Transcript Slide 1

The Dynamics of
Western Settlement and
Eastern Capitalism
1790–1820
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Two powerful ideologies
Nationalism and
Sectionalism
Both grew tremendously during this period. Lets look at the
factors that helped to promote these two ideologies, and try to
understand the impact of each on the nation’s history.
People frequently think that secessionist plans originated
among radical southern states’ rights advocates. The earliest
secession schemes began in the Northeast and the West, we
need to look at their motives, and the reasons for their failure.
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I also want to examine the factors that fostered the development of a capitalist
economy in the United States. Specifically the forces behind the enactment
of the Embargo Act of 1807. We need to understand the economic
hardships and divisiveness it caused, and understand why it was replaced
by less stringent legislation. We need to understand outwork, or puttingout, system; its origins and the effects it had on farm families, agriculture,
and the market economy.
Students often believe that after the Revolution, Americans were united into a
single homogeneous people. The geographical expansion of the United
States from 1790 to 1820 needs to be understood, especially the roles
played by American presidents, diplomats, military forces, and foreign
nations (including Native Americans) in acquiring new territory. We need
to examine the power and influence of state and local governments in the
early nineteenth century, and the numerous ways in which they sought to
improve the welfare of their citizens and to regulate social life.
3
Students often believe that after the Revolution, Americans
were united into a single homogeneous people.
The geographical expansion of the United States from 1790 to
1820 needs to be understood, especially the roles played by
American presidents
diplomats
military forces and
foreign nations (including Native Americans)
in acquiring new territory.
We need to examine the power and influence of state and local
governments in the early nineteenth century, and the numerous
ways in which they attempted to improve the welfare of their
citizens and to regulate social life.
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Thanks in part to purposeful political
leadership and innovative public policies, the
young American republic grew at an
astounding pace between 1790 and 1820.
First Census taken in 1790 -
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The United States acquired immense new
lands in the West, particularly through Thomas
Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana from France,
and settled them quickly. By 1820, more than
two million white an black Americans were
living west of the Appalachians.
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Native Americans, however, struggled with whites for
the preservation of their lands and culture. National
policy promoted farming in the West, and state
legislatures devised legal innovations and financial
incentives to stimulate economic growth in the East.
The results of these twin initiatives were soon
apparent as per capita income in the United States
increased after 1800.
7
With the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800,
Republicans began wresting political power from
northeastern merchants and creditors and
implementing policies to help yeomen farmers.
While retaining the Bank of the United States and
many Federalist officials, Jefferson eliminated excise
taxes, reduced the national debt, cut the size of the
army, and lowered the price of land in the West.
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Westward Expansion
Native American Resistance
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Invoking the Treaty of Paris and viewing Britain’s Indian allies
as conquered peoples, the U.S. government asserted its
ownership of the trans-Appalachian West;
***Native Americans rejected this claim and pointed out that
they had not signed the treaty and had never been conquered.
In 1784, the United States used military threat to force the proBritish Iroquois peoples to sign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and
relinquish much of their land in New York and Pennsylvania.
Farther to the west, the United States induced Indian peoples
to give up most of the future state of Ohio.
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The Indians formed a Western Confederacy to protect
themselves against aggressive settlers and forced a peace
compromise in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
In practice, this agreement eventually brought the transfer of
millions of acres of Indian land to the U.S. government and
sparked a wave of American migration into the region,
resulting in new conflicts with native peoples over land and
hunting rights.
Most Native Americans resisted attempts to assimilate them
into white society and rejected European farming practices.
***American Indian policy from 1790 to 1820 included
- assimilation of Indians into American culture.
- acknowledging Indian ownership of western lands.
- coercing and bribing Native Americans to cede vast tracts of
western lands to the Americans.
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Migration and the Changing Farm Economy
Cumberland Gap was "the way West" until 1810
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The migratory upsurge of white farmers and planters brought
financial rewards to many settlers and transformed the
American farm economy.
Most migrants who flocked through the Cumberland Gap were
white tenant farmers and yeomen families fleeing the depleted
soils and planter elite of the Chesapeake region.
Though poor migrants to Kentucky and Tennessee believed
they had a customary right to occupy “waste vacant lands,” the
Virginia government allowed them to purchase up to 1,400
acres of land at reduced prices but sold or granted estates of
20,000 to 200,000 acres to wealthy individuals and
partnerships.
*** The end result was that New lands opened by the Treaty of
Paris were primarily controlled by rich speculators.
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A second stream of migrants, dominated by slave-owning
planters and their enslaved workers, moved along the coastal
plain of the Gulf of Mexico into the future states of Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Cotton financed the rapid settlement of this region as well as
the expansion of ***slavery into the Old Southwest as
technological breakthroughs increased the demand for raw
wool and cotton.
Seeking land for their children, a third stream of migrants
flowed out of the overcrowded communities of New England
into New York, Indiana, and Ohio.
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In New York, speculators snapped up much of the best land
and attracted tenants to work it by offering farms rent-free for
seven years, after which they charged rents; many New
England yeomen preferred the Holland Land Company, which
allowed settlers to buy the land as they worked it, but high
interest rates and the lack of markets initially mired thousands
of these freeholders in debt.
Unable to compete against low-priced western grains, eastern
farmers changed their agriculture methods — rotating crops,
diversifying production, and planting year round — which
helped increase their productivity and boosted the entire
American economy.
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The Transportation Bottleneck
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Improved inland trade became a high priority for the new state
governments to overcome geographic impediments to getting
goods to market.
States chartered corporations to dredge rivers and build
turnpikes and canals. *** One of the early successes in solving
transportation problems in the United States was the
construction of the Lancaster Turnpike in 1794 in
Pennsylvania.
Only after 1819, when the Erie Canal linked central and
western New York to the Hudson River, could inland farmers
easily sell their goods in eastern markets.
***Improvement in roads and the construction of canals
decreased the cost of transportation in the East, but these
conveniences did not reach western farmers across the
Appalachian Mountains. States such as Ohio and Kentucky
relied on the transport of goods via the Mississippi River south
to New Orleans.
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Western settlers paid premium prices for land along navigable
rivers, and farmers and merchants built barges to float goods
to the port of New Orleans.
Many isolated western settlers had no choice but to be selfsufficient; self-sufficiency meant a low standard of living.
Settlers continued to migrate westward, confident that the
canal and road system would yield future security.
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The Republicans’ Political Revolution
The Jeffersonian Presidency
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Thomas Jefferson was the first chief executive to hold office in
the District of Columbia, the new national capitol.
Before John Adams left office, the Federalist controlled
Congress had passed the Judiciary Act, which created sixteen
new judgeships and six new circuit courts. Just before leaving
office, Adams filled the judgeships and courts with “midnight
appointments.”
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James Madison’s refusal to deliver the commission appointing
William Marbury, one of Adams’s midnight appointees, as a
justice of the peace in the District of Columbia caused
Marbury to petition the Supreme Court to compel delivery
under the terms of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall asserted
the Court’s power of judicial review.
22
Despite this setback, Jefferson mobilized Republicans to
shrink back the national government’s size and power they
believed was grossly over expanded through Federalist
policies.
Republicans refused to reenact the Alien and Sedition Acts
when they expired, amended the Naturalization Act to permit
resident aliens to become citizens after five years, and secured
repeal of the Judiciary Act, thereby ousting forty of Adams’s
“midnight appointees,” though Jefferson allowed competent
Federalist bureaucrats to retain their jobs.
23
In foreign affairs, Jefferson met the crisis of the Barbary
“pirates” by initially refusing to pay an annual bribe (“tribute”)
to protect American vessels in the Mediterranean, but, to avoid
war, negotiated a diplomatic settlement that reduced the tribute
payment.
In domestic matters, Jefferson set a clearly Republican course:
he abolished internal taxes; reduced the size of the army; and
tolerated the Bank of the United States.
With Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin at the helm, the
national debt was reduced and the nation was no longer run in
the interests of northeastern creditors and merchants.
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***Jefferson's Republican revolution cut back the size and
scope of the federal government, decreased the national debt,
and opened up the West. There were no work projects
instituted for the disadvantaged. Although Jefferson did away
with many Federalists policies, he removed only about onefourth of the Federalist officeholders held over from the
previous administration.
In foreign policy, Jefferson tried to enforce a neutral position
against Britain and France, but he allowed the Alien and
Sedition Acts to expire and decreased the term required for
naturalization to five years.
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Westward Expansion
The issues of westward expansion, foreign policy,
and slavery caused deep political divisions between geographical
regions. Indian uprisings and expansionist demands by western
Republicans led President James Madison into the War of 1812
against Britain.
The war split the nation, prompting a secessionist
Movement in New England, but a negotiated peace ended the
military stalemate, and Andrew Jackson’s victory at New
Orleans preserved American honor. The diplomacy of
John Quincy Adams led to the acquisition of Florida
and the settlement of boundaries with British Canada
and Spanish Texas.
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Jefferson and the West
As president, Jefferson seized the opportunity to increase the
flow of settlers to the West; Republicans passed laws reducing
the minimum acreage available for purchase.
In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte coerced Spain into returning
Louisiana to France; then he directed Spanish officials to
restrict American access to New Orleans.
27
To avoid hostilities with France, Jefferson instructed Robert R.
Livingston, an American minister in Paris, to negotiate the
purchase of New Orleans; simultaneously, he also sent James
Monroe to Britain to seek its assistance in case of war with
France.
In April 1803, Bonaparte, Livingston, and James Monroe
concluded what came to be known as the Louisiana Purchase
for $15 million dollars ($450 million in today’s dollars).
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Since it did not provide for adding new territory, Jefferson
pragmatically accepted a loose interpretation of the
Constitution.
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The acquisition of approximately
827,000 square miles would double
the size of the United States.
The Senate ratified the treaty Oct.
20 by a vote of 24 to 7. Spain, upset
by the sale but without the military
power to block it, formally returned
Louisiana to France on Nov. 30.
France officially transferred the
territory to the Americans on Dec.
20, and the United States took
formal possession on Dec. 30.
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"This little event, of France's possessing herself of Louisiana
… is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries
on both sides of the Atlantic and involve in it's effects their
highest destinies."
Jefferson's prediction of a "tornado" that would burst upon the
countries on both sides of the Atlantic had been averted, but
his belief that the affair of Louisiana would impact upon "their
highest destinies" proved prophetic indeed.
34
In 1804, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
on an expedition; they returned two years later with maps of
the new territory (and regions beyond).
Fearing that western expansion would diminish their power,
New England Federalists talked openly of leaving the Union.
Refusing to support the secessionists, Alexander Hamilton
accused their chosen leader, Aaron Burr, of participating in a
conspiracy to destroy the Union, and Burr shot Hamilton to
death in a duel.
35
As evidenced by Burr’s probable plan to either
capture territory in New Spain or to foment a
rebellion to establish Louisiana as a separate nation
headed by himself, the Republicans’ policy of
western expansion increased party conflict and
generated secessionist schemes in both New England
and the West.
36
Conflict with Britain and France
As the Napoleonic Wars ravaged Europe, Great Britain and
France refused to respect the neutrality of American merchant
vessels.
Napoleon imposed the “Continental System,” which required
customs officials to seize neutral American ships that had
stopped in Britain.
The British naval blockade stopped American ships carrying
goods to Europe and also searched them for British deserters,
who were then impressed (forced) back into service in the
Royal Navy.
37
Americans were outraged in 1807 when a British warship
attacked the Chesapeake, killing or wounding twenty-one men
and seizing four.
Jefferson devised the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited
American ships from leaving their home ports until Britain and
France repealed restrictions on U.S. trade.
The act caused American exports to plunge, prompting
Federalists to demand its repeal.
*** The Embargo was an imaginative but naive policy
that hurt Americans more than anyone else.
38
Despite discontent over the embargo, voters elected
Republican James Madison to the presidency in 1808. As
president, James Madison replaced the embargo with new
economic restrictions, none of which persuaded Britain and
France to respect America’s neutrality rights.
Republican congressmen from the West thought Britain was
the major offender as evidenced by its assistance to the Indians
in the Ohio River Valley.
Republican expansionists in Congress condemned British
support of Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, who had
revived the Western Confederacy, and threatened to invade
Canada in retaliation.
39
In 1811, following a series of clashes between settlers
and the Western Confederacy, William Henry
Harrison, the governor of the Indian Territory, led an
army against Tenskwatawa’s village of Prophetstown,
fended off the confederacy’s warriors at the Battle of
Tippecanoe, and burned the village to the ground.
Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, hoping to gain new
territory and discredit the Federalists, pushed
Madison toward war with Britain.
40
With elections approaching Madison demanded
British respect for American sovereignty in the West
and neutral rights on the Atlantic
When the British did not respond quickly, Madison
asked Congress for a declaration of war. In June
1812, a sharply divided Senate voted 19 to 13 for
war, and the House of Representatives concurred, 79
to 49.
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The War of 1812
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***Pressure for war with Britain primarily came from western
Republicans who saw British support for the Indians as a
threat to American expansion.
The War of 1812 was a near disaster for the United States,
both militarily and politically.
Political divisions in the United States prevented a major
invasion of Canada in the East; New Englanders opposed the
war, and Boston merchants declined to lend money to the
government.
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***deeply divided along party lines; the Federalist
merchants in the Northeast were opposed to war, while most
Republicans supported the war.
After two years of sporadic warfare, the United States had
made little progress along the Canadian frontier and was on the
defensive along the Atlantic; moreover, the new capital city
was in ruins. *** The war was going badly for the United
States when it ended.
44
45
In the Southwest, Andrew
Jackson led an army of
militiamen to victory
over British supported
Creek Indians in the
Battle of Little
Horseshoe Bend and
forced the Indians to
cede 23 million acres
of land.
46
Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut to discuss a strategy “for
a radical reform in the National Compact.”
Some proposed secession but the majority wanted an amendment
to the Constitution that would:
limit presidents to a single four-year term
rotate the presidency among citizens of different states
They also suggested amendments:
restricting commercial embargoes
requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress to declare war,
to prohibit trade, and to admit a new state to the Union.
47
The war continued to go badly; an American naval victory on
Lake Champlain narrowly averted a British invasion of the
Hudson River Valley; British troops landed outside New
Orleans and threatened to cut American trade down the
Mississippi River.
American military setbacks strengthened opposition to the war,
but, fortunately, Britain, sapped from its twenty-year war with
France, wanted peace.
The Treaty of Ghent, signed December 24, 1814, restored the
prewar borders of the United States.
48
Andrew Jackson’s victory against the British at New Orleans
not only made him a national hero but it also redeemed the
nation’s pride, and, together with the coming of peace,
undercut the Hartford convention’s demands for a significant
revision of the Constitution.
49
On January 8, 1815, American forces, under
General Jackson, decisively defeated the British
forces at New Orleans.
50
As a result of John Quincy Adams’s diplomacy, the United
States gained undisputed possession of nearly all the land
south of the forty-ninth parallel and between the Mississippi
River and the Rocky Mountains.
It was also at Adams’s urging that Monroe announced a new
American foreign policy (the Monroe policy) in which it was
declared that the American continents were not “subject for
further colonization” in return for which the United States
agreed “not to interfere in the internal concerns” of European
nations.
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The Capitalist Commonwealth
Banks, Manufacturing, and Markets
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As Americans imposed a new political economy on the lands of
the West, they developed a capitalist economy in the East.
Beginning in the 1790s, merchant capitalists created a flourishing
outwork system of rural manufacturing, and state governments,
by means of the commonwealth system, awarded corporate
charters and subsidies to assist transportation companies,
manufacturers, and banks.
***The commonwealth system involved the following policies:
- corporate charters with limited liability.
- monopoly charters with eminent domain for transportation
projects.
- judicial support of corporate activity on the basis of "social
utility."
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America was a nation of merchants, and to finance enterprises,
Americans needed a banking system.
In 1791, Congress chartered the first Bank of the United
States; however, it did not survive. When the bank’s twentyyear charter expired in 1811, President Madison did not seek
its renewal.
Republican minded state legislatures enacted statutes
that encouraged economic development by redefining
common law property rights.
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Merchants, artisans, and farmers petitioned their state
legislatures to charter new banks and by 1816 there were 246
state-chartered banks with $68 million in banknotes in
circulation.
Many banks issued notes without adequate specie reserves and
made ill-advised loans to insiders.
The Panic of 1819, sparked by a sharp drop in world
agricultural prices, gave Americans their first taste of the
business cycle’s periodic expansion and contraction of profits
and employment.
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The Panic of 1819 also revealed that artisans and yeomen as
well as merchants now depended on regional or national
markets; merchant-entrepreneurs developed a rural based
manufacturing system similar to the European outwork, or
putting-out, system.
The economic advances that the economy enjoyed during this
time stemmed primarily from innovations in organization and
marketing rather than in technology.
The penetration of the market economy into rural areas
motivated farmers to produce more goods.
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As the rural economy turned out more goods, it significantly
altered the environment; by the mid-nineteenth century, most
of the forests in southern New England and eastern New York
disappeared and mill dams altered the flow of New England’s
rivers.
The new market system decreased the self sufficiency of
families and communities even as it made them more
productive.
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Public Policy: The Commonwealth System
Throughout the nineteenth century, state governments had a
much greater impact on the day-to-day lives of Americans than
did the national government.
As early as the 1790s, state legislatures devised an American
plan of mercantilism, known as the “commonwealth system.”
State legislatures granted hundreds of corporate charters to
private businesses to build roads, bridges, and canals to
connect inland market centers to seaport cities.
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Incorporation often included a grant of limited liability and
transportation charters included the power of eminent domain.
By 1820, innovative state governments had created a new
political economy: the Commonwealth system that used state
incentives to encourage business and improve the general
welfare.
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Federalist Law: John Marshall and the
Supreme Court
Led by the Federalist John Marshall, the Supreme Court
protected the traditional rights of property owners and the
charter privileges of business corporations.
Entrepreneurs took advantage of state legislation and judicial
protection in order to create new business enterprises, strong
regional economies, and the beginnings of a national market
system.
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Both Federalists and Republicans endorsed the idea of the
commonwealth system, but in different ways: Federalists
supported Alexander Hamilton’s program of national
mercantilism: a funded debt, tariffs, and a central bank where
Jeffersonian Republicans generally preferred the state-based
commonwealth system.
Following the War of 1812, some Republicans advocated
national economic initiatives; in 1816, Republican Henry Clay
of Kentucky won legislation creating the Second Bank of the
United States and persuaded President Madison to sign it.
61
The difference between Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican
conceptions of public policy emerged during John Marshall’s
tenure on the Supreme Court.
Marshall was a committed Federalist who shaped the evolution
of the Constitution through three principles that formed the
basis of his jurisprudence: a commitment to judicial authority;
the supremacy of national over state legislation; and a
traditional, static view of property rights.
After Marshall proclaimed the power of judicial review in
Marbury v. Madison, the doctrine evolved slowly; the
Supreme and state courts used it sparingly and only to overturn
state laws that conflicted with constitutional principles.
62
Marshall adopted a loose construction of the Constitution and
asserted the dominance of national statutes over state
legislation (McCulloch v.Maryland, 1819, and Gibbons v.
Ogden, 1824).
Under Marshall, the Supreme Court construed the Constitution
so that it extended protection to the property rights of
individuals purchasing state-owned lands (Fletcher v. Peck,
1810, and Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819).
***In Fletcher v. Peck, John Marshall contributed to the
emergence of a national capitalist economy by expanding the
contract clause of the Constitution to include state grants and
charters, thus securing the validity of contracts across state
lines and encouraging companies to do interstate business.
63
Nationalist-minded Republicans won the allegiance of many
Federalists in the East, while Jeffersonian Republicans won the
support of western farmers and southern planters.
Chief Justice John Marshall
- was a loose constructionist.
- used the contract clause to defend property rights.
- claimed the right of judicial review.
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Although the decline of the Federalists and of party politics
prompted observers to dub James Monroe’s two terms as
president (1817–1825) as the “Era of Good Feeling,” the
Republican Party divided into a “national” faction and a
“Jeffersonian,” or state oriented, faction.
This division in the ranks of the Republican Party would
produce a second party system in which national-minded
Whigs faced off against state-focused Democrats.
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