United States History I: Colonies to Reconstruction

This is Unit One of Social Sciences and History, part two of two: United States history from the founding documents to the end of Reconstruction. Part one closed on the War of Eighteen Twelve, which settled no boundary and settled an identity. This part carries one idea to its end. Every settlement the country reached over slavery rested on a line drawn across a map, and every new territory moved the line. The Missouri line held a generation; the next held four years; the next three; and when the Supreme Court took away the power to draw lines at all, nothing was left to compromise about. The capstone entry at the end lays that chain out link by link. By the end you will be able to read a founding document for its claim, authority and audience. To tell the Jackson era's three fights apart. To name Clay's three compromises and say where the course's record is thinner than the exam's key. To match each Reconstruction amendment to what it forbids. And to recite the chain from compromise to war with its dates.

Two entries to open: three questions that answer any founding-document item, then the mills, panics and canals that remade the North.

How to read a founding document.

SSH 0025 Reading a Founding Document for Its Claim

The exam quotes founding documents and asks what they claim, who they address, and on what authority, and three questions answer almost any such item. What does the text claim to be true or to do? Whose consent or authority does it rest on? Who is meant to hear it? The Declaration claims that the colonies are, and by right ought to be, free and independent states; its authority is the consent of the governed and the natural rights it names; its audience is a candid world, which is why it lists grievances. The Articles claim to bind sovereign states into a league on the states' own authority, which is why the national government could not tax. The Constitution's preamble acts for "We the People," an authority above the states, which is why it could. "A firm league of friendship" points to the Articles; "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" points to the Declaration; "a more perfect union" points to the Constitution. The trap is mistaking a grievance list for a claim. The grievances are evidence; the claim is independence, on the people's authority.

The market that reshaped the North.

SSH 0026 The Market and Transportation Revolutions

Mills at Waltham and Lowell hired young women and split artisan work into steps, called deskilling. Speculation and unbacked paper money caused the Panic of eighteen nineteen. Roads, canals and railroads shrank distance, with the Erie Canal joining the Hudson to Lake Erie and western markets. Three classes formed: an elite, a middle class prizing work and education, and wage workers who could afford neither.

Three entries on Jackson's era: the politics of the majority, the tariff crisis and the Bank War, and the removal a Court ruling could not stop.

The politics of the majority.

SSH 0027 Jacksonian Democracy and the Second Party System

Universal White manhood suffrage replaced deference. The House gave the eighteen twenty-four election to Adams, and Jackson's supporters called it a corrupt bargain with Clay. Jackson won in eighteen twenty-eight and rewarded loyalists with offices, the spoils system. Democrats against Whigs formed the second party system, and eighteen forty's log cabin campaign had both parties courting the crowd. Tocqueville warned of the majority's tyranny.

The crisis over the tariff.

SSH 0028 Nullification, the Bank War, and the Whigs

South Carolina met the Tariff of eighteen twenty-eight with nullification, the claim that a state could void federal law. Jackson faced it down, and a compromise tariff of eighteen thirty-three lowered rates, brokered by Clay according to the witness, not the anchor. Jackson vetoed the Second Bank and removed its deposits. The Bank War produced the Whigs, whose program was Clay's American System.

Removal.

SSH 0029 Indian Removal

The Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty ordered the Five Civilized Tribes out of the Southeast. The Supreme Court ruled for the Cherokee; the ruling gave no protection, and the army removed them along the Trail of Tears, the route to present-day Oklahoma. The anchor ties the policy to popular contempt for native peoples. The course states the record: a forced march.

Four entries on the lines across the map: Missouri's line, the territory that reopened the question, the sample question on Clay, and the South that cotton built.

The compromise that drew a line.

SSH 0030 The Missouri Compromise

Missouri's bid to enter as a slave state in eighteen nineteen raised slavery's morality and the fear of disunion. The compromise of eighteen twenty admitted Missouri with slavery and Maine free, barring slavery north of thirty-six thirty; the Tallmadge Amendment for gradual emancipation was narrowly rejected. The anchor does not name Clay here. The witness credits him, and the course says so.

Texas and the war with Mexico.

SSH 0031 Texas, Polk, and the Mexican Cession

Texas won independence in eighteen thirty-six, and the United States refused it as a slave state. Polk annexed it, settled Oregon with Britain, and fought Mexico from eighteen forty-six to forty-eight, taking nearly half its territory, with the border fixed at the Rio Grande and gold found in California. The cession reopened the question Missouri had settled. Every acre raised the argument over slavery.

The sample question on Henry Clay.

SSH 0032 Henry Clay's Three Compromises

Sample question one names the compromises of eighteen twenty, eighteen thirty-three and eighteen fifty and asks who authored them; the key is Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser. In eighteen twenty the deadlock was Missouri, and the package paired a slave state with a free one and drew a line. In eighteen thirty-three it was nullification, and the package lowered rates over time while South Carolina withdrew its ordinance. In eighteen fifty it was the Mexican Cession: California free, popular sovereignty for the rest, no slave trade in Washington, a stronger Fugitive Slave Act. The distractors are men present at one crisis but not all three. Calhoun stood on the other side of nullification; Douglas passed the eighteen fifty bills but was not in Congress in eighteen twenty; Jackson faced nullification down and authored no compromise; Webster was absent from the first. Only Clay appears at all three, as the broker. The course's record: the anchor credits Clay only with leading eighteen fifty; his authorship of the first two is stated by the witness, the American Yawp. The key stands on that reading, and the course says so.

The South that cotton built.

SSH 0033 Cotton, the Domestic Slave Trade, and the South's Defenses

Whitney's gin of seventeen ninety-four made cotton profitable, and the South grew most of the world's supply. After the international slave trade was outlawed in eighteen oh eight, the domestic trade exploded, separating families. A small elite owned most enslaved people; most White southerners owned none. The South's defenses included Calhoun's concurrent majority, paternalism and polygenism, named here as the record of an argument.

Four entries on reform and the broken truce: the reform impulse, abolition and Seneca Falls, the decade the truce broke, and secession.

The reform impulse.

SSH 0034 The Second Great Awakening and Reform

The Second Great Awakening, with Charles Finney, urged individuals to take charge of their own salvation, and Transcendentalists like Emerson sought truth beyond the senses. Reformers attacked drink, founded communities, Shakers, Fourierists, Brook Farm, and the Mormons, the most successful, and mapped the mind through phrenology. Optimism about perfecting society ran through every movement. Abolition drew the strongest reaction.

Abolition and women's rights.

SSH 0035 Abolition and Seneca Falls

Colonization proposed moving Black Americans to Africa, and abolitionists scorned it. Garrison's immediatism demanded an end to slavery now, by moral suasion, in a nation of equals; the Liberator's masthead showed two Americas, one free. Slave rebellions horrified North and South alike. Abolition seeded feminism: at Seneca Falls in eighteen forty-eight, the first women's rights conference signed a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments.

The decade the truce broke.

SSH 0036 Kansas-Nebraska, Dred Scott, and the Republicans

The Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty made helping escapees a crime. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act of eighteen fifty-four applied popular sovereignty, Kansas bled, and the Republican Party formed to stop slavery's spread. Dred Scott, eighteen fifty-seven: no Black citizenship, no bar on territorial slavery. The ruling voided the Republican platform, and the eighteen fifty-eight debates with Douglas made Lincoln nationally known.

Harpers Ferry to Fort Sumter.

SSH 0037 Secession and the War's Opening

John Brown's raid of eighteen fifty-nine inflamed the South and split the Democrats. Lincoln won in eighteen sixty; seven states seceded before he took office, and Fort Sumter fell on April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, with both sides expecting one short battle to settle it. Losses at Manassas and Fredericksburg, gains at Shiloh, New Orleans and Memphis. The Union took the West first.

Three entries to close: emancipation and victory, Reconstruction's plans and amendments, and the one chain from compromise to war.

The year the war changed.

SSH 0038 Emancipation and Union Victory

The Emancipation Proclamation of January first, eighteen sixty-three freed few people at once but made ending slavery a Union war aim. Vicksburg gave the Union the Mississippi, and Gettysburg ended Lee's invasion; Lincoln spoke there on November nineteenth. Neither Britain nor France recognized the Confederacy. Sherman marched to the sea, and Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April ninth, eighteen sixty-five.

What came after.

SSH 0039 Reconstruction: Plans, Amendments, Collapse

Reconstruction ran from eighteen sixty-five to seventy-seven. Lincoln's ten percent plan offered a lenient path back; after his murder, Andrew Johnson pardoned southerners en masse and declared Reconstruction finished by eighteen sixty-six. Congress disagreed, overrode his vetoes, and imposed Radical Reconstruction under military rule from eighteen sixty-seven. Three amendments remade the Constitution: the Thirteenth abolished slavery; the Fourteenth made everyone born in the country a citizen and guaranteed equal protection; the Fifteenth barred denying the vote on account of race, and women's suffragists were disappointed. To match an amendment to a question, ask what it forbids: unequal treatment or denied citizenship points to the Fourteenth, the ballot to the Fifteenth, slavery itself to the Thirteenth. The collapse came from terror and fatigue together: the Klan as an arm of the Democratic Party, scandals, a depression, and the Compromise of eighteen seventy-seven, which gave Hayes the presidency for withdrawing the last troops. The anchor judges that Reconstruction failed its primary objective, an interracial democracy with equal rights; the course reports that as the anchor's judgment.

The chain from compromise to war.

SSH 0040 From Compromise to War: One Chain, 1820–1861

The exam's questions cluster on the road to the Civil War, and the road is one chain with a single link repeated: each time the country acquired territory, Congress had to decide whether slavery could go there, and each compromise held for a shorter time than the last. Eighteen twenty: Missouri raised the question for the Louisiana lands, and the compromise drew the line at thirty-six thirty. It held a generation, though Jefferson heard in it the knell of the Union. Eighteen forty-eight: the Cession raised it for half of Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso split the Democrats, and the Compromise of eighteen fifty, Clay's package passed by Douglas, pleased no one; its Fugitive Slave Act made northerners slave-catchers by law. Eighteen fifty-four: Kansas-Nebraska replaced the line with popular sovereignty inside lands the line had already settled, Kansas became a battlefield, and the Republicans formed. Eighteen fifty-seven: Dred Scott removed Congress's power to decide at all. Eighteen fifty-nine: John Brown ended the possibility of trust. Eighteen sixty: Lincoln won without a southern electoral vote, seven states left, and Crittenden's last compromise failed. Eighteen sixty-one: Sumter. Four acquisitions, four compromises, each shorter-lived: thirty-four years, four, three, none. This is not a proof that the war was inevitable, and the course does not say it was. It shows why each compromise failed: every settlement rested on a line, and every new territory moved the line. That is the idea this lecture opened with, and here it is paid off.

Look at what you can now do. You can read a founding document by asking what it claims, on whose authority, and to whom, and you can tell a grievance list from the claim it supports. You can tell the Jackson era's three fights apart: the majority's politics, nullification, and removal. You can name Clay's three compromises and the crisis each answered, and you can say that the course credits him with the first two on the witness's word, not the anchor's. You can match each Reconstruction amendment to what it forbids. And you can recite the chain from Missouri to Sumter with its dates, and say why each compromise held for less time than the last: every settlement was a line, and every new territory moved it. Unit two opens on the industrial nation that emerged from Reconstruction.