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FOURTH EXAM STUDY GUIDE

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THE 1790s:

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This lecture dealt with the early operation of the United States under the Constitution.  After the ratification of the Constitution, United States citizens set up the new government, and the early version of our current nation started to operate.  This lecture illustrated the difficulties early political leaders encountered.  It also noted that their hardships were a result of inexperience and the extremely complex issues the United States confronted in the 1790s.  The politicians were also under TREMENDOUS pressure not to fail again.  If the United States went the same route as the Confederation, the whole nation experiment in North America would be over.

 

 What we’re going to find is that the conflicts of the 1790s terrified the politicians running the early United States.  How nervous, paranoid, and uncertain they were becomes evident in the lecture.  What’s particularly interesting (and a little ominous) is that this conflict didn’t frighten younger individuals.  It exhilarated them.  Younger politicians took a very different message from the 1790s than their older counterparts, which would have significance in development of the Civil War.

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So at minimum you need to know this:

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  • The problems facing the Early United States

  • George Washington

  • Alexander Hamilton

  • The Report on Public Credit I and II

  • Report on Manufactures

  • The controversy over the Hamilton Plan and the reasons why men like Madison were so critical

  • Hamilton’s reasons for his financial actions - was he just an elitist or were there real, financial reasons for his actions that had nothing to do with class?

  • The reasons parties began to emerge and the implications party politics posed for the Constitution

  • The differences between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans

  • The horrors of the French Revolution

  • Washington's dilemma in the face of the French Revolution

  • The Jay Treaty of 1794

  • The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794

  • The election of 1796

  • John Adams' presidency - Quasi War, etc.

  • The Sedition Act of 1798

  • Luther Baldwin

  • The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and their implications

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WHAT HAPPENED IN 1800:

 

Here, lectures turned to the resolution of the social and political conflict started in the 1790s.  Lectures argued that political leaders of the 1790s, capable but inexperienced men faced with slew of difficult issues, drove the national to the brink of destruction.  In 1800, though, when the people voted Jeffersonian Republicans into office and removed Federalists, the great conflicts of the 1790s in large part resolved.  Through the "Revolution of 1800s," the people spoke and brought to a conclusion the bitter battles that had come to dominate politics and society.  This Revolution of 1800 (what Jefferson called it) is HUGE.  Think about revolutions of the 1700s and 1800s.  How many people typically died in a revolution (in which one group in power was replaced by another)?  How many died in the Revolution of 1800?  Hmmmm . . .

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So you need to know the following:

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  • The term "Revolution of 1800"

  • Who became President in 1800

  • Thomas Jefferson's background and dreams for the United States

  • The significance of farming in Jefferson's mind and the reasons farmers were virtuous enough to allow the nation to exist without a strong national government.

  • "Those who labor in the earth . . ."

  • Jefferson's actions as President - what did he do that made him look like a man of the people?

  • Jefferson's gunboats

  • Pinckney's Treaty 

  • The Louisiana Purchase

  • Lewis and Clark

  • Zebulon Pike

 

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 American Behavior after 1800s 
Lectures now considered the behavior of the American people during the period of the Early Republic.  We dealt, after all, with Hamilton's dream for the United States, and with Jefferson's dream.  At this point, lectures identified what the PEOPLE of the United States were thinking and doing.  Lectures argued that they were an ambitious group that moved west in tremendous numbers, sold the produce of their labor to make money, bought luxury items, speculated on the land, risked life and limb to get land, and eventually went to war to protect their incomes and their honor.  They were, in other words, quite different from what either Hamilton or Jefferson had figured.  In this group of lectures, we also get to see the War of 1812, one of the more important conflicts in our history.  The War of 1812, after all, answers the important question of “Can a Republic of Free People Win a War?”   People didn’t know.  Could free people be made to fight?  The War of 1812 provides a powerful answer to that question – an answer that opens up a whole new, confident, era in US history.

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So you need to know the following:

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  • The behavior/actions of Americans - what they wanted

  • The development of industries and shipping in the west

  • Movement west

  • The new states and population growth

  • John Jacob Astor

 

 

 

The War of 1812: 

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The War of 1812 was a defining moment for the early United States.  In this war, the United States took on one of the most powerful nations of the world and fought it to a draw.  The US did this without much of a military and almost no navy.  The United States' performance in this war proved to Americans and to the world that their new republic was stronger than they believed.  The War of 1812 brought in a new, aggressive and confident period in our nation's history.

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So you need to know the following:

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  • The problems with neutral trade that plagued the US in the early 1800s.

  • The Chesapeake Incident and the problem of impressment

  • The Embargo of 1807

  • Enforcement Act of 1809

  • Milan Decree, Berlin Decree, Orders in Council

  • Macon's Bill #2

  • The concerns about the US the started to emerge as presidents refused to act against foreign aggression

  • War Hawks

  • Regional differences in regard to the War of 1812

  • The Hartford Convention and New England

  • The reasons for the War of 1812

  • The president during the War of 1812

  • How the war unfolded.  The Great Lakes operations in the early war.

  • The explosion at Fort York and subsequent American actions

  • The battle of Lake Erie

  • The British plan for the United States starting in 1814

  • What happened with the British invasion out of Canada.

  • Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, the Star-Spangled Banner – “Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand between their loved homes and wars desolation.”  Republics CAN fight, it turns out, and when they do, look out!

  • The Battle of New Orleans

  • The Treaty of Ghent and its significance

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American Ambition:  Written


By this point, the Republic had proved itself pretty strong.  It’d survived the Constitutional period, the 1790s, the economic disaster of the 1780s, the social revolution, and the War of 1812.  NOW, the people were feeling pretty damn strong and confident.  Time to start a business!  To try a new invention!  And so we enter the Age of Ambition.  This lecture information covers developments in American history immediately after the War of 1812.  It argues that Americans, confident from their success in the War of 1812, no longer feared that their republic would fail.  Instead, bolstered by the great victory at New Orleans, United States citizens entered into a period of optimism in which they felt free to realize their ambitions.

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So you need to know the following:

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  • The role of the War of 1812 in promoting ambition and confidence.

  • The American System

  • The physical manifestations of ambition:  the transportation revolution and the industrial revolution – know these thoroughly.

  • The Lancaster Turnpike

  • The Erie Canal

  • The Clermont

  • The difference in northern and southern transportation systems

  • Major inventions and inventors of the Age of Ambition

  • The nature of American industrialization, the rise of the machine factory, the American system of manufacturing

  • The role cotton played in shaping industrialization

  • The Lowell Experiment

  • What personal injury lawsuits revel in a society, and the rulings in the northern lawsuits listed in class

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Political Ambition and the Age of Jackson:  

 

Lectures also discussed how, as Americans realized their ambitions in the early 1800s, they also began to desire more popular control over  national and state politics.  Accordingly, by the 1820s most states extended the vote to record numbers of people and opened new offices to popular election.  Lectures discussed how these changes affected political culture in the United States -- how new voting rules led to the emergence of a new type of politician.  And you have to begin to see how things fit together at this point.  The new voters changed the politician, and Martin Van Buren figured out how to make use of those new voters – how to get them interested in politics, get them learning about political activities.  He developed the Second Party System, in which conflict and strong personalities were used to generate and maintain voter interested.  Lectures also discussed Andrew Jackson's actions as president and the presidential elections of 1824 and 1828.

So you need to know the following:

  • The election of 1824

  • The election of 1828

  • Andrew Jackson

  • Dickinson Duel

  • John Quincy Adams 

  • The Corrupt Bargain

  • Andrew Jackson's inaugural

  • The Democratic Party

  • Martin Van Buren

  • Jacksonian Democracy and the new political culture of the age of ambition

  • The significance of fighting and conflict in American politics before the Civil War 

  • Andrew Jackson's presidency

  • The Bank War and subsequent depression

 

The Downside of Ambition:  (Written)

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Does success breed happiness?  Is the American system of ambition suited to everyone?  And what if your culture does not want to participate in American ambition or stands on ground that Americans covet?  Say you’re a Native American.  How does American ambition interact with your culture and society?  Say you’re not a type-A personality?  How are you going to fare in this world?  And what if there starts to be a division between two types of ambition – one slave and one free?  How do they function in one nation?  At this point, lectures addressed a rather alarming development in American society.  During the Age of Ambition, just as the United States was developing economically and politically, Americans began engaging in some destructive behaviors (massive drinking, Native removal, to name a few).  It looked at the first arguments between North and South.  So, here we’ve got some of the negatives associated with the Age of Ambition.

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You need to know the following: 
 

  • The Alcoholic Republic

  • The Panics of 1819, 1837, 1857

  • Benjamin Remmington, Addison Ward.

  • The controversy over whether Indian tribes were sovereign nations or part of the United States

  • Andrew Jackson's response to the Supreme Court's opinion on the subject of Indian tribes

  • The concept of assimilation

  • The Indian Removal Act of 1830

  • How states tried to rid themselves of Indians after 1830

  • The Trail of  Tears

  • The Missouri Compromise of 1820

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