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America: Pathways to the Present | Chapter 3: An Emerging New Nation (1783-1861)

This final review chapter covers social, economic, and religious life in the rapidly growing United States from 1783 to 1861. It focuses on how all aspects of American society contributed to increasing tension between the northern and southern regions of the country. The chapter is divided into four sections: Life in the New Nation, the Market Revolution, Religion and Reform, and the Coming of the Civil War.

Section 1: Life in the New Nation

Main Ideas

• A rapidly growing and young population spurred tremendous territorial growth.
• Innovations in industry brought social change as the northeast became more urban and industrial.
• Religious reform resulted in distinctly American forms of worship.

Summary and Analysis
Daniel Boone became an early symbol of what constituted the ideal American: courage, practical wisdom, and bottomless determination. These characteristics were needed to settle the frontier, because in the early part of the nineteenth century Americans were rapidly on the move. The population was young, growing, and ambitious to own land. Between 1780 and 1830, the population of the United States grew from approximately 2.7 million people to 12 million people; the country also grew from thirteen to twenty-four states. Settlers poured west toward the Mississippi, south to Florida, southwest to Texas, and northwest to Oregon. Although many of those areas were not actually part of the United States at first, they eventually became U.S. territory by either conquest or purchase.

The Industrial Revolution also brought many changes. New machines such as textile mills, steamboats, combustion engines, and eventually the railroad forever affected American society. As settlers began to grow food in fertile Midwestern fields, the Northeast’s less fertile cities began to depend more and more on manufacturing as their economic base. The development of better transportation in the form of steamboats, canals, roads, and railroads made it easy for goods to be shipped all over the country.

The Second Great Awakening created new—and distinctly American—denominations, including the Baptists and Methodists, which had strong evangelical Christian beliefs. Other religious denominations such as Unitarianism and Mormonism also had their beginnings in this period. Even the African Methodist Episcopal Church flourished, numbering 86 churches by 1831.

Section 2: The Market Revolution

Main Ideas:

• In the early 1800s, manufacturing and banking expanded the U.S. economy.
• Economic diversity brought added tensions between the North and South.
• Despite these tensions, a sense of nationalism continued to grow.

Summary and Analysis
Improvements in technology sparked the Industrial Revolution, and improvements in banking helped to keep it growing. The new economy, referred to as the Market Revolution, was based on a free enterprise system where most ownership and investment in companies is by private individuals and success depends on the supply and demand of the market. To accommodate the flow of money that this capitalistic system needed, the banking industry grew and developed new forms of currency.

Industry began to dominate the economy of the Northeast. The industry standard was the Lowell textile mills, which used young, unmarried women who lived in dorms as workers. Abuses of the workers in this system led to the development of labor unions to protect their interests. The South was still dominated by a rural economy that was dependent on slave labor. The economic differences in the region led to tensions as Southerners felt that attacks on slavery were part of an economic attack on the South. Northerners could not understand the Southerners’ dependence on slaves nor their fear of Northern economic domination.

Despite these differences, there was an increase in national sentiment and solidarity as evidenced by several Supreme Court decisions. McCulloch v. Maryland increased the authority of the federal government. And in foreign policy, the Monroe doctrine essentially stated that the U.S. would not interfere in Europe’s affairs as long as Europe stays out of American affairs and refrains from any further colonization of the Western Hemisphere.

In the political realm, the formation of oppositional political parties continued throughout the terms of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s term in office included two important events. The first was the implementation of the Tariff of Abominations, which was intended to discourage foreign trade and benefit American manufactures. The second event was the forced removal of Native Americans in the southeast. Called the Trail of Tears, the relocation resulted in the deaths of 15,000 Native Americans and remains one of the nation’s darkest moments.

Section 3: Religion and Reform

Main Ideas

• Powerful religious and reform movements transformed society and produced regional and ethnic tensions.
• Increased immigration also contributed to regional tensions.

Summary and Analysis
The early nineteenth century was a time of great reform movements coming from both religious and philosophical roots. Protestant revivalists under leaders such as Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher encouraged individuals to reform themselves. Other movements such as Transcendentalism, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, had a more intellectual bent and were grounded in Enlightenment philosophy. These reform movements inspired men and women to take action in several different venues, some of which were interconnected. The temperance movement existed to eliminate the use of alcohol and had some significant successes. There was also a movement to provide more public education, led by education pioneer Horace Mann. Dorothea Dix spent her time reforming prisons, while others like Robert Owen spent their time and money founding utopian communities. All of these reforms took a back seat, however, to the abolitionist movement, which was devoted to eliminating slavery. Led by outspoken men (journalist William Lloyd Garrison and former slave Frederick Douglas) and equally outspoken women (the Grimke sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sojourner Truth), the abolitionists raised the ire of the South and deepened regional resentment. All of these reform movements were characterized by the intense involvement of women, so it is not surprising that many women went on to advocate for women’s rights. In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, was the first official meeting of those concerned with obtaining rights and suffrage for women.

Increased immigration also triggered growing social divisions. A great influx of German and Irish immigrants flooded the cities and rural areas in the North and Midwest. This led to discrimination and turmoil in the North, but also created a large, inexpensive work force.

Section 4: The Coming of the Civil War

Main Ideas

• The continuing expansion of the United States exacerbated the tensions between the North and South on the issue of slavery.
• The differences between the North and South ran deeper than just the issue of slavery.
• Although Congress tried in many ways to resolve the differences between the North and South, they failed and in 1861 several Southern states seceded from the Union, beginning the Civil War.

Summary and Analysis
Over the period between 1783 and 1861, the United States continued to add territory and settle it. Soon after the end of the Mexican War, with the Gadsden Purchase, which added what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, the nation reached its present day boundaries. Expansion into the new territories brought both slave-owning settlers and abolitionists into conflict when these regions sought statehood. Would they be slave-holding states, or non-slave-holding states? The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had tried to solve this issue, but did not hold as settlers continued to move west. Congress then introduced the Compromise of 1850, which had five separate laws regulating slavery in the territories. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress ruled that territories could decide for themselves on the slavery issue. This led to terrible violence in "Bleeding Kansas" as the sides raided and attacked each other. Finally, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court rendered all these laws null and void because it ruled that Congress had no power to ban slavery anywhere since slaves were personal property. Northerners were horrified.

The differences between North and South were deeper than slavery, however. The South believed that the North was trying to control the nation at the South’s expense. The North had a stronger economy based on industry, a larger more diverse population because most immigrants went to the North, and significantly more technology than the South. Southerners felt that their entire way of life was under attack.

The Nation had become very divided by 1861, and when Abraham Lincoln, a member of the newly formed Republican Party (formed by antislavery Northerners) won the Presidential elections, several of the Southern states had had enough. They formally withdrew from the Union, and the country waited to see what Lincoln would do. The Civil War had come.

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