they weren’t technically slaves. Free blacks had trouble finding jobs, schools, or places to live in the North. Eventually, as ex-slaves learned to write and speak about conditions in the South, they began to gain Northern white supporters. Some highlights:
Frederick Douglass (1850) escaped from slavery in 1838 and wrote his moving life story.
Harriet Tubman (1860) escaped ten years later and went back to help more than 300 other slaves (including her parents) make it safely to freedom.
Both races worked together on the Underground Railroad (1855), sheltering former slaves on the way to freedom.
William Lloyd Garrison (1855), a white newspaper editor, and Sojourner Truth (1851), a freed slave woman, both spoke eloquently in support of abolition.
Although most white Southerners were too poor to own slaves, they were willing to fight for slavery anyway. In the North and West, opposition to slavery grew steadily stronger.
Early Emo: Feeling in Art, Education, and Belief
For the first time, ordinary people could learn about culture in free public schools. Before the 1830s, schools were mostly for rich kids — if you wanted to get an education, daddy had to pay. Horace Mann started the common school movement of tax-supported mandatory free education for all children. By the 1850s, every state outside the South had free education and teacher training.
Advances in art and literature
In the 1820s, America got its own art after years of kissing up to Europe as the only seat of real culture. The Hudson River School produced artists like Thomas Cole, who painted man and nature in harmony along the Hudson River in rural upstate New York. George Caitlin painted American Indians in natural settings, and John James Audubon did the same for birds.
The U.S. cut a fine trail in literature as well; James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau (among others) wrote influential works during this period that are still popular today.
Transcendentalism and the Second Great Awakening
Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, shared a philosophy with his New England neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transcendentalism. The Transcendentalists believed God was an inner voice, leading people to do the right thing and live in harmony with nature, if they’d just listen.
Strong feelings about spirituality were part of the Second Great Awakening, which encouraged that religion should be felt as well as thought. (America must have been taking a nap, because even though the country was only a few years old, it was already on its Second Awakening. For the story of the First Awakening in colonial America, see Chapter 9). Evangelists traveled the country speaking at deeply spiritual meetings. This period also saw the birth of Mormonism and the spread of the Methodist church, as well as the beginning of groups devoted to abolition, education, and temperance.