APUSH Unit 4 REVIEW [Period 4: 1800-1848]—EVERYTHING You NEED to Know

[0:00]Okay, let's go ahead and put every dang thing you need to know about unit four right into your mind grapes and then crush them until the sweet nectar of learning comes pouring forth. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, then I stand at the ready to milk them. Let's get to it. Okay, so let's start with the big picture that's going to tie all the dangly threads of this overly complex unit together. First of all, the time period is 1800 to 1848, the former being the election of Thomas Jefferson and the latter being the Seneca Falls Convention. Second, the theme of this giant hunky unit is pretty simple. The United States gets an identity. Or to put my interrogative pants on, we might say the theme is, who is the United States becoming? And spoiler alert, there isn't just one identity that emerges, but multiple concurrent and sometimes competing identities. Regardless, that identity question is going to be important for you to hang on to throughout this review because we're going to run this thing thematically instead of chronologically. So multiple times throughout this video, I'm going to be starting at 1800, then go right on through to 1848, and then the next section, I'm going to go right back to the beginning and start all over. So the thing to keep you oriented is this. Who is the United States becoming? And the two massive honking themes that run throughout this unit and answer this question are expansion and war. Or, if you like, foreign policy and economic policy. Okay, so if you're yucking what I'm yacking, then let's get to the first answer. Okay, so the first big strand of American identity that emerged during this period was the impulse to become a proper world power and to get some dang respect on the world stage. This is the foreign policy or the expansion theme of American identity. And this was important because most of the world powers, particularly European powers, thought the United States was about as worthy of respect as a feral raccoon. It's like, yeah, I'm sure the raccoon plays some kind of crucial role in the wider ecosystem, but at the end of the day, you eat other people's trash. So here's where I tell you that during this period, the United States made strides in at least four areas and tried their best to rise above their current trash panda status. First, the US attempted to increase its power on the world stage by promoting foreign trade. So, France and Britain were at war and were flagrantly ignoring US neutrality in that conflict. So Thomas Jefferson challenged that by passing the Embargo Act, which really only hurt the American economy. So that was a big whiff, but before James Madison took office, Congress passed the Non-Intercourse Act in 1809, which replaced the Embargo Act. And basically, instead of cutting off all foreign trade, the Non-Intercourse Act cut off trade with Great Britain and France only. And you know, opening international trade helped the economy somewhat, but it didn't have any dramatic effects and is generally considered a failure to address the nation's economic issues. And then there were other foreign policy attempts to force Britain and France to take US neutrality seriously, but for the most part, they all failed pretty miserably. And speaking of failing miserably, if that reality applies as much to early 19th century US foreign policy as it does to your Apush grade, then buckle up because I got something for you. This video is part of a larger set of review materials I made called the Apush Himler Review Guide. It's got metric buttloads of resources that are going to help you get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, and it's going to help you do that as fast as possible. So if that's something that you're into, check that link in the description. Okay, so then the second way the US attempted to claim power on the world stage was by claiming territory on the North American continent. For example, by means of the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States and it also firmed up the western border in the Louisiana Territory. Also, the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 was an agreement between Great Britain and the United States for joint occupation of the Oregon Country, and by 1846, a new treaty would establish US possession of the Oregon Territory below the 49th parallel. And so, although there are many examples I could give you, domestic territorial expansion was certainly a victory for the US in terms of world power. But perhaps the most significant victory in terms of becoming a world power occurred in a pair of developments, namely a war and a policy. The war was the War of 1812 and it was yet another contest between the US and Great Britain, so sort of like American Revolution 2.0. And there were many mounting tensions between the two powers that led to open conflict, including economic tensions over policies like the Non-Intercourse Act and Britain's refusal to evacuate troops from forts located on the US frontier. But the real egg in America's foreign policy sock was the continuing British practice of impressment. It meant that when the British seized American merchant vessels, they forced Americans to fight on British navy ships. And that kind of insult to American national honor would not stand. So, the US declared war on Great Britain, and over the course of two years, both sides secured some victories and suffered some defeats. But in the end, the two powers ended the war by citing the Treaty of Ghent and basically declared that the war was a stalemate. Everything went back to the way it was before the war started. But one thing emphatically did not go back to the way it was before the war, and that, my dear pupils, was America's place on the world stage. This was now the second time they had defeated Great Britain, and that got plenty of Americans positively drunk on nationalistic feelings. So much so that the era directly following the war is sometimes called the Era of Good Feelings. And so that led to the fourth development in which the US aimed to claim power on the world stage, namely the issuing of the Monroe Doctrine. So, James Monroe was elected president in 1816, and with Americans high on the victory fumes of the War of 1812 and the significant territorial expansion that I mentioned earlier, Monroe saw his chance to puff out the American chest for all the world to see. So he announced the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the Western Hemisphere was a US sphere of influence. And basically, that means that he was saying that anything that happens over here is the business of the United States and European intrusion would be very much not welcome. And on the flip side, he declared that the US wouldn't meddle in European affairs either. And so, in terms of American identity, I think we can safely say that the United States made its first steps toward becoming a proper world power, deserving of respect of other major European powers. Okay, now the second major strand of the emerging American identity during this period was the development of a modern economy. Because, to quote James Monroe, you can't take over the Western Hemisphere's crap unless you got the boom boom to back it up. In case it's not clear, he did not say that. Please do not write that down. Anyway, the big honking development that ushered the US into the modern world economically was the Market Revolution. Now, by definition, the Market Revolution describes the process through which the US economy transitioned from primarily an agricultural, subsistence-based economy to an industrial, commercial economy. And if that made precisely zero sense to you, then let me try to Heimsplain it in a way that you might understand. So an economy driven by subsistence agriculture means that most people are farmers and they themselves grow or make everything they need to survive. But an economy driven by commercial industry means that goods are mass-produced, everything from shirts to wheat, and sold to consumers on the market. It's a transition from self-reliance to market reliance. So, says you, how did that happen? Well, says I, I'm in the mood to tell you. Essentially, the Market Revolution had four big causes. The first cause was the rise of the factory as the center of industrial production. So it was a British immigrant named Samuel Slater who created the first textile factory in the US, and it was able to produce yarn at a pace that far exceeded yarn spun by hand. But it was Eli Whitney who truly revolutionized American manufacturing by introduced goods with interchangeable parts. Basically, he developed the process by which manufactured goods could be fabricated one piece at a time and then assembled, and this had two implications. First, since each part was made with precise machining, it could be exchanged for any other part on that item. Second, the main work was done by machines, and therefore the human workers could be entirely unskilled. Unlike an artisan that made goods by hand from beginning to end. And so, Whitney created the blueprint for a more organized and productive creation of goods known as the American System of Manufacturing. All right, the second cause of the Market Revolution was the development of a metric buttload of new technologies. In industrial factories, steam engines eventually powered machines, which meant that factories could now be built anywhere, and, oh, did they multiply rapidly? Then we got the Telegraph in 1844, which harnessed short electrical signals to communicate at a distance. And as more and more miles of telegraph wire were hung, distant cities and markets were able to communicate with each other almost instantly, and that led to an even greater tightening of America's increasingly complex regional business relationships. But new technology also reached farmers and increased their productivity as well. For example, Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper revolutionized Western agriculture and led to greater productivity for the farmers who specialized in food production for the United States, since this machine could do the harvesting work of five farmers harvesting by hand. And then the third cause of the Market Revolution was the multiplication of government-sponsored infrastructure, and there are three varieties that you're going to need to know. First, government sponsored the construction of roads. For example, there was the development of the Cumberland Road, which was one of the rare cases in which a road was financed by the federal government, and I'm going to say more about that later. But state governments also got in on the road construction party, as did Pennsylvania with the construction of the Lancaster Turnpike. But in the second kind of infrastructure that abounded during this period was canal. The big example here was the Erie Canal, which linked Albany to Buffalo in New York. And then third, we begin to see the multiplication of railroads. So by the 1830s, railroads were competing heavily with canals as the most efficient means of regional economic interconnection. And thanks to steam-powered locomotives, goods and passengers could be transported quickly and cheaply across the United States. Okay, so the main thing to remember about all of this new infrastructure is that it connected the various regions of the United States, and in doing so, it made goods easier to ship to regional markets, and thus the national economy grew rapidly. And finally, the fourth cause of the Market Revolution was urbanization and immigration. Now, urbanization means that the population of American cities were growing rapidly, and it's precisely because cities were home to industrial manufacturing. So, as the economy became more commercial, subsistence farmers and their families could no longer make a viable living as they always had, and so they migrated to industrial cities in huge numbers looking for work. But arguably, an even more significant contribution to the success of the Market Revolution was the spike in immigration during the first half of the 19th century. So between the 1820s and the 1840s, more than 2 million European immigrants arrived to the United States, the bulk of which were Irish, German, or Scandinavian. And for the most part, these immigrants settled in big cities in the Northeast, though some migrated westward as well. And in settling in these urban areas, the cities became even more socially diverse. Furthermore, the spike in immigration was intimately connected to the Market Revolution, since those who settled in the northern cities, especially the Irish, provided an influx of cheap labor for factories, which powered the Market Revolution. Okay, so now let's consider the multitudinous effects of these two big developments. Remember, we're talking about expansion and economics, and those two massive elements of historical change during this period changed a whole lot of other stuff as well, and I reckon it's time to have a look at it. Okay, so as a result of those two big developments that I just mentioned, the United States became a modern democracy, and all that started with the election of our boy Thomas Jefferson in 1800. And, you know, this was kind of a big deal since it signified the first peaceful transfer of power between rival factions in this fair nation, which was a signal that the Republican system of government could, in fact, work despite political differences and disagreements. In this case, the Federalists surrendered power to the Democratic Republicans. So, the US is a country that peacefully transfers political power, but even so, you didn't think these parties weren't going to keep fighting over policies like toddlers smacking each other over the family's one iPad, did you? Don't be crazy. No, these rival factions continued to debate over at least three perennial issues. First, they fought over America's proper relationship to European powers. A good example here is Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807, which I mentioned briefly earlier. But to suss it out a little more, Britain and France were at war, which for them is just like any normal Tuesday in world history. And so, Jefferson reaffirmed Washington's neutrality stance for the United States, but Britain and France were not, in fact, respecting US neutrality on account of the French were seizing US merchant ships, and the British were forcing American sailors to fight on their ships. So, Jefferson convinced Congress to pass the Embargo Act, which cut off all foreign trade with the United States in an effort to force the British and the French to respect US neutrality. But here's where I tell you that the Embargo Act was a giant turd sandwich, and it actually did the opposite. So while it did improve US manufacturing and thus paved the way for the Market Revolution, for the most part, the Embargo Act wrecked the US economy. And that led a fiery debate between the rival parties about how Jefferson had used federal power not merely to regulate trade, but to shut down the whole thing entirely, not to mention agitate international tensions with important trading partners. And then second, the parties debated over the proper limits of federal power domestically. And here, the best example is the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Now, long story short, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte lost interest in France's North American territory and decided to sell this massive chunk of land to the US. Now, Jefferson agreed to the purchase, but then got real sweaty because of two opposing principles afflicting him. On one side, Jefferson and his ilk were strict constructionists, which meant that they believed that federal power was strictly limited to the exact words of the Constitution. As it turns out, the Constitution did not grant the President, nor Congress for that matter, the authority to purchase land from a foreign government. But on the other side, Jefferson's vision for the future of America was an agrarian future, which is to say, it was all about farming and agriculture. So this doubling of the United States territory meant that the West could now fill itself with frolicking Jeffersonian farmers as far as the eye could see. And that's the side that eventually won out. And to further federal control over this new territory, Jefferson commissioned Meriweather Lewis and William Clark to explore and map the northwestern part of the land and Zebulon Pike to explore and map the southwestern part of the land. And both of these expeditions greatly increased the knowledge of the land and the peoples of the West, which would help all the more with future westward expansion efforts. And then third, parties fought over the proper scope of federal power in the Judicial Branch. Now, if you recall, the Constitution didn't have much to say about the duties and powers of the Supreme Court, and that meant that in the beginning of this period, the court really wasn't equal in power to the other two branches. But under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, the court was about to unlock its latent beast mode and claim its equal place among the federal government. And how, says you, did this happen? Well, says I, in a lot of ways, but I'm only going to mention two. First, in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, Marshall led the Court to claim its primary power, namely judicial review. And by definition, that means that the court can decide whether a law violates the Constitution or not. And then the second case that strengthened federal power under Marshall was McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, which, in sum, declared that federal laws are supreme over state laws. In other words, when federal and state laws are in contradiction, federal laws always win. Or to put it the other way around, this case established the precedent that state laws cannot interfere or overrule federal laws or power. Okay, so to sum up, the first way the US is becoming a modern democracy during this period was by defining the powers of government. And then the second movement during this period that helped US claim its identity as a modern democracy was the expansion of voting rights. And that's not too hard to understand because, after all, Americans just got done fighting an entire dang revolution because, you know, liberty. And maybe the most tangible sign of liberty is the right to vote, also known by its fancy name, the franchise. But here's where I tell you that in the beginning of the 19th century, in most cases, the franchise was restricted to white, land-owning men. But it was the Panic of 1819 that changed all of that. Now this was essentially a nationwide economic depression that was caused by a series of irresponsible practices carried out by the Second Bank of the United States. Now this bank, of course, was like the bank of the United States, and it wielded a whole lot of federal power. And so, when its decisions caused a heap of economic suffering for nearly all Americans, the vast majority of which could not vote in order to hold the shysters in charge accountable, that presented a problem. And thus began a nationwide push to remove property qualifications for voting and enact universal white male suffrage. And yes, it's true that women and Black Americans suffered economically as well, and they also did not have the right to vote, but to quote Martin Van Buren of New York, who led the public charge toward universal white male suffrage, Let's not get crazy, y'all. Anyway, Van Buren argued that universal white male suffrage was already present in the Western frontier states, since they had organized their territories on that very principle. Anyway, by 1825, the majority of states on the Eastern Coast had either eliminated or significantly reduced property qualifications for voting. Even though such a move was opposed by the property to lead who had formally held the sole privilege of the franchise. Okay, so who is the United States becoming? It's becoming a nation of voters and expanded democracy. However, I need to tell you about a massive effect of this expansion of the franchise, namely the development and growth of America's political parties. So one major effect of opening the right to vote to more people is that politicians and political parties have to adjust their platforms in order to appeal to more people who likely have very different interests than those swanky, landed elites. And that is exactly what we see during this period. Now, by about 1815, the Federalist Party was altogether dead on account of they opposed a very popular war, namely the War of 1812, of which I'll have more to say later. So that left the US with a single political party, namely the Democratic Republicans, but they themselves were split into two rival factions that would eventually become new political parties themselves. Yeah, the Democrats led by Andrew Jackson and the National Republicans led by Henry Clay. Now the Democrats were essentially Democratic Republicans 2.0, and the National Republicans were the Federalists 2.0. And that's what you're going to continue to see as new parties develop and change names and all of that. At their core, they are just really riffing on the theme set up by the OG political parties. And what are those themes? Well, if you're in the mood for me to punt all nuance from the conversation, and I know that you are, then the oversimplified version is this. One party is always going to favor more government power, and in the beginning that was the Federalist and now the National Republicans. And then the other party is always going to favor less government power, and in the beginning, that was the Democratic Republicans, and in this period, it's the Democrats. Okay, now by the Election of 1828, the new parties had fully formed. The election was a contest between Andrew Jackson of the Democratic Party and John Quincy Adams of the National Republicans. And here's where we see the real consequences of that flurry of expanded democracy. Like, think about it, now that it's not just wealthy, land-owning white men that can vote, there's a metric buttload of common, less educated white men who want to have a say in who becomes the president. And that means that the candidates and their parties needed to change the way that they appealed to the electorate. Well, as it turns out, John Quincy Adams, though he was the incumbent, didn't see fit to get his hands dirty and appeal to the uneducated rabble, although his supporters had no qualms about hurling plenty of slander about Jackson. But Jackson, well, that guy knew exactly how to appeal to the common man and did so by directly campaigning to the people. Adams on the other hand was cold and aloof and sat in his office and was all, if you want me, you know where to find me. And it's probably not going to surprise you to hear that Jackson and his popular appeal to the common people absolutely destroyed Adams and Jackson became the president. Now, here's where things get pretty interesting. While Jackson fought for and benefited from America's expanded democratic impulses, he also wielded federal power like Thanos with all five Infinity Stones. And in a lot of ways, I hope this reminds you of Thomas Jefferson since he also acted in ways that seemed to contradict his desire to limit federal power. And both presidents seemed to agree that federal power should be diminished in some ways, like in the economy, for example. But both presidents also felt as though federal power ought to be expanded when acting in the best interests of the nation. And I'm going to give you three significant examples of Jackson getting positively drunk on executive power, but also one example of him restraining executive power. First, Jackson expanded federal power during the Nullification Crisis. Long story short, a tariff was in place which put serious economic strain on the southern states, and they hated it so much that they called it the Tariff of Abominations. Now, eventually, South Carolina asserted the right to nullify this tariff, since they believed it to be unconstitutional, on account of it seemed like the federal government was trampling all over the liberty of states and needed to back way off of its heavy-handed economic policy. And they puffed out their chest against Jackson and said that if the federal government tried to enforce the collection of this tariff, South Carolina would go ahead and secede from the Union. But Jackson, in no mood to get sassed by a measly state government, led Congress to pass the Force Bill, which gave Jackson authority to send federal troops into South Carolina to collect the taxes. But he also told South Carolina that he'd work to reduce the tariffs, and so that diffused the situation and South Carolinians backed down. Okay, now the second way Jackson expanded executive power was during the Bank War. Now, just before the election of 1832, the charter for the Second Bank of the United States was up for renewal, and Jackson aimed to veto the new charter. He branded the national bank as a monster that benefited elites and harmed ordinary Americans. And he didn't have to work that hard to convince common Americans that this was true because, you know, the Panic of 1819 was still fresh in everybody's memory. Therefore, Jackson vetoed the charter and killed the federal bank. And in doing so, he removed federal deposits from the bank and deposited them in state banks whose electorate had been loyal to him, and that's why Jackson's enemies referred to them as his pet banks. Okay, the third example of Jackson's expansion of executive power came in the form of policies aimed at American Indian removal from the United States. Now, in case you don't know, before becoming president, Jackson gained his war hero status, at least in part, by being a fierce Indian fighter, which is to say he was no friend of Native Americans. And that became clear after the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Now, this was a policy that targeted the removal of many different American Indian groups from the US, but I just want to focus on one particular example, namely the Cherokees of Georgia. So the Cherokee people had adopted a policy of assimilation to white American culture under the leadership of their chief John Ross. In other words, they decided that their best bet for continuing to live in their ancestral lands was to become culturally similar to Americans. So they created a Republican government and learned to speak English and dressed in American-style clothing. But as it turned out, all those efforts did not protect them when gold was discovered on their land, and Georgians got real hungry to gobble up their territory. And in the end, the Cherokee took to the judicial system, and in a case called Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that Cherokee removal was unconstitutional. And we should just take a second to appreciate what a massive and important win this was for the Cherokee, like, what? But they couldn't bask in the victory for too long because Jackson went ahead and ignored John Marshall's decision and removed the Cherokee anyway. And the path was more than a thousand miles long and led them to the western side of the Mississippi River, and because so many American Indians died on the brutal trek, it became known thereafter as the Trail of Tears. Now, that was an example of American Indians peacefully resisting Jackson's removal policy, but in other cases, things got violent, as it did in the Black Hawk War in 1832. So in that case, Jackson sent federal troops into Western Illinois to force the Sauk and Fox Nations to move westward. And so, their chief, Black Hawk, retreated into the Wisconsin Territory and then gathered a thousand fighters to meet US troops at Bad Axe. And in the end, the result was a massacre of the American Indians and the forced removal of the survivors. Okay, the fourth example of Jackson's use of federal power actually has him upholding state power, and that occurred when he opposed federally funded internal improvements. The big example to remember here is the Cumberland Road, otherwise known as the National Road. So the National Republicans, and later the Whigs, approved of federal spending on this interstate road because it would facilitate both westward migration and help connect western farmers to eastern markets. But the Democrats led by Jackson invoked the fear of growing federal power at the expense of the states. They believed an interstate road to be unconstitutional because the Constitution did not explicitly grant that power to Congress. Okay, so let's just sum up this whole section. During this period, the United States forged an identity as a modern democracy through the expansion of voting rights while at the same time trying to determine the proper balance between federal and state power. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Okay, now the Market Revolution was emphatically not just an economic development. No, it caused enormous changes in how many Americans lived as well, which is to say, in terms of identity, the United States was becoming a modern society. And it just so happens that you need to know three aspects of that society, so, let's talk about it. First, the Market Revolution led to the emergence of three distinct social classes. On top was the business elite, which was the smallest and wealthiest class. And these folks tended to be factory owners or shipping executives or something like that. Then in the middle was the, you know, middle class, and you really need to remember that this class did not exist before industrialization in the United States. So these people were generally lawyers or teachers or managers or some other profession like that. And in general, they were not as wealthy as the business elite, but they were wealthier than the working class, and that extra boom-boom gave them the occasion to carve out a distinct social identity, especially in terms of gender and family relations. For example, middle class men and women were increasingly understood to have separate spheres of existence and responsibility. The male sphere was defined by work outside the home, and the female sphere was defined by domestic work inside the home. So, in this way, it was kind of a status symbol to a middle-class man to have a wife who didn't have to work because that meant that he made enough money to support everyone, and he was a real man. And to be clear, this kind of gender separation was not, in fact, present in the lower working class, since those families needed income from both genders to survive. Which I guess makes working class males fake men. Anyway, the consequence of the separate spheres kind of thinking in the middle class led to a related phenomenon in terms of women. And basically, it answered the question, if middle-class women don't work, then what are they good for? And the answer came in the form of the cult of domesticity, which said that a woman's role in the family was to raise virtuous children and to serve her husband, because, you know, he's the one out there doing the real work. Okay, that's enough about the middle class, so let me introduce you to the working class. Now, this class was composed of the bulk of urban Americans who worked in factories for pitifully low wages, which is why they were sometimes referred to as wage slaves. A big portion of this class was made up of all those immigrants that I mentioned earlier. For example, many of the Irish immigrants settled in the northeastern industrial cities like Philadelphia and New York City. And they took whatever jobs they could find, which usually meant very meager wages in industrial factories. And even though these immigrants were vital to the success of the Market Revolution, their sheer numbers got some native-born Americans, a real twitchy. And this is what we call a nativist backlash, and these nativists targeted the Irish for many reasons, not the least of which was their Catholicness. But also young women made up a significant portion of the working class. In fact, by the late 1820s, several entire towns devoted to manufacturing were constructed in New England, the most famous of which was Lowell, located in Lowell, Massachusetts. So the sponsors of this town recruited young farm girls, who became known as Lowell Girls, from the countryside to work in their factories and to live in their towns. And in the beginning, quite a few of these girls enjoyed the adventure of leaving home and earning a living. But over time, working conditions degraded, and they organized themselves into a union known as the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, which was the first women's labor union in the United States. All right, so the Market Revolution stratified American society into a rigid class structure. Which is, you know, it's always fun to talk about, but now I need to tell you about the second ingredient in the development of a modern American society, namely, a national culture expressed through art and philosophy. Without getting too far into the weeds, you just need to remember that before, during, and just after the American Revolution, American culture was pretty much all borrowed from European culture. But not in this period, my dear people. No, after the War of 1812, which, as I mentioned earlier, America entered an intense period of nationalism, known as the Era of Good Feelings. And hopefully, by this point in the video, you know that it was emphatically not puppies and rainbows for everyone living in America, but still a lot of people felt real good and wanted to show forth those warm fuzzies and unique cultural expressions. So first, let's talk about the expression of American culture through the arts. Now, the movement that really influenced these new American expressions was romanticism, which began as a European movement. And it was a reaction to the cold, angular, disimpassioned thinking that characterized the Enlightenment. In contrast, romantics emphasized emotional exuberance, imaginative exploration, and spontaneity. In other words, they were real feely-feely. And you can see this in American visual art during this period, especially in the Hudson River School, whose artists made nature their subject and painted majestic American landscapes that called for a more open emotional response from the viewer. You can also see this impulse in literature, like, for example, in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. His book, The Last of the Mohicans, romanticized the opportunity and danger of the mysterious Western lands of America. His aim was to contrast what he called the natural men of the frontier with the men who had been corrupted by civilization. And then in terms of architecture in this period, American architects designed buildings in the Greek Revival style. It was inspired by the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire during this same time period and was an homage to the two countries' mutual love of democracy. Okay, now the second major cultural movement during this period was the development of a unique American philosophy known as transcendentalism. It was conceived of and led by folks like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this way of thinking was also deeply influenced by the emotional emphasis of romanticism. It was a clear rejection of the rationalism of Enlightenment thought, which said that truth can be known through the senses, like through observation and experimentation. Transcendentalists on the other hand believed that truth was beyond the senses or transcended them, and therefore must be accessed by other means, chiefly by communion with the mysteries of nature. And then finally, the third major ingredient to the emerging American identity during this period was the impulse to social reform. Now, there are a whole lot of reforms that I'll tell you about, but first, you need to know about the religious revival that created the conditions for reform, and that was the Second Great Awakening. Now, I could yeah for days about the similarities and differences between this and the First Great Awakening that we talked about in Unit 2. But to keep things simple, just remember this. The emphasis of the First Great Awakening was to reform your nasty, sinful self. But the emphasis of the Second Great Awakening was to reform the entire nasty, sinful society. Now, mass religious movements like this are not without their causes, and you need to know three of them. First, the Awakening was facilitated by the spread of democratic beliefs. Now, remember what I said earlier, namely that there was a big push to expand democracy during this period, so that even common people could participate politically in the United States. Well, that commitment showed up in the Second Great Awakening as well. For example, revivalist preachers organized camp meetings where people could come and hear preaching and singing all day long. And some of these preachers were lower class and some uneducated, and the camp meeting crowds themselves were a mixture of races and classes and wealth. Okay, a second cause of the Awakening was Americans' embrace of Romanticism and all the emotional exuberance thereunto appertaining. For example, arguably the Second Great Awakening's greatest preacher was Charles Grandison Finney, who focused his efforts in northern cities. He made use of highly charged emotional language and spoken plain language filled with metaphors and allusions that common people could understand. Now, the overarching theme of Finney's preaching was the possibility of Christians ushering in the perfect kingdom of God on Earth by means of Christians' moral efforts to reform society of evils like alcohol and slavery. And this revival, much like its first iteration during the colonial period, swept the country in a mass movement of common religion. But in some cases, the religious fervor led to the creation of new forms of faith that were at times at odds with the majority Christian view. And probably the best example here is the creation of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, whose people are known as the Mormons. Now, their founder, Joseph Smith, had a deep religious experience under these revivalist preachers and then began having visions of his own. As a result, he created a new church, and the people of New York got real twitchy about some of their doctrines, most notably their emphasis on polygamy, or, you know, like multiple wives. Now, ultimately, the Mormons would exile themselves all the way out to the Utah Territory, where under the leadership of Brigham Young, they established a proper theocracy. So all this to say, people got real religious during this period, and because this movement emphasized social reformation, people got busy reforming the crap out of American society. So, you know, now it's time to talk about that. Okay, so the first effect of the Second Great Awakening was the formation of utopian societies. For example, the Oneida Community was created in 1848 in New York. And its founder was John Humphrey Noyes, who had himself experienced a profound Christian conversion under the preaching of Charles Finney and was taken by the impulse to social reform that came along with it. And what he did with that impulse was to create a community of Christians separate from the wider society, in which the perfection of the kingdom of God could be practiced. And for them, that meant that all members surrendered their property to the group and were encouraged to participate in complex marriage, which is to say, they had relations with any dang person they wanted. But like many of the other utopian experiments of this age, the community fell on hard times financially and were forced to disperse. Okay, the second effect of the Awakening was the formation of new voluntary organizations, which worked to reform various aspects of society. And one of the biggest reform movements was the Temperance Movement, which sought to curb, or eliminate entirely, the production and consumption of alcohol in the US. And to that end, middle-class clergy and businessmen founded the American Temperance Society in 1826, which aimed to reform drunkenness among working-class men. And don't miss that nuance there. Temperance was largely a middle-class movement aimed at the working class. And if you remember, a not insignificant portion of that working class were Irish and German immigrants, who were none too happy about those well-to-do dinguses trying to control what the immigrants understood as part of their culture. Nevertheless, temperance movements made a pretty significant impact in many places with several states enacting prohibition laws. And then third, this impulse toward social reform led to the beginning of a women's rights movement. Now, women played a significant role in the abolitionist movement, but on the whole, it was largely a male-led enterprise. Even when women pushed for leadership roles in abolitionist organizations like the American Anti-Slavery Society, the men in charge rejected their inclusion. And so, some influential abolitionist women began to discern that their passion and talents for abolition could only be fully realized if they had equal rights with men. Therefore, in 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention to address this very issue. The women at the meeting produced and signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which argued for women's full equality with men in all areas of society, including employment, education, and the franchise. However, although this first iteration of the women's rights movement was born out of the abolitionist movement, the call for women's rights was still, overtime, focused on white women. Regardless, if we're asking the question, who is the United States during this period, then we can add this to the various strands of identity. Americans were a nation of social reformers. Okay, now the next way Americans were reckoning with their identity played out in the tension between national interest and regional interests. In other words, as I am want to say, the big question Americans were trying to answer was, are we the United States or the United States? Okay, so first, let's consider the factors that contributed to the unification of the country, and here let's talk economics. First was the development of a more national economy. And the big movement under this heading was the introduction in 1824 of Henry Clay's American System. It was a series of policy proposals that sought to grow the US economy and further knit together their regional economies into a tighter interdependent national economy, particularly after the War of 1812, when Americans were all giddy during the Era of Good Feelings. And so, the American System aimed to boost the national economy by means of three major initiatives. First was federally funded infrastructure projects, including roads and canals that would especially benefit farmers on the frontier. Second, the American System called for protective tariffs. And here, the granddaddy of them all was the Tariff of 1816. And yes, I know I said that the American System was introduced in 1824, but Clay made the continuation of this tariff a big part of his plan. Anyway, all you really need to know about this tariff is that it was the first tax on imports whose main goal was not to raise revenue for the federal government, but instead to protect and bolster domestic industry. And then the third part of the American System was the Second Bank of the United States. Now, the purpose of the federal bank was to regulate public credit issued through local banks throughout the nation. Additionally, the bank issued a national currency, all of which aimed to bind the various regions of the country together into a tighter economic whole. And yes, this was the very same bank that Andrew Jackson dubbed a monster and vetoed into oblivion. Okay, so as a result of these kinds of policies, there was definitely an emphasis on America as the United States. Like, we're becoming a nation here, y'all. But here's where I tell you that those efforts aimed at national unification simultaneously encouraged regional specialization. What are you talking about, Willis? Well, since the infrastructure to connect the various regions was multiplying rapidly, that meant that each region could specialize in what they did best, and then rely on importing goods from other regions to make up for what they lacked. For example, southern states specialized in agriculture, and in this period, cotton gradually became the dominant crop grown and then exported from the South. The northern states majored in manufacturing and depended on importing raw materials from the South in order to produce those manufactured goods. And then the Western states and territories majored in growing food, which they exported to the other regions. So, regional economies were for sure becoming more distinct from one another, but that also in turn made them more united because they needed each other in order to prosper. But then at the same time, these differences often caused division when policies like the American System showed up, which seemed to benefit some regions at the expense of others. But without a doubt, the most divisive issue that made regional differences flare up was slavery, to which I say, uh, no, duh. Now, slavery was the dominant labor system in the South and to a much smaller degree, the West. But the dominant labor system in the North was free wage labor. And hey, you might think that each region could just look at each other and say, hey, you do you, boob. But neither region could, in fact, do you boob, because of a very significant problem. You see, these regional interests were held in balance by the equal split of senators in Congress that represented free and slave states. So, when the Missouri Territory applied for statehood, it created an odd number of states, and that led to a crisis for this delicate regional balance. To southerners, if northern states gained an advantage in the Senate, then the very existence of slavery would be threatened, and they had built their entire lives on slavery. And so, ultimately, the debate was settled by our boy Henry Clay, who proposed the Missouri Compromise, otherwise known as the Compromise of 1820, and here's how it solved this fractious regional debate. Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, but Maine was admitted as a free state in order to preserve the balance in the Senate. And then it was agreed that hereafter, the 36°30′ line of latitude, Missouri's southern border, would create the geographical division of slavery in the western United States. And so, the compromise worked to stop the bleeding from the gushing neck wound that was the fight over American slavery, but don't worry that bandage is going to pop right off in the next unit.

[39:51]So, you know, something to look forward to. Well, okay, you can click here to grab my Apush Himler Review Guide, or you can click here to watch my other more detailed videos on Unit 4.