History 17b midterm review PDF

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Prof Perrone...

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Changes in transportation, technology, communication, and political economy fostered unified national development ○ People can communicate w/ one another ○ Get same news no matter where they live ○ People can buy the same goods at reasonable prices ○ Manifestation of Market Revolution in North and South were different ○ Make a “people” out of the nation Market Revolution: individual/self-sustaining household → market; agrarian → capitalism ○ Transformations in production and transportation ○ More stuff & less work; selling excess ○ Created: ■ Interconnected national economy ■ Increase in production ■ Ability to transport goods globally for reasonable price ■ Mass produce manufactured goods ■ Growth in banking industry Transportation Revolution: connect eastern seaboard to interior of US ○ Between 1815-25, the coast and interior economies merge ○ 1818: National Road completed ○ Key Features: roads, canals, steamboats, railroads ○ Erie Canal linking Atlantic Ocean (NY) to Mississippi River ○ Railroads had greatest long-term influence Technological Innovation: changing how people lived & worked ○ Steel plow ○ Mechanical Reaper in 1830s (could harvest more and faster; became essential for harvesting wheat) ○ Steam Engine ○ Interchangeable parts ○ Telegraph ○ Cotton gin ○ Access to credit becomes possible ○ Farms no longer about family = its own industrial site of large scale production ○ Ability to move West & push to do so now Communication Revolution: ability to share national news; no longer a barrier to communication ○ Postal Service (connecting small towns to the nation) ○ Periodicals (Penny Press -- national politics and social trends communicated across the nation) ○ Telegraph (real time) Jacksonian Democracy ○ Major changes in political culture and process that developed during the Jacksonian era remain with us to this day

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Indian Removal was a choice made by the government with the support of the American people ○ Removal was about land – especially Southern Land Three core concepts: ○ Assumption that candidates have to court the public ○ Focus on voter turnout ○ Organized political parties designed to orchestrate political victories Universal Manhood Suffrage ○ Political Ideal = masculine virtues qualified one to vote First Party System (1790s) ○ Parties = Federalists & Republicans ○ Important for Congress, but not for public Second Party System (1828) ○ Organized around the cult of Jackson ○ Designed by Martin Van Buren ○ Birth of Democratic Party, which remains in existence ○ Set the standard for political party operation Democrats (expansion, religious pluralism, pro-slavery) vs. Whigs (expansion, federal intervention, taxes, Evangelical Protestant, anti-slavery) Indian Removal → wars made Jackson famous ○ Five Tribes: Cherokees (most adopted to acculturation), Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks ○ Indian Removal Act (1830) → no accomodation, federal government negotiating removal treaties; Jackson surprised by backlash; ignores SCOTUS’ opinion ○ Resulted in Trail of Tears: forced removal of native peoples by US Army; ¼ die from exposure ○ Second Seminole War: Seminoles resist removal, when US Army arrives they retreat to the Everglades, US forces unable to beat them Urban America ○ American landscape became less rural ○ American labor patterns were changing ○ Cities had disproportionate influence on the image of America ○ Growing fears about depravity of cities Birth of the American Metropolis ○ Three forces at work: ■ Urban proliferation: more cities founded ■ Urban growth: more people move into cities ● In one generation, proportion of city dwellers doubles ■ Urbanization: nations becoming less rural overall ○ Largest American cities were in north and non-slaveholding west ■ Ex: NYC, Philly, Boston… ○ By 1860, 20% of Americans lived in cities

City growth facilitated by transportation revolution (cities in the West; Chicago off Erie Canal) Immigration: ○ Booming in 1830s ○ May be single most important source of urban growth ○ Why come to US? ■ Changes in Europe ■ Easier to get to the US ● Faster, cheaper, safer, etc… ● Not as difficult to cross atlantic on a boat than in 1800 ○ Who? ■ Irish → potato famine ● Racist narratives about Irish immigrants ■ Germans → land scarcity, economic dislocation, revolution of 1848 (persuade people that moving to US is a good idea) ● More money than Irish; could buy land ● Brought beer Features of the Urban Economy ○ Drastic, visible inequality ○ Living conditions determined by social class ○ Unhealthy: city life produced pollution; close living → disease ○ Poverty commonly tied to ethnicity (ex: poor b/c Irish) ■ Five Points: 19th-century neighborhood in Lower Manhattan ● Seen as densely populated, disease-ridden, crime-infested slum ● Viewed as being that way because Irish immigrants made it that way Industrialization (began in the Northeast) ○ Fueled by Market Revolution (changed labor and consumption patterns) ○ Textile production industrializes first ○ Lowell Mills (textile) ■ Women and children working in mills ■ Lowell girls: women come to Lowell, MA; lived in dorms at the Lowell factory supervised by headmistresses ● Religious services mandatory ● Girls themselves self-policing: wanted to preserve reputations ● Become own class of people who earn money, disposable income ○ Build own dowries ○ Spent on clothes, books, entertainment available in cities (put money to workers = puts back into urban commercial economy) ○ Offered independence, escape from rural isolation and parental control, pretty decent wages, cultural instruction ■ Experiencing new kind of society (but conditions worsen over time, wages lower, work becomes more demanding) ○

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Textile prominence stolen from England (Samuel Slater taking water powered textile mill) ○ Massachusetts becomes second most industrialized place in world behind Great Britain → turning cotton into thread/textiles ○ Factory labor ■ Regimented by the clock, supervised, seen as un-manly ■ Moreso immigrant work (undignified) ○ Work becomes specialized: going to work in a factory and learning one small piece of a job ○ Work becomes gendered: women working in textile industry, later would be taken by Irish immigrant men, but originally men thought it was unmanly Modern city life = contact with diverse strangers, but individual anonymity possible New public transportation ○ Fixed-route (bus) ■ Becomes a social institution: culture of commuting ○ Omnibus ■ First example of fixed-route public transit ■ Carriage w/ two long benches, drawn by horses ■ Changed city smells (horse poop) ○ Streetcar ■ Forced commitment to a certain route ■ Can take more passengers = lower fare Commercial Nightlife ○ Made possible by gaslight: In 1816, Baltimore became first city to light its streets ○ Commercialize sex ○ Secondary economy: drinking, night entertainment, prostitution ○ Story and media trope of “Seduction and abandonment” theory: young women seduced into big city by sweet-talking men (family life, gifts, wealth), but abandoned them after they had sex w/ them once women arrived in the cities ○ Some women felt more independent, autonomous, self-sufficient Media venues as part of city experience ○

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Revivals, Reform, Domestic Life ○ The Jacksonian period ushered in major changes in the way Americans thought about religion, their time on earth, and their ability to change the world around them ○ Women’s role in society remained in flux ○ Social ideals tied to class. Poor Americans could not live up to middleclass ideals. But, middle-class reform often targeted “vices” of the poor. Second Great Awakening (religious movement marked by evangelicalism and revivals) (around 1790-1820 ish) ○ Finney: father of modern evangelicalism ■ Anyone can be reached by God, not just elites ■ Regardless of race, class, gender, etc… → revolutionary

implications Emphasis on agency of the individual → it is in your power to perfect yourself, god does not make this choice for you ■ Individuals had to put in time and effort for their own salvation (individuality) ■ Ministers irrelevant essentially ○ Millennialism: belief in imminent arrival of 1000 year reign of Christianity and the return of Christ ■ Tied to idea that society can be perfected ● If human beings take control of their own actions they can change society they live in and perfect it = return of Christ ■ Finney is an advocate of this ■ Radical idea that it is in individual power to overcome all sin; up to everyday men and women to bring about millennium by spreading good work on earth ○ Effects: ■ Surge in popular religiosity ● Church membership increases by factor of 10 between 1800-1850 ● Women as driving force ● Internalizing the idea that they have responsibility to go out and change society for the better ■ Religious values become public values ■ New denominations Domesticity & The New Middle Class → domestic life changed by new religious sentiment ○ New Domestic Customs ■ Marriage should happen later in life = people end up having fewer children: women older now ■ Family more centered around marriage (loving not economic) ■ Home no longer the site of labor (work in public sphere not in home) ● Primarily factory work but also middle-class jobs such as people who work in stores, clerks, telegraph operators, emergence of white-collar work ■ Home should be a nurturing place (prepare children; comfortable home and loving mother) ○ “Cult of Domesticity”: middle-class ideal based on science and Second Great Awakening ■ Men and women should occupy separate spheres ■ Women seen as vulnerable, but suitable for nurturing → “naturally suited to domestic life” ● Mothers responsible for making well-behaved children ● Keeping them safe from sin; re: puberty → Antebellum Sex Book ■ Catherine Beecher → housekeeping guides; domestic life as a ■

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“woman’s calling” Women as vulnerable, infantilized; needed to be rescued and defended by “morally upstanding gentlemen” → these stereotypes become big in the South ■ Home is a site of work but not a site of work for the people who live there (domestic servants can come in and work) Reform Movements ○ Most advocates are middle- and upper-class: they have (leisure) time to go out in world and advocate for poor people ○ Second Great Awakening: power to go out into world and make change ■ Marked by evangelical fervor and optimism ■ Often led by women ○ Temperance ■ Drunkenness & violence ■ SGA: can’t become good and moral Protestant if you were drinking alcohol // They have internalized improving society as an objective: if they are better society is better ■ Women connecting alcohol to domestic violence → drinking reduced by 75% ○ Education ■ Result of huge inequality that marked Jacksonian Democracy (city disparity of wealth, super visible and acute) ■ Education to lift people out of poverty ■ Education as public good: society prospered when people were educated ● Not about charity; about perfecting society ■ Horace Mann: built school systems in most of the country ● Greatest resistance was in the South: worried about slaves and freed slaves becoming educated; wealth elites sent to prep schools in the North ○ Women’s rights ■ Women emerging w/ new sense of purpose and responsibility for society ■ Keep husbands and children on moral path and help society do the same thing ■ Felt they were particularly suited for this because “female purity” ○ Prison reform ○ Mental health/asylum reform ○ Abolition ■

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American Slavery & King Cotton ○ Northern and Southern Economies both grow rapidly during the antebellum decades, but they grow in very different way → North grows dynamically, South grows statically ○ Cotton economy is NATIONAL ○ Cotton plantation economy increasingly determined the lives of enslaved

people; violence central to making the economy function Slave life is mundane, and that itself is part of the horror of it → nevertheless, slaves RESISTED Slavery as: ○ A system of coerced labor ○ A legal institution ○ An economic system ○ A form of labor ○ A lived experience Began in Virginia in 1619 ⅗ clause: slaves were NOT represented in any way ○ Think of it as a “White Person Bonus” (1+⅗ vs. 1) ○ The number of slaves merely adds to political power of states w/ significant slave populations → more representation ○ Result = ■ Slave states OVERREPRESENTED in House of Reps. ■ Slave states had INFLATED number of Electoral College votes ■ It had NO EFFECT on slaves themselves Slavery & The Antebellum Economy ○ Cotton gin and new hybrid seed reinvigorated American slavery ○ Two lucrative markets based on slavery ■ Cotton (the product grown by slave labor) ■ Enslaved people (people as commodities) ● Note: most southerners do not own slaves; those who do owned less than 5; stereotypical large plantation not as prevalent as what we think or see in pop culture ○ The Chattel Principle: enslaved people weren’t just laborers -- also valuable commodities and sources of wealth (provide lots of wealth to those who can own slaves) What the economy looked like: Central economy shifted to Mississippi River Valley ○ Cotton and other staple crops (slaves as labor) ■ *Louisiana sugar plantations extra bad and feared by slaves, hardest ○ A secondary market in slaves (slaves as investment and commodity) ○ Financial support system (providing the money) ○ Transportation network (moving slaves and cotton to market) ○ Production of finished goods (cotton into cloth) ○ In south: exporting cotton but importing other goods they need bc they focused a lot on cotton and needed stuff like agriculture/food → import from north Northern industry developed to aid plantation economy (ex: financial services, textile mills) Dependent on agricultural cycle (weather, bugs, etc) Most slaves DO NOT live on large plantations Slave life: ○

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Concentrated in “black belt” or “cotton belt” Lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates Violence and threat of violence constant House servants → tended to be better fed and in better physical condition; but isolated ○ Field hands → highest portion of slave population ○ Skilled artisans → usually less isolated and more educated Poor standard of living (bad clothes, no shoes leading to parasites, had to use folk medicine and perform own abortions, etc) Religion central to black life (not in Colonial, but after Second Great Awakening) ○ Masters feared conversion: thought they would be unable to control slave population ○ Using Christianity to compel their slave labor to do a better job and resist less ○ African Methodist church, 1815, Philly ○ Masters worried that they were plotting a rebellion -- thought they should only attend w/ white people w/ white preachers ■ Created secret churches at night ■ Call and response ■ Song at center of worship ■ More active religious experience ■ Salvation and freedom waiting for you in next life All children born to slave women were a slave themselves Rebellion: ○ Working slowly ○ Stealing or hiding people ○ Poisoning people ○ Running away (more success in upper South = closer to free zones) ○ Armed revolt (difficult, unusual → Nat Turner’s Rebellion in VA) ○ ○ ○ ○

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Gender, Domesticity, and Race and the US South ○ Archetypes not same as reality, rep. Guiding principles of Southern society ○ Race gender violence related ○ White women played central role in defining the slave based society of South Hierarchical society -- gender, wealth, social status → intrinsically tied to slavery ○ Being a man = amass wealth to own and buy slaves White Southern Manhood: the “gentleman” ○ Honorable, chivalrous, courageous ○ Defender of women ○ Self-sufficient: no debt, generate wealth ○ Hospitable, kind, generous, open-minded ○ “Good” master; a proper paternalist ■ In control of self and other member of household → mastery

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● Also master as in slaves ■ In control of productive and reproductive (children) capacities ○ Performed masculinity ■ Had to show this outwardly ■ E.g. gambling, drinking -- but supposed to be in moderation ■ Act out sexual desires on slaves; pure white woman for making children ○ Honor + mastery = gentlemen The Southern Belle: Idealized White Womanhood ○ Virginal, honorable, virtuous ○ Madonna-like, pure and noble -- perfect complement to male ○ Good hostess ○ Like a piece of decor, or accessory ○ Never in public arena ○ Subordinate to husbands and fathers ○ Worthy of gentlemen’s protection ○ Ideal mother for legitimate children ○ A myth projected into reality ■ Willing participants in perpetuating slavery ■ Expresses anger on slaves because she can’t on her husband ■ Often violent, though can also be an ally White perceptions of black female bodies: the jezebel or the mammy ■ Hyper sexualized (the jezebel) ● Sexually available, promiscuous → lure white men into sex ● Objects of male fantasies → submissive to their sexual fantasies ● There was an incentive to rape slaves → to have children by any means necessary ○ Idea of jezebel = that enslaved women can never be raped because they always want to have sex ■ Innocuous and maternal (the Mammy) ● Non-threatening caretaker ● Domestic expertise, a superwoman ● Nurse white children Notions of anatomical differences ○ Overly developed genitalia, which made black women promiscuous ○ Did not require the same care in childbirth ○ Primitive not feminine ○ Stronger than white women = harsher conditions ok ○ Tension: revulsion of black body, yet also hypersexualization and allure ○ Black women’s bodies commodified in unique ways -- physical labor and childbirth & rearing Sexual abuse and demographic change → large “mulatto” population: African Americans and whites have sex w/ each other ○ Birth of “white slaves” tainting image of whiteness (push for abolition)

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Concubinage & placage ○ “Fancy girls” slaves bought for sex purposes ○ Some concubines given advantages (housing, clothing, conditions) Black manhood ○ Slavery = figurative castration, emasculation ○ Compare to white southern gentleman: ■ Could not legally marry ■ No custody of children ■ Almost no means of self-sufficiency, no household to be head of ■ Unable to defend women around them from abuse ○ Common stereotypes ■ Sambo (slavery makes him good, most prevalent, “Uncle Tom” and Jim Crow mix) ■ Nat (violent, runaway, “scary black man” -- Nat Turner) ■ Jack (loyal, faithful, unless mistreated) Black body: ○ Site of violence ■ Black male form as perfect and muscular, focused on penis ■ Homoeroticism w/ whipping ○ Site of sexual abuse ■ White men sexually abused black men too -- harder to talk about it bc no children produced ■ Sometimes white women/black men -- taboo; destroy woman’s reputation as “pure” ■ Forced coupling/breeding -- forced male slave or purchased purposefully to impregnate other female slaves in household in order to increase wealth ○ Object of white fascination ■ Tension between fascination and revulsion Abolitionism and Proslavery Thought ○ Defense of slavery becomes increasingly important to South after development of radical abolitionism ○ Defense comes from North AND South, illustrating national reach of the institution ○ Enslaved people and allies resisted in radical and small ways; acts big and small helped destroy the institution Colonization: sending African Americans to Africa; reasons = ○ Free slaves from bondage ○ Religious convictions ○ Economic fears ○ Prevent free black society from growing American Colonization Society (founded 1816) ○ Protestant organization, established Liberia in 1822

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Radical Abolitionism ○ Influenced by Second Great Awakening and Reform Movements ■ Slavery w...