CHAPTER 11

Panic and Boom

1837 – 1845

“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in a government?  Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?  There will never be a free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

“If Christ should appear on earth he would on all hands be denounced as a mistaken, misguided man, insane and crazed.”

“I believe the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

“Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.”

“Americans love their country not as it is but as it will be.” Foreigner Francis Grund 

“Why Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous.”  Lucretia Mott

“You cannot outlaw one part of the people without endangering the rights and liberties of all people. You cannot put a chain on the ankle of the bondsman without finding the other end of it about your own necks.” Frederick Douglass

“This young boy [Nat Turner], by the time he was eight or nine years old, had memorized the entire Bible.” Stephen B. Oates

“The mistress of a plantation was the most complete slave on it.” Susan Dabney Smedes

“But southern court records, newspapers, plantation diaries, and slave memoirs reveal that sadistic slave punishments were frequent and harsh.” Faragher text

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul

has simply nothing to do. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“The power of Love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. . .”

“There will always be a government of force where men are selfish.”

“As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1888

Bibliography

John Blasingame, The Slave Community (1979)Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross (1974) and

Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (1989)

John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (1947)

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White women of the Old South (1988)

Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976)

Ulrich Phillips, American Negro Slavery (1919)Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956)Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

Paul Boller, American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860 (1974)Degler, Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. (1980)Douglass, Frederick. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. (1845)Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837

(1978)Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and power before the Civil War (1973)R. D. Richardson Jr., Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (1986)

Gutman, Herbert G. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America:  Essays in American Working-Class History. (1976)

Handlin, Oscar. Boston’s Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation. (Revised 1959) and The Uprooted (1951)

Lerner, Gerda. The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women’s Rights and Abolition. (1967)

Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom:  Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840. (1988)

Mintz, Steven.  Moralists and Modernizers:  America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers. (1995)

Pessen, Edward. Most Uncommon Jacksonians:  The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement. (1967)

Sklar, Kathryn. Catharine Beecher:  A Study in American Domesticity. (1973)

Chapter Review

Explain the events and the consequences of the series of financial panics and depressions that plagued the U.S. economy beginning in 1837.

Trace the ongoing ferment for social change and self-improvement that characterized the decade of 1835 to 1845.

Explain the focus on abolitionism that dominated the late 1830s. Describe the lives of slaves in the 1830s as well as the attitudes of

white Southerners regarding slavery. Outline the perils and the potential of continuing westward expansion. Explain how the presidential election of 1840 illustrated the transformation

taking place in American politics. How did slave owners justify slavery and how did their defenses

change over time?

3 Interpretations of the “Peculiar Institution”

1. Slavery as a relatively humane and reasonable institution helping childlike slaves

2. Slavery as a harsh and cruel system of oppressive exploitation

3. Viewed from the perspective of the slaves: brutal treatment but survived with sense of self-esteem, community and culture

The first two interpretations emphasized work day interactions, the 2nd focused on life in the slave quarters from sunup to sundown

Rationalizations – positive good to necessary evil

BiblicalCurse of CainnOld and New Testament

HistoricalEgypt, Greece, Rome

LegalConstitutionMissouri Compromise Scientific

Environmental factorsCreated separately [polygenesis]

Allston: “The educated master is the Negro’s best friend upon earth.”George Fitzhugh: “the Negro is but a grown child and must be governed as a child.”

Concepts

Horace Mann, public education Samuel F. B. Morse Brook Farm, New Harmony Cult of Domesticity Temperance movement Grimke sisters Amistad Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau Daguerreotypes Manifest Destiny Lowell, Rhode Island system

Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf Frog and scorpion, boiled frog syndrome Task system [rice] v. gang system Maroon colonies, Los Folkloristas song 40% of free blacks were mulattos compared to 10% of total slave

population drapetomania - “the disease causing Negroes to run away” Life expectancy: 21.4 black / 25.5 white (1850) [Your text says white

life expectancy is in the 40s] Gary Wills: “the slave power” politically Stanley Elkins – Sambo v. Jack, Nazi prison camp experiences

1846, by Nathaniel Currier

William Lloyd Garrison, 1831 Newspaper, the Liberator

Harriet Tubman

After fleeing from slavery in Maryland in 1849, Harriet “Moses” Tubman, standing on the left, risked reenslavement by returning to the South on several occasions to assist other slaves in escaping. She is photographed here with some of those she helped free.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman stands beside a chair while clad in a long dark dress.

The scars from a whipping on a slave's back

A black slave displays disfiguring scars on his bare back from whippings.

The Spread of Slavery: New Slave States Entering the Union, 1800-50

Seven slave states entered the Union after 1800 as cotton production shifted westward.

Cotton and Other Crops in the South, 1860

Most of the Upper South was outside the cotton belt where the demand for slave labor was greatest.

“New Orleans from the Lower Cotton Press, 1852”

Mobile Bay, Alabama 1842

An 1860 slave burial “drawn from life” at the plantation of LA Gov. Tucker

Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr.’s home at Beaufort, S.C.

Charlestown, South Carolina 1838

The slave deck of Wildfire, 1860

The death of Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois in 1837 after 4th printing press destroyed

Theodore Dwight Weld, 1803 – 1895 – he attempted to radicalize Lane Theological Seminary to abolitionism – formed Oberline – married Angelina Emily Grimke in 1838

Sarah Moore Grimke, 1792 – 1873 -- she and her sister Angelina left Charleston home to live in Philadelphia as abolitionists

Arthur Tappan – he and brother Lewis were NY evangelicals committed to abolitionism – funded Anti-Slavery Society, Oberlin College, the Liberator

Wendell Phillips, 1811 – 1884 --- on the Boston Common

Lucretia Mott, 1793 - 1880

Susan B. Anthony [r], 1820 – 1906 and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815 - 1902

A page from McGuffey’s Reader published in 1836

Lowell, MA mills about 1840

Farmer’s daughters working in a power loom mill

A replica a Samuel F. B. Morse’s 1st telegraph instrument, 1835

Samuel F. B. Morse in Victorian NY City home, about 1870

Charles Grandison Finney, 1792 – 1875 – President of Oberlin College 1851-65

Horace Mann, 1796 - 1859

Noah Webster, 1758 – 1843 – Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882 – The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 – 1864 – The Scarlet Letter 1850

Frederick Douglass

After escaping to freedom in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a commanding figure in the abolitionist movement. His speeches denouncing slavery were fiery and eloquent.

The American Anti-Slavery Society

The constitution of the AASA from its founding convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1833.

The Drunkard’s Progress From The Glass To The Grave

By the 1840s, the temperance crusade had become one of the most significant reform movements in America. This illustration graphically suggests the perils of alcohol.

Woman at Spinning Wheel

A painted figurine of a woman sitting at a spinning wheel, ca. 1850-1870, Salem, Massachusetts.

The Growth of Cities, 1820-1860

In 1820, most cities were clustered along the Atlantic seaboard.

The Growth of Cities, 1820-1860

By 1860, new transportation outlets—canals and railroads—had fostered the rapid growth of cities in the interior, especially at trading locations with access to navigable rivers or to the Great Lakes. Much of this growth occurred in the 1850s.

Moral Lessons

Moral Lessons such as this one for boys at play filled the page of the McGuffey’s readers. Richard Nowitz Photography

Nursemaid

Especially on large plantations, slave nursemaids cared for the young children in the white planter’s family. From the Collection of the Louisiana State Museum

I. Economic Crisis and Innovation

President Martin van Buren faces a financial crisis Supreme Court hands down ruling that changes how

business operates Railroads become main form of transportation as

Americans become more connected

The Growth of Railroads

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II. Life in the New Slave South

African American families develop networks of “fictive kin” to counteract pressures of slavery

Most slaves work in fields, where conditions vary greatly Both Whigs and Democrats support slavery in the South,

but the parties’ constituents are vastly different

Paths of the Slave Trade

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Spread of Slavery

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Percentage of Population Enslaved, 1820 and 1840

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III. Reform Takes Root

Public education gains support Movement against alcoholic beverages grows Abolition remains strongest reform movement

IV. Development of an American Culture

Transcendentalism emerges as a new cultural movement American popular culture includes such different areas as

painting, writing, and public entertainment

V. The Transformation of American Politics

Campaigns become a major part of America’s entertainment, and the new emphasis on informal issues helps elect William Henry Harrison

Harrison’s death from pneumonia brings John Tyler to the presidency, to the displeasure of almost everyone

Election of 1840

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VI. The Challenge of the West

California and Oregon become “The West,” and many Americans begin to migrate westward

“Manifest Destiny” is used to describe God’s plan for Americans to inhabit the continent

Two major issues dominate 1840s: slavery and statehood for Texas

Oregon Boundary Dispute

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Population Explosion 1830-1850

©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.

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Trails to the West

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