History 101: Week 8 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

Lecture 20: The Jeffersonian Vision

I. Washington DC in 1801 - a small collection of unfinished buildings in the midst of a vast muddy quagmire in the wilderness.

II. Jeffersons inauguration marked the end of the Federalist era, but also was a milestone in American history as the first peaceful and constitutional change of political regimes. "The changes of administration, which in every government and every age have most generally been episodes of confusion, villainy, and bloodshed, in this our happy country take place without any species of distraction or disorder." said one political observer of the time.

A. The transition made easier by Jeffersons vow not to purge the government of Federalist office holders (Federalists, like every other political party of the 19c, used the government as a patronage trough from which to reward their allies. Of 600 federal officers appointed in the Federalist years, only 6 were Republicans). 1. Jefferson later reneged on his pledge and carried out a wholesale purge of Federalists, especially in their home base of New England. Within three years only 130 federal jobs held by Federalists.

III. Jeffersonian contrast with Federalist regimes of the past: A. less pomp and circumstance: Washington/Adams rode in six- horse carriages, Jefferson preferred to ride alone on horseback. No more elaborate "levees" - Jefferson didn't even have prearranged seating arrangements at state dinners.

IV. The Jeffersonian program of "small, frugal, and distant government." A. repealled internal taxes, especially the hated Whiskey tax. B. cut army in 1/2 and navy by 2/3. C. closed 2 of 5 diplomatic missions (Berlin and the Hague). D. repealled Alien and Sedition Acts. E. relaxed citizenship requirements from 14 years residency to 5.

V. But in spite of Jeffersonian rhetoric, Jefferson willing to wield the powers of the executive when it suited him. A. Louisiana Purchase done without Congressional authorization.

VI. Jeffersonian program unravelled with the revival of European wars. A. France and England began intercepting American vessels supplying their enemies. England also impressed US sailors. 1. Republicans pass Non-Importation Act 1806. 2. 1807 Chesapeake Affair nearly leads to war. a. Jefferson quietly built up armed forces during this period. b. Embargo Act passed cutting off all foreign trade. American imports drop 80%. Eastern port cities driven into deep economic depression. New England begins talking of seccession from the Union in 1808. B. Republicans continue their rule under Madison in the election of 1808. 1. America blunders into war with England by 1812. A war that ended in a practical stalemate and did little to change the problems that intitiated it. 2. War of 1812 created an upsurge in nationalism and brought the two previously feuding parties closer together. Madison approved of the Federalist policies of a national bank, internal improvements and supported a peacetime army. Partisan divisions muted until the sectional crisis caused by the territorial questions in 1819.

Lecture 21: The Growth of the American Continental Empire

VII. The Republican era of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe saw the beginnings of a vast expansion of the American nation. 1. 1801 Louisiana Purchase. 2. 1819 Acquisition of Florida. 3. Northern border with Canada demilitarized and fixed to Rockies (though area west of that jointly administered for 10 years). A. Between 1790 and 1830 the US: 1. doubled its land area. 2. doubled the number of its states [to 26] 3. tripled its population [to nearly 13 million] (while increasing its density per square mile). 4. and quadrupled the number of its cities [5 to 23]. B. Between 1830 and 1860, the US: 1. nearly double its land area again. 2. increase its cities fivefold [to 101]. a. By 1860, the number of Americans living in an urban area increased over 1790 from 1 in 25, to 1 in 5. 3. increase its population 2 1/2 times [to 31.5 mil.]

VIII. Between 1800 and 1850 Americans swept over the Appalachian Mts. in three broad streams: 1. out of W. Penn and Southern backcountry into Ohio Valley. 2. West from N. Eng. through W. NY and N. Ohio, Ind. and Il. 3. out from South Atlantic across the Gulf Plains. (By 1850, 1/2 of all white native born Americans lived in a state different from the one of their birth.)

A. Why did they go? 2 main reasons: 1. Soil exhaustion due to exploitative farming. 2. Yearning for independent yeoman life.

IX. These years saw the country specialize and diverge regionally to a greater extent than ever before. The nation grew apart into three distinct regions, economically, socially, and politically. 1. NE - commerce and manufacturing. 2. West - frontier farming. 3. South - plantation agriculture.

A. Why? The driving force was the transportation revolution. 1. The north made the largest and swiftest investment into new transportation technologies that centralized its control over the markets and products of the western hinterlands and the southern plantation economy. 2. New transportation technologies made possible the extension of American settlement far into the west. 3. The south's vast network of navigable rivers satisfied much of its internal transportation needs, but retarded its acquistion of new technologies.

X. Transportation Revolution:

A. In 1800 it cost about the same to move a ton of cargo from Europe to America as it cost to move it just thirty miles inland from an American port. American roads and bridges were so few and primitive that Thomas Jefferson had to ford five rivers to go from his Virginia home to take office as President in Washington in 1801.

B. Steamboat 1807. (Steam did not decisively impact ocean- going commerce until the 1850's - but it was of incalculable advantage in the inland waterways.) 1. In 1820 it took 90 days and cost 6 cents/mile to take cargo from New Orleans upstream to Louisville. In 1830, because of the steamboat, it took only 8 days and cost one-tenth as much.

C. Canal boom 1820's-1830's. New York led the way with the 360 mile long Erie Canal in 1825. The Erie lowered the cost of moving goods from Buffalo to NY from $100/ton to $5/ton and decreased the time from 20 days to just 6. 1. In 1817 it took 50 days to take cargo downstream and around the Floridas from Cincinnatti to New York. After the construction of the Erie canal goods moved to NY in just 18. 2. Between 1830 and 1840 over 2,000 miles of canals built.

D. RR. 1. Between 1830 and 1850, 9,000 miles of RR built. Between 1850 and 1860, 22,000 more built. 2. By 1853, RR stretched from NY to Chicago and just a couple years later crossed the Mississippii.

XI. Just as important was the Communication Revolution: A. 1830's saw the introduction of the steam press that slashed the cost of newspapers and placed them within reach of even poor Americans. B. 1840's saw the development of the telegraph.

XII. It must be kept in mind that contrary to the contemporary myth of the 19c. laissez faire state, antebellum Americans demanded a strong government role in their economies and societies. Even Jefferson's Republicans believed that government had to intervene in the economy to create opportunity for private citizens. Throughout the first decades of the 19c. the steady economic growth and technological innovations were dependent upon government aid: A. Land - The US government not only distrubuted land at low cost to both settlers and speculators, but undertook the costs of exploration and surveying of them. B. Roads - The national government built the first trans- appalachian road (called the "National Road") from Cumberland Maryland to Columbus Ohio in the late 1820's and early 1830's. States built many more and chartered even more (though charters for roads and bridges were highly specific and regulatory). C. Canals - Erie canal, the largest single project in these years was paid for by the New York state government. 1. From 1815 to 1860, 73% of all the capital invested in canals came from public coffers. Even more of the share of railroad capital came from public investment.

D. Technologies - 1. Tariff of 1816 established to protect and incubate home manufacturing industries. 2. National arsenals were used to innovate new manufacturing proceedures (such as interchangeable parts production). 3. The first telegraph was constructed and operated under government grant. 4. Government even underwrote much of the costs of agricultural innovation by sponsoring agricultural fairs, offering bounties and prizes, and publishing innovatative ideas and technics in gov. financed journals.

XIII. Changes in transportation and technology had their biggest impact upon the nature of life on the American farm (which remained over 90% of the population until 1840). Frontier farms, though increasingly tied to national and even international markets, were relatively self-sufficient in the early decades of the 19c. (Though most were enmeshed in communities were barter was common and a few specialized services, such as blacksmithing, milling, general store were available.) Even frontier farms traded for salt, sugar, molasses, tea, gunpowder, guns, tools, etc. A. Women worked tremendously hard at producing all of the items needed by the family (shearing, carding, spinning, and sewing woolen clothes; basketweaving; carpet weaving; quilting; milking, churning; skinning, gutting, dressing; as well as childcare, healing, midwifery, etc.):

"Up in the morning I must rise Before I've time to rub my eyes With half-pin'd gown, unbuckled shoe I haste to milk my lowing cow. But, Oh! it makes my heart to ake, I have no bread till I can bake And then, alas! it makes me sputter, For I must churn or have no butter. The hogs with swill too I must serve, The hogs must eat or men will starve. -Ruth Belknap 1782

B. The transport revolution brought mass-produced goods to even remote frontier villages. As freight costs declined, the costs of "store-bought" items began to displace homemade goods. 1. Between 1809 and 1836, the cost of soap and candles fell by a third. 2. "Formerly," noted a Pennsylvania farmer in 1836, "no man thought of going to a tailor for a sheet. Now everybody goes to one even for a handkerchief." 3. By 1820, home manufactures were already dying out in New England. As the Erie canal opened, the areas surrounding it ceased to make homemade woolens.

C. The manufacturing/transportation revolution fostered intense competition among farming neighbors as all now pushed for efficiency, specialization, and the expansion of their acreage to get more money with which to purchase needed goods. Many went out of business and were incorporated into the growing wage labor force.

Lecture 23: King Cotton and the "Firebell in the Night"

XIV. In the last decade before the end of legal importation of slaves, a slave trade boom increased the number of slaves by 70%. This boom in slaves signalled once and for all the end of the prospects for the "natural" extinction of the institution that so many of the Revolutionary generation had hoped for.

A. Growth of slave pop: From 700,000 slaves in 1790 to 1.2 million in 1810 to nearly 4 million on the eve of the civil war.

1. Note: the increase in this time was due almost totally to natural increase, because though much slave smuggling continued, the numbers of newly imported slaves about equalled those who gained their freedom by flight or manumission in these years.

XV. Cotton in the world economy. Though slavery became peculiarly a southern institution as the 19c wore on, the benefits of slavery were national in scope: 1. 1790 3,000 bales produced 2. 1810 178,000 bales 3. 1860 4,000,000 bales

A. The south produced 2/3 of the worlds' cotton by 1850. B. 3/4 of all southern cotton went to England. It was easily the nations leading export and provided the crucial foreign exchange and capital that allowed the country to develop. C. As most plantations specialized in the production of cotton for export, a vast market for foodstuffs existed in the south for the surplus produce of western and northern farmers. D. The first northern mass production industries were those that provided shoddy goods (shoes, coarse cloth) for southern slave-owners.

XVI. Most slaves lived on relatively small holdings and most slaveowners were not the fabuously rich planters immortalized in the mythologized old South: 1. 1% owned 10% of the nations slaves (more than 100 apiece) 2. But the typical slaveowner owned 5-6 slaves and land worth only $3000. 3. 90% of all slave-labor farms had fewer than 30 slaves and were supervised directly by the master. 4. Only 25% of slaves lived on large plantationw with 50 or more others. A. The general small size of slave holdings molded the character of American slavery and made it distinct from other slave-societies in the Western Hemisphere where absentee owners tended owned massive plantations. 1. closer/more intense relationship between masters and slaves in America than any other modern slave society. a. white masters often headed their religions duty to spread the gospel to their slaves, but fearing the spread of literacy, read the Bible and preached to them. b. many white masters had grown up in the company of black children and white southern men routinely sexually exploited slave females under their control. c. whites interfered in the daily lives of slaves to a far greater degree than in any other society. Slave owners viewed their slaves as "children" who were under their protection and guidance. Masters in this way actually strove to root out and suppress every vestage of slave independence. (1) farm rules from everything from when to get up to when to eat to how to work and how to spend free time. (2) societal laws structured every aspect of their public life.

XVII. Of course, slavery was a system that ultimately rested on physical coercion. Two threats always hung over the slave - physical torture and seperation from loved ones.

A. Beating, maiming, whipping, all legal in slave states. B. Seperation: No aspect of slavery was more resented by slaves themselves than the fact that masters routinely broke up slave families. As many as 1/3 of all slave marriages were broken up by slaves being sold off or entire plantations moving.

XVIII. But in spite of the masters attempt to totally control all aspects of their slaves lives, slaves did not passively accept their lot in life and preserved a distinct and rich African heritage through all of their adversity.

A. Cultural resistance and survivals.

XIX. Resistance to slavery was an everyday act of slaves and it took innumerable forms: A. Feigning misunderstanding and stupidity to frustrate the master. B. Destruction of tools and injuring of livestock. C. Women feigned pregancy. D. Running away, temporarily or permanently. E. Theft. Slaves acutely aware of their entitlements: "They always tell us its wrong to lie and steal but why did the white folks steal my mammy and her mammy?...Thats the sinfullest stealing there is." - former slave, Josephine Howard.

Planters were the stupid ones - they failed to dissassociate slave resistance from their racist belief in slave inferiority. Wrote one planter plagued by sabatoge: "(My slaves) break and destroy more farming utensils, ruin more cars, break more gates, spoil more cattle and horses and commit more wates than five times their number of white laborers do. They are under instruction relative to labor from their childhood, and still when they are gray-headed they are the same heedless botches; the negro traits predominate over all artificial training."

XX. But the most daring and desperate form of resistance, the revolt, was a constant threat and of regular occurance in the early 19c. Though given the political stability of the south and the unity of whites, armed rebellion was clearly doomed.

A. Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion 1800: Prosser, a blacksmith, organized a force to seize the city of Richmond. Prosser and his fellow conspirators saw themselves as carrying out the promise of the Am. Revolution. They planned to carry a banner inscribed "Death or Liberty." On the gallows, one of the rebels cried out: "I have ventured my life...to obtain the liberty of my countrymen." B. 1822, a free black carpenter, Denmark Vesey, (he had purchased himself in 1800), prepared an elaborate plan to revolt and sail for Haiti. Four years of planning. Meticulous crafting of weapons. 1. Vesey regularly preached to slaves, reading the story of Moses and the exodus from the Bible. C. Biggest insurrection led by Nat Turner in 1831. D. Largest military resistance by slaves has gone entirely overlooked in American history - the two Seminole wars of 1812 and 1835. 1. Florida long a haven for runaway slaves "maroons". 2. Allied with Seminoles and resisted American expansion southward. 3. 1812 war the Seminoles and Maroons completely routed the US Marines. 4. 1835 the US army planned a three month campaign to end Seminole/Maroon resistance that turned into a murderous seven year war. American general Thomas Sidney Jessup wrote to Washington at the outset of the war, "This you may be assured is a negro, not an Indian war." In the end 1600 US troops died in the fighting and the war cost the US between 30-40 million and ended with the Maroons gaining a committment from the US that they could migrate in freedom to Oklahoma Territory.

XXI. Slavery in National Politics:

A. 1790, when the first sectional compromise effected in the Constitution, the population of the north and south were about equal. But in the first decades of the 19c., the north grew more quickly and it gained an advantage in Congress. By 1820, the south had but 42% of the seats in the House and clung to rough parity in the Senate.

B. 1819 Missouri applied to become a state (with slavery). 1. at the time 11 free and 11 slave states (three previous states admitted since 1812, LA, MS, AL, all slave.) 2. Northern reps demanded that Missouri only be admitted upon it prohibiting the further introduction of slaves within its borders and provide for gradual emancipation of children born of slaves. (Passed the house, but stripped in the Senate). 3. Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, offered a compromise: a. Southern boundary of Missourri (36,30) to be extended across the Louisiana Purchase. b. Maine admitted as free state and Missouri admitted as slave.

"This momentous question like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the Union" - Thomas Jefferson, 1819.

"I take it for granted that the present question is a mere preamble - a title page to a great, tragic volume."

4. The Clay compromise solved the immediate problem, but the political issue of slavery, once raised, forever altered the terrain of American politics. The Jeffersonian Republicans fractured into at least four factions.!.

ID: NOTES-101.8.

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