Chapter 9
The Transformation of
American Society, 1815-1840
Introduction
• Economic
and social changes that took place in the United States between 1815 and 1840
Western Expansion
- By 1840,
one-third of Americans living between Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi
River – developed own western culture
- Migrants
expected a better life in the West because of the:
- Growing
power of federal government
- Boom
in agricultural prices after War of 1812
The
Sweep West
– By
1821 the following states were added
• VT,
KY, TN, OH, LA, IN, MS, IL, AL, ME, MO
– Between
1790 and 1820
• Pioneer
families clustered near the navigable rivers
– 1820’s
and 1830’s
• With
the development of canals and railroads, families could afford to fan out
– Tended
to settle near others who had come from the same region back east
• Settled
mostly between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River
• Traveled
as families rather than as individuals
• Clustered/settled
around people from the same region
Western
Society and Customs
• Before
1830, life was crude and difficult
– Easterners
often looked down on westerners’ lack of refinement
– Westerners
in turn resented eastern pretensions to gentility
• Most
westerners craved sociability – rural families joined with their neighbors in
group sports and festivities
– Men
competed in strength/ability testing games
– Women
combined work and play with quilting/sewing parties, etc.
• Chores
of pioneer women were brutal
• Most
western sports and customs had been transplanted from the east but the west
developed its own
• Neighbors
shamelessly borrowed from richer ones because they “had plenty”
• Westerners’
relative lack of refinement made them easy targets for easterners’ contemptuous
jibes
– The
exchange of “half-savage yokels” westerners and “soft and decadent” easterners
fostered a regional identity among westerners and further shaped their behavior
– Westerners
intolerant of western neighbors with pretensions to gentility
The
Far West
• Adventurous
pioneers traveled across the continent
• Fur-trading
and animal trapping
• Area
between Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi River no longer considered “far
West” – beyond the Mississippi River was far West
• 1806
– Zebulon Pike sights Colorado peak later named after him
• 1811
– New York merchant John Jacob Astor founded the fur-trading post of Astoria at
the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon county
• white
trappers AKA “mountain men” – men who gathered furs
– Kit
Carson, Jedidiah Smith, Jim Beckwourth
The
Federal Government and the West
• Of
the various causes of expansion to the Mississippi River from 1790 to 1840, the
one that operated most generally and uniformly throughout the period was the
growing strength of the federal government
• Midwestern
settlement was encourage by:
– Ordinance
of 1785
• set
forth plans for surveying and selling parcels of several states’ ceded western
land claims to the federal government as public treasure to settlers
– Northwest
Ordinance
• provided
for the orderly transformation of western territories into states
– Louisiana
Purchase
• brought
entire Mississippi River under American control
– Transcontinental
Treaty of 1819
• brought
entire Mississippi River under American control
– Land
warrants given to War of 1812 veterans
– Extension
of the National Road into IL by 1838
– Removal
and declining strength of the Native Americans (by 1820 were no longer
receiving Spanish and British aid)
•
War of 1812 settled by Treaty of Ghent –
Indians were the real losers of the war
– Louisiana
Purchase and Transcontinental Treaty stripped them of Spanish protection
– Britain
had insisted on creation of an Indian buffer state between US and Canada in the
Old Northwest but after the American victory at the Battle of Plattsburgh,
Indians were abandoned to Americans
The
Removal of the Indians
• By
the 1820’s, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles of the South were
under heavy pressure to cede their lands to whites
• The
Indian Removal Act (1830)
– President
Andrew Jackson
– Granted
the president the power to move all Native American west of the Mississippi
River
– Could
use force if necessary
• The
Creeks in GA and AL had already started to migrate by that point
– In
1836, the remainder were forced out
• The
Choctaws and Chickasaws suffered a similar fate
• After
losing a war of resistance that lasted from 1835 to 1842, most Seminoles also
were expelled from FL
• The
Cherokees (the most assimilated of the Indians) appealed to the U.S. Supreme
Court for protection
• Chief
Justice John Marshall ruled in their favor
– President
Jackson ignored the court
– Compelled
the tribe to cede its land
• Travel
the “Trail of Tears” westward
– 4,000
Cherokees died on the trip
– 1838-1839
– 1832
– The
Sac and Fox attempted to keep their lands
– Native
Americans lost
• Sac,
Fox and other Midwest and Northeast Indians also had to move west of the
Mississippi
The
Agricultural Boom
• Growth
of the population in the old Northwest
– The
removal of the Indians
– the
high prices and escalating demand for wheat and corn
• Growth
of the population in the old Southwest
– 1793=Eli
Whitney’s cotton gin
– Boundless
need of the British textile industry for raw cotton
• After
the War of 1812
– Southeasterners
poured into AL and MS
– Drove
up land prices
– Tripled
the nation’s cotton production
• By
1836, cotton accounted for 2/3’s of America’s foreign exports
• Factors
of skyrocketing farm prices:
– US
captured British and Spanish markets b/c both countries exhausted by 2 decades
of war
– Demand
within US intensified after 1815 as the quickening pace of industrialization
and urbanization in the East spurred a shift of workers toward nonagricultural
employment
– West’s
river system expanded markets to the East, West Indies, South America, and
Europe
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