Slavery 1800-1840
The importation of slaves into the United States was banned by Congress at its first available opportunity, in 1808, as allowed by the slavery compromise in the Constitution. But slavery remained the foundation of the economy of many southern States, particularly South Carolina. The dispute over slavery increasingly divided the North, many of whom opposed it, from the South, many of whom relied on it.
An example of the divisiveness of the slavery issue was the Tallmadge Amendment proposed in the Senate in 1820. It would have outlawed further slave importation into Missouri and also would have freed older slaves. But it was defeated because the South was insistent that slavery continue, and even expand.
Why would some want to expand slavery? One reason was that the South feared being outvoted by the North in the Senate if the States abolishing slavery outnumbered the States using it. Slavery thereby became caught up in politics and many bitter conflicts over it continued to occur. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, discussed above, settled some issues but by no means all of them.
In 1831, Nat Turner led slave revolt in Virginia, and 57 whites died. That same year William Lloyd Garrison, a fiery Puritan abolitionist in Massachusetts, started the "Liberator" newspaper to demand an end to slavery. Two years later, he founded the American Antislavery Society along with others who opposed the institution of slavery.
By 1836 it became nearly impossible for Congress to function due to the repeated conflicts that would arise over slavery and many other issues that were related to slavery. Paralyzed, Congress instituted a "gag rule" from 1836 to 1844 to prohibit its members from circulating proposals concerning slavery, especially abolitionism (prohibition on slavery).
Then, in 1837, a horrific murder demonstrated that the continued existence of slavery threatened the constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of the press. Elijah Lovejoy, an antislavery newspaper publisher, was murdered in Alton, Illinois by a pro-slavery mob that had crossed the river from the slave State of Missouri. Lovejoy thereby became the first white martyr for abolitionist movement.
In 1841, the former President John Quincy Adams represented slaves who were being prosecuted for unlawfully taking control of a Spanish ship and killing its captain and crew (the serious crime of mutiny). The slaves ended up in the United States. Under President Martin Van Buren, the United States Department of Justice sought to deport these slaves to Cuba, where they would likely have been executed by the Spanish controlling that island. Adams argued that the slaves should be freed in the United States, even though they were not American citizens, because the U.S. had prohibited the slave trade by this time. The Supreme Court held in favor of the slaves and John Quincy Adams in United States v. The Amistad Africans. The slaves were freed and welcomed by a community in Connecticut.
Other Developments 1800-1850
The 1840s was a decade of expansion and social change for the growing United States. Counting California, which joined the Union in 1850, five new states were added to the United States: Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin and California. This included the two largest states in area in the continental United States (California and Texas), and what are now three of the four largest in population (California, Texas and Florida). This was the greatest addition of new states since the 1810s. The nation as we know it today was taking shape.
A widespread belief in "Manifest Destiny" was driving this growth. Manifest Destiny was the concept that westward expansion was part of God's plan for the United States to spread out over the continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Americans believed that exploration and expansion was a mission from God. There were other significant developments as the United States grew immensely in population and wealth from 1800 to 1840. From 1811 to 1818, the first national road was built. Known as the Cumberland Road, it connected Cumberland, Maryland with Wheeling, now in West Virginia (then in Virginia). It was built using funds obtained from the sale of lands in Ohio.
The United States in 1840
In 1836, Texas fought and won its independence from Mexico. The Texans sought independence based on Mexico's violation of settlers' rights under Mexico Constitution. In March of 1836, the Mexicans massacred the Texans at the Alamo (including Davey Crockett, who came from Tennessee to help), but in April the Texans defeated the Mexican army and its General Santa Anna. Sam Houston was elected the first President of the Republic of Texas (it did not yet join the United States).
There were social changes in the early-to-mid 1800s worth noting. In 1826, the Lowell System consisted of factory-based cities, with the planning of the city and its housing based on the existence of jobs in the local factory. Lowell, Massachusetts, was the first example.
In 1842, the United States resolved some minor disputes with Canada (then still a British colony) over the location of the U.S.-Canadian border. Known as the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, this resolved the location of the northern border of Maine, agreed on the location of the border in the Great Lakes (and shared use of those Lakes), and affirmed the use of the 49 degrees latitude as the border heading west. Daniel Webster, then the Secretary of State (who otherwise was a prominent Senator), signed the Treaty for the United States and the U.S. Senate ratified it as required by the Constitution.
Around the same time settlers began to move westward in large groups, traveling on the Oregon Trail. Beginning in 1843, Americans became fascinated with the Oregon territory, and 1000 pioneers traveled all the way from Missouri to Willamette Valley (a trip that took 4 to 6 months then). The Oregon Trail stretched for 2000 miles and many settlers spent a full six months traveling along it. Missionaries traveled in order to minister to the Indians far and wide.
Others went westward in a search for gold, and the "gold rush" that began in 1848 and hit a fever pitch in 1849, attracting many to California (the football team the "San Francisco 49ers" is named after those settlers).
Half of the Oregon territory, which included the current states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and a bit of Montana and Wyoming, was controlled by the British. In 1846 the Oregon Treaty settled the disputes between America and Britain, giving most of the Oregon territory to the United States.
Along with the expansion and migration came great social change in the older portions of the United States. Utopian communities thrived in the 1840s to pursue idealistic societies, often based on common religious beliefs and sharing homes and property. The homeschooling movement today could be compared with the movements in the 1840s, though homeschooling is more of a concept than a centralized community having shared property. Examples of Utopian communities in the 1840s (and earlier) were the Shakers, Brook Farm, the Rappites, and the Oneida Community:[3]
The Shakers, whose formal name was the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, believed in communal living (people sharing each other's homes and property), productive labor, pacifism, simplicity, and ritualistic dancing and shaking during services. It was founded by an Englishwoman in 1758, split off from the Quakers in 1772, and grew to 6,000 members in America before the Civil War. The Shakers rejected slavery and other aspects of American life, and had thriving communities in Enfield, Connecticut and in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Other Shaker communities existed in Kentucky, New Hampshire, New York (New Lebanon) ... and Maine (New Glochester), where there are Shakers to this day!
Brook Farm was a Utopian community based on "transcendentalism" - a philosophy started by Immanuel Kant in the late 1700s that emphasized man's ability to "transcend" experience and pursue a lifestyle of simple living, self-reliance, and rejection of industrialization. This movement took inspiration from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was the leading American proponent of this philosophy (without himself living in a Utopian community), and his friend Henry David Thoreau, who did spend some time living in simplicity on "Walden's Pond." (Occasionally he would sneak over to his friend Emerson's house to enjoy a good meal and better surroundings!) Thoreau also became famous for his book advocating "civil disobedience" to laws and authority. Brook Farm itself was located in Suffolk County, Massachusetts and was led by a former Unitarian minister. The community provided to all members, their children and family dependents the following: housing, fuel, wages, clothing and food. It also had schools at all levels before college. This project ended in failure due to financial difficulties and even a bitter lawsuit by investors attempting to recover their money. This community never exceeded 120 persons, making it smaller than most homeschooling communities today.
The Rappites, also known as The Harmony Society, were founded by Johann Georg Rapp and first consisted of immigrants from Germany seeking religious freedom in America. They settled in Butler County, Pennsylvania, called Harmony, and believed that the Bible was humanity's sole authority. Similar to the Shakers, the Rappites required led a communal life without individual possessions. Frederick Rapp, George Rapp's adopted son, transformed the economy of Harmony from subsistence agriculture to gradual diversified manufacturing, and by 1814 the Society was thriving with 700 members and a town of 130 homes and factories. The products they produced, ranging from textiles to woolens to wine and whiskey, were highly valued by other Americans for their quality. The Rappites continued to succeed economically, and repeatedly outgrew their towns, moving to Indiana (after selling their first town for $100,000 to Mennonites) and later back to Pennsylvania. They peaked in 1866 and, after several schisms, disbanded in 1905. Their sturdy buildings remain to this day.
The Oneida Community in Madison County, New York, was an abolitionist movement founded by the minister John Humphreys Noyes. He preached the radical view that perfection was attainable in this life, and his followers became known as "Perfectionists". Unfortunately, he also preached a concept of "complex marriage," whereby men and women married in groups such that every man in the group was married to every woman in the group, and children were raised by everyone. "Bible communism" resulted in no individual property. A 1879 meeting of ministers in Syracuse, New York, condemned the settlement, and unrest caused Noyes to flee to Canada.
The decline of all the Utopian communities has been attributed to increased industrialization and hostility by a broader public to the concept. Inflammatory newspaper articles played a role as the public became reliant on secular sources for information. But historians have concluded that "religious utopian colonies possessed a longer life then their secular counterparts." Most of the Utopian communities have remnants that are preserved today and can be visited.
In addition to the Utopian communities, there were key social and religious movements in or around the 1840s that resulted from the culmination of the Second Great Awakening, which swept America from 1790 to 1840:
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormon Church), the only major church founded in America, was established in 1830 by Joseph Smith in western New York. He then moved to Ohio, and then Nauvoo, Illinois, where it thrived so much that it became the largest town in Illinois in 1844 (even bigger than Chicago). The movement banned alcohol and emphasized hard work and entrepreneurship. But in 1844 an anti-Mormon newspaper (the "Nauvoo Expositor") began harshly criticizing the church, and city council responded by shutting down the newspaper, which in turn led to a backlash causing the imprisonment of Mayor Joseph Smith. While in jail, Joseph Smith (and his brother) was killed by a mob that was unlawfully allowed to enter the prison. Brigham Young became the next leader of this church within a few years, and led the 70,000-person Mormon community on a 1,300-mile migration to establish a new state in the west, then part of Mexico but now Utah. Today the Mormon Church is the fourth largest church denomination in the United States, after the Catholics, Baptists and Methodists. One of its spectacular temples is located just north of D.C., close to the "Beltway" (highway 495 that loops around D.C.).
The Seventh Day Adventist Church began 1844, when a prediction of the end of the world based on a biblical interpretation did not happen (the so-called "Great Disappointment"). This new Christian religion emphasizes observance of the Sabbath on Saturday (hence its name), adherence to the Bible, and preparation for the second coming of Christ. The Seventh Day Adventists also developed an approach to good health that included building hospitals, such as the large hospital located in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
Women's rights began as a social movement in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, where the first women's rights convention was held. The assembly drafted a Declaration of Sentiments that called for granting women the right to vote, which they did not have at the time. Separately, in 1849, the English-born Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in America, which she obtained from Geneva College in New York.
In 1840, the first anti-slavery party (called the "Liberty Party") formed. It lasted until 1848, when it merged with opponents of slavery in the Whig and Democratic Parties in order to form another anti-slavery party, the stronger Free-Soil party.
In 1842, the union workers' movement obtained a key court ruling in their favor from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in Commonwealth v. Hunt. That decision held that it was legal for workers to organize a union and to strike. Union power was greatly increased by this ability to strike (and shut down a factory) when the employer does not give into union demands. Some blame the collapse of the American automobile industry today and the current depression in Michigan on an abuse by unions of their great power. The unionization of government workers recently became a national controversy, as the Wisconsin Governor seeks to terminate the basic union power of "collective bargaining" for its government workers.
There was a movement to ban alcohol ("prohibition", or the "temperance movement") began in 1826 and lasted until the 18th Amendment passed in 1919 to ban alcohol nationwide (it was later repealed by the 21st Amendment during the Great Depression);
And the most influential movement of all gained steam in the 1830s: public school education. Horace Mann, a member of the Whig Party from New England, established the first state school board. But public school would not reach its full extent as seen today until the 20th century.