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845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). A polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated settlement and forced relocation of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.[1]
Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his toughness and aggressive personality; he fought in duels, some fatal to his opponents.[2] He was a wealthy slaveholder. He fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy, adding to his appeal to common citizens. He expanded the spoils system during his presidency to strengthen his political base.
Elected president in 1828, Jackson supported a small and limited federal government. He strengthened the power of the presidency, which he saw as spokesman for the entire population, as opposed to Congressmen from a specific small district. He was supportive of states' rights, but during the Nullification Crisis, declared that states do not have the right to nullify federal laws. Strongly against the national bank, he vetoed the renewal of its charter and ensured its collapse. Whigs and moralists denounced his aggressive enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Historians acknowledge his protection of popular democracy and individual liberty for United States citizens, but criticize him for his support for slavery and for his role in Indian removal.[3][4] |
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(July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829). He served as American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former President John Adams and Abigail Adams. As a diplomat, Adams played an important role in negotiating many international treaties, most notably the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated with the United Kingdom over America's northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, and authored the Monroe Doctrine. Historians agree he was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history.[3][4]
As president, he sought to modernize the American economy and promoted education. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt.[5] He was stymied by a Congress controlled by his enemies, and his lack of patronage networks helped politicians eager to undercut him. He lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson. In doing so, he became the first president since his father to serve a single term.
Adams is best known as a diplomat who shaped America's foreign policy in line with his ardently nationalist commitment to America's republican values. More recently Howe (2007) portrayed Adams as the exemplar and moral leader in an era of modernization. During Adams' lifetime, technological innovations and new means of communication spread messages of religious revival, social reform, and party politics. Goods, money, and people traveled more rapidly and efficiently than ever before.[6]
Adams was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts after leaving office, serving for the last 17 years of his life with far greater acclamation than he had achieved as president. He is, so far, the only president later elected to the United States House of Representatives (though John Tyler was elected to the House of Representatives of the Confederate States just before his death in 1862). Animated by his growing revulsion against slavery,[7] Adams became a leading opponent of the Slave Power. He predicted that if a civil war were to break out, the president could abolish slavery by using his war powers. Adams also predicted the Union's dissolution over the slavery issue, but said that if the South became independent there would be a series of bloody slave revolts.[8] |
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was passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. Prior to the agreement, the House of Representatives had refused to accept this compromise, and a conference committee was appointed.
A bill to enable the people of the Missouri Territory to draft a constitution and form a government preliminary to admission into the Union came before the House of Representatives in Committee of the Whole, on February 13, 1819. James Tallmadge of New York offered an amendment (named the Tallmadge Amendment), that forbade further introduction of slaves into Missouri, and mandated that all children of slave parents born in the state after its admission should be free at the age of 25. The committee adopted the measure and incorporated it into the bill as finally passed on February 17, 1819, by the house. The United States Senate refused to concur with the amendment, and the whole measure was lost.
During the following session (1819–1820), the House passed a similar bill with an amendment, introduced on January 26, 1820, by John W. Taylor of New York, allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state. The question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama, a slave state, making the number of slave and free states equal. In addition, there was a bill in passage through the House (January 3, 1820) to admit Maine as a free state.
The Senate decided to connect the two measures. It passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, excluding slavery from the Missouri Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north (the southern boundary of Missouri), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri. |
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was the first major financial crisis in the United States,[1] and occurred during the political calm of the Era of Good Feelings. The new nation previously had faced a depression in the late 1780s, following the war of independence, which had led directly to the establishment of the dollar and, perhaps indirectly, to the calls for a Constitutional Convention. It had also experienced another severe economic downturn in the late 1790s, following the Panic of 1797. In the earlier crisis however, the primary cause of economic turmoil originated in foreign trade and the broader Atlantic economy.[2] These crises and others had resulted from international conflicts such as the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812, and had caused widespread domestic foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and a slump in agriculture and manufacturing. However, things would change for the US economy after the Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816,[3] in response to the spread of banknotes issued by private banks, due to inflation brought on by the debt following the war.[4] In contrast, the causes of the Panic of 1819 largely originated within the U.S. economy. The panic marked the end of the economic expansion that had followed the war and ushered in new financial policies that would shape economic development.
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s a term of periodization used by historians and political scientists to name the political party system existing in the United States from about 1828 to 1854, after the First Party System. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by Election Day turnout, rallies, partisan newspapers, and a high degree of personal loyalty to party.[1][2]
The major parties were the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, assembled by Henry Clay from the National Republicans and other opponents of Jackson. Minor parties included the Anti-Masonic Party, which was an important innovator from 1827 to 1834; the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840; and the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852. The Second Party System reflected and shaped the political, social, economic and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era, until succeeded by the Third Party System. |
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originally called "The American Way", was an economic plan that played a prominent role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century. Rooted in the "American School" ideas of Alexander Hamilton, the plan "consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other 'internal improvements' to develop profitable markets for agriculture."[1] Congressman Henry Clay was the plan's foremost proponent and the first to refer to it as the “American System”.
A plan to strengthen and unify the nation, the American System was advanced by the Democratic-Republican Party and a number of leading politicians including Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. The System was a new form of federalism that included:
Support for a high tariff to protect American industries and generate revenue for the federal government
Maintenance of high public land prices to generate federal revenue
Preservation of the Bank of the United States to stabilize the currency and rein in risky state and local banks
Development of a system of internal improvements (such as roads and canals) which would knit the nation together and be financed by the tariff and land sales revenues. |
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| was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s,[1] the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism. This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because "Whig" was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who identified as opposing tyranny.[2] The Whig Party counted among its members such national political luminaries as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and their preeminent leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also nominated war hero generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Abraham Lincoln was the chief Whig leader in frontier Illinois. |
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established in 1876, was one of the first Marxist-influenced political parties in the United States. It is remembered as the forerunner of the Socialist Labor Party of America.
The WPUS was formed in 1876, when a congress of socialists from around the United States met in Philadelphia in an attempt to unify their political power. Seven societies sent representatives, and within four days the party was formed under the name of the Workingmen's Party of the United States. The party, composed mostly of foreign-born laborers, represented a collection of socialist ideas from different groups, most notably followers of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. The Lassallean faction believed in forming a Socialist political party to advance their agenda incrementally through the electoral process. Marxian Socialists, however, did not believe it worthwhile to form a political party within a capitalist system. They championed strong trade unions, strikes and boycotts. |
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| was a leader in the Second Great Awakening. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism.[1] Finney was best known as an innovative revivalist, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor of women and African-Americans, a religious writer, and president at Oberlin College. |
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was a Protestant revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800, and, after 1820 membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the 1840s. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism and rational Christianity, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood.[1]
The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be saved through revivals, repentance, and conversion. It enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[2]
People at the time talked about the Awakening; historians named the Second Great Awakening in the context of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and '40s and of the Third Great Awakening of the late 1850s to early 1900s. |
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(or "Factory Girls," as they called themselves) were female workers who came to work for the textile corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The women initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, between the ages of seventeen and twenty five. By 1840, at the height of the Industrial revolution, the textile mills had recruited over 8,000 women, who came to make up nearly seventy-five percent of the mill workforce.
During the early period, women came to the mills of their own accord, for various reasons: to help a brother pay for college, for the educational opportunities offered in Lowell, or to earn supplementary income for themselves. While their wages were only half of what men were paid, many were able to attain economic independence for the first time, free the controlling influence of fathers and husbands. As a result, while factory life would soon come to be experienced as oppressive, it enabled these women to challenge the myths of female inferiority and dependence.
As the nature of the new "factory system" became clear, however, many women joined the broader American labor movement, to protest the dramatic social changes being wrought by the Industrial Revolution. While they decried the deteriorating factory conditions, worker unrest in the 1840s was directed mainly against the loss of control over economic life. This loss of control, which came with the dependence on the corporations for a wage, was experienced as an attack on their dignity and independence. In 1845, after a number of protests and strikes, many operatives came together to form the first union of working in the United States, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. The Association adopted a newspaper called the Voice of Industry, in which workers published sharp critiques of the new industrialism. The Voice stood in sharp contrast to other literary magazines published by female operatives, such as the Lowell Offering, which painted a sanguine picture of life in the mills. |
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means of subcontracting work. Historically it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the work in off-site facilities, either in their own homes or in workshops with multiple craftsmen.
It was used in the English and American textile industries, in shoe making, lock-making trades and making parts for small firearms from the Industrial Revolution until the mid 19th century; however, after the invention of the sewing machine in 1846, the system lingered on for the making of ready made men's clothing.[1]
The domestic system was suited to pre-urban times because workers did not have to travel from home to work which was quite impracticable due to the state of roads and footpaths and members of the household spent many hours in farm or household tasks. Early factory owners sometimes had to build dormitories to house workers, especially girls and women. Putting-out workers had some flexibility to balance farm and household chores with the putting-out work, this being especially important in winter.
The development of this trend is often considered to be a form of proto-industrialization and remained prominent until the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century.
At that point, it underwent name and geographical changes. However, bar some technological advancements, the putting-out system has not changed in essential practice. Contemporary examples can be found in China, India and South America, and are not limited to the textiles industry. |
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s the Southampton Insurrection) was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia during August 1831.[1] Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55–65 white people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the South. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for over two months afterward.
In the aftermath, there was widespread fear, and white militias organized in retaliation against slaves. The state executed 56 slaves accused of being part of the rebellion. In the frenzy, many innocent enslaved people were punished. At least 100 blacks, and possibly up to 200, were killed by militias and mobs. Across the South, state legislatures passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services. |
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The 1811 German Coast Uprising, which took place outside of New Orleans in 1811, involved up to 500 slaves. It was suppressed by volunteer militias and a detachment of the United States Army. They killed 66 black men in the battle, executed 16, and 17 escaped and/or were killed along the way to freedom.
Although only involving about seventy slaves, the Turner's 1831 rebellion is considered to be a devastating event in American history. Over sixty people were killed causing the slave-holding south to go into a panic. Fifty-five men women and children were killed as Turner and his fellow rebel slaves rampaged from plantation to plantation throughout Virginia. Fears afterward led to new legislation passed by southern states prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves, and reducing the rights of free people of color. Turner and the other slaves were eventually stopped as their ammunition ran out. Resulting in the hanging of about eighteen slaves, including Nat Turner himself.
John Brown had already fought against pro-slavery forces in Kansas for several years when he decided to lead a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (West Virginia was not yet a state). This raid was a joint attack by former slaves, freed blacks, and white men who had corresponded with slaves on plantations in order to form a general uprising among slaves. It almost succeeded, had it not been for Brown's delay, and hundreds of slaves left their plantations to join Brown's force - and others left their plantations to join Brown in an escape to the mountains. Eventually, due to a tactical error by Brown, their force was quelled. But directly following this, slave disobedience and the number of runaways increased markedly in Virginia.[12]
The historian Steven Hahn proposes that the self-organized involvement of slaves in the Union Army during the American Civil War composed a slave rebellion that dwarfed all others.[13] Similarly, tens of thousands of slaves joined British forces or escaped to British lines during the American Revolution, sometimes using the disruption of war to gain freedom. For instance, when the British evacuated from Charleston and Savannah, they took 10,000 slaves with them. They also evacuated slaves from New York, taking more than 3,000 for resettlement to Nova Scotia, where they were recorded as Black Loyalists and given land grants.[14] |
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behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person or group's liberty or autonomy. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority.[1][2]
The word paternalism is from the Latin pater for father, though paternalism should be distinguished from patriarchy. Paternalism is sometimes thought appropriate towards children and paternalism towards adults is sometimes thought to treat them as if they were children.[3]
Examples of paternalism include laws requiring the use of motorcycle helmets, a parent forbidding their children to engage in dangerous activities, and a psychiatrist confiscating sharp objects from someone who is suicidally depressed. |
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| meaning that slaves were treated like animals... -_- :'( |
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Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Irish Catholic immigration. In 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes. In New York City, an Order of United Americans was founded as a nativist fraternity, following the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of the preceding spring and summer, in December, 1844.[13]
In 1849–50 Charles B. Allen founded a nativist society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner in New York City. In order to join the Order, a man had to be twenty-one, a Protestant, a believer in God, and willing to obey without question the dictates of the order. Members of the Order became known as the Know Nothings (a label applied to them because if asked they said they "know nothing about" the secret society).[13]
The Nativists went public in 1854 when they formed the 'American Party', which was especially hostile to the immigration of Irish Catholics and campaigned for laws to require longer wait time between immigration and naturalization. (The laws never passed.) It was at this time that the term "nativist" first appears, opponents denounced them as "bigoted nativists." Former President Millard Fillmore ran on the American Party ticket for the Presidency in 1856. The American Party also included many ex-Whigs who ignored nativism, and included (in the South) a few Catholics whose families had long lived in America. Conversely, much of the opposition to Catholics came from Protestant Irish immigrants and German Lutheran immigrants who were not native at all and can hardly be called "nativists."[14]
This form of nationalism is often identified with xenophobia and anti-Catholic sentiment (anti-Papism). In Charlestown, Massachusetts, a nativist mob attacked and burned down a Catholic convent in 1834 (no one was injured). In the 1840s, small scale riots between Catholics and nativists took place in several American cities. In Philadelphia in 1844, for example, a series of nativist assaults on Catholic churches and community centers resulted in the loss of lives and the professionalization of the police force. In Louisville, Kentucky, election-day rioters killed at least 22 people in attacks on German and Irish Catholics on Aug. 6, 1855, in what became known as "Bloody Monday."[15] Nativist sentiment experienced a revival in the 1890s, led by Protestant Irish immigrants hostile to Catholic immigration.[16] |
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... an ideology that defines and prescribes separate spheres for women and men. Culturally located in Europe and North America,[2] it emerged as a distinct ideology during the Industrial Revolution, although the basic idea of gendered separation of spheres is much older.
The notion of separate spheres dictates that men, based primarily on their biological makeup as well as the will of God, inhabit the public sphere – the world of politics, economy, commerce, and law. Women's "proper sphere", according to the ideology, is the private realm of domestic life, child-rearing, housekeeping, and religious education.[3][4] The separate spheres ideology presumes that women and men are inherently different and that the sex differences as well as the resulting separation of spheres are "natural". |
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was an early and influential women's rights convention, the first to be organized by women in the Western world, in Seneca Falls, New York, July 19–20, 1848. It was planned by local New York women upon the occasion of a visit by Philadelphia-based Lucretia Mott, a Quaker famous for her orating ability, a skill rarely cultivated by American women at the time. The local women, primarily members of a radical Quaker group, organized the meeting along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a skeptical non-Quaker who followed logic more than religion.
The meeting spanned two days and six sessions, and included a lecture on law, a humorous presentation, and multiple discussions about the role of women in society. Stanton and the Quaker women presented two prepared documents, the Declaration of Sentiments and an accompanying list of resolutions, to be debated and modified before being put forward for signatures. A heated debate sprang up regarding women's right to vote, with many including Mott urging the removal of this concept, but Frederick Douglass argued eloquently for its inclusion, and the suffrage resolution was retained. Exactly 100 of approximately 300 attendees signed the document, mostly women.
The convention was seen by some of its contemporaries, including featured speaker Mott, as but a single step in the continuing effort by women to gain for themselves a greater proportion of social, civil and moral rights,[1] but it was viewed by others as a revolutionary beginning to the struggle by women for complete equality with men. Afterward, Stanton presented the resulting Declaration of Sentiments as a foundational document in the American woman's suffrage movement, and she promoted the event as the first time that women and men gathered together to demand the right for women to vote. Stanton's authoring of the History of Woman Suffrage helped to establish the Seneca Falls Convention as the moment when the push for women's suffrage first gained national prominence.[1] By 1851, at the second National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, the issue of women's right to vote had become a central tenet of the women's rights movement.[2] |
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A global utopia of world peace is often seen as one of the possible endings of history. Within the localized political structures or spheres it presents, "polyculturalism" is the model-based adaptation of possible interactions with different cultures and identities in accordance with the principles of participatory society.[5]
The Soviet writer Ivan Efremov produced during the "Thaw" period the science-fiction utopia Andromeda (1957) in which a united humanity communicates with a galaxy-wide Great Circle and develops its technology and culture within a social framework characterized by vigorous competition between alternative philosophies.
The communes of the 1960s in the United States were often an attempt to greatly improve the way humans live together in communities. The back to the land movements and hippies inspired many to try to live in peace and harmony on farms, remote areas, and to set up new types of governance.
Intentional communities were organized and built all over the world with the hope of making a more perfect way of living together. However, many of these new small communities failed, but some are growing like the Twelve Tribes Communities that started in the United States and have grown to many tribes around the world. |
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| is an interpretation of chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation which sees Christ's second coming as occurring after (Latin post-) the "Millennium", a Golden Age in which Christian ethics prosper. The term subsumes several similar views of the end times, and it stands in contrast to premillennialism and, to a lesser extent, amillennialism (see Summary of Christian eschatological differences). Postmillenialism is a relatively rare belief compared to premillennialism and amillenialism, which are well-established in Protestant, Orthodox Church, and Catholic Church theological circles. |
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| postmillennialism key ideasszz xxx |
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Although some postmillennialists hold to a literal millennium of 1,000 years, others postmillennialists see the thousand years more as a figurative term for a long period of time (similar in that respect to amillennialism). Among those holding to a non-literal "millennium" it is usually understood to have already begun, which implies a less obvious and less dramatic kind of millennium than that typically envisioned by premillennialists, as well as a more unexpected return of Christ.
Postmillennialism also teaches that the forces of Satan will gradually be defeated by the expansion of the Kingdom of God throughout history up until the second coming of Christ. This belief that good will gradually triumph over evil has led proponents of postmillennialism to label themselves "optimillennialists" in contrast to "pessimillennial" premillennialists and amillennialists.
Many postmillennialists also adopt some form of preterism, which holds that many of the end times prophecies in the Bible have already been fulfilled. Several key postmillennialists, however, did not adopt preterism with respect to the Book of Revelation, among them B. B. Warfield, Francis Nigel Lee, and Rousas John Rushdoony. |
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| Sarah Grimke & Angelina Grimke |
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Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were 19th-century Southern American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights.
They were born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Sarah Moore Grimke was born on November 26, 1792 and Angelina Emily Grimke was born on February 20, 1805. Throughout their lives, they traveled throughout the North, lecturing about their first hand experiences with slavery on their family's plantation. Among the first women to act publicly in social reform movements, they received abuse and ridicule for their abolitionist activity. They both realized that women would have to create a safe space in the public arena to be effective reformers. They became early activists in the women's rights movement. |
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(April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852), was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives. He served three different terms as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and was also Secretary of State from 1825 to 1829. He lost his campaigns for president in 1824, 1832 and 1844.
Clay was a dominant figure in both the First and Second Party systems. As a leading war hawk in 1812, he favored war with Britain and played a significant role in leading the nation to war in the War of 1812.[1] In 1824 he ran for president and lost, but threw his electoral votes to John Quincy Adams, who made him secretary of state as the Jacksonians denounced what they considered a "corrupt bargain." He ran and lost again in 1832 and 1844 as the candidate of the Whig Party, which he founded and usually dominated. Clay was the foremost proponent of the American System, fighting for an increase in tariffs to foster industry in the United States, the use of federal funding to build and maintain infrastructure, and a strong national bank. He opposed the annexation of Texas, fearing it would inject the slavery issue into politics. Clay also opposed the Mexican-American War and the "Manifest Destiny" policy of Democrats, which cost him votes in the close 1844 election. Dubbed the "Great Pacificator," Clay brokered important compromises during the Nullification Crisis and on the slavery issue. As part of the "Great Triumvirate" or "Immortal Trio," along with his colleagues Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun, he was instrumental in formulating the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. He was viewed as the primary representative of Western interests in this group, and was given the names "Henry of the West" and "The Western Star."[2] A plantation owner, Clay held slaves during his lifetime but freed them in his Will.[3]
Abraham Lincoln, the Whig leader in Illinois, was a great admirer of Clay, saying he was "my ideal of a great man." Lincoln wholeheartedly supported Clay's economic programs.[4] In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Clay as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft. |
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was an independent sovereign nation in North America which existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846. It was bordered by the nation of Mexico to the southwest, the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, the two US states of Louisiana and Arkansas to the east and northeast, and the United States territories encompassing the current US states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico to the north and west.
Formed as a separate nation after gaining independence from Mexico in 1836, the republic claimed borders that included all of the present US state of Texas as well as parts of present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico based upon the Treaties of Velasco between the newly created Texas Republic and Mexico. The eastern boundary with the United States was defined by the Adams-Onís Treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819. Its southern and western-most boundary with Mexico was under dispute throughout the entire existence of the republic with Texas claiming the boundary as the Rio Grande (known as the Río Bravo del Norte or Río Bravo in Mexico), and Mexico claiming the boundary as the Nueces River. This dispute would later become a trigger for the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848 between Mexico and the United States after the annexation of Texas by the United States on December 29, 1845. |
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May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who used violent actions to fight slavery.[1] During 1856 in Kansas, Brown commanded forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie.[1] Brown's followers also killed five pro-slavery supporters at Pottawatomie.[1] In 1859, Brown led an unsuccessful raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry that ended with his capture.[1] Brown's trial resulted in his conviction and a sentence of death by hanging.[1]
Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five pro-slavery Southerners and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty on all counts and was hanged. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of the abolitionist iceberg and represented the wishes of the Republican Party to end slavery. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that, a year later, led to secession and the American Civil War.
Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who advocated peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown demanded violent action in response to Southern aggression. He believed he was the instrument of God's wrath in punishing men for the sin of owning slaves.[2]
Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he said, "These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!" [3] During the Kansas campaign he and his supporters killed five pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856 in response to the raid of the "free soil" city of Lawrence. In 1859 he led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. During the raid, he seized the armory; seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local pro slavery farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces seized the nation's attention, as Southerners feared it was just the first of many Northern plots to cause a slave rebellion that might endanger their lives, while Republicans dismissed the notion and said they would not interfere with slavery in the South.[4]
Historians agree John Brown played a major role in the start of the Civil War. Historian David Potter (1976) said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the Lincoln–Douglas debates, and that his raid revealed a deep division between North and South.[5] Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today. He is sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist.[6] Historians debate whether he was "America's first domestic terrorist".[7]
Some writers, such as Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot, others, such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation." David S. Reynolds hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free."[8] The song "John Brown's Body" made him a heroic martyr and was a popular Union marching song during the Civil War. |
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or the Border War, was a series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of Missouri between 1854 and 1861. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a proxy war between Northerners and Southerners also known as the dark side hatters over the issue of slavery in the United States. The term "Bleeding Kansas" was coined by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune; the events it encompasses directly presaged the American Civil War.
Congress had long struggled to balance the interests of slaveholders and abolitionists. The events later known as Bleeding Kansas were set into motion by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which nullified the Missouri Compromise and instead implemented the concept of popular sovereignty. An ostensibly democratic idea, popular sovereignty stated that the inhabitants of each territory or state should decide whether it would be a free or slave state; however, this resulted in immigration en masse to Kansas by activists from both sides. At one point, Kansas had two separate governments, each with its own constitution, although only one was federally recognized. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, less than three months before the Battle of Fort Sumter which began the Civil War. |
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April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician from Illinois. He was a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee for President in the 1860 election, losing to Republican Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in a Senate contest, noted for the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because though short in physical stature, he was a forceful and dominant figure in politics.
Douglas was well known as a resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of legislation. He was a leading proponent of democracy, and believed in the principle of popular sovereignty: that the majority of citizens should decide contentious issues such as slavery and territorial expansion. As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues. However, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened some previously prohibited territories to slavery under popular sovereignty. Opposition to this led to the formation of the Republican Party.
Douglas initially endorsed the Dred Scott decision of 1857. But during the 1858 Senate campaign, he argued its effect could be negated by popular sovereignty.[1] He also opposed the efforts of President James Buchanan and his Southern allies to enact a Federal slave code and impose the Lecompton Constitution on Kansas.
In 1860, the conflict over slavery led to the split in the Democratic Party in the 1860 Convention. Hardline pro-slavery Southerners rejected Douglas, and nominated their own candidate, Vice President John C. Breckinridge, while the Northern Democrats nominated Douglas. Douglas deeply believed in democracy, arguing the will of the people should always be decisive.[2] When civil war came in April 1861, he rallied his supporters to the Union with all his energies, but he died a few weeks later. |
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a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio.
The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party in 1854. |
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one of the major events leading to the American Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed lands in south Texas and New Mexico east of the Rio Grande.[1]
Congressman David Wilmot first introduced the Proviso in the United States House of Representatives on August 8, 1846 as a rider on a $2,000,000 appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican–American War. (In fact this was only three months into the two-year war.) It passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the South had greater representation. It was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the House and failed in the Senate. In 1848, an attempt to make it part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also failed. Sectional conflict over slavery in the Southwest continued up to the Compromise of 1850. |
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is the principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with republicanism and social contract philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect or describe a political reality.[1] It is usually contrasted with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, and with individual sovereignty.
Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."[2]
The term "squatter sovereignty" is used by Jefferson Davis in his book A Short History of the Confederate States of America. This term referred to the influx of new citizens in order to manipulate the ultimate sovereign votes. At the 1860 Democratic National Convention, William L. Yancey used the phrase "squatter sovereignty" in a speech he gave.[3]
Popular sovereignty also can be described as the voice of the people. |
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The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederacy, was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by a number of Southern slave states that had declared their secession from the United States. The Confederacy recognized, as members, 11 states that had formally declared secession, two additional states with less formal declarations, and one new territory. The Confederacy was eventually defeated in the American Civil War against the Union (the U.S.). Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a compact among states, an agreement which each state could abandon without consultation. The United States government rejected secession as illegal. Following the Confederate attack at Fort Sumter, the Union used military action to defeat the Confederacy. No foreign nation officially recognized the Confederacy as an independent country,[1] but several did grant belligerent status.
The Confederate Constitution of seven state signatories—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas—formed a "permanent federal government" in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1861. In response to a call by U. S. President Abraham Lincoln for troops from each state to recapture Sumter and other lost federal properties in the South, four additional slave-holding states—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina—declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states. Also aligned with the Confederacy were the Five Civilized Tribes and a new Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts to secede in Maryland were halted by martial law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty, did not attempt it. A Unionist government in western parts of Virginia organized the new state of West Virginia which was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863. The Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia had an uneasy relationship with its member states because of issues related to control of manpower, although the South mobilized nearly its entire white male population for war.[3]
Confederate control over its claimed territory and population steadily shrank from 73% to 34% during the course of the Civil War due to the successful Union overland campaigns, their control of inland waterways into the South and the seacoast Union blockade. These created an insurmountable disadvantage in men and supplies and finance. Public support of the Jefferson Davis administration eroded over time with repeated military reverses, economic hardship and charges of autocratic government. Richmond fell after four years of Union campaigns in April 1865, and shortly afterwards, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and with that the Confederacy effectively collapsed. Four years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that secession was illegal, and that the Confederacy had never legally existed.[4][5]
The U.S. Congress began a decade-long process known as Reconstruction which some scholars treat as an extension of the Civil War. It lasted throughout the administrations of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Grant, and saw the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to free slaves, the Fourteenth to guarantee dual U.S. and state citizenship to all, and the Fifteenth to guarantee the right to vote in states. The war left the South economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure and exhausted resources. The region remained well below national levels of prosperity until after World War II. |
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| is the name widely applied to an outline strategy for subduing the seceding states in the American Civil War. Proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized the blockade of the Southern ports, and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by the vociferous faction who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and who likened it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim. The snake image caught on, giving the proposal its popular name. |
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can refer to secession of a state from the United States, secession of part of a state from that state to form a new state, or secession of an area from a city or county.
Attempts at or aspirations of secession from the United States have been a feature of the country's politics since its birth. Some have argued for a constitutional right of secession and others for a natural right of revolution. The United States Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional while commenting that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession.
The one serious secession movement was defeated in the American Civil War. In 1860 and 1861, eleven of the fifteen southern declared their secession from the United States and joined together as the Confederate States of America. It collapsed in 1865 after losing the war with the northern states.[1]
A 2008 Zogby International poll revealed that 22% of Americans believed that "any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic." |
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(February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.
After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860. With almost no support in the South, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy. The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. Lincoln explained in his second inaugural address: "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came." |
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When the North enthusiastically rallied behind the national flag after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war effort. His goal was now to reunite the nation. As the South was in a state of insurrection, Lincoln exercised his authority to suspend habeas corpus, arresting and temporarily detaining thousands of suspected secessionists without trial. Lincoln averted British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair in late 1861. His efforts toward the abolition of slavery include issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, encouraging the border states to outlaw slavery, and helping push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which finally freed all the slaves nationwide in December 1865. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln brought leaders of the major factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Under Lincoln's leadership, the Union set up a naval blockade that shut down the South's normal trade, took control of the border slave states at the start of the war, gained control of communications with gunboats on the southern river systems, and tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865.
An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, Lincoln reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election. As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln found his policies and personality were "blasted from all sides": Radical Republicans demanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death.[3] Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people with his powers of oratory.[4] His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history.[5] It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. Six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, however, Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's death was the first assassination of a U.S. president and sent the nation into mourning. Lincoln has been consistently ranked by scholars and the public as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents, the others being George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
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| in many books the town is called "Harper's Ferry" with an apostrophe-s.[1]) was an attempt by the white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accomplished by 20 men in his party, was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan would fail.[2] |
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| refers to the violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by tensions during Reconstruction following the American Civil War.[1] After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black soldiers recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white civilians and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freed slaves. Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, including 46 blacks and 2 whites killed, 75 persons injured, over 100 persons robbed, 5 women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools burned.[2] Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000. Public attention following the riots and reports of the atrocities influenced the rapid proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[ |
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were laws in the United States after the Civil War with the effect of limiting the civil rights and civil liberties of blacks. Even though the U.S. constitution originally discriminated against blacks and both Northern and Southern states had passed discriminatory legislation from the early 19th century, the term "Black Codes" is used most often to refer to legislation passed by Southern states at the end of the Civil War to control the labor, migration and other activities of newly-freed slaves.
In Texas, these codes were enacted in 1866, right after the Civil War. The legislation reaffirmed the inferior position that slaves and free blacks had held in antebellum Texas and was intended to regulate black labor. The codes reflected the unwillingness of white Texans to accept blacks as equals and also their fears that freedmen would not work unless coerced. Thus the codes continued legal discrimination between whites and blacks. The legislature, when it amended the 1856 penal code, emphasized the continuing line between whites and blacks by defining all individuals with one-eighth or more black ancestry as persons of color, subject to special provisions in the law.[1]
Though varying from state to state, they each endeavored to secure a steady supply of cheap labor, and continued to assume the inferiority of the freed slaves. The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been in effect. The premise behind chattel slavery in America was that slaves were property, and, as such, they had few, if any, legal rights. The slave codes, in their many loosely-defined forms, were seen as effective tools against slave unrest, particularly as a hedge against uprisings and runaways. Enforcement of slave codes also varied, but corporal punishment was widely and harshly employed to great effect |
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