Well hey and welcome back to Heimler's History. Now in this video I'm going to review everything you need to know about Unit 4 of the AP US History curriculum. And we ain't got no time to waste, so let's get to it. Now before we get started I need to mention that this review video is part of a larger set of review materials that I've made for you, the Ultimate Review Packet for AP US History. It's got everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, so if you're interested.
Link in the description below. Alright, so let's get down to reviewing Unit 4. The time period that we're covering is 1800 to 1848, and the main themes are as follows. First, the expanding role of the United States in world affairs. Second, the transformation of the society and economy in the early years of the republic. And third, we're going to see how Americans came to terms with all the growing democratic impulses going on during this time.
Now we left off the last unit with the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and now we're going to f- Pick it right back up. So you'll probably recall that during this time there were fierce debates between the Democratic Republicans and the Federalists on dang near everything. And those debates just continued right along into this period, two of the main debates being about American relations with foreign powers and the scope of federal power back here at home.
So I reckon we ought to look at both of them in turn. Now with respect to America's relationship with foreign powers, a good example of the debate during this period has to do with the trouble some Americans were having with a group of folks called the Barbary Pirates. Since the 1970s, the US government had paid tribute to the Barbary states of North Africa in exchange for their protection of American merchant ships.
And this was a policy put in place by prior Federalist presidents Washington and Adams. But our boy Jefferson was morally opposed to paying bribes in order to engage in trade, and so he ordered those payments to cease. So the Barbary Pirates lifted their protection and began attacking US merchant ships.
And at this, Jefferson sent the US Navy to retaliate, but the But as things began to escalate towards war, Jefferson's administration negotiated a reduced payment to the Barbary states. And maybe even more divisive during this time were the debates about the scope of federal power back at home. Democratic Republicans, as you may remember, were all about restriction of federal power, and that was the exact opposite of the Federalists.
The Democratic Republicans championed a strict constructionist view of the Constitution. What this means is that they believed that the federal government was only able to do what was explicitly written in the Constitution. Now Federalists, on the other hand, were loose constructionists. This meant that the federal government had a lot more flexibility with the written word of the constitution, and therefore they could do a lot more that wasn't explicitly written in the constitution.
But, as with all things in history, it's a little more complicated than that. Case in point, the Louisiana Purchase. You might recall that France had a colony in H- Haiti, and that starting in 1791 the Haitians rose up in revolt against the French and won their independence in 1801. As a result of that, Jefferson saw an opportunity to gain navigation rights on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, which was squarely in French territory in North America.
And so he sent James Monroe over to France with $2 million in his pocket to secure those rights from Napoleon. But now that Haiti was lost, Napoleon had little use for the Louisiana territory, and so he went ahead and told Monroe that America could have all of Louisiana for $15 million. Now, Monroe couldn't exactly call up Jefferson for advice, so he went ahead and took the deal. Now that seems great and all, but when Monroe came home heralding the good news, it sent our boy T.J.
into kind of an existential crisis. Remember, he was a strict constructionist, and there was nothing in the Constitution that gives the power to the President to buy land. But there was nothing he could do.
The deal was done. But Jefferson justified the purchase to himself by arguing that by owning the new land, Indians could be removed further westward and it would cut off European influence in the region and open up trading. And bonus, this land would offer the potential to further his agrarian dream for a nation of yeoman farmers rather than the trade and manufacturing nation that Federalists, which is to say Hamilton, envisioned. So in this way, Jefferson, who was a strict constructionist, actually violated those principles and acted like a common, dirty Federalist loose constructionist. Now after the purchase was complete, Congress appropriated funds for a Corps of Discovery led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Lewis and Clark began the exploration of the vast new territory beginning in 1804 and they traveled thousands of miles up the Missouri River until they wound up on the Pacific coast. The southern part of the territory was explored and mapped by Zebulon Pike in 1806 and the travels of these two expeditions led to more accurate mapping of the territory, greater geographic and scientific knowledge of the region, and further diplomatic relations with the Indians who lived there. There was further expansion of federal power during this time, and this happened as a result of Supreme Court decisions, and for that we have our buddy Chief Justice John Marshall to thank. And the first case you need to know in this respect is Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Now, it's not that important that you know all the details of this case, but I'll tell you the story just so you have some context.
Just before Jefferson's election, the Federalist-dominated Congress passed the Judiciary Act, which created 16 new spots for federal judges in the United States. And on his way out of office, John Adams appointed Federalist judges to fill all those spots, and one of those appointments was to go to a judge named William Marbury. And I don't care how you slice it, that was a shrewd political move, because both the Congress and the presidency were changing over from Federalist to Democratic-Republican dominance in the United States.
and this move was a way to ensure continued Federalist influence in the courts. Now as it happened, Jefferson was none too happy about this, and so his Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver some of those appointments. So the conflict wound up in the Supreme Court, and led by Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court decided to ...that under the Judiciary Act, Marbury did in fact deserve his commission. Hmph.
Well that's what I'm talking about. So that's the story, but here comes the sauce. In this decision, the Court also proclaimed itself to be the final interpreter of the Constitution and that the Judiciary Act itself was unconstitutional.
And the term for this power is called judicial review. And therefore, Marbury would not receive his commission. Wait, what? So, this had the effect of increasing the power of the Supreme Court.
And this increase in power just continued in another case in 1819 called McCulloch v. Maryland. And I won't tell you the story here, but just understand that as a result of this case, the Supreme Court decided that federal law trumps state law. Okay, so federal power is increasing during this time, but you also need to understand that sometimes regional interests took precedence over national concern.
And if you want an example, and I know you do, let's talk about the War of 1812. Now this was the first proper war we had gotten ourselves into since the Revolutionary War, so we need to talk about the causes of this war. So during this time, France and Britain were fighting because that's kind of their thing. The US wanted to remain neutral in the conflict, especially on the seas, but France and Britain kept seizing American merchant ships, and that, to put it mildly, was annoying. Additionally, Americans who were moving westward were having Indian problems, as was our custom, and they became convinced that the British were stirring up this resistance.
Finally, there was the problem of British impressment. And you might recall from the last unit that the practice of impressment just means that British ships were forcibly capturing American folks and making them to serve in the Royal Navy. Now, this practice was hated, but at least understandable while America was still a collection of British colonies. But now we got our big boy independence pants on and the British were still doing it. So in June of 1812, the United States declared war on Britain.
Britain and support or resistance to this war fell right along party lines. The Democratic Republicans were very much for it and the Federalists were very much against it. In fact, the Federalists so opposed this war that they met together at something called the Hartford Convention in 1814. And amid their discussions about how to end the war, they even argued that as a result of all this mess, New England should secede from the Union.
Regardless, America won that war and there were some significant consequences that attended it. First, the victory created the occasion for an intense nationalism in the American chest. After all, here was the second war that America had won against the mighty British. I mean technically we didn't win it, we just kind of didn't lose it, but whatever.
The second consequence was the final demise of the Federalist Party. Because everyone was rejoicing in this victory, it seemed like the Federalists who were so staunchly opposed to this war were so out of touch with American reality. And this marked the beginning of a so-called Era of Good Feelings, with a supposed national unity under the Democratic-Republican Party.
However, even with this supposed national unity, the debates raged on. The third consequence is that even though the United States won this war, it did show us some of our glaring weaknesses. For example, since Democratic-Republicans had let the National Bank Charter expire in 1811, there was no national bank, and therefore it was very difficult to raise funds without a reliable source of credit.
Additionally, without a reliable means of infrastructure and transportation, they found it very difficult to move men and supplies for the war effort. And the remedy to these problems gives us another example of regional interests trumping national concerns, namely Henry Clay's American system. In this economic prescription comprised of numerous pieces of legislation and policies, three interdependent policies were proposed with the intent of unifying the American economy.
The first provision was for federally funded internal improvements like roads and canals that would aid farmers and merchants. The second provision was for the implementation of protective tariffs. Tariffs, by way of reminder, are taxes on imported goods.
And if you raise the price on imported goods, that has the effect of making people want to buy cheaper goods produced in America. So the tariffs would protect U.S. manufacturers. And the third provision was for a second Bank of the United States. Now, President Madison vetoed the first provision for internal improvements because he disliked the way it would expand federal power, which he believed would disadvantage the South.
the other two provisions passed. Now, regional tensions were further exacerbated by continued westward expansion. And a prime example is when Missouri applied for statehood in 1819. Settlers had already brought thousands of enslaved people into the Missouri territory, and so it was assumed that Missouri would come in as a slave state.
But here's where I tell you about the Talmadge Amendment. New York Congressman James Talmadge went ahead and attached an amendment to Missouri's application for statehood, prohibiting slavery in the new state. And this was a massive deal, immediately it caused a firestorm in Congress.
And to understand why, you have to realize that of utmost importance during this time was to keep the balance in the Senate between free states and slave states. If Missouri came in as a free state, that means that the slave states would be the losers in the Senate on every vote that concerned such matters. And so this little amendment threatened to break up the Union, and even the word civil war started to drip from people's lips.
Don't just take it from me, let's listen to our boy Thomas Jefferson. He said, But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment.
But this is a reprieve only. Not a final sentence. But our boy Henry Clay stepped in to put a bandaid on this gushing national neck wound.
He proposed the Compromise of 1820, also known as the Missouri Compromise. According to this compromise, they would bring in Missouri as a slave state and then go ahead and bring in Maine as a free state. And thus the free state-slave state balance in the Senate would be preserved.
And in order to solve the problem for future expansion westward, they decided that the southern border of Missouri, which is to say the 3630 line, would hereafter be the line separating slave territory from free territory. territory. Below it, slavery would be permitted. Above it, not so much.
Except Missouri, of course. Okay, so that's what's happening back at home. So now let's turn our attention and look at what's happening with America on the world stage. The major goals for America during this period were to firm up our boundaries and to gain more territory.
And so in 1816, James Monroe, a Democratic Republican, won the presidency. He sent John Quincy Adams over to London to settle some territorial claims, and Adams negotiated treaties that established the US-Canadian border at the 49th parallel. and establish joint US-British occupation of the Oregon Territory.
Okay, now that we've got the North squared away, I know what you're thinking. Was there a treaty that established the southern border of the United States? There it was! I got you. Because Monroe wanted to limit the influence of Spain on the American continent, he had old John Quincy Adams negotiate the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 as well.
In that treaty, Spain went ahead and sold Florida to the United States and established the location of our southern border. And now baby, we're on a roll, globally speaking, so let's keep going. A couple of years after these treaties were signed, several South American countries gained their independence also from Spain.
And Monroe seized this opportunity to proclaim American dominance in the Western Hemisphere in something called the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. And basically this doctrine just established the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of. influence perpetually to be free of European influence. And if that definition doesn't make any sense to you, think about it this way.
Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States is like a giant dog, lifting its leg and peeing all over the Western Hemisphere. Uh, hey y'all, this all belongs to me and you know that because I peed on it. Respect. Alright, so that's what's going on in the wider world.
And now we need to turn our attention to what's going on at home in America during that time, specifically what's going on with our society and what's going on with our economy and all that could be summed up. with the market revolution. So by definition, the market revolution was the linking of northern industries with western and southern farms, which was created by advances in agriculture, industry, communication, and transportation.
And this is why Henry Clay proposed the American system, and this had a massive effect on America. First of all, new technology gave this revolution its big push forward. The cotton gin and the spinning machine revolutionized southern agriculture and northern industry. The cotton gin significantly sped up the process of separating seeds from cotton fiber. And the spinning machine sped up the process of spinning cotton into yarn.
And yet another technological breakthrough that contributed to the market revolution was the advent of interchangeable parts. Now prior to this, generally speaking, any given product was made by artisans from beginning to end. But now, in the midst of the larger industrial revolution, machines were used to produce in bulk the various parts of, say, a musket, and then assemble them all together.
And this new process of production became the basis for the American system of manufacturing. Basically, you had water-powered machines the division of labor into small repeatable tasks performed by unskilled laborers, and therefore mass production. Also, steamboats transformed trade. Now, rivers and streams have always been arteries for trade, but the problem with rivers and streams is that they only flow in one direction.
If you got a raft full of goods to sell 100 miles downstream, that's great, but maybe you walking home. But now, with steam power, trading vessels could navigate upriver and downriver. Also in this market revolution, you had the advancement of transportation. The first big leap forward came with the building of canals, for example, the Erie Canal that stretched across New York state.
Now, in case you don't know what a canal is, it's just a waterway made by humans. Sometimes rivers don't go where you want them to go, so you got to make one of your own. And once the economic benefits of the Erie Canal were plain, that launched a huge campaign for more canals to be dug all across the nation.
Now, by the 1820s and the 1830s, railroads began to replace canals as the sine qua non of transportation for trade. And local and state governments helped this process by granting special loans and tax breaks to railroad companies. And the effect of all this new technology was that American industry became more interconnected and interdependent than ever before, and it especially promoted the growth of Western agriculture. Now, while all of this was going on, American society was changing too. All across the North, industrial cities expl- exploded in both population and diversity.
For starters, from 1820 to 1840 something like two million immigrants showed up on the American shores, mainly from Germany and Ireland. And many of them settled on the eastern seaboard and provided an expanding pool of cheap labor which further fueled Northern industry. Others migrated west and established homesteads and farms on the frontier.
And those immigrants who stayed in the industrial cities transformed the urban landscape. They formed a growing class of laboring poor, and as such they crowded themselves into hastily built housing called tenements. And then these crowded tenements it was a pretty bleak reality.
Sanitation was an afterthought, diseases spread rapidly, and basically they lived there because that was their only choice. But even so, many of these immigrants were able to reestablish their cultural institutions that they had left back in their homeland. For example, Jewish immigrants established synagogues, and the influx of Irish Catholics led to the expansion of the Catholic Church.
And also, there was a growing middle class. This class first emerged in the North and included folks like businessmen, shopkeepers, journalists, doctors, and lawyers. And with their growing prosperity, they had disposable income which they spent on leisure activities like plays and circuses and sporting events.
And hey, we gotta talk about women during this period too. The ladies were expected to conform to a developing societal norm which was known as the Cult of Domesticity. And this was expounded to them in a dizzying array of new magazines and books that were being published. The idea was that a woman's identity and sense of purpose revolved around childbearing and making her home a haven of rest for her husband. The husband's proper place was outside of the home, working.
And so this idea of separate spheres for the sexes began to really take hold in American society during this time. This was a middle class and upper class phenomenon, and the reason why it didn't extend to the lower classes is probably obvious. For the lower classes, the women had to work in order for the family to survive. Ain't no lower class woman got time to sit around and make her husband's sandwich all day. All right, now let's take a hard look at the Right and talk about the expansion of democracy during this time.
To begin with, it's going to be important for you to know that the only people who could vote during this time were property-owning white males. So that means that voting was the prerogative of the elite. But as the century progressed, workingmen and small farmers and frontier settlers all began to demand the franchise, which is to say, the right to vote. Now, in order to understand why, I need to tell you about the Panic of 1819, which was the first major recession in United States history. The panic resulted from irresponsible banking practices and a decrease in demand for exported American goods, especially cotton.
Now, it was laboring men who were hit hardest by this panic, and they wanted to be able to hold politicians accountable for their failures to regulate the banks. but they could not vote. And this desire for the franchise gathered more steam because the frontier states had pretty much all established universal male suffrage. And so by 1825, most eastern states had lowered or eliminated their property qualifications for voting. And now that American politics had an influx of new voters, that led to the growth and realignment of political parties.
The election of 1824 led to a split in the Democratic-Republican party, and the two factions were as follows. The group who called themselves the National Republicans had a more expansive view of federal power, which is to say they were loose constructionists in the lineage of old school Federalists. And the group who called themselves the Democrats had a restrictive view of federal power, which is to say they were strict constructionists. And with this rift growing between them, they had the worst time nominating a candidate for the presidential election.
And so they chose four candidates, three of which will be important to name. There was Andrew Jackson, who was a Democrat in the Jeffersonian mold. There was John Quincy Adams, and then there was Henry Clay, who were both national Republicans with Federalist tendencies. Now Adams and Jackson were the strongest contenders among the four.
But while Adams stayed home and let other people do his campaigning for him, Jackson went to the people and inspired mass support. So Jackson won the popular vote, but because there were so many candidates to choose from, nobody won a majority of the electoral vote. And in that case, the Constitution says that it falls to the House of Representatives to choose the president.
Henry Clay, who came in fourth in this contest, who also happened to be the Speaker of the House through his support behind Adams, and the House chose Adams to be the President. But not five seconds after Adams'cheeks hit the chair in the Oval Office, he named Henry Clay as his Secretary of State. And Jackson and all his supporters saw this and cried foul, and they called it the corrupt bargain.
But now fast forward to the next election in 1828, and these intra-party factions have actually crystallized into legit political parties. The Democratic Party chose Jackson as their candidate, and the National Republicans went with Adams. And Jackson again took his campaign across the country to all the people, and he ended up this time winning the ticket. And now we need to talk about Andrew Jackson and his use of federal power during his presidency. By the time he was elected, the two major national parties had shifted a little bit.
The Democrats were led by Andrew Jackson, and a new party called the Whigs was led by Henry Clay. And the main disagreement between these two parties was basically the scope of federal power. And here's where I give you some examples of this conflict.
And let's start with tariffs, specifically the Tariff of 1828. Now this tariff was actually passed during the Adams administration and it raised import duties up to 50%. As you can imagine, Northern manufacturers and Western farmers loved this tariff because it protected their industries. But Southerners hated it because they relied on imported goods.
And so now in 1832, under the Jackson administration, Congress went ahead and reaffirmed that tariff and here's where things get a little saucy. I already told you that the Southerners hated the tariff. In fact, they called it the Tariff of Abomination.
And it just so happened that Jackson's vice president was a guy named John C. Calhoun, who happened to be a South Carolinian. And Calhoun shared the Southern hatred of this tariff and developed the doctrine of nullification. And what this meant in practice was that the states had the power to determine the constitutionality of federal laws. And if a state found a law to fail the test, they could nullify it, or refuse to follow it.
And so in 1832, when Congress reaffirmed that tariff, South Carolina held a convention and decided they would not pay those taxes. And furthermore, if federal authorities came to collect those taxes, South Carolina would secede from the Union. And so Andrew Jackson, not one to have his authority flouted by a recalcitrant state, persuaded Congress to pass the Force Bill.
And the Force Bill gave Jackson the authority to use federal troops to enforce federal law in South Carolina. Now Jackson did work with Congress in order to lower the tariffs so that way South Carolina could remain in the Union and still save face. But in a nasty little thumb-biting moment, the South Carolina legislature went ahead and nullified the Force Bill.
What's up? That's fun. Okay, now a second illustration over the divide of opinion on the scope of federal power was Jackson's veto of the Second Bank of the United States.
Now, recall that this bank was established as part of Henry Clay's American system, and it did stabilize the economy throughout the 1820s. But when state banks started closing because they couldn't make the required payments to the national bank, many people were left with worthless paper money. At that, Jackson concluded that a national bank favored the elite over ordinary citizens, and as a man of the people, he sought to correct that error.
And when the recharter for the bill for the bank passed Congress and showed up on Jackson's desk, he vetoed it, calling it a monster that was dangerous to the common people of America. And so the National Bank was officially Deadsy's. And yet another illustration of Jackson's use of federal power was his project of Indian removal. Now, acquisition of Indian land was a big issue before and during Jackson's administration, and it came to a head in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. And there are several different Indian nations we could look at here, but let's just consider the Cherokee. The Cherokee nation, located in Georgia, had declared itself a sovereign nation within the borders of the state.
Georgians, however, did not see it that way. To them, the Cherokee were more like guests on their land. I mean, y'all can chill on our land.
That's all good. What? There's golden in their heels? Oh, y'all got to go.
And so upon the passage of the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokee refused to be resettled across the Mississippi River. And they actually challenged that law in the Supreme Court in a case called Worcester v. Georgia. The court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was in fact sovereign and that Georgia did not have the right to impose state laws within their boundaries. And that was a great win for the Cherokee, but then something happened.
In 1835, U.S. officials persuaded a small delegation of the Cherokee to meet with them and sign a treaty. Now, this group of Cherokee did in no way have tribal authority to do such a thing, but sign it they did. The result was the Treaty of New Dakota, which officially exchanged Cherokee land in Georgia for a reservation territory west of the Mississippi River. And for all who did not relocate voluntarily, the forced removal began in 1838 along what became known as the Trail of Tears. Okay, so that definitely happened, but we do need to move on and talk about the distinct American culture and the spirit of reform that was springing up during this time.
It was very important for Americans to develop their own distinct identity. And in this period, that largely occurred through language, philosophy, art, and religion. With respect to American literature and language, we need to talk about Noah Webster and his publication in 1828 of the American Dictionary of the English Language. This dictionary was used in expanding networks of schools and academies.
And its chief effect was to standardize the spelling and pronunciation of American English. Because son, as far as I'm concerned, you ain't American unless you speak American. And we also got ourselves a thoroughly American philosophy with the advent of Transcendentalism.
Now I say it was American, but it was definitely influenced by European Romanticism and its belief on human perfectibility. Additionally, Romanticism, in contradiction to the Enlightenment's emphasis on the thinky-thinky parts, emphasized human passion and mystery. And so Transcendentalism followed all of this and emphasized the transcendent power and beauty of nature.
The first luminary of this manner of thought was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believed that moral perfection could be achieved in the United States. Later, a follow of Emerson's named Henry David Thoreau moved to a cabin near Walden Pond, He lived there among nature for a year and made an experiment of human perfection. All of his musings he wrote down in a book called Walden.
Most of these folks supported other moralist movements at the time, including abolition and temperance and women's suffrage, which is to say there's lots of overlap throughout the various reform movements during this period. This manner of thinking also influenced art during this period. For example, the Hudson River School of Artists painted romanticized landscapes in New York and the Western Territories. And all of this was an effort toward spiritual renewal in America. But some folks took this desire for spiritual renewal even further and created utopian communities.
These groups of folks were usually very influenced by European intellectuals and American values of democracy and equality. And one of the more famous of these groups was the Oneida community, formed in 1848 in central New York. This group of Christians became convinced that the Second Coming of Christ had already occurred and therefore they must shake off the restraints of the kingdom of this world and live communally in imperfect equality. And so each member relinquished any private property they owned, and one of their more well-known doctrines was that of complex marriage.
marriage. And that is exactly what it sounds like. Everyone in the community belonged to everyone else, and so that means that the marriage bed was, how shall I say this, open. But don't worry, the community was really big on birth control methods, you know, like Jesus would have done when he established his everlasting kingdom on Earth. You know.
Anyway, perhaps the most significant spiritual renewal during this time was the Second Great Awakening. Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians organized camp meetings in the woods that folks attended for days. days on end, and each day would feature up to a dozen evangelical preachers who preached with fervor all day long. And it'll be important for you to know that in general these camp meetings were relatively egalitarian, which is to say they included whites, blacks, enslaved and free people, men and women.
But it wasn't all egalitarian puppies and rainbows. For example, the Southern Baptists went ahead and split from their denomination because of all those cranky Baptist abolitionists in the North. Now this movement spread to the cities chiefly by means of the great preacher Charles Finney.
Finney was a New York preacher who spoke powerfully, in a dialect, and with images that common folks could understand, and they flocked to hear him in droves. And soon his ministry of preaching spread across the cities of the North, and the flame was lit for Christian revival. But in contrast to the First Great Awakening, whose preachers focused intently on personal moral reformation, Finney and the preachers that followed in his steps were emphasizing the moral reformation of society.
And it's important to mention that because such messages set the stage for the temperance movement, which crusaded against the consumption of alcohol. And going right along that line, in 1826 the American Temperance Society was founded by businessmen and clergy. Its efforts were directed towards working class men who abused alcohol.
And the religious revivals happening in the midst of the Second Great Awakening led to the establishment of over 5,000 chapters of the ATS. across the country. And their goal was nothing less than complete abstinence from alcohol. And the Second Great Awakening also set the stage for innovations on the Christian faith, the most famous of which being Mormonism or the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1840s.
It was founded by a guy named Joseph Smith, who claimed to receive visions from God at the age of 18. The substance of those visions was pretty varied, but the main idea is that all churches in America had strayed from the true teachings of the original apostolic church. And so being directed to dig up some gold plates buried in the hills of Palmyra, New York, Joseph Smith translated the plates into what became their holy book, the Book of Mormon. Now, in the beginning, New Yorkers tolerated the Mormon presence, but once Smith proclaimed that God had instructed his community to enjoy the institution of polygamy, where men can marry many wives, they fell under persecution. And so, after Smith was lynched in Missouri for such teachings, the next prophet of the group, Brigham Young, led the Mormon community to establish a theocracy on the Great Salt Lake in the Utah Territory. Okay, still on the topic of American society, let's talk about the growing movement of abolitionism.
In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement was mainly confined to free blacks and Quakers. But later in this period, the movement really started picking up steam. One cause for this was the publication in 1831 of William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator. He argued forcefully that white folks needed to take a stand against slavery by means of moral persuasion and not violence. In 1833, his cause had gathered enough attention to create the American Anti-Slavery Society, which spread rapidly across the northern states.
But you can't get the impression that everyone in the North was an abolitionist. That's not how it was. Northern merchants and manufacturers actually feared abolition because of its potential effects on the cotton and sugar trade.
And on the other hand, white working men in the North felt threatened by the prospect of abolition because that meant their jobs could be in peril. There were many women who supported the cause of abolitionism, but they found that their status as women made it impossible for them to advocate for the cause as they wished. And so they concluded that in order to be more effective in their campaigns, they needed more rights for themselves.
And so the cause of abolitionism and women's rights began to grow up together out of the same soil. And to this end, in 1848, women gathered for the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. This was the first women's rights conference in America, and there they drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for women's equality in education, legal rights, and voting. And the fruit of that movement won't come fully to bear for a long time, but this is where it started. And finally, we need to talk about a distinct subset of American society during this time, namely the South.
After 1830, plantations began to expand right along with westward expansion. And when that happened, plantation owners profited enormously from their expanded fields of sugar and cotton. And this created a wealthy plantation aristocracy, which sought to protect their profits and way of life through hard discipline towards the enslaved people that worked for them.
But even despite the harsh conditions, the enslaved laborers found ways to keep their own sense of community alive. One cultural aspect that's worth mentioning is their songs. They sang songs that both created a rhythm for their work and expressed their collective despair and also their collective hopes.
Now planters went to great lengths in order to control their black laborers, and one of the reasons is that they were purp- perpetually haunted by the possibility of slave uprisings. And they had good reason to fear, because the Haitian Revolution, which was itself a slave uprising, wasn't that far in the past. And in 1831, their fears became a reality in an event known as Nat Turner's Rebellion.
A black laborer named Nat Turner organized a slave revolt in Virginia, believing that God had given him a mission to do so. By the end of the rebellion, he and his followers had killed over 50 white people. Turner and 55 of his followers were hanged publicly, but this event only served to further increase the fear among Southerners of more slave rebellions. And so, out of that fear, they imposed even harsher disciplines and restrictions on slaves. Now, it's going to be important for you to know that most white Southerners didn't own any slaves at all.
They were yeoman farmers, which means they were independent landowners. But it's important to know that even if they owned no slaves, they still believed in general in the institution of slavery and the racial hierarchy that made the Southern society work. Now as the soil in the South became depleted of nutrients because of over-farming, lots of Southern farmers began moving west. And as a result of that, slavery began to grow in the West as well, and I'm sure that won't cause any problems in the next period.
but we'll have to wait till we get there to find out. Alright, I know that was a beast, but that's what you need to know about Unit 4 of AP U.S. History. If you want to go ahead and grab the Ultimate Review Packet, go ahead and click right here and all your dreams will come true. And if you want to join the Heimler family, go ahead and subscribe and let me know that you want me to keep making these videos.
I had a good time. I hope you had a good time. Heimler out.