Richardson Unit 4 1800-1846 Group 2

Congress passed this act to give America quicker means of delivery of packages and bank notes. If the Post Office Act had not been passed then America would not have a postal service, thus causing people to make independent deliveries.

Expansion of the franchise (right to vote) dramatically symbolized the Democratic Revolution. By the 1830's, most states allowed nearly all white men to vote. Nowhere else in the world did ordinary farmers and wage earners exercise such political influence. Political parties provided voters with the means to express their preferences. If this wouldn't have happened, then the rise of democracy wouldn't have happened which means that both political machines and the spoils system wouldn't have been created.

In the midst of the tariff crisis, Jackson faced a major challenge from politicians who supported the Second Bank of the United States. The bank was privately managed and operated under a twenty year charter from the federal government. The role of the bank was to stabilize the nation's money supply, which consisted mainly of notes and bills of credit- in effect, paper money, issued by state chartered banks. Those banks promised to redeem notes on demand with hard money (gold or silver coins minted by U.S. or foreign governments) but there were few coins in circulation. By collecting those notes and regularly demanding specie, the Second Bank kept the state banks from issuing too much paper money and depreciating its value. If this wouldn't have happened, then Jackson wouldn't have vetoed the rechartering bill, the bank wouldn't have been destroyed, and Jackson wouldn't have won major support.

National bank with multiple branches chartered in 1816 for twenty years. Intended to help regulate the economy, the bank became a major issue in Andrew Jackson’s reelection campaign in 1832. If the Second Bank had not been established, then the nations money supply would not have been stabilized, thus banks did not issue too much paper money which kept money from depreciating its value.

Large battle of the Adams administration came over tariffs. If the tariff battle had not happened, then there would not have been taxes on imports of cheap English cotton cloth and other imports of iron goods/more expensive woolen and cotton textiles respectively,thus prices would not have been high in the south.

Widespread award of public jobs to political supporters after an electoral victory. If there would not have been a spoils system, then a lot of political support would not have been gained for legislative reasons, thus the outcome of Van Buren's/Jackson's presidency could've been very different.

Five Republican candidates campaigned for the presidency. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and General Andrew Jackson. If John Quincy Adams wouldn't have been elected, then the Tariff of Abominations wouldn't have been created and people wouldn't have elected democrat Martin Van Buren in the Election of 1828.

Adams called for bold national action. He called for the establishment of a national university in Washington, scientific explorations in the far west, and a uniform standard of weights and measures. Adams endorsed Henry Clay's American System which included protective tariffs to stimulate manufacturing, federally subsidized roads and canals to facilitate commerce, and a national bank to control credit and provide a uniform currency. If he wouldn't have been president, then people in America wouldn't have been angry. The Tariff of Abominations wouldn't have been created and Van Buren wouldn't have spoken about his opposition of a consolidated government.

White voices throughout the South and Midwest demanded the resettlement of Indian peoples west of the Mississippi River. Removal to the West seemed the only way to protect Indians from alcoholism, financial exploitation, and cultural decline. However, most Indians did not want to leave their ancestral lands. If this wouldn't have happened, then Cherokee Indians wouldn't have resisted against white men, and Jackson wouldn't have pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia wouldn't have happened, and the Trail of Tears wouldn't have existed.

In this election, the Jacksonian campaign and Tariff of Abominations made Andrew Jackson to be the favorite among voters and achieve presidency. If the election of 1828 hadn’t happened, then Jackson would not have been elected president, thus removing the democratic party from presidency in general.

Andrew Jackson opposed national banking and succeeded in destroying the Second Bank of America by taking out all of their gold and silver and distributing among state banks. If Jackson had not destroyed the bank then it wouldn’t have taken away national banking in his presidency, thus preventing the controversial actions he took to act independently from Congress and possibly illegally.

Election where the Whigs faced Martin Van Buren for presidency in 1836. If this election had not happened, then Van Buren would not have gotten voted into office, thus it would not have been clear that the party’s ideas of economic and moral improvement won favor not only from middle-class citizens but also to farmers and laborers with little money.

The panic began when the Bank of New England tried to boost the faltering British economy by sharply curtailing the flow of money and credit to the United States. Since 1822, British manufacturers had extended credit to southern planters to expand cotton production, and British investors had purchased millions of dollars of canal bonds from northern states. Suddenly deprived of British funds, American planters, merchants, and canal corporations had to withdraw gold from domestic banks to pay their foreign debts. If this wouldn't have happened, then Democrats wouldn't have been blamed for the problem, and the Specie Circular wouldn't have been put into place to save America's economy.

Westward trek of Cherokees from their lands in Georgia to Oklahoma in. Almost a fourth of the Cherokees died on the way. If the Trail of Tears had not happened, then eastern tribes would not have moved west of the Mississippi, thus citizenship in Indian acquired land would not have been racially classified as the U.S. was a white man land.

Whigs exploited Van Buren's weakness. In 1840, they organized their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison of Ohio for president and John Tyler of Virginia for vice president. Whig leaders Henry Clay and Daniel Webster wanted a president who would rubber stamp their program for protective tariffs and a national bank. The depression stacked the political cards against Van Buren, but the election turned as much on style as on substance. The Log Cabin Campaign was the first time two well organized parties competed for votes through a new style of campaigning. If this wouldn't have happened, then more men wouldn't have voted and Harrison wouldn't have been voted into the White House.

Provoked more animosity, known as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were utopians with a much more conservative social agenda-continuing the traditional patriarchal family. If Joseph Smith had not founded the Mormon Church , then the idea would not have spread to Nauvoo, IL, thus creating the largest utopian community in the U.S. with 30,000 inhabitants.

The factions siding with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson battled to gain voting favor among the states by creating new tariffs to protect farmers and manufacturers from an economic overtake of British goods, such as the Tariff of 1816 by the Adams administration and the Tariff of 1828 supported by the Jacksonians of the north. If the Tariff Battle hadn’t happened then John Quincy Adams wouldn’t have lost favor of the south, thus increasing chance of being reelected in 1828.

The Lyceum Movement was sparked by Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed in a single God and caused transcendentalist beliefs, which was an intellectual movement in New England. If the lyceum movement hadn’t happened then people would not have written influential books, thus preventing the intellectual movement.

Like many social movements of the era, Mormonism emerged from religious ferment among families of Puritan descent who lived along the Erie Canal and who were heirs to a religious tradition that believed in a world of wonders, supernatural powers, and visions of the divine. The founder of the Latter-day Church, Joseph Smith Jr, was born in Vermont to a poor farming and shoe-keeping family that migrated to Palmyra in central New York. In 1830, he published The Book of Mormon, which he claimed to have translated from ancient hieroglyphics on gold plates shown to him by an angel named Moroni. The Book of Mormon told the story of an ancient Jewish civilization from the Middle East that had migrated to the Western Hemisphere and of the visit of Jesus Christ, soon after his Resurrection, to those descendants of Israel. If this wouldn't have happened, than the religion of Mormon might not exist today.

Minstrelsy was the making of plays that practiced racism and social mockery. If minstrelsy hadn’t happened then racism would not have been encouraged, thus reducing the harassment of immigrants and blacks.

As Walker threatened violence in Boston, Nat Turner, a slave in Southampton County, Virginia, staged a bloody revolt- a chronological coincidence that had far reaching consequences. As a child, Turner had taught himself to read and had hoped for emancipation, but one new master forced him into the fields, and another separated him from his wife. Later on, Turner and a handful of relatives and friends rose in rebellion and killed at least 55 women, men, and children. If this wouldn't have happened, then whites wouldn't have made slave laws stricter and they wouldn't be frightened of blacks. This wouldn't have inspired William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists to create the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated the liberation of the individual. Emerson's vision influenced thousands of ordinary Americans and a generation of important artists, who, in the American Renaissance, a mid-nineteenth century flourishing of literature and philosophy, wrote a remarkable number of first class novels, poems, and essays. Emerson was the leading voice of transcendentalism, an intellectual movement rooted in the religious soil of New England. Its first advocates were Unitarian ministers from well-to-do New England families who questioned the constraints of their Puritan heritage. For inspiration, they turned to European romanticism, a new conception of self and society. If this wouldn't have happened, then many inspiring and powerful books wouldn't have been written. Life in the Woods, The American Scholar, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Leaves of Grass, and The Scarlet Letter are some of them.

William Lloyd Garrison was the most determined abolitionist. A Massachusetts born printer, Garrison had worked during the 1820s in Baltimore on an antislavery newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. In 1830, Garrison went to jail, convicted of libeling a New England merchant engaged in the domestic slave trade. In 1831, Garrison moved to Boston, where he immediately started his own weekly, The Liberator and founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He demanded immediate abolition without compensation to slave owners. The society won financial support from Arthur and Lewis Tappan, wealthy silk merchants in New York City. Later on, abolitionists urged to aid fugitive slaves. They provided lodging and jobs for escaped blacks in free states and created the Underground Railroad, an informal network of whites and free blacks in Richmond, Charleston, and other southern towns that assisted fugitives. If this didn't happen, than close to zero blacks would have been saved. Blacks might have been slaves much longer.

An informal network of whites and free blacks in the South that assisted fugitive slaves to reach freedom in the North. If the Underground Railroad had ever been created, then one thousand of African Americans would not have found freedom in the North each year, thus abolitionists may not have held a political campaign where they went to congress with a petition that demanded the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, an end to the interstate slave trade and a ban on admission of new slave states.

Racial fears and hatreds led to violent mob actions. White workers in northern towns laid waste to taverns and brothels where blacks and whites mixed, and they vandalized respectable African American churches, temperance halls, and orphanages. By pressing for emancipation and equality, the abolitionists had revealed the extent of racial prejudice and had heightened race consciousness, as both whites and blacks identified across class lines with members of their own race. Politicians joined the fray. President Andrew Jackson asked Congress in 1835 to restrict the use of the mails by abolitionist groups. Congress refused, but in 1836, the House of Representatives adopted the so-called gag rule. Under this informal agreement, which remained enforced until 1844, the House automatically tabled antislavery petitions, keeping the explosive issue of slavery off the congressional stage. If this wouldn't have happened, then blacks could have been free sooner. Also, women wouldn't have been recognized earlier.

Laws in NY and other states that permitted married women to own, inherit, and bequeath property. If these laws had not been est., then women activists in NY may not have won a comprehensive statue that became the model of 14 other states, thus giving women full legal control over the property they brought to a marriage.

John Humphrey Noyes began the oneida beliefs based on Shaker beliefs, except for the fact that he defended sexuality and turned to perfectionism for his basis. If Noyes had not formed the oneida community then their radical beliefs would have not existed, thus taking away from how beliefs differed and citizens practiced freedoms in America.

Dorthea Dix was a woman who was emotionally abused as a child, that grew into a compassionate young woman with a strong sense of moral purpose. If she has not persuaded lawmakers to enlarge the state hospitals to house indigent mental patients, then she would not have been able to establish state asylums for the mentally ill, thus many states would not have began to improve their prisons and public hospitals.

Brigham Young led thousands of Mormons westward in this trek to Salt Lake City. If this trek hadn’t happened then Mormons would have remained under harassment of opposition, thus causing them to become disheartened and abandon their faith.

Women's rights activists devised a pragmatic program of reform. Unlike radical utopians, they did not challenge the institution of marriage or the conventional division of labor within the family. Instead, they tried to strengthen the legal rights of married women by seeking legislation that permitted them to own property. This initiative won crucial support from affluent men, who feared bankruptcy in the volatile market economy and wanted to put some family assets in their wives' names. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a gathering of women's rights activists in the small New York town of Seneca Falls. 70 women and 30 men attended the Seneca Falls Convention, which issued a rousing manifesto extending to women the egalitarian republican ideology of the Declaration of Independence. If this wouldn't have happened, than America wouldn't have noticed how women lack many rights. Even men agreed with the fact that women deserve more.

As women addressed controversial issues such as moral reform and emancipation, they faced censure over their public presence. Offended by this criticism, which revealed their own social and legal inferiority, some women sought full freedom for their sex. Women were central to the antislavery movement because they understood the special horrors of slavery for women. In her best-selling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe pinpointed the sexual abuse of women as a profound moral failing of the slave regime. If this wouldn't have happened, then many women wouldn't have been inspired to revolt against lack of rights for women. Seneca Falls might not have happened.

The Old South gentry that built impressive mansions, adopted the manners and values of the English landed gentry, and feared federal government interference with their slave poverty. If affluent planters had never came up with this aristocracy, then the middle-class society may not have developed in the Northeast and Midwest, thus the system would not have been affective.

This was the trading of slaves between owners within the United States borders. The federal government played a key role in this by welcoming slave states like Alabama and Mississippi. If the slave states hadn’t been welcomed then there would be less slavery, thus less opposition towards abolition.

Planters seeking labor looked to the Chesapeake region, home in 1800 to nearly half of the nation's black population. There, the African American population was growing rapidly from natural increase- an average of 27 percent a decade by 1810, thus creating a surplus of enslaved workers on many plantations. Domestic slave trade was a result also. By 1816, the mania for buying negroes from the upper south had resulted in a massive transplantation of more than one million slaves. A majority of African Americans now lived and worked in the deep south, the lands that stretched from Georgia to Texas. This African American migration took two forms- transfer and sale. The domestic market brought wealth to American traders between 1800 and 1860. If this wouldn't have happened, than there wouldn't have been many slaves which means southerners would not be near as wealthy. Blacks could have better lives.

The black population that was free nearly tripled in a 50 year span. This was due to abolitionist movements and black culture maintained, such as Black Protestantism where blacks were declared equal to whites. If these people hadn’t been freed then slavery would have continued to grow, thus continuing the mistreatment of blacks.

In 1817, when the American Colonization Society began to transport a few freed blacks to Africa, the southern plantation system was expanding rapidly. In 1790, its western boundary run through the middle of Georgia. By 1830, it stretched through western Louisiana, and by 1860, the slave frontier extended into Texas. That advance of 900 miles more than doubled the geographical area cultivated by slave labor and increased the number of slave states from eight in 1800 to fifteen in 1850. The federal government played a key role in this expansion. To cultivate this vast area, white planters imported enslaved laborers first from Africa and then from the Chesapeake region. Despite the influx, the demand for labor for exceeded the supply. Consequently, planters imported new African workers illegally through the Spanish colony of Florida until 1819 and then through the Mexican province of Texas. If this wouldn't have happened, then slavery might have been abolished earlier. Northerners would have prospered more than southerners.

Granted all white men suffrage. If this constitution did not exist, then white men would not have gotten the right to vote, thus the secret ballot would not have been created.

When Mexico in 1835 adopted a new constitution creating a stronger central government and dissolving state legislatures, the Americans split into two groups. The war party that was led by Sam Houston and recent migrants from Georgia, demanded independence for Texas. Members of the peace party that was led by Stephen Austin negotiated with the central government in Mexico City for greater political autonomy. They believed Texas could flourish within a decentralized Mexican republic, a federal constitutional system favored by the Liberal party in Mexico. Austin won significant concessions for the Texans, including an exemption from a law ending slavery, but in 1835 Mexico's president, General Santa Anna nullified them. Santa Anna wanted to impose national authority throughout Mexico. Fearing central control, the war party provoked a rebellion that most of the American settlers ultimately supported. On March 2nd, 1836, American rebels proclaimed independence of Texas and adopted a constitution legalizing slavery. To put down the rebellion, president Santa Anna led an army that wiped out the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio and then captured Goliad, executing about 350 prisoners of war. If this wouldn't have happened, than Texas might have never been annexed and slavery could have ended sooner.

For African American families, the domestic slave trade was a personal disaster that underlined their status and vulnerability as chattel slaves. In law, they were the movable personal property of the whites who owned them. Slave property underpinned the entire southern economic system. As a slave owner, Henry Clay knew that property rights were key to slave discipline. Thousands of slaves suffered from that fate, which destroyed about one in every four slave marriages. If this wouldn't have happened, than more slaves would have ran away or took more action against slavery.

Cotton was a demanding crop because of its long growing season. Slaves plowed the land in March, dropped seeds in early April, and once the plants began to grow, continually chopped away the surrounding grasses. In between these tasks, they planted the corn and peas that would provide food for them and the plantation's hogs and chickens. When the cotton bolls ripened in late August, the long four-month picking season began. Slaves in the cotton south worked much harder and more unremittingly than those in the tobacco regions. Moreover, fewer of them acquired craft skills than in tobacco, sugar and rice areas, where slave coopers and engineers made casks, processed sugar, and built irrigation systems. To increase output, profit-seeking cotton planters began, in the 1820s, to use the gang-labor system. Previously, many planters had supervised their workers sporadically or assigned them specific tasks to complete at their own pace. Now, masters with twenty or more slaves organized disciplined teams or gangs supervised by black drivers or white overseers. They instructed the supervisors to work the gangs at a steady pace, clearing and plowing land or hoeing and picking cotton. If this wouldn't have happened, then profits wouldn't have enhanced for slave owners. Productivity wouldn't have increased.

The Americans and Mexicans had disputes over Mexico, and had many different views on how the issue should be solved. There was Sam Houston’s war party and Stephen Austin’s peace party. If this hadn’t happened then disputes wouldn’t have taken place over Texas, thus preventing the rift between Americans and Mexicans.

Many white planters saw only the African American marriages that endured and ignored those they had broken. Accordingly, many owners considered themselves benevolent masters, committed to the welfare of "my family, black and white". Some masters gave substance to this paternalist ideal by treating kindly loyal and worthy slaves- black overseers, the mammy who raised their children, and trusted house servants. By preserving the families of these slaves, many planters could believe that they sold south only coarse troublemakers and uncivilized slaves who had little sense of family. Other owners were more honest about the human cost of their pursuit of wealth. Whether or not they acknowledged the slaves' pain, few southern whites questioned the morality of the slave trade. If this wouldn't have happened, than slavery would have been abolished much earlier and more slaves would rebel and demand for freedom more.

The slave system in the interior of the country that fed slaves to the Cotton South. If this system had not been created, then white planters would not have been able to utilize interstate trade, thus not having the opportunity to provide young workers for the expanding plantations of the cotton belt.

This event was a battle led by Mexican President Santa Anna on the Alamo and capturing of Goliad against a Texas garrison. If this hadn’t happened then the media wouldn’t have turned Americans against Mexicans, thus preventing the destruction of Santa Anna’s army later on.

Africans carried their traditional religious practices to the United States. Some practiced Islam, but the majority relied on African gods and spirits. Other Protestant crusaders came from the ranks of pious black men and women who had become Christians in the Chesapeake. Swept to the cotton south by the domestic slave trade, they carried with them the evangelical message of emotional conversion, ritual baptism, and communal spirituality. Equally important, these crusaders adapted Protestant doctrines to black needs. Enslaved Christians pointed out that blacks as well as whites were children of God and should be treated accordingly. Black Protestantism generally ignored the doctrines or original sin and predestination, and preachers didn't use biblical passages that encouraged unthinking obedience to authority. If this wouldn't have happened, than slaves wouldn't have realized that the Bible says everyone is a child of God. Culture wouldn't have spread among African Americans.

Slave owners in the New South faced much less hypocrisy although their treatment of slaves was much worse. If there would not have been slave owning entrepreneurs, then plantation owners would not have developed the gang-labor system, thus there would not have been organized teams or ‘gangs’ that was overseen by black drivers and white overseers. It also would not have given slaves the opportunity to get work done quicker and produce impressive profits and becoming even more prevalent.