Chapter 8
In This Chapter
● Trying to hold on to nationalism
● Bolstering slavery in the South with new crops and inventions
● Setting the foundations for dirty politics and land expansion
● Debating states’ rights
● Making travel, farming, and communication easier with technological advances
Fresh from a “victory” over England in the War of 1812 (it was really a draw), America was feeling pretty full of itself in 1815. The country made big strides in pulling together. But like any adolescent, America was subject to wild mood swings. As this chapter unfolds, the country suffers an attack of the economic blahs, encounters some pretty sick politicking, and sees one of the most tragic aspects of its national character, slavery, take firm hold.
There’s also the election of Andrew Jackson, which begins a Democratic dynasty; a speech from Daniel Webster that helps get the North ready to fight the Civil War; the coming of the railroad; and more shameful treatment of Native Americans. Oh, and don’t forget the Alamo.
Embracing Nationalism... Sort Of
By 1815, the generation that had brought on — and fought through — the American Revolution was fading away. James Monroe, who was elected president in 1816, was the last chief executive to have actually fought in the Revolutionary War. And as the revolutionary crowd faded, so did many of the memories of what it had been like to be individual colonies before uniting to become a single country.
More people began to think of themselves as Americans first and Virginians or Vermonters second. The rising tide of nationalism showed itself in the beginnings of a truly American literature and art. The District of Columbia, rebuilt on the ashes of the capital the British had burned in 1814, became a source of national pride.
But these nationalist feelings were sorely tested by several issues that different sections of the country viewed with different perspectives. These issues included the banking system, tariffs, public land sales, and Supreme Court decisions on the powers of the central government versus individual states.
Taking it to the bank
The first Bank of the United States, whose majority stockholder was the federal government and which had helped the nation get a grip on its finances, had been created at the urging of Alexander Hamilton in 1790. But it had been allowed to expire in 1811, and a horde of state-chartered banks swarmed to take its place. In 1811, there were 88 state banks; by 1813, the number was 208, and by 1819, 392. Most of them extended credit and printed currency far in excess of their reserves; when the war came, most of them couldn’t redeem their paper for a tenth of its worth.
In 1816, Congress chartered a second Bank of the United States, with capital of $35 million. The idea was to provide stability to the economic system by having a large bank that would serve as the federal government’s financial agent. But the new bank’s managers were corrupt, stupid, or both, and they lent money like mad to land-crazed Americans flocking to the West.
In 1819, land prices dropped, manufacturing and crop prices collapsed, and scores of overextended banks failed. The yahoos who were first put in charge of the second Bank of the United States finally got the boot; new management stepped in, clamped down hard on credit, and foreclosed on virtually all its debtors.
But the Panic of 1819, the nation’s first widespread financial crisis, triggered strong resentment toward the Bank, which was nicknamed “the Monster.” The Bank was particularly hated in the credit-dependent West, which saw it as a creature of rich financiers and speculators in New York and New England. The West’s antipathy toward the bank drove a wedge between the regions.
A tariff-ic idea
The largest source of income for the federal government came from tariffs, the taxes collected on goods imported into the United States. During the War of 1812, the average tariff doubled, to about 25 percent. In 1816, Congress voted to keep tariffs at those levels.
The idea was that higher tariffs would not only generate money for the government but also drive up prices on foreign goods and thus encourage Americans to buy U.S.-made products. Most sections of the country liked the idea at first, especially the North, where manufacturing of goods from furniture to textiles had developed during the war.
But as time passed, the South and much of the West came to hate tariffs because those regions had little manufacturing to protect, and the taxes just drove up the cost of goods they had to get from somewhere else.
This land is my land, but for how much?
Nothing attracts a crowd like a new country, and America was certainly doing that. In 1810, the census counted 7.2 million Americans. By 1820, that number shot up to 9.6 million, a 33 percent increase. Much of that was the result of an astonishing birthrate, but an upswing in the number of European immigrants crossing the Atlantic helped as well. The crossing was relatively cheap (maybe $25 from London), and no paperwork was necessary. You got off the ship and you looked for a job. No customs, no immigration, and no passport. By 1820, an estimated 30,000 people a year were doing just that. Although some immigrant-bashing surfaced when economic times got tough, most of the newcomers were greeted with a big yawn.
“The American Republic invites nobody to come,” wrote Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. “We will keep out nobody. Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as aliens. But they can expect no advantages either. Native-born and foreign-born face equal opportunities. What happens to them depends entirely on their individual ability and exertions, and on good fortune.”
One of the reasons for this attitude was that the country had plenty of room. Between 1815 and 1821, six new states joined the Union, bringing the total number to 24. And land was cheap and plentiful: $2 an acre for a minimum of 160 acres, with only $80 down and the rest paid over four years.
But when hard times hit in 1819, even those lenient terms were too much. Many folks lost their land to banks when they couldn’t pay the mortgage. The banks themselves weren’t immune, either: Many failed, taking the settlers’ savings with them.
In 1820, Congress lowered the minimum amount of land that could be bought to 80 acres, at $1.25 an acre. The West supported the move, but the North and East, which saw public land as a cash cow to be milked for every dollar that could be squeezed out, were less enthusiastic. Public land thus became another sore point between regions.
That's some farmer . . .
"[T]hese Americans are the best that I ever saw. . . . [T]he men are tall and well-built; they are bony rather than fleshy [A]nd they have been well-educated to do much in a day. . . . Besides the great quantity of work performed by the American labourer, his skill, the versatility of his talent, is a great thing. Every man can use an ax, a saw, and a hammer. . . . [There are] very few indeed who cannot kill and dress pigs and sheep."
— William Cobbett, English farmer and politician, 1819.
Orders from the court
One place where nationalism was secure was in the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice John Marshall, the court consistently ruled in favor of a strong central government over the rights of individual states.
In an 1819 case, for example, the court ruled that Maryland had no legal right to try to run the Bank of the United States out of the state by heavily taxing it. “The power to tax is the power to destroy,” Marshall wrote, and states had no power to destroy federal institutions. In an 1821 case involving Virginia and an illegal lottery, the court asserted its right to review the decisions of state supreme courts in cases involving powers of the federal government. And the court ruled in 1824 that New York had the power to regulate steamboat commerce only within itself, not between states.
But despite the court’s support of nationalism, forces beyond its ability to foster a sense of unity were at work, creating the foundations for a deep rift between North and South.
Increasing industry
America was basically a country of farmers for much of the nineteenth century, but the War of 1812 had cut off the supply of many manufactured goods from Europe and encouraged the growth of domestic industry. The following sections cover a couple of industry’s lasting contributions: factories and transportation systems.
The rise of factories
In 1790, the first factory devoted to spinning cotton into thread opened in New England, and by 1815, there were 213 such factories.
Most goods were still produced and sold by individuals or small companies. But strides in manufacturing interchangeable parts that could be interchanged to make assembling objects easier, the use of water-and steam-powered machinery, and increases in demands for American-made goods all helped foster growth in the nonagricultural segment of the economy.
Transportation gets rotting (well, floating)
As the market for goods increased, the need for a sound transportation system also grew. Congressional leaders such as Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun were eager for the federal government to lead the development of roads and waterways.
But Presidents Madison and Monroe balked, claiming that the Constitution limited the federal government’s public works efforts to projects that crossed state boundaries and not projects that were contained within a single state. Because most states didn’t have the money for big road-building projects, traveling or shipping by road remained a real pain in the back pocket.
On the water, however, things were a little different. One of the advantages of moving goods by water is that you can move a lot more with less effort — if you can get the water to go where you want to go and move in the direction you want. The development of the steamboat opened two-way traffic on rivers, particularly the Mississippi, because cargo could go upstream against the current. And construction began in New York in 1817 on a remarkable engineering feat: the 363-mile-long Erie Canal, linking Lake Erie at Buffalo with the Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean. Completed in 1825, the $7 million canal soon repaid its costs through tolls and brought prosperity to the entire region. It also sparked a nationwide canal-building boom as areas raced to link up major natural waterways with manmade ditches.
Sequoyah
If the Cherokee, or any other Native Americans for that matter, wanted to jot down their thoughts, they had to do it in English because none of the tribes had a written language. Sequoyah, a Tennessee-born Cherokee trader, hunter, diplomat, and genius, changed that.
In 1809, Sequoyah began work on an 86-letter alphabet for the Cherokee language, using symbols from an English grammar book and then adding to them as needed to reproduce the sounds of Cherokee. By 1821, the language
could be read and written, and the Cherokee could now preserve their ancient traditions and culture on paper. Sequoyah, by the way, means "hog's foot" in Cherokee.
Later in his life, Sequoyah acted as a mediator with federal officials when the Cherokee were forced off their lands in the Southeast and moved to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. He died in 1843 but left a version of his name behind in the giant sequoia trees of California and Sequoia National Park.
The Slavery Cancer Grows
In the South, no one was digging canals or building factories. Tobacco, once the major crop, had worn out the soil in many areas, and many Southern planters were looking for a substitute. Cotton was a possibility because of the big demand for it, especially in England. But the variety of cotton that grew well in most of the South was difficult to de-seed.
Cotton and sugar mean more slaves
In 1793, a teacher and inventor from Massachusetts named Eli Whitney visited a plantation in Georgia. Fascinated with the cottonseed problem, Whitney fiddled around and came up with a simple machine that rotated thin wire teeth through the slots of a metal grill. The teeth picked up the cotton fibers and pulled them through the slots, leaving the seeds behind.
Whitney’s cotton gin (short for “engine”) could do the work of 50 men. The result was a cotton boom. In 1793, the South produced about 10,000 bales of cotton. By 1820, that amount rose to more than 400,000. In 1794, a Frenchman in New Orleans named Jean Etienne Bore came up with a method of boiling off sugar cane until it turned into crystals, and the cultivation of sugar spread over the Southeast.
But growing cotton and sugar were labor-intensive activities, and that labor was supplied almost exclusively by slaves. Until the cultivation of cotton and sugar took off, slavery had appeared to be on the decline. A federal constitutional provision had outlawed the importation of any more slaves in 1808, but all the individual states had already banned the practice five years earlier. And the prices of slaves had been steadily dropping, a sign that the economics of the system were too unfavorable to continue it.
Noneconomic reasons also factored in. A religious revival that swept the country in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did much to raise the level of opposition to slavery. In addition, many whites were fearful that an increase in the number of slaves could lead to a massive rebellion such as the one that had happened in Haiti in the 1790s. But the rise of the cotton and sugar crops and the spread of tobacco to new areas increased the dependence of the South on slave labor. Ten to 20 slaves worked every 100 acres of cotton, and they became valuable “commodities.” In 1800, the average cost of a slave was about $50; by 1850, it was more than $1,000.
Because the need for slaves was increasing, owners were anxious to increase their holdings through births. However, overwork during pregnancy and poor diets meant more than half of slave children died before their first birthdays. As their value increased, slaves were sold from state to state as the market dictated, often breaking up families. In 1800, the number of slaves in America was put at about 900,000; by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the number was 4 million.
Southern slave owners were dependent on a labor force they could force to work; pay no wages to; and keep, sell, rape, or kill as they saw fit. To defend the system, the owners often fell back on the rationale that slavery was good for the slave and frequently mentioned in the Bible as a normal human condition.
Examining opposition (and possible alternatives) to slavery
Many Northerners felt compelled to attack the system. Some of the opposition was on moral grounds, but much of it was based on politics. The Constitution allowed slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person when deciding how many members each state could have in the House of Representatives, and nonslave states (those that specifically prohibited slavery) resented slave states (those that allowed it) for gaining more political clout through their nonvoting slaves. In the West, much of the antislave sentiment stemmed from free laborers not wanting to have to compete with slave labor.
The truth was that African Americans were discriminated against in the North, too. In most situations, they couldn’t vote, testify at trials, marry outside their race, join labor unions, live in “white” areas, or go to school. Free African Americans in the North, especially children, were also at risk of being kidnapped and taken to the South to be sold.
With even well-intentioned antislavery advocates convinced that the two races may not be able to live together, many people supported sending former slaves to Africa. President Monroe, a Virginia slave owner, pushed in 1819 for the establishment of a colony in Africa where freed American slaves could go. In 1824, the colony of Liberia was established, with its capital of Monrovia named after Monroe. But many American-born freed slaves had no interest in going to a strange country. They preferred to take their chances on staking a claim to their birthrights as American citizens.
Compromising over Missouri
In February 1819, the territory of Missouri petitioned Congress to be admitted as a state. At the time, America consisted of 11 slave and 11 free states, so the question was whether Missouri, with 10,000 slaves, should be admitted as a slave state or be forced to free its slaves before it was allowed into the fold. Debate on the issue raged across the country. Finally, Henry Clay crafted a compromise in March 1820. Under the aptly named Missouri Compromise, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and the territory of Maine came in as a free state, keeping a balance of 12 slave and 12 free. Figure 8-1 shows a breakdown of the slave/free arrangement created by the compromise. Congress also deemed that slavery would be excluded from any new states or territories above latitude 36 degrees, 30 minutes.
Proslavery forces grumbled that Congress had no constitutional right to say where slavery could and couldn’t occur; antislavery forces complained that the compromise was an admission that slavery was acceptable. But the compromise held for the next three decades, giving the country a little more time to look for a better solution.
Figure 8-1: Results of the Missouri Compromise.
Of wolves and fire bells
"[T]his momentous question [the spread of slavery], like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union . . . . [W]e have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go."
— Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder, 1820.
Mind your own hemisphere: The Monroe Doctrine
While the issue of slavery was growing at home, big events were happening elsewhere in the Americas. Spain’s Latin American colonies were struggling for their independence, and U.S. citizens generally supported the struggles as being like their own with the British. As several colonies broke free, Washington clamored to recognize their independence.
In 1819, after Spain had sold Florida to America for $5 million and a promise that the United States would keep its hands off Texas, President Monroe promptly urged Congress to formally recognize the newly independent Latin American countries, including Mexico.
In Europe, meanwhile, a group of monarchs known as the Holy Alliance was making noises about picking off Spain’s former colonies. And on the Pacific Coast, the Russians had claimed the area from present-day Washington State to the top of Alaska.
Declining an offer from the English to go in as partners against the Holy Alliance’s plans, Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, decided to issue what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, which amounted to a hands-off warning in the Western Hemisphere. In December 1823, Monroe told Congress that America wouldn’t tolerate further attempts by European powers to colonize in the New World. What they had, they could keep, he said. Everything else was off limits.
Although it probably had little to do with Monroe’s warning, the Russians did agree in 1824 to pull back to what is now the southern border of Alaska and stay there. In fact, Monroe’s statements didn’t really have much to back them up, because American military might was slight. But the Monroe Doctrine has been interpreted and employed by many presidents since to justify interfering in, or staying out of, the affairs of neighboring countries.
Keep off the continents
"[T]he American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."
— James Monroe, message to Congress (later called the Monroe Doctrine), December, 1823.
Mud-Wrestling to the White House
I can truly say that in the space of 12 years — from 1817 to 1828 — presidential politics went from dignified to disgusting. In March 1817, James Monroe assumed the office. Monroe, who had easily beaten Rufus King, the last candidate the Federalist Party would ever nominate, wasn’t a brilliant man. But he had a good deal of common sense, and he was so honest Thomas Jefferson said, “[T]urn his soul wrong side outwards, and there is not a speck on it.”
Monroe was also immensely popular, so much so that he won reelection in 1820 with all but one electoral vote. In 1824, however, he followed the tradition started by Washington and didn’t seek a third term. With no need to unite behind one candidate because the Federalist Party was extinct, plenty of Republicans decided to run. They included Monroe’s secretary of state, John Quincy Adams; House Speaker Henry Clay; Treasury Secretary William Crawford; Secretary of War John C. Calhoun; and war hero General Andrew Jackson.
Adams wins, but Jackson isn't done
By the 1824 election, Calhoun had dropped out in favor of running (successfully) for vice president, and Crawford had suffered a stroke that left him unable to serve. Despite a bitter, nasty campaign and the crowded field, voter turnout was only 27 percent.
When the electoral votes were counted, Jackson had 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. Because no one had a majority, the Constitution required that the House of Representatives pick the winner. Clay had no love for Adams but even less for Jackson, so he threw his support to Adams, who was thus elected.
The son of former president John Adams, Adams was an intelligent and disciplined visionary — and a lousy politician. He refused to use his appointment powers to win support and then appointed Clay as his secretary of state despite their well-known personal differences. Clay’s appointment set off howls of protest — many viewed it as a political payoff for Clay’s support in the House showdown for the presidency — and it became known as “the Corrupt Bargain.” It marred Adams’s time in office almost from the start.
Jackson, meanwhile, never stopped running in what turned out to be one of the sleaziest presidential campaigns in American history. His supporters attacked Adams as an aristocrat who had lived his entire life at the public trough. When Adams bought a billiard table and chess set with his own funds, they accused him of turning the White House into “a den of gambling.” And Adams was charged with supplying a young American girl for the pleasure of the Russian tsar while he was U.S. minister to Russia.
The Adams camp counterattacked. Jackson, they said, was a murderer, a slave-trader, and a bigamist. A pro-Adams newspaper claimed Jackson’s mother was a prostitute brought to America by British soldiers. Posters were distributed listing 18 people Jackson had supposedly killed.
The mudslinging may have been sleazy, but it sure brought out the vote. The turnout in 1828 was 58 percent, more than twice as high as it was in 1824. It was also the first truly democratic presidential election because in 22 of the 24 states, the popular vote determined how many electoral votes went to each candidate. When the votes were tallied, Jackson had 178 electoral votes to Adams’s 83. Adams returned to Massachusetts, was elected to Congress (the only president ever to do so after his presidency), and served until his death in 1848. Jackson went to Washington and ushered in a new American era.
Old Hickory: The Jackson presidency
Andrew Jackson wasn’t in a good mood when he arrived in Washington in early 1829 to become president. His beloved wife, Rachel, had died two months before, shortly after discovering that she had been the target of vicious personal attacks during the 1828 election. Jackson was sure the discovery contributed to her death, and he was bitterly angry.
But if Jackson was angry, the thousands of his supporters who came to see him take the oath of office were jubilant. Jackson was the first Westerner to win the office and the first to come from humble beginnings. Though some came just to cheer their hero, many also came hoping for a cushy government job.
More than 20,000 people surrounded the Capitol for the inauguration.
Jackson gave a speech that hardly anyone heard and then fought his way through the crowd and went off to a reception at the White House. So did almost everyone else. Hordes of people crowded into the place, drinking, eating, and stealing souvenirs. Jackson escaped through a back window and spent the first night of his presidency in a nearby hotel.
Jackson’s supporters were referred to as “the mob” by Washington onlookers used to more refinement and less tobacco-spitting, but the mob also reflected a growing sense of democracy in America.
More people had the vote and were using it. The turnout for the presidential election of 1824 had been 27 percent of the eligible voters. In 1828, it was 58 percent, and in 1840 it was 78 percent. Cheap newspapers and magazines were flourishing, giving the common man access to ideas and information. And a fight for providing free public schools had begun, eventually spreading to every state in the West and North. The average guy was finding his voice, and in Jackson, a focus for his admiration.
Jackson was the first president since Washington who hadn’t been to college. He was tall and thin (6 feet 1 inch, 145 pounds) with a full mane of silver-gray hair and hawklike features. His father had died before he was born, and the family was so poor they couldn’t afford a headstone for the grave. Jackson’s mother became a housekeeper, and the family went to live with a brother-in-law.
As a boy, Jackson received a sword cut on his head from a British officer who thought the boy hadn’t been humble enough, and Jackson learned never to let a slight or insult go unanswered. He had a violent temper, although he often pretended to be angry just to get his way. Like many military men, he was often inflexible when he made up his mind. His friends called him “Old Hickory” or “Gineral;” his foes called him “King Andrew.”
As a Western lawyer and politician, Jackson had seen firsthand how the West was often at the mercy of financial interests in the East, and he had a Westerner’s distrust of banks. But as a wealthy man by the time he became president, he wasn’t a champion of the idea that all men are equal. Instead, he believed that every man should have an equal chance to succeed, and that no one’s rights were more important than another’s — unless you were a woman, a Native American, or an African American.
Jackson was also a believer in the statement offered by a New York politician at the time: “To the victors belong the spoils of the enemy.” That meant replacing federal officeholders who had been appointed by previous administrations with his own appointees in what became known as the spoils system. Jackson’s theory was that most government jobs weren’t very tough and that personnel should be changed up to bring new ideas and approaches to them.
Jackson didn’t actually invent this idea; all the presidents since Washington had done it to some degree. In fact, in his eight years in office, Jackson only turned out about 20 percent of the 1,100-member federal bureaucracy. And many of them needed turning out because they were inept or corrupt.
But the spoils system did much harm, too. It changed qualifications to hold a federal post from being able or experienced to being a campaign worker or contributor. It gave rise to political machines by giving them something to reward supporters with, and it reduced the efficiency of government. Jackson’s efforts to democratize the government created problems that took decades to fix.
Nullify This
John C. Calhoun had waited a long time to be president. Intelligent but humorless, the South Carolinian had served as vice president under John Quincy Adams and was now vice president under Jackson. Then, as now, the best part about being vice president was that it made becoming president easier, and Calhoun figured to follow Jackson into the White House. But two relatively trivial things happened to throw him off-course and, in a way, helped push the country toward civil war. The first involved the wife of Jackson’s old friend and secretary of war, John Eaton. Peggy Eaton had a reputation of being something of a slut, which she may or may not have deserved. But Washington society’s leading females — led by Calhoun’s wife — snubbed her, refusing to invite her to their parties or to attend parties she was invited to.
Jackson, whose own wife had been the target of scandalous gossip, was enraged at the snubs. At one point he called an evening Cabinet meeting to defend Mrs. Eaton. The issue, dubbed “Eaton Malaria” by Washington wags, dominated the first months of Jackson’s presidency and drove a wedge between Jackson and Calhoun. The second incident involved a letter Jackson received from Calhoun’s enemies suggesting that while he was a member of James Monroe’s cabinet, Calhoun had called for Jackson to be court-martialed for invading Florida when it was still owned by Spain. When confronted, Calhoun could provide only vague half-answers. The rift between the two men grew wider, and Jackson turned his successor-favor to Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, a wily New Yorker who had helped get him elected.
All together now
"While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. . . . When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven . . . [l]et their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic . . . and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
— Daniel Webster, January 26, 1830.
Calhoun eventually resigned as vice president and was immediately elected a senator from South Carolina. When it was clear he wouldn’t become president, Calhoun abandoned his support of a strong central government and became a champion of the rights of states to pick and choose what federal laws they would obey, a theory of government called nullification.
The nullification debate hits the Senate
Calhoun’s embrace of states’ rights and nullification further pushed him away from Jackson. Even though he was a Westerner and a slave owner, Jackson was an ardent nationalist. At a White House dinner, when nullification proponents tried to test his loyalties by offering a series of toasts about states’ rights, Jackson responded, “Our Federal Union: It must be preserved!” (To which Calhoun replied, “The Union — next to our liberty, the most dear!”)
But despite Jackson’s support, nationalism was having a tough time. In the Senate, a January 26, 1830, debate on whether to stop selling public land in the West gradually turned into a debate on nullification. Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina gave a long, impassioned, eloquent speech in favor of the idea, pointing out that it was the only way a state could safeguard its interests and not be dominated by other areas.
Then Daniel Webster of Massachusetts took the floor. Webster was one of the greatest orators in American history. Dark and imposing, with eyes that glowed like coals and a deep but pleasing voice, Webster spoke for hours. The people, not the states, had ratified the Constitution, he said, and if the states were allowed to decide which sections they would or wouldn’t subscribe to, the country would be held together by nothing but “a rope of sand.”
Webster’s speech had a spectacular effect. Within three months, 40,000 copies had been published, and within a few years, parts of it were standard reading in textbooks throughout the North and West. Hundreds of thousands of young Northerners and Westerners were exposed to its sentiments — including a 21-year-old man on his way to Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. For many of them, the speech’s message became words worth fighting for.
A tarrible idea
In 1828, Congress had passed a bill that set high tariffs (taxes) on a bunch of imported goods. The tariffs were favored in the North because they drove up prices of imported goods and, thus, made goods produced in Northern factories more attractive. The West was okay with the bill because revenues from the tariffs were supposed to pay for public works projects the region needed. But the South, without factories and with less need for roads and canals, hated them.
Nat Turner's rebellion
Despite all the rhetoric about how well they treated their slaves and how happy the slaves were, Southern slave owners' deepest fear was that the humans they so degraded would some day rise up to seek freedom — and revenge. Slave rebellions, in fact, had occurred in both Northern and Southern states and had been responded to with harsh brutality.
In 1822, for example, just the rumor of a possible uprising resulted in the execution of 37 slaves in South Carolina. In August 1831, however, a preacher/slave named Nat Turner led 70 followers on a murderous rampage around Southampton, Virginia. Before the uprising was over, Turner's group had murdered 57 white men, women, and children. The rebellion was broken up quickly, and after two months in hiding, Turner was captured and hanged, along with 19 others.
But the rebellion sent shock waves through the South. In retaliation, about 100 slaves were slain at random. New laws were passed to make it harder for owners to free slaves, to restrict the ability of slaves to travel without supervision, and to censor antislavery material. Any serious talk of the South voluntarily freeing its slaves ceased.
In 1832, Congress passed a new tariff schedule that was lower than the 1828 rates. But it wasn’t enough for the South Carolina legislature. Legislators called for a special convention, which decided that not only was the tariff null and void in South Carolina, but the state would also militarily defend its right to nullify the law.
The move infuriated Jackson, and he sent some army and navy units to the state while he prepared a larger force “to crush the rebellion.” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Henry Clay, the great negotiator, came up with a compromise tariff that reduced the rates over a decade. The South decided it could live with that without losing face. Both sides claimed victory, and a bloody civil clash was once again delayed.
Bringing down the Bank
With South Carolina back in the fold, Jackson was easily reelected in 1832, despite his ill health and his earlier statements that he would serve only one term. Part of the reason he sought a second term was to thrash his old foe, Henry Clay, who was the first nominee of the new National Republican Party (which would soon take the name of the opposition party to the English king and become the Whigs). Another factor was that Jackson had some unfinished business with a bank.
The charter of the country’s only nationwide bank, the Bank of the United States, was set to expire in 1836, and Clay pushed a bill through Congress in 1832 to extend it. But Jackson vetoed the bill, contending the Bank was a private monopoly that fed off the little banks and benefited only a handful of rich American and foreign investors.
The Bank’s stock was, in fact, controlled by a relatively few men, and the charge of corruption also had its truth. Bank president Nicholas Biddle was a brilliant but arrogant aristocrat who often loaned money at no or low interest to the “right people” — including dozens of members of Congress — while clamping down hard on banks in the West. But since 1819, the Bank had provided stability to the economy by requiring local banks to keep adequate gold and silver reserves to back up the currency they issued and to be careful about making loans.
After his veto, Jackson decided to try to kill the Bank off rather than wait until 1836. So in 1832, he ordered that all federal funds be withdrawn from it and deposited in smaller banks. When his treasury secretary balked, he got a new one, and when that one also balked, he got a third who agreed to go along.
At first, the plan worked pretty well, mostly because the economy was sailing along. The federal government’s budget deficit dropped to zero for the first time in history; the budget even had a surplus, which was shared with the states for projects like road building and education. But then the boom busted.
In 1836, Jackson ordered that all public land could be sold only for silver or gold, not paper currency. Land sales sagged from 22 million acres to 6 million in one year. Local banks held mortgages that weren’t being paid, and they couldn’t foreclose because the land was worth little and no one could buy it anyway.
Horace Mann
Of all the reform movements in the 1830s and 1840s — including temperance, the abolition of slavery, and women's suffrage — the most effective was the common school movement, an effort to provide compulsory free education to children.
Its leader, Horace Mann, was anything but common. Born in 1793, Mann became a Massachusetts legislator; in 1837, he drafted a bill that created the state's school board and then he became the board's secretary. Mann advocated tax-supported schools that would bring together kids from all economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. He fought for higher salaries for teachers and better schoolhouses, established the first American teacher training school, and encouraged women to become teachers.
Mann's exuberance and persistence spread, and by the 1850s, every state outside the South had free elementary schools and teacher-training institutions. Mann died in 1859, having lived up to his own advice: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."
In 1837, after a bank panic, the country sank into a four-year recession. But by that time, Jackson was out of office, and it was someone else’s problem.
Inventing a Better Life
While politicians were debating lofty issues like nullification and national banks, other people were creating better ways to get around, get something to eat, and get their points across.
Riding the train
On September 18, 1830, a nine-mile race on the outskirts of Baltimore pitted a horse pulling a carriage against a noisy contraption on wooden wheels called a steam locomotive engine. The horse won after the engine broke down, but it was a relatively short-lived victory for Old Paint, because the railroad had arrived in America.
Although trains had been operating in England for some years, the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) line’s Tom Thumb was the first in the United States. By the end of 1830, the B&O had carried 80,000 passengers along a 13-mile track.
In South Carolina, a 136-mile line between Charleston and Hamburg opened in 1833. By 1840, 409 railroads had laid 3,300 miles of track, and by 1860, America had close to 30,000 miles of rail.
Early trains had their flaws. Sparks caused fires along the tracks and in the rail cars, and the rails themselves had a nasty habit of coming up through the bottoms of the cars. Trains were also subject to the occasional explosion, which hardly ever happened with horses.
On tonight's menu . . .
One thing you can say about nineteenth-century Americans is that they didn't waste much when it came to chow. Some samples from an 1836 book called The Frugal Housewife: "A bullock's heart is very profitable to use as a steak, broiled just like beef. There are usually five pounds in a heart, and it can be bought for 25 cents. . . . Calf's head should be cleansed with very great care. . . . The brains, after being thoroughly washed, should be put in a little bag, with one pounded cracker, or as much crumbled bread, seasoned with sifted sage and tied up and boiled one hour. After the brains are boiled, they should be well broken up with a knife, and peppered, salted and buttered."
But trains had an enormous impact. The demands for labor to build tracks encouraged immigration, and the demand for capital to finance the lines attracted foreign investment. The ability to transport large amounts of goods and agricultural products opened new markets and linked old ones. Communications improved vastly, and going from here to there got a whole lot easier. Even philosopher Henry David Thoreau conceded, “When I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort, like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet and breathing fire and smoke . . . it seems the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it.”
Reaping what you sow
As the nation grew, so did its appetite. Steel plows, most notably the kind developed by Illinois blacksmith John Deere, had made it easier to plant crops. But harvesting, especially grain, was still a laborious process that involved men swinging heavy scythes all day long and then going back and picking up the threshed grain.
In 1831, a Pennsylvanian named Cyrus McCormick came up with a rolling machine that both cut down the grain and threw it onto a platform. McCormick’s machine could do the work of 15 men, and more quickly.
By 1860, he was making 4,000 harvesters a year and selling them on an installment (financing) plan so farmers could afford them. America’s breadbasket got much bigger because of it.
Communicating across America
In New York, meanwhile, a painter named Samuel F.B. Morse was tinkering with a device (the telegraph) that could send messages using electricity. After he patented the telegraph in 1841, Morse got Congress to put up $30,000 so he could string electric wire between Washington and Baltimore. On March 24, 1844, the first message — “What hath God wrought?” — was sent. In 1856, the Western Union Company was formed, and by 1866, a transatlantic telegraph cable had been laid between America and Europe.
The telegraph was the first true mass communication medium. By the end of the century, there were few places in the world that couldn’t send and receive messages. Not everyone, however, was impressed. When someone remarked that, with the telegraph, Maine could now talk to Florida, writer Ralph Waldo Emerson reportedly observed, “Yes, but has Maine anything to say to Florida?”
Staking Out New Land despite a Revolving Presidential Door
When not busy inventing things, Americans were on the move, mostly in a westerly direction. That movement was unfortunate for the Native Americans already there. It also proved unfortunate for the Mexican government, which was determined to hold onto an area known as “Tejas” in Spanish. Americans called it Texas.
Pushing out the Native Americans
A Native American name for Andrew Jackson was “Long Knife,” and not because they considered him a swell guy. For his part, Jackson contended he didn’t hate the Native Americans despite the fact that as a soldier he had killed them and burned their villages. He just didn’t want them where they would be in the way.
Therefore, Jackson wholeheartedly supported a policy (actually started by Pres. James Monroe) to systematically move all the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River to west of the Mississippi, or off the fertile acreage of the river valley and onto the dusty prairies of what is now Oklahoma.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act and set aside $500,000 for the task. By the time the odious job was done in the 1840s, more than 100,000 natives had been moved off more than 200 million acres of real estate. Proponents contended the forced exodus was a humane gesture, because the only practical alternative was to exterminate them. This attitude conveniently ignored the fact that thousands of Native Americans did die — of disease, hunger, and exposure — on the forced marches, giving rise to the term Trail of Tears. Of all the nation’s leaders, only Henry Clay spoke out against the policy.
Two tribes, in particular, didn’t go easily. The Sauk and Fox tribe, led by Chief Black Hawk, originally crossed the Mississippi and then came back. Met by a large U.S. military force that included an Illinois militia volunteer named Abe Lincoln, the tribe surrendered after bloody fights in which women and children were slaughtered along with the native warriors. In Florida, the Seminoles under Chief Osceola used the swamps and Everglades to fight for a decade before ultimately surrendering. The war with the Seminoles cost the U.S. military $20 million and 1,500 lives.
In the Southeast, the so-called civilized tribes of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw had actually been pretty adaptable to the encroaching white man’s ways. They built roads and houses, raised cattle, and farmed. Some even owned slaves. When the state of Georgia tried to force the Cherokee off their land, they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor. But the ruling didn’t help; what the state couldn’t do, the federal government could. By the end of the 1840s, most of the Native Americans in the eastern United States were gone, pushed west to await being pushed some more.
Claiming independence for Texas
Everyone wanted Texas. Pres. John Quincy Adams offered $1 million for it; Andrew Jackson upped the offer to $5 million. But the newly independent country of Mexico wasn’t interested in selling, even though it was sparsely settled and Mexico had no firm plans for the area. But for some unexplained reason, Mexico did allow Americans to settle there.
Growing the American base
In 1821, a Connecticut man named Moses Austin contracted with Mexico to bring 300 American families to an area near San Antonio. Austin died shortly afterwards, but his son Stephen took over and led the settlers to the area in 1823.
By 1834, Austin’s colony had 20,000 white colonists and 2,000 slaves. That was four times the number of Mexicans in Texas. Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1831, but Austin ignored the law, as well as the one requiring the settlers to convert to Roman Catholicism. The settlers began thinking of themselves less as Mexican subjects and more as a cross between Mexicans and Texans — or Texians, as they called themselves.
The area began to attract restless and sometimes lawless Americans who weren’t as peaceful as the Austin bunch. These folks included Sam Houston, a soldier and good friend of Andrew Jackson’s; the Bowie brothers, Louisiana slave smugglers who had designed an impressive long knife that bore their name; and Davy Crockett, a Tennessee ex-congressman and daredevil backwoodsman with a flair for self-promotion.
Remembering the Alamo
In 1835, Mexican Pres. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna proclaimed a new constitution that eliminated any special privileges for Texas, and the Texians declared their independence. They kicked the Mexican soldiers out of the garrison at San Antonio, and a motley force of 187 Texians and American volunteers set up a fort in an old mission called the Alamo.
On March 6, 1836, after a 13-day siege and a brief predawn battle, Santa Anna’s army of about 5,000 overran the Alamo, despite heavy Mexican losses, and killed all its defenders. (Figure 8-2 shows a depiction of the battle at the Alamo.) The victory accomplished little for Santa Anna, but “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry for Texians. Six weeks after the Alamo fell, an army led by Sam Houston surprised, defeated, and captured Santa Anna at the San Jacinto River.
Figure 8-2: Battle of the Alamo.
Becoming a state
Texas ratified a constitution that included slavery and waited to be annexed to the United States. But Jackson was in no hurry. He didn’t want a war with Mexico that could ruin the election chances of his handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren. And the fact that Texas was proslavery would upset the delicate balance between free and slave states.
Jackson did formally recognize Texas on his last day in office in March 1841, after Van Buren had been elected. But it wasn’t until December 1845 that the Lone Star Republic became the Lone Star State.
Changing it up at president
In the 16 years between 1820 and 1836, America had three presidents. In the eight years between 1836 and 1844, it also had three.
The first was Martin Van Buren, who was the first president born under the U.S. flag. Van Buren was a New York lawyer and governor whose political machine had helped elect Jackson. Dubbed “the Little Magician” for his political skills, Van Buren snuggled up to Jackson, serving as secretary of state and vice president and winning Jackson’s considerable support in beating Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.
Unfortunately for him, Van Buren took office just as the Panic of 1837 and its subsequent economic recession hit the country. The recession lasted most of his term, and he was blamed for it. But he did manage to strike a blow for labor while in office, agreeing to lower the working day for federal employees to ten hours.
Despite his vast political skills, Van Buren was outfoxed by the Whigs when he ran for reelection. It began when a Democratic newspaper reporter sneered at Harrison, who was again Van Buren’s opponent: “Give him [Harrison] a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and . . . he will sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin.”
That image didn’t sound like a bad idea to a lot of voters. Harrison, an old Native-American fighter who had defeated Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe Creek in 1811, was actually a moderately wealthy Virginia farmer. But the Whigs seized on the chance to present him as a tough frontiersman. Rallies were held featuring log cabins and plenty of hard cider, and “Old Tippecanoe” squashed Van Buren in the election.
At his inauguration on March 4, 1841, a hatless 68-year-old Harrison gave a long and pointless speech in a pouring rainstorm. He fell ill with pneumonia and died a month later, making him the first president to die in office.
His successor was the newly elected vice president: John Tyler, a stubborn slave owner from Virginia who had only become a Whig because he had a falling out with the Democrats and Jackson over the issue of nullification and states’ rights.
Tyler earned the distinction of being the only sitting president thrown out of his own political party when he refused to go along with Whig policies in Congress and vetoed many Whig bills. In 1844, Tyler started his own party, the Democratic-Republicans, so he could run again, but he gave up after Jackson asked him to step aside.
In 1844, the Whigs put up Henry Clay, who had been running unsuccessfully for president for 20 years. The Democrats, after a long and heated convention, nominated a dark horse, or surprise candidate in James K. Polk of Tennessee. Polk was such an ardent follower of Jackson that he was called “Young Hickory.”
It was a very close election, but Polk squeaked through. He made few promises during his campaign, among them: to acquire California from Mexico, to settle a dispute with England over the Oregon border, to lower the tariff, and not to seek a second term. When he took over the presidency in March 1845, he kept all of them.