History 101: Week 12 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

Apr. 17, 1995: Women in Antebellum Society

I. The vast changes that occured as America went from colony to republic and an agrarian society to a commercial society, had a profound impact upon the social position of women. From the colonial period to the Jacksonian Era, the socially acceptable realm of action for women was narrowed and relative to the advancing status of men, legally, politically and economically, the status of women had declined.

II. Women's Role in Colonial Society:

A. Colonial society had a chronic shortage of women, exp. in frontier areas. The proportional scarcity of women enhanced women's status and position in colonial society.

B. Puritan ideology emphasized work as saintly and idleness as deviltry. Women's work was seen as essential and as a civic duty. 1. Puritan town councils expected single women (widows, spinsters) to provide for themselves and granted them parcels of land to do so. 2. No social sanction against married women working. (Rather, married women were expected to help their husband in his trade and help manage his business affairs - they were considered 'deputy husbands'.) a. Consequently, women were found working in scores of trades and professions in this period.

C. (Of course, women's status in colonial society should not be overly romanticized. Women still suffered from an inferior legal status and their social position was still a function of the position/rank of their husbands or fathers. But as Gerda Lerner observed, "What is remarkable is the extent to which this felt inferiority of women was constantly challenged and modified under the impact of environment, frontier conditions, and a favorable sex ratio...")

III. As the nation industrialized, the middle class family became less the locus of production and more the locus of child-rearing.

Between the Revolutionary Era and the 1820's, the popular perception of women's role in the family and society changed. Women lost their roles as producers within the household economy and took on new roles as moral supervisors and tutors of children and the moral guardians of the family.

IV. The American Revolution left an ambiguous legacy for women. On the one hand the rationalist and enlightenment humanism that was in the air at the time opened ideological possibilities for women's advancement, and the new ordering of society based upon ability rather than rank might have aided women's advancement. But both of these innovations bypassed women.

In one respect, the ideological innovations of the Revolutionary era even set women back:

A. Ideology of Republican Motherhood: During the Revolutionary years the spread of enlightenment ideals changed the way children were viewed. Before, under a more religious tradition, children were born with a certain character and predestined life of godliness or damnation. Enlightenment ideas emphasized the maliability of every individual and the "tabula rosa" of each new baby's character. Under these beliefs, women now had to become the moral and intellectual tutors of their children as well as just their protectors and nurturers. Indeed, the very success of the American republic depended upon women's success in imparting reason and virtue to the succeeding generation.

"It is woman's appropriate duty and particular privilege to...implant in the juvenile breast the seed of virtue, the love of God, and their country, with all the other virtues that shall prepare them to shine as statemen, soldiers, philosophers, and Christians." - Hannah Mather Crocker, 1818.

B. Womens status was further restricted as Republican ideals clashed with the rising values of capitalism. The early 19c saw the rise of entrepenuerialism, a system that rewarded competitiveness, reason, individualism, dominance above all other values. Entrepenuerialism was in many ways a threat to moral foundations of republicanism (public-mindedness, virtue). To resist the encroachments of individualistic and competitve values upon the American republic, intellectuals and opinion makers of the time turned to women. Women were to be the moral guardians of society - the bulwark against entrepenuerialism and the defenders of the republic.

1. Women were praised for embodying the very virtues which entrepenuerialism attacked - cooperation, nurturing emotionalism, and piety. Women were now expected to make their homes refugees from the dog-eat-dog capitalist ethos that dominated in the outside world. Consequently, women were further restricted to a domestic sphere of action.

a. As the public realm became equated with entrepenuerial values and women were increasingly idolized as inately moral, pure, and pious, the private sphere of the home was equated with lost egalitarian and communal values. Women's place then was in the home.

George Burnap, a evangelical proponent of these values, lectured on The Sphere and Duties of Woman and argued that marriage was "that sphere for which woman was originally intended and to which she is so exactly fitted to adorn and bless, as the wife, the mistress of the home, the solace, the aid and the counsellor of that ONE, for whose sake alone the world is of any consequence to her."

V. Idea of Seperate Spheres: With these changes, the idea that men and women should occupy seperate social spheres, man-public, woman-private. 1. In the 19c., this seperation hardened as women's work, now based on child-care, and domestic labors rather than household production of goods, was downgraded in the eyes of men. "Work" came to be equated with waged labor which made women's work even more invisible. Non-domestic work for women was now socially disapproved.

2. As industrialization made it easier for the middle class to emulate the upper class, the upper class woman came ever more to be the standard by which all women were measured. Upper class women had never worked - leisure was a hallmark of wealth and status. By the early 19c, feminity came to be defined by a genteel model of leisured consumption and all women came to be gauged by such a standard. The "Gospel of True Womanhood" was broadcast widely by the development of cheap, mass periodicals such as Godey's Lady's Book that propogated strict notions of the proper standard of women's dress and behavior.

VI. Professional Exclusion of Women: Women were forced out of many professions in the early years of the republic. Medicine was a prime example of this process:

1. In colonial times there were no medical schools, no medical journals, few hospitals, and few laws governing the practice of medicine. All sorts of individuals practiced the healing arts and women were frequently "doctoresses". (Even some enslaved women were granted higher status and privilige because of they were talented doctors.) 2. The last 1/4 of the 18c saw the development of medical courses in colleges, the standardization of training requirements for the profession, and the proliferation of medical societies. By the first years of the 19c, many states passed licensing laws that required attendance at a medical college, thus excluding women. 3. Similar processes also occured in law, retail trades, and in all other areas except two whose need was so great that the hardening boundaries of sex were overcome - industry and teaching.

VII. Women's Resistance: Many women resisted these subordinate roles and worked to expand their sphere of social activity, even though many believed in the idea of "true womanhood".

A. Schools movement: 1820's-1830's a number of crusading, educated women worked to established schools to train women in the profession of teaching. They used the ideology of woman's roles to argue for their schools, saying that women must be well educated so that they can properly raise the children under their care. 1821 Emma Willard established a female "seminary" that went on to become one of the most successful normal schools of the antebellum era. Between 1821 and 1872, 12,000 women attended Willards seminary. Some of Willards early students spread the movement by establishing schools of their own around the country.

1. Because school administrators argued that women, either being employed only temporarily until they found suitable husbands, or else working for "pin money" if married, should be paid less than men. Female school teachers were paid 1/2 to 1/3 of the wages paid to male teachers. 2. Because of the cheapness of female teachers, schools eagerly hired them to save money and by 1830, in one Massachusetts district, (Mass was where the public school system was most developed) 3 women were employed to every 2 men. By the end of that decade, 1/5 of all native white women of Massachusetts had taught school at one time.

These women's efforts helped to bring about a schooling revolution in America that expanded the number of Americans going to school dramatically. By 1840, 38% of white American children went to school. Whereas literacy rates for white women were below 50% in the colonial era, by 1850 virtually all white women were literate.

B. The Second Great Awakening also challenged these hardening strictures on women's roles by offering an evangelical religion largely outside the realm of masculine church authorities. 1. The 2nd GA's emphasis on God's merciful offering of universal salvation (for those who chose to accept it) recast God in a more "feminine" image (forgiving, nurturing, moral teacher) and away from the patriarichal image of a vengeful authority. 2. 2nd GA's practice of lay preaching offered women a public voice through ministry, testimonials, and public prayer. C. Women used their newfound roles in the church to expand their public activities by founding sunday schools and organizing female missionary societies. 1. Such work gave many women experience in organizing and leadership that proved useful when their activity turned from charity and religion to political protest.

VIII. The first women's political societies: A. 1834 a small group of women formed the American Female Moral Reform Society in NYC, a group dedicated to ending prostitution and the male double-standard, and male licentiousness. By the 1840s there were over 400 chapters of the AFMRS nationwide. B. Temperance (already discussed) C. Abolition (to be discussed next week) 1833 Philadelphia women form the Female Anti-Slavery Society. D. 1848 Seneca Falls Womens Rights Convention.

Apr. 19, 1995: Thought and Society in Antebellum America

I. Between 1840 and 1861, American culture rapidly developed and grew more complex. In these years the modern mass press developed, a national theater and a uniquely American theatrical form (minstrelsy) grew up, urban culture flowered in innumerable and divergent ways, etc. Where in 1840 America was still a cultural backwater that looked to Europe for initiative, by 1860 America had a complex culture that had emerged from under Europe's shadow.

II. Of all the cultural changes that occurred in the first decades of the 19c, none was as profound and deeply felt by the people that it touched than was the spread of "industrial discipline" and its values of legitimatization, "industrial morality".

A. Preindustrial work lacked time discipline and moved to the rhythms of life and/or nature.

B. Rise of industrial work required regular, sustained, routinized labor that even divorced itself from the natural rhythms of day/night and the seasons.

C. Alongside the increasing discipline and demands of industrial work arose a set of values that came to surround modern society - values that can be collectively described as "industrial morality". 1. postponement of gratification - saving and sobriety. 2. respectability, character, evenhanded temper valued. 3. separation of self from nature (note this is part of the substance of Henry David Thoreaus critique.) 4. social status a function of consumption and display of material goods.

III. Between 1820 and 1860, the American middle class (well-off farmers, small merchants and professionals, master artisans, low government officials, etc.) acquired the means and the material to assume the trappings of gentility that had previously been reserved to the most wealthy.

1. widespread public education 2. houses larger, more decorated, beginning of suburban migration, and the widespread introduction of parlors.

A. The ability of the middle class to parrot the fashions of wealth allied them sentimentally with the upper class and further alienated the working class from the bulk of American society. As refinement and gentility became equated with "respectability", the working class was degraded in status and even dehumanized in the eyes of popular culture.

[Note the functional importance of the spread of genteel mores in society to the rise of capitalism. Republican and puritan American values were in many ways antithetical to capitalism in that they stressed saving, public-spiritedness, and simplicity, over consumption and individuality. The eager adoption of Victorian gentility in the American middle class helped to overcome these values, to emphasize the need to consume, to display wealth, to make spending a purpose of social existence - values that propelled the creation of a consumer market and the growth of industry]

IV. Streetcar Suburbs - the class segregation of urban geography accelerated in the antebellum years. A. Horse omnibus introduced to NY in 1827. B. By 1832 the Harlem RR ran the length of Manhattan. C. By 1850s all big cities had streetcars.

D. Rise of a mass popular press: 1. Between 1830 and 1840, the cost of newspapers declined and their numbers and circulation increased and created the first mass-circulation media in American history. 2. 1830, there were 65 dailies with an average circulation of 1,200 that sold for 6 cents each (or $10/year - about a week's wages for a skilled worker) and primarily appealed to an upper class audience. Soon the cost dropped to 1 cent and: 3. 1840, there were 138 dailies and by 1850, 254. Average circulation doubled. 4. New York in 1850 printed 150,000 newspapers a day, about 1 paper for every 4.5 inhabitants.

5. The new penny press began as radical workingmen's papers, but after the failure of several of these, their radical, but bottom-line conscious publishers, turned to a new formula that followed the police, and covered court dramas in lurid detail. Crime and sex, not unsurprisingly, sold papers and the modern mass newspaper business was born. 6. Importantly, though these papers were superficially non-partisan, and had a diversity of editorial political slants, all shared a spread-eagled expansionism that cheered every instance of American aggression in the antebellum years whether against American Indians or Mexico.

V. Such changes affected city people mostly and the urban culture and environment came to reflect this new industrial regime.

A. Rise of commercialized leisure: 1. P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum in NY in 1820s. 2. Racetracks built in 1840s. 3. Department store palaces built in most major cities in 1840s. 4. Most popular sport, bare-knuckle prize fighting, epitomized the pre-industrial values that urban workers had been forced to abandon (physicality, natural prowess, unruliness). 5. Theater changed from being the preserve of the elite, to a centerpiece of popular culture: a. 1820 NY Park theater built with 2,500 seats. b. 1830 NY Bowery theater built - 3,000 seats. c. 1840 NY Broadway theater built - 4,000 seats.

d. (By 1840s, over 50 touring theatrical companies also travelled around the US).

Theater offered not only English and American dramas, but served up a steady fare of Shakespeare. Shakespeare most popular with working class audiences.

VI. But the most popular form of theater, and one that helped usher in the era of burlesque, vaudeville, and modern mass media in general, was minstrelsy.

1. So popular that when Admiral Perry arrived in Japan, he entertained Japanese dignitaries with a minstrel show. 2. Pres. John Tyler was officially entertained at his inauguration by minstrels and Abe Lincoln was quite fond of them.

A. Minstrelsy an incredibly complex social/psychological institution. Its power and appeal revealed much about the nature of racism in the US. At bottom, minstrelsy operated as did racism in the 19c America generally, as whites displaced upon blacks the very pre-industrial values that they had been forced to sacrifice. As such values came to be seen as "black", whites defined themselves and their new roles as "white." (In the process the routinized and alienated lifestyles of industrial society were legitimated through the medium of race.) Minstrel shows and other festivals of race role reversal gave urban workers an opportunity to indulge in pre-industrial revelry in a socially acceptable manner, free from the potential taint this might have placed upon their characters.

Apr. 21, 1995: Manifest Destiny and the Question of the Territories

I. Thomas Jefferson when he acquired Louisiana congratulated himself for having given the American people "room enough for our descentents to the thousandth and thousandth generation." Within two decades settlers were finding the purchase lands "crowded" and were beginning to infiltrate the less settled national domains to the South.

II. Between 1830 and 1860, the proportion of Americans living west of the Appalachians increased from 1/4 to 1/2. And as the west developed, both in population and in wealth, it gained in political stature and commanded a greater place in Washington.

A. Lewis and Clark surveyed the Louisiana Purchase Lands in 1804-1806 and charted a trail clear to Oregon. B. Soon fur trappers followed and by the 1820s they were numerous in the west and nearly hunted fur bearing animals to exinction. C. 1820s Santa Fe trail from St. Louis to Santa Fe opened artery of trade to far southwest. D. 1841 Oregon trail opened and thousands streamed across the Plains. E. Also in 1840s a trickle of settlers branched from Oregon trail past the Rockies and moved down to California. F. In 1847 the Mormons led by Brigham Young also veered off the Oregon trail into remote Mexican territory and proclaimed their Zion in the wilderness around Salt Lake. G. And beginning in the 1830, thousands of southerners poured over the border into Mexican territory and set the wheels of history in motion that would culminate in the Civil War.

III. In 1846 the US went to war with Mexico and stole half of its territory for itself. The territory thus gained constituted the greatest acquisition of natural wealth in American history, dwarfing even the Louisiana Purchase. A. On the other side, no single event contributed as significantly to Mexico's underdevelopment in the modern era as did its conquest by the US in 1848. B. No single event was as responsible for dividing the US public and leading to the Civil War.

IV. Texas/Mexico:

A. Throughout 1810's "filibusters" invaded portions of this territory for the purpose of establishing independent fiefdoms. 1. Former Vice-President Aaron Burr plotted to conquer Mexico and proclaim himself emporer. 2. 1812, Augustus Magee, former Lieutenant in the US army led 3,000 men in an attack and seizure of Bexar (San Antonio), proclaiming the "Republic of Texas."

3. 1819, America renounced all claims on Mexican territory and promised to respect Mexican territory forever in the Treaty of Limitations. Western boundary of Louisiana was fixed at Sabine River.

B. In 1821 Mexico gained its independence from Spain and looked to begin systematic development of its northern most frontier provinces. It offered large land grants to any group of 200 or more families would would settle the area, convert to Catholicism and take out Mexican citizenship. Tens of thousands of Americans flooded voer the border.

C. 1825, J.Q. Adams began negotiating for Texas, at one point his agent in Mexico even trying to bribe the President.

D. Dec. 1826, Hayden Edwards hired 200 men and seized Nacogdoches and proclaimed the "Republic of Fredonia."

E. Soon these Americans were oppressing Mexicans and flaunting Mexican law. Particularly by holding on to slaves and importing slaves from the U.S. (Slavery was outlawed by the constitution of the Territory of 1827 and again prohibited by Presidential proclamation of 1829.)

F. Beginning in 1830, the Mexican government moved to bring the provence in line with its national law. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna assumed the Presidency. 1. Prohibited further immigration from US. 2. Evicted illegal Anglo squatters. 3. Enforced import tariffs.

G. Soon Americans were in full rebellion as Mexican officials attempted to reassert their control. 1835 the Texans held a Congress, declared independence and elected Sam Houston commander-in-chief. (Mobs also attacked all the native-born Mexicans in San Antonio forcing them from their homes.)

1. Houston - probably a slave smuggler while serving in the army in the war of 1812. As a young man he left home and lived among the Cherokee who renamed him "Big Drunk." Houston developed no love for his Indian neighbors, serving under Jackson in the Creek wars, then serving as a subagent in the force that drove the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears.

H. 1836 the Alamo. Goliad. Jackson orders US troops to Texas border (where they were poised to save the Anglo rebels if they began to lose.) San Jacinto.

I. Throughout this period arms, supplies, over 2,500 volunteers, including an entire regiment of equipped troops (the New Orleans Grays) flooded into Texas from the US. Despite protests from Mexico, Jackson refused to do anything to stem the tide.

V. The Question of Texas soon became a sectional issue and became entangled with the question of slavery. Many politicians began to worry that the acquisition of Texas would upset the sectional balance so carefully constructed in 1820. The question of the territories was splitting the Democratic party (a coalition of southern planters and wester agrarians who had been united in their opposition to the Bank of the US, the tariff, etc.)

Jackson, in spite of his plotting to obtain Texas, found his hands tied politically and was forced to sit on the border and watch the rebels and even waited until his last day in office and eleven months after the battle of San Jacinto, to recognize the independence of Texas.

A. JQ Adams, now a congressman from Quincy, Mass., charged Jackson with plotting to introduce slavery in the Americas through war with Mexico. In 1838, Adams

B. Abolitionist published tracts, with titles such as "The War in Texas; a Crusade against the Government set on foot by Slaveholders."

VI. Territories and National Politics

VII. Background of National politics in the 1830s-1840s. A. The parties: 1. Democrats - an extremely potent coalition of the planter politics of the South, western interests, and urban workers. The coalition was made possible, because the Democrats had earned the loyalty of the farmer and worker by portraying itself as the party that enfranchised the poor and identified with the common man. 2. Whigs - remnants of old Federalists and national Republicans. Base in the northeast and centered among merchants, industrialists, Yankees of all sorts, Protestants where politics religiously and ethnically polarized. B. Strategy: The only swing constituency, and the one most rapidly growing in size was in the west. Democrats to win had to keep them in their coalition by protraying themselves as the friend of the common man against the east coast elite. Whigs to win had to win them over with promised internal improvements, protective tariffs (this was the politics behind Whig Henry Clay's "American System").

C. Wilmot Proviso illustrated the joint power of western agrarian interests, eastern business, and urban labor. These factions tied together by common interest in:

1. internal improvements (westerners seek cheaper access to markets - eastern business just as eager to give it to them) a. Joshua Giddings, (Sen. from Indiana and a spokesman of western farm interests): "Are the farmers of the West, of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, prepared to give up the sale of their beef, pork, and flour, in order to increase the profits of those who raise children for sale, and deal in the bodies of women?" 2. urban workers interested in increased migration (cheaper land) to west so as to drain off the excess urban population (raising wages and lowering rents).

(NOTE: Slave planter south against spending money to build better roads, canals, and ports in the north, and did not want to aid freemen to go west, thereby foreclosing territories to slavery.)

VIII. Martin Van Buren, democratic boss of New York assumed the Presidency after Jackson in 1837.

A. 1837 the worst depression in American history hit and the Democrats, rightfully, were blamed.

IX. Thus in 1840, the Whig party, seizing a rare opportunity adopted the tactics of the Democrats in the election: A. No platform B. appeal to emotion and not reason C. nominate a military hero rather than a statesman

Thus the party passed over the most able stateman in the nation, Henry Clay, and nominated General Henry Harrison, a man whose claim to fame, like Jackson, was killing Indians. 1. "Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign."

X. General Henry Harrison elected in 1840. A. Hurrican inauguration. B. Harrison's pneumonia and liver failure: 1. quack treatments: blistering, emetics, cathartics, opium, camphor, brandy, crude petroleum, snakeweed.

XI. April, V.P. Tyler, a southerner who had little in common with his fellow Whigs, assumed Presidency. A. Pres. Tyler proposed admitting Texas by a joint resolution of Congress (rather than by treaty so as to avoid the 2/3's requirement). Tyler signed the resolutions into law three days before vacating office and Mexico immediately broke relations with the US.

XII. National Politics of 1844: A. Democrats shun Van Buren for his opposition to the annexation of Texas. Instead nominate James K. Polk, (Jacksonian and imperialist). 1. Democrats demand 54'40; Texas. B. Henry Clay (oppossed annexation) won unanimous Whig nomination. 1. Whigs call for expansion by negotiation, not force. 2. Internal improvements. (Clay's American System again)

C. Spread-eagled imperialism brought the Democrats back into office in 1844 and brought Polk to the White House by just 38,000 votes. (Clay would have probably won but for the votes drained away in the critical state of New York by James G. Birney, the Liberty Pary (abolitionist) candidate.

XIII. Polk's first act is to veto an internal improvements bill.

XIV. Oregon A. 1818, Anglo-American convention of 1818 pledged joint British/US occupation of the Oregon territory for ten years. B. During JQ Adams administration, US had attempted to fix the border at the 49th parallel, but Britain refused demanding access to Puget Sound and Columbia River. C. 1841 Oregon fever struck thousands. D. By 1846, five thousand settlers in the Willamette Valley. E. 1843, provisional government organized. Cincinnatti presidential convention demanded northernmost border of Oregon fixed at 54,40 - "Fifty Four Forty or Fight!"

XV. Polk, immediately after war with Mexico began, Polk dropped demands for 54'40 and offered the British the old 1818 line of the 49th which they rejected. Polk served notice that the US would abandon the 1818 agreement in one year and pressured Britain into agreement.

A. Polk dispatched US troops to the Rio Grande, land long claimed by Mexico with the knoweldge that this would probably provoke an attack.

XVI. Mexican-American War

A. Disparities of power: 1. Economic - the year before the war began Mexico's GNP was about 17 1/2 million dollars. The US was 3 billion. 2. Population - US pop 17 million. Mexican pop - 7 million.

B. General Zachary Taylor took Monterrey (Taylor elected Pres. in 1848 - Whig). C. Colonel Stephen Kearney marched across New Mexico and into California, joining with rebellous American settlers under John C. Fremont (Fremont ran for Pres. in 1856 - Republican). D. General Winfield Scott landed at Vera Cruz and marched into Mexico City. (Scott ran for Pres. in 1852 - Whig). E. Feb. 1848, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 15 million dollar payment for captured territory.

XVII. Toll: 13,000 Americans, 50,000 Mexicans killed.

ID: NOTES-101.12.

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