The Reform Era and Eastern U.S. Development 1815-1850 (American Eras)

AMERICAN ERAS THE REFORM ERA AND EASTERN U.S. DEVELOPMENT

I 8 1 5 - I 8 5 O

EDITED BY

GERALD J. PROKOPOWICZ A MANLY, INC. BOOK

GALE DETROIT NEW YORK

LONDON

AMERICAN ERAS 1815-185O Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman, Editorial Directors Karen L. Rood, Senior Editor

ADVISORY BOARD LINDA MURDOCK

MARTHA FELDMANN

University of Memphis Memphis, Tennessee

GWEN ICKSTADT La Jolla High School La Jolla, California

Providence Day School Charlotte, North Carolina CATHY CHAUVETTE Sherwood Library Alexandria, Virginia

HILDA WEISBURG Morristown High School Morristown, New Jersey

Copyright ©1998 by Gale Research ISBN 0-7876-1482-3

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapter 1: WORLD EVENTS

VII XI 3

Chapter 2: THE ARTS

19

Chapter 3: BUSINESS &THE ECONOMY

63

Chapter 4: COMMUNICATIONS

99

Chapter 5: EDUCATION

137

Chapter 6: GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

169

Chapter 7: LAW & JUSTICE

207

Chapter 8: LIFESTYLES, SOCIAL TRENDS, & FASHION

245

Chapter 9: RELIGION

285

Chapter 10: SCIENCE & MEDICINE

321

Chapter 11: SPORTS & RECREATION

349

CONTENTS

GENERAL REFERENCES

355

CONTRIBUTORS

359

GENERAL INDEX

361

INDEX OF PHOTOGRAPHS

377

V

INTRODUCTION

Progress. For the United States the era from 1815 to 1850 was one of energy, faith, and boundless expectations. The nation expanded dramatically both in territory and population. New inventions changed the nature of everyday life. Victory in the War of 1812 created a new sense of nationalistic self-confidence that invigorated American diplomacy. In art, literature, science, and other fields Americans consciously strove to reject European models and create a distinctively American culture. Political activity increased with the expansion of the electorate and the revitalization of political parties, symbolized by the election of Andrew Jackson, the "people's candidate," to the presidency in 1828. The widespread revivalism of the Second Great Awakening reinforced the sense that God had chosen the United States for a special destiny. Reform movements that sought to end drinking, slavery, maltreatment of the mentally ill, and other social problems competed with one another in their attempts to make the United States "a more perfect union." Yet beneath the optimism that drove entrepreneurs, evangelists, and reformers lay the disquieting idea that perhaps the nation was not on the right track. Some worried that the undeniable economic expansion of the era was being achieved at the sacrifice of the republican ideals of the nation's founders. Others saw Christian values falling before the rampant materialism of the age. Still others viewed the unequal development of the North and South, and the latter's dependence upon human slavery for its economic well-being, as evidence that the Union could not survive indefinitely as a house divided. Expansion. In 1815 the Union consisted of eighteen states and eight and one-half million people, most of them living clustered between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. By the end of 1850 there were thirty-one states inhabited by more than twentythree million people and stretching from New England to the Pacific shore. This enormous expansion of territory was driven by aggressive government policy. The successful conclusion of the War of 1812 led to the withdrawal of the British and their Indian allies from the Ohio River valley, opening the Old Northwest. The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 secured Florida from Spain. Military action against Native Americans, including the

INTRODUCTION

Black Hawk War (1831-1832), the Seminole War (1835-1842), and the Indian Removal policy of the Jackson administration that sent thousands of Native Americans on the "Trail of Tears" across the Mississippi, pushed the indigenous population westward, leaving more land available for settlement by Americans of European and African descent. The war against Mexico (1846-1848) resulted in the confirmation of Texas as an American state and the acquisition of what would become California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The population grew at a fantastic rate, nearly doubling every twenty-three years, and began filling these immense areas. Natural increase accounted for most of the growth, but immigration became an increasingly important factor, especially after the start of the potato famine in Ireland in 1845 and the failed revolutions of central Europe in 1848. Total immigration rose from six hundred thousand in the 1830s to one and one-half million in the 1840s. Technology. The expansion of the republic could not have occurred at such a pace without revolutionary advances in technology. In 1815 a horse-drawn trip from New York to Saint Louis took more than a month; by 1850 it took no more than three days by railroad, and a message could be sent the same distance in seconds by telegraph. To conquer the vast distances of the continent, Americans constructed stone turnpikes, bridges, canals, wagons, sailboats, and flatboats on an unprecedented scale. The Erie Canal alone reduced the price of transporting goods from the Midwest by a factor of twelve. But far more dramatic were the effects of new means of transportation, particularly the railroad and the steamboat. Whether one used these inventions to travel to a new life in the West or purchased the goods that they transported to the growing cities of the East, they changed the nature of everyday life. Other inventions also had revolutionary social and economic effects, for good or ill. The cotton gin, invented in 1793, led to a boom in cotton production by 1820 that reversed the economic decline of slavery. The use of interchangeable, machine-made parts, called the "American system of manufactures," accelerated the production of precision instruments such as guns and clocks that once had to be

VII

made individually by skilled craftsmen. The innovation of placing power looms and other machines under a single roof in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, resulted in the development of the modern factory. Such ideas spurred national pride as well as economic growth as European visitors came to marvel at American canals, factories, bridges, and railroads. National Identity. The defeat of the British by an American army under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 triggered a groundswell of nationalist pride in American arms. The United States asserted its place among nations as the defender of the Western Hemisphere with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The economic achievements of the following decades and the spread of religious belief in the Second Great Awakening seemed to prove that the United States was God's chosen nation. In cultural terms, however, Americans remained painfully aware that sophisticated Europeans considered their country a provincial backwater, asking with scorn "Who reads an American book?" American authors, poets, artists, and architects tried to answer this question by consciously developing explicitly American cultural forms, free from European models. Some were successful. The Greek Revival in architecture, the Hudson River School of landscape painters, the philosophical essays of the Transcendentalists, and the minstrel show were distinctly American cultural expressions that drew on the nation's unique political, geographical, religious, and ethnic heritage. The novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the songs of Stephen Foster, and the neoclassical lines of Greek Revival buildings survive as cultural legacies of the era. But many of the most popular artists of the day, including the sculptor Horatio Greenough, the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, and the novelist Catharine Sedgwick, have fallen from favor. Their works, and those of many of their contemporaries, were heavily infused with moralism, for Americans were suspicious of the idea of art for art's sake and too busy to indulge in cultural activities that did not simultaneously work to improve their minds or souls. Nature of Work. Everyday life changed more between 1815 and 1850 than it had in the previous two hundred years of American settlement. The fundamental change was one from a subsistence to a market economy. In the eighteenth century the lives of many Americans approximated that of Thomas Jefferson's idealized republican citizen, the self-sufficient yeoman farmer. By the early nineteenth century the growth of markets and manufactures meant that many people made and sold goods to others for a living, but even these artisans considered themselves as economically independent as Jefferson's farmers. They owned their own tools, kept their own hours, and set their own prices. The expansion of markets through improved transportation and the increase in productivity achieved by large shops and factories using water-powered machines brought this way of life to an end. In manufacturing, young men who once ς Ι Ι Ι

could have expected to progress up the ranks from apprentices to journeymen to master craftsmen instead found themselves permanently employed at unskilled labor, tending machines or cutting shoe uppers instead of learning complex crafts. Farmers, meanwhile, were lured away from self-sufficiency by the high profits of cash crops such as cotton in the South and wheat in the West. They entered the market economy, growing and selling a single crop and depending on the proceeds to purchase everything else their families needed. When the economy boomed, they borrowed to buy more land to make more money, but when the economy collapsed, as it did following financial "panics" in 1819 and 1837, they risked the loss of their land and livelihood. Separate Spheres. The changing nature of work affected the social roles that men and women were expected to play. On farms men and women traditionally performed different kinds of work, but all shared the same environment. In cities, however, the rise of factories and other large commercial enterprises took men away from home to do their jobs. At the same time the availability of cheap mass-produced goods made it economically pointless for women to labor for hours to produce their own cloth, soap, or candles. The notion arose that men and women occupied "separate spheres" of life. The rough-and-tumble worlds of business, commerce, and politics belonged to men, who left the home each morning to engage in cutthroat economic competition with one another. Middle-class women, who remained at home with their children, became responsible for the education and nurturing of the young and the moral guardianship of society. They were thus placed on a pedestal and excused from the hard work of making money, but at the cost of being expected to manage their households and refrain from participating in politics, business, and other male activities. This bargain was endorsed by women such as Catharine Beecher, but by the 1840s it came to be rejected by woman's rights activists such as Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who began the struggle for the right to vote. For many women, of course, the rules of proper conduct for the middle class were irrelevant; Irish immigrants, free African Americans, and other women of the urban poor had no choice but to work as factory hands, sweatshop laborers, or domestic servants. Slavery. An unintended result of the combination of technological progress and geographic expansion was the economic revitalization of the institution of slavery. In the early nineteenth century slavery appeared to be growing obsolete in the Southeast, where many tobacco plantations had worn out and ceased to be profitable. As late as 1832 the Virginia legislature was still considering abolishing slavery in the Old Dominion. The invention of the cotton gin, however, made it practical for the first time to process short-staple cotton, which thrived in the rich soil and warm climate of the Deep South. As settlers established plantations in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisi-

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ana, and Texas, they created a market for slaves purchased from Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, tying the Southern economy together around slavery. Although the importation of slaves from Africa was banned in 1808, the number of enslaved Americans more than doubled through natural increase from 1.5 million in 1820 to 3.2 million in 1850. Slaves developed various mechanisms for coping with their unhappy lot: Denmark Vesey (1822) and Nat Turner (1831) attempted to lead rebellions; Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass escaped (as did thousands of others) and worked for the abolition of slavery; some engaged in small-scale resistance through work slowdowns and petty crime; and others turned to the solace of religion or family in spite of laws and customs that limited the rights of slaves to worship freely or marry. Sectionalism. The resurgence of slavery in the South led to sectional tension. Even at the height of the "Era of Good Feelings" (1816-1824), when political strife was at a minimum, Thomas Jefferson heard in the congressional debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state a "firebell in the night" warning of danger to the Union. The debate was resolved temporarily by the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri and Maine as slave and free states, respectively, and drew a line separating free and slave territory within the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, but slavery was too fundamental an issue to be settled so easily. Turner's bloody uprising in 1831, the attempt to flood the mails with abolitionist literature in 1835 and the resulting "Gag Rule" that prohibited discussion of slavery in Congress, and the murder of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy in 1837 sounded further alarms of sectional discord. Vice President John C. Calhoun penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest in 1828, articulating a theory which allowed individual states to disregard or "nullify" federal laws within their borders. Although South Carolina backed down when the theory was put to the test in the Nullification Crisis of 1832, the idea that states might have to resist the federal government when it interfered directly with local institutions remained strong. The outcome of the Mexican War brought sectional tensions to a head when Northerners and Southerners disagreed whether slavery should be allowed in the new territory acquired as a result of war. The Compromise of 1850 seemed to resolve this disagreement, but like the Missouri Compromise it would prove to be no more than a truce, doomed to come to an end eleven years later at Fort Sumter. Union. The fires of sectionalism were kept in check in large part because of the personality of Andrew Jackson, the greatest political figure of the age, and the mind of John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835. Both Marshall and Jackson were devoted to the Union. In a series of landmark decisions the Marshall court repeatedly asserted the supremacy of the federal government over the states and established principles of constitutional interpretation that allowed the fed-

INTRODUCTION

eral government to promote economic growth and prevent individual states from overriding national policy. Jackson put the force of the presidency behind Marshall's ideas, most notably in 1832 when Jackson faced down South Carolina's attempt to nullify the federal tariff. Jackson's nationalism was fueled by his belief that the federal government could best protect the average citizen from oppression by powerful, corrupt institutions. Ironically, this led him to spend much of his presidency trying to destroy the national bank, which he believed wielded too much power in the otherwise unregulated American economy. The success of Jackson's "war" against the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 brought to an end one of the most powerful institutions of the federal government he cherished. Democracy. The raucous public celebration of Andrew Jackson's presidential inauguration in 1829 was taken by many Americans as symbolic of the increasing democratization of politics. Popular participation rose sharply between the presidential election of 1824, when the right to vote was limited by property qualifications in several states and barely a quarter of those eligible turned out to cast their votes, and the 1840 election, when property qualifications were all but eliminated and 80 percent of the expanded electorate exercised their franchise. The increase in voter interest was accompanied by the resurgence of political parties. After the Federalists' opposition to the War of 1812 left their party discredited, the Republican Party remained unchallenged for a decade; all four candidates for the presidency in 1824 claimed to be Republicans. In the following years the supporters of Andrew Jackson evolved into "the Democracy" or Democratic Party, and after Jackson's election in 1828 his opponents coalesced into the Whig Party. Competition between Democrats and Whigs at all levels spurred political interest, and the introduction of nominating conventions, the "spoils system," cheap newspapers, and noisy and entertaining election campaigns seemed to make politics more accessible to the "common man." Despite this broadening of political participation, some people remained firmly outside the system: women and African Americans were denied the vote in almost every state, and nativist (antiforeign) sentiment led to campaigns to prohibit recent immigrants from voting as well. Perfectionism. Nowhere did the possibility of unlimited progress find more passionate expression than in the spread of religious enthusiasm known as the Second Great Awakening, which lasted roughly from 1800 to 1840. Like the original Great Awakening of the 1740s, this movement converted or brought back tens of thousands to Christianity. Unlike their dour Puritan predecessors, however, the optimistic Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian preachers whose emotional appeals energized the Second Great Awakening emphasized the potential of all individuals to be saved rather than the harsh Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Following the anti-authoritarian tenor of the times, the new evangelical

IX

denominations also rejected the strict hierarchies of traditional churches in favor of more-democratic governance. So powerful was the religious ferment of the era that many Americans took it as a sign that Christ's return to earth was imminent. Thousands eagerly awaited the specific day in 1843 when, according to evangelist William Miller, the millennium would surely begin. Others, too impatient for perfection to wait for it in the next life, formed new religious sects in order to redeem a corrupt, materialistic world or joined Utopian communities to escape from it. Shakers, Disciples of Christ, Transcendentalists, Mormons, and others all experimented in forming communities that were spiritually and in some cases physically outside the mainstream of American society. Reform. The same belief in the perfectibility of humankind that drove the Second Great Awakening also inspired myriad social-reform movements. People organized themselves in support of temperance, universal public education, better treatment of the mentally ill, observation of the Sabbath, world peace, public health, and the abolition of such practices as slavery, gambling, duel-

X

ing, and capital punishment. For women, who could not vote, participation in these movements provided an opportunity for social and political activism although the discovery that they were not expected to express themselves publicly even on behalf of worthy causes led some women to start a new reform movement for themselves, beginning with the first woman's rights convention in 1848. Many reform movements were led by New Englanders, allowing the region to continue to shape American culture and society even as the nation's economic and political centers of gravity were moving west and south. The reform impulse reflected the underlying trends of its time: an optimistic faith that individuals and institutions were capable of improvement and even perfection coupled with a nagging fear that only strenuous efforts to enact such improvement could save the nation from careening down a path of materialism that would destroy the spiritual and political roots of the Republic. It is for this reason that historians have traditionally characterized the years from 1815 to 1850 as America's "Reform Era."

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was produced by Manly, Inc. Anthony J. Scotti was the in-house editor. Production manager is Samuel W. Bruce. Office manager is Kathy Lawler Merlette. Administrative support was provided by Ann M. Cheschi and Brenda A. Gillie. Bookkeeper is Joyce Fowler. Copyediting supervisor is Jeff Miller. The copyediting staff includes Phyllis A. Avant, Patricia Coate, Christine Copeland, Thorn Harman, and William L. Thomas Jr. Editorial associate is L. Kay Webster. Layout and graphics staff includes Janet E. Hill and Mark McEwan. Photography editors are Margaret Meriwether and Paul Talbot. Photographic copy work was performed by Joseph M. Bruccoli.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Systems manager is Marie L. Parker. Typesetting supervisor is Kathleen M. Flanagan. The typesetting staff includes Pamela D. Norton and Patricia Flanagan Salisbury. Walter W. Ross, Steven Gross, and Mark McEwan did library research. They were assisted by the following librarians at the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina: Linda Holderfield and the interlibrary-loan staff; reference-department head Virginia Weathers; reference librarians Marilee Birchfield, Stefanie Buck, Stefanie DuBose, Rebecca Feind, Karen Joseph, Donna Lehman, Charlene Loope, Anthony McKissick, Jean Rhyne, Kwamine Simpson, and Virginia Weathers; circulation-department head Caroline Taylor; and acquisitions-searching supervisor David Haggard.

XI

WORLD EVENTS: SELECTED OCCURRENCES OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

MAJOR POWERS AND LEADERS

Austria (Habsburg E m p i r e ) — Emperor Francis (1804-1835); Ferdinand (1835-1848); Francis Joseph (1848-1916) China — Emperor Jia-qing (1796-1820); Tao Kuang (1820-1850) France — Emperor Napoleon I (1804-1814, 1815); Napoleon II (1815); King Louis XVIII (1814, 1815-1824); Charles X (1824-1830); Louis Philippe (1830-1848); Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III), president 1848-1852 Great Britain — King George III (1760-1820); George, Prince of Wales, regent (1811-1820), King George IV (1820-1830); William IV (1830-1837); Queen Victoria (1837-1901); Prime Ministers: Lord Liverpool (1812-1827); George Canning (1827); Lord Goderich (1827-1828); Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1828-1830); Charles, 2nd Earl Grey (1830-1834); Lord Melbourne (1834, 1835-1839, 1839-1841); Robert Peel (1834, 1841-1845, 1845-1846); Lord John Russell (1846-1852) Japan — E m p e r o r Kokaku (1779-1817); N i n k o (1817-1846); Komei (1846-1867); Shoguns lenari (1786-1837); leyoshi (1837-1853) Ottoman Empire (Turkey) — Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839); Abdul Mejid I (1839-1861) Prussia—King Frederick William III (1797-1840); Frederick William IV (1840-1861) Russia —Tsar Alexander I (1801-1825); Nicholas I (1825-1855) Spain — King Ferdinand VII (1813-1833); Queen Isabel II (1833-1868) Zulu Kingdom — Senzagakona (1781-1816); Sigujana (1816); Shaka (1816-1828); Dingane (1828-1840); Mpande (1840-1872)

WORLD

EVENTS

MAJOR CONFLICTS 1809-1826 — Wars for Latin American Independence: Spain versus Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Guatemala 1812-1815 — War of 1812: United States versus Britain 1815 — The Hundred Days: Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia versus France 1821-1829 — Greek War for Independence: Greece versus Turkey 1822-1831 — First Ashanti War: Britain versus Ashanti people (of modern Ghana) 1824-1826 — First Burmese War: Britain versus Burma 1826-1828 — Russo-Persian War 1828-1829 — Russo-Turkish War 1830-1847 — French conquest of Algeria 1831-1832 —Black Hawk War: United States versus the Sac and Fox tribes 1832-1833 — Turko-Egyptian War 1834-1839 — Carlist Wars: Spain versus the forces of the pretender Don Carlos 1835-1842 — Seminole War: United States versus the Seminole tribe 1836 — Texas War of Independence: Texas versus Mexico 1838-1842 — First Afghan War: Britain versus Afghanistan 1839-1842 — First Opium War: Britain versus China 1844-1848 — Maori War: Britain versus natives of New Zealand 1845-1849 — Sikh Wars: British East India Company versus the Sikhs in India 1846-1848 — Mexican War: United States versus Mexico 1848 — Schleswig-Holstein War: Prussia versus Denmark 1848-1849 — Austro-Sardinian War

3

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1815

Grimm's Fairy Tales are published. 27 Feb.

Napoleon escapes from exile on the Mediterranean isle of Elba.

20 Mar.

Louis XVIII flees Paris; the "Hundred Days" begin as Napoleon assumes control of France.

18 June

British and Prussian forces defeat the French at the Battle of Waterloo, ending Napoleon's bid to regain power.

22 June

Napoleon abdicates.

8 July

Louis XVIII returns to Paris and is restored to power a second time.

2 Aug.

Napoleon is exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

20 Nov.

The Treaty of Paris imposes an indemnity and allows the military occupation of France.

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini composes his opera // barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).

1816

Jane Austen writes Emma. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is published. French physician Rene Laennec perfects the stethoscope. Much of the world experiences an unusually cold summer, caused by dust from a massive volcanic eruption in the East Indies a year earlier. The British Museum buys the Elgin Marbles. 16 Jan.

Brazil declares itself an empire, led by the prince regent of Portugal.

5 May

The first German state constitution is granted by Carl August of SaxeWeimar.

9 July

The United Provinces of La Plata (Argentina) declare their independence.

1817

17 • David Ricardo writes Principles of Political Economy an Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel publishes Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The first exhibition of John Constable's landscape paintings is held.

4

28 Apr.

The Rush-Bagot Treaty between Britain and the United States limits naval forces on the Great Lakes.

18 Oct.

Revolutionary German students gather at the Wartburg Festival.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

inin

Franz Huber writes lyrics to the Christmas carol "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" (Silent Night). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley writes Frankenstein. Jane Austen's Persuasion and North anger Abbey are published posthumously. George Gordon, Lord Byron, begins writing Don Juan, which he will complete in 1823. Shaka establishes the Zulu empire. The Prado Museum is founded in Madrid. 6 Jan.

The Treaty of Mundoseer gives Britain control of the dominion of the Holkar of Indore and the Rajputana States in India.

5 Feb.

Jean Bernadotte, former marshal in Napoleon's army, succeeds Charles XIII as king of Sweden.

12 Feb.

Chile declares independence from Spain.

3 June

Britain gains control of the dominions of the Peshwa of Poona in the Bombay presidency.

27 Sept.21 Nov.

At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, France joins the four Great Powers in the Quintuple Alliance; allied troops leave France.

20 Oct.

Britain and the United States establish the United States-Canada border along the forty-ninth parallel, and agree to the joint occupation of Oregon.

20 Nov.

Simon Bolivar declares independence for Venezuela, formerly a Spanish possession.

Theodore Gericault completes his painting Raft of the Medusa.

1819

Sir Walter Scott writes Ivanhoe. Franz Peter Schubert composes the Trout Quintet. Sikh leader Ranjit Singh conquers Kashmir. The Savannah is the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, completing the trip in twenty-six days.

WORLD

6 Feb.

Sir Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company founds Singapore.

16 Aug.

In the Peterloo Massacre, British soldiers charge a political gathering in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, killing several of the audience.

20 Sept.

The Frankfurt Diet issues the Carlsbad Decrees, curtailing political freedom in order to suppress revolutionary tendencies in the German states.

EVENTS

5

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

Oct.

A Prussian trade treaty with Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen marks the beginning of the formation of a pan-German Zollverein (customs union).

7 Dec.

A constitution is granted in Hanover.

17 Dec.

Simon Bolivar becomes president of an independent Colombia.

1820 . Percy Bysshe Shelley writes Prometheus Unbound. •

Thomas Robert Malthus publishes Principles of Political Economy.

•

John Keats writes Ode to a Nightingale.

•

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin writes Ruslan and Lyudmila.

•

Egypt begins a two-year campaign to conquer the Sudan.

•

The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1 Jan.-

7 Mar.

Revolution in Spain forces King Ferdinand VII to restore the 1812 constitution.

29 Jan.

George III dies; George IV assumes the throne of Great Britain.

23 Feb.

The Cato Street Conspiracy attempts (unsuccessfully) to assassinate British cabinet ministers.

2 July

Revolt begins in Naples; government officials promise a constitution.

24 Aug.

A revolution in Portugal begins.

•

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel publishes Philosophy of Right.

1821 .Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber composes the opera Der Freischutz.* Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber composes the opera Der Freischutz. •

Heinrich Heine publishes Poems.

•

Michael Faraday demonstrates the workings of magnetic force fields, the basic principle of the electric motor.

•

The Rosetta Stone is used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

13 Feb.

Austria agrees to use military force to suppress a revolt in Naples.

24 Feb.

All parties complete the ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaty, under which Spain cedes Florida to the United States. Mexico declares its independence from Spain.

6

6 Mar.

The Greek war for independence from Turkey begins.

5 May

Napoleon Bonaparte dies on Saint Helena.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

24 June

Simon Bolivar defeats a Spanish army at Carabobo, securing Venezuela's independence.

28 July

Peru declares its independence from Spain.

15 Sept.

Guatemala declares its independence from Spain.

28 Nov.

Panama declares its independence from Spain.

1 Dec.

The Republic of Santo Domingo is founded, independent of Spain.

1822 • Franz Peter Schubert composes Symphony No. 8 in B minor. •

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin begins writing Evgeni Onegin; he will complete it ten years later.

•

Liberia is founded in West Africa as a colony for freed slaves.

27 Jan.

Greece declares its independence from Turkey.

12 Aug.

Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, commits suicide.

7 Sept.

Brazil declares its independence from Portugal; the next month Dom Pedro is proclaimed emperor of Brazil.

20 Oct.14 Dec.

1823

• Ludwig van Beethoven composes Missa Solemnis. •

"Home Sweet Home" is composed by Henry R. Bishop.

•

Charles Babbage begins developing a calculating machine.

19 Mar.

Emperor Augustus de Iturbide of Mexico is forced to abdicate.

7 Apr.

France invades Spain; Ferdinand VII is removed from the Spanish throne.

31 Aug.

French troops restore Ferdinand VII to the throne after crushing Spanish rebels.

2 Dec.

U.S. president James Monroe issues a warning to world powers not to intervene in the Western Hemisphere (later known as the "Monroe Doctrine").

182 0

•

WORLD

At the Congress of Verona, Britain refuses to intervene to suppress the Spanish revolution, while other nations refuse to aid the Greek war of independence. These developments mark the end of the Congress system of European diplomacy.

EVENTS

Ludwig van Beethoven composes the Ninth Symphony. Leopold von Ranke completes History of the Roman and Teutonic People, 1494-1535.

7

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1825

11 May

Britain, at war with Burma, takes Rangoon.

16 Sept.

Louis XVIII dies; Charles X becomes king of France.

12 Dec.

The last Spanish army in South America surrenders.

•

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin completes Boris Godunov.

•

Britain allows trade unions to form.

•

In England the first public steam railway opens.

6 Aug.

The Republic of Bolivia declares its independence from Peru.

25 Aug.

Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil.

29 Aug.

Portugal recognizes Brazil as an independent country.

1 Dec.

Tsar Alexander I of Russia dies and is succeeded by Nicholas I.

26 Dec.

The Decembrist revolt in Russia is quickly suppressed.

Felix Mendelssohn composes Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

1826

Nguan Nguan edits Confucius's writings. A global cholera epidemic begins in India. 24 Feb.

1827

The First Burmese War ends with the Treaty of Yandabu.

George Ohm formulates Ohm's Law, the relationship of current and voltage in electrical circuits. Joseph Ressel of Austria invents the screw propeller. 26 Jan.

Peru secedes from Colombia.

6 July

Britain, France, and Russia guarantee Greek independence in the Treaty of London.

20 Oct.

Naval intervention by the London Treaty powers destroys the Ottoman fleet at Navarino Bay in the Black Sea.

Franz Peter Schubert composes C Major Symphony.

1828

Karl Baedeker publishes his first travel guide. 22 Feb.

8

Persia cedes part of Armenia to Russia.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1829

*^%^%^%

1830

WORLD

26 Apr.

Russia declares war on Turkey.

23 June

Regent Dom Miguel overthrows the government of Portugal, initiating a sixyear struggle.

22 Sept.

The Zulu king Shaka is assassinated; under his leadership the Zulu grew from a minor tribe to the dominant military power in southern Africa.

11 Oct.

Russia takes Varna from Turkey.

•

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini composes the opera William Tell.

•

Suttee, the practice of burning widows with the bodies of their late husbands, is abolished in British India.

13 Apr.

Legislation allows Catholics to hold public office in Britain.

14 Sept.

The Treaty of Adrianople ends the Russo-Turkish War; the Turks grant Greece independence.

29 Sept.

Robert Peel creates the first modern police force, known as "Bobbies" in London (or "Peelers" in Ireland, where they are less popular).

•

Alfred Tennyson publishes Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.

•

Auguste Comte begins Course of Positive Philosophy, completing it twelve years later.

•

Hector Berlioz composes Symphonie Fantastique.

•

Marie-Henri Beyle, more commonly known as Stendhal, writes Le Rouge et le Noir.

•

Eugene Delacroix paints Liberty Leading the People.

•

The British East India Company annexes Mysore and Cachar in India.

26 June

George IV dies; William IV assumes the throne of Britain.

5 July

France captures Algiers, but guerilla resistance to French rule in North Africa will continue for seventeen years.

27-29 July

The July Revolution breaks out in Paris.

2 Aug.

Charles X abdicates the French throne.

7 Aug.

"Citizen King" Louis Philippe is elected to replace Charles X.

25 Aug.

Belgium rebels against Dutch rule and declares independence in November.

Sept.

Uprisings in Brunswick, Hesse, and Saxony lead to a constitutional government in place of hereditary rulers.

29 Nov.

An uprising against Russian rule begins in Warsaw.

10 Dec.

Simon Bolivar dies.

EVENTS

9

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1831

1832

1O

•

Victor Hugo writes Notre-Dame de Paris.

•

Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetism and builds the first dynamo.

•

Charles Darwin begins his five-year voyage as volunteer naturalist aboard the Beagle.

•

Egypt conquers Syria, detaching it from the Ottoman Empire.

•

Constitutions are established in Saxony, Hesse-Cassel, Moldavia, and Wallachia.

•

The French Foreign Legion is formed to protect France's colonial interests.

25 Jan.

Poland declares independence from Russia.

Feb.

Austria suppresses rebellions in Modena, Parma, and the Papal States.

4 June

Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg becomes Leopold I, king of the Belgians.

8 Sept.

Following a two-day battle, Russia recaptures Warsaw, crushing the Polish revolt.

9 Oct.

Greek president Augustinus Capodistrias is assassinated.

15 Nov.

Britain and France guarantee Belgian independence.

17 Nov.

Greater Colombia separates into Venezuela, Ecuador, New Granada, and Colombia.

•

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe finishes his dramatic work Faust part II.

.

Waterloo Bridge is painted John Constable.

•

Ando Hiroshige paints Fifty-three stages of the Tokaido.

•

Robert Brown describes the cell nucleus in Fecundation in Orchidae.

•

Giuseppe Mazzini founds "Italian Youth," an organization dedicated to Italian unity.

•

Britain occupies the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.

15 Apr.

Turkey declares war on Egypt. Egyptian forces led by Mohammed Ali defeat the Turks in Syria.

4 June

The First Reform Act passes in Britain; it makes Parliament more representative by expanding the franchise and abolishing "rotten boroughs" (districts with few inhabitants).

8 Aug.

Prince Otto of Bavaria is elected Otto I, the first king of the newly independent Greece.

Nov.

French forces seize Antwerp to force Dutch recognition of independent Belgium.

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1833

1834

1835

•

Felix Mendelssohn composes Symphony No. 4 in A.

•

12 Etudes is composed by Frederic Chopin.

•

The Factory Act limits child labor in England.

•

Parliament provides for the abolition of slavery in all British colonies, with compensation to owners.

22 Mar.

The Zollverein (customs union) includes most German states, led by Prussia but excluding Austria.

4 May

The Convention of Kutahia makes Mohammed Ali ruler of independent Egypt and Syria.

*

Honore de Balzac writes Le Pere Goriot.

•

Louis Braille develops a system of raised characters that can be read by the blind.

•

After five centuries the Spanish Inquisition is abolished.

22 Apr.

The Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal is formed to secure the governments of Spain and Portugal.

July

An attempt by Don Carlos, pretender to the Spanish throne, to gain power initiates the Carlist Wars, lasting until 1839.

1 Aug.

Slavery is abolished in the colonies of the British Empire.

2 Aug.

The South Australia Association is chartered and begins to send settlers to Australia within two years.

*

Hans Christian Andersen begins work on his Fairy Tales, completing it in 1861.

•

Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol starts writing Dead Souls, and finishes it seven years later.

•

Halley's Comet is visible.

•

Baden joins the Zollverein.

•

The Great Trek of the Boers begins; farmers leave British rule by moving north from Cape Colony in South Africa to start new republics (Transvaal, Natal, Orange Free State).

2 Mar.

Emperor Francis I of Austria dies and is succeeded by Ferdinand I.

1836

WORLD

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Charles Dickens begins writing Pickwick Papers.

•

The Arc de Triomphe is completed in Paris.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1837

21 Apr.

Texas wins its independence from Mexico by defeating Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto.

16 June

The working-class Chartist movement starts in Britain with the formation of the London Working Men's Association.

29 Oct.

Louis Napoleon's unsuccessful coup d'etat results in his exile to America.

•

Thomas Carlyle publishes French Revolution.

•

Charles Dickens starts writing Oliver Twist.

June

Trekking Boers establish the Natal Republic.

20 June

The death of William IV separates the royal houses of Britain and Hanover; Victoria assumes the British throne.

Nov.

Papineau's Rebellion breaks out in Lower Canada.

Dec.

William Mackenzie leads a rebellion in Upper Canada.

Charles Dickens begins writing Nicholas Nickleby.

1838

Jenny Lind debuts in Der Freischutz. 5 Jan.

Canadian rebels are defeated at Toronto.

8 May

The Chartists' "People's Charter" calls for universal suffrage in Britain.

24 Sept.

The Anti-Corn Law League is formed to end laws enforcing high wheat prices in Britain.

lOct.

The First Afghan War begins; Britain seeks to secure the northwest frontier of India against possible Russian incursions.

30 Nov.

France declares war on Mexico.

16 Dec.

At the Battle of Blood River, trekking Boers defeat the Zulu nation.

1839

Karl Leberecht Immermann finishes the novel Munchhausen. La Chartreuse de Parme is written by Stendhal. Modern cell theory is formalized in Theodor Schwann's Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants.

12

Mar.

Louis Daguerre invents photography by perfecting a system for capturing images on copper plates.

21 Apr.

Turkey invades Syria.

July

The Opium War starts as Britain attempts to force the opium trade on China.

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1840

•

Charles Dickens begins writing Old Curiosity Shop.

•

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon writes Quest-ce-que la Propriete?. . . cest le vol (What is Property? Property is Theft.).

6 Feb.

The Treaty of Waitangi makes New Zealand a British colony.

10 Feb.

Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

6 June

The Carlist Wars in Spain end with the surrender of Carlist forces.

7 June

Frederick William III of Prussia dies; he is succeeded by Frederick William IV.

15 July

The Treaty of London between Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria protects Turkey against the further expansion of Egypt.

23 July

An act of Parliament unites Upper and Lower Canada.

Aug.

Louis Napoleon is imprisoned after his second attempt to seize power in France.

15 Dec.

Napoleon I is buried in Les Invalides, Paris.

Robert Browning writes the verse play Pippa Passes.

1841

Robert Alexander Schumann composes Symphony No. 1 in Bflat Major. Louis Kossuth leads a Hungarian nationalist movement. Adolphe Sax invents the saxophone. •

1842

WORLD

Travel agent Thomas Cook arranges his first excursion.

13 Feb.

The Convention of Alexandria makes Mohammed Ali hereditary ruler of Egypt.

13 July

The Straits Convention, signed by Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France, closes the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to warships.

•

Alfred Tennyson writes Morte a"Arthur and Other Idylls.

•

Charles Dickens publishes American Notes.

•

Boers establish the Orange Free State.

1 Jan.

The British garrison retreating from Kabul is wiped out by Afghan guerillas.

9 Aug.

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty settles border issues between the United States and Canada.

29 Aug.

The Treaty of Nanking ends the Opium War, confirming the cession of Hong Kong from China to Britain and opening other Chinese ports to British trade.

EVENTS

13

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1843

Richard Wagner composes Flying Dutchman. Thomas Babington Macaulay writes Critical and Historical Essays. A Christmas Carol is written by Charles Dickens. 12 May

Britain annexes Natal, a Boer republic in southern Africa.

July

A revolt in Spain removes the military leader Baldomero Espartero and puts Isabel II on throne in November.

Aug.

Britain annexes Sind, in India.

1844

Alexandre Dumas fere writes Three Musketeers. Joseph Mallord William Turner paints Rain, Steam, and Speed. Silesian weavers revolt against low wages and are suppressed. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meet in Paris. The Young Men's Christian Association is founded in London.

6 Aug.

France opens hostilities against Morocco, which end with the Treaty of Tangier on 10 September.

Alexandre Dumas pere publishes The Count of Monte Cristo.

1845

Richard Wagner composes the opera Tannhauser. Friedrich Engels writes Situation of the Working Classes in England. Britain annexes the Punjab in northwest India. Blight destroys most of the Irish potato crop; in the resulting famine approximately one million Irish will die, and two million leave the country, many to the United States.

May

1846

British explorer Sir John Franklin starts an expedition of two ships to seek a Northwest Passage; the ships become icebound, and all hands are lost.

George Grote begins to write History of Greece and finishes it ten years later. Edward Lear writes Book of Nonsense. Damnation of Faust is composed by Hector Berlioz. The potato blight continues in Ireland. 13 May

14

The United States declares war on Mexico.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1847

1848

26 May

The Corn Laws are repealed in Britain, largely in response to Irish famine, to reduce the price of bread.

15 June

The signing of the Treaty of Washington resolves the status of Oregon as an American territory.

*

^"ar^ ^arx an"V ^ Apr. The Land Act of 1820 ends credit purchases for federal land but also reduces the minimum price and acreage restrictions in order to promote land sales to small farmers.

1821

government, discontent in the West. 1821 Passagerelieving of the Relsome ief Actfinancial allows farmers to return unpai d-for land to the

1822

Mathew Carey, a Philadelphia bookseller, publishes Essays on Political Economy, which supports tariffs and internal improvements at the federal government's expense. C. M. Graham receives the first patent for making false teeth.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1823

Nicholas Biddle becomes the president of the second Bank of the United States.

1825 Deming Jarves establishes a glassworks at Sandwich, Massachusetts, utilizing the new mechanical method of pressing glass. 26 Oct.

1827

The Erie Canal officially opens at a building cost of $7 million.

In Philadelphia the Mechanic's Union of Trade Associations becomes the first of many trade councils in the nation. SOJuly3 Aug.

Protective tariff supporters meet in a convention at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and call for an increase in duties in order to protect domestic manufactures, especially textiles and iron. Southern opposition in Congress remains firm.

13 May

Congress passes what Southerners call the "Tariff of Abominations," a bill placing extremely high duties on imported raw materials.

19 Dec.

The South Carolina legislature protests the "Tariff of Abominations" and claims the right to "nullify" federal laws in the state.

17 Oct.

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, linking the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River, officially opens at a building cost of $2.25 million. The national government; state governments of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland; and private citizens contribute money to its construction.

29 May

Congress passes the Preemption Act, which grants settlers the right to claim (preempt) and purchase within one year (up to 160 acres at a minimum of $1.25 an acre) federal land they already occupy.

1828

1829

183O

1832

Cyrus Hall McCormick successfully demonstrates his grain reaper, which will transform American agriculture starting in the late 1840s. 14 July

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The Tariff of 1828 results in embarrassing federal surpluses. Congress passes a reduced tariff bill, which does not, however, mollify South Carolina.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1833

1834

Aug.

The first national labor federation is organized by the New York General Trades Union. Other national trade unions organize over the next three years, until the Panic of 1837 ruins many of them.

29 Jan.

Irish laborers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal riot in protest over terrik^ e working conditions. Federal soldiers, under orders from Andrew Jackson, suppress the riots, marking the first use of army troops to subdue labor protest in the United States.

1835

Samuel Colt comes up with his design for a revolving cylinder sidearm. Canal and railroad projects are started by several Midwestern states; most will fail with the onset of the 1837 panic.

1836

John and Hiram Pitts of Maine invent the grain thresher. 11 July

Rising inflation prompts Andrew Jackson to issue the Specie Circular, making gold and silver the only acceptable mediums for the purchase of federal lands.

1837 Illinois blacksmith John Deere constructs the first self-scouring steel moldboard plow; the device makes prairie farming practicable. Mar.

British credit contraction precipitates an avalanche of economic problems in the United States, starting a national business depression that lasts until 1843.

183 The New York Free Banking Act allows banks to obtain charters without special application to the state legislature. Several Western and Southern states repudiate their debts, making Europeans cautious about investing in future American projects.

1839 The failure of Nicolas Biddle's state-chartered Second Bank of the United States in Pennsylvania deepens the ongoing economic depression. In Bank of Augusta v. Earle the Supreme Court rules that corporations do not have every legal right granted to individuals but can operate in more than one state.

66

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

184O

The Independent Treasury system is enacted by Congress, creating a fiscal system that will last until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. 31 Mar.

1841

By executive order, a ten-hour workday is established for all federal employees engaged on public works.

The nation's first commercial credit-rating agency, forerunner of Dun and Bradstreet, is organized in New York City. Sept.

Bills to establish a new national bank are vetoed by President John Tyler, prompting the resignation of the entire cabinet, with the exception of Daniel Webster.

4 Sept.

The Distribution Preemption Act supports squatters rights on Western lands.

1842 In Commonwealth v. Hunt the Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that labor unions are not by definition criminal conspiracies.

1844

15 June

Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanizing rubber.

19 Sept.

A group of government surveyors headed by William A. Burt accidentally discovers the Marquette iron-ore range in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan near Lake Superior.

1845

George Henry Evans forms the National Reform Association, which advocates that the federal government give every workingman a free homestead of 160 acres.

1846 Instrument maker Elias Howe invents and patents the sewing machine.

1847

Cyrus Hall McCormick starts producing reapers in Chicago to better serve the Midwestern market. New Hampshire enacts a bill mandating a ten-hour workday.

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ECONOMY

67

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1848

•

The Chicago Board of Trade opens, specializing in farm-commodity trading.

5 Dec.

In his annual message President James K. Polk announces that gold has been discovered in California, which confirms public rumors and starts the Gold Rush.

1849 Walter Hunt of New York invents the safety pin.

1850

4 T9 hetextileindustryisoneofthelargestindustriesinthecountry.There are 564 New England plants, capitalized at more than $58 million and employing 61,893 operators. The South has 166 factories, capitalized at $7.25 million, and using 10,043 workers.

A woodcut illustrating artisans at work, using standard, mass-produced parts

68

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OVERVIEW

Transportation Revolution. In an 1817 congressional address calling for federal support for a national system of roads and canals, South Carolina's John C. Calhoun noted the potential advantages to American business of such a system of internal improvements: "An article, to command a price, must not only be useful but must be the subject of demand; and the better the means of commercial intercourse the larger the sphere of demand." Over the next three decades Americans underwent what historians have come to call a "Transportation Revolution." Between 1815 and 1840 state governments and private investors built more than three thousand miles of canals, including the monumental Erie (finished in 1825), which reduced average freight costs from Buffalo to New York from about twenty cents a ton-mile to two cents. At the same time steamboats began to open the nation's river system to inexpensive upriver travel. The steamboat quickly accelerated trade on the Mississippi River and its tributaries (including the Ohio River), where the number of steam vessels rose from 17 in 1817 to 727 in 1855. Ground transportation and communications improved as well. In 1815, with railroads still on the horizon, stagecoaches provided the fastest overland transportation and mail delivery, achieving average speeds of more than ten miles per hour on express routes. By 1850 America's thirty thousand miles of railroads exceeded that of the rest of the world combined, and travel time from New York City to Chicago had dropped from six weeks to three days. By the late 1850s telegraph wires provided nearly instantaneous communications between America's major cities. With the population growing by 30 percent each decade from 1810 to 1850 and the transportation revolution swelling the "sphere of demand" that producers could reach, it is no wonder that the American economy grew explosively in this period. National Market Economy. Before the War of 1812 many Americans accepted Thomas Jefferson's vision of an economy of self-sufficient farmers as appropriate for a republic built on the selfless virtue of its citizens. With the enormous new markets that began to open after the War of 1812, however, came the irresistible temptation to do more than just get by. Manufacturers sought to increase production by developing new methods and investing in new factories, new machinery, and larger

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workforces. Factories employing hundreds of "operatives" began to produce massive quantities of axes, plows, reapers, shoes, and textiles. Specialized wholesale merchants appeared who distributed these goods to the most remote country stores in the interior, where farmers expanded their acreage and invested in new labor-saving devices to earn the cash needed to buy these goods. Retailing changed dramatically as owners separated production areas from salesrooms and opened speciality shops and department stores catering to the needs of a growing professional middle class created by the market economy. Liberalism. Americans justified the newly unleashed entrepreneurial spirit that sparked the dynamic expansion of the economy with the liberal political economy of the eighteenth-century British philosopher Adam Smith. As it was understood by his American disciples, Smithian liberalism argued that individuals pursuing their self-interest (desire for profit and wealth) in a free marketplace created an economy where constant competition eventually yielded benefits for everyone, in the form of cheaper goods and services as well as a general increase in wealth. This economic theory was tailormade for the populist "common man" politics of the Jacksonian era. Birth and rank counted for nothing in America's expanding and ever-changing economy, only one's ability to make money. Anyone, in other words, could make it in America, and as long as that was true, all Americans would benefit. Discontents. Not everyone liked the market-driven America that emerged in the Jacksonian era. Visiting Europeans tended to be shocked by the relentless pace of American life and the national obsession with profit. "I know no country," Alexis de Tocqueville claimed in the early 1830s, "where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men." A British traveler agreed, claiming that he had "never overheard Americans conversing without the word DOLLAR being pronounced between them." After experiencing firsthand the tireless wealth seeking of Americans, Frances Trollope of England wrote in her 1832 memoir that "such unity of purpose, such sympathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else except perhaps in an ant's nest." More profoundly, many Americans worried that

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the ideal of America as a virtuous, egalitarian, agrarian republic was giving way to an increasingly urbanized, industrialized, corrupt, and class-divided society no different from Europe with its grimy factories, urban slums, and shady business practices. Reorganization of Labor. While many farmers found themselves working harder to afford the consumer goods available in the new market economy, it was urban labor that underwent the most dramatic change. In place of traditional craft labor, where individuals made items by hand from start to finish, entrepreneurs began to increase the speed of manufacturing by breaking down processes into simple steps that could be performed cheaply by unskilled laborers instead of trained craftsmen. The introduction of new machines such as the power looms that revolutionized the textile industry in the 1820s further changed the nature of work since these machines were generally simple to operate and could be attended by unskilled laborers. As large mills and factories replaced small workshops in the iron, glass, paper, and shipbuilding industries (among others), the rhythm of work changed dramatically. Instead of working at his own pace, learning his trade while working side by side with the master of the shop (in whose house he probably lived), the typical worker was now supervised and paid by strangers whose only interest was to make sure that he

was as productive as possible. Class lines grew more distinct, and words such as employer and boss entered the American lexicon. Business Cycle. Moreover, as Americans buckled themselves more firmly into the market economy, they were forced to ride the roller coaster of modern capitalism, the cycles of boom and bust endemic to an emerging global marketplace. No one could yet predict with any degree of accuracy how many shoes Americans might want next year, or how many bales of cotton Liverpool might demand, and thus no investment or fortune was ever entirely secure. The financial panics of 1819 and 1837 showed how slender was the reed of national prosperity. Still, enough people succeeded to make Smithian liberalism the dominant economic philosophy as Americans learned to adapt to, occasionally reform, and in many cases embrace the changes wrought by the national explosion in economic activity. It was John C. Calhoun's hope that "the more enlarged the sphere of commercial circulation, the more extended that of social intercourse; the more strongly are we bound together; the more inseparable our destinies." Ironically, by 1850 a vastly enlarged "sphere of commercial circulation" had indeed bound America together, in ways that Calhoun and his Southern allies found they could not continue to accept.

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

AGRICULTURE IN THE NORTH Promised Land. When Indiana farmer Jacob Sickler wrote to his brother back home in New Jersey in 1846, he summed up the attitude of many Northern farmers: "I often think of you when I come in at night and place a candle on the stand and take the rocking chair and newspaper and compare our two situations[.] you have been all day . . . spending your strength and time striving to get some thing to stimilate the old sand to raise a potato whilst I have been to Lafayette with a load of grain and think that a task[.] you had better just take a peep out here some of these days and see the differents. I can truly say I have got right down lazy this winter never felt so independent as regards a liveing in all my life [al]most to lazy to husk the corn." Sickler's brother never moved to Indiana, but in the decades after the War of 1812 hundreds of thousands of migrants did follow Sickler's ad-

7O

vice to go West. Land sales at federal offices north of the Ohio River jumped from less than 50,000 acres at the beginning of the War of 1812 to 823,264 acres in 1814 and 2,064,177 acres in 1819. Clearings. Farm families moving west preferred to travel in late winter or early spring. Leaving in March or April allowed them to avoid the worst winter weather on the road but still arrive before the end of June, just in time to get a crop in the ground. Upon arrival in the West, as soon as they had tackled the immediate problems of securing food and shelter, migrant farmers set about the laborious task of clearing fields for planting. This presented a great challenge as forests of amazing height and thickness covered much of the Old Northwest. Travelers recorded sycamores twelve feet in diameter and white pines two hundred feet tall or more. Abraham Lincoln, eight years old when his family migrated

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The Residence of Thomas Hillborn, by Edward Hicks (1845), showing the orderly arrangement of a typical American farm (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Virginia)

north and west to Indiana from Kentucky in 1816, later recalled that "the clearing away of surplus wood was the great task a head" and that he "though very young . . . had an axe put into his hands at once" to help out. Caroline Kirkland wrote in her memoir of Michigan frontier life that farmers in the 1830s looked upon the vast encircling woods as an obstacle "which must be removed" so that "not one tree, not so much as a bush, of natural growth, [can] be suffered to cumber the ground." In reality few farmers had the time, tools, or inclination to clear their fields completely in the first year of arriving at a new farmstead. With help from neighbors and family they usually chopped down as many trees as possible and destroyed others by fire or "girdling," peeling off the bark to deny nutrients to the trees and causing them to die in the field. Girdled trees were nicknamed "widow-makers" for their tendency to drop heavy limbs, or fall over completely, on unsuspecting farmers. Women's Work. The saying "a woman's work is never done" applied quite literally on Northern farms. Outdoors, women and girls milked the cows, collected eggs, butchered the roosters, churned butter, made cheese, rendered maple syrup, and made cider and apple butter while also planting, weeding, and harvesting a garden of half an acre or more. Young boys might help with these tasks, but they risked ridicule if they continued to do "women's work" after ten or twelve years of age. Inside the farmhouse women cooked huge meals over open hearths, using iron pots and pans hung directly over the hot coals although cookstoves were coming into general

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use by midcentury. Since cooking was an all-day activity, the cooking fire was never completely extinguished, even on the hottest summer day. Cleaning occupied most of the time not devoted to cooking and often required separate fires for making soap or doing laundry. Finally, farm women were responsible for making all of the family's clothes, including spinning the thread on a spinning wheel and weaving as much as forty yards of cloth per year on a family loom. Though machine-made textiles largely replaced home manufactures by the Civil War, women still spent time repairing and altering the family wardrobe to keep hand-me-downs in use. As if these tasks were not enough, women bore the additional burden of frequent pregnancies, nursing, and child care as well as an occasional turn in the harvest field. The first Department of Agriculture report in 1862 did not exaggerate in stating that "a farmer's wife, as a general rule, is a laboring drudge . . . it is safe to say, that on three farms out of four the wife works harder, endures more, than any other on the place." The Farmer's Year. Whether on the Western frontier or back East, farms required long hours of labor. Most farmers went to bed not long after dark and rose when the first tinge of gray touched the sky, a time referred to as "long before day" in country parlance, maybe as early as 5 A.M. Starting in mid March the farmer and his sons headed out after breakfast to clear and drain land, manure and plow the fields, or plant crops. Wheat, the main cash crop in the North, was sown broadcast (flung from a bag of seed carried around the farmer's neck), while corn,

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the staple of the Midwestern diet, was planted in hills. Sheep shearing, goose plucking, collecting maple sap, and finding beehives were other common tasks. As the days lengthened in summer, the workload increased. Corn needed hoeing to keep down competing weeds while hay had to be cut, cured, and stored for winter livestock feed. A short rest from heavy labor came in August, when the maturing crops had outgrown the weeds, or vice versa; August was (and still is) the traditional time for fairs in the Midwest. September and October brought a new frenzy of activity as the harvest season arrived. Until the 1850s most farmers still cut, bound, and shocked wheat, oats, and barley by hand while cornpicking remained a predominantly manual operation until well into the twentieth century. As the days shortened and cooled in October and November, farmers turned to threshing and storing the grain, husking corn, picking fruit from orchard trees, and butchering hogs for the salted and smoked pork that would tide the family over until spring. Cabins and barns required repair before winter blasts sought out cracks and crevices. Winter itself offered something of a respite for the farmer. The most industrious would spend the season mending fences, clearing more land, or hauling manure from the barn or feedlot to next year's fields, but for most farmers winter meant a time to visit with neighbors, take surpluses to market in wagons or flatboats, and plan next year's crops. Communal Work. Seasonal social occasions matched to the work cycles of the farm alleviated the isolation and constant labor of the farm family while also providing much-needed help during the periods of greatest labor demand. Harvest gatherings, logrollings, cabin raisings, and husking bees gave both men and women an opportunity to socialize and work at the same time. The women of the household hosting one of these events spent days preparing food for the gathering. Visiting wives would help the hostess prepare the biggest meal—at midday—and then gather to exchange information while sewing together. Men, on the other hand, used communal occasions to display their strength and athletic prowess. Farm families in the newly settled regions of the Midwest relied on these communal activities not only as excuses to drink, dance, fight, and gossip but also for their economic benefit. With no modern harvesting machines and a limited labor supply, many farm tasks could not have been done without help from neighbors. Farmers regularly exchanged labor, livestock, and crops for goods and services they could not provide for themselves, such as blacksmithing, glassware, coffee, and harvesting help. Prairie Farms. By the late 1830s migrant farmers had settled most of the prime farmland in the southern tier of the Old Northwest. What had been an almost impenetrable forest now echoed with the ring of axes and the scrape of plows. More farmers came to fill in the empty spaces, but most of them paused at the edge of the great

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tallgrass prairies that stretched in an almost unbroken carpet west across the glaciated plains from northern Indiana into and past Iowa. Farmers found these grasslands formidable obstacles. In summer the prairie's big bluestem grasses, forbs, and wildflowers could reach ten feet in height, hiding herds of buffalo, packs of wolves, and panthers. Moreover, the prairie flatlands were full of slow-moving streams considered ideal breeding grounds for malarial fevers. Nor did farmers yet know how to farm the prairies. Accepted wisdom said that heavily forested land promised greater fertility, and farmers incorrectly assumed that prairie lands would not support heavy cropping. Even when farmers tried crops on the prairies, the matted roots of the ancient grasslands flung cast-iron plows aside. Only the big, expensive prairie plows hitched to sixteen or more oxen could hope to turn the prairie sod. Last, but certainly not least, the prairies lacked human inhabitants. Until the 1840s only the occasional squatter or fur trapper was brave enough to venture permanently out onto the flatlands, where nothing stood in the way of the winter winds or the late-summer prairie fires that raged for miles. Not until the advent in the 1840s and 1850s of John Deere's self-scouring steel plow, McCormick's reaper, and the railroads, would extensive settlement on the prairies begin. Sources: John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979); Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmers Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, 1960).

THE ARTISAN'S WORLD Made by Hand. In the first third of the nineteenth century most consumer goods were produced in small, unmechanized manufactories (literally, places where things were made by hand). Contemporaries referred to these business places as shops and their proprietors as craftsmen, artisans, or mechanics. Many small shops combined manufacturing and retail operations (often in one room), produced goods to order (called "bespoke" goods), and were generally owned and run by the master craftsman himself, who, depending on the size of the concern, might have in his employ several journeymen or apprentices. The master craftsman and his family generally lived in rooms above or behind the shop, and the journeymen and apprentices he hired often lived under the same roof. The Master. In traditional shops masters, journeymen, and apprentices knew their specified duties and maintained a rough hierarchy of authority under the master's control. In an era of ardent republicanism, however, journeymen and apprentices chafed under harsh masters, and the wise shop owner tried to maintain a spirit of mutuality and common effort. Nonetheless, it was the master artisan who either owned or rented the place of business, possessed all of the tools appropriate to

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the craft, and supervised the work of the journeymen and apprentices. Masters purchased raw materials, punished recalcitrant apprentices, greeted customers, and drummed up new business (though not usually by advertising, which was considered inappropriate for a respectable craftsman). To become master of his own shop, which was every journeyman's goal, required years of learning the field, first as an indentured apprentice (bound by contract and law to serve one's master, usually for four to seven years) and then as a journeyman working by piece rate. Pride of Work. Craftsmen took pride in their work and the quality of the products they created. They spent years acquiring the skills needed to assemble a finished product out of a pile of raw materials using only hand tools and experience. Over time the knowledge, skill, and unusual vocabulary of his particular craft became second nature to the skilled artisan, so much so that retired craftsmen still used the lingo of the trade decades after they left the shops. The tools of the trade were treated with the utmost respect; half a century after his retirement shoemaker David Johnson could still weigh the relative merits of English and American awls and the qualities of the Allerton, Wilson, and Titus brands. Awls were the most expensive tools in a shoemaker's box, and, according to Johnson, a boy who broke too many awls by accident, perhaps while trying to work some particularly hard leather, could expect to feel some leather applied to his own hide by the master of the shop. Leisurely Pace. Artisans worked hard, often ten to fourteen hours each day. But they did not labor at the same relentless pace that bosses demanded in the mechanized factories of Lowell and Lynn, with their tight production schedules and expensive machines. In most shops, in fact, work and leisure were not clearly separated. Breaks were frequent, and hard cider or other alcoholic beverages were liberally distributed among the workers, creating a congenial atmosphere. The working week in theory ran from Monday through Saturday in most shops, but in many communities workers regarded it as their right to enjoy "Blue Monday" at home, visiting friends, or more likely, nursing their headaches after drinking too much on Sunday. In Philadelphia, for instance, German Americans held regular neighborhood Volksfests (folk festivals) that ran from Sunday to Tuesday. The rise of the temperance movement would end the alcoholic aspects of artisan culture even as the advent of mechanization would end the leisurely pace of craft labor. The Artisan's Household. By tradition, and in many towns as late as the 1820s, masters were morally and legally responsible for the care, upkeep, training, and behavior of all the dependent members of their households, which included not only their families but the journeymen and apprentices who lived with them as well. These extended work-related families ate and drank at the same table and attended social events together. Some journey-

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The Wood Sawyer (1842) by Charles E. Weir (Jay P. Altmayer Collection)

men (who were usually young adults), and even some apprentices, might live on their own, but even then their masters were responsible for their behavior in the community. For this reason contracts between masters and journeymen or apprentices usually contained specific stipulations about personal behavior. The apprentice John Englis, who eventually became a well-known steamship builder in New York's East River yards, signed in 1825 a four-year contract of indenture that required that "the said apprentice his master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands everywhere readily obey . . . he shall not contract matrimony within said term: at cards, dice, or any unlawful game he shall not play whereby his master may have damage . . . he shall not absent himself day or night from his master's service without his leave; nor haunt ale-houses, taverns, dancehouses, or play-houses." Craft Traditions. America's master craftsmen never succeeded in developing European-style guilds, organizations of masters that regulated prices, output, and pay. Nor could American cities control market prices or

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worker's lives like European communities did. Cheap land, a constant demand for labor, and an American tradition of resistance to authority and government regulation of markets made these options untenable. Nevertheless, American artisans did adhere to the celebratory traditions of the crafts, and they developed European-style craft organizations, habits perpetuated by the continual influx of immigrant workers steeped in the lore of the anThroughout the nineteenth century tailors, hatters, printers, and shipwrights could be found in annual parades, marching under the banners of their crafts, wearing the symbols and regalia of their organizations, or riding on floats displaying their work routines. Fourth of July parades were popular holidays for such displays, but any public celebration would do. The shipwrights and caulkers marched with their mallets and "other articles emblemattical of our Trade" and even built "a skooner to be carried in procession" when New York City celebrated the 1825 completion of the Erie Canal. New Markets. In a traditional artisan's shop the journeyman or master assembled the entire product—a chair, a shoe, a suit—and often fashioned the constituent parts as well. The system was effective but slow, and when the market for consumer goods began to expand after the War of 1812 due to population growth, westward expansion, and improved transportation, masters found it difficult to increase production to meet the new demand. A master could add more journeymen, but this made supervision difficult without increasing efficiency. Alternatively, he might insist that his journeymen work faster and for longer hours, be punctual, and stay sober, but only at the cost of coming into conflict with his employees, who considered such demands to be impositions on their autonomy and traditional rights to work at their own pace. Bastardization of the Crafts. Many masters solved this problem by "bastardizing" (as journeymen termed it) the craft process. Rather than have a skilled journeyman complete an entire product, masters broke the production process down into several simple steps, each of which could be done by almost any untrained apprentice. Once the work process was broken down, masters could assemble teams of these workers, pay them by the piece or by the hour, and then impose a quota on their production. In this system skilled journeymen were no longer necessary. Moreover, task subdivision readily yielded to mechanization because inventors had a much easier time devising machinery that could perform one simple task repeatedly rather than the multiple tasks of the journeyman. Market demand, task subdivision, and mechanization (especially with steam power) made the steps to fully mechanized factory production much easier to contemplate on the part of investors, merchants, and masters. The world of the skilled craftsman did not crumble immediately in the face of these changes, and many of the new mechanized industries never had a craft tradition to

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replace (for example, the production of McCormick reapers or cheap clocks), but by the 1850s factory-made goods were taking over many of the markets of the traditional craftsman. Resistance. Artisans resisted changes in their traditional pathways to independence and status. Starting in the 1820s and 1830s workers formed political parties up and down the Eastern Seaboard to lobby for the right to strike against their employers and to push for legislation limiting the length of the workday to ten hours. Craftsmen also formed unions, both within their individual crafts and collectively in the 1834 National Trades' Union. The reforms they suggested seemed mild, but their rhetoric often expressed a more fundamental criticism of the whole process of industrialization. Workers argued that the bastardization of their crafts undermined the honor of honest labor and denied them the freedom, equality, independence, and opportunity promised by the Revolution. Craftsmen countered evidence of advancing productivity with republican arguments: "this sir, is a free country," one artisan remarked, "we want no one person over another which would be the case if you divided labor." Artisans argued that the masters who had once been fellow workers were turning into nonproducing investors, parasites on society who were attempting to reverse the gains of the Revolution. In 1836 female strikers at the Lowell textile mills made this point clear when they promised that "as our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the British ministry, so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us." Mixed Results. The new unions and workers' parties won some significant victories, including the ten-hour day in several states and an 1842 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that legalized strikes in that state. But several factors militated against the growth of a full-scale, organized labor movement. First, the potential unity of workers was weakened by racial, ethnic, gender, and craft divisions. Many skilled native-born workers thought that African, Irish, and female wage laborers undermined their demands for a living wage (which they defined as enough for a "worthy mechanic" to support his family without the labor of children or wife, to purchase a comfortable home, and to save up to open his own shop) by working for low pay. Equally important to the failure of working-class protest was the fact that craft workers and their unions rarely had the financial resources to support prolonged strikes or sur—vive periodic depressions such as the Panic of 1837, which destroyed many nascent unions. Finally, and perhaps most significant, many workers either welcomed change, moved into new industries with no craft tradition (like railroads), grudgingly accommodated themselves to new work systems, or worked in crafts relatively untouched by labor subdivision, such as blacksmithing.

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Sources: Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill ScWang, 1978); Bruce Laurie, "'Nothing on Compulsion': Life Styles of Philadelphia Artisans, 1820-1850," Labor History, 15 (1974): 337-366; Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

COTTON KINGDOM Whitney's Gin. In 1792 Catherine Greene, a widowed Georgia plantation owner, invited the Connecticut Yankee Eli Whitney to tutor her children on the family plantation outside Savannah. Conversations between cotton planters at the Greene estate often turned to the difficulty of supplying the British market for cotton, and Whitney came to realize that the major bottleneck in the expansion of cotton growing in the South was the difficulty of separating cotton seed from the cotton boll. Once Whitney understood the problem, it took him only a few weeks to devise a simple hand-cranked machine called a gin (short for engine) that utilized two metal rollers with mounted teeth to separate cotton seeds from their bolls. Whitney's device ginned short staple cotton eight times faster than traditional methods by 1800, and worked faster still after improvements in design and attachment to a power source other than manual labor. Whitney's gin, along with cheap land, a captive labor force, and a growing British market, created a cotton boom across the South. Annual cotton production in the nation rose from four thousand bales in 1790 to more than a million bales by 1840. By the 1840s cotton accounted for one half of American exports, and the United States produced 60 percent of the world supply. Moreover, the rise of "King Cotton" had an immediate multiplier effect on the national economy. Financing and moving cotton stimulated Northern banking and transport while the wealth generated by cotton sales created Southern demand for Northern manufactured goods and Midwestern farm produce. In its first decades the cotton boom benefited almost everyone, except the African American slaves whose labor produced the "white gold." Economy of Slavery. Before the invention of the cotton gin the institution of slavery appeared to be in permanent decline. The collapse of the tobacco market in the late eighteenth century left many slaveholders in Virginia, the state with the largest slave population in 1800, with more slaves than they could profitably use. Meanwhile, the moral impact of fighting in a revolution dedicated to the equality of all men led some slaveholders to question the institution itself. Whether for economic or ethical reasons, Virginians manumitted more than ten thousand slaves in the years following independence, and as late as 1832 the Virginia legislature considered abolishing slavery altogether. But the cotton boom created another option. As planters moved west with their slaves

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and planted more acres in cotton, they clamored for more field hands to work the red soils of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Slave owners in Maryland and Virginia discovered a market for their human property, a market protected by the federal ban on the African slave trade in 1808. Slaves herded overland in chained coffles, or "sold down the river" on steamboats, became familiar sights as slave dealing became big business in the cotton kingdom. Planters. Contrary to legend, all Southerners did not own slaves or live on large plantations. Of those who did hold slaves, most owned only one or two and worked alongside them on small farms. Much of the region's wealth, however, was controlled by the few large planters who owned dozens or hundreds of slaves to work their CAPITAL OF THE COTTON KINGDOM If any place embodied the "moonlight and magnolias" mythology of the Old South, it was Natchez, Mississippi, Perched on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, Natchez's small size (only 4,680 inhabitants in 1850) belied its economic importance. In 1838 Natchez-area growers sent forty thousand bales of cotton downriver to New Orleans, Moreover, the city's forty most prominent families, referred to as the "nabobs," included the largest and wealthiest cotton planters in the entire South and some of the biggest slave owners in the world. No one could accuse the Natchez nabobs of hiding their wealth. At least forty large mansions graced the streets of the town or the wooded lanes of Adams County. Their names slid smoothly off the tongue—"Concordia," "Monmouth," and "Melrose." In conscious imitation of the English landed gentry, families like the Duncans, Surgets, and Quitmans furnished their homes with the best furniture, drapes, and marbles, and then used these stages to play out their self-appointed roles as patriarchs of the Cotton Kingdom. Gracious entertainment was the order of the day, as evidenced by John Quitrnan's journal entry recording a visit to a friend's plantation: "Mint-juleps in the morning are sent to our rooms, and then follows a delightful breakfast in the open veranda . . . we hunt, ride, fish . . . read or lounge until dinner," followed by a siesta and then more of the same until the evening meal. "In fine weather," Quitman continued, "the tea-table is always set before sunset, and then, until bed-time, we stroll, sing, play whist, or croquet. It is an indolent, yet charming life, and one quits thinking and takes to dream-

ing." Source: D. Clayton James, Antebellum Natchez (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968).

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African American slaves carrying cotton bales in South Carolina, circa 1850

expansive fields. These planters did not work in the fields themselves, but contrary to popular perception, they did work. A cotton plantation entailed on its owner responsibilities similar to those of other large businesses. A planter might spend his morning updating the plantation account books before going out to check on the day's work in the fields. The afternoon might find him buying supplies or selling crops, deciding on planting schedules, or checking on investments with bankers, merchants, and factors. In fact, many of the largest slaveholders, especially in the newer cotton areas like Natchez, Mississippi, had begun their careers as bankers, lawyers, merchants, or slave traders before investing their money in land and slaves and becoming gentlemen and planters. Of course, no matter how normal business operations might seem on a plantation, the growing of cotton still put planters at the mercy of world markets and continued to depend on the labor of enslaved human beings. Field Hands. On the largest cotton plantations masters organized slaves into work gangs, groups of twenty to sixty men and women, who set out early every morning (except Sunday) to labor in the fields under the supervision of an overseer. Workloads fluctuated with the seasonal requirements of the cotton plant. Former slave Solomon Northrup recalled just some of the tasks performed by field slaves: "Ploughing, planting, picking cotton . . . pulling and burning stalks . . . pressing." The fall harvest, or "picking time," saw the greatest demands on the plantation crews, bringing all available hands into the

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fields, including children. Because the short staple cotton plants grown before the Civil War did not all mature at the same time, the picking season might extend over several months, with slaves scouring the same field over and over again. Adult slaves were expected to pick two hundred pounds of cotton a day, pinching the bolls out of the sharp seed casings, stuffing them into long gunny sacks dragged over the shoulder through the rows to the weighing scales, then dumping them in the wagon waiting to take the cotton to the nearest gin for cleaning and pressing into bales. Slave gangs worked at least until dusk though in harvest season slaves might also feed livestock or move cotton bales well into the night. After the harvest was over, slave workers spent the winter season cutting wood, repairing or erecting outbuildings, and clearing more land for spring planting. After a twelve- to fourteen-hour workday most slaves returned to a dinner of fatty pork and corn mush, followed by sleep in drafty cabins, often with only a plank for a bed. Overseers. In an 1837 article in the Farmer's Register planters were advised to "regard an overseer as an indispensable agent, whose first qualities should be honesty and firmness, united with forbearance and good temper. Sobriety is the sine qua non." The article went on to suggest that the overseer "should not be allowed to strike . . . with his fist or a stick, nor ever to punish with severity; for it is not the severity, but certainty of punishment that wins implicitly obedience." As the article suggests, overseers did not have a good reputation, and planters often

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hired them to push slaves when they themselves were unwilling to do so. Not all plantation regimes were brutal, but many witnesses, including former slaves and Northern travelers, recorded frequent physical punishments doled out by white overseers or even black slave drivers. On his tour of the South, Frederic Law Olmsted described a scene on a cotton plantation where the overseer wandered among the work gangs with a whip "which he often cracked at them, sometimes allowing the lash to fall." Sources: Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 volumes (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1933); James Oakes, The Ruling Race: Si History of American Slaveholders (New York: Knopf, 1982).

FINANCING THE MARKET REVOLUTION Alternatives to Cash. Even in the best of times little cash passed through most farmers' hands. When periodic financial crises hit, like the Panics of 1819 or 1837, circulating gold and silver currency disappeared almost completely, especially in rural areas. To make do, people resorted to other forms of currency, such as triangular pieces of coins called "shinplasters," printed paper money issued by businesses and termed "scrip," and Spanish gold dollars split into eighths, or "bits" (which gave rise to the slang phrases "two bit" and "pieces of eight"). Another alternative was the barter system, in which farmers, mill owners, blacksmiths, and storekeepers exchanged needed goods and services. Rebecca Burlend, an Englishwoman traveling in Illinois in the 1830s, noted that the countryside was filled with what "are termed store keepers, who supply the settlers with articles the most needed, such as food, clothing . . . medicine and spiritous liquors; for which they receive in exchange the produce of their farms, consisting of wheat, Indian corn, sugar, beef, bacon." Most village merchants also allowed farmers to buy on credit in anticipation of the next season's crop. These transactions, however, were usually marked down in ledgers in cash terms, and even neighbors exchanging goods and services (such as help with plowing in return for a quilt) often kept accounts that recorded the cash value of the transaction as negotiated by the two parties. Farm Credit. Barter worked for everyday needs, but farmers generally needed cash or credit to purchase land or equipment. Between 1800 and 1820 farmers could get four-year loans from the federal government to buy farms from the public land offices, but these loans did not extend to purchases of privately held land, nor did they help buyers east of the Appalachians. Farmers could obtain cash to buy more land if they could get their crops to market, but this was difficult and expensive. The expansion of the rail network in the late 1840s and 1850s revolutionized farm marketing and induced Western farmers to invest heavily in larger farms. With cash more

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readily available, credit expanded as well, and starting around 1850 firms such as the McCormick Reaper Company began selling equipment on the installment plan. Before that date, however, farmers in the North and West had to rely on personal and local networks of credit to supply their needs, and local bankers and merchants were not always gracious lenders. Merchants often did not grant farmers the full value of crops they brought in to settle store accounts, and many local bankers were seen as hard-hearted creditors. "Did you ever see a cat watch a mouse," one contemporary author asked, "just so will the little country bank director, who has lent cash to a farmer on the mortgage of his place, watch him." Investment Capital. Merchants and local banks could provide credit for individual farm purchases but were too small to finance large-scale commodity transfers, wholesale dry-goods transactions, construction of new industries, or the development of roads, canals, and railroads that came to characterize the American economy. New York banks, the most dependable and cash-rich institutions in the country, supplied much of the capital for these endeavors. They financed crop transfers from the West and imports from Europe bound for the nation's interior. They also provided the credit necessary for store owners all over the country to buy goods for retail sale from the "jobbers," middlemen who bought goods in large lots at auctions or from wholesalers, and they financed the jobbers' purchases from the wholesale supply PANIC IN THE STREETS By the winter of 1819-1820 the nation's economic crisis had reached fever pitch. All across the new western states banks foreclosed on thousands of farm mortgages after calling in their loans in a vain effort to recover the specie they needed to pay their depositors. Having ruined their debtors, the banks suspended specie payments and closed their doors, ruining their creditors. In the East land values in New York plummeted in one year from $315 million to $256 million. In Richmond, Virginia, they fell by half. By early 1820 thirteen thousand paupers crowded the streets of New York while at least a half million people lost their jobs nationwide. One commentator warned of the "prospect of families naked—children freezing in winter's storm—and the fathers without coats" to dress properly for work. Witnessing the devastation, John C. Calhoun wrote that "within these two years an immense revolution of fortunes" came to pass "in every part of the union; enormous numbers of persons utterly ruined; multitudes in deep distress." Source: Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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Texas currency used in 1840

houses located in lower Manhattan. At first, state and local governments paid for canals, roads, and railroads by selling bonds directly to regional bankers, local farmers and merchants, or overseas investors, but starting in the 1840s New York investment banks, and the city's stock exchange, began to figure prominently in the financing of the nation's rapid railroad expansion either as purchasers or marketers abroad of state and private railroad bonds and stocks. Consequently, volume on the New York Stock Exchange rose rapidly. Never again would only thirty-one shares change hands in a business day, as happened in March 1830. Limited Liability. Factories did not require nearly as much capital as railroads and could be built without resorting to public borrowing through the sale of bonds. Manufacturers relied largely on the investments of merchants, friends and family, suppliers, and other business associates to finance their new facilities. To make investing more attractive, manufacturers began to incorporate their businesses by obtaining a charter of incorporation from a state legislature or, after several states passed general incorporation laws to ease the process, following a few simple procedures and filing some forms. Corporations held the great advantage of being limited liability organizations, meaning that investors were not individually liable for the entire debt of the company (as members of a partnership were). Investors risked losing whatever they chose to put into a corporation, but that was the limit of their liability. The Supreme Court's decision in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) helped to establish the security and legal status of corporations. Various state and federal court rulings and legislation on bankruptcy, eminent domain, and damage judgments, together with the reform of state laws that made it much easier for businesses to incorporate, promoted economic development by ameliorating some of the dangers of investing in new enterprises. State Banks. Large as they were, the private banks of the East could not meet all the capital needs of the West, where state governments as well as groups of private in-

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vestors began to organize their own banks. Between 1811 (when Congress refused to recharter the Bank of the United States) and the financial panic of 1819, the number of state banks rose from 88 to 392; a similar expansion occurred in the 1830s. Observing these institutions springing up everywhere induced one humorist to claim that "wherever there is a church, a blacksmith shop, and a tavern seems a proper site for one of them." The tiny state bureaucracies were unable to keep up with the rapid proliferation and shady practices of the new banks. In theory the directors of a new bank, whether state-run or private, were supposed to sell stock in the bank in return for specie (gold and silver coin), or other dependable financial instruments such as government bonds. Unscrupulous directors enriched themselves by issuing more bank shares than allowed, in a sort of pyramid scheme. One contemporary quipped that many Western banks started with no more assets than "a table, a chair, and a keg of nails with a few coins on top." During the boom business years of 1815 and 1816 banks "with notes issued equal to 20 times specie held" became the order of the day; in this "jubilee of swindlers" and "Saturnalia of non-specie paying banks" it seemed that "throughout the whole country, New England excepted, it required no capital to set up a bank." Panic of 1819. Even honest bankers found it difficult to resist lending more money (in the form of printed banknotes) than their specie reserves warranted since loans constituted a bank's most important source of profit. As long as land and crop values continued to rise, the notes (secured by farm mortgages) kept their value. But when land or crop values fell rapidly, holders of notes would present them for redemption in specie, and the overly speculative banks that had issued them would fail rapidly, bankrupting the note holders and the bank's shareholders as well. This was exactly what happened during the Panic of 1819, when Americans learned that being part of a worldwide market economy fueled by credit meant not just boom times but also the possibility of ruin. In a fit of shame and guilt many Americans

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swore they would never borrow beyond their means again but would return instead to the old republican values of self-sufficiency, industry, frugality, and restraint. Congress led the way by suspending credit purchases for government land, requiring cash payment at time of sale. Others, however, blamed the banking system (especially the Bank of the United States) and speculators for their economic woes. A Western paper proclaimed, "People of the West—debtors to the government—have we not repeatedly told you that you were imposed upon—that you were preyed upon by sharpers and speculators? What say you now?" Western legislatures passed "stay" laws to delay foreclosures while many states tried to increase their supply of specie by taxing the Bank of the United States, a policy ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The Bank of the United States survived public and congressional attack, but not before it was permanently labeled as a corrupt institution, a "monster of iniquity . . . brought into existence . . . by a corrupt congress, who trampled on the constitution they had sworn to support in order to gratify their ambition for wealth." Bank of the United States. Americans remained angry at the Bank of the United States well into the 1830s, when Jackson's Bank War reignited the issue. Their anger was not entirely misplaced as the Second Bank of the United States did indeed suffer from mismanagement, indecision, and even corruption in its early years. The Panic of 1819 thoroughly discredited the Bank, which had helped to precipitate the crisis by calling in its loans to overextended state banks, triggering a series of bank failures. In 1823 wealthy Philadelphia businessman Nicholas Biddle took over directorship of the Bank of the United States and immediately set about reforming the institution. To curb the speculative habits of state and private banks, he forced them to keep larger specie reserves. At the same time he expanded the Bank's lending, though now with the appropriate controls over reserves and collateral that characterized sound financial institutions. By the late 1820s the Bank of the United States was the nation's largest creditor, with twentythree branches in the busiest commercial cities and a central role in the nation's economic growth. By 1830 the Bank held over 30 percent of all national bank deposits and made 20 percent of the nation's loans. The Bank's enemies, however, still looked upon the institution with suspicion and waited for the "monster" to make a wrong move so that it could be destroyed once and for all, returning America to its imagined past of hard-money simplicity. Sources: R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 volumes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991); Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957).

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FROM FARM TO MARKET The Market Economy. "Wealth," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "by bringing things from where they abound to where they are wanted," gave the farmer's peaches "a new look and a hundredfold value over the fruit which grew on the same bough and lies fulsomely on the ground." Most farmers in the 1815-1850 era would have agreed with Emerson, if in less florid style. They planted their fields and raised their livestock with the needs of the market in mind. Although many (especially those living far from markets) clung to the Jeffersonian ideal of self-sufficiency and planned to sell locally only whatever surplus remained after filling their families' needs, most American farmers entered the new national market economy eagerly. Improved transportation networks made marketing farm goods economical while also bringing to the farmer's attention a new array of compelling items ready for cash purchase, from factory-made shoes to cookstoves. By 1850 even the most recalcitrant antimarket farmers knew that there were consumer goods they could obtain only by raising a cash crop. On the Hoof. In an era before good roads and railroads, the easiest way for a farmer to transport his surplus to market was to have it walk there, in the form of livestock. In the 1810s and 1820s carrying grain (even expensive wheat) overland in wagons to the nearest market was too costly to be practical. Bad roads ruined wagons, and both draft animals and farmers needed constant feeding and shelter. It was far easier to use the grain to fatten livestock and have the animals driven to market. Thus in the early 1820s annual hog drives from the trans-Appalachian West to the East Coast became commonplace. Travelers on the National Road "met continually droves of hogs, often 600 together, being driven, usually from Ohio and even Indiana, to Baltimore." Cattle and even turkeys were herded over the same route. Stock buyers regularly fanned out into rural areas and bought up livestock, then combined the lots into herds led by professional drovers. Some of this livestock bordered on the feral, and western pigs were especially notorious for their wildness. On the frontier, in fact, pigs often ran wild in the woods during most of the year, feeding on acorns and small mammals while developing mean temperaments to ward off wolves and bears. Farmers had to tempt these animals into fenced cornfields, where they could be held until time for the drive. In these gathering pens boys drove the pigs with sticks to reacquaint them with human control, occasionally sewing shut the eyes of the most stubborn animals to keep them from attacking or running away. By the 1830s, with forests in rapid decline, farmers began to pen their hogs throughout the year and drive them in the off-season to the new pork-processing centers at Cincinnati or Chicago. Porkopolis. Without refrigeration, pork butchering and packing was a winter occupation. From November until at least February, the packinghouses of Cincinnati

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"Porkopolis," or Cincinnati, in 1835

and other Midwestern river cities such as Terre Haute, Indiana, hummed with activity. In the cold of tall buildings along the Ohio River seasonal workers (many being farmers earning extra money in the off-season) manned their posts on the "disassembly line," where, in the words of historian R. Carlyle Buley, "the mallet,—the knife,—the axe,—the boiling caldron" and the "remorseless scraping iron" converted the "fated porker, that was but one minute before grunting in the full enjoyment of bristling hoghood" into "mess, prime, or cargo" pork awash in a sea of brine and salt, and finally packed into giant barrels ready for the long spring journey downriver by steamboat and flatboat to the markets of the cotton South, the urban East, or even Europe. Cincinnati won the nickname of "Porkopolis" for its predominance in the trade, a position not surrendered until the coming of the railroad shifted the center of pork packing to Chicago, later labeled the "hog-butcher for the world" by poet Carl Sandburg. Northeastern Markets. For Western farmers with surpluses not "on the hoof," it cost roughly a hundred dollars in the precanal era to transport one ton of goods overland from the Great Lakes to New York City, and Midwestern farmers grew hardly anything worth more than a hundred dollars a ton. Until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 most of the wheat flour, corn, and beef consumed in or exported from New York came from within 150 miles of the city. Even after the opening of canals and railroads brought down the price of Western wheat, corn, and cattle, Northeastern farmers could still rely on a superior system of turnpikes, canals, and rail-

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roads linking them with expanding urban markets in Boston and Philadelphia, facilitating extensive market, or "truck," farming in New England, Pennsylvania, and New York. Eastern urban markets for oysters, wild game, orchard fruits, fresh vegetables, and dairy products allowed many worn-out New England farms to survive competition with the West. By the early 1850s oysters alone represented a $5 million dollar market in New York City, and six steamboats of peaches arrived daily (in season) from Middlesex County, New Jersey. This trade with the city's hinterland made New York's Fulton Market a veritable cornucopia in 1850, stacked with fruits, vegetables, and cheeses from farms throughout the East. Country Stores. Cities such as Richmond, Charleston, New Orleans, Saint Louis, and Cincinnati also offered nearby farmers thriving produce markets, although not on the scale of the New York market. For most farmers, however, the local general store was the main outpost of the world economy. In hundreds of these stores across the country farmers exchanged their livestock and produce for the products of Pittsburgh iron foundries, British and American textile firms, and New England clock, ax, gun, shoe, and watch factories. The storekeeper was an important, if not necessarily popular, figure, for he served as the primary buyer of farm goods and supplier of manufactured items as well as a major source of credit. Some were sharp dealers; for every "Honest Abe" Lincoln, who briefly kept a store in New Salem, Illinois, there was a P. T. Barnum, who recalled of his storekeeping days that "we cheated the customers with our goods. Each party expected to be cheated, if it was possible."

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Honest or not, storekeepers earned their position at the center of the rural economy by assuming the risks of the market. It was up to them to store the produce they accepted from farmers and transport it to a larger market, a process that could take months, with prices fluctuating all the while. Guessing wrong about the price that corn, pork, or potatoes might command in New Orleans or New York could prove costly. In the spring of 1844, for example, Iowa merchant John Burrows heard that potatoes were going for two dollars a bushel in New Orleans, but by the time he got there with a flatboat full of spuds, the price had fallen to only eight cents a bushel. Chicago. When canals and railroads began to penetrate the West, farmers no longer had to take their produce south by flatboat or submit to the monopoly power of the local storekeeper. They could make instead the relatively easy journey by wagon to the nearest port or rail connection and sell their goods there. Once the railroad came to the tiny hamlet of Chicago, Illinois, which had no more than a thousand residents in 1830, farmers came from all over with sacks of grain and barrels of pork to sell at what had become the western terminus of the New York to Great Lakes trading network. In the town's open-air market, cash or commission merchants inspected the farmers' grain right from the sack, grading it based on its type and quality. They offered prices, based on the grade of the grain and the prevailing prices in Buffalo, New York City, or London. The merchant's superior knowledge of endpoint prices as well as transport and insurance costs gave him the advantage in bargaining and limited the farmer's room for maneuver. Once the deal was made, farmers usually took their cash (or the merchant's receipt) and visited one of Chicago's three hundred stores to stock up on supplies before heading home. Sources: R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 volumes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950); William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991); Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmers Frontier: 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, 1960).

THE LAND BUSINESS A Restless People. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of America in 1803, but as late as 1812 only one out of fourteen Americans lived west of the Appalachians, and two-thirds of the population still lived within fifty miles of the Atlantic. That changed dramatically after victory in the War of 1812 removed the British and their native allies as barriers to white settlement of the West. Between 1810 and 1820 the population west of the Alleghenies doubled, and by 1840 one-third of Americans lived beyond the mountains, ten times the number of people only three decades before. By 1850 almost half of the American population lived outside their state of birth. The federal government encouraged this overland migration, first by selling public land with lib-

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eral credit terms, then by reducing the required minimum acreage purchase, not to mention the six million acres worth of Western land bounties handed out to enlistees during the War of 1812. As a result of these policies land sales in the West leaped from a mere sixty-eight thousand acres in 1800 to 1.3 million acres in 1815 and more than 20 million acres in the peak year of 1836. Speculators. As the federal government sought to sell off its vast landholdings, it attracted the attention of businessmen who had little or no intention of settling the land themselves. Chief among these were the land speculators and their agents, men who wanted to buy land cheap, hold onto it until the area grew up around them, and then sell their parcels for four or five times the purchase price. Speculators were unpopular even though it was sometimes difficult to distinguish speculators from settlers, and many speculators helped the economy to grow by leasing their land to cash-poor farmers who could not have afforded to buy it outright. At one federal land auction an observer noted that if someone even looking like a speculator "makes a bid, or shows a disposition to take a settler's claim from him, he soon sees the

LAND AUCTION Farmers from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and various points south crowded the Crawfordsville, Indiana, Federal Land Office on Christmas Eve in 1824, Some had been there for weeks scouting the best farm sites or waiting for their favorite parcel to come up for auction. They read surveyor's notes in the office, rode out into the thick forests to investigate land parcels themselves, imagined timber stands becoming cabins and profitable lumber, assessed the quality of springs and streams for drinking water and market transport, smelled the dirt to test for fertility, and maybe took a shot or two at the still-abundant wildlife. In the evenings the farmers returned to town, visited with relatives and acquaintances, drank whiskey in the local taverns, and slept on the floors of log cabins. Then it was time for the auction itself, when the government agent began selling parcels of land by their survey designations, starting with the southern tier of townships in that federal district and working his way north. By unspoken agreement settlers did not bid against each other for the same piece of land but worked out private arrangements in advance or cast lots to determine who would get to bid first. Without competition, land usually sold at the "Congress price" of $1.25 an acre on a m i n i m u m purchase of 80 acres (originally 160, and later reduced to 40), cash only. Source: Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmer's Age: Agriculture* 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, 1960).

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Plan of the proposed town of Hygeia, Kentucky, circa 1820 (Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library)

white of a score of eyes snapping at him, and at the first opportunity he crawfishes out of the crowd." But speculators did not always lose out. At the Huntsville, Alabama, land office a bidder commented on the "rapacious horde of speculators who seemed disposed to monopolize the whole country . . . outbidding people who attended the sale to purchase lands for settlement." Eastern capitalists snapped up millions of acres of Western lands at sixty cents an acre by buying at a discount the land bounties of war veterans who needed the ready cash or had no desire to move. Some individual speculators owned as much as a hundred thousand acres. Paper Cities. Speculators did not limit their purchases to farmland. Gambling on the future value of potential town sites in the West became so common that it seemed almost as much a sport as a serious business. Town promoters sought out promising locations on waterways (to give the future town access to faraway markets via steamboat), purchased blocks of unsettled land, surveyed the area, laid out a street grid, cleared a few acres, and touted the location as the next great commercial metropolis of the West. Commenting on the tendency of town promoters to boast of their community's future, one bemused writer noted that every "miserable waste of sand and fens which lay unconscious of its glory on the shore of the lake [Michigan], was suddenly elevated into a mighty city," and "not the puniest brook . . . was suffered to remain without a city at its mouth," despite the fact that most of the spots were "suitable only for the habitation of wild beasts." If enough unsuspecting or greedy Eastern investors believed the advertising and bought lots, or if (as sometimes happened) people actually settled there to start a town, the promoter could

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sit back and reap the profits from the rise in land values. When the little village of Chicago got word in the mid 1830s that it might become the terminus of a canal, lots selling for two hundred dollars were suddenly worth thousands; one Chicago lot that sold for thirty-three dollars in 1829 was offered for a hundred thousand dollars in 1836, the peak year of Western land speculation. Conflicts. The Panic of 1837 brought the speculative land frenzy to a temporary halt, but the issue of land sales continued to agitate the political scene for the remainder of the century. Because the self-sufficient, landowning yeoman farmer was the central cultural icon of nineteenth-century America, anything that affected the disposition of land affected the nation's idea of itself. Passionate debates arose over whether squatters (people who settled in advance of the federal survey) should be given a right of preemption (the first chance to buy the land on which they had lived for years) rather than allow some new purchaser to eject them. This seemed consistent with both the "Empire for Liberty" Jefferson had promised to American farmers when he signed the Louisiana Purchase and the ideal of the yeoman farmer. Questions of land-distribution policy often made their way to the floors of Congress and were endlessly discussed in Western taverns. But when the issue of slavery's expansion into the Western territories took center stage again in the late 1840s, the debate over what to do with the Western lands quickly became a debate over the fate of the Union itself. Sources: William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991);

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Paul Wallace Gates, The Farmers Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, 1960); D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, volume 2, Continental America, 1800-1867 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993).

THE LOWELL SYSTEM Manchester Model. Francis Cabot Lowell returned from a trip to England in 1812 determined to establish a British-style textile factory in the United States. While in Manchester, Lowell had used his position as a prominent Boston import-export merchant to gain access to the world's largest textile mills, which were normally closed to Americans out of a well-founded fear of industrial espionage. Lowell was impressed by what he saw and came away convinced that American entrepreneurs could create a profitable textile industry of their own. Within two years of his return Lowell had incorporated his Boston Manufacturing Company, raised over half a million dollars, and started construction of his first cotton mills on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. Lowell's mills did not represent the first American experiment in the factory production of cotton textiles (Lowell's own uncle owned a textile mill), but Lowell expected to reduce costs enough to compete with British imports through the innovation of mechanizing and concentrating all the processes of textile production. His mills were America's first factories to transform cotton from raw bales to bolts of cloth ready to make into pants, shirts, sheets, and towels, all under one roof. Success. Over their first seven years of operation Lowell's mills reduced the cost of cotton textile production enough to grab a large share of the market, while returning annual dividends of 19 percent to the initial investors. Lowell died an untimely death in 1817, but by 1836 his Boston Manufacturing Company (also called the Boston Associates) employed six thousand workers at the Lowell Mills, valued at over $6 million. Lowell's success (and tariff protection from Congress) prompted dozens of imitators. A national survey of manufacturing in 1832 revealed that 88 of the 106 largest American corporations were textile firms. Many of those companies set up their operations alongside the Lowell Mills on the powerful Merrimack River, to which the Lowell Mills had moved in order to take advantage of the stronger current. On the Merrimack the largest waterwheel in the country supplied power for a dozen multistory factories, and by 1840 the town of Lowell had become a major manufacturing center with a population of twenty thousand. Popular Destination. Nothing like the mill city at Lowell had ever existed in America. On the surface the notion of a large British-style factory town with its dependent laboring population seemed antithetical to the Jeffersonian vision of America as an agrarian republic of independent farmers. Nonetheless, as America's first true industrial center, Lowell quickly became a mecca for

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Two female employees at a New England textile mill, circa 1840

travelers and a symbol to Europeans and Americans alike of the nation's entrepreneurial spirit and mechanical ingenuity. European visitors made it a common stop, and one went so far as to write that "Niagara and Lowell are the two objects I will longest remember in my American journey." Lowell also succeeded in the popular American imagination, attracting favorable notice even from committed Jeffersonians like Andrew Jackson because it symbolized America's potential independence from European imports and from the ills of European industrialism. Rural Factories. This was not an accidental outcome as Francis Lowell himself had designed his mill city to avoid the "distress and poverty" he had seen in the "manufacturing towns" of Britain. He was aided by necessity since the lack of adequate steam engines and mechanics forced him to locate his mills alongside a large, swift-moving stream, preferably near a waterfall, where water power could drive the machinery. The need to lo-

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cate early factories in the countryside led many Americans to assume that the nation would "have none of the great manufacturing cities" that blighted Europe. Instead, American factories would rise up "on chosen sites, by the falls of waters and the running streams, the seats of health and cheerfulness, where good instruction will secure the morals of the young." The "Lowell Girls." Lowell not only chose a bucolic site for his mills but also selected what he thought was the ideal workforce for a rural factory in the yeoman republic, the unmarried daughters of New England farm families. Since rural household manufacturing was being rendered obsolete by machine-made goods, one of Lowell's business partners noted, these young women could supply "a fund of labor, well-educated and virtuous," for work in the mills. A further benefit to the mill owners was that these young women (aged sixteen to thirty) were willing to work for two or three years at one-half to one-third the wages paid to men for similar work before returning home to marry and start a family. At $2.40 to $3.20 a week, the pay was still more than double that of domestic servants and seamstresses, the two most common occupations for workingwomen until the teaching profession opened up with the rise of compulsory education in the 1850s. Moreover, the work was not much more difficult than farm labor or home spinning, and most of the workers enjoyed having more financial and personal independence than they had ever experienced in their paternalistic, male-centered farm households or in the claustrophobic confines of rural villages. The keepers of the Lowell boardinghouses where the women lived did impose strict discipline, with curfews, mandatory church attendance or Sunday self-improvement, and chaperones for male visitors, but the women were more than willing to trade these limits on their freedom for the money in their pockets and the camaraderie of their fellow workers, at least for a few years. As one wrote home, "I have but one life to live and I want to enjoy myself as well as I can." Work at Lowell became so popular that factory managers were "more puzzled to get rid of hands than to employ them." A Day's Labor. Work routines were strict at Lowell, with a twelve-hour day starting at seven in the morning, and only a half-hour lunch break at midday. Factory bells announced times for leaving and entering the plant, and the employees were fined for lateness as well as other breaches of the rules (as defined by the male overseer), including insubordination, profanity, or improper conduct. The work did not demand great physical strength, but it did require constant attention as the women generally tended carding, spinning, and weaving machines, checking for and then correcting broken threads and patterns. In winter work began before sunup and lasted into the darkness, when smoky whale-oil lamps illuminated the interior of the factories. Because cotton thread breaks more readily in dry air, overseers sealed windows shut and sprayed water in the air to keep the humidity high in the six-story factories. As a result, not only were light and

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ventilation blocked, but the "buzzing and hissing and whizzing of pulleys and rollers and spindles and flyers" became an unnerving cacophony in the enclosed machinery rooms. Reorganization and Resistance. Lowell's success encouraged many imitators, and by the mid 1830s the textile market was saturated. Profits declined for the Boston Associates, who responded by adding twelve thousand spindles to the Lowell Mills' original six thousand between 1836 and 1847 to achieve new economies of scale. At the same time managers made the mill women tend more looms and spindles operating at a faster speed. To reduce expensive turnover caused by the new workload, workers were required to sign yearlong labor contracts. These changes increased productivity dramatically, but wages did not keep pace. When Lowell managers actually reduced wages and increased boarding fees in 1836, two thousand women walked off their jobs in protest. The company fired strike leaders but rescinded the pay reductions. The depression of 1837 brought more unwelcome workplace changes, including longer hours. In response workers formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) and petitioned the Massachusetts state legislature to limit the workday to ten hours. Led by Sarah Bagley, the LFLRA accused the mill owners of betraying the original promise to guard the morals of young female employees and to treat them with the respect due them in a republican society. The workers were determined to "show these drivelling cotton lords, this mushroom aristocracy of New England, who so arrogantly aspire to lord it over God's heritage, that our rights cannot be trampled upon with impunity; that we will no longer submit to that arbitrary power which has for the last ten years been so abundantly exercised over us." Industrial City. To break the cohesion of the Lowell workers the Boston Associates began to hire poor immigrants who were willing to tolerate harsher conditions and lower pay than the New England farm women who formed the original workforce. By 1860, one-half of Lowell's mill workers were impoverished Irish immigrants. In the end Lowell became what the Jeffersonians most feared, a city of factories manned by a permanent, largely poor, and often oppressed industrial working class. Lowell was no Manchester, but by 1857, with its mills employing fourteen thousand textile operatives, it had indeed become the mechanized heart of an industrialized and urbanized state. In his 1854 book Walden, Henry David Thoreau of Massachusetts said of Lowell, "I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which man can get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but unquestionably that the corporations be enriched."

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A William Bennett; Stokes Collection, New York Public Library) Sources: Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).

MIDDLEMEN AND FOREIGN TRADE New York Merchants. Before a piece of English ironware, a bottle of French wine, or any other imported item could reach an American consumer, it had to pass through the hands of a foreign exporter, a domestic importer, a jobber or wholesaler, and a retail seller. By the 1830s more than half the value of all imports entered at New York, and it was New York's wholesale merchants who dominated this network of middlemen. Their huge auction houses and warehouses on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan supplied the vast majority of regional wholesalers and country merchants throughout the nation, with domestic as well as imported items. Storekeepers and regional jobbers from the West and South made annual pilgrimages to lower Manhattan, where they purchased (usually on credit) and arranged for the shipment of goods for their stores. Wholesale merchants specializing in coffee, ready-made clothing, or hardware, and jobbers with huge lots of cheap textiles from Lowell or

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Manchester plied the visiting merchants with their wares. Regional Competition. As the nation expanded westward, other cities tried to compete with New York as a wholesale outlet. In the 1830s and 1840s regional networks of production and marketing developed, centered around cities such as Cincinnati, New Orleans, Saint Louis, and, later, Chicago. Manufacturers in these cities began producing furniture, hardware, and farm implements for their own local markets, and wholesale networks soon followed to distribute these goods further afield. The rapid growth of canals and railroads greatly facilitated this expansion. But most of the money to pay for these consumer items ultimately came from the sale of l u m b e r and a g r i c u l t u r a l p r o d u c t s to the more-populous cities of the Eastern states or Europe, which almost always involved some transaction with New York. As one chagrined Indiana congressman noted in 1851, "the city of New York controls at the present time, with its immense monetary power, the commercial destinies of the Union." Cotton Factors. New York middlemen controlled exports as well as imports, and America's main export was cotton. Only seven years after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, American cotton growers were exporting fifty thousand bales (20.9 million pounds) annually. Between 1815 and 1840 the annual value of America's cotton exports rose from $17.5 million to $64 million; no other crop even came near to cotton in volume of exports or

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Early advertisement for blue jeans

dollar value. The volume and unusual marketing needs of King Cotton became the responsibilities of a new breed of specialized middleman, the cotton factor. Unlike storekeepers and traditional shipping merchants, cotton factors did not take title to the cotton itself but operated as commission merchants, charging fees for each service they provided to the cotton planter. Those services included arranging for the shipment of the planter's entire crop by steamboat and ocean vessel to its destination in Massachusetts or England, providing safe storage for the bales at each stop along the way, coordinating insurance and paying carters and drayers, negotiating the best price for the crop with the professional cotton buyers of Liverpool, and then purchasing in London or New York City a full range of supplies for the planter and his family with the proceeds. In addition factors often operated as creditors, providing advances against the crop as the bales made their way from the field to the factory. To resist the many opportunities for corruption and price gouging in all of these transactions, factors had to be trustworthy, and many formed close personal relationships with the planters they served. The Cotton Triangle. New York's commercial dominance over America's market economy was nowhere more apparent than in the role the city's middlemen played in the cotton trade. By the 1820s most Southern cotton went through the port of New York on its way to Liverpool, Le Havre, or Lowell. Unloading, storing, and then reloading cotton bales at East River wharves added both cost and miles to a voyage that could easily have gone directly from New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, or Savannah to its destination. Yet such was the power of

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the port of New York and its merchants that they were able to corner the most lucrative trading network in America, which became known as the Cotton Triangle. The southern point of the triangle started at the door of the cotton presses, where giant machines compressed each w a g o n l o a d of fluffy ginned cotton into four-hundred-pound bales wrapped in burlap and wire. After baling, the factor took over responsibility for the planter's crop, shipping it first to the nearest steamboat landing, then downriver to an ocean port on the Gulf or Atlantic coast. Beginning in October, New York-owned coastwise packets sailed down to these Southern ports to pick up their precious cargo. Most cotton shipments then made a detour to New York, completing one side of the triangle. Overseas. On the second side of the triangle dozens of regular packet liners picked up bales on the East River wharves and carried them to Liverpool (where buyers from the big Manchester textile mills negotiated for their purchase), or to the Lowell mills in Massachusetts via Rhode Island, or to French mills via Le Havre. After dropping off their cargoes, the ships returned carrying finished textiles, wines and liquors, steel, toys, or any of a hundred items bound for the wholesale houses lining the East and Hudson Rivers of the Port of New York. The cotton factors then bought luxury furniture from the shops of Duncan Phyfe, the newest silk dresses from Paris, marble and chandeliers for the big house, and cheap clothing, shoes, and blankets for the slaves to be sent south with the returning coastwise packets, thus completing the triangle.

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Sources: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of the New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Scribners, 1939); Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Harold D. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968).

MOBILITY AND CLASS Land of Opportunity. Americans often seemed driven by competition and the desire for profit, characterized by Washington Irving in 1836 as the pursuit of "the almighty dollar." They believed fervently in the "self-made man" (a phrase coined in the 1830s) who rose from poverty through initiative and hard work. Abraham Lincoln, a prominent example of this creed of economic mobility, summed up the prevailing philosophy in one sentence: "The man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him." Yet historians still debate how closely the rhetoric of economic mobility conformed to reality. The evidence supports various conclusions. Between 1820 and 1860, for example, approximately 15 percent of Philadelphia's working population improved either their occupational status (for example, from apprentice to master), income, or wealth, yet an equal number slid lower on the economic scale. Per-capita income doubled in that forty-year span, but the increase in large industrial and mercantile firms meant that a smaller percentage of the workforce attained the traditional goal of becoming an independent proprietor or farmer. Big businesses created new demand for white-collar workers such as managers and clerks and for engineers with the specialized skills needed for new industries, but these jobs did not always lead to economic independence. By 1850 an unprecedentedly large minority of the national workforce could expect to spend their lives working for someone else, and the prospects for achieving wealth were slim indeed. Of those Americans who qualified as rich, fully 90 percent started out in wealthy families, and only 2 percent began life in the ranks of the poor. Responsibility. Most Americans were unwilling to accept the possibility that the United States had developed a permanent wage-earning class. Like many of his contemporaries, Lincoln considered such wage dependency a symptom of individual failure rather than a fault of the system. "If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer," according to Lincoln, it was "because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune." Others dropped even the possibility of misfortune, claiming that "no oppression of the laborer" occurred "here which it is not in his power to remedy, or which does not come from his own inefficiency and lack of enterprise." Some, like BUSINESS

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THE "FREE BARBER OF NATCHEZ"

Not all African Americans worked as slaves on Southern cotton plantations in antebellum America. On the eve of the Civil War about 226,000 free blacks lived in the North and about 260,000 in the South. One of the most remarkable of these was William Johnson of Natchez, Mississippi, who recorded his activities in a diary from 1835 until his death in 1851. Freed by his owne and the Mississippi legislature in 1830, Johnson learned the barber's trade by apprenticing under his brother-in-law James Miller, Free blacks dominated the barbering trade in several Southern cities, and Natchez was no exception. In 1830 Johnson inherited from Miller the most prosperous barbershop in one of the richest,communities in the nation. Prominent planters frequented Johnson's shop, and soon he was pulling in about twenty dollars a day, enough to buy the building for three thousand dollars in 1833 and take three-month vacation to New Orleans and New York in the same year. By 1850 Johnson's main shop boasted six barber chairs (manned by free black assistants he had trained himself), **two sofas ... four mirrors,** and "thirty-one framed pictures" along with a full assortment of hair oils like "lavender water," "bay mm,** and **rectified bear's oil," the most common men's hair dressing. Johnson invested in various commercial properties, and by the time of his death in 1851, he had amassed an estate valued at approximately twenty-five thousand dollars, including fifteen slaves. Source: William Ransom Hogan and Edwmg Adams Davis, eels,, William Johnson's Natchez: The Ante~Belittm Diary of a Free Negro (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951).

Orestes Brownson, challenged these assumptions; Brownson claimed that the new wage system was creating a society in which "one half of the human race must forever be the virtual slaves of another," thus destroying American republicanism. "The only way to get rid of its evils," he continued, "is to change the system, not its managers." Go West. Those who stressed the opportunity offered by the American system proclaimed that if all else failed, workers should take the advice of New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley and go west to start life over again on the frontier. "Go straight into the country—go at once," Greeley thundered, to the public lands that served as "the great regulator of Labor and Capital, the safety valve of our industrial and social engine." Western settlement, it was thought, would draw off discontented and unemployed wage earners from the East, thereby curbing the impetus for strikes, reducing class conflict, and ulti-

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mately improving living conditions and wages for the remaining workforce. In the long term this optimistic assessment proved wrong as labor conflict in the East increased rather than diminished despite rapid Western settlement in the post-Civil War era, in part because the poorest, most discontented workers rarely had the resources to travel west. In the short term, however, the frontier did indeed seem to be a place where Americans could achieve the traditional ideal of Jeffersonian selfsufficiency and economic independence. Evidence suggests that in the Old Northwest most migrants were achieving the goal of independence, working for themselves on their own farms. Northern Cities. In 1800 or even 1820 urban areas looked much like the rest of the North, with a narrow band of rich and poor sandwiching a broad spectrum of what was termed "the middling sort," a large group of artisans and small merchants who, though not wealthy, could claim some property and a large degree of autonomy. This changed over time: where the wealthiest 10 percent in Boston owned about 50 percent of the city's real estate and personal property in 1771, by 1848 more than 60 percent of the city's assets were owned by the upper 4 percent while the lower 81 percent of the population owned only 4 percent of the wealth. Disparities in wealth began to manifest themselves in neighborhood organization as well; as early as 1828 in New York more than half of the city's wealthiest 500 families lived on only 8 of the city's 250 streets, and in Boston they lived on only 8 streets out of 325. Affluent neighborhoods contrasted sharply with nearby slums, causing wealthy New Yorker Philip Hone to worry about the potential for class conflict in a society where "the two extremes of costly luxury in living, expensive establishments, and improvident waste are presented in daily and hourly contrast with squalid misery and hopeless destitution." Conflict. Class conflict flared regularly. In 1835 a fire destroyed several fine houses in Hone's neighborhood, and within a short time a mob descended on the scene and began consuming as much champagne and wine as they could pillage from the cellars of the ruined homes. Genteel New Yorkers took to carrying revolvers to protect themselves. But rather than being directed at the rich, most urban violence occurred within poor communities, and even in the midst of the dire economic depression that followed the Panic of 1837, when urban unemployment reached 50 percent at times, no general working class ever ignited in America as it did in Paris and other European cities in the same period. No Revolution. Various factors militated against working-class revolution in the United States. Foremost among them was the fact that almost all adult white males could vote and theoretically enjoyed equal protection under the law. Every election year politicians courted the vote of labor with promises of workplace reforms like shorter workdays, the right to strike and form unions, and better working conditions. Speeches extol-

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ling the virtues of America's mechanics as the "bone and sinew" of the republic regularly rang out on public holidays. Legislators promised to keep the playing field level and to guarantee equality of opportunity, if not equality of condition, to all white citizens. Many politicians supported the free distribution of Western land to any who wanted to go. Whatever the underlying economic conditions, the rhetorical descriptions of America as a land of opportunity for all were sincere enough to convince most workers that their poverty was only temporary and that through hard work and determination they might still earn the American dream of economic independence. Sources: Gabor Boritt, Abraham Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis, Term.: Memphis State University Press, 1978); Edward Pessen, "Society and Politics in the Jacksonian Era," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 82 (1984): 1-27; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

RETAIL Grand Emporium. "The main entrance opens into a rotunda of oblong shape, extending the whole width of the building, and lighted by a dome seventy feet in circumference. The ceilings and sidewalls are painted in fresco, each panel representing some emblem of commerce. Immediately opposite the main entrance . . . , a flight of stairs which lead to a gallery running around the rotunda. This gallery is for the ladies to promenade upon." Thus did one wide-eyed visitor describe the opening of the nation's first department store in September 1846, A. T. Stewart's at Broadway and Chambers Streets in Manhattan. With its marble floors, mahogany furniture, graceful chandeliers, and clerks dressed as gentlemen, A. T. Stewart's was (in the words of the aristocratic Philip Hone), "one of the 'wonders' of the Western World." Revolution in Retailing. Alexander Stewart's "marble palace," with its two acres of retail floor space, was indeed an aesthetic feast for the eyes, but it also represented a revolution in the retailing of consumer goods. Stewart created a store that appealed to America's growing middle class, the managers, engineers, merchants, and clerks who planned and supervised the large-scale factories, railroads, and commercial houses of the nation's expanding market economy. Stewart believed that providing good service and a wide array of quality dry goods in surroundings comfortable to his largely female clientele would dramatically increase his sales and profits over those of the general merchandise stores that had formerly characterized Eastern cities and continued to dominate in the interior of the country. To ensure good service Stewart employed more than three hundred salesmen and clerks at his Broadway store. To maintain control over pricing Stewart bought his stock directly from producers (and eventually manufactured some of his own), avoiding the expense of middlemen, while giving

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him the bargaining power to demand better quality and lower prices than his competitors. Spatial Segregation. Separating the production of consumer items from the areas where they were purchased became common in American retailing in the Jacksonian era. In contrast to earlier practice, when the master craftsman's workshop and retail store were one and the same, shoppers now rarely saw the workmen who made the hats, dresses, or gloves they had come to purchase. The laborers might be only a few steps away from the retail counters, behind a wall or up a flight of stairs, but they were still out of sight. Instead purchasers encountered tasteful decorations, helpful and knowledgeable salespeople, and a broad array of choices within each retail niche. Downtown. The separation of manufacturing and retailing paralleled the segregation of the American city itself. As the market economy grew, and businessmen began to expand and specialize their operations, they also tended to congregate in specific areas of town. In most cities the commercial sections of town came to be called "downtown." By 1850 visitors to almost any city in America could expect to find a downtown area with hotels, restaurants, train stations, banks, and commercial businesses all catering to a mobile, professional middle class. Other city neighborhoods also acquired specialized functions. By the 1830s New York, for instance, had its financial district around Wall Street, its wholesale businesses on Pearl Street, its shipping merchants on South Street, and its middle-class retail shops on Broadway. Streets of opulent mansions, respectable middle-class residential districts, and the crowded slums of the poor were each located in their own parts of town as well. Though separate, these neighborhoods were not distant from one another. Beggars lined fashionable streets like New York's Broadway, and people of all classes came to look into Stewart's shop windows at the luxuries that were beyond their reach. Sources: Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760—1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

THE RISE OF THE FACTORY Definition. The wordfacfory eludes precise definition but describes a type of production facility sharing certain characteristics. In factories employer-owners assembled power machinery, raw materials, and large groups of wage workers under one roof and then coordinated this assembly to apply human and mechanical energy to raw materials in order to produce goods at low cost for market sale. Several of the largest flour mills in America and the federal armories at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and Springfield, Massachusetts, combined many of these characteristics even before the War of 1812. Yet the flour

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BLUE MONDAY

Before industrialization required the punctuality, sobriety, and continuous labor needed to tend to the rhythms of machines, craft workers often mixed work with both drink and leisure. As described by retired artisan David Johnson, they regarded time flexibly: "Alphoimo . * . seemed to regard his work as an incidental circumstance. When he left the shop he might be ejected back the next morning: but there were no special grounds for the expectation. He might drop in the next morning or the next week. He left one Saturday night and did not make his appearance again until the following Thursday morning. On entering the shop he proceeded to take off his jacket as though there had been no hiatus in his labor. His master watched him with an amused countenance to see whether he would recognize the lapse of time. At length he said, Where have you been, Alphonzo?* Alphonzo turned his head in an instant, as if struck with the preposterousness of the inquiry, and exclaimed, Me? I? O, I've been down to Nahant/ The case was closed/ Source: Eileen Boris and Nelson Lkhtenstein, eels,, M&j&r $r$bfam$ m the History of American Workers (Lexington, Mass.: D« C. Heath, 1991).

mills employed few wage workers, and the armories did not produce firearms for a mass retail market. In New England Samuel Slater had since the 1790s produced an immense amount of cotton thread and fabric by combining outwork and factory employment, but unlike the textile mills at Lowell, Massachusetts (which many historians consider the first true factories in America), Slater's operations were not mechanized throughout the production process. Subdivision. In 1815 most of the goods used by a American family were either made in the home or obtained from a local craftsman. One of the first steps in the shift from craft labor or home manufacture to the factory system was the idea of subdivision of labor. One way to increase the efficiency of, for example, shoemaking, was to replace the skilled journeymen who performed all the steps involved in turning raw leather into finished footwear with a larger number of unskilled, lower-paid apprentices, each of whom repeatedly performed only a single step of the process. By increasing the size of their shops and subdividing tasks master craftsmen were able to produce more, but they did so at the cost of severing themselves from the rituals and traditions of the artisan world. They became businessmen and entrepreneurs, concerned with expanding production while reducing unit costs, increasing sales, and making the whole process as predictable and profitable as possible.

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Eli Whitney's gun factory near New Haven, Connecticut, 1821 (Yale University Art Gallery, Garvan Collection) Sweatshops. Textile mills had long used task subdivision in the form of outwork or cottage labor, in which unfinished materials were distributed to workers (usually women) in their homes, to be completed and returned to the manufacturer. The availability of a large labor pool, consisting primarily of immigrants, in New York City led to the development of the ready-made garment industry. Rather than make shirts individually, master tailors subcontracted the manufacture of sleeves, collars, and other components to piecework contractors, who in turn ran sewing shops in the attics of Manhattan buildings where rents were cheap. These subcontractors would recruit crews of pieceworkers to do the actual work either as outwork in their own homes and boardinghouses or assembled together in the attic sweatshops of the city's garment district. By the mid 1830s New York's sweatshops made it the nation's largest producer of cheap, ready-made clothing, supplying much of the cotton clothes for slaves in the South as well as pants and work shirts for farmers in the West. Mechanization. Before the introduction of the sewing machine in 1846 sweatshops could not be considered factories, in that the labor was performed by hand rather than by power machinery. In other industries, however, mechanics and inventors were designing machines that could each perform one of the simple tasks needed to make a finished product. Thus, task subdivision and mechanization often went hand in hand. Power band saws, sewing machines, automatic gun-stock lathes, and ax-grinders all transferred skilled hand operations to machinery that could be operated by wage workers with a minimum of training. Reducing the production of complex products to mechanized and subdivided tasks using labor-saving devices to produce interchangeable parts came to be called the "American system of manufac-

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tures," or "armory practice," a term revealing the origins of the system in the national armories of Springfield, Massachusetts, and Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Charged with producing guns with interchangeable parts (so that troops in the field could simply substitute for a broken part instead of losing the use of the gun entirely), Eli Whitney and John Hall used their armory contracts to develop specialized machine tools (each with precise jigs, fixtures, and gauges to ensure uniformity) which carved, cut, and bored metal and wood to precise specifications. From the 1810s on, skilled machinists steeped in the armory tradition spread interchangeability and armory practice into several other key American industries, including the making of clocks, guns, and axes. Lowell Model. Francis Cabot Lowell and his Boston Manufacturing Company began textile production in 1813 using the British factory model, where the spinning, weaving, bleaching, and dyeing of cotton were performed in one location, using as much power machinery as possible. By 1845 just one of Lowell's mills could produce in a week more cotton cloth than was produced in the entire country in 1810. While numerous competitors followed Lowell's example in building factories along New England's rivers, the Lowell Mills were for several decades the largest industrial enterprise in America in terms of capitalization, value of production, and number of employees. Because of its ready supply of capital, water power, large population, skilled labor force, good transportation networks, proximity to coal and iron ore, and commercial infrastructure of merchants and bankers the Northeast established itself firmly as the nation's center of factory growth. When steam power and the railroad made urban factories possible, Northeastern manufacturers further cemented the region's domination of American manufacturing by constructing new plants

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in New York City, Pittsburgh, Hartford, Springfield, and dozens of cities in between. Nonetheless, by 1850 Western cities such as Cincinnati and Chicago could boast their own large mechanized factories producing iron goods, processing grain and meat, and turning out hundreds of reapers and plows for Midwestern prairie farmers. Sources: Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); Bruce Laurie, Artisans Into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill ScWang, 1989); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

WOMEN AT WORK Limited Options. As various goods, especially textiles, became cheaper to buy than to produce at home, many farm women looked for alternative ways to contribute to their families' economic well-being. One possibility had been doing outwork, assembling pieces that had been prepared in a shop and sent out to workers' homes to be completed or sewn together, for a small amount of money per piece. Mechanization of the textile industry made outwork obsolete but created jobs for young, unmarried, middle-class women who hoped to gain some independence and save some money before marriage. In the 1830s and 1840s these women, America's first force of factory workers, were gradually replaced by immigrant men and women who were willing to accept lower wages and harsher conditions, and factory work became less and less respectable for middle-class women. For immigrants, free black women, and others with little education or resources, factory work remained the most lucrative option despite the long hours and

meager pay. If unable to find factory jobs, such women were generally limited to working as seamstresses, washerwomen, domestic servants, or (at last resort) prostitutes, an option of which some women availed themselves in the fast-growing, impersonal cities. Separate Spheres. For the most part, educated, middle-class women were not expected to work outside the home. For those who wanted or needed to earn a living, only a few avenues remained open. Teaching became the most common occupation, for which women were paid approximately half of what male teachers made. As the practice of hiring female teachers became more common, men left the profession. Many women who would later become prominent members of the woman's rights movement, such as Susan B. Anthony, began their careers as teachers. The explosion in publishing also offered opportunities for women writers, who could work at home, thereby maintaining a degree of propriety. Although few women writers could earn enough to live on, some became wealthy and famous, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fanny Fern (the pen name of Sara Payson Willis), Sarah Josepha Hale, Catharine Sedgwick, and Lydia Maria Child. Pioneering women such as Elizabeth Blackwell and Harriot K. Hunt in medicine and Antoinette Brown and Phoebe Palmer in religion opened doors into traditionally male fields, but they were rare exceptions. "She's the Man." Despite contemporary cultural stereotypes that labeled women as unfit for the rough-and-tumble world of business, historians have uncovered hundreds of women who ran their own boardinghouses, private academies, dress and millinery shops, hairdressing salons, washing services, and even factories. "Women typically entered business," an R. G. Dun credit reporter noted, "because their spouses could not or would not earn a living." Many businesswomen were widows who, unlike married women, were allowed to own property in their own names. Credit reporters, more

WHEN THE SPINNING WHEELS FELL SILENT

"Wife and daughters," Elizabeth Hill's father announced one day in the 1850s, "store away your loom, wheels, warping bars, spool rack, winding blades, all your utensils for weaving cloth up in the loft/ Farmer Hill had decided that the family's womenfolk no longer had to spend winters making cloth because "the boys and I can make enough by increasing our herds" to purchase factory-made at the store. The younger women in Elizabeth's neighborhood were overjoyed as their families too abandoned looms and spinning wheels, "They clapped their hands with delight/' Elizabeth remembered, though "the old ladies could not give up ... as yet, so they continued

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with spinning." These older women had great pride in their skills as spinners and weavers, having inherited the secrets of the process from their mothers along with treasured wheels and looms. One wistfully remembered working by the fireplace on a cold winter day while "merrily the shuttle sang to an accompaniment of a camp meeting melody." Despite such nostalgia, however, the new association of spinning with those who were old-fashioned and behind the times confirmed a new name for older unmarried women in American slang: "spinster." Source: John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on tke Illinois Prairie (New Haven, Conn,: Yale University Press, 19B6),

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interested in accurately assessing a business's prospects than in perpetuating paternalistic stereotypes, acknowledged the ability of many businesswomen. "A careful and sharp woman . . . first rate, entirely safe for anything she will buy," one reported. Another found Mrs. J. S. Beattie, whose husband worked as a clerk in her store, as a "woman with good business acumen" while "she is the man of the concern" described a woman who ran a business for her inept husband. An editor for the Merchants Magazine went so far as to claim that "we can see no good reason why women should not be as free to labor in any field of industry as her self-styled lord and master.'"

Still, women were far from putting into action the platform of the 1856 Women's Rights Association, which called on women to "burst through the barriers of the old established customs of Society, force [their] way into occupations and offices now wholly monopolized by man, and prepare for the hardships and trials necessarily consequent on business life." Sources: Anita Ashendel, '"She's the Man of the Concern': Entrepreneurial Women in the Ohio Valley, 1790-1860," dissertation, Purdue University, 1997; Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York: Norton, 1984).

HEADLINE MAKERS

JOHN JACOB ASTOR 1763-1848

FINANCIER, REAL ESTATE MAGNATE Arrival. On the occasion of John Jacob Astor's death in 1848 the New York Herald described him as a "self-invented moneymaking machine." By that time Astor had become the prime exemplar of America as a land of boundless opportunity, where anyone could go from rags to riches, a place where poor boys could make good. Astor rose high indeed from where he started, arriving in New York from his native Germany in 1783 almost penniless. The young immigrant made up in intelligence and ambition what he lacked in funds. Astor started as a clerk for a New York-based fur-trading company but soon ventured into trading on his own. Whatever profits he managed to squeeze out of the fur business he quickly channeled into Manhattan real estate. Fur Business. In 1808 Astor organized the American Fur Company to take advantage of the high demand for American furs throughout the world. His plan was to establish a fur-trading outpost on the Pacific Coast, but most of the expedition he sent out to start the trading post was massacred by natives after founding Astoria on the south side of the Columbia River in 1811. An overland expedition fared somewhat better, finding the

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northern Rockies' South Pass (crossover point for the Oregon Trail in the 1840s) and establishing several furtrading stations. Operations were interrupted by the War of 1812 (Astor played a major role in financing the American war effort), but he returned afterward and built what amounted to a monopoly on the Western fur trade. Real Estate Tycoon. Astor continued to invest his profits from furs and government bonds in Manhattan real estate. In the early nineteenth century, with the city's residents packed into the lower part of the island, most of Manhattan was still rural. In 1803 Astor paid twentyfive thousand dollars for seventy acres of Manhattan countryside, including what would become Times Square; by the 1880s those seventy acres were worth $20 million. Astor spent the depression years of 1837 to 1843 buying up most of what became midtown Manhattan at bargain prices. Nor did he neglect the lower part of the island, buying hundreds of lots below Fourteenth Street and collecting two hundred thousand dollars in annual rents by the time of his death. Asked not long before his demise whether he would have invested differently if given the chance, Astor replied, "could I begin life again knowing what I now know, and had money to invest, I would buy every foot of land on the island of Manhattan." Millionaire. Herman Melville said of John Jacob Astor that even his name "rings like unto bullion." When Astor died in 1848, he bequeathed to his family (mainly his son) a fortune estimated at $40 million, making him not just a millionaire but by far the richest

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man in America. The term millionaire was itself a product of the 1840s, coined to describe the first generation of the super rich, grown fat on the expanding market economy. New York City, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, along with a few cotton cities such as Natchez, Mississippi, claimed the largest share of this new and expanding class of the fabulously wealthy. In 1845 ten millionaires resided in New York City, a number that increased to 115 by 1860. Though most of the new millionaires were born into prosperous families, Americans focused on those who rose from humble circumstances, such as Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt, as the true models of wealth in America. They were held up as examples to the world of what could be accomplished in the dynamic young republic with grit, determination, hard work, and (seldom mentioned) ruthlessness, all of which Astor had in abundance. Sources: Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931); Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

SARAH BAGLEY 18O6-?

LABOR LEADER Lowell Girl. Like thousands of Francis Cabot Lowell's "mill girls," Sarah Bagley grew up in rural New England. Born into a New Hampshire farm family, Sarah left home at twenty-one to become a mill operative in the Hamilton Manufacturing Company mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1837 Lowell still retained something of the original optimistic spirit with which Francis Cabot Lowell had set out to create an ideal factory town for the young republic. Changes. Bagley seemed to thrive in the surroundings. She organized an after-work school and wrote articles for the company newspaper, Lowell Offering, titled "Pleasures of Factory Life." But conditions were beginning to change. A vast expansion in the number and size of Lowell's textile mills (as well as similar mills throughout the region) had begun to saturate the market for cheap cotton goods, driving down prices. The managers of the Lowell mills looked for ways to reduce their production costs and maintain profits. They required mill workers to tend many more spindles or looms than they were originally assigned and steadily increased the speed of the machines, making an already difficult job even more trying. Moreover, while these changes yielded sharp productivity gains and stable profits for the mill owners, the mill workers themselves suffered a decrease in pay. Resistance. In response to these changes Bagley wrote scathing articles in the Lowell Offering condemning the mill owners for sacrificing the health of

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female operatives in mills filled with cotton dust, smoky lamps, and raucous machinery for the sake of profits. Soon the paper refused to accept any more articles from Bagley, who turned instead to collecting signatures for a petition asking the Massachusetts state legislature to investigate conditions at the mills and pass a bill reducing the hours of daily labor to ten. Faced with two thousand signers, the legislature invited eight textile workers to testify but refused to pass a ten-hour bill, citing the danger such legislation might pose to the competitiveness of Massachusetts industry. A second petition drive yielded four thousand signatures and another committee hearing, with the same result. LFLRA. Angered by this response, Bagley and a dozen fellow workers organized the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) in January 1845. The LFLRA lobbied for a ten-hour day and improvements in working conditions, asking fellow workingwomen to "throw off the shackles" of oppression and work "for reform in the present system of labor." "For the last half century," Bagley argued, "it has been deemed a violation of woman's sphere to appear before the public as a speaker, but when our rights are trampled upon and we appeal in vain to legislators, what shall we do but appeal to the people." The LFLRA joined forces with regional labor-reform groups such as the New England Workingmen's Association (of which Bagley became a vice president), and Bagley took to touring the mill districts of New England to rouse reform sentiment and organize local Female Labor Reform Associations (FLRAs). Tactics. Bagley's LFLRA and its sister organizations did not advocate strikes or walkouts, and their tactics to increase membership and strength included fund-raising picnics and health benefits for duespaying members. Still, the mill owners considered them a threat. Some mill towns (under pressure from the owners) refused to open city halls for FLRA meetings, and organizers such as Bagley were constantly in danger of being fired or put on the infamous blacklist (labeled as a radical and denied employment at any of the mills). These threats, and genuine disagreement with the LFLRA's views, kept many workers from joining the movement (which continued to grow nonetheless), but they only further radicalized Bagley herself. In the organization's newspaper, The Voice of Industry, Bagley started a column that she promised would be "devoted to woman's thought," and which "will also defend woman's rights, and while it contends for physical improvement, it will not forget that she is a social, moral and religious being. It will not be neutral because it is female, but it will claim to be heard on all subjects that effect her intelligence, social or religious condition." What had been an organization dedicated to improving working conditions and shortening the workday became a movement with a much more

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wide-ranging reform agenda, one that demanded a new voice and a new recognition for workingwomen. Last Chapter. When mill owners in the late 1840s and 1850s began hiring large numbers of poor Irish immigrant men, women, and children (who could ill afford to be as confrontational as the LFLRA), the reform movement faltered. Bagley continued to serve in the labor-reform cause and became interested as well in the socialist utopianism of Charles Fourier. But little is known of her later life. In 1847 she surrendered the presidency of the LFLRA to Mary Emerson and became superintendent of the Lowell Telegraph Office. The next year found her back at the mills, but the end of her life remains hidden in obscurity. Sources: Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement: From the First Trade Unions to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1982).

SAMUEL COLT 1814-1862

INVENTOR, INDUSTRIALIST Restless Youth. Like so many of America's nineteenth-century inventors, Samuel Colt hailed from New England. He was born to a well-off family in Hartford, Connecticut, and at ten entered his father's factory. He also went to school until his fourteenth year (a fairly rare occurrence in the 1820s) and would have gone longer if he had not run away from his Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school. The young runaway signed on as a sailor on a ship bound for Calcutta, India, and spent some time wandering the world's oceans before returning to work again for his father. Dyeing and bleaching textiles did not, however, appeal to Samuel's restless soul. Using the meager knowledge of chemistry he learned from the dyeing work, the eighteen-year-old Colt began touring the country as the learned "Dr. Coult," lecturer on chemistry. His lectures consisted mainly of getting his listeners giddy on nitrous oxide gas at a time when laughing-gas parties were a current fad. After three years of this activity Colt decided to use his lecturing profits to invest in an invention that he thought had a future. The Revolver. On his Calcutta trip Colt had spent his spare time carving a wooden toy gun in which the usual single-shot cartridge chamber was replaced by a six-chamber revolving cylinder. He was not the first to think of the revolver or repeater firearm, but his design outlived most others, and he secured patents for his

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version in England (1835) and the United States (1836). In the expansive economic climate of the mid 1830s the twenty-one-year-old was able to secure a three-hundred-thousand-dollar credit line, enough money to organize the Patent Arms Company and begin revolver production at a Paterson, New Jersey, factory. At first the young entrepreneur found it difficult to convince the nation's largest arms buyer, the U.S. Army, to purchase his guns, in part because of the revolver's tendency to explode several cartridges at once. In 1837, however, Colt's revolving rifles proved useful in the Seminole War, and the Texas Rangers likewise found Colt's weapons excellent for Indian fighting. Texas became Colt's largest market, but neither Texas sales nor a small federal government order was enough to keep Colt's factory in business. He closed its doors in 1842 and went on to other things. Mexican War. When the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846, Texas Rangers armed with Colts fought alongside the U.S. Army in the first invasion of Mexican territory. After Gen. Zachary Taylor noted the superiority of Colt's revolvers, the Quarterm a s t e r C o r p s gave Colt a t w e n t y - e i g h t thousand-dollar contract to supply a thousand of the weapons. Colt had to build a new prototype for the factory to copy because he had sold his last revolver five years earlier. Since he no longer had a factory of his own, he rented an empty armory near New Haven, Connecticut. Colt lost three thousand dollars on the first order, but he was back in business to stay. The Mexican War made Colt's weapons standard in the army, and Colt had to increase production rapidly to meet public and private demand. The revolver's reputation in Indian warfare led to increased orders as more and more Americans moved west. Orders increased even more after Colt's revolver was displayed at the London Crystal Palace industrial exhibition in 1851. A Big Business. In 1852 Colt opened a giant factory in his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, replete with housing, a library, and a public hall for his workers. The three-wing, three-story, thousandfoot-long Colt Armory (which when enlarged in 1862 became the world's largest private armory) combined arms manufacturing with advanced mass-production techniques as well as a factory that made precision machine tools. Blending the recently invented turret lathe with both old and new cutting machines, Colt had already achieved the tolerances necessary for interchangeable weapons parts by 1851. But it was the production of these specialized machines at the Hartford factory that added a new dimension to Colt's profits. He sold both the weapons and the machines needed to make them. Colt supplied his machines to British armories at Enfield and the Russian armory at Tula. Colt also attracted the best mechanics of his age to design tools for his plants, such as Elisha K. Root. Root, considered "one of the ablest mechanics New

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England has ever produced," took over the armory after Colt's untimely death in 1862. Root, (and Colt before him) mentored some of the most famous American inventor-mechanics of the nineteenth century, including F. A. Pratt and Amos Whitney of Pratt-and-Whitney engine fame. Sources: Joseph Wickham Roe, English and American Tool Builders: The Men Who Created Machine Tools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916); Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1931).

CHAUNCEY JEROME 1793-1868

CLOCK MANUFACTURER Early Life. Chauncey Jerome grew up working on the family farm, attending school only three months a year in the winter. At age eleven he was working in his father's blacksmith shop. After his father died, at fourteen Chauncey went to live and apprentice with a local farmer. In the off-season Chauncey worked for Eli Terry, the nation's pre-eminent manufacturer of inexpensive wooden clocks. Terry pioneered clock-making by designing machine tools that any unskilled woodworker could use in the mass production of wooden clock parts. With his little crew of twelve packed into a four-hundred-square-foot shop powered by a waterwheel, Terry was able to produce a thousand clocks annually by 1806 at a price between twenty and thirty dollars apiece. By 1840 he had reduced the price of clock "movements" (the active part of the clock mechanism) from fifty dollars to five dollars, and Terry clocks became common on the mantles of homes across the country. Only one problem remained—it was impossible to export the clocks because the wood, even when seasoned, tended to warp in transit. Chauncey Jerome would solve this with his design for a cheap brass clock.

cents to produce. No longer would only the wealthy be able to afford brass timepieces; this was a clock for the masses. Combining all his production operations under one roof, and using precision machine tools to produce interchangeable parts, Jerome was able to increase annual production to two hundred thousand units and reduce the retail price of his brass clocks to two dollars, or even one dollar for the less fancy model. Jerome's brass clocks were not only cheaper than wooden clocks, they also were more accurate and could be shipped anywhere in the world without warping. British Reaction. For years Britain had been looking at its former colonial possession with a mixture of disdain tinged with envy. By the 1840s and 1850s English manufacturers were beginning to feel the pinch of American competition in the world marketplace. Britain was especially afraid that Americans might try to dump cheap products on its shores to capture market share from England itself. To avoid this possibility, English customs inspectors had orders to buy up incoming cargoes that seemed to be wildly undervalued. When Jerome's first shipment of brass clocks arrived on British shores in 1842, the customs inspectors could not believe that anyone could sell clocks so cheaply and paid Jerome cash for the whole lot. Jerome then sent a larger shipment, which the authorities promptly purchased as well. Not until the third shipment arrived did the British finally allow Jerome's clocks into the country. Fall. Jerome's brass clocks made him a rich man. In antebellum America, however, a fickle economy and bad luck could plunge even the rich back into the depths of poverty. Jerome did not fall overnight, but his untrustworthy partners managed to ruin the business by the late 1850s, leaving Jerome almost penniless. The man who left a poor farm life and worked his way to the top with ingenuity and determination found himself heading west like many other Americans looking for a new start. Jerome ended his days serving as the manager of a Chicago clock factory. Source: Joseph Wickham Roe, English and American Tool Builders: The Me Who Created Machine Tools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916).

CYRUS HALL McCoRMiCK

The "One-Day Clock." When Jerome turned twenty-one and ended his apprenticeship, he managed to open his own clock shop, but he had no marketing system except his feet. He peddled his clocks from door to door, and even accompanied his first large order (twelve clocks at $12 apiece) all the way to the South. Meanwhile, he continued to work at perfecting his own clock designs and in 1824 finally came up with a breakthrough clock, a bronze looking-glass model that soon made his the busiest clock factory in the country. The Panic of 1837 almost sank this business, but it also drove Jerome to design a new clock to reinvigorate demand. In 1840 he came up with a design for a one-day brass clock (so called for the length of time it would run on one full winding) that cost less than fifty

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INVENTOR, INDUSTRIALIST Virginia Childhood. Cyrus Hall McCormick was born into a strict Presbyterian farming family in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia on 15 February 1809. Cyrus's grandfather moved to Rockbridge County from Pennsylvania during the American Revolution (in which he fought) and there settled the homestead

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that stayed in the McCormick family until the twentieth century. Cyrus's father, Robert, considered himself something of an inventor and had designed among other things a clover huller, a bellows for blacksmiths, and even a reaping machine. Cyrus, who grew up working the family farm and attending a rural school when time permitted, must have caught the mechanical bug from his father. By the time he was twenty-two, he had a U.S. patent to his credit for a hillside plow. But Cyrus used his own ideas when it came to designing and building his first reaper in 1831. Lucrative Market. When McCormick (with the help of two slaves owned by his father) wheeled his ungainly new contraption out onto John Steele's oat field for a field trial, it was not the first time someone had used a machine to reap grain. In the 1820s Patrick Bell of Scotland built a machine that harvested as much as ten acres a day, several times what a man could do by hand. With their small farms and ample cheap labor, however, British farmers had little interest in mechanical harvesting devices such as Bell's reaper. In America, on the other hand, the situation was reversed. The vast expanse of arable land, and comparatively scarce supply of workers, called out for the adoption of labor-saving devices. Wheat in particular had to be harvested at just the right time, before its grain heads ripened too much and spilled their precious cargo on the ground, and since everyone's wheat in a particular region reached maturity at roughly the same time, farmers who could not find enough labor during the crucial period might lose their entire crop. An inexpensive machine that could safely and quickly cut grain in the field had the potential to tap into a lucrative market. Early Competitors. After Cyrus's first reaper stumbled through six acres of Steele's oats, and then survived another larger public trial in 1832 (after several mechanical improvements), McCormick began to think his machine had the potential to make money. He continued to improve on his original design throughout the 1830s, but other family ventures absorbed his time, and he did little in the way of marketing or manufacturing his machine until Obediah Hussey of Ohio began building and selling a reaper of his own in the middle of the decade. Each man had arrived at his design independently (Hussey patented his reaper in 1833, one year before McCormick received his patent), yet Hussey's reaper operated under principles similar to McCormick's, which became a source of friction and rivalry between the two men. An 1843 head-to-head field trial of the two machines proved inconclusive, but the competition (as well as accumulated debt from another family business) prompted Cyrus to begin producing and selling his machines in earnest. Using the family blacksmith shop and the help of his father and brothers, McCormick built and sold twenty-nine reapers in 1843 and fifty in 1844. McCormick realized, however, that he could sell only so many of the expensive ($100 to $150) reapers to the farmers of

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the Shenandoah hills, with their small, rocky fields and worn-out soils. Moves West. In 1844 McCormick sold several reapers to farmers in the rich lands of the Ohio Valley and late that year went west himself to see that his machines were properly assembled. Visiting the vast, recently settled prairie farmlands of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, McCormick observed a situation tailor-made for his reaper, and in 1847 he and his family moved to the up-and-coming city of Chicago. Within a year the railroad and telegraph reached the city, and Chicago quickly became the dominant agricultural processing and shipping center for the entire West. McCormick stood at the epicenter of that transition, armed with an invention ideally suited to the harvesting of the prairie. Innovations. McCormick sold 450 reapers out of his Chicago factory in 1848, and more than 1,000 by 1850, but his success was by no means assured. His patents expired in 1848, opening the field to dozens of competitors, some with designs superior to McCormick's own. Furthermore, farmers were hesitant to spend more than $100 on a piece of machinery they knew nothing about. McCormick adopted some of his rivals' improvements, such as seats for the rider and raker, a better cutter bar, and eventually automatic binders, and kept his prices down through cost reductions in his factory. He was an aggressive and very litigious competitor. But McCormick's real innovation came with his marketing schemes. McCormick agents demonstrated his reaper at agricultural fairs throughout the Midwest, pitting the machines against those of other companies in contests that drew large crowds. He wrote his own advertisements extolling the virtues of his "Virginia Reaper" (often with testimonials from farmers) while at the same time illustrating how easy and profitable it was to use his device. He organized a system of sales agents who sold reapers on commission but were also responsible for repairing the machines and educating farmers on their operation. Finally, he offered his reapers for sale on a credit installment plan, allowing a farmer to make a down payment in the spring, use the machine to bring in the harvest, and then pay the rest of the cost by December. Aided by the rapid expansion of the rail network and a sharp increase in the price of wheat, McCormick sold over four thousand reapers a year by the mid 1850s, and had sold a total of eighty thousand by 1860. In 1851 the reaper won the coveted Council Medal at the London Crystal Palace Exhibition; McCormick used this opportune moment to start an overseas sales network. Last Years. By his own admission, McCormick lived for his reaper business. "I have one purpose in life," he said, "the success and widespread use of my machines. All other matters are to me too insignificant to be considered." McCormick neither drank nor smoked and did not marry until well into middle age though he and his wife still managed to have seven children, one of whom, Cyrus Jr., took over the company. He contributed heavily

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to the Democratic Party, served on the party's national committee, and ran for office (unsuccessfully) several times, once for vice president. One of the first of America's industrial tycoons, McCormick invested in railroads, mines, and other business endeavors, becoming a director on the board of the giant Union Pacific Railway. A lifelong strict Presbyterian, McCormick also donated large sums of money to the church and to the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Chicago (called the McCormick Theological Seminary until 1928). Despite all of these activities, however, the McCormick Harvest-

ing Machine Company (incorporated in 1879, and combined with other firms to form International Harvester in 1902) remained the central institution in his life. He continued to serve as the firm's president, supervising improvements in the manufacturing and design of the McCormick reaper, until his death in 1884. Sources: Craig Canine, Dream Reaper (New York: Knopf, 1995); William T. Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick, 2 volumes (New York: Century, 1930-1935).

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Nathan Appleton, Labor, its relations in Europe and the United States compared (Boston: Eastburn's Press, 1844); Appleton, Remarks on currency and banking: having reference to the present derangement of the circulating medium in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1841)—one of antebellum America's biggest capitalists gives his opinion of the economic situation after the Panic of 1837; Henry William Ellsworth, Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana with hints on its agricultural advantages: Plan of a dwelling, estimates of cultivation, and notices of labor-saving machines (New York: Pratt, Robinson, 1838)—the son of one of America's biggest land speculators, Patent Office commissioner Henry

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Leavitt Ellsworth, published this treatise on the prospects of prairie farming on the eve of its takeoff; William M. Gouge, A Short History of Paper-Making and Banking in the United States (New York: B & S Collins, 1835)—a good contemporary history; McClane Report on Manufactures, Documents Relative to Manufactures in the United States, House Document No. 308, 22d Congress, 1st Session, 2 volumes (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1833)—a window into the early years of American industrialization; James Montgomery, A Practical Detail of Cotton Manufacturers of the United States (Glasgow: J. Niven; New York: Appleton, 1840)—an account by a British expert on the industry.

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An 1844 campaign banner touting the benefits of Whig economic policies

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CHAPTER

FOUR

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by J. JACOB JONES

CONTENTS CHRONOLOGY 1OO

OVERVIEW 1O5 TOPICS IN THE NEWS Bridges The McCaM's Ferry Bridge.

Canals...,.,.., The Clipper Ships, The Erie Canal Flatboats and Keelboats

1O6 1O8

.....1O8 HO Ill 113

MUkeFink. ,113 A National Road System 115 Newspapers and Magazines..... 116 T&e Great Moon Hoax 117 Packet Lines ,.., 119 The Plank-Road Craze . . . . . . . ,121 Post Office . . . . . . . . 122 The Great Postal Campaign 122 Railroads 122 The Annihilation of Space and Time , ......124 Stagecoach Lines 125 Steamboats 126 Explosion of*&? Moselle 127 The Telegraph. 128

HEADLINE MAKERS Horace Greeley. Samuel F.B.Morse Henry M. Shreve Ithiel Toifn Cornelius Vanderbilt

129 .130 131 133 134

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Sidebars and tables are listed in italics.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1815

Henry M. Shreve becomes the first steamboat captain to ascend the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers by sailing the Enterprise from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky.

1817

The state of New York begins construction of the Erie Canal. Thomas Gilpin of Delaware produces the first machine-made paper in the nation. 3 Mar.

Before leaving office President James Madison vetoes the Bonus Bill, which would have provided federal financing for roads and canals.

1818 A regular transatlantic packet begins operation when the James Monroe sets sail from New York to Liverpool, England.

1819

David Napier builds the first flatbed cylinder printing press, which will soon revolutionize the publishing and newspaper businesses. The nation's first agricultural journal, the American Farmer, begins publication in Baltimore. 20June

1822

• 4 May

1824

The Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, from Charleston, South Carolina, thus completing the first successful steamship crossing of the Atlantic with the aid of sails.

The Charleston (S.C.) Mercury begins publication. President James Monroe vetoes the Cumberland Road Bill, which would have authorized the collection of tolls to pay for repairs on the National Road, connecting Cumberland, Maryland, with Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia). Citing Congress's lack of constitutional authority for federal road construction, Monroe's veto message requests passage of a constitutional amendment giving' the national government authority to finance and build roads.

Sequoyah completes the Cherokee alphabet, developing the first written version of a Native American language. In Gibbons v. Ogden the Supreme Court decides that a New York statute granting a monopoly to a ferry service is unconstitutional. 30 Apr.

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Congress passes the General Survey Bill, mandating land surveys and cost estimates by federal agents for roads necessary to national defense and commerce.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1825

26 Oct.

Gov. DeWitt Clinton of New York officially opens the Erie Canal.

6 Dec.

In his first Annual Message to Congress, President John Quincy Adams calls for a broad program of federal investment in internal improvements. Little of his program makes it through an antagonistic Congress.

The first railroads in the United States are constructed, mostly short lines powered by cables, horses, or sails rather than steam.

1826

Scientist Joseph Henry starts experimenting with insulated wire and the multiple-coil magnet, both important developments in telegraph research.

The nation's first African American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, begins publication in New York City.

1827

Wealthy businessman and signer of the Declaration of Independence Charles Carroll of Maryland begins construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

1828

1829

William Cullen Bryant begins publication of the New York Evening Post.

At the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, Peter Cooper designs the Tom Thumb, the first steam locomotive built in America.

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The Lady's Book (later Godey's Lady's Book), a popular magazine for women, begins publication in Philadelphia. 27 May

President Andrew Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road Bill.

1 Jan.

William Lloyd Garrison starts publishing the Liberator, a radical abolitionist newspaper dedicated to achieving an immediate end to slavery.

26 Nov.

The New York and Harlem Railroad in New York City puts into operation the first streetcar in the world. A horse-drawn car built by John Stephenson, it was named John Mason and ran on lower Fourth Avenue.

1831 1832

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1833

Baltimore shipwrights complete the first clipper ship, \htAnn McKim. Benjamin H. Day starts publication of the New York Sun. The Sun becomes the first successful daily "penny" newspaper in the country.

1835

Southern businessmen, in an attempt to redirect the trade of the Midwest from the Erie Canal to Southern ports, organize the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad. James Gordon Bennett founds the New York Herald Mo compete with the New r York Sun. Impressed by the success of the Erie Canal, many Midwestern states undertake extensive state-funded transportation projects of their own.

1836

The New Orleans Picayune is founded by George W. Kendall, and it becomes a leading Southern paper.

1837

Samuel F. B. Morse exhibits his electric telegraph at the College of the City of New York. Meanwhile, W. F. Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patent an electric telegraph in Britain.

7 Nov.

1838

1840

1

Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of an abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, is murdered by a mob and becomes a martyr to free speech as well as to the antislavery movement.

The New York Herald is the first U.S. newspaper to use European correspondents.

Samuel Cunard starts the first Atlantic steam packet line between Europe and America. In America there are 2,816 miles of railroad in operation, double the entire mileage in Europe.

1841

1O2

Horace Greeley begins the New York Tribune, which becomes an influential newspaper in the North.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1842

Boston and Albany are connected by railroad.

1843

1844

Congress grants Samuel F. B. Morse $30,000 to build the nation's first telegraph line.

24 May

The first official telegraph transmission is made by Samuel F. B. Morse from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland.

The Postal Act authorizes federal subsidies for American steamship lines carrying transatlantic mail.

1845

The phrase "manifest destiny" is made popular by the press as a succinct expression of the national desire to expand across the continent.

Richard M. Hoe invents the rotary press, capable of printing eight thousand newspapers an hour.

1846

James D. B. De Bow starts publishing the Commercial Review of the South and Southwest.

12 Dec.

The United States and New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama) sign a treaty that gives the United States right-of-way across the narrow Central American isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific.

Matthew Fontaine Maury of the U.S. Naval Observatory starts his Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, a navigation aid that sailors come to depend on in order to reduce their crossing times between Europe and America.

1847

The Chicago Daily Tribune is founded.

1848

1849

May

The news-sharing organization that comes to be known as the Associated Press is founded by a group of New York newspaper editors.

Jan.

Amelia Bloomer, a temperance and woman suffrage advocate, begins publishing Lily, a newspaper with fiction and poetry and articles on education, marriage laws, and women's issues.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

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Harpers New Monthly Magazine begins publication in New York.

19 Apr.

In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, Britain and the United States agree that neither country will try to monopolize control of transportation routes (especially potential canal routes) across the Central American isthmus.

20 Sept.

Congress votes to grant public lands to Alabama, Mississippi, and Illinois in order to help finance a major north-south rail trunkline from Mobile, Alabama, to Chicago, Illinois.

The first illustrated front page of an American newspaper, 1845

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OVERVIEW

On the Move. A traveler heading west over the National Road in 1817 noted the continuous stream of "family groups behind and before us" and concluded that "old America seems to be breaking up" and moving out to settle the frontier. Census statistics bear out his observation. By 1840 fully one-third of the nation's thirteen million souls lived between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, an area that prior to 1812 supported a substantial Indian population but only a few hundred thousand AngloAmericans. American military success in the War of 1812 led to the expulsion of the Indians from their homelands and started a mass exodus from the East. At the same time the United States experienced a boom in population, especially in the port cities of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Market Access. Such rapid expansion, however, strained the crude communications and transportation networks of the young republic. Western farmers wanted to get their surplus grain and livestock to markets in the East, but in 1815 the muddy tracks that passed as roads over the Appalachians made it cheaper for farmers to send their produce to Philadelphia on a three-thousand-mile boat journey via New Orleans than three-hundred-mile trip by land. Eastern merchants wanting to market manufactured goods in the West experienced the same problem in reverse. Binding the Republic. The federal government was concerned about poor transportation and communications, and not just because Westerners continually clamored for better postal service. During the War of 1812 American forces had experienced several embarrassing defeats on the Western and Northern frontiers, partly because the pitiful condition of roads made rapid troop movements and military provisioning difficult and expensive. As historian George Rogers Taylor noted, "for every $400 spent buying a cannon in Washington in 1814, $1,500 or $2,000 had to be added to transport it to the northwest frontier of Ohio." Leaders in Washington also retained fresh memories of secession conspiracies and rumors of disunion rampant in the West before the war. In his 1817 call for a new national system of transportation Secretary of War John C. Calhoun alluded to these concerns: "Those who understand the human heart best know how powerfully distance tends to break the sympathies of our nature.... Let us then bind the

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republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space . . . it is thus that a citizen of the West will read news of Boston still moist from the press." Costs. In the nationalist euphoria of the postwar decade most Americans agreed with Calhoun on the need to build a national infrastructure, or "internal improvements," as they were commonly called. What they did not agree on was who should finance this "perfect system of roads and canals." Calhoun and his supporters thought that "many of the improvements contemplated . . . are on too great a scale for the resources of states or individuals . . . they required the general superintendence of this government to effect and complete them." Yet an equally large constituency thought that the federal government did not have the constitutional power to build anything other than postal roads and naval vessels. The Bonus Bill of 1817, on behalf of which Calhoun spoke so passionately, was vetoed by President James Madison not because he opposed internal improvements (in fact, he favored them) but because he thought Congress had overstepped its constitutional authority. Liberty and Power. Like many, Madison worried that any expansion of federal power in the area of internal improvements would eventually intrude on the liberties of the states and individuals to decide their own destinies in matters totally unrelated to roads and canals. As he put it, signing the Bonus Bill would "have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them." In short, if Congress could build roads by legislative fiat, they could theoretically also threaten states' rights, slavery, freedom of speech, and all of the other liberties the separation of powers supposedly protected. Through the first half of the nineteenth century this objection repeatedly led lawmakers to defeat proposals for a federally funded and controlled system of internal improvements. As a result private capitalists, with assistance from states and localities (and some federal help), financed and built most of the roads, canals, railroads, bridges, and steamboats constructed during America's transportation revolution. An unintended side effect of private construction was that the desire to "bind the republic together" often gave way to questions of private profit—a lasting legacy of the era.

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Revolution. In 1815 it took forty-nine days for news of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 between Britain and America, to reach Washington from Europe. By 1850 the fastest Atlantic steamship would make the same trip in less than ten days. In 1830 passengers had to endure almost three weeks of travel to get from New York City to Saint Louis by some combination of canal, road, and steamboat though a letter might arrive a little earlier if sent on the express mail service. By the mid 1850s railroads had cut traveling time for the same passengers to less than three days, and the message in the letter took only a few minutes to reach Saint Louis along the recently completed telegraph lines. In the span of one lifetime Americans experienced a revolution in transportation and communications, for better or worse. Visiting Europeans complained constantly about the relentless pace of American life, and even some Americans began to doubt their attachment to speed in the age of the "iron horse." One American lamented that "we are born in haste . . . our body is a locomotive, our soul, a high-pressure engine." However, whether they liked it or not, in a few short decades Americans had undergone a fundamental reordering in their conception of time and space. They set their clocks and watches by railroad whistles and insisted on timeliness. They expected the newspapers to provide accounts of national events almost as soon as they happened. And woe to the train conductor or steamboat captain who did not rush to his destination. New Way of Life. The new national conception of time and space depended on an infrastructure of iron rails, steamboats, telegraph wires, and canals. Much of

that infrastructure was devoted to the prosaic but essential task of moving massive amounts of grain, lumber, iron, coal, and cotton from the countryside to the expanding industrial cities of America and Europe. From there it returned over the same paths once converted to cookstoves, enamelware, textiles, and locomotives. Of course, telegraphs, railroads, steamboats, and canals also allowed loved ones to hear from one another more than once a year and maybe visit each other more than once a decade. And no longer did a move to the western frontier have to mean a final farewell to parents or childhood friends. Business. Alongside these changes came a parallel revolution in the business of America. The new infrastructure removed many previous obstructions and bottlenecks in transportation and production. Grain and meat could now travel hundreds or even thousands of miles before it spoiled. News of changes in commodity prices moved at the speed of electrical current across the telegraph wires, allowing wily brokers to corner markets in wheat, corn, and hogs. In short, massive amounts of money could now be made by maximizing flows of capital, goods, information, and services through new conduits. Fortunes also came to those who built the infrastructure itself. Railroads, for example, consumed mountains of money and steel. Bankers and stockbrokers profited greatly from supplying the former while foundries and locomotive works grew large providing the latter. In fact, many of America's post-Civil War business tycoons and engineers used the entrepreneurial-system builders of these antebellum decades as their models, and thus much of modern corporate America was born.

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

BRIDGES Bottlenecks. In the late summer of 1787 George Washington made the mistake of trying to cross the stream at Elkton, Maryland, on what he described as "an old rotten, and long disused" bridge. One of his carriage horses fell through, and only the prompt assistance of some bystanders saved the first citizen of the republic from plummeting into the water. Experiences such as Washington's were not uncommon in the early national era. "Roads" were often no more than mud tracks, and few streams could boast permanent all-weather bridge crossings. Most travelers relied on ferries and fords, both

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subject to the vagaries of the weather, even to cross major rivers. The lack of reliable bridges and roads represented more than just an occasional danger or inconvenience to travelers. During the War of 1812 the nation's armies found the unreliable road-and-bridge system a serious impediment to the timely movement of troops and supplies, especially in the West. In an expanding postwar economy, transportation bottlenecks at river crossings obstructed the free flow of trade goods between the countryside and the ever-growing port and manufacturing cities.

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Plan for a truss bridge patented by William Howe in 1840 (U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C.)

Burr. In the decades after the War of 1812 the threat to national defense and economic growth posed by bad roads and bridges prompted both private investors and the state and federal governments to expend vast sums on infrastructure, including turnpikes, canals, railroads, and the bridges that carried all of these arteries across the nation's waterways. America could claim few trained civil engineers qualified to design these bridges, but a generation of bridge-building craftsmen arose to meet the unique design and construction challenges presented by America's great rivers. Theodore Burr was one who learned his bridge-building skills as a carpenter rather than in the engineering classroom. Burr used his innovative wooden arch-truss designs to bridge the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Mohawk, all broad rivers with heavy currents and teeming with boat traffic, before moving on to his masterpiece, the McCall's Ferry Bridge over the Susquehanna. When completed in 1815 the McCall's Ferry Bridge was the longest wooden-arch span in the country. The Truss Design. Burr's arch-truss bridges impressed the public and professionals alike, but the wooden truss bridges of Ithiel Town were easier to construct, and the cantilevered arch-truss bridges of Louis Wernwag were more successful in the long run. Wernwag finished the "Colossus" of Philadelphia in 1812, a 340-foot clear span cantilevered wooden bridge that became the admiration of artists and engineers from the United States and overseas. The Colossus was the first modern cantilever, and Wernwag built some thirty such bridges over the next three decades throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Town's bridges, on the other hand, did away with the arch entirely, relying instead on

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a bridge framework of wooden planks crossed in a diamond pattern and secured with wooden pins (much like a garden lattice) resting on stone piers. Simple in design and made with easily obtained materials, Town's truss bridge became popular for the highways and earliest railroads of the nineteenth century. Railroad Bridges. All-wood spans were more than adequate for most of the traffic in prerailroad America. But with the growth of extensive rail networks in the 1840s and 1850s engineers needed bridges that could span wide river valleys, withstand the weight and vibration of massive trains, and still avoid the expense and stream obstruction of multiple-pier wooden spans. These requirements were especially important in bridging rivers such as the Mississippi or the Ohio, where heavy barge and steamboat traffic necessitated wide channels and tall vertical clearances (the smokestacks on some steamboats were over 75 feet tall). A new generation of engineers, including William Howe, Caleb and Thomas Pratt, and Squire Whipple, managed to solve these problems by fine-tuning Town's basic truss design and by utilizing more cast and wrought iron in the planning and construction of railroad bridges. As Pittsburgh foundries increased the volume and quality of their iron (and eventually steel) production, all-metal Pratt, Howe, and Whipple truss bridges became the standard railroad spans nationwide. Suspension Bridges. In the winter of 1816 the first wire suspension bridge in America, a passenger toll path only 2 feet wide and 408 feet long spanning the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia, collapsed under snow and ice. Almost two decades earlier James Finley, a western Pennsylvania judge, had come up with the idea of using iron chains stretched over stone piers to hold up a level floor over a span of water.

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THE MCCALL'S FERRY BRIDGE

Theodore B u r r bragged t h a t the wooden arch-tmss bridge over the Susquehanna River that he designed in 1815 contained "the greatest [arch] in the world . . . at three hundred and sixty feet four inches/' It was certainly one of the most difficult bridges in America to build. At the spot Burr chose, the Susquehanna was swift, almost one hundred feet deep, and subject to ice floes during the spring thaw. Instead of working in the dangerous main channel Burr's laborers constructed the bridge's central arch in upright sections at a spot a quarter-mile downstream, then used the frozen river of January 1815 to swing it upstream and raise it into place. Unfortunately, the river was not entirely frozen, and blocks of ice mixed with slush had stacked up at the narrows to a depth of sixty to eighty feet where the bridge piers stood ready for the deck. Somehow his workmen manhandled the huge arch into place with only one accident: a worker who plunged fifty-four feet to the river yet survived. Bonfires and ample amounts of liquor heralded the completion of the span, but the bridge fell victim within two years to another ice jam and was never replaced. Sources; Llewellyn N. Edwards, A Record of History and Evolution of Earty American Bridges (Qrono: Maine University Press, 1959); Richard Shelton Kirby and others, Engineering in History (New York* McGraw Hill, 1956).

While Finley's first suspension bridges never exceeded 70 feet, he claimed that they would someday safely cross open spaces and waterways 1,000 feet wide. By the last half of the nineteenth century bridge designers in the United States and Europe were proving Finley's predictions practicable. Suspension bridges offered strength and safety (when braced for wind) over long stretches of water, with the added advantage of fewer piers and thus less obstruction to navigation. The latter benefit became especially important when bridging active shipping channels at busy ports such as New York. Sources: Llewellyn N. Edwards, A Record of History and Evolution of Early American Bridges (Orono: Maine University Press, 1959); Donald C. Jackson, Great American Bridges and Dams (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1988); Lee H. Nelson, The Colossus of 1812: An American Engineering Superlative (New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1990); Ted Ruddock, Arch Bridges and Their Builders, 1735-1835 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

CANALS Canal Fever. Even before its completion in 1825 the Erie Canal was making money for its owner, the state of

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New York. This made state governments all over the nation take notice. Excitement over the Erie prompted several Eastern states to start canal projects in the 1820s, but it was in the new states between the Appalachians and the Mississippi that "canal fever" took particularly virulent form. Between 1810 and 1840 canal mileage in the United States increased from 100 to over 3,300 miles, a building boom paralleled only by the rapidity of railroad construction in the following decades and the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s. Need. Before the canals some Western farmers and storekeepers made annual trips to the Eastern cities to sell their produce and cattle or to stock up on dry goods for the coming year. Traveling in caravans over the mountains along the National Road bound for Baltimore and Philadelphia, their transportation costs ate up a large percentage of their revenue. By the 1830s flatboats and steamboats had alleviated some of these problems by carrying an ever-widening stream of grain and meat from cities such as Cincinnati downriver to New Orleans and beyond. Still, legislators in the Old Northwest concluded that a significant profit might be made if riverborne commerce could be supplemented by a network of canals linking every area of the region with Lake Erie and the Erie Canal. Moreover, canals would help speed the immigration of new settlers into the still lightly populated Northern prairie areas of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Thus, in 1825 the Ohio legislature authorized a canal construction program, and by 1833 a 308-mile canal did indeed join the Lake Erie port of Cleveland with Portsmouth on the Ohio while feeder channels with connections to navigable rivers touched almost every major region of the state. Like the Erie Canal, the Ohio system was initially a great success. Ohio's experience was so favorable that it prompted Indiana and Illinois to launch their own state building programs, with nearly disastrous results. Wabash and Erie Canal. Canals seemed like a good idea to Hoosiers who looked at the success of the Erie Canal and the Ohio system. In 1836, in the midst of economic boom times, the Indiana legislature enthusiastically adopted the Mammoth Internal Improvement Bill authorizing loans and state bonds to finance an ambitious program of canals, railroads, and turnpikes. Unfortunately, a year later the nation plunged into a deep economic depression, and by 1841 Indiana was near bankruptcy with a state debt of over $13 million, mostly attributable to the investment in internal improvements (by comparison, the state debt in 1827 had amounted to only $18,700). Incompetence and corruption in canal finance and construction soured the state on the continued expense of internal improvements, and much of the ambitious 1836 plan was abandoned. Still, construction on the Wabash and Erie Canal continued slowly, reaching Terre Haute in 1849 and ending at Evansville on the Ohio in 1853. Upon completion the Wabash and Erie,

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Junction of the Erie and Northern canals in upstate New York, circa 1825

with its 450-mile network, became the longest canal in the United States, but within two decades railroad competition made the system obsolete. The Wabash and Erie helped promote settlement in northern Indiana, but its total receipts of $5.5 million never even matched its cost, which exceeded $8 million. Traveling. Canals were built primarily for the shipment of commodities and dry goods, but somewhat to their owners' surprise they quickly became popular passenger routes as well, prompting canal companies to build new accommodations for the traveling public. Canal passenger service came in two classes: the cheaper regular or line boats (which carried freight as well) and the more-elegant luxury or packet boats. Packets were brightly decorated and averaged about three and one-half miles per hour (forty to fifty miles a day) as opposed to the two or two and one-half common in the line boats. Both were pulled by horses, mules, or oxen walking along the towpath by the side of the canal. The standard passenger canal boat was fifty to sixty feet long (short enough to fit into the locks along the way) and was divided into four or five cabins: a small forward space for the six crew members, a ladies' cabin and room also forward, the cook's quarters, and a larger middle or rear cabin that served as a sleeping parlor for the men and a dining room for all. Passengers slept on bunks or narrow shelves fitted to the walls. When the boats were overcrowded, which was often, passengers slept on the floors, tables, and anywhere else they could find room. Such accommodations were not always secure, as one Swedish traveler found in the 1830s when "another craft coming too close to ours," scraped his canal boat and "precipitated . . . about a dozen sleeping individuals from the second and third tier" onto the "unfortunate beings who were lying on the floor." Traveling on these placid water-

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courses bored many passengers and led as well to attacks by mosquitoes, as one young woman en route across Indiana in 1851 found out when her "hot and stuffy little room" filled one evening with "all the mosquitos ever hatched in the mud puddles of Indiana." When canal passenger service gave way to the greater speed and excitement of steamboat and railroad service, few mourned its passing. Decline. Canals were expensive. The average turnpike in early national America cost $5,000 to $10,000 per mile to build, whereas canal construction averaged about $20,000 to $30,000 per mile. They proved equally expensive to repair. Floods were a constant threat to canals, washing out retaining walls and filling in channels. Furthermore, canals were most successful when used near capacity (maximizing toll revenues per mile) and when they could accommodate bulky and heavy loads that other carriers could not profitably handle, such as coal or lumber. But light usage in isolated areas, frequent locks, narrow channels, and of course winter freezes reduced the efficiency and profitability of canals. The reckless legislative authorization of large sums of public money for canal construction often led to cost overruns, political favoritism in the granting of contracts, and outright theft and mismanagement. All of these problems aside, it was the advent of the railroad that sounded the death knell for canals. Railroads were almost as expensive as canals to construct, but they were cheaper to repair and did not require huge supplies of water. Moreover, unlike canals, railroads could provide dependable all-weather transport for a full range of dry goods, not to mention people. Nonetheless, many canals did continue to compete successfully with railroads in the shipment of bulky commodities, even after the Civil War.

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Advertisement for a clipper ship sailing to California, circa 1850

Sources: Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820-1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969); Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790-1860 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

THE CLIPPER SHIPS Age of Sail. For a few brief decades between the end of the War of 1812 and the control of the world's trade routes by the ocean steamers (after about 1860), America's merchant marine enjoyed a golden era, in some areas challenging even the historical predominance of England on the high seas. New York's packet lines plied the Atlantic on

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predictable schedules to and from Liverpool, Le Havre, and London. New England's whaling fleets dominated that most dramatic of seaborne industries. Meanwhile, the new plantations of the recently settled Deep South swung into cotton production, and the Great Lakes basin began yielding tons of surplus grain and flour from its fertile farm fields, much of both bound for the transatlantic European market. The increased volume of shipping helped make flourishing port cities of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans. This rise in waterborne commerce also required everlarger ships, and by 1850 America's major shipyards (at Boston, Portsmouth, and New York) were turning out two-masted brigs, three-masted ships, and squareriggers three times the size of similar vessels in the 1820s. Many of these boats had sleeker lines and carried

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a greater spread of sail than their predecessors. They were built for speed, and the fastest ship of that golden age was also an American creation: the clipper ship. Built for Speed. Clippers were defined as much by speed as by design. Even the name apparently derived from the slang verb clip, meaning to move quickly. To earn the name of clipper a ship had to be able to make the run from New York to San Francisco in 110 days or less. Contemporaries often classed clippers by the markets they served: the China clipper, the California clipper, the opium clipper. Since speed was the overriding consideration in defining the clipper, these vessels tended to share certain design elements. Clippers were more streamlined than other sailing ships, sharp bowed instead of bluff (the sharpest bowed were referred to as "extreme clippers"), and concave on the sides. Their maximum beam (width of the ship) was farther from the bows, and they were narrower for their length than their slower counterparts. Clippers ranged from 150 to 250 feet in length, with the longest being the Great Republic at 302 feet. They were especially known for their heavy spars, tall masts (the mainmast of the Challenge soared 200 feet above the water), and the immense amount of sail they carried. Knifing their way out of New York or Boston bound for the far-off Pacific under a huge cloud of white sail, these sleek vessels seemed the very embodiments of romantic ocean travel. Heyday. The era of the American clipper was short but dramatic, lasting from about 1845 to 1859, with 1848-1854 representing the high tide. The reason for the clipper's rise and fall had everything to do with profit, specifically the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California in 1849. Americans wanted to get to San Francisco and the gold fields as fast as possible and were willing to pay whatever it cost to do so, an ideal situation for fast ships. Once they arrived, gold miners did not want to waste time growing food. As a result there were tremendous profits to be made in delivering even the most basic commodities to California. A barrel of flour costing five or six dollars in New York could be sold for fifty to sixty dollars in San Francisco. Even penny newspapers from the East, several months old upon arrival, could fetch as much as a dollar in California. Moreover, the return cargo of gold promised equal profits. There were other attractions in the Pacific market as well. In 1849 the British allowed American ships to compete on the China-to-London tea runs, and in 1851 the Australian gold rush provided yet another opportunity for clippers to carry the precious metal halfway around the world. Merchants and shipbuilders all up and down the East Coast realized that here was an opportunity to make money shipping small, high-value cargoes at the greatest possible speed. Thus was born the clipper era. Racing. Their owners ran the clippers for profit, and their captains drove them mercilessly for speed, routinely carrying full sail in winds that would make the commanders of other vessels order the crew to reduce sail,

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reefing (taking in) part of the topsail at least. The public avidly followed both clippers and captains in the news while competing lines regularly raced from New York to San Francisco and boasted of their record runs. Where ordinary shippers took from 150 to 200 days to make the journey from Gotham to the Golden Gate, clippers were expected to arrive in 110 days or less. The fastest of them all was the 1,782-ton Flying Cloud. Commanded by Josiah Perkins Cressy of Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Flying Cloud left New York on its maiden voyage at 2:00 P.M. on 2 June 1851. Although the Flying Cloud sprung her mainmast and (according to the ship's log) ran "very wet, fore and aft," it covered 374 miles in one day, a new record for any ship, steam or sail. On that first voyage the Flying Cloud reached San Francisco in a mere 89 days and 21 hours, a record for sailing ships that was to be surpassed only by the Flying Cloud itself when it shaved 13 hours off the mark in 1854. Decline. By the late 1850s few clippers were being built in American shipyards, and the financial panic of 1857 drastically reduced available cargoes for the entire merchant marine. The Flying Cloud was idled for two years, and most clippers were reduced to carrying bulky low-value cargoes such as flour or Peruvian guano, for which they were structurally and financially unsuited. Some clippers still plied the China- and Australia-toLondon runs, and British shipyards continued to build clippers into the 1870s for the tea trade. But on most routes the clippers were no longer profitable, and because of overbuilding during the boom era there were simply too many clippers in the market. Moreover, even as early as the 1850s oceangoing steamers were cutting into the clippers' speed records, erasing the last advantages the clippers had over their competitors. Sources: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of the New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Scribners, 1939); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

THE ERIE CANAL Potential Problems. In April 1817 the New York legislature authorized funding for the construction of a 364-mile canal to link Albany on the Hudson River with Buffalo on Lake Erie. Skeptics claimed the project would end up as nothing more than an expensive failure, good only to line the pockets of politicians and bankrupt the state. The critics had some telling points, for the biggest canal built to date in the United States was only 27 miles long, and only 100 miles of canals existed in the entire country. In 1817 none of these projects could claim much of a profit, and President James Madison's recent veto of the Bonus Bill quashed any hope that federal help might be forthcoming for New York's internal improvement schemes. Moreover, although the proposed Erie Canal would be the longest modern canal in the world by far, its construction supervisors were not formally trained

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engineers, and apparently none of the consulting engineers had ever actually seen a canal dug previous to their work on the Erie. "Clinton's Big Ditch." Despite these drawbacks, the canal's most ardent advocate, governor and former New York City mayor DeWitt Clinton, traveled all over western New York drumming up support for the project and claiming that the "whole line of the canal will exhibit boats loaded with ... valuable productions of our country. . . and merchandise from all parts of the world" while encouraging "great manufacturing establishments" to "spring up" along its line and new "villages, towns, and cities" to rise up from "the shores of the Hudson from Erie to New York." In short, he added, the canal would make the "wilderness . . . glad, and the desert. . . rejoice and blossom as the rose." Small wonder that critics referred to the project as "Clinton's Big Ditch." Nevertheless, Clinton's rosy predictions proved to be quite accurate upon completion of the canal. Opportunity. American victory in the War of 1812 had restarted the decades-long exodus of farmers from the East into the rich bottomlands of the Ohio River valley and the fertile cotton lands of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Seeing a growing market for manufactured goods and a rapidly expanding farm surplus for sale overseas, port cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New York competed vigorously to be the first to forge overland transportation links with the Great Lakes basin and dislodge New Orleans as the terminus for Western goods. In this competition Philadelphia and Baltimore had the advantage of proximity to the Ohio River, but the mountains of western Pennsylvania and Maryland presented a daunting obstacle to the construction of roads, railroads, and canals. Only in New York was the passage through the mountains sufficiently low (only six hundred feet just east of Buffalo) to encourage consideration of a water route. Construction. Construction started at Rome, New York, near Lake Oneida on 4 July 1817. The New York State canal commissioners selected four amateurs to serve as the principal engineers for the giant project. They did a surprisingly good job, completing the work not only in a timely fashion and almost on budget but also with a certain flair for innovation. Their designs for soaring aqueducts over the Genesee at Rochester and over the Mohawk at Little Falls were studied by visiting European engineers for years to come. Other innovations were more basic. For example, the Erie engineers used "plows, root cutters, and scrapers, drawn either by oxen or by horses" for excavation in place of traditional shovels and wheelbarrows. They also came up with a contraption by which one man could pull down a tree of any height without an ax and a wheeled machine that could pull thirty to forty tree stumps a day using only seven laborers. Those laborers were mainly local farmers and mechanics mixed with a small percentage of Irish immigrants, all of whom signed on with one of the doz-

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ens of contractors directly responsible for building the canal sections. Given that most of the Erie's construction contracts and almost all of its salaried positions were dispensed as political patronage, it is a small wonder that the canal was finished with a minimum of corruption. Even labor relations remained fairly calm during construction, with the occasional exception of fights between the Catholic and Protestant Irish workers. Upon completion in October 1825 the Erie Canal was the longest in the Western world at 363 miles and was already carrying a monumental traffic along its 4-footdeep and 40-foot-wide channel. Ceremonial Completion. Praise for the completed canal came in from around the world. One writer claimed that New Yorkers had constructed the "longest Canal in the least time—with the least experience—for the least money—and of the greatest public utility of any other in the world." New Yorkers celebrated the completion of the Erie Canal in October 1825 with a ten-day party. A ceremonial flotilla with Governor Clinton on the Seneca Chief in the lead headed east from Buffalo on 26 October. As the governor's boat set off, cannons spaced along the entire 500 miles to New York City fired in succession to announce his departure, with the last cannon booming 100 minutes after the first. Then the process was reversed. Clinton carried with him on the boat two kegs of Lake Erie water. On 4 November he dumped one in the New York Harbor in front of adoring crowds lining the Battery and then sailed out to Sandy Hook, where, in front of a flotilla of small craft and a British squadron playing "Yankee Doodle," he dumped the second barrel signifying "The Marriage of the Waters." Impact. It is hard to exaggerate the national enthusiasm that greeted the completion of the Erie Canal. The Buffalo Emporium compared the event to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, saying that "well may New York rejoice in an achievement that would add glory to the most powerful nation on earth." But for once the political rhetoric did not entirely outrun reality. The canal had a tremendous impact on the economy of New York and the nation as a whole. Among other things it made New York City the preeminent port in the country. As one commentator noted, if "the canal is to be a shower of gold, it will fall upon New York; if a river of gold, it will flow into her lap." And flow it did. The canal opened an inexpensive route for Western goods (especially lumber, grain, and flour) to flow into the Hudson and then out into world markets from the wharves of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Coming the other way, imported and domestically produced manufactured goods swept west along the new channel, quickly making the port of New York the busiest in the country. Between 1830 and 1847 well over half of all American imports flowed through New York's harbor. This enormous volume resulted from the simple fact that the Erie Canal cut the cost of sending goods from Buffalo to New York City to less than $8 a ton from a precanal cost of $100 a ton, a twelve-fold re-

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duction even before factoring in the savings in time. In fact, the Erie Canal so reduced waterborne shipping costs that by 1827 residents of Savannah, Georgia, could buy wheat from central New York for less than they paid for wheat grown in the interior of their own state. In the words of historian John Lauritz Larson, "with the opening of the Erie Canal, New York had redrawn the economic map of the United States forever in its own favor." Boom Towns. Not just in New York City but all along the line of the canal itself the completion of the Erie created a boom economy. In the western part of the state, where before there was mainly sparsely settled wilderness and a few villages, new farms now stretched to the north and south of the canal route, causing a 22percent increase in the acreage under cultivation between 1821 and 1835. More impressive still was the growth of canal towns such as Buffalo, Lockport, and Rochester. Rochester multiplied its population more than twenty times over (from 1,502 to 36,403) between 1820 and 1850, making it the fastest-growing city in the country in the 1820s. Armed with several of Oliver Evans's automatic flour mills, and with abundant supplies of water power from the Genesee River, which dropped 100 feet in its passage through the city, Rochester became a major grain processor, shipping out 369,000 barrels of flour in 1836 alone. Such growth also fed a speculative frenzy in land purchases. Adamson Palmer bought a building in Rochester in August 1835, held it for only five months, and realized a 50-percent profit. Taverns and hotels in the city sold for the then-extravagant sums, for example, of $46,000 or $80,000. Criticisms. Despite its enormous positive impact on the economy of New York, the completion of the Erie Canal had several unintended negative consequences, and many critics grew to loathe the whole canal culture. First, the Erie became a conduit for not only freight and passengers but also disease. Smallpox and cholera frequently "rode the canal," affecting not only New York but also the Great Lakes states as well. More commonly, critics of the canal were bothered by the style of life and type of individual the canal supposedly supported. Most prominent among these critics were the religious reformers of the Second Great Awakening. Revivalism spread like wildfire along the canal route in the 1830s, to the point where commentators began calling the western part of the state the "Burned Over District." To these inspired moralists the common practice of running canal boats (which served liquor) on Sundays meant breaking the Sabbath. Worse yet, canal workers seemed to be drunken, foul-mouthed, violent rowdies who constantly disrupted the communities along the waterway. The reformers feared that the canal would simply bring more and more migrants bent on living lives of lawless abandon in taverns, theaters, and houses of prostitution. The reformers had limited success in curbing such behavior along the canal, but for the more-settled members of so-

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ciety their message of Christian morality, sobriety, and self-control carried great weight. Sources: John Lauritz Larson, "'Bind the Republic Together': The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements," Journal of American History, 74 (September 1987): 363-387; Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

FLATBOATS AND KEELBOATS Carrying Western Trade. Before 1840 most of the produce grown in the old Northwest Territory was carried to market by flatboats on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Between 1815 and 1840 an average of 2,500 flatboats every year, laden with the surplus grain, flour, pork, whiskey, and lumber of the Ohio Valley, sailed down the smaller rivers of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio and on into the Mississippi, bound for the markets of the cotton South or for the bustling wharves of New Orleans for export back east or abroad. Even after 1830, when steamboats began to dominate the Mississippi, the clumsy wooden flatboat still carried farm produce to the steamboat landings or to the nearest canal MIKE FINK

Midwestern farmers flatboating their cargoes down to New Orleans often spent their spare time drinking, gambling, and fighting, but their rakish reputations never matched those of the Mississippi's permanent residents, the infamous Mississippi rivermen. These professional boatmen in their bright red and blue outfits were as lawless and dangerous as the river they worked on, and they disdained the "landsman" flatboaters. Most famous of the rivermen was the legendary Mike Fink, a real boatman but draped in myth even while alive. Drunken and violent, Fink embodied the rough-and-tumble character of river life. As good with a boast as with a knife, he reportedly said of himself, *Tm the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open, and called out for a bottle of Rye. . . . I'm half wild horse and half cockeyed alligator and the rest o' me is crooked snags. . . . I can out-run, out-jump, outshoot, out-brag, out-drink, an' out fight, roughan-tumble, no holts barred, any man on both sides the river from Pittsburg to New Orleans an' back ag'in to St. Louiee. Come on, you flatters, you bargers, you milk-white mechanics, an' see how tough I am to chaw! I ain't had a fight for two days an' Fm spllein' for exercise." Source: R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950).

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lengths of one hundred feet. Built for only one trip downstream with a large cargo, arks carried families to new homes as well as freight to port. Running the rapids at Keokuk or bypassing the falls at Louisville, arks loaded with pigs, horses, and cattle as well as men, women, and children became a frequent sight on Western rivers. The farmers who used these various kinds of boats generally built them as well. In 1831, for example, when Abraham Lincoln and some companions were hired to take a load of live hogs, corn, and barreled pork down the Mississippi to New Orleans, they first had to build the boat using timber cut down along the Sangamon River in central Illinois.

Keelboat on the Mississippi River (1832) by Felix A. St. Aulaire (City Art Museum, Saint Louis)

port. In fact, 1846-1847 was the peak year for flatboat arrivals in New Orleans (their most common destination), when 2,792 of the vessels tied up at the levees of the Crescent City. The steamboat actually made it easier for the farmer or merchant to use the flatboat to carry his farm surplus downriver. Before the advent of regular upriver steamboat service, farmers either had to walk back from New Orleans over the Natchez Trace or pole upstream against the Mississippi on a keelboat—backbreaking labor even on the best of days. Types of Boats. Flatboats, keelboats, barges, and arks were the main types of river craft before the era of steam power. The termflatfroat generally referred to a "heavy framed rectangular craft 8 or 10 feet wide and 30-40 feet long," usually of light draft to clear river snags and rapids and with some sort of cabin or shelter built on top of the hull. A long sweep at the back of the craft kept the flatboat in the downstream current. They were not meant to go upstream. The flatboat, however, shared freight duties with another wooden craft that was intended to go upstream, the keelboat. As its name suggests, the keelboat was constructed around a rigid timber in the center that could withstand collisions. Generally longer than the flatboat, the keelboat carried a sail on top of its cabinlike superstructure. When the wind was low, which was most of the time in the heavily forested Mississippi valley, the keelboat relied on the muscle power of its eight- to twenty-man crew to pole, row, or drag (using ropes flung over tree limbs) the boat upstream. At a maximum of six miles per hour, the return keelboat trip from New Orleans frequently took several months. Barges were another type of river craft that looked much like keelboats, but arks were another matter altogether. Shallow of hull and squared or F-shaped at the ends, arks usually lacked decking or housing but could reach

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Heavy Traffic. Flatboats were the most-common kind of river craft, and they carried much of the Mississippi River's downstream freight until at least 1850. At the height of the shipping season, in April and May, hundreds of flatboats tied up at New Orleans or Vicksburg. Each of these stout craft could carry about 100 tons of produce. The record shipment at New Orleans was a flatboat of 180 tons with a cargo that included 320,000 pounds of bulk lard. Much of the lard, pork, and beans ended up feeding the slave populations of Southern cotton plantations. But much of it also went to the industrial cities of the Northeast since before the opening of the Erie Canal and the arrival of the railroad, it was cheaper to send goods on a roundabout 3,000-mile water journey south to New Orleans, east across the Gulf of Mexico, and finally north along the Atlantic coast than it was to carry them by wagon 300 or so miles across the mountains from Ohio to Philadelphia or Baltimore. Romantic Image. Flatboat journeys may have been common, but navigating the Mississippi was no easy task. In the 1820s the "Father of Waters" had yet to see a dam or concrete channel and had encountered only a few levees. Giant fallen trees, or snags, choked the water, and hundreds of river craft of all dimensions sought constantly for an ever-shifting main channel. It was a rare voyage indeed where no crew member or passenger was drowned, injured, victimized by thieves on the Natchez Trace, or disfigured in a brawl in one of the various port cities. On Abraham Lincoln's first trip south in 1828 he and his traveling companion had to fight off seven attackers at a wharf in the Louisiana low country. As might be expected from bands of young men away from home, the flatboat crews had a reputation for rowdiness. Frances Trollope, a visitor from England who booked passage on the steamboat Belvidere bound north from New Orleans in 1828, described the two hundred flatboat men aboard, who slept on the deck and were kept separate from the regular passengers. "We never saw them," she commented, "except when we stopped to take in wood; and then they ran, or rather sprung and vaulted over each other's heads to the shore, whence they all assisted in carrying wood to supply the steam engine," a service they performed as "a stipulated part of their passage." Trollope had heard that the Kentucky flatboat men were a

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"most disorderly set of persons, constantly gambling and wrangling, very seldom sober, and never suffering a night to pass without giving practical proof of the respect in which they hold the doctrines of equality, and community of property" but had to admit that "these Kentuckians are a very noble-looking race of men" whose "countenances [are], excepting when disfigured by red hair, which is not infrequent, extremely handsome." Sources: Erik F. Haites, James Mak, and Gary M. Walton, Western River Transportation: TheEraof Early Internal Development, 1810-1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860 Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

A NATIONAL ROAD SYSTEM Country Roads. For most Americans in 1815 the only means of overland travel from farm to market, mill, and store were rural roads, many developed from Indian trails and farmers' tracks. Chronically muddy and filled with stumps and boulders, the nation's country roads were nonetheless crucial to farmers and the national economy they supported. Country roads were, by Anglo-Saxon tradition, the responsibility of the county, and every year farmers congregated during slow times to work off their county "road taxes" by repairing or constructing local roads. Because county-road supervisors rarely possessed engineering skills, and because the work crews were less than highly motivated, rural roads in America remained almost uniformly poor even into the early twentieth century. Yet farmers did not worry over much. Except when moving or heading to market, they rarely traveled, and rather than pay higher taxes or contribute more of their valuable time to roadwork, they simply made do with roads as they were. Only where the state government or private turnpike companies did the road building could Americans find improvement in overland travel. Military Needs. During the first decades of the nineteenth century the nation's road situation improved with the development of turnpikes, or toll roads. The best of these new roads were constructed with solid stone foundations and gravel topdressings. They crossed streams on stone bridges and were sloped and side-ditched for better drainage. By the War of 1812 turnpikes connected the major commercial cities in America north of the Potomac and east of the Alleghenies. Yet none of these roads breached the Appalachian barrier, and two of the major theaters of military operations during the war, the West and the South, lacked even a rudimentary turnpike system. Thus, when the British naval blockade of 1813-1815 forced Washington to rely on the existing road system to move and supply the nation's armies, America's roads were simply not up to the task. During the height of the conflict it took one wagon of cotton seventy-five days to traverse the thousand miles between Charleston, South Carolina, and Worcester, Massachusetts. After the war a tidal wave of settlers began pouring

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over and around the Appalachians, adding a new chorus of voices to the persistent demands for dependable transportation links to the West. Congress responded in 1815 by renewing construction on the National, or Cumberland, Road from western Maryland over the Appalachians to the Ohio River at Wheeling. Contractors reached Wheeling in 1818, but it would take another twenty years for the National Road to arrive at what became its final destination in Vandalia, Illinois. There, one hundred miles short of its ultimate goal, Saint Louis and the Mississippi, the grand free national highway "expired in the mud," the victim of the railroad's superiority. Opposition. Despite widespread support for an eastwest national road, not everyone was equally excited about the prospect of the federal government financing, building, and then maintaining such a large internal improvement. Reasons for opposition varied. Some congressmen, especially from the South, opposed federal internal improvements on constitutional grounds. They argued that only states had the right to appropriate money for these purposes, not the central government. Eastern businessmen worried that better roads to the West would lure their workforce to new lands, raising labor costs in the East. Others simply opposed the choice of route, especially those who lived in localities bypassed by the road. Still others, including Andrew Jackson and his numerous followers, worried that federally financed internal improvements would serve to enrich only one locality or state and not the nation at large. And some believed that any large government project would be a source of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. One or more of these negative constituencies was usually enough to kill the legislative proposals to fund a federal system of internal improvements that periodically emerged in the 1820s and 1830s. State Funds. The National Road managed to survive partisan bickering and government attack but only at the expense of severe limitations imposed from Washington. The most serious of those limitations arose in 1822 when President James Monroe vetoed a bill to finance the upkeep of sections already completed. Without the authority to maintain the National Road, the only alternatives were to let it go to ruin or to give it to the states. Congress chose the latter, and in 1834 the National Road became the property of the states through which it ran. Shortly thereafter the Western states began placing toll gates on the National Road every ten miles or so to raise revenue for upkeep and repair. In most states only schoolchildren, those attending church and traveling to funerals, or men going to militia muster were exempt from these tolls. Commercial stage lines found the toll gates particularly galling. They paid their tolls on a quarterly basis, but when payments were late it was the habit of state governments to refuse the stage lines passage through the toll gates. At such times lines of the brightly colored stagecoaches would stack up at the gates, passengers and drivers alike fuming on the roadside.

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Construction. The initial legislation funding the National Road called for a right-of-way eighty feet wide with a thirty-foot center of broken stone one foot deep and drainage culverts and bridges of cut stone. Working west from Cumberland, Maryland, over the Alleghenies, it took construction crews three years to arrive at Wheeling, at a cost of $13,000 per mile. From Wheeling west it did not take long for contractors to deviate from the initial specifications. In 1832 an Army Corps of Engineers inspector found huge stumps still in the center of the road on a section near Columbus, Ohio, that had been reported as complete. All along the road frontiersmen broke up bridge walls to use the dressed stone for their own purposes. Others stole the gravel or built on the right-of-way. These depredations and the natural decline of the road from wear and tear led one historian to conclude that "never at any one time was the National Road a good road all the way from Cumberland to Vandalia." Construction crews presented other problems. Bands of off-season farmers working on the road were admonished not to bring "ardent spirits to the place of labor" or be caught "insulting travelers or quarreling or fighting" because these actions would be "cause for dismissal." Presumably, contractors issuing these rules had learned from past experience. First Interstate. Writing home to his wife in Virginia, an 1840s traveler on the National Road in Ohio commented that "it looks as if the whole earth is traveling this way." For a few brief decades before the railroad permanently eroded the importance of the National Road, this highway to the West operated very much like a modern interstate, where a cross section of the country passed every day in commercial carriers, family passenger vehicles, and public conveyances, all jostling for room on its thirty-footwide surface. Burly teamsters drove huge wagons of goods west from Maryland and slept under them on the side of the road. Stagecoaches weighing a ton or more flew by, warning other travelers out of the way with honks from their horns. Drovers pushed immense flocks of pigs, sheep, and cattle east along the road, destined for markets in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Mixed in with all of these vehicles was a continuous stream of settlers traveling steadily west in family groups or caravans of neighbors, with all the family possessions stacked in Conestoga wagons and all but the youngest children walking alongside. Source: R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 volumes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950); Philip D. Jordan, The National Road (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES Bulletin Boards. Before the American publishing revolution of the late 1820s the nation's newspapers were little more than community "bulletin boards." The typical paper was only four pages long and approximately

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nine by fourteen inches in size. Advertisements took up two of those four pages, and the other two usually included lists of ship arrivals, departures, and cargoes; a smattering of foreign news; and reprints of political speeches alongside editorials. In fact, because political parties often subsidized the newspapers to serve as mouthpieces for the party line, "journalists," a contemporary acidly commented, are "usually little more than secretaries dependent on cliques of politicians . . . and office seekers for their prosperity and bread." Circulation, even for metropolitan dailies, generally amounted to only one or two thousand copies (even in New York, which had two hundred thousand residents in 1830) while the combined output of all the nation's dailies in 1830 was a mere seventy-eight thousand in a nation of more than twelve million. Republican Experiment. The Founding Fathers had considered news, especially of government and politics, to be the lifeblood of successful republican government since only an informed citizenry could choose its leaders wisely. In the 1780s Thomas Jefferson wrote that every American should have "full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and . . . those papers should penetrate the whole mass of people." Federal postal rate discounts for newspapers reflected this concern. Until 1845 it cost only one-and-one-half cents to send a newspaper anywhere in America, regardless of the paper's size and weight. By comparison it cost a quarter to send a one-page letter more than four hundred miles. Low postal rates helped make the major metropolitan dailies the dominant national newspapers, but postal rates alone did not create America's rapid expansion in publishing output in the 1830s and 1840s. The widening of the suffrage to almost all white males and a steady rise in literacy rates as mandatory schooling became the norm in the North and led to an ever-increasing market for the news, especially political news. Artists such as George Caleb Bingham depicted the public reading of newspapers at rural stores as central to the American political process while the relative merits of competing politicians were always a common topic among travelers in stagecoaches, taverns, and steamboats. Newspaper owners were not entirely unaware of this potential market, but they lacked the technology and the imagination to tap it. Publishing Revolution. The application of steam technology to the printing press, mostly a result of European inventions, worked what can only be termed a revolution in American publishing. In 1825 the American Bible Society of New York became one of the first publishers to adopt the new Napier and Treadwell steam presses. In the previous decade, using the best stereotyped handpresses, the society had been able to print seventy thousand Bibles a year. In just four years after their adoption the new cylindrical steam presses gave the society the capacity to produce five times that amount. The religious and reform publishers were the first organizations to grasp the implications of the new technology for

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reaching a mass audience. For example, by 1829 the American Tract Society was printing six million pamphlets a year advocating a full range of moral reforms, from the abolition of slavery to abstinence from alcohol. By the end of the 1830s they annually produced five pages of printed material for every man, woman, and child in America. Cheap Newspapers. Following the initial application of steam technology in the religious and reform press, enterprising newspapermen such as Benjamin Day and James Gordon Bennett, owners respectively of the New York Sun and the New York Herald, grasped its implications for the commercial news business. Previously newspapers could print two hundred pages per hour. Using the new presses, publishers increased the rate by a factor often. By 1846 the addition of Robert Hoe's "fly," a device which removed printed sheets from the press automatically, allowed publishers to print twenty thousand sheets in an hour. Combined with cheaper methods of making paper (the Fourdrinier paper machine was brought to America in the late 1820s), the new steam presses made it possible for Day to lower the price of the New York Sun from six cents to a penny in 1833. At a time when the average workingman made only about a dollar a day, a price drop of this magnitude created an entirely new market for the American metropolitan daily newspaper. The "Penny Press." By June 1835 the combined daily circulation of New York's three "penny" papers was forty-four thousand in a city of fewer than three hundred thousand. The publishers of these papers reached this mass audience by creating a whole new type of newspaper to match the new technology. The penny papers were physically larger than the older papers, consisting of "blanket sheets" with eight to ten three-inch-wide columns. Rather than waiting for customers to come to the printing office to buy the paper, as was traditionally done, Bennett and his competitors sent out newsboys to sell papers on street corners. Advertising consumed three-quarters of the enlarged newspapers in the first years, providing the revenue that made it possible for at least some of the publishers not to have to rely on funding from political parties; it was now circulation rather than subsidy that would make or break a newspaper. The new press was by no means politically neutral, but editors such as Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune could at least choose their own editorial positions and send reporters to cover political events, much to the chagrin of many old-fashioned politicians, whose personal foibles and odd habits became grist for the journalists' mill. Competition. Bennett, Day, and Greeley knew that in order to continue attracting advertisers they had to maintain circulation. To lure readers away from their competitors they focused on crime and human-interest stories as well as the analysis and interpretation of financial and political events. Bennett sent reporters to all the police courts in New York, and it was a rare day indeed

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THE GREAT MOON H O A X

In the summer of 1835 the New Y&rk Sun printed a series of stories, allegedly from the Edinburgh Journal of Science* under the byline of Sir John Herschel, "internationally known British astronomer/' Herschel related how he had recently gone to the Cape of Good Hope to test out a powerful new telescope with which he claimed he could see "planets in other solar systems* and even more "astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description*** Training the telescope on the moon, Herschel reported that the moon not only had oceans, trees, and birds, but also men with wings similar to those of a bat, **being a transparent membrane expanded in curviKneal divisions by means of a straight radii, united at the back by dorsal integument/ The seeming authenticity of the **Moon* articles caused a wave of excitement. Sales of the Sun almost doubled. Thousands of Americans were convinced by the author's apparent expertise and authoritative technical language, A group of Yale scholars confirmed HerschePs story, and some Baptist ministers started prayer meetingt for the "winged men'* on the moon, who presumably had not yet been converted to Christianity* Why did so many people fall for this hotx, the author of which was Sun writer Richard Adams Locke, and other equaEy fantastic tales of technological and scientific wizardry? Many people never really believed it but enjoyed the moon stories as they enjoyed P. T. Barnurn's American Museum—for the challenge of trying to separate fact and fiction* For others the few decades in which Americans had gone from travel and communication at a horse's pace to speeding railcars and almost instantaneous telegraph messages had conditioned them to expect the amazing; perhaps, they thought, there really were men on the moon. Source: Neil Harris, Humbug: TktArt of P. T. Ustrnum (CMcaga: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

when a grisly story of murder and mayhem (for which New York was notorious even then) did not grace the covers of the penny press. Scandal and violence were splashed so often across the front pages of the cheap dailies that Charles Dickens sarcastically suggested the "New York Sewer" and "New York Stabber" as new names for the city's papers. Moreover, there had yet to develop any concept of journalistic ethics, and objectivity was not considered a virtue. Fistfights between rival editors of the fiercely competitive penny papers were not unknown, and reporters would not only rush to "scoop" their rivals with stories of the latest murder trial or street

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Offices of a popular newspaper as depicted on the front page of an 1830 issue

riot but also would often side openly with one of the participants. According to historian Menahem Blondheim, to get the latest news to press and beat out its rivals in the days before the telegraph, the Sun dispatched carrier pigeons with field reporters, set the type for special editions of overseas news onboard speeding steamships, and sent fast boats out to meet the Atlantic packets in the open ocean rather than wait for them to dock with their latest European news. In periods of slow news, editors were not averse to concocting stories out of thin air, such as the Moon Hoax of the Sun in 1835. These tactics seemed to work. By 1850 New York publishers printed one daily newspaper for every four and one-half city residents, up from one copy for every sixteen in 1830. Daily circulation for the Sun reached twenty thousand in the mid 1840s, making it not just the most popular daily in New York but probably the largest-selling newspaper in the world. New York's newspaper boom was duplicated on a smaller scale in many other cities, and national newspaper circulation rose from seventy-eight thousand in 1830 to three hundred thousand in 1840. Associated Press. Beginning in May 1846 reporting events of the war with Mexico challenged the way the

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New York dailies did business. The recently invented magnetic telegraph was as yet underdeveloped; there were only 130 miles of wire strung at the outbreak of hostilities, and the theater of war was 1,300 miles away. With a public clamoring for war news and the mail ships slowed by what the New York Herald called the "blundering incapacity and ridiculous parsimony" of the federal government, the big papers at first did what they always did with big stories, trying to scoop one another by rushing information from the theater of war to their press rooms in New York. But the expense of the competition proved too much even for the biggest New York papers. With the Sun as their leader, they agreed to cooperate in a pooling of war news through an organization that came to be called the Associated Press (AP). Ironically, while technological breakthroughs had created the huge competitive dailies, it was technology in the form of the telegraph that ultimately curbed their rivalries and made cooperation through news agencies such as the AP the order of the day. The editors agreed to collective action because they understood that the exponential increase in telegraph lines would soon make it impossible to monopolize incoming news. The Sun might be able to beat other papers out to meet the Atlantic packets or finance

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rail and steam expresses from various quarters, but it could never control every source of news at the end of every telegraph line. Magazines. The New York dailies were the biggest news- and opinion-makers of the antebellum decades, but others were able to cash in on the publishing boom by copying the technology and marketing savvy of the big-city editors. The middle decades of the century saw an explosion of specialized publications and generalinterest magazines aimed at the rising professional white-collar middle class. America's booming economy had yielded larger business organizations and new occupations needing well-educated people to fill positions as managers and clerks. These middle-class professionals tended to live in homogeneous neighborhoods, go to the same schools, and read the same newspapers, novels, and magazines. As members of a relatively privileged class in an aggressively democratic society, they tended to worry about justifying themselves through "proper" behavior. The new magazines appealed to these concerns. The most famous of them, Godey Lady's Book, edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, specialized in stories that suggested to its readers what dress, manners, education, and even housing were appropriate to the bourgeoisie, a French term for the class of people between the aristocracy and the working class. These magazines were also willing to pay high fees for the best fiction writers of the day: Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. By 1860 Godeys could claim a circulation of 150,000, up from 40,000 in 1849. Sources: Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Allan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790-1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

PACKET LINES The James Monroe. On a snowy morning in January 1818 a cold wind blew across the harbor of New York as Capt. James Watkinson paced the deck of the James Monroe and waited for Saint Paul's clock to strike ten, the advertised time for the ship to pull away from its berth. The James Monroe carried only seven passengers, a shipment of apples, and a letter bag only recently hustled down from a harbor coffeehouse, a light load indeed for a ship of 424 tons. The ship's owners, however, wanted the James Monroe to sail on time, whatever the load. Three months previously advertisements in the New York papers had announced that beginning in January 1818 the Amity, Courier, Pacific, and James Monroe would begin

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sailing to and from New York and Liverpool in regular succession on specified days each month throughout the year. So precisely at 10:00 Captain Watkinson ordered the ship's crew to get her under way, and as she pulled back from the wharf a deckhand unfurled her foretopsail painted with a large black ball, the symbol of the Black Ball Line. The nearly simultaneous sailing of the James Monroe from New York and the Courier from Liverpool inaugurated the era of the sailing packets. Tramps and Traders. Before the start of the packet lines most of America's foreign trade traveled in one of two categories of vessels, the transients (often referred to as "tramps") and the regular traders. Tramps had no fixed routes or schedules and did not specialize in carrying one cargo. The captain of a tramp, who often owned the vessel as well, might carry a shipment of furniture from New York to New Orleans and then wait around for a few weeks until he picked up a boatload of cotton bales bound for Liverpool, where in turn he might get a load of metalware for Africa. Sometimes the captain bought goods himself and sold them for a profit at his destination. This wandering from port to port occasionally went on for years according to historian Robert Albion. The brig Forrester sailed from Salem, Massachusetts, in 1826 and did not return until 1828, in the meantime visiting New Orleans, New York, Cuba, Genoa, Marseilles, New York again, Hamburg, and then Saint Ubes (in Portugal). Some transients never came home, either due to accident or because the captain saw an opportunity to sell his ship for a tidy profit, leaving her in a distant port and coming home as a passenger on another vessel. Regularity. The tramps' unpredictability precluded them from carrying anything or anyone with a schedule to meet, especially passengers and mail. Nor could the transients compete for regular freight shipments on the major sea routes. These duties and routes fell instead to the "regular traders," a group that included the packets. The difference between the regular traders and the packets came from the fact that the regular traders waited at their berths until an adequate cargo had been assembled, whereas the packets set sail on time no matter what. This predictability made the packets attractive to businessmen and passengers alike. Passengers who could afford the ticket prices on the regular liners no longer had to cool their heels in harbor hotels until a ship was ready to sail. Moreover, the sail packets and their steam-driven successors provided the fastest and most elegant mode of transatlantic transportation in their era. Luxury packets even carried their own "barnyards" of milk cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry, enough to supply fresh food for the five-week return trip from Liverpool to New York. Business Advantages. For American businessmen New York's transatlantic packet service meant more than just convenience and luxury; it could mean the difference between success and failure. For example, in the years before the transatlantic telegraph, packets returning from Britain carried a most crucial piece of news: the

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A packet-line advertisement encouraging Germans to immigrate to Michigan

current prices at the largest cotton market in the world. If a New York merchant could find out that the price of cotton in Liverpool had jumped six or ten cents over the asking price in America, he could quickly send orders by rail, express stage, coastal packet, or, later, telegraph to his representatives in New Orleans, Mobile, or Savannah to be the first to buy up as much cotton as possible at the lower rate, then ship it to Liverpool to resell for an enormous profit. Bankers and commercial newspapers could also make tidy sums for being the first to receive financial news from overseas. So valuable was the news carried by the packets that New York merchants and newspapers regularly ran their own fast vessels out into the open ocean to meet the packets before they could clear Sandy Hook and head into the harbor. Expansion. The rapid expansion of packet service after the start of the Black Ball Line attested to the importance of regular shipping as a crucial link in the international development of American commerce and communications. Within six years of the initial voyage of the James Monroe New York could boast of two more packet companies and four monthly sailings for Liverpool, two to Le Havre, and one to London, along with new coastwise lines to New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston. By 1845 there were fifty-two steam packets to Europe sailing three times a week out of New York, and steam packets ran as well from New York to the Isthmus of Panama, from Panama to Oregon, from New York to Charleston, and from Charleston to Cuba. Other ports such as Baltimore and Boston tried starting their own packet lines, but New York remained the center of packet service. Steam. In 1835 Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a popular authority on American science, predicted that "as to the project which was announced in the newspapers of making a voyage directly from New York to Liverpool by

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steam it was perfectly chimerical and they might as well talk of making a voyage to the moon." Doctor Lardner had found another profession by 1838 because in the spring of that year two steamships, the Sirius and the Great Western, both made the crossing from Liverpool to New York. Though they arrived in New York on the same day, the Sirius, an older vessel, crossed in nineteen days while the Great Western, a powerful new steamship designed specifically for the Atlantic crossing, made it in fourteen and one-half days. From that year on, steam packets regularly plied the major Atlantic routes. Steam power cut crossing times by more than 60 percent and quickly made the old sailing packets obsolete. In order to drum up business many of the old sail packets switched in the 1840s to the steerage business, carrying mostly impoverished Irish and German immigrants from Liverpool and Le Havre to New York and other cities on the Atlantic seaboard. Steerage. The 1848 revolutions in Europe and the Irish potato famine of the late 1840s sent hundreds of thousands of immigrants to America. Transporting them became a lucrative but often shameful trade, with British and American agencies competing for "steerage" or "tween decks" business, terms that referred to the parts of the ship where the immigrants were housed. Before the 1840s immigrants had booked cheap passage with whatever vessels they could find, and returning American ships were happy to fill a few unoccupied berths with paying customers. With the vast rise in immigration, however, shipping agencies found that they could contract with packet lines to fill return berths at ten dollars a head, for example, and then charge immigrants twenty dollars for the same journey. These agencies competed aggressively for passengers; one Irish immigrant remembered "there were hand bills placarded on every corner, tree, and pump and public place in the city of Dublin."

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The owners of the older sailing packets, no longer able to compete with steamships for other cargo, quickly latched onto the immigrant agencies and outfitted their boats for maximum occupancy. On a typical vessel the six-foothigh tween deck (between the upper deck and the cargo hold) was filled with tiers of plain wooden bunks, leaving only the narrowest of passages for walking. For the passengers privacy was nonexistent, and toilet facilities were crude. With no ventilation but an overhead hatchway, the fetid and overcrowded holds often bred disease. Regulations set minimums for food and water rations (one gallon per day for all uses), but if storms delayed the trip, food and water could run perilously short. Not all of the old sailing packets converted to the steerage business, and not all the immigrant ships were hellholes, but for those involved it was a sad final chapter for these onceelegant ships. Sources: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Scribners, 1939); Albion, Square Riggers on Schedule (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1938).

THE PLANK-ROAD CRAZE Fads. Americans in the antebellum decades exhibited a mania for whatever trend promised to reduce to manageable proportions the nation's vast distances and long communication gaps. Obsessed with speed, hating isolation, yet tired of long and uncomfortable journeys and letters that took weeks or months to reach their destinations, ordinary Americans found potential salvation in each new transportation technology. The railroad and the telegraph satiated their appetite for a while, capturing the national imagination for most of the nineteenth century (before the telephone and the automobile started the whole process going again), but not before one last craze swept the country: a mania for wooden roads. From the late 1840s until the business depression of 1857 Americans invested some $10 million in more than seven thousand miles of plank roads concentrated mostly in New York and the Midwest, an investment which literally rotted away before their eyes. The Farmer's Railroad. Plank roads seemed like a good investment. A growing network of railroads and canals linked all of the nation's larger cities by the late 1850s, but these advances were of limited use to the thousands of rural residents living on dirt tracks miles from the nearest rail line. The wooden road seemed the ideal answer to the problem of how to connect the countryside with the new system of canals and railroads. In fact, commentators often referred to plank roads as "the farmer's railroad." Utilizing America's most abundant resource, wooden roads were cheap to build. By placing them over existing dirt roads, builders saved money on grading and draining. Plank roads were easy to construct, consisting of nothing more than heavy planks three inches thick and eight feet long attached crosswise to

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wooden stringers set into the roadbed. At about $1,500 a mile the plank roads were relatively easy to finance and could be built by small companies with little capital in a short time, usually two to three years. These companies recouped their investments by charging tolls. Promises. To increase traffic and revenue, promoters constantly touted the advantages of the wooden roads for farmers. They told farmers that plank roads could cut their travel time to city markets and thus allow them to make more money on their produce, which was a true enough point. But promoters also assured farmers that plank roads would add "value from 10 to 15 per cent" to their farmland, which was considerably less certain. Most imaginative of all, some developers claimed that the new plank roads would improve rural living by connecting farms with urban culture. One article claimed that the access to stores and schools provided by plank roads had worked wondrous changes in the Indiana countryside: "the people . . . are changed" the editor wrote, they "dress better, look better—their manners are better. Their wives and daughters are no longer the same persons; they have improved wonderfully." Decay. Like the boosters of most other transportation manias, the plank-road enthusiasts could not sustain their illusions in the face of reality. When kept under repair, or where the weather was dry, the roads fulfilled much of their promise. But where builders had projected a life span of at least seven years for the wooden roads, in reality they lasted only one or two years in the wet prairie areas of Indiana and Illinois. Even in drier areas the sun warped the top boards while ground moisture rotted the stringers. Replacing these parts proved expensive, and plank-road companies found that toll revenues would not cover repairs and provide profits as well. In fact, plank-road owners found out quickly that rural residents were good at finding ways to bypass the toll booths, evidence of which can still be found in Midwestern towns with streets named Dodge. When the plank roads went unrepaired they became both inconvenient and dangerous. Rotting planks gave way under the weight of horses and wagons, damaging cargo, injuring human passengers and animals alike, and leading to numerous expensive lawsuits. Moreover, the spread of rail networks to eversmaller communities reduced pressure for publicly funded common roads and dried up some of the capital for private investment in plank roads. Indiana and Illinois had 1,000 miles of plank roads in 1851, of which only about 150 miles remained in operation by 1855. The depression of 1857 provided the final blow for many of the remaining companies, ending yet another shortlived transportation craze. Source: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

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POST OFFICE Slow Service. In 1820 a letter sent from Baltimore regularly took three weeks to arrive in Saint Louis by boat and stagecoach while in the more-remote areas of the South "the mails ran seldom, if at all, and stage never." By 1834 steamboats had cut delivery times substantially, but as one postmaster admitted, "half the intelligence of the country is still carried in saddlebags." In the more-remote western frontier regions even the saddlebags were occasionally dispensed with. On the route from Green Bay to Chicago, about 250 miles, postal carriers had to walk with "sixty pounds of mail, two sacks of parched corn, and blankets," along with an Indian guide to keep from getting lost. High Rates. The nation's vast distances hindered the efficient distribution of the mail, but high postal rates also cut down on the number of letters ordinary Americans exchanged. Originally organized as a division of the Treasury Department (until 1825), the Post Office was supposed to turn a profit for the government. NewspaTHE GREAT POSTAL C A M P A I G N In May 1835 the American Anti-Slavery Society tried to "sow the good seed of abolition thoroughly over the whole country* by putting its new steam-driven presses into overdrive and flooding the mails with antislavery newspapers and pamphlets calling for the immediate emancipation of all enslaved African Americans. But Southerners were in no mood to accept what they considered this new threat to their way of life. Mobs plundered packets of pamphlets and copies of the society's newspaper, The Liberator, from the Charleston post office and burned them in the public square. Other cities in the South followed suit. Several Southern legislatures placed bounties on Northern abolitionists, and violence against abolitionists broke out even in the North, where many considered abolitionism a threat to national unity. In October 1835 a mob in Boston seized William Lloyd Garrison (editor of The Liberator} and proceeded to drag him through the streets. When the mailings did not stop, President Andrew Jackson, himself a slaveholder and cotton planter, ordered Postmaster General Amos Kendall to do something. At Kendall's instructions Southern postmasters instantly began cleansing the mail of abolitionist literature. Ironically, it was the suppression of the "great postal campaign*' that illustrated how the new communications and transportation technologies could alter how Americans thought about slavery and thus alter the national balance of political power. Source: James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: Tbe Abolitionist and American Slavery (New York: Hill 6c Waag, 1976).

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pers were delivered at reduced rates because of the importance of news for the "informed citizenry" of a selfgoverning republic, but other postal rates were set quite high: twenty-five cents to send a one-sheet letter more than four hundred miles, fifty cents for two sheets, and so on. To get their money's worth correspondents took to filling a page horizontally, then turning letters on the side to write another layer on top of the first, and sometimes even adding a third set of diagonal lines on the same page. To avoid the high fees family members and friends often entrusted their letters to acquaintances traveling in the direction of the letter's destination. By 1837 the Post Office handled only about two letters per person each year. Politics. Another problem with the nation's postal service was its susceptibility to political pressure, as postmasterships represented the primary source of patronage available to the president. In an era before civil service exams each change in party control in the White House could and usually did mean a widespread substitution of postmasters, who numbered seventeen thousand by 1850. Moreover, contracts to move the public mails were supposed to go to the lowest bidder in a competitivebidding process. Not coincidentally, those carrying companies tended to be controlled by adherents to the party in power, and these "party men" often failed to fulfill the requirements of their contracts. Reform. Internal policy changes and the introduction of the railroad and telegraph changed the Post Office for good starting in the 1830s. By 1832 it took only thirtysix hours for a letter to get from Philadelphia to Boston. By 1840 postal employees were sorting mail between these major urban areas on special mail cars, cutting delivery time even more. At the same time Western cities could expect thrice-weekly deliveries from the East by the late 1830s. Meanwhile, the number of post offices increased rapidly, from three thousand in 1815 to seventeen thousand in 1850 (one for every eleven hundred citizens). The advent of rail service resulted in exponential savings to ordinary customers. Postal rates were reduced in 1846, 1851, and 1855. Prepaid postage stamps wer introduced in 1847, and by 1851 a mother in New York could write a letter to her son in the California gold fields and expect to buy only a five-cent stamp to get it there. Sources: R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840, 2 volumes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1950); Allan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 1790-1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard University Press, 1973); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

RAILROADS First Efforts. Most of the first railroads in America, such as the two-mile-long "granite railroad" of Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826, were short routes intended only

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The first locomotive to cross the Allegheny Mountains, circa 1840

to ship bulk commodities to or from the nearest port, steamboat landing, or canal. The early lines did not even use steam power but relied on horses, mules, oxen, and in some instances sails to push the small carriages over wooden rails (sometimes with iron covers) resting on the ground. It was the Erie Canal that finally prompted the construction of modern interregional steam railroads. The first such railroad in America started with an 1827 meeting by a group of Baltimore merchants who assembled to "take under consideration the best means of restoring to the city of Baltimore that portion of the western trade which [had] recently been diverted" to New York by the completion of the Erie Canal. Their solution was to construct a two-hundred-mile steam rail line from Baltimore to Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), on the Ohio River. They called their railroad the Baltimore and Ohio (B &O). "University of Railroad Engineering." Traversing mountain ranges and deep ravines, designing new engines and freight cars, finding capital to finance construction, learning how to coordinate traffic flows—these were the problems that faced the B 8c O's engineers as well as all early American railroad companies trying to connect the East with the burgeoning economies across the Appalachians. Older railroad technology proved inadequate to address these new problems. For example, the iron-covered wooden rails used on older routes simply could not handle the heav-

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ier locomotives needed to pull trains over the Appalachians. Moreover, those same iron rail covers tended to peel away from their wooden bases and rip into carriages (these pieces of iron were called "snakeheads"), occasionally impaling passengers. Solid iron rails were the most obvious solution, but the young American iron industry could not supply enough of these, and to purchase British rails required great amounts of capital. In 1830 Robert Stephens, part owner of the Camden and Amboy rail line, solved the problem by designing a T-shaped rail that provided the strength of a solid rail without using nearly as much metal. The Stephens Trail, eighteen feet long and thirty-six pounds per yard, became the standard American rail. B & O engineers developed many such standards and practices. Specifications for road grades, car construction, and track alignment developed on the B 8tO became the industry norm for decades to come. So many rail engineers learned their craft while working on the B & O that the line became known as the "University of Railroad Engineering." Travel Hazards. In the 1830s a British visitor to America got off her train and realized that she had thirteen holes burned in her dress from the cinders that had blown back across the carriages from the locomotive's smokestack. Frequent boiler explosions led some railroads to surround passenger carriages with cotton bales while on other lines passengers occasionally had to get out and help

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THE ANNIHILATION OF SPACE AND TIME On every Monday and Thursday starting in December 1851, William Cranch Bond of the Harvard Observatory checked the mean solar time in Boston (itself set to the Greenwich, England, Prime Meridian) and then telegraphed that time to railroad stations throughout New England. From those station clocks every train conductor and engineer in the region set their own pocket watches. For the first time, clocks throughout the United States were synchronized. Before the railroads expanded into regional systems, all land time in the United States was local time. As long as rail systems were self-contained, conductors could run trains by schedules geared to local times posted at terminals. Starting in the 1840s, however, previously isolated train systems began to merge with lines using different local times, which proved dangerous. In 1841 America's first interregional line, the Western Railroad (also called the Worcester and Albany), experienced a fatal accident due to time confusion. To prevent future incidents the Western announced a policy that "the clock at the upper depot in Worcester shall be taken to be the standard time, and all constop the train because the wooden brakes could not do the job. Delays were frequent and frustrating, especially in the first years of rail travel when most railroads could only afford to build single-track lines. To avoid collisions, trains ran on strict schedules monitored by the conductors' pocket watches, and when two trains were scheduled for the same line, one had to get off on a siding and wait for the scheduled train to pass before continuing. If the scheduled train broke down, which happened often, the second train might have to wait for hours. Different railroads used different gauges (widths of track) throughout the country, especially in the South, where travelers had to change railroads six or seven times or interrupt rail travel with stage or steamboat just to get the six hundred miles from New Orleans to Charleston. Moreover, few competing railroads meeting in major cities built connecting services. In Philadelphia, served by five different railroads, passengers and shippers had to hire wagons to carry their belongings from one station to another. Ripple Effect. Despite these problems the American rail network grew exponentially in the 1840s and 1850s, from about three thousand miles of track in 1840 to thirty thousand miles in 1860—more than the rest of the world combined. Railroad trains, the first all-weather, allterrain motorized transportation in human history, drastically reduced the price of shipping commodities to market by as much as 95 percent between 1815 and 1860. These

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ductors before leaving Worcester are required to compare and regulate their time by that clock, and to see that the clocks at all other stations which they pass conform to the standard time." The Postal Service, which began using railroads in the 1830s, also encouraged railroads to adopt more stringent time controls by demanding on-time delivery of the mails. By the middle of the 1850s every regional railroad ran on a standard zone geared to a particular clock in a particular locality, and many were now getting telegraphed time. Even that archfoe of modern industrial society Henry David Thoreau noted with appreciation the newfound predictability of the trains running on the Fitchburg Railroad along Walden Pond: "they go and come with such precision, and their whistle can be heard so far," he wrote, "that farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates the whole country." Source: Carlene Stephens, "'The Most Reliable Time'; William Bond, the New England Railroads, and Time Awareness in 19th-century America," Technology and Culture, 30 (January 1989): 1-24.

savings rippled through the economy. Farmers near rail routes saw their land values rise and the value of their crops increase, adding to their ability to buy manufactured goods. Increased agricultural spending power helped expand the nation's industrial sector, but so too did the demands of rail construction and finance. Steel production rose, and stock markets boomed as a result. Not everyone, however, liked these changes. Especially upset were the canal companies losing business to railroads, tavern owners on turnpikes no longer used for freight shipping, the owners of stock in failed railroads, the communities bypassed by rail routes, and the Saint Louis and New Orleans steamboat companies that lost freight business to the eastern roads. "A Perfect Passion." By the 1850s one visiting Frenchman could write that Americans had a "perfect passion" for railroads, loving them "as a lover loves his mistress." Economic advantages were of course paramount in America's love affair with the railroad, but cultural factors played a part as well. For example, railroads seemed a "democratic" transportation medium. As Daniel Webster noted in an 1847 speech, "railroads equalize the condition of men. The richest must travel in the cars, for there they travel fastest; the poorest can travel in the cars, while they could not travel otherwise, because this mode of conveyance costs but little time or money." He might have added that unlike European railroads, American passenger cars were not divided by class of service—first class for the

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A stagecoach on the Kalamazoo Line in Michigan, circa 1850

wealthy, third for the "peasants." Americans, or at least white Americans, had only one class of passenger service (black people were often forced to sit in a separate section of the car), and that service by the 1850s was quite elegant even by European standards, with upholstered seats (convertible to beds) and fine woodwork gracing the carriages. With the more-powerful locomotives of the 1850s and tracks finally bridging the Alleghenies and the nation's biggest rivers, the railroad now seemed to many Americans a "force of nature," an almost living example of America's republican ingenuity, its expanding imperial reach, and growing international prestige. Sources: Eugene Alvarez, Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828-1860 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1974); Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); James S. Dilts, The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, The Nations First Railroad, 1828-1853 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1996); D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume II: Continental America, 1800-1867 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993); John Stover, History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1961).

STAGECOACH LINES Transit before Railroads. If a person wanted to get from one town to another quickly in 1815, especially between the major cities on the Eastern seaboard, he or she took a stagecoach. The construction of good turnpikes had cut the length of a stagecoach journey from Boston to New York by more than half between 1800 and the early 1830s, from seventy-four hours and three overCOMMUNICATIONS 125

nights to just over thirty-three hours with no overnight stops. With their horse relays and colorful but often reckless drivers, the express stages could sometimes muster eleven and one-half miles an hour on the most competitive routes. The cost to customers for such blazing speed was about seven cents a mile and severely shaken internal organs, especially on the rougher Western roads. In fact, beyond the Appalachians, the most popular slang terms for stagecoaches were the "shake guts" and "spankers." Yet stagecoaches did more than move passengers. As late as 1847, well into the steamboat and railroad eras, 80 percent of the nation's mail still moved by horseback or stage. Railroads, canals, and steamboats eventually replaced the stage as the favored means of passenger travel on the longer routes, but the stages continued as an important feeder link to these other modes of transportation. Wagon Maker's Art. The skilled wagon makers who fashioned stagecoaches designed them to catch attention and withstand harsh punishment. Painted cobalt blue, bright vermillion, or shiny red (the traditional color for mail stages), the best stagecoaches also sported murals on their sides depicting forest scenes or portraits of the owner's favorite politician; Andrew Jackson was a popular stagecoach portrait subject in the West. Traditionally owners named stages after cities or states. Thus, Lucius W. Stockton, owner of the National Road Company, named some of his coaches New Orleans, Keystone, Buckeye, and Natchez. Stages also came in several designs, from a streamlined but impractical egg shape modeled after the personal carriage to the workhorse Troy, a flattopped behemoth that carried nine passengers inside and two out. One of the more popular models on the Na125

A side-wheeler steamboat used on the Ohio River, circa 1820

tional Road, the Concord coach, weighed in at between 1,400 and 2,250 pounds, with ten-and-one-half-inch wheel hubs and a wheelbase of six feet, two inches. All of this rested on metal springs suspended high above the ground to provide clearance over unbridged streams and obstructions such as stumps and boulders that littered Western roads. Costing anywhere from $600 to $1,000 to build, antebellum stagecoaches represented a significant investment, and the owners of the largest lines might have a dozen in operation at the same time. Land Admirals. Like their drivers, the owners of the main Western stage lines in the 1830s, sometimes referred to as "Land Admirals," were a colorful and competitive group of characters. Some of the owners, such as six-foot, five-inch Scotsman James Reeside of the Good Intent Line, had begun their careers as drivers. Reeside served as a teamster during the War of 1812, hauling military cargoes from Baltimore to Pittsburgh and Canada. With his wartime experience and profits he went into the stage business and within a few years won control of the United States mail route between Philadelphia and New York. Through hard driving and good management he cut the running time on that route from twenty-three to twelve hours and soon added several more mail lines. By the mid 1820s Reeside had become one of the largest mail contractors in the country, with one thousand horses at his disposal and four hundred employees. Stockton's National Road Line represented Reeside's main rival on the Western roads, and the competition between these two entrepreneurs usually spilled over into competition between their best drivers, Peter Burdine and Redding Bunting. In 1846 Bunting carried Folk's Mexican war message from Cumberland, Maryland, over the steepest part of the National Road to Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), a distance of 131 miles, in only twelve hours. Most commentators, however, considered Burdine the fastest driver in the West, as noted in a popular jingle: "If you take a seat in Stockton's line, You are sure to be passed by Peter Burdine." State laws made stagecoach racing illegal and sub-

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jected violators to fines and damages where necessary, but passengers continued to report that drivers tried to pass the coaches of rival lines while not allowing themselves to be passed by any other coaches. Democratic Experience. American stagecoach lines, like the nation's railroads, made no distinction by rank or class when ordering the arrangement of passengers. True, the richest could rent a coach all to themselves, but most stage passengers mingled together in the most democratic of ways. Drinking, gambling, and political discussions helped pass the time on the long journeys. A volatile mix at the best of times, politics and drinking not infrequently led to violence on the stagecoaches. Theodore Weld, ardent moralist and abolitionist, was not particularly well liked in the mostly antiblack, antireform Midwest, and on one trip along the National Road he found himself thrown into a flooded creek by his fellow passengers, presumably for letting loose one of his tirades in the wrong company. Frederick Douglass endured much-harsher treatment. Denied a place in some coaches because of his color, when he did ride, Douglass was sometimes met with heckling or violence. In Indiana an antiabolition mob dragged him from a coach and beat him viciously, then left him on the roadside. Sources: Philip D. Jordan, The National Road (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

STEAMBOATS Inventors. Robert Fulton gets well-deserved credit for building an economically useful combination of steam engine and hull design, but he was certainly not the first person to build a steamboat, nor even the first American to do so. The Englishman Jonathan Hull patented a steamboat in 1737, and Americans James Rumsey, John Stevens, and James Fitch all ran working steamboats on American rivers before Fulton launched

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The Steamboat (later called the Clermont) in 1807. In 1805 Oliver Evans, of automatic flour-milling fame, launched his own version of a steam wagon-steamboat called the Orukter Amphibolos. In July of that year Evans's contraption, a seventeen-ton steam engine on wheels, trundled around downtown Philadelphia and then plunged into the Schuylkill River, where its paddle wheels took over and pushed the vessel sixteen miles to a dock on the Delaware. Evans would later design an important new steamboat engine, but it was Fulton's successful ascension of the Hudson from New York to Albany and back in August 1807 that proved the practicability of steam travel. Fulton had many advantages over his competitors, including technical virtuosity; he had previously invented a submarine, a marble-cutting machine, and several types of bridges. But Fulton also had the backing of one of the richest men in America, Robert Livingston, who not only possessed great wealth but also happened to hold two monopolies on steam navigation, one granted by the New York state legislature for the state's rivers and one granted by the Louisiana Territory for the lower Mississippi valley. Monopoly. Fulton's success on the Hudson generated a wave of public enthusiasm for steamboat building and travel. The steamboat seemed especially suited for the developing frontier along the great interior river system formed by the Ohio, the Mississippi, and their tributaries. In 1811, four years after the successful run of th Clermont, Fulton launched the New Orleans from a Pittsburgh shipyard and sent her downriver on the first successful steamboat run to its namesake city. Soon Fulton had a regular shuttle running between New Orleans and the cotton port of Natchez. The Fulton-Livingston monopoly, however, was short-lived. Competitors began to build their own boats, which, unlike roads, canals, or railroads, did not require years of expensive construction; once American shipyards gained some experience, they could construct medium-size vessels for $20,000 and even the grandest models for around $60,000. The monopoly could not keep other boats off the rivers, which after all were public highways. And in an age devoted to increasing economic opportunity for all, the FultonLivingston monopoly rankled the public as well as other steamboat companies. Constantly under attack in the courts, the monopoly finally fell in the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). Heavy Dew. The end of the Fulton monopoly ushered in a new era of rapid growth in the steamboat industry. By the 1850s steamboats dominated river transportation, especially in the West where there were only 17 steamboats in 1817, but 727 by 1855. Numbers, however, tell only half the story. Western rivers also presented a challenge to steamboat designers. Except for the Mississippi, most Western rivers were shallow, and in seasons of drought, water levels could fluctuate as much as 40 feet in a few weeks. As a result Western steamboat pilots had to relearn the rivers constantly, and the deep-draft de-

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sign of eastern vessels simply would not work out west. In response to these problems Western builders came up with the Mississippi steamer, a long, wide vessel of shallow draft and light construction with an on-deck engine. According to historian George Rogers Taylor, by the late 1830s at least 20 of these new steamboats on the Ohio could navigate in only 20 inches of water. Contemporaries claimed they could "run on a heavy dew." Obstacle Course. Mark Twain made the tobaccochewing, ever-cussing, always-wary riverboat pilot a larger-than-life figure in American culture, but he did not exaggerate the dangers such men encountered. Huge snags, sandbars, and constantly shifting channels made the Mississippi River a two-thousand-mile obstacle course, described by Charles Dickens in 1842 as "an enormous ditch . . . choked and obstructed everywhere by EXPLOSION OF THE MOSELLE

Late in the afternoon of 25 April 1838 the 150-ton steamboat Moselle pulled away from the Cincinnati wharf and headed east on the Ohio River to pick up a few passengers at a small landing before heading back downstream on her way to Saint Louis. During the stop the engineer kept the safety valve loaded down and the boiler fires at full blast, preserving steam pressure but violating accepted safety procedures. As the Moselle backed away from the landing, three of her four boilers exploded with a deafening roar, spewing steam, boiler parts, and fragments of bodies all over the waterfront. What was left of the Moselle drifted out into the current and began to sink; within fifteen minutes only the smokestacks and a segment of the upper decks still showed above the surface. Rescuers could only save about half of the passengers, and many who were not killed by the initial blast drowned m midstream. All told, about half of the 280 people on the Moselle died, the biggest steamboat catastrophe to that time. Between 1816 and 1848 steamboat explosions in the United States cost almost 1,800 lives and destroyed 230 boats, most due to poor boiler design and inexperienced engineers. When two other steamboats blew up within weeks of the Moselle> the Oronoko in the West and the Pul&ski in the East, Congress finally passed regulatory legislation for "the better security of the lives of the passengers." The 1838 bill proved largely ineffective, however, and it would take another series of disasters in the late 1840s to bring about effective safety legislation in 1852. Sources: Louis C, Hunter,Steambeat on the Western Riverse: An Econo

Source: Louis C. Hunter, Steamboat on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technol

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huge logs and forest trees." Every spring high water scoured and collapsed the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi, sending huge trees crashing into the swirling waters; John James Audubon noted sycamores fourteen feet in diameter on the Ohio shore in the 1830s. At one time the Red River was blocked by a two-hundredmile-long raft of trees. With no levees or concrete channels, in big flood periods the ever-curving lower Mississippi was especially prone to cutting across one of its meanders to make a new channel for itself. Steamboat pilots had to rely on experience, instincts, and word-of-mouth to guide their way through the treacherous and shifting channels, and they did not always make it. One narrow defile on the Ohio carried the nickname The Graveyard because of the number of wrecks that occurred in its snag-choked channel. Floating Palaces. The dangers of the river contrasted sharply with the luxurious accommodations available onboard the finer steamboats, which featured grand saloons running the three-hundred-foot length of the boat; elegant, heavy wood furniture; soaring gilded ceilings; and (on the fanciest boats) mirror-lined walls even in the engine rooms. Those who could afford them traveled in private cabins on the upper decks while poorer passengers slept on the freight decks, using cotton bales or grain sacks for beds. For the well-off, fine food, drinking, and gambling broke the monotony of the two-week journeys up the Mississippi and Ohio. So too did the famous steamboat races. Steamboat Races. Organized races between rival steamers became the stuff of legend on the Mississippi, but far more common were the impromptu battles between captains who tried to beat each other to the next landing to pick up more business. These chance encounters often erupted into races that lasted for days, with excited passengers egging the captains on to put on more fuel and speed. The connection between racing and steamboat boiler explosions has always been difficult to make precisely, but it was certainly true that many engineers and captains tied down safety valves on steam engines and stoked their boilers with the most flammable resinous woods to maximize speed. Federal safety legislation in 1838 and 1852 largely ended this sort of activity, but races continued to occur well after the Civil War. Sources: Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860, Economic History of the United States, volume 4 (New York: Holt, 1951).

THE TELEGRAPH Invention. Samuel F. B. Morse was not the only contender for the tide of inventor of the telegraph. By the late 1830s many other inventors had come up with similar devices, but it was Morse who managed to outlast the other sixty-two claimants. One reason the telegraph attracted so many inventors was that the technology of sending communications through a wire was not particularly complex. An operator tapped out a message by opening and closing an

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electric circuit in a coded pattern while at the receiving end the current flowed through an electromagnet which moved a long arm (much like a doorbell works), typing out the message as a series of dots and spaces on a strip of paper. Morse, however, was the first to prove the idea practicable, with the use of his flexible "Morse code" of dots and dashes to represent letters. In 1840 Morse managed to patent his telegraph, but investors balked at the invention, and it took three more years of mechanical tinkering and political lobbying before Morse could convince Congress to fund an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore, at a cost of $30,000. "The Great Highway of Thought." Finished on schedule, Morse officially opened the first intercity electromagnetic telegraph in the world on 24 May 1844 by sending from Washington to Baltimore the message "What Hath God Wrought." Five days later came the most publicized use of the early telegraph. Morse's agent in Baltimore had been covering the Democratic Party's convention in that city, and on 29 May he transmitted to Morse at the Capitol the surprising news that James K. Polk, the nation's first "dark horse" candidate, had just been nominated for president. Democrats still in Washington sent back their congratulations to Polk, which were promptly read aloud on the convention floor. For the politicians crowding around Morse in the Capitol, and the newspapermen at the Baltimore end of the line, this event showed the revolutionary potential of the telegraph. For the first time in human history, in the words of historian Menahem Blondheim, "persons at great distances from each other could interact in virtually real time," using a communications medium that was not dependent on the speed of a messenger. As one wondering commentator put it, "time and space" had been "overcome." Business Applications. Morse proved the telegraph would work, but at first no one seemed to know what to do with the new gadget. The government only used the line from Washington to Baltimore three times in its first year. Traffic was so slow that a few people proposed using the line for a long-distance chess game. The only high-volume users were the newspapers and commercial shippers of Baltimore and Washington. Such light use convinced Congress that a federally owned system could never pay for itself, and they refused to fund the telegraph's development. Consequently, Morse and his partners transferred their rights to private development corporations. By the mid 1850s six regional companies had constructed twenty-three thousand miles of telegraph lines. Once lines extended between major commercial and news centers, the traffic became enormous. The telegraph virtually created the agricultural commodities markets, making possible not only the rapid transmission of crop prices around the nation but also better integration of supply and demand. Railroads used the lines to ensure the safety of their trains and to serve their freight customers better by tracking shipments. Newspapers. Telegraphs eventually became indispensable to the transportation industry, but the heaviest initial users were the highly competitive daily newspapers, who lived

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and died by the "scoop." At first some newspapers tried to monopolize the new medium by buying up all the time on a telegraph line between major cities such as New York and Washington. If no breaking news arrived at either end of the line, agents of the papers would simply transmit sections of the Bible to keep the line open. On slow days operators might get all the way from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Telegraph companies quickly changed the first-come-firstserved policy that made these practices possible, opting instead for a fifteen-minute maximum-use rule. Unable to monopolize the lines, newspapers cooperated to form the Associated Press in 1848, an organization in which the big dailies formed "press pools" to share nonlocal news coming

in over the wires. Another effect of the fifteen-minute rule was to make time available for individuals, resulting in an exponential increase in private transmissions between distant friends and relatives, one of Morse's original goals for the telegraph. Sources: Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); Carleton Mabee, The American Leonardo: A Life of 'Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: Knopf, 1944); Robert L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832-1866 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947).

HEADLINE MAKERS

HORACE GREELEY

The Written Word. Horace Greeley was born into a poor family in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1811. Greeley's father always struggled and could not provide his son with much in the way of an education, but Greeley took advantage of the family's few William Shakespeare works, and his early apprenticeship as a printer with the Northern Spectator of East Poultney, Vermont, gave him exposure to the news of the day. Not long after the Northern Spectator failed in 1830, Greeley stuffed his possessions into a bandana and walked to New York, determined to make a living as a newspaperman. Living in a boardinghouse for $2.50 a week, Greeley scraped by as a typesetter but continued to feed his appetite for politics and writing by regularly contributing articles to the Daily Whig, one of the many newspapers run by the Whig Party. In 1840 Thurlow Weed and other prominent Whigs tagged Greeley for the editorship of the Log Cabin, the Whig Party newspaper organized to promote the hugely successful William Henry Harrison presidential campaign.

son campaign, by April 1841 he was able to raise the capital to launch the New York Tribune into the crowded and competitive New York newspaper market. Between the sensationalism of the penny press and the "staid correctness" of William Cullen Bryant's Evening Post, Greeley saw room for a newspaper that advocated political reform but did so in good taste. To attract this audience Greeley assembled what was probably the best staff of writers in the nation, including Margaret Fuller (literary reviewer and woman's rights activist), Charles A. Dana (later editor of the New York Sun), and Bayard Taylor. In an era when newspapers frequently influenced the nation's political agenda, Greeley's Tribune became the most influential of all. The circulation of the Tribune reached 287,750 on the eve of the Civil War, making it the "political bible" of the North. Greeley's views on Western lands, his opposition to immigration restriction, and his virulent hatred of slavery all found a place in the pages of the Tribune and eventually in the platforms of American political parties. Greeley augmented his paper's reputation by giving frequent lectures on every conceivable issue of moral reform, from agricultural science to abolitionism. Greeley's moral earnestness, combined with his baggy trousers, white socks, and absent-minded manner made him an immensely popular figure. According to historian Menahem Blondheim, Greeley was known to stick mail in his winter coat on the last cold day of spring and then forget about it until he put the same coat back on six months later.

New York Tribune. Greeley had long wanted to get into New York City's exploding newspaper business. With the reputation and contacts made from his work on the Harri-

Go West Young Man. Despite his popularity, many of Greeley's views were considered radical. He regularly corresponded with Karl Marx and for two years allowed the so-

1811-1872

NEWSPAPER EDITOR AND POLITICIAN

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cialist Fourierists to use the front page of the Tribune to publish their unusual ideas for social reorganization. In an age when abolitionism was not always popular he became a fierce opponent of slavery in the South while simultaneously attacking Northern corporations for exploiting their factory workers. Among his readership, however, Greeley was perhaps best known as an advocate of the free distribution of federally owned Western lands to migrating settlers, a notion that became law with the Homestead Act of 1862. A charter member of the Republican Party, Greeley adhered closely to the party dictum that America should be a land of "free soil, free labor, free men." Greeley saw in the nation's Western lands a perpetual opportunity for any hardworking individual to achieve independence and economic security. This philosophy is embodied in the phrase for which Greeley is best known, "Go West Young Man," although it was a newspaperman named John Soule from Terre Haute, Indiana, who first wrote the words. Civil War and Political Failure. During the Civil War, Greeley remained a staunch supporter of the Union and the Republican Party, especially its radical wing. But he nonetheless took editorial positions during and after the war that opened him to intense criticism. From the first he saw the conflict not only as a fight to preserve the Union but also a holy war to abolish slavery, an unpopular position among many moderate Republicans and among almost all Democrats. Greeley s vacillation over supporting Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election, his advocacy of peace with the South in 1864-1865, and his call for full civil equality for freedmen after the war all eroded his public image. When Greeley ran for president in 1872, he became the object of vicious assaults in the press, including scathing cartoons by Thomas Nast. When he lost the election to Ulysses S. Grant and subsequently was edged out of active service in the Tribune, Greeley lost heart and died on 29 November 1872. Sources: Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader (New York: Hill ScWang, 1953).

SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 1791-1872

INVENTOR, TELEGRAPH PIONEER Gilded Youth. Born in 1791 to a prominent Federalist and Calvinist family in the Boston area, young Samuel Finley Breese Morse had the best that America could offer and much of the best that Europe could offer as well. Child of a respected clergyman and scholar, young Finley grew up

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in a loving and supportive family, was educated at Phillips Academy at Andover, and at Yale College mingled with the best and brightest minds in America, including John C. Calhoun, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper. In 1811 he embarked for Europe to study art and portraiture at the Royal Academy in London. London was the artistic and commercial center of the Western world in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and Morse relished the atmosphere of the bustling metropolis. He also worked hard at his craft, winning prizes and the attention of royal portrait painters such as Benjamin West and spending hours at the British Museum copying the techniques of the old masters. Yet Morse found more than enough time in the day to rub elbows with the literary and political lights of the time, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and William Wilberforce. Portrait Painter. Returning to the United States after the War of 1812, Morse found a career as a portrait painter, and a bride, Lucretia Pickering Walker. By the early 1820s Morse was considered one of the preeminent portraitists in America, and in 1825 he won the coveted commission to paint the Marquis de Lafayette on the latter's triumphal tour of America. Meeting in Washington, Morse wrote home to his wife how struck he was by the living legend, "the very man who spent his youth . . . to bring about our happy Revolution; the friend and companion of Washington." What Morse did not know was that the day before he wrote this letter, his wife had died suddenly in New Haven, Connecticut. Communications were so slow that by the time he received news of her death, she had already been laid to rest. Morse never substantiated the connection, but some think that being denied one last conversation with his wife became one of the motivations for his development of the telegraph. Spark of Inspiration. By the 1830s Morse had begun toying with the idea of sending signals over wires using electricity. On a journey to France early in the decade he observed the French semaphore system, which relayed messages cross-country by means of flags in signal stations. But, as Morse commented to his fellow passengers on his return trip, "this will not be fast enough" for America; "the lightning would serve us better." He contemplated a method for sending electrical pulses through wires and in his notebook sketched out the first draft of his "code," the dots and dashes that would allow him to convert written messages into electronic signals. Contenders for the Prize. Morse did little more about the telegraph until 1837, when a Frenchman announced the completion of a system that could send messages electronically. Although the French system differed substantially from Morse's design, it pushed him to take quick action, worrying that another contender would beat him to the punch. In October 1837 Morse sent a caveat to the Patent Office describing his

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designs and announcing his intention of making a full patent application soon. With technical advice from future partners Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail, Morse learned how to boost the current in his telegraph wires by increasing the intensity of the voltage from his batteries. By November 1837 the three men were able to give a public demonstration of the telegraph at New York University by sending a message through ten miles of wire mounted on reels in a classroom. Public demonstrations and coverage in the New York Observer attracted a storm of competing claimants, leading Morse to comment bitterly that "many stand ready to snatch the prize, or at least claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention seems certain." Success. Raising capital for the development of the telegraph, improving and demonstrating his system, and overcoming his many skeptics consumed the next seven years of Morse's life. But he had certain advantages. First, although two British inventors beat him by eight days, Morse was able to patent his version of the telegraph by 1840. Second, his system consistently worked in demonstrations (with one embarrassing exception when boats in the Hudson unintentionally severed his underwater line with their metal anchors), attracting more support. Third, Morse's prominent family background, his experience as a portraitist and newspaper publisher, and decades of socializing among the nation's elite yielded him access to the highest political circles. In 1843 Morse was able to convince Congress (which included his acquaintances Calhoun and John Quincy Adams) to provide $30,000 to fund a demonstration line from Washington to Baltimore that ostensibly would aid the Post Office in its duties. Skeptics still abounded. The postmaster general, in charge of overseeing the appropriation, assigned someone to keep an eye on that "impracticable or crazy" painter. Despite unscrupulous contractors and a decision midway through the project to run the telegraph lines on poles along the Baltimore and Ohio instead of through underground pipes, the line to Baltimore was soon completed. On 24 May 1844, in front of a crowd of dignitaries in the Supreme Court chambers, Morse sent and then received from Baltimore the first official message over the telegraph: "What Hath God Wrought." Aftermath. For Morse the telegraph proved to be a mixed blessing. He made a significant amount of money transferring his telegraph rights to the companies that actually built the lines, but he also had to spend years in court protecting his patent and fighting an unscrupulous partner, the former congressman Fogg Smith. In 1854 the Supreme Court finally ruled that Morse's patent was original. Freed from financial burdens, Morse found time to run unsuccessfully for Congress, become a cofounder of Vassar College in 1861, serve as president of the National Academy of COMMUNICATIONS

Design, and even try a return to painting before his death in 1872. Sources: Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); Carleton Mabee, American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: Knopf, 1943).

HENRY M. SHREVE 1785-1851

STEAMBOAT PIONEER Frontier Childhood. Henry Shreve's father, Israel, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, but it cost him dearly. The British destroyed his New Jersey farm, and his Quaker congregation drove him from the church community as punishment for taking up arms. In July 1788 Israel decided to take his family, including threeyear-old Henry, out to the western Pennsylvania frontier to start over again. In Fayette County, along the banks of the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny Rivers, young Henry grew up watching boatmen, among them his own brother John, sail off on trading expeditions down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and on to New Orleans or the West Indies, returning months later with tales of their adventures. The young Shreve heard these stories of far-off places and dreamed of following the river himself. Professional Riverman. At fourteen, after his father died, Henry began working on the keelboats, barges, and pirogues that annually ventured downriver from western Pennsylvania. By the time he was twenty-one Shreve was an experienced riverman, and in the summer of 1807 he decided to go into business for himself. At Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela, Shreve built his own keelboat (thirty-five-ton capacity), hired his own crew of ten, and headed for the Mississippi. For the next three years Shreve carried manufactured goods from Pittsburgh down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to Saint Louis, returning with furs for the Eastern and European markets. Encouraged by his success, Shreve built a larger boat and in 1810 began shipping lead from the Galena district (upriver from Saint Louis) to New Orleans and Philadelphia, coming into direct competition with the British, who previously dominated trade on the upper Mississippi. Soon commercial competition with the British took more-violent form with the outbreak of war in 1812. Wartime Opportunity. Like many good businessmen, Shreve saw in the conflict with England an opportunity for profit. With the British blockade closing down shipping lanes on the coastwide trade with New Orleans, Eastern merchants would have to depend more than ever on the in-

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terior water route to the South while New Orleans merchants would have to find some way to get their goods north and east. Additional keelboats might accommodate the increase in downstream traffic, but only the new steamboats could hope to handle a sharp rise in upstream freight volume. But there were two problems. First, no steamboat had yet been able to ascend the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Second, the Robert Fulton-Robert Livingston partnership still claimed a legal monopoly on the steamboat trade of the lower Mississippi, and their steamboats were too weak to make the ascent. Moreover, the monopoly's New Orleans lawyers threatened to confiscate any steamboat that tried to succeed where they had failed. Knowing the potential of the wartime river trade, Shreve decided to challenge the monopoly anyway. He invested in a new and more powerful steamboat under construction in Pennsylvania and then offered to captain the vessel on its maiden voyage to New Orleans. On the first day in December 1814 Shreve loosed the forty-five-ton stern wheeler Enterprise from its Pittsburgh moorings and headed south with a cargo of ammunition and arms destined for Andrew Jackson and New Orleans. The Enterprise. Two weeks later Shreve landed in a city under attack. The British fleet controlled the Mississippi outlets, and red-coated troops were poised to descend on the city. Andrew Jackson's army stood in the way, and Jackson not only needed Shreve's cargo but also needed Shreve's steamboat. For the next several weeks Shreve ferried supplies to the downriver forts past British batteries, ran reinforcements down from the North, and finally manned a cannon himself during the decisive battle on 8 January 1815. None of this kept the Livingston family from bringing suit against Shreve and taking the Enterprise into custody after the battle. But Shreve's lawyer managed to get the boat released in a few hours, and Shreve wasted no time in setting off on the historic return voyage to Pittsburgh. An Inland Sea. Shreve chose an opportune time to attempt to ascend the Mississippi. The river had overflowed its banks, reducing the current's speed and providing a relatively placid inland sea for the small engines of the Enterprise to push against. In fact, Shreve apparently spent as much time sailing over the flooded flatlands as he did in the river's channel. Nevertheless, when he landed at Pittsburgh fifty-four days later, the Enterprise became not only the first steamboat to ascend the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers but also the first to make the round-trip to New Orleans and back. Shreve was the toast of the upper Ohio, attending dinners in his honor in Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Brownsville. Acknowledging the captain's accomplishment, the Niks Weekly Register said: "how do the rivers and canals of this old world dwindle into insignificance compared with this, and what a prospect of commerce is held out to the immense regions of the West by means of these boats." Steamboat Entrepreneur. Having traded on the Mississippi for fifteen years, Shreve knew exactly "what prospect of commerce" the steamboat offered. Within months of his arrival in Pittsburgh, Shreve began designing and building

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his own boat at Wheeling. The Washington would be unlike any other steamboat on the river. It had a shallow draft, and its 100-horsepower high-pressure engine (significantly more powerful than the Fulton engines) could make headway against even the strongest Mississippi current. Moreover, Shreve placed the engine on the surface deck, with the boilers on the uppermost deck, leaving the hold for cargo. Finally, unlike earlier steamboats, the Washington actually boasted two floors above the waterline, the topmost for passenger accommodations, including a large bar and spacious cabins. When one of the boilers on the Washington blew up on its maiden voyage, killing fourteen, many thought Shreve's designs were folly. But Shreve repaired the boat, sailed to New Orleans in 1818, and returned with a full complement of passengers and 150 tons of freight. By the end of its second round-trip the Washington had not only paid for itself but also yielded a profit of $1,700 for its owners. Model for an Era. Like most steamboats, the Washington wore out after six years of service. Nonetheless, its design had become a model for the steamboat age. But Shreve soon came out with yet another innovative steamboat, the George Washington. Completed in 1824, the George Washington was a side wheeler rather than a stern wheeler, and the two wheels could move independently, making it possible to turn the vessel easily. The new vessel, moreover, had four decks and a pilot house balanced on its almost flat hull. The four decks allowed Shreve to offer more extensive and luxurious lodgings for passengers. "None of the sleeping rooms have more than two beds," one British traveler wrote, "and a gallery and verandah extends entirely around the vessel. . . commanding a fine view of the surrounding scenery." The boat also featured a circulating library and "a smoking and drinking room for the gentlemen." With their innovative engineering and advanced passenger accommodations, Shreve's steamboat designs helped set the standard for the steamboat era. Government Service. In 1826 Shreve's life took an abrupt turn when he was commissioned head of the Office of Superintendent of Western River Improvement at an annual salary of $5,000, "less than could be made on a single trip of a good steamboat to New Orleans." Shreve liked the challenge of the job, which included responsibility for improving river navigation. To solve the problem of removing snags, or fallen trees, from the river Shreve designed an unusual double-hulled steam vessel that he thought would do the job. In April 1829 the Heliopolis set sail under Shreve's command and headed for the most dangerous snagridden portions of the Mississippi. With its complicated system of beams, windlasses, levers, and rollers, the Heliopolis outperformed even the optimistic expectations of its designer. Shreve reported to Washington that he had sailed the ship to "plum point (the Most dangerous place on the Mississippi River) where I arrived at 12 m. There I made the first attempt to remove snags with the boat &c am proud to say the performance far exceeded my most sanguine ex-

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pectations. In eleven hours that whole Forrest of formidable snags . . . was effectually removed." The "Great Raft." Shreve next turned to the twohundred-mile-long raft of logs that clogged the Red River in upper Louisiana. This "Great Raft" had been building up for hundreds of years, and the river had so spread out above the obstruction that the entire area had become a maze of bayous, marshes, and lakes. At some points the mat of logs had grown so thick that horsemen could ride over the top of the river and trees grew from the rotting wood to wave over the waterway. Upstream settlers clamored for help in opening the river to commerce with New Orleans. Beginning work on the raft in 1833, Shreve and his crew cleared seventy miles in the first year despite suffering from oppressive heat, alligators, and hordes of mosquitoes. Three hundred thousand dollars and four years later the Red River ran free, and Shreve had a town named after him for the achievement. In less than ten years Shreve and his snag boats cleared the Mississippi, the Red, the Ohio, the Arkansas, and the Cumberland Rivers, leaving only annual federal maintenance to keep newly felled trees from settling into the beds again. Later Life. Shreve also used his office as a platform to promote improved steamboat safety. He advocated federal testing of steamboat boilers as well as the official inspection of older, more dangerous boats. Like most civil servants, however, he found that probity and efficiency did not deflect constant public criticism while his bureaucratic supervisors in Washington kept up an insistent demand for completed paperwork and sent suspicious letters threatening audits of his accounts. When he was finally fired in 1841 by the incoming Whig administration, Shreve did not seem chagrined. He moved to a plantation outside Saint Louis, invested in local real estate, became a founder of the Pacific Railroad Company, and died a prosperous and contented man in March 1851. Source: Florence L. Dorsey, Master of the Mississippi: Henry Shreve and the Conquest of the Mississippi (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941).

ITHIEL TOWN

1784-1844

BRIDGE BUILDER Architect. As a boy growing up in rural Connecticut, Ithiel Town excelled at doing the intricate carpentry necessary to build the massive timber-frame houses common still in the New England landscape. Moving to Boston as a young adult, Town continued to pursue building design under the COMMUNICATIONS

tutelage of one of the nation's best-known authors of architectural books, Asher Benjamin. Town launched his professional career as an architect by designing and building the Center Church on the town green in New Haven, Connecticut. He managed to build the spire of the church inside the tower and then lift it into place in less than three hours using a special windlass. His reputation established, Town won commissions to design several important public buildings across the country, including the Wall Street Customshouse, state buildings in New Haven and Indianapolis, and Christ Church in Hartford, Connecticut. Town eventually became one of the first two architects selected for membership in the National Academy of Design. Bridge Builder. America was known throughout the Western world for its innovative bridge designs, especially in wood. As the nation expanded rapidly westward, the roads, railroads, and canals built to link West and East required hundreds of new bridges. Yet, unlike Europe, America had neither the manpower nor the engineering skill to cross all of these streams with stone. What the nation needed were safe bridge designs that could be executed by unskilled workers and that utilized cheap, readily available building materials such as wood. Not surprisingly, the men who came up with those designs, Thomas Wernwag, Theodore Burr, and Town foremost among them, started their careers as builders and carpenters, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the load-bearing properties of various woods. Of this group Town became the most famous and the wealthiest because of his Town latticetruss bridge. Truss Design. Since the days of the Roman Empire, bridge designers had relied on arches to support the weight of bridges and their traffic. Instead of an arch, the truss bridge used "a structural assemblage of many relatively small members [pieces of wood, iron, and cable] joined together in a series of triangles that interconnect to form the bridge." The idea for the truss design went back at least to Andrea Palladio, a sixteenth-century Italian architect. American designers found the truss design particularly attractive because it did not require the wide stream-obstructing piers needed to support stone arches, and the "small members" could be made from wood and assembled by any competent carpenter. Town's design was the simplest of all. Instead of heavy timber pieces, his truss used an interlocking web or lattice of wooden boards drilled and pegged together to form a long rigid structure, usually covered by a wooden roof and sides to protect the lattice from the weather. Safe and easy to build, the Town truss was probably the most popular wooden-bridge design in antebellum America. Town charged royalties of one to two dollars per linear foot for his designs and made a fortune in just a few decades. A few Town truss bridges still survive, but the longest ever constructed—the twenty-nine-hundred-

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foot James River bridge at Richmond, Virginia—was destroyed by the Confederate army as it retreated from the city in 1865. Income from his bridge designs gave Town the freedom to travel, including a tour of Europe with Samuel F. B. Morse in 1829-1830, and to amass the country's "finest collection of choice books relating to architecture and the fine arts." Town died in his adopted home of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1844. Source: Llewellyn N. Edwards, A Record of History and Evolution of Early American Bridges (Orono: Maine University Press, 1959).

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 1794-1877

RAILROAD AND STEAMSHIP PROMOTER Hard-Boiled Apprenticeship. Born on Staten Island in 1794, Cornelius Vanderbilt left school at eleven to go to work. While still a teenager Vanderbilt started his own ferry service in New York harbor, and the War of 1812 found him investing in his own fleet of sailing ships, competing on some of the major coastal routes to the South and New England. But the ambitious young man wanted to get into the steamship business, and in 1818 he hired on as a steam-ferry captain with Thomas Gibbons, who was in the process of defying the Fulton-Livingston steam navigation monopoly in the profitable New York harbor market, now owned by Aaron Ogden. Until the Supreme Court ended steamboat monopolies in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) Gibbons operated his ferry service in violation of a state court injunction, leaving intrepid young Captain Vanderbilt to drop passengers at constantly shifting spots on the New York waterfront to avoid process servers. The experience gave Vanderbilt knowledge of the steamboat business and the capital, savvy, and competitive edge to make it in the new industry. The Commodore. By 1829 Vanderbilt had begun his own steamboat service from New York City to New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first leg in the busy and lucrative route from New York to Philadelphia. Soon he was successfully competing on the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, Providence, and Boston routes. When the gold rush started in 1849, Vanderbilt constructed a line of steamers that cut travel costs to California by 30 percent. By building his own roads across the Nicaraguan isthmus, Vanderbilt removed the extra time, expense, and danger of steaming around Cape Horn. Then in 1854 he entered the

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Atlantic packet competition by sailing head to head against the government-subsidized British Cunard Line. Worth well over $11 million by the mid 1850s, his wealth, his million-dollar fleet, and his competitive edge had earned Vanderbilt the nickname Commodore. Competitor. Vanderbilt succeeded not only because he provided the best in speed, comfort, service, and safety but also because of his ruthless tactics. On the Long Island Sound routes Vanderbilt captured market share by cutting fares to Hartford, Connecticut, from $5 to $1. In the late 1820s Vanderbilt started running two steamboats from New York City to the state capital just to force the dominant line to buy him out, which they did. Knowing that the fastest steamboats usually acquired the most business, Vanderbilt always tried to outrun his competitors. At the age of fifty-three Vanderbilt challenged John Law, a competing steamboat owner, to a race from New York to Sing Sing with a $1,000 prize. Vanderbilt lost the race, but unlike Law he raced his own boat. With Vanderbilt it was always personal, and when competitors found out he was entering their particular regions, they often bought him off rather than deal with his bulldog mentality. When Vanderbilt threatened to open a Panama steamboat service in addition to his Nicaraguan line, the owners of the current Panamanian line paid him $56,000 a month just to stay away. In short, Vanderbilt became for many the model, for better or worse, of the nineteenth-century American business tycoon, the quintessential "robber baron." "The Public Be Damned." By the late 1850s Vanderbilt had decided it was time to try his hand at the railroad business. Employing his usual combination of shrewd investment strategy and hardball business tactics, Vanderbilt first gained control of several New York rail lines and then consolidated them into the New York Central, later purchasing two crucial rail connections to the Chicago market. With an estate estimated at $100 million Vanderbilt was considered the richest man in New York City when he died, and his children would continue the Vanderbilt legacy well into the next century. But Vanderbilt's baronic style of business eventually alienated the American public. Vanderbilt had always maintained that railroads were "not run on sentiment, b u t . . . to pay" and when asked by a reporter in the midst of the terrible depression of 1873-1877, "But don't you run it [the New York Central] for the public benefit?" Vanderbilt barked back, "the public be damned." Later generations of tycoons would be reticent to voice such sentiments publicly even if they agreed privately. Sources: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of the New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Scribners, 1939); Wheaton J. Lane, Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of the Steam Age (New York: Knopf, 1942).

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PUBLICATIONS

William Cullen Bryant, An Address to the People of the United States in E eh alf of the American Copyright Club (New York, 1843); Johnathan Knight and Benjamin H. Latrobe Jr., Report upon the Plan of the Principal Rail Roads in the Northern and Middle States, and upon a Railway Structure for a New Track on the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road\ by J. Knight Chief Engineer, and Benjamin H. Latrobe (Baltimore: Lucas & Deaver, 1838); Dionysius Lardner, The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated, fifth American edition (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1836); Thomas Pope, A Treatise on Bridge Architecture (New York: A. Niven, 1811)—a text on bridge design used by builders in Britain and America;

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Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner, Die innern Communicationen der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerica [The Internal Communications of the United States of North America], 2 volumes (Vienna: Anstalt, 1842-1843)—an extensive and exhaustive report on the engineering, construction, and management of American railroads and canals from 1838 to 1839, prepared by a German civil engineer for the Russian government; United States Congress, House of Representatives, C o m m i t t e e of Commerce and M a n u f a c t u r e s , Electro-magnetic Telegraphs . . . (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Allen, 1838).

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A November 1837 pro-slavery riot in Alton, Illinois, during which abolitionist Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed (woodcut, 1838)

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EDUCATION

by STEVEN BISTRUP

CONTENTS CHRONOLOGY 138

OVERVIEW 144 TOPICS IN THE NEWS African Americans and Educational Limitations ............... 146 Prudence Crandall Closes 146 Her School Assimilation through 147 Education The Classical Curriculum,,.,., 146 Father of Pennsylvania's Schools.. 149 Common School Crusade..... .149 Walt Whitman on Punishment in Public Education ISO

Education in Rural America .... 151 District Schools 1S1 Lyceum Movement and Adult Education » . » , 152 152 Public Library Movement Normal Schools: Teaching the Teachers 153 Parochial and Private Schools . * 154 Reform Schools and Charity Schools 155 155 Sunday Schools Thomas Jefferson on Religious Intolerance 156 Science and Higher Education .«156 Teachers and Textbooks ....... 157 157 Schoolmaster of the Republic

The McGuffey Readers Women in Education

The Rise of Coeducation; Oberlin College..*..

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HEADLINE MAKERS Henry B. Barnard 161 Catharine Beecher 162 Josiah B. Holbrook 162 Mary Lyon,»., » , . 163 Horace Mann ......*......... 164 Emma Hart Wfflard 165

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159 159

Sidebars and tables are listed in italics.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1815

Edward Everett, Edward Cogswell, and George Ticknor are among the first of some ten thousand American students who further their education at German universities in the nineteenth century. The American Education Society is created to provide funds for student aid.

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1817

New York merchant Eleazar Lord and associate Divie Bethune create the New York Sunday School Union Society.

138,1T4h 3eUnitedStatesMilitaryAcademyatWestPointisreorganizedtoincorporate science and civil engineering more fully into the curriculum.

1818

Thomas Jefferson meets with legislators in Rockfish Gap to recommend a university for the state of Virginia.

1819

tem for the poor quality of its libraries, the exclusion of modern languages from the curriculum, and the lack of specialized departments.

Harvard professor George Ticknor harshly criticizes the American college sys-

Thomas Jefferson founds the University of Virginia. Emma Hart Willard publishes A Plan for Improving Female Education.

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The first Roman Catholic school in New England is founded in Boston, enrolling more than one hundred girls in its first year.

Emma Hart Willard starts an institution of higher education for women, the Troy Female Seminary, in Troy, New York. The English Classical School (later named the English High School) opens iin Boston.

1823

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A Bowdoin College instructor makes use of the blackboard for the first time in American higher education.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

At Harvard College student frustration over the rigid authoritarianism of college life leads to a riot and damage to campus buildings. The Great Rebellion forces school officials to expel forty-three seniors out of a class of seventy. Catharine Beecher opens the Hartford Female Seminary in Connecticut.

1824

The University of Virginia opens, offering students eight possible fields of study ranging from anatomy to ancient languages. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, the first entirely technical school in the United States, is founded to instruct children of mechanics and farmers in theoretical and mechanical sciences. Supporters of the Sunday school movement organize the national American Sunday School Union.

1825

Miami University in Ohio permits the substitution of modern languages, practical mathematics, and political economy for certain subjects in the traditional or classical curriculum. President Philip Lindsley of the University of Nashville adopts a curriculum that stresses vocational and research concerns over the study of Greek and Latin. Harvard institutes major changes in its curriculum as a result of the college's first institutional self-evaluation. Changes include the departmentalization of faculty and curriculum, an option for juniors and seniors to take a small number of elective courses, and the introduction of some self-pacing of the curriculum. Union College in Schenectady, New York, creates the first Greek-letter social fraternity, Kappa Alpha.

1826

Union College introduces a scientific curriculum, which includes modern languages, mathematics, and sciences, as an alternative to the classical program. Josiah Holbrook organizes the first American lyceum (adult education) in Millbury, Massachusetts.

1827

Philadelphia reformers found the Society for the Promotion of Public Schools. Samuel Griswold Goodrich begins publishing the Peter Parley textbooks.

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1828

The faculty at Yale College respond to the increasing criticism of the American college with a report that describes the purpose of higher education as providing "the discipline and furniture of the mind." Kenyon College in Knox County, Ohio, introduces faculty advising in which each student is teamed with one member of the faculty. Noah Webster publishes the first edition of his famous dictionary, which helps standardize the American language.

1829

1830

James Smithson's will leaves property to the U.S. government to be used to establish an institution for advancing knowledge. In 1846 Congress will create the Smithsonian Institute.

Columbia University adopts a program that includes both science and modern languages. The American Institute of Instruction is founded in Boston. Workingmen's parties adopt educational reform as a primary goal.

1831

Ohio University establishes a program to prepare public-school teachers. The National American Lyceum is organized and adopts a constitution. The first coeducational public high school is established in Lowell, Massachusetts. Nat Turner s uprising results in the intensification of efforts to prevent African Americans in the South from receiving formal education.

1832 Prudence Crandall begins her two-year struggle to maintain a seminary of African American girls in Canterbury, Connecticut.

1833 Oberlin College in Ohio becomes the first college to admit women to a previously all-male institution.

1834

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The Pennsylvania School Law passes.

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1835

Rensselaer Institute awards the nation's first engineering degree. There are over three thousand lyceum lecture associations in the nation. Thaddeus Stevens issues his famous defense of the school tax in Pennsylvania. Local residents destroy the racially integrated Noyes academy at Canaan, New Hampshire.

1836

Wesleyan Female College of Macon, Georgia, becomes the first degreegranting women's college in the United States. William H. McGuffey begins to publish McGujfey's Readers for grade-schoolers across the nation.

1837

New York State establishes the People's College to provide science and technical education to craftsmen. Horace Mann becomes the first secretary of Massachusetts^ newly created state board of education. Mary Lyon establishes the first fully endowed institution of higher education for women, Mount Holyoke Seminary, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Massachusetts law requires children to receive schooling prior to employment in mills and factories. Michigan enters the Union with the first constitutional provision of state responsibility for promoting and supervising public schools.

1838

Horace Mann founds the Common School Journal as an organ for the ideas of public school reformers. Henry Barnard becomes secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education. The first normal school (a formal school for the preparation of teachers) is founded in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1839

A Catholic school controversy begins in New York. In Connecticut, Henry Barnard conducts the nation's first teachers' institute. The Virginia Military Institute is founded.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

184O 1841 1842

1843 1844

1845

A total of seven institutions of all kinds exists in the nation for the higher education of women.

There are approximately two hundred parochial schools in the country.

Controversy over Bible reading and religious exercises in the public schools begins in Philadelphia.

Henry Barnard moves from Connecticut to Rhode Island to promote public education.

Horace Mann's Seventh Annual Report embroils him in conflict with Boston schoolmasters.

Union College becomes the first liberal arts college to inaugurate an engineering program. Henry Barnard becomes Rhode Island's state commissioner of public schools.

1846 Yale makes two faculty appointments in agriculture.

1847

The New York State legislature charters the tuition-free Academy of New York City, later renamed City College of New York. Yale College founds a scientific institution on its campus, the Sheffield Scientific School, and takes the first tentative steps toward the creation of a graduate school. Harvard College creates the Lawrence Scientific School, which emphasizes the study of geology and zoology. Instruction at the new school, however, does not initially lead to a bachelor's degree.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1848

ThefirststatereformschoolopensatWestborough,Massachusetts. In the Roberts case the Massachusetts Supreme Court upholds the right to maintain separate-but-equal "colored" schools.

1849

Avery College, the first black-sponsored college, opens in Pennsylvania. New Hampshire passes the first law authorizing tax-supported libraries on a statewide basis. Elizabeth Blackwell graduates from Geneva Medical College in New York as the first American woman to earn a medical degree.

1850

ThepresidentofBrownUniversity,FrancisWayland,proposesaradicallynew

curriculum that increases the number of science courses as well as offering students a greater degree of freedom in the selection of courses and majors. Insufficient funding and lack of public support end the experiment within four years.

Antoinette Brown becomes the first American woman to earn a degree in theology, graduating from Oberlin College.

Frontispiece for the 1819 revised edition of Noah Webster's The American Spelling Book

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OVERVIEW

Changing Society. From 1815 to 1850 successive waves of economic and social change swept across the nation. Revolutions in transportation, from the canal boom of the 1820s to the rapid spread of railroads, stimulated interregional trade and sparked an unprecedented development of towns and cities. In 1820 only 6.1 percent of the population lived in places of twenty-five hundred or more. By 1850 high population density characterized parts of the expanding West as well as the Northeast. The rise of manufacturing and industry in America also signaled dramatic shifts in the nation's economy. Although the textile factories that emerged in New England were relatively small, some Massachusetts towns such as Lowell and Waltham employed thousands of textile workers by the mid 1830s. Americans continued to view themselves as a nation of farmers, but industrialization was taking hold. The development of an urban-industrial America played an important part in the rise of a unified movement for public schools, which found most of its support in the nation's expanding cities. Changes in the population also sparked educational reform. Just as immigration proved vital to the emergence of an industrial America, the influx of German and Irish immigrants with different cultures, beliefs, and religions seemed to threaten the stability of an American way of life and system of beliefs. Much educational reform aimed at trying to instill uniform values and cultural norms to counteract the forces of social instability that were transforming a predominantly agricultural and relatively homogeneous nation. Inequalities. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on "the general equality of condition among the people," but the reality was far different. Educational reformers hoped to use public schools as a means to assimilate immigrants and achieve national unity by creating a uniform and universal educational experience, but social divisions and inequalities often thwarted their efforts. Religious intolerance, particularly against Catholics, prevented many immigrants and their children from enjoying new educational opportunities. Prejudice against African Americans, deeply ingrained in white society, restricted slaves and most free African Americans from receiving formal educations. Prudence Crandall, David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, and other teachers, writers, and abolitionists condemned the disparities in black educational opportunities, but most

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mainstream school reformers paid scant attention to the education and assimilation of African Americans. Gender discrimination also found its way into the classroom. Although reformers such as Catharine Beecher, Mary Lyon, and Emma Hart Willard sought to redress the inequalities that girls and young women confronted by founding female institutions of learning, educational and vocational options remained limited. At higher levels of learning, race, religion, gender, and a growing gap between rich and poor meant that only a small percentage of the wealthy could afford to send their children to private academies or other institutions of higher education. Literacy. Before the movement for a common school system developed, most children learned their letters at church or private schools, from tutors, or from their families. Abraham Lincoln recalled his own informal education by claiming that he had little formal schooling: "Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all." Young Lincoln, like the vast majority of America's children, acquired only the most basic of skills. School attendance beyond the elementary or grammar level was typically the privilege of the more affluent or well-connected citizen. Prior to 1830, moreover, no state had a public school system in the modern sense, and in the scattered rural areas educational opportunities competed with the demands that children work on the farm and forgo formal educations. During the 1830s and 1840s, however, the crusade for public schools rose on a surge of reform activity. Educators argued that popular government and an orderly society made necessary a literate and informed electorate. Many workers also lobbied for tax-supported schools to give their children an equal chance. In 1830 the Working Men's Party of Philadelphia spoke in favor of "a system of education that shall embrace equally all the children of the state, of every rank and condition." As a result of such efforts, by 1840 some 78 percent of the total population and 91 percent of the white population could read and write. Reform. Educational reform was one among many reform campaigns that captured the attention of Americans. There was not "a reading man" who was without some plan for a new Utopia in his "waistcoat pocket," claimed Ralph Waldo Emerson. Invigorated by the evangelism and optimism of the Second Great Awakening, reformers pro-

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moted a spectrum of ideas from female suffrage and the abolition of slavery to "miracle" medicines and fad diets. Societies formed to ban alcohol, tobacco, and profanity, and some individuals stepped forward to proclaim the benefits of communal living, polygamy, and rule by spirits and prophets. Harebrained cranks and inspired idealists clamored for their visions of a perfect society. What bound the dizzying array of reformers together, from the crusade against slavery to those seeking to establish a system of juvenile reformatories, was an intense moralism and sense of high-mindedness. Within this mix of reformist zeal arose the crusade to establish a system of tax-supported public schools. With the same zeal that inspired temperance advocates and abolitionists, educational activists worked toward creating the mandatory public school systems that they fervently believed would create a better society. While most educational reformers tended to be reasonably well-educated white men of the middle class, many women and minorities joined the new educational organizations and campaigned for common schools as a way to overcome their lack of voting privileges and exclusion from political parties. Common School. Prior to the efforts of reformers in the 1830s and 1840s, elementary schooling seemed ill equipped to prepare youngsters to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship in a republic or meet the everchanging economic opportunities of an emerging industrial economy. Led by men and women dissatisfied with the scarcity of schools and the poor quality of those that existed, the common school movement sought to make a school experience a mandatory part of every child's upbringing. Although school reformers throughout the nation joined in the common cause, the obstacles they encountered varied from state to state. Roadblocks ranged from the logistical difficulties of sending children from scattered farm settlements to centralized schools to the legal challenges put forth by reluctant taxpayers and resistant parents concerned about relinquishing their parental authority to the state. Nonetheless, rapid progress took place in the 1830s. In 1835 Thaddeus Stevens issued a famous defense of the school tax in Pennsylvania, and within three years the state had forged the beginnings of a public school system. In 1837 Horace Mann became the first secretary of Massachusetts's newly created state board of education. The following year the Connecticut Board of Education made Henry Barnard its secretary. Due to the efforts of leaders such as Stevens, Mann, Barnard, and school reformers in other eastern states such as New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, a permanent system of public schools was in place by 1850. Higher Education. In a period when few high schools existed academies were a frequent option as a final, typically vocational oriented setting for formal education. Upon leaving academies young men (women were only beginning to forge their own female seminaries and academies) often entered directly into extended appren-

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ticeships, where they studied law or medicine, or worked on canals or buildings as engineers in training. For the elite few who could afford to attend college an abundance of small schools in the East offered many choices although nearly all the colleges founded prior to the Civil War were organized, supported, and controlled by religious interests. Colleges offered courses in the classics, the liberal arts, and some fields of science. The more established institutions such as Harvard and Yale, which had yearly tuitions in 1825 of fifty-five dollars and thirty-three dollars, respectively, required a prescribed course of study in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and moral philosophy. The classical curriculum, which most college presidents defended vigorously, focused on the mental and moral refinement of the student. The goal was to create gentlemen and future community leaders. Such a limited course of study prompted many young men to study abroad at Europe's institutions of higher learning. Gradually the demand for practical coursework in the sciences came to dominate the debate over higher education. Despite a few anomalies, such as Oberlin College, which admitted African Americans and women as early as the 1830s, most colleges restricted admission to white men. For those who were not white, male, and wealthy, higher education of any sort remained a distant dream. Popular Education. For the vast majority of Americans who had little opportunity to receive advanced education at America's colleges or academies, there existed a wide range of alternatives for informal or self-directed education. A thriving magazine and book trade appealed to the growing number of literate citizens, which in turn sparked the growth of public and private libraries. Mechanics' and workingmen's institutes, debating societies, literary groups, and other organizations and clubs came forth to inform the general public on issues of the day. Vocational institutions emerged, such as the People's College, which New York State established in 1837 to provide scientific and technical education to craftsmen. Opportunities for religious education also expanded. In 1816 New York merchant Eleazar Lord and associate Divie Bethune created the New York Sunday School Union Society. Religious instruction in general benefited from an increase in parochial and private schools begun by Catholics and other "outside" religious groups. Public institutes arose, such as the Franklin Institute (founded at Philadelphia in 1824) and the Smithsonian (1846), to inform the general public about science, nature, and American history. The most widespread and effective means of popular education, however, was the lyceum movement. Begun by Josiah Holbrook in the 1820s, lyceums aimed to diffuse a broad body of knowledge through public lectures and debates. Professional agencies sponsored speakers such as Emerson, Herman Melville, Daniel Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other prominent Americans. The period from 1815 to 1850 marked a time not only of substantial school reform but also of popular lectures and learning.

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TOPICS IN THE NEWS

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS The South. Reformers called for "free schools for a free people," but few focused on the South in their efforts to establish public school systems. As winds of educational reform blew through the North, public education withered on the vine in the South, where the literacy rate lagged far behind that of the rest of the country. The vast majority of Southern black people, free or enslaved, remained illiterate, as did a large proportion of the Southern white population. Political leaders in the South tended to focus their educational interests only on providing the best for the sons of wealthy planters while remaining uninterested in or even hostile to popular education, even for poor whites. As the proslavery theorist George Fitzhugh explained in 1857, "we must unfetter genius, and chain down mediocrity. Liberty for the few—Slavery, in every form, for the mass!" This especially applied to African Americans, who were prohibited by law and custom from receiving instruction in reading and writing. White Southerners resisted educating slaves because they feared that education would give access to ideas that would threaten the institution of slavery. Nat Turner's uprising in 1831 only confirmed white fears and intensified efforts to prevent African Americans in the South from receiving any formal education. Some slaveholders gave their slaves a limited education, but only as a means of increasing their economic worth. In most cases this meant training in manual and semiskilled occupations, which would not threaten to challenge or overturn the slave society. The few African Americans who were able to acquire literacy under slavery passed this precious skill on to others, often secretly and at great risk to their own safety. The North. Within the context of the newly developing urban educational system in cities such as Boston free African Americans began their struggle for education. At the beginning of the nineteenth century no law excluded black children from Massachusetts schools, but harsh economic conditions among the black population and the hostile reception given to many black students combined to keep their attendance rate low. In response African Americans in Boston lobbied for a separate system of schools for their children. In other Northern cit-

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ies, including Philadelphia and New York, black leaders also preferred segregated schools because such institutions protected their children from discrimination and violence. In Boston the School Committee eventually accepted the idea of a segregated school system, and in 1812 the committee voted for permanent funds for the school and established direct control over it. By the 1820s, however, some African Americans began to question their earlier request for segregated schools due to PRUDENCE CRANDALL CLOSES HER SCHOOL

Restrictions on educational opportunities for African Americans in the North could be as severe as those in the slaveholding South. One example occurred in 1832 in Canterbury, Connecticut, when Prudence Crandall invited a young African American girl to attend her otherwise all-white boarding school. Parents of the other girls protested, and when Crandall refused to remove the new student, they withdrew their daughters. Undaunted by these actions, Crandall, with the help of abolitionist newspaperman William Lloyd Garrison, opted to transform the school into one exclusively "for young colored ladies and Misses/ The townspeople responded with hostility and violence. Students were openly insulted. The building was repeatedly vandalized. Crandall refused to surrender even as town leaders appealed to the state legislature for aid in removing what was referred to as the "nigger school." On 24 May 1834 the Connecticut legislature passed a law prohibiting schools for "colored persons who were not inhabitants of the state/ Under the new law Crandall was arrested and eventually found guilty. While her conviction was subsequently overturned, Prudence Crandall, in the face of repeated attempts to destroy the building, closed the school on 10 October 1834 and left Canterbury, Connecticut, forever. Source: Frederick M. Binder, The Age of the Common School, 1830-1865 (New York: John Wiley Sc Sons, 1974).

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Colored Youth, worked hard to improve educational opportunities for black children in the North and South. Sources: G. W. Dyer, Democracy in the South before the Civil War (New York: Arno, 1973); Edgar Wallace Knight, Public Education in the South (New York: Ginn, 1922); Stanley K. Schultz, The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

ASSIMILATION THROUGH EDUCATION

New York African Free School, the second school for black children in that city, circa 1815

the low quality of the teachers and the inferior conditions of their buildings compared to Boston's other public schools. Concerns about the quality of segregated schools and attempts to end segregation would continue through the coming decades. On 28 April 1855 Massachusetts desegregated the state's public schools with a law that stated: "no distinction shall be made on account of the race, color, or religious opinions, of the applicant or scholar." Demands. African American leaders, such as the abolitionist David Walker, eventually concluded that only an integrated educational system could offer equal educational opportunities for all students. Walker and other integrationists had come to suspect that white Americans were trying to keep black Americans from receiving any significant education. As proof he and others cited the laws in the South that made it illegal to educate slaves and argued that New England educators had purposely designed an inferior system for blacks to keep them in a state of ignorance. Walker was frustrated not only by the educational limitations placed on African Americans but also by the black community's lack of awareness about the state of inequality. "Most colored people when they speak of the education of one among us who can write a neat hand, and who perhaps knows nothing but to scribble and puff pretty fair on a small scrap of paper . . . say he has as good an education as any white man." In spite of opposition and meager financial resources Walker and pioneering African American educators such as Sarah Mapps Douglass, abolitionist and founder of a school for African American girls in Philadelphia, and Fanny Jackson Coppin, principal of the prestigious coeducational Institute for the Education of

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Creating One People. More than two million Europeans came to America between 1830 and 1850, mainly from Ireland and Germany. Leaders of public education faced the task of transforming these newcomers—speaking a babble of languages, clinging to diverse cultures, and owing loyalties to the Old World—into one people. Even before the arrival of this flood of non-English Europeans, prominent Americans such as Benjamin Franklin had voiced a concern that new immigrants were not melting into American society: "They will soon out number us, that all the advantages we have will not, in my opinion, be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious." Now the task of assimilating immigrants into a single American identity seemed paramount to many old-stock Americans. School reform, consequently, appealed to native-born Americans alarmed by the swelling tide of immigration. For those who believed that American ideals and traditions should be fixed not fluid, and singular rather than pluralistic, the public school emerged as the favorite device to forge a common American culture out of an increasingly diverse society. Said one advocate of school reform: "We must decompose and cleanse the impurities which rush into our midst" through the "one infallible filter—the SCHOOL." Melting Pot. In 1835 the Ohio school reformer Calvin Stowe warned teachers that "it is altogether essential to our national strength and peace, if not even to our national existence, that the foreigners who settle on our soil, should cease to be Europeans and become Americans." Stowe expressed what so many other school reformers felt, that the emerging public school system should be a tool to melt incoming alien cultures into a distinct American character. The schools must create a national feeling and unity of thought and action, Stowe explained, for "nothing could be more fatal to our prospects . . . than to have our population become a congeries of clans, congregating without coalescing." Only a concentrated effort "to shape the rising generation to our own model" in schools common to all could avert the impending "disaster" of cultural pluralism. School reformers were assimilationists in the sense that they sought to use public education to give children common values through shared experiences. In one respect, however, these reformers wore blinders on the issue of assimilation, for few stressed the integration of black and white children. Nonetheless, hope ran high that the public

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Harvard College in 1821 (painting by Alvin Fisher; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University)

school system could unify the nation against external threats and internal divisions. Cultural Conflict. Despite their efforts to unify all who came to America's shores, public schools seldom achieved complete cultural homogeneity in the classroom, nor did immigrant parents unanimously desire it. In fact the public schools, while revering the institution of the family, in many cases became wedges splitting immigrant children from their parents. Schools that taught children of immigrants to scorn and reject their parents' culture and traditions caused friction and disrespect within immigrant families. Many youngsters, caught in a conflict of cultures, found it impossible to conform to the wishes of both their families and the public schools. On occasion parents challenged the logic of those who sought to erase all signs of their heritage from the lives of their children. And many immigrant groups supported, often at a great financial sacrifice, their own private schools designed to pass on their religious and ethnic heritage. Norwegian Lutherans in Minnesota, Polish Catholics in Chicago, Russian Jews in Boston, and many other immigrant groups created their own schools in attempts to preserve their cultures. In the end, however, the public schools achieved their goals as most immigrant children learned to speak English and came to prefer American folkways. Source: David B. Tyack, Turning Points in American Educational History (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1967).

THE CLASSICAL CURRICULUM Single Course of Study. Prior to the secularization of school curricula and the dawning of the age of science and industrialism, colleges such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and others prescribed a single complete course of study. The classical curriculum re-

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quired all students, regardless of their career paths, to learn Latin and Greek as well as the language of mathematics. A typical freshman class of the period would have read Latin out of Cicero and Horace, and Greek out of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato. Readings and translations from the Bible would also have been regular exercises for the average college student. The insistence on training young men in the ancient languages of Greece and Rome dated back to medieval Europe; since then, traditional religious leaders continued to demand that every student follow the same course of studies to insure that future teachers and clerics would adhere to church dogma and remain free of dangerous new ideas. Eventually the notion that such a course of study was required of anyone who might consider himself liberally educated came to dominate thinking on both sides of the Atlantic. Character over Training. Many graduates of America's colleges went into the ministry; others went on to study law or medicine through apprenticeships or further occupational instruction. But preparation for gainful employment was the least of concerns among those who prescribed the classical approach. For the select few who attended institutions of higher learning the acquisition of professional skills took a back seat to the development of mental discipline and moral character. The aim of college education in the United States was to shape the character of the student according to a rigid model of a pious, righteous, and educated gentleman. Vocational or "practical" education, concepts that would come to command the concerns of students and educators by the end of the nineteenth century, seemed antithetical to intellectual and moral refinement. Such a philosophy of education ordained that practical knowledge and skills, which many believed students could just as easily acquire outside of college through apprenticeships, should not jeopardize the unity and simplicity of an undergraduate

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curriculum that aimed at perfecting a student's intellectual discipline and moral behavior. Defenders. In 1828 Professor James L. Kingsley of Yale, in a famous report that aimed to put to rest incipient questions about the usefulness of the traditional curriculum, justified the necessity and superiority of studying the ancient texts: "Study of the classics forms the most effectual discipline of the mental faculties. . . . Every faculty of the mind is employed." Believers in mental discipline argued that students improved recall ability and reasoning skills and gained a sense of discernment and refinement through intense study of the ancient languages. As new scientific and technological knowledge threatened to replace the study of Greek and Latin, educational leaders vocally defended the classical approach of higher education. Professor Solomon Stoddard proclaimed at the opening ceremony of Middlebury College in 1839 that the classics "improve the memory, strengthen the judgment, refine the taste, give discrimination and point to the discerning faculty, confer habits of attention, reasoning, and analysis—in short, they exercise and cultivate all the intellectual powers." President Noah Porter of Princeton argued for the disciplinary aspects of classical study, the necessity of a prescribed curriculum for all, and the incompatibility of the classics FATHER OF PENNSYLVANIA'S SCHOOLS

Prior to 1830 no state seemed less committed to the common-school idea than Pennsylvania. Separate schooling along religious and class lines stood entrenched throughout the state. In 1834 state senator Thaddeus Stevens successfully steered through the legislature an act to fund a general system of public education. The reaction from religious bodies and rural areas was fierce, and in 1835 a repeal seemed imminent. It was on this occasion that Stevens delivered what became a famous speech in defense of public education, one that was reprinted throughout the nation and earned him the nickname "Father of Pennsylvania's Schools." In part Stevens declared: If an elective Republic is to endure for any length of time, every elector must have sufficient information not only to accumulate wealth and take care of his pecuniary concerns, but to direct wisely the legislature, the ambassadors, and the Executive of the Nation—for some part of all these things . ., falls to every freeman. If, then, the permanency of our Government depends on such knowledge, it is the duty of Government to see that the means of information be diffused to every citizen. This is a sufficient answer to those who deem education a private affair and not a public duty. Source*. EHwood P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934).

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with vocationalism: "The college course is preeminently designed to give power to acquire and to think, rather than to impart special knowledge or special discipline." For the time being the advocates of the classical curriculum won the day, but as the nineteenth century progressed, an increasing number of college presidents and educational leaders would begin to replace the prescribed curriculum with a wide-open elective system, offering a spectrum of courses from anthropology to zoology. Sources: Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977); Willis Rudy, The Evolving Liberal Arts Curriculum: A Historical Review of Basic Themes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); Russell Thomas, The Search for a Common Learning: General Education, 1800-1960 (Nw York: McGraw-Hill, 1962).

COMMON SCHOOL CRUSADE Mix of Schools. Except in the South and a few rural areas America did not lack schools in the early nineteenth century. The institutions, however, were a hodgepodge of types with a variety of goals. Some were founded for charity and others for profit; some were supported by cities and towns and others privately funded; and some aimed at spreading religious faith, some for advancing learning, and others merely to keep children off the streets. Within this mix of schools there were no sharp lines between what was private and public nor any clear distinctions between sectarian (religious) and nonsectarian schools as many publicly supported schools openly taught a Protestant viewpoint while on occasion sectarian and private institutions welcomed poor children regardless of religious background or faith. Although this mix of public and private institutions was typically open to all white children, male and female (and in a few places to free black children), it did not constitute a satisfactory system. In Massachusetts, for example, education was hampered by unskilled teachers, inadequate texts, excessive decentralization of school control, and public apathy. Beginning in the 1820s and increasing over the next two decades a growing number of Americans began to wonder if American schools were good enough to carry the important burdens placed on them. Out of this criticism came the ferment called the common school crusade. The East Leads. The crusade began in New England, where problems resulting from urbanization, industrialization, and immigration made obvious the shortcomings of the lack of an organized system. Into the breech stepped such prominent friends of education as Horace Mann of Massachusetts and Catharine Beecher and Henry Barnard of Connecticut. During the 1830s and 1840s they led a movement for the common (or public) school, universal education, and popular education. To support these schools they called for the establishment of standardized state systems of education. Mann and school reformers such as Samuel Lewis, Robert Breckinridge, James Carter, Calvin Stowe, and Caleb Mills

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Joseph Saxton's daguerreotype of the Philadelphia Arsenal and Old Central High School. Taken on 16 October 1839, it is the oldest extant print of an American photograph (Franklin Institute). helped win more-regularized public support for schools, advocated reliance on female teachers (who were paid much less than male teachers), popularized the teaching of a common body of knowledge to students of different social backgrounds, and, most important, supplemented the moral case for mandatory schooling with civic and WALT WHITMAN ON PUNISHMENT IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

On 22 October 1845 the famous poet Walt Whitman described and condemned the tradition of physical punishment common in the nation's publie schools: It is with no unkind spirit that we affirm—and call all good and sound modern reasoners on the subject to back us—that the instructor who uses the lash in his school at all, is unworthy to hold the power he does hold.,.. That he can bethink him no better and easier, and gentle and more humane plan to ensure obedience than thrashing, proves him fit for dog-whipper, or menagerie-tamer, but not for the holy office of fashioning an immortal human soul, . . , How many noble spirited boys are beaten into sullen and spiteful endurance of what there is no earthly need—sharp taunts, blows, and frowning looks! Awake! parent and teacher, to higher ideas for your kind, in the young freshness wherewith God has formed them, than to suppose there are not a hundred better ways of drawing out what is good, and repelling what is bad in them, than the ferrule and the rod! Source; Walt Whitman, Brooklyn Evening Star (22 October 1845), reprinted in Turning Points in American Educational History, edited by David B. Tyack (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1967), pp. 165-167,

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economic arguments. Reformers insisted that schools had to equip children for the emerging competitive and industrial economy. Through numerous newspaper articles, lectures, and pamphlets reformers lobbied for a truly common school, one that would be an institution for "the diffusion of knowledge through all classes of people." Out of the common school movement emerged the outlines of the modern American school system. Opposition. Reform did not come easily. Because rural parents depended on their children's labor, reformers faced numerous challenges from farmers who were content with the informal country schools. Urban Catholics, led by individuals such as New York City's Bishop John Hughes, rejected the pro-Protestant and anti-Catholic bias of public schools. Some critics complained about high taxes and minimal value that they received for their support of common schools. Many more took issue with mandatory school attendance, which they viewed as a tyrannical usurpation of parents' freedom. Opposition to universal public education did not reflect a general rejection of education and schools but was aimed more specifically at the idea of organizing schools that were taxpayer supported, mandatory, and under state control. When Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in 1816, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, and in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," most Americans nodded in agreement. In the end the adoption of the common school program occurred because merchants and laborers, Democrats and Whigs, Congregationalists and Unitarians, and Easterners and Westerners came together (often for different reasons); their common interest in education was stronger than any dis-

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agreements over how schools should be organized and funded. Program. Given the many demands placed upon the schools by concerned parents, reformers exhibited a remarkable degree of agreement on what common schools should do. Since most reformers considered America a Christian nation, they advocated a sound moral education grounded in Christian beliefs and values. They claimed, however naively, that they could implement moral instruction without offending any religious group. Since America was a republic where in theory every person had the right and responsibility to participate in government, advocates of the new common school systems also emphasized instruction in civic duties to insure the loyalty and civic-mindedness of future generations of Americans. Last, school reformers hoped not only to combat ignorance but also to spread uniform cultural values by exposing all youngsters to similar educational experiences. The many demands placed upon the new common schools, by reformers and parents alike, mirrored America's faith in the power of education to right all wrongs and solve society's ills. Sources: Frederick M. Binder, The Age of the Common School (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974); Robert L. Church, Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: Free Press, 1976); Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983); David Nasaw, Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

EDUCATION IN RURAL AMERICA Apprenticeships. For most rural children formal education was a prize that had to be postponed or forgone altogether due to the demands of farm life. On farms, where more than 85 percent of all Americans lived as late

A rural schoolhouse in Tappan, New York, 1832

as 1850, education started early but not in the classroom. Farm children received an apprenticeship education, which involved imitating adults in the skills needed to run a family farm. Youngsters learned by watching and doing. Boys tended the animals, cleared the land, repaired machinery, and helped their fathers with the harvests. Meanwhile girls worked alongside their mothers as they learned to cook, clean, sew, and garden. This education was not offered for the benefit of the children but because necessity required all members of the family to contribute their labor to putting food on the table and clothes on their backs. As a side effect, however, parents passed on the abilities necessary to sustain life in a rural environment from one generation to the next. Formal Education. Many farm children received all their education from watching and imitating their elders on the farm, at church, or in the village, but formal education began to make increasing inroads. In New England, for example, country schools became the rule rather than the exception by 1840 as parents began to re-

DISTRICT SCHOOLS

Rural America's district schools provided public school reformers with one of their most obvious targets. One-room log or clapboard cabins with small windows, uncomfortable benches, and little heat in the winter held pupils aged anywhere from three to twenty. The conditions were so poor at these rural schools that Horace Mann was able to point out that New England farmers housed their hogs in better buildings than those to which they sent their children to be taught. Reformers wanted to improve not only the schoolhouse itself but also what went on inside. The district schools taught farmers' children rudimentary reading and counting skills but little else. District schools stayed open only a few months of the year. Moreover, schoolmasters were too often

EDUCATION

ill trained, ill tempered, and 111 paid. As reformers explained, they put more stress on "lickin" (with a hickory stick) than on "larnin." Those who attended the district schools seldom forgot the primitive conditions or the severe discipline. One rural Massachusetts student recalled years later: "the wood-pile in the yard, the open fire-place, the backless benches,* and the beatings until "the youngster vomited or wet his breeches." Reformers insisted that "modern" schools should prepare children for the emerging competitive industrial economy and that the district schools must change

or go. Source: Robert L. Church, "The District School," in Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: Free Press, 1976), pp. 3-22.

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alize that the changing nature of the economy demanded that their children acquire new skills and knowledge. In the rapidly growing Western states simple one-room schools appeared and attendance became common by 1850. In the most rural region of the country, the South, schools developed far more slowly. Schooling remained the expectation for the children of wealthy plantation owners, but poorer Southerners rarely experienced any sort of formal education. And African American children, whether free or enslaved, had even fewer opportunities for structured learning. Importance. Children in rural America learned the chief business of farm life by their early teens, with only a minority receiving some elementary schooling before they assumed family and farm responsibilities. Their parents often resisted demands for mandatory education because they depended upon their children's labor and viewed reform efforts that sought mandatory attendance as a threat not only to their parental authority but also to their livelihoods. While many farm parents were resisting the spread of formal education, those in the cities saw education as a ticket to economic advancement, not a drain on household labor. Various working-class organizations in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston actively lobbied for changes in educational policies in order to give their children a chance to move up the economic ladder. It was in the thriving cities of a young industrial America where the growing demand for universal education in the form of taxpayer-supported public schools arose. Because rural parents were initially less than eager to lose their child's labor to the classroom, urban school reformers had a difficult task in trying to persuade farmers who seemed satisfied with the informality of the district school systems. In the end, however, urban school reformers would prevail, and in time many rural Americans as well would acknowledge the importance of formal education for their children. Sources: R. Freeman Butts and Lawrence A. Cremin, A History of Education in American Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1953); Ellwood P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States: A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934).

LYCEUM MOVEMENT AN ADULT EDUCATION

Filling the Gaps. While some forms of adult education had always existed in the United States, the early nineteenth century was remarkable for the dramatic expansion in the number of avenues that a person with a thirst for knowledge could travel. New learning options and sources of information for an increasingly literate public compensated to some degree for the inadequacy of traditional educational institutions. Magazines flourished, and while most folded after a short life, a few endured. The North American Review, founded in 1815, was one of the most popular and longest-lived periodicals of the period. Millions of women devotedly read

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Godey's Lady's Book, which began publishing in 1830 and survived until 1898. Adults eager to learn also supported the burgeoning business of house-to-house book peddling. Sales boomed for American novels, European classics, advice books, theological texts, and more. Samuel Griswold Goodrich, a publisher from 1816 until his death in 1860, estimated that yearly book sales reache $12.5 million by 1850. At a time when ordinary works of fiction cost anywhere from two dollars to as low as twenty-five cents, this figure represented a staggering quantity of books. Booksellers, private subscription libraries, and tax-supported public libraries (which first appeared in numbers in the 1830s) all tried to fill America's hunger for reading. But self-instruction was not limited to reading. In this era of intense didacticism there were also societies, associations, and institutes of every sort at which programs of lectures and discussions took place. Lyceums. The most widely known and successful form of popular adult education during the period was the American Lyceum. The organization was founded in 1826 by Josiah Holbrook, a wealthy Connecticut farmer turned amateur scientist, and consisted of local groups that sponsored public lectures on various topics. Holbrook established the first lyceum in Millbury, Massachusetts, called Millbury Lyceum No. 1, Branch of the American Lyceum. His vision in 1826 was "to establish on a uniform plan, in every town and village, a society for mutual improvement." Within months, as Holbrook's enthusiasm spread to neighboring counties, a dozen nearby villages followed Millbury's lead. Lyceums develPUBLIC LIBRARY MOVEMENT

At a time when formal institutions of higher education rarely touched the lives of most Americans, the spread of knowledge among all classes was promoted through a variety of public and commercial ventures. One of the most important means of satisfying the growing demand for knowledge from an increasingly literate public was the public library. By 1830 there existed several varieties of private libraries, such as apprentices' libraries, subscription libraries, and lyceum libraries. More enduring in the long run, however, were the free public libraries that began to appear in Boston and other New England towns m the 1830s. In 1849 New Hampshire passed the first law authorizing tax-supported libraries on a statewide basis. Massachusetts followed suit within two years. Like the public school crusade, the public library movement epitomized the era's boundless faith in public institutions as agents of self-improvement and the perfection of society. Source: Robert L. Church, Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: Free Press, 1976).

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A lyceum lecturer discoursing on weather at Clinton Hall in New York, 1841 (caricature by James P. Espy; Museum of the City of New York)

oped quickly, and in 1831 organizers formed a National Lyceum with a constitution that proposed "the advancement of education" and "the general diffusion of knowledge." By 1840 thirty-five hundred towns had lyceums. Although most of these local groups were not particularly large, memberships of two and three hundred were not uncommon, and the Salem Lyceum in Massachusetts reportedly contained some twelve hundred members. Although the lyceum movement spread rapidly, it did not spread evenly. Thriving best in New England and the cities of the Middle Atlantic states, lyceum fever was less contagious among the scattered population of the Midwest while the South remained almost immune. Flourishing during the late 1820s and throughout the 1830s, excitement and interest in lyceums began to fade shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Yet the lyceum mania of the 1820s and 1830s would form the foundation for a similar popular lecturing phenomenon later in the century, the Chautauqua movement. Learned Lecturers. Although the lyceums organized many local activities and events, the main focus of the program came to be the public lecture. Lyceum goers, including professional men, merchants, farmers, artisans, and a large number of middle-class women, demanded learning that was informative, enjoyable, and useful. To meet this demand lyceums presented lectures on a wide variety of subjects. In 1838, for example, topics at the lyceum in Salem, Massachusetts, included "The Character and Customs of North American Indians," "Causes of the American Revolution," "Common School Education," "The Legal Rights of Women," and "The Sources of National Wealth." The lyceum at Concord, Massachusetts, alone sponsored some 784 lectures, 105 debates, and 14 concerts during its first few years of existence. Lyceum debates were as wide ranging and lively as the lectures and covered such issues as the immortality of the soul, imprisonment for debt, and the desirability of educating women. The speakers were as diverse as the topics and prior to 1840 often consisted of ambitious locals who wished to show off their learning before appreciative neighbors. At the Concord lyceum, for example,

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local residents presented 301 of 784 lectures; the January 1838 address at the Young Men's Lyceum Association of Springfield, Illinois, was given by an obscure local state legislator and lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. In time, however, audiences began to demand men of reputation, eloquence, and presence who could grab and hold their attention. Gradually there emerged a few nationally known lecturers who traveled throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states, giving talks on the lyceum circuit. Yankee philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was far and away the most popular literary lecturer out of a group that included such prominent figures as Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Noah Webster, and Calvin Stowe. Reformers such as Horace Mann and Henry Barnard were also frequent lyceum speakers. From the onset of the lyceum movement Holbrook had made public education one of its chief considerations, and Mann, Barnard, and others used the lyceum stage to galvanize support for common school systems in state after state. Source: Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

NORMAL SCHOOLS: TEACHING THE TEACHERS Need for Professionalism. In most rural areas it was common for teachers to "board around," living for a week or more in the homes of each of the children enrolled at their schools. Connecticut in 1846 reported that 84 percent of the state's teachers boarded around. Not surprisingly the practice of boarding around was not conducive to maintaining a stable teaching force as few but young, single, and inexperienced teachers were willing to accept the constant packing and moving. Such men (few women taught in the early nineteenth century) could perhaps provide basic instruction in the "three Rs" of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but with the general extension of public education and the expansion of school curricula to include more subjects teachers themselves needed to have more education to do their jobs. To address the problems of transient teachers

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and unqualified instructors, reformers called for the overhaul of the inadequate and ad hoc manner in which most teachers were trained. Horace Mann, Emma Hart Willard, Henry Barnard, and others proposed the establishment of institutions to meet the demand for a welltrained and stable teaching force. Normal Schools. To offer the kind of professional training considered crucial for teachers, reformers promoted the normal school. The name, derived from the Latin word norm, meaning rule, describes an institution dedicated to instruction in the rules of learning and teaching. As early as 1824 James G. Carter, a prominent Massachusetts school reformer, had introduced the idea of formal teacher preparation. Carter, Mann, and others hoped to improve teaching through the establishment of state normal schools that would teach "the art of teaching," school management, and the "proper" virtues as well as offer opportunities for supervised and practice teaching. For Mann and others the creation of normal schools was an integral part of the larger common-school crusade. Mann himself considered them "as a new instrument of progress for the improvement of the human race." As in other areas of school reform, Massachusetts led the way in developing normal schools. On 3 July 1838 the first state normal school opened in Lexington. During the 1840s and 1850s normal schools came into existence in various parts of the Northeast and West. By 1860 there were twelve such schools in the nation. The development of these teaching institutions marked the beginning of the study of pedagogy and the investigation of various methods of instruction and learning processes. Character and Morality. In the cloistered atmosphere of the normal schools, young women, who increasingly came to dominate the profession of public school teaching, learned more than to master the subjects that they would later teach. Instructors placed so much emphasis on elevating the moral character of the future teacher that many normal schools resembled religious revivals. The prevailing image of the teacher in contemporary professional literature was that of a missionary completely committed to her duty of spreading morality and knowledge to children. This focus on the teaching of moral character was in keeping with dominant social attitudes about women, whose proper role as mother or teacher was to nurture moral character in the family or school. Women (as mothers or teachers) were to help build upstanding American citizens who obeyed the rules. The purpose of the emerging normal schools was to train young women to fulfill this maternal mission consistently and professionally. Sources: Frederick M. Binder, The Age of the Common School (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974); Cyrus Pierce, The First State Normal School in America (New York: Arno, 1969); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985 (New York: Longman, 1986).

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A Philadelphia private school, circa 1840

PAROCHIAL AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS Catholic Influx. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the number of Catholics in the United States barely exceeded 100,000, a negligible percentage of the total population. This changed with the mass immigration of Irish Catholics into the cities of the Northeast that began in the 1830s and accelerated greatly after 1845. By 1850 the estimated American Catholic population was 1,606,000. In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, Irish immigrants formed distinct communities within the larger population, complete with their own taverns, clubs, newspapers, and churches. Many nativeborn Protestants saw in the growing numbers of Catholics an economic threat and a cultural danger and looked with deep suspicion on the Pope and his followers. Such fears led to nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment that manifested itself in the burning of Catholic churches, the formation of an anti-Catholic political party (the Native American Party, or Know-Nothing Party), and hostile literature. One of the most dramatic points of confrontation, not surprisingly, involved schooling. Catholic Protest. Most Americans regarded public schools as the main conduit for the transmission of the national ethos. They counted on the public school to develop a unified national character as well as to inculcate a single set of moral and spiritual values among all the nation's children. But within a universal public school system open to all children, not all subscribed to the Protestant values that characterized common schools of the period. As immigration swelled the ranks of American Catholics, an increasing number of them objected to the Protestant teachings and derogatory references to things Catholic that dripped from the pages of textbooks in the publicly funded school systems. Such anti-Catholicism led individuals such as Bishop John Hughes of New York to seek state funds for separate Catholic schools. He ar-

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gued that Catholics could not in good conscience attend the public schools, but the state denied Hughes any funding. Out of frustration Catholics felt compelled to organize their own separate (parochial) school systems. Parochial Schools. Catholics felt it necessary to establish separate schools to preserve the faith of their children, even at the cost of asking Catholic parents to pay twice, once to support the public schools and once to support the private schools they had created. Nor were Catholics alone in their determination to develop alternative systems of schools. The Presbyterian Church, for example, expressing concern over the general secularization of the public schools and the aggressive determination of the Roman Catholics to build up their own parochial school system, also established a substantial system of parochial schooling during the 1840s. The place of religion in public schools remained a controversial issue through the first half of the nineteenth century; in 1842 a heated debate over Bible reading and religious exercises in the public schools of Philadelphia captured headlines. Such controversies and their legacies, both in terms of the secularization of public schools and the funding of private institutions, continued long into the next century. The experience of Catholics, Presbyterians, and other religious groups led to sharper distinctions between public and private education and pointed to the many problems of creating a school system common to all children in a country becoming increasingly more diverse by the decade. Sources: Frederick M. Binder, The Age of the Common School (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974); Carl F. Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).

REFORM SCHOOLS AND CHARITY SCHOOLS Moral Reformation. During the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans organized a variety of institutions for the moral reformation of society. Upper-class, old-stock New Englanders, in response to population growth, immigration, and other social changes, became convinced that institutions such as schools could perfect the individual and create a righteous and moral society. It was an age of reform that sought to redeem not only institutions of education but also all of society. This manner of thinking made it possible for public school reformers to view education as the key component in the moral and political reformation of America. The expansion of charity schools as well as the development of reform schools to save delinquent youth reflected the belief that institutional structures had redemptive powers. Charity Schools. Prior to the widespread adoption of free public schools open to all children, many other forms of educational institutions, public and private,

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SUNDAY SCHOOLS

Sunday schools, adopted from the English model of religious education, began during the colonial period and were similar in style to the charity schools that also aimed at educating the children of the working classes. Sunday schools emphasized basic intellectual skills and moral training. They were typically nondenominational and welcomed youths of all religious persuasions. For the most part the schools were established, run, and financed by lay people, organized into local gen* der- and race-segregated societies. Supporters of religious education worked to bring together the various Sunday school societies in regional and national organizations. Eleazar Lord and Divie Bethune, for example, created the New York Sunday School Union Society in 1816, and in 1824 a national organization was formed: the American Sunday School Union* The movement spread not only through the urban areas of the North but also throughout the more rural South. An average Sunday school met in the morning and afternoon for activities that included prayer, hymn singing, and alphabet lessons as well as reading and memorizing passages from the Bible, In fact some schools rewarded children who committed to memory verses from the Bible with a form of currency, which could then be redeemed for Bibles or other suitable prizes. Source: Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill dcWaag, 1983).

competed for the moral refinement of America's youth. Charity schools had originated during the colonial period, promoted by leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, as a way of preserving the English language and Anglicizing newcomers from alien cultures. Directed by churches, voluntary benevolent societies, or town councils, charity schools had as their main purpose the development of each student's moral character through the memorization and recitation of biblical and other didactic readings. In towns such as Schenectady and Newburyport as well as cities such as New York and Boston, charity schools supplemented the many other private or semipublic educational institutions that tried to impart Christian morals and values. Charity schools thus represented the first major attempt in the United States to use schools as a means of socializing children into an emerging industrial society. Moreover, along with the reform school movement charity schools reflected Americans' growing tendency to call on educational institutions to solve problems of poverty and crime. Reform Schools. Juvenile reformatories or reform schools also developed as a way to fight poverty and law-

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lessness, the twin evils of society, and bring delinquent children back into the fold of a moral society. Generally reform schools sought to create moral character for boys and girls who had gone astray by replacing a weak family structure with a rigid institutional setting and by physically severing their connections to criminal associations and environments. City leaders founded the first reformatories, called houses of refuge, in New York City in 1824, in Boston in 1826, and in Philadelphia in 1828. It was not until 1848, however, that the first state reform school opened at Westborough, Massachusetts. In New York City the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents reported in 1822 that children became wayward because no "moral standard of conduct has been placed before their eyes." Their families were to blame: "No faithful parent has watched over them and restrained their vicious propensities." Officials designed the variety of reform schools that sprang up during the first half of the nineteenth century to provide a morally superior environment, patterned after that of the family. Accordingly teachers at these institutions were women who acted as mother figures. Within these institutionalized "families" instructors demanded regimentation, order, and strict discipline. Unfortunately the success of THOMAS JEFFERSON ON RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

On 2 November 1822 Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to his friend Thomas Cooper on the sectarianism and intolerance that pervaded the ranks of higher education. "The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all." Jefferson hoped that despite the charged climate of the Second Great Awakening, a period of religious evangelism that swept the country from the 1790s through the 1820s, the spread of new knowledge in science, biology, and technology might lessen the hypersectarianism that limited academic freedom: "The diffusion of instruction, to which there is now growing attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism/'Jefferson proposed a plan that encouraged the various religious sects to establish, each for themselves, "a professorship of their own tenets," In the end he believed that "by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality." Source: Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Monticelloj 2 November 1822, Jefferson MSS, Vol. 223, Library of Congress, reprinted in American Higher Education: A Documentary History, volume 1, edited by Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 195-196,

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the first reform institutions was mixed at best. Evidence exists to show that reform schools were often more successful at breeding adult criminals than responsible citizen-workers. Nonetheless, Americans clung to the belief that education remained the main path to a better, safer, and moral society. Sources: Carl F. Kaestle and Maris A. Vinovskis, Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (London: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Stanley K. Schultz, The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 17891860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985 (New York: Longman, 1986).

SCIENCE AND HIGHER EDUCATION Old-Time College. Before the Civil War higher education in America consisted of a scattered group of small colleges in various stages of development. Harvard, founded in 1636, was America's oldest and most prestigious institution. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and other Ivy League institutions, which by 1850 had faculties ranging from fifteen to twenty-five and student bodies from three hundred to four hundred, were large by American standards. More typical were the many tiny colleges that dotted the country. These smaller and more obscure schools typically employed a staff of only six or eight instructors, with enrollments ranging between fifty to one hundred students. Only one in five colleges created before 1860 survived, and most of those that did were educationally ineffective, unable to offer variety or rigorous studies. The relatively low quality of American colleges and the restrictive nature of the curriculum prior to the 1860s prompted many young men to further their education in European universities. In 1815, for example, Edward Everett, Edward Cogswell, and George Ticknor, three individuals who would become outspoken critics of the antiquated nature of American higher education, traveled to Germany to study the new fields of science not yet offered by the old-time colleges of the United States. Sectarian and Conservative. Prior to the rise of the large state colleges and research universities during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, most of the nation's institutions of higher learning were openly sectarian, creations of highly competitive religious denominations. Such colleges included the Methodist DePauw (1837) and Ohio Wesleyan (1842), the Presbyterian Knox (1842), the Congregationalist Oberlin (1833) and Beloit (1846), the Baptist Bucknell (1846), and the Catholic Notre Dame (1842). In most of these schools the classical curriculum reigned supreme, with its heavy dose of Latin and Greek required for all. Students rarely had any choice over what courses they could take. Gradually, however, American colleges began to modernize the course of study to reflect the ideas and discoveries of the Enlightenment. In 1824 the University of Virginia opened its doors and offered eight possible

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whose competition would eventually force the colleges to submit to a wholesale overhaul of the college curriculum. The first of these was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, founded in 1824 to instruct children of mechanics and farmers in theoretical and mechanical sciences. Harvard began its Lawrence Scientific School in 1847, and during the same year even conservative Yale established new chairs in agriculture, chemistry, and applied science that became the nucleus from which Yale founded the Sheffield Scientific School. Out of these reforms would emerge the concepts of the modern research university and the nonsectarian liberal arts college that characterized the landscape of higher education throughout the twentieth century. Sources: R. Freeman Butts, The College Charts Its Course (New York: Arno Press, 1971); Richard Hofstadter and C. DeWitt Hardy, The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University cago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

(Chi-

TEACHERS AND TEXTBOOKS A chemistry professor performing an experiment, circa 1840 (American Museum of Photography)

fields of study, including such topics as anatomy and biology. The following year Miami University in Ohio permitted the substitution of modern languages, practical mathematics, and political economy for certain subjects in the classical curriculum. The same year University of Nashville president Philip Lindsley began to stress vocational and research concerns. And in 1826 Union College in Schenectady, New York, introduced a scientific course of study as an alternative to the classical program. Nonetheless, many conservative elements resisted such challenges to the religious and classical nature of higher education. In 1828 the faculty at Yale responded to the increasing criticism of American colleges with a report that vigorously defended the classical approach. Yale's powerful defense against the first wave of attacks upon academic orthodoxy held the forces of change at bay temporarily, but over the next two decades science and vocational or practical learning began to alter the character and curriculum of the old-time colleges forever. Science. By the 1840s and 1850s American higher education was considering alternatives to the classical curriculum, albeit only to students willing to forgo the bachelor of arts (B.A.) degree for the lesser status but greater practical knowledge found in programs leading to a bachelor of science (B.S.) degree. These reforms were spurred by a flank attack on traditional higher education: since science could not easily make its way into the rigid classical curriculum, teachers of science began to create separate schools dedicated solely to technical education,

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Female Teachers. The common school reforms firmly established the institutional structure of public education as well as the ideology of universal education. But the key to making the new schools efficient and productive was the teacher. Before the school reform movement teachers had little training and few effective textbooks on which to rely. Almost everything that occurred in the classroom depended on the direct relationship between teacher and SCHOOLMASTER OF THE REPUBLIC

Education in America benefited dramatically from improved textbooks, particularly those of Noah Webster, a Yale-educated Yankee known as the Schoolmaster of the Republic. His "reading lessons," used by millions of children, were designed in part to instill a sense of patriotism among the newest Americans, the immigrants. Perhaps his greatest achievement was his famous American Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1828, Spending nearly twenty years of his life on the project, Webster wrote a dictionary that helped to standardize the American language. Together, his textbooks and dictionaries defined a specifically American spelling and usage that he hoped would differentiate American English from the language of its former colonial parent. Webster worked to promote universal literacy and to foster a unified national consciousness through the development of a common language. Source: David Simpson, The Politics of American English, 1776-1850 (New York; Oxford University Press, 19S6),

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A circa 1840 lithograph depicting the difficult task of the schoolmaster

student. A good teacher meant a good school, but the practice of using untrained college students as school teachers made that result unlikely. After 1820, however, a change came about in the profession of school teaching as male teachers were increasingly replaced by young, unmarried women. In Massachusetts, for example, the percentage of male teachers in the public schools fell from around 60 in 1840 to less than 14 percent by 1860. The schoolmaster gave way to the schoolmarm in state after state for a variety of reasons, but the primary justification for the acceptance of women into the ranks of teaching was that they were inexpensive to employ. Female teachers took home much smaller paychecks than their male counterparts; most female teachers earned less than a common laborer. Nonetheless, thousands of young women gravitated toward the profession of teaching and in doing so reshaped the image of public education. New Textbooks. In the typical elementary school the curriculum was in most cases limited to whatever was in the textbook. Youngsters studied individual books rather than subjects. Together with the Bible, textbooks were the only contact that many students had with the world beyond their communities. Recognizing the importance of textbooks in shaping young minds, educators such as Noah Webster sought to supplement the tools available to teachers by creating uniquely American texts for American schools. Webster almost single-handedly replaced the outdated New EnglandPrimer(1691) with his spellers and readers. Webster's American Spelling Book (1788), commonly known as the "Blue-Backed Speller," An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking (1787), and his most famous work, American Dictionary

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of the English Language (1828), all became common reading and reference books for generations of children. The era of the common school produced other long-running series of American schoolbooks, such as the Peter Parley textbooks for elementary school children first published in 1827 by Samuel Griswold Goodrich. The most famous textbook series was that of the McGuffey Readers, one of the most remarkable and enduring series of graded readers ever issued in America. For some sixty years after their introduction in 1836 the McGuffey Readers were the most widely used reading books in the nation. As the McGuffey Readers became standard, they brought a degree of uniformity to America's widespread schools, permitting children to move easily from one school to another and spreading a common curriculum through all parts of the country. Teaching Techniques. Although most school reformers deplored the traditional emphasis on rote learning and the system of awarding small prizes and medals for a student's skill at regurgitating facts and phrases, such practices continued to dominate the standard teaching practice of the period. While reformers such as Horace Mann and Henry Barnard tried to promote the goal of real understanding rather than rote memorization, teachers were slow to adopt such new teaching techniques. For the teacher facing a classroom of children of varying ages and levels of education, recitation and drill of Webster's spelling books or McGuffey's Readers seemed the most sensible way to provide order and promote the required moral lessons. Despite the focus on the monotonous memorization of textbooks, the school experience of children in the 1830s and 1840s was a marked improvement over that of their predecessors.

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THE MCGUFFEY READERS No textbooks for young people were more widely used in the nineteenth century than the McGuffey Readers. William H. McGuffey, an Ohio teacher-preacher of exceptional power, first published hi-s grade-school readers in 1836. During the following decades McGuffey would sell more than twenty-two million copies. The McGuffey Readers hammered home lasting lessons of industry, honesty, and patriotism through a variety of reading lessons and parables. They also created a common curriculum for every student in the nation. Students everywhere absorbed such reading exercises as "Respect for the Sabbath Rewarded," "True and False Philanthropy," "No Excellence without Labor," and "The Patriotism of Western Literature." The popularity of the McGuffey Readers reflected the emphasis on moralism and virtue that pervaded the educational climate of the early republic, but the textbooks were neither sectarian nor openly political. As an advertising blurb printed with McGuffey's Edec tic Fourth Reader in 1844 exclaimed: "NO SECTARIAN matter has been admitted into this work." Such conscious impartiality made the McGuffey Readers an amazing commercial success in all parts of the country. Source: John H. Westerhoff, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978).

Schoolbooks were better and more available, and the influx of female instructors meant that there were fewer bullying brutes or harsh taskmasters posing as teachers. Unified Message. Teachers and textbooks shared the complementary purposes of articulating and shaping the attitudes, values, and tastes of the nation's children by preaching American traditions and Christian morality. Surpassed in number of readers only by the Bible, these new textbooks, written almost exclusively by New England authors, taught a common and widely accepted message of the righteousness of America and the destiny of its people. Grammars, spellers, and readers assured students that God had created their world and that he divinely favored the United States, which was undoubtedly the most glorious of all nations. But students were also warned that the bestowal of God's blessings upon people and nations alike depended upon their own continued moral behavior. As one speller asserted: "In this country the way for a poor little boy to become a great and happy man is to be honest, industrious, and good." Conversely, children learned that "Poverty is the fruit of idleness" and that "Declining prosperity is the usual attendant of degenerate morals." Textbooks and teachers exalted patri-

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otism and morality as they attempted to define and unify a nation that seemed increasingly undefmable and diverse. Sources: Ellwood P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States: A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934); David B. Tyack, Turning Points in American Educational History (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1967).

WOMEN IN EDUCATION Young Girls. Limited opportunities for schooling were available to girls and young women. Even though Protestant belief acknowledged the same route to salvation for men and women, and thus the same need for literacy, female education in the early nineteenth century ranged from inferior to nonexistent. As the push for school reform increased during the 1830s and 1840s, however, popular attitudes began to shift concerning the education of girls. Although women's intelligence was considered different and perhaps inferior to men's, females were believed capable and deserving of common school education in order to become upstanding moral citizens and more important because as future wives and mothers they needed to pass such solid moral training on to their families. Benjamin Rush, DeWitt Clinton, Emma Hart Willard, and others took up the argument that female education was necessary for this crucial domestic role. Although inequality of opportunity remained a problem, the increasing acceptance and provision of education for girls resulted in a dramatic rise of female enrollments in schools of all levels. As more and more girls passed through the educational system, a sign of their advancement could be found in the increasing percentage of literate women, which doubled between 1780 and 1840. Academies and Seminaries. In the decades before the emergence of high schools (which did not become widespread until after the Civil War), academies and seminaries

The Charleston, South Carolina, Female Seminary in the 1830s

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THE RISE OF COEDUCATION: OBERLIN COLLEGE During the antebellum period almost all colleges restricted admission to white men. Common be lief held that women were incapable of intellectual self-discipline and rigor. Attempts to impose higher learning on young women, it was feared, would prove debilitating to both the female mind and body. In this climate Oberlin College in Ohio stood out as an anomaly. In 1832 Oberlin's founder, the Reverend John J. Shipherd, proposed a school open to both sexes and all races, and in 1837 Oberlin became the first American college to admit women as well as men. It offered young women a choice of a "ladies' course" or the traditional classical curriculum. In 1842 four young women received bachelor of arts degrees from the Ohio institution. As one Oberlin student explained: "Women are to be educated because we choose civilization rather than barbarism." Over the following decades more and more educational institutions would admit women as students, and the number of exclusively female institutions would increase. But despite the pathbreaking stance of Oberlin in the 1830s, American higher education remained a virtually all-male affair until after the Civil War. Source; Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College: From its Foundation through the Civil War (New York: Arno, 1971).

arose to serve as a transition from grammar school for those who wanted to prepare for college work and as a form of higher education for the many who would not go on to college. Though females began to enjoy a rough equality of access to primary schooling and were in some places in the majority among those who continued on to grammar schooling, they were at a significant disadvantage in access to most forms of higher education. The founding of female academies was thus a boon to women seeking some sort of higher learning. In New York State

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alone thirty-two academies were incorporated between 1819 and 1853 with the prefix "Female" in the title. Still more advanced were the special "female seminaries," such as that begun by Willard in Middlebury, Vermont, in 1814, the Troy Female Seminary (founded by Willard in 1821), the Hartford Female Seminary (founded by Catharine Beecher in 1828), and Mount Holyoke Seminary (founded by Mary Lyon in 1836). During the 1830s and 1840s, especially in the South, the female seminary quickly became the vogue. In Alabama, for example, twenty-seven academies for girls were founded between 1822 and 1861. These schools trained girls in domestic, literary, and religious matters as well as in mathematics, philosophy, and history, providing the first higher education for females in the United States. The future expansion of higher education for women was based on the establishment of the academies and particularly the female seminaries founded in large numbers between 1800 and the 1850s. Higher Education. Wesleyan Female College in Georgia began awarding degrees to women in 1836, the same year that Oberlin College began admitting women to academic study. In spite of such advances opportunities for higher education remained restrictive and inferior when compared to the educational opportunities available to young men. The female seminaries and emerging women's colleges were not yet on the same level with the traditional degree-granting institutions for men. As Beecher frankly stated: "Not one" female seminary calling itself a colleg has "as yet, secured the chief advantages of such institutions. They are inertly high schools." By 1840 there existed only seven institutions of all kinds for the higher education of women. Nevertheless, by insisting that women were capable of receiving levels of education beyond grammar school, reformers and the young women who attended the new female seminaries forever changed Americans' views of women and their intellectual abilities. Sources: Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983); Maxine Schwartz Seller, ed., Women Educators in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994).

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HEADLINE MAKERS

HENRY B. BARNARD 1811-1900 FIRST U.S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION A Calling. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Henry B a r n a r d graduated from Yale College in 1830, taught school for one year, and subsequently studied law. A the years passed, he was drawn away from law and became deeply i n t e r e s t e d in e d u c a t i o n . At twenty-four Barnard traveled across the Atlantic to study the various schools and educational approaches of Europe. After nearly three years abroad he returned and was elected a Whig delegate to the Connecticut General Assembly (1837-1840). Combining his knowledge of law with his passion for public education, Barnard immediately put forth legislation that aimed at creating a State Board of Commissioners for Common Schools. Modeled after the Massachusetts plan, the board, with a secretary of education at the helm, would oversee the creation and supervision of a state public school system. In 1839 he was able to secure passage of the la and was promptly elected as Connecticut's first secretary of education. He eventually withdrew from the assembly to establish the political neutrality of the secretary's office and never again identified himself with a political party. Despite the fact that the legislature would abolish both the board and the position by 1842, Barnard had begun a life of school reform that no legislature could thwart. Restless Reformer. No less important than the better-known crusade that Horace Mann was simultaneously conducting in Massachusetts, Barnard's efforts for school reform in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and other New England states also bore fruit. In 1839 he organized the first teachers' institute in America and used this new instrument to awaken teachers to a higher standard of professionalism. During the same

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period he established the Connecticut Common School Journal to spread his educational ideas. He also organized school libraries and encouraged the creation of night schools. Politically savvy, Barnard used statistical data to arouse public opinion for reform and exposed the intolerable conditions of school buildings to urge legislation for better schoolhouse construction. After the abolition of his position as the secretary of Connecticut's board of education he traveled to Rhode Island to examine and report on the state's school system. He stayed and from 1845 to 1849 acted as Rhod Island's state commissioner of public schools. While there he organized the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, one of the oldest teachers' associations in the country. In Rhode Island and elsewhere he organized town lecture courses and town libraries. In later years Barnard would serve brief terms as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and president of Saint John's College in Maryland. In 1855 he became the founder and editor of the American Journal of Education, one of his most lasting contributions to the field of American education. By 1867 this energetic reformer became the first U.S. commissioner of education. Influence. Henry Barnard remains one of the preeminent leaders in the early development of American public education. Like Mann and other reformers he viewed the social unrest and rapid changes of the antebellum years with unease. Consequently many of his educational efforts were aimed at controlling social change by inculcating a uniform moral message in the nation's young people. Unlike others, however, Bar nard was not confrontational and avoided controversy. Instead he continually sought to advance his beliefs through research, writing, and administrative work. He has been described as "the scholar of the great public school awakening." Sources: Ralph C.Jenkins and Gertrude C. Warner, Henry Barnard: An Introduction (Hartford: Connecticut State Teachers Association, 1937); Richard E. Thursfield, Henry Barnard's American Journal of Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945).

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CATHARINE BEECHER 18OO-1878

ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN'S EDUCATION Activist Family. The oldest child of Lyman Beecher, the nation's most prominent evangelical preacher of the 1820s and 1830s, and the sister of Henry Ward Beecher (the "Shakespeare of the pulpit," as he came to be known) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852), Catharine grew up in a home actively engaged in saving souls and reforming society. Born in isolated and rural East Hampton, Long Island, at the age of nine she moved with her family to fashionable and class-conscious Litchfield, Connecticut. Although in East Hampton, Catharine's parents taught her at home, when her family relocated, she began attending a private girls' school. At sixteen the death of her mother forced Catharine to take charge of the Beecher household. It was then that she decided to go into teaching so that she could contribute to the family income. Absorbing her father's phenomenal energy and abounding sense of mission, Catharine quickly rose to prominence. Philosophy of Nurturing. Beecher devoted most of her life to explaining and implementing her philosophy of women's education at a time when many Americans questioned the necessity of educating females. Central to her beliefs about women and education was the idea of mothers and teachers as natural nurturers of young people. She felt strongly that it was vital for mothers and teachers actively to take part in the business of education. She believed that women had a special duty to sustain the moral and social fabric of each generation of Americans. "The peculiar responsibilities of American women" was how she described a woman's duty in her famous Treatise on Domestic Economy, published in 1841. "In the matters pertaining to the education of their children . . . and in all questions relating to morals or manners, they [American women] have a superior influence." Throughout her numerous publications Beecher argued repeatedly that women's innate domestic and teaching abilities, properly defined, were not only the basis of women's social advancement but also the foundation of social order. The future of American democracy itself, she argued, depended on "the intellectual and moral character of the mass of people." The shaping of that character, she concluded, was "committed mainly to the female hand." This social vision demanded that women receive the proper training to carry out their unique domestic mission, and Beecher dedicated her life to providing such education for the women of the United States. Women's Institutions. Beecher's career as an educator and advocate for women's expanded social role flourished in the dynamic environment of antebellum America. In 1823 she founded one of the fledgling nation's most rigorous academies of higher education for women, the Hartford (Connecticut) Female Seminary. The Hartford school offered one of the few places in America where women

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could go for education beyond the elementary level. The seminary taught grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and many of the other subjects found in the curricula of men's colleges. In 1832 she followed her father and siblings to Cincinnati, where she established and directed the Western Female Institute (1832-1837), which carried on the work that she had begun in Hartford. In 1847 Beecher founded the Board of National Popular Education, which recruited hundreds of young schoolmarms for the new states. Five years later she helped create the American Women's Educational Association. In addition to founding various institutions and organizations for women's education Beecher actively promoted and embraced the vision of the common school movement that Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and others were leading. As she began to devote an increasing amount of her time and effort to school reform, her ideas about women's role in society and the importance of public education melded into a sort of personal crusade that she never relinquished until her death at the age of seventy-eight. Woman of Her Time. Catharine Beecher was an untiring organizer of women's schools and colleges and a resourceful fighter for the advancement of female teachers. As a prolific writer and educator Beecher led the way in vocalizing the importance of professionalizing women's domestic and educational roles. She was in the end, however, a product of her environment. In expressing her views about the expanded power of women in the domestic sphere, she rarely criticized the political, social, and economic inequalities that divided men and women. Rather, Beecher tried to reconcile the many middle-class women who read her books and attended her schools with the existing patterns of female subordination in America. In fact Beecher did not support the first movement for women's rights. Beecher's views appear tame compared with those of the more-radical female activists of her day, but her lifelong efforts guaranteed that women would exert increasing influence on the developing nation. In the end Beecher helped to pave the way for modern assumptions about the place of women in American society. Sources: Joan Burstyn, "Catharine Beecher and the Education of American Women," New England Quarterly, 47 (1974): 386-403; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York: Norton, 1976).

JOSIAH B. HOLBROOK

1788-1854

FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN LYCEUM MOVEMENT Amateur Scientist. From an early age Josiah Hoibrook of Darby, Connecticut, who graduated from Yale College in 1810, mixed interests in business, science, and educational reform. A well-to-do farmer turned amateur

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scientist, Holbrook dreamed of sharing scientific knowledge with citizens throughout the nation. After listening to the science lectures of Benjamin Silliman, the eminent professor of chemistry and mineralogy at Yale, Holbrook returned to Darby to spread his interest in science to others and traveled throughout the state as an itinerant lecturer on scientific subjects. In 1819 he organized one of the nation's earliest industrial schools in his hometown. He continually experimented with other schools that combined manual training, agricultural education, and formal academic instruction. By the 1820s he had acquired a reputation as one of the leading voices of the new sciences and an advocate of educational reform. American Lyceum. In October 1826 Holbrook wrote an article titled "Association of Adults for Mutual Education" for \]\Q American Journal of Education, in which he proposed a federation of adult educational organizations, called lyceums (from the Greek name for the garden at Athens where Aristotle taught), on town, county, state, and national levels. He explained the lyceum as a way to increase educational opportunities and to promote "the advancement of education" including "the general diffusion of knowledge." Such an organization would be "a voluntary association of individuals [men and women] disposed to improve each other in useful knowledge and to advance the interests of the schools." One month after his influential article Holbrook founded the first American lyceum at Millbury, Massachusetts. The movement spread rapidly, particularly throughout New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the growing Midwest. By 1828 there were well over one hundred town lyceums. By 1831 the movement had become so popular that supporters organized a National Lyceum and created a constitution. Holbrook estimated in 1835 that there existed fifteen or sixteen state lyceums, over one hundred county lyceums, and about three thousand town lyceums. The American lyceums not only disseminated "useful knowledge" through lectures but also, reported Holbrook, many local lyceums organized libraries, museums, and science exhibitions. Some groups compiled town histories and town maps, and others conducted agricultural and geological surveys. The topics of discussion at town lyceums also covered a range of issues that went beyond science and agricultural techniques and embraced nearly every issue or interest of the day. Holbrook and other local leaders initially discouraged only the controversial issues of war and slavery. School Reform Ally. Part of Holbrook's plan for the American lyceum was to popularize interest in public school reform. Holbrook and other lyceum leaders invited prominent reformers such as Henry Barnard and Horace Mann to speak in favor of tax-supported public schools. Lyceums, however, did more than act as platforms for school reform advocates. As Holbrook reported, they often furnished teachers "with a room, apparatus, and other accommodations, for holding meetings, and conducting a course of exercises in relation to

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their schools." In addition Holbrook encouraged older children to attend various lyceum sessions to fill in some of the many deficiencies of their local school curricula. Legacy of Learning. Holbrook's movement has been described as "educational evangelism," with the part of the circuit-riding preacher played by the itinerant lecturer. Like the religious revivals of the era, however, the movement could not sustain itself indefinitely. It peaked in the mid 1830s with over thirty-five hundred local lyceums organized in the Northeastern states. Attendance at the national conventions decreased yearly until the final meeting in 1839. Yet on the local level the lyceums continued to thrive through the years of the Civil War. Holbrook's American lyceum was the most important stimulus to popular education of its time and for over a decade was as powerful and influential as the public school system itself was soon to become. Through his efforts Holbrook and the lyceums did much to establish the regular public school. The American lyceum movement also served as the precursor to the Chautauqua movement organized in the later nineteenth century. Throughout the remainder of his life Holbrook remained dedicated to the cause of popular education. In 1849 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he promoted the lyceum system until his death. He died doing what he loved best: furthering the knowledge of science. In 1854 he drowned in Blackwater Creek near Lynchburg, Virginia, on an outing to collect specimens of minerals and plants indigenous to the area. Source: Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

MARY LYON 1797-1849

FOUNDER OF MOUNT HOLYOKE FEMALE SEMINARY Teaching as Necessity. Mary Lyon was born on the family hill farm in Buckland, Massachusetts. When Mary was still a child, her father died, leaving the family of seven children in the difficult financial situation of trying to make the best of one hundred rocky acres, a small flock of sheep, and several dairy cows. Mary learned at home the skills of spinning, weaving, candlemaking and housework, but from the age of four she tagged along with her older siblings to a nearby school, where the teachers could hardly keep pace with her intense curiosity about the world. She continued to attend the local district schools and began teaching at seventeen, earning the customary salary of seventy-five cents a week plus room and board. At nineteen Mary spent all her savings to pay for one term at the

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Sanderson Academy in Ashland, Massachusetts. At times she slept only four hours a night so that she could get in sixteen hours of studying and recitation. Such dedication impressed her teachers and fellow students alike, and when she ran out of money to attend a second term, the school's trustees voted to extend her free tuition. Through the next twenty years of financial struggles, in which she taught school and "boarded round" (she had no home of her own until she was nearly forty), her enthusiasm and friendliness continued to gain her many benefactors. Spirituality of Learning. At the core of Lyon's beliefs was a conviction that the purpose of education was spiritual. Knowledge should lead to action, she argued, and women trained as schoolteachers should carry out a sacred mission to America's children. Her Puritan background at times created an inner tension as she delved into the world of "human science" and secular books, but as she explained to her students, one should "study and teach nothing that cannot be made to help in the great work of converting the world to Christ." Convinced that women were endowed with a special capacity to spread God's word, Lyon took care to ensure that her teaching fostered Christian values and character among her students. In the end she was able to combine her passion for learning, her faith in God, and her desire to see that young women received an education worthy of their calling. During the winter of 1834 Lyon wrote to a close friend about her decision to establish and operate a new kind of seminary: "My heart has so yearned over the adult female youth in the common walks of life, that it has sometimes seemed as though a fire were shut up in my bones." From then on the fire within would burn brightly on the surface as she dedicated her life to the cause of women's higher education. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. In 1800 women could not enter any college in the United States. Through her own experience Lyon knew that women could meet the same rigorous academic standards as their male counterparts, and in 1834 she set about raising funds to establish a quality women's college. She solicited money throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut, aided by longtime supporters such as the Reverend Edward Hitchcock. Selecting a site in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Lyon opened the doors of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary on 8 November 1837, with one hundred students. To keep costs low so that those not born into wealthy families might attend, students and teachers performed all of the domestic chores at the institution. However, Lyon refused to include instruction in domestic activities. Instead she established high academic standards. Closely modeled on that of men's colleges, her curriculum emphasized advanced studies in both the sciences and the humanities. The school offered women an opportunity to study subjects once unavailable to them but at the same time stressed the intellectual cultivation required to become good wives, mothers, teach-

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ers, and missionaries. "O how immensely important is this work of preparing the daughters of the land to be good mothers!," Lyon wrote. She served as principal of the seminary from 1837 until her death in 1849. During her twelve-year tenure as principal the school quickly grew in enrollment and reputation. The institution eventually was incorporated into a college in 1888. Trailblazer. Mary Lyon's Holyoke seminary marked the beginning of higher education for women. Its remarkable success inspired the Vassars, Smiths, and Wellesleys founded in later years. By applying standards equal to those of traditional colleges Lyon helped undermine the long-standing assumption that women were intellectually inferior to men. Despite its many limitations Holyoke seminary marked a great improvement over the colonial finishing schools once considered to offer the only proper education for young ladies. Sources: Beth Bradford Gilchrist, The Life of Mary Lyon (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1910); Elizabeth Green, Mary Lyon and Mt. Holyoke: Opening the Gates (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1979).

HORACE MANN 1796-1859 PUBLIC SCHOOL CRUSADER Lawyer and Legislator. Born and raised in Franklin, Massachusetts, Horace Mann graduated from Brown University in 1819. He served as a tutor at Brown for the next three years while simultaneously studying law. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar of Norfolk County, Massachusetts. Mann practiced law at various places throughout the state from 1823 to 1837 and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833 and the Massachusetts Senate from 1833 to 1837. As a legislator he was instrumental in the creation of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, of which he served as secretary for nearly twelve years. Mann began his task as secretary with exuberance, exclaiming on 2 July 1837: "My lawbooks are for sale. My office is to let! The bar is no longer my forum. My jurisdiction has changed. I have abandoned jurisprudence, and betaken myself to the larger sphere of mind and morals." Such enthusiasm and urgency rarely slackened for the remainder of his life. In 1848 he resigned as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education to succeed John Quincy Adams in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he stayed for five productive years, championing the cause of education nationally. Later in life Antioch College in Ohio appointed Mann its first president, a

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position he held until his death. At each stop he remained committed to education reform. Public School Reform. Mann stood at the center of the movement for a tax-supported common school system. In the debate between those who hoped public schools would guarantee civic virtue, national loyalty, and industrious workers and those who feared statesponsored autocracy, Mann remained committed to his cause. Constantly opposed by contemporaries who viewed universal public education as a waste of money and local groups who detested the homogenizing effects of state-run education, Mann utilized the popular American lyceum movement to generate mass support for public education. In addition to lecturing throughout the East, in 1838 he founded the Common School Journal as an organ for reformers' ideas. As secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education he campaigned effectively for more and better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum. He traveled from town to town, gathering information, propagandizing for improved schools, and encouraging school committees and citizens to commit themselves to greater efforts for the education of their children. From his modest power base Mann proceeded not only to transform the educational system of his home state but also to become the foremost leader of the common school movement in the nation. Loyalty and Social Order. Mann's lectures and writings preached universal public education as the only means to transform America's disorderly masses into a disciplined, law-abiding, republican citizenry, which he believed would eliminate the risk of anarchy and class conflict. Concerned about the "additional thousands of voters every year crossing the line of manhood to decree the destiny of the nation," Mann explained in 1842 that "without additional knowledge and morality, things must accelerate from worse to worse." Two dangers awaited the nation if it failed to extend the most basic of educational opportunities to immigrants and the poor: "the danger of ignorance which does not know its duty, and the danger of vice, which knowing, condemns it." At the same time Mann wanted to prevent a sort of industrial feudalism from emerging, with a small group of wealthy capitalists dominating the growing factory system. "If one class possesses all the wealth and education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former." Mann envisioned a society of order and opportunity, a system that rewarded righteous behavior and honest work with material well-being and the responsibilities of leadership. Influence. Horace Mann symbolized the Yankee reformer of the era, completely convinced of the righteousness of his cause and willing to spare no effort to attain his goals. Imbued with a Puritan sense on the necessity for society to be governed by a strict moral code, Mann

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was also a humanitarian who regarded education as the starting point for universal reform. For Mann the mission of the public school was to be nothing less than to offer opportunities for the fullest development of each individual, to secure progress through social harmony, and to guarantee that intelligent and moral citizens would guide the new republic. He was not original in his advocacy of such goals, but no predecessor or contemporary had presented them so convincingly, expressed so eloquently their importance, or described in such detail how the nation could best attain them. He was certain that schools would accomplish wonders if they could first gather the nation's children under education's roof. Mann's deep conviction in the nearly limitless potential of education to resolve America's problems set in motion a national faith whose power still guides reformers today. Sources: Robert E. Downs, Horace Mann: Champion of Public Schools (New York: Twayne, 1974); Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1972).

EMMA HART WILLARD 1787-187O

FOUNDER OF THE TROY FEMALE SEMINARY Turning Point. Born in Berlin, Connecticut, in February 1787, Emma was the sixteenth of seventeen children. Her ancestors were among the most prominent settlers of New England, and her father had served as a militia captain in the Revolutionary War as well as in the state General Assembly. Emma attended a local district school, but much of her learning came at home. Reading aloud with her parents, she became a voracious reader of books that she borrowed from a nearby village library. At fifteen she began studying at the Berlin Academy under the tutelage of Thomas Miner, a graduate of Yale and the academy's founder. It was a turning point in her life. "No better instruction was given to girls in any school, at that time in the country," she recalled years later. Inspired and intellectually stimulated by Miner's lectures, Willard began teaching in the village school in 1804 at the age of seventeen. The experiences at the Berlin Academy and the village school sparked in her a lifelong passion for learning and teaching. From 1804 until the publication of her famous "Plan for Improving Female Education" (1819) she alternated periods of teaching and extending her own education. Improving Female Education. In Willard's "Plan for Improving Female Education," addressed to the New York legislature, she argued (albeit unsuccessfully) that states had an obligation to charter and finance colleges for women as well as men. In doing so she was contradicting the statement made the previous year by Thomas Jefferson in which he stated that female education should

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concentrate on "ornaments" and "the amusements of life." Explained Jefferson, "These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and music." Willard told the legislature that the education of women "has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty." The problem, she articulated, was that "the taste of men . . . has been made into a standard for the formation of the female character." Reason and religion teach us, she said, that "we too are primary existences . . . not the satellites of men." Astute enough to understand the temper of the times, she explained to the male legislators that educated mothers would raise citizens of better character. Properly educated female teachers, she hastened to add, would be both more virtuous and less expensive than male instructors. Always careful to appeal to men's self-interests, Willard asked: "Who knows how great and good a race of men may yet arise from the forming hands of mothers, enlightened by the bounty of their beloved country?" Troy Female Seminary. While bold enough to seek financial assistance for the formation of an educational institution for women, Willard was aware that it was foolhardy to propose a college for women, given contemporary views about women. Instead she coined the termfema/e seminary even though she had every intention of making such an institution operate on the same level as men's colleges. Over the next two years Willard embarked on a personal crusade for women's education, and after several unsuccessful attempts to raise the necessary finances, in 1821 she was able to establish the Troy (New York) Female Seminary. The Seminary became one of the first institutions for the education of girls and the first teacher-training insti-

tution in the nation. Willard believed that young women should and could learn academic subjects typically reserved for men, so the curriculum at the Troy Female Seminary included a full range of classes from Latin to geography. At its opening session in 1821 ninety young women enrolled, a number that grew every year that Willard served as teacher and administrator. She helped to design the buildings, selected or wrote the textbooks, and organized the curriculum. As the years passed, she added more advanced subjects in an effort to keep the institution's course of study as rigorous as that of any male college in the country. Willard spent most of her life at the Troy Female Seminary, and forty years after her death the trustees honored her memory by renaming the institution the Emma Willard School. Pioneer. In addition to founding the Troy Female Seminary, Willard was an accomplished teacher in her own right, the author of textbooks on geography and history, an early supporter of teacher education, and an unflagging advocate of common schools. She was a pioneer in challenging popular concepts of the role of women in the new republic. Although she accepted many of the inequalities of her era's highly patriarchal society, she did much to draw attention to the serious deficiencies in the education of girls. The ideas she expressed throughout her life provided thousands of women with the necessary leverage for increasing both their level of formal education and their opportunities as teachers. Sources: Alma Lutz, Emma Willard: Pioneer Educator of American Women (Boston: Beacon, 1964); Maxine Schwartz Seller, ed., Women Educators in the United States, 1820-1993 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994).

PUBLICATIONS

Henry Barnard, Normal Schools, and Other Institutions, Agencies, and Means Designed for the Professional Education of Teachers (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany, 1851)—argued for the development of institutions to train teachers; Barnard, School Architecture (New York: Norton, 1848)—called for the reform of school-building construction; Catharine Beecher, An Essay on the Education of Female

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Teachers (New York: Van Nostrand, 1835)—provided information on the training of women for teaching; Beecher, The Moral Instructor for Schools and Families (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith, 1838)—proclaimed the centrality of women as moral leaders in the domestic and educational spheres; Beecher, Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education (Hartford, Conn.: Packard & Butler, 1829)—an early call for school reform; John Goldsbury, The American Common-School Reader

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and Speaker (Boston: C. Tappan, 1844)—a popular textbook; Horace Mann, Lectures on Education (Boston: W. B. Fowle 8cN. Capen, 1845)—a compilation of Mann's ideas and arguments for school reform; Mann, Tenth Annual Report Covering the Year 1846 (Boston: Dutton 8t Wentworth, 1847)—one in a series of reports that Mann published on public school reform; William H. McGuffey, Fourth Eclectic Reader (Cincinnati: Winthrop B. Smith, 1844)—part of the most widely used textbook series; Lewis Samuel, Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools (Columbus, Ohio: Samuel Medary, 1839)—an influential report on the state of public schools; Delazon Smith, A History ofOberlin or New Lights of the West (Cleveland: S. Underbill, 1837)—a history of the nation's first coeducational institution of higher learning;

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John Orville Taylor, The District School; or, National Education (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, ±835)—describes the author's experiences teaching in district schools; Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: S. Converse, 1828)—the first American dictionary, which helped to standardize American English; Emma Hart Willard, A Planfor Improving Female Education (Albany, N.Y.: I. W. Clark, 1819)—described Willard's ideal female seminary and how it would operate; Yale College, Reports on the Course of Instruction in Yale College (New Haven, Conn.: Hezekiah Howe, 1828)—this report, published in slightly abbreviated form as "Original Papers in Relation to a Course of Liberal Education" in American Journal of * Science and Arts, 15 (January 1829): 297-351, was one of the major defenses of the classical curriculum.

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Sequoya's alphabet, 1821 (Houghton Library, Harvard University)

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GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

by JOHN MOUSTY

CONTENTS Dirty Tricks and the Campaign of 1828 *. 189 Presidential Elections ......... 19O Stephen Van Rensselaer and the "Corrupt Bargain" 19O Log Cabins and Hard Cider, 192

CHRONOLOGY 17O OVERVIEW 177 TOPICS IN THE NEWS The Federal Government

The People's Inauguration IndianPolicy. The Cherokee Republic International Affairs The National Bank Party Politics. The Eaton Affair

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ISO 182 182 183 185 .187 187

Reform Parties 193 Tariffs 195 Territorial Expansion and Sectional Conflict 196 The Toledo Border War .........196 TheMaysmlle Road Veto 197 The Strange Claim of Marigny D*Auteri 15 Mass. 1 (1818) Massachusetts chief justice Isaac Parker explained why women should be compensated for broken promises to marry: When the female is the injured party, there is generally more reason for a resort to the laws, than when the man is the sufferer. Both have a right of action, but the jury will discriminate and apportion the damages according to the injury sustained. A deserted female, whose prospects in life may be materially affected by the treachery of the man, to whom she has plighted her vows, will always receive from a jury the attention which her situation requires. And it is not disreputable for one, who may have to mourn for years over lost prospects and broken vows, to seek such compensation as the laws can give her. It is also for the public interest, that conduct tending to consign a virtuous woman to celibacy, should meet with that punishment, which may prevent it from becoming common. The delicacy of the sex, which happily in this country gives the man so much advantage over the woman, in the intercourse which leads to matrimonial engagements, requires for its protection and continuance the aid of the laws, When it shall be abused by the injustice of those who would take advantage of it, moral justice as well as public policy dictate the propriety of a legal indemnity.

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preme Court, that enforcement of English marriage laws "would bastardize the vast majority of children which have been born within the state for half a century." Massachusetts chief justice Theophilus Parsons and his son of the same name, a leading treatise writer, led the opposition to common-law marriages, advising that "every young woman of honor ought to insist on a marriage solemnized by a legal officer, and to shun the man who prates about marriage condemned by human law, as good in the sight of Heaven."

A bridal couple, circa 1850. The husband is wearing a militia uniform.

Massachusetts said yes. Although the suit no longer served as protection for both families entering marriage as an economic deal, it recognized the pressures upon women to marry and helped to safeguard the chastity of unmarried women. Theoretically men remained eligible to sue, but as the Alabama Supreme Court observed in 1846, "a just regard to public morals has long since confined the action alone to the female sufferer." In most states, courts enhanced the breach-of-promise suit by granting additional compensation in cases of seduction, a trend reinforced by the call for legislation providing redress for seduction. Common-Law Marriage. By generally requiring sanctioned ceremonies to make marriages legally valid, English law emphasized state authority over the rights of individuals to marry. American law reversed these values in recognizing the "common-law marriage." This legal relationship was essentially invented by jurist James Kent, who argued in his influential Commentaries (1826-1830) that no formal solemnization was needed to ratify the consent of the parties to marry. Later courts agreed that marriage was "one of the natural rights of human nature." This philosophizing was reinforced by the practical observation of the distinguished judge John Bannister Gibson, chief justice of the Pennsylvania Su-

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Eligibility to Marry. The common-law marriage issue was part of a controversy over the power of the state to decide who was eligible to marry. Advocates of marriage as a natural right largely succeeded in resisting attempts to legislate minimum ages for marriage and to ban marriages between first cousins. In both instances, enforcement of community standards came to depend mainly on individual self-governance. One of the most revealing questions of marital eligibility was the right of slaves to marry. On the one hand, slave masters actively encouraged the stability associated with permanent unions between slaves and welcomed the formation of families that would add to the labor supply. Enforcement of slave marriages also enhanced their masters' paternal selfimage; such proslavery ideologues as George Fitzhugh, George Frederick Holmes, Henry Hughes, and Robert Toombs called for the expansion of slaves' marital rights. But the recognition of slaves' marital rights would also undermine their marketability, reducing their value to their masters. As a result Southern judges refused to recognize slave marriages as legally binding, while acknowledging "a wide distinction between the cohabitation of slaves, as man and wife, and an indiscriminate sexual intercourse." Married Women's Property Rights. Under a common-law principle known as "coverture," the property rights of a married woman were subsumed in the legal identity of her husband. In the absence of an antenuptial agreement, he alone enjoyed authority to manage the property that either of them brought to the marriage, or that came to either member of them after the wedding. Moreover, the creditors of the husband could satisfy his debts by demanding the assets brought to the marriage or earned thereafter by the wife. This common-law tradition was displaced through state legislation known collectively as "married women's property acts." The first such statutes were enacted in Arkansas and the Florida Territory in 1835 and in Mississippi in 1839, the latter in response to the severe economic depression that followed the Panic of 1837. This legislation safeguarded wives' assets from husbands' creditors. Lobbying by woman's rights activists, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, produced a second and stronger wave of married women's property acts, beginning in New York in 1848, that not only protected wives' property from creditors but recognized the authority of women to manage the property that they contributed to the household. By

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THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD The case of D'Hauteville v. D'Hauteville (1840) illustrated the increasing tendency of judges to presume that mothers should receive custody of their children. The highly publicized litigation between Boston textile heiress Ellen Sears D'Hauteville and her husband, Swiss nobleman Baron D'Hauteville, took place in Philadelphia, where the mother had taken their two-year-old son because of Pennsylvania's favorable custody policies. The state supreme court fulfilled her ex* pectations by rejecting the baron's argument that he enjoyed a presumptive right to custody. The court observed that "the reputation of a father may be stainless as crystal, he may not be afflicted with the slightest mental, moral, or physical disqualification from superintending the general welfare of the infant . . . and yet the interest of the child may imperatively demand the denial of the father's right" because "every instinct of humanity unerringly proclaims that no substitute can supply the place of her, whose watchfulness over the sleeping cradle or waking moments of her offspring is prompted by deeper and holier feelings than the most liberal allowance of a nurse's wages could possibly stimulate." The Victorian ideal of domestic womanhood had become embodied in the law. midcentury seventeen states had passed some form of married women's property acts. The most powerful force impelling these reforms was the clarification of debtorcreditor relations, rather than the restructuring of relations between husbands and wives, but the creation of new rights for married women helped to redress the inequality in the traditional patriarchal conception of marriage. Reproduction. In childbearing, as in marriage, the law responded to changes in social practices. The sharp decline of the birthrate, one of the most important demographic facts of American life during the nineteenth century, was achieved in various ways, including contraception and abortion. By the 1830s both of these had become sufficiently widespread to spark significant legal controversies. The approach to contraception reflected the American ambivalence toward the subject. Regulations were aimed at outspoken public advocates of birth control, whom lawmakers regarded as dangerous radicals, but little effort was made to interfere with prevate practices. The legality of abortion had traditionally focused on "quickening," or the first movements of the fetus, generally around the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. The common-law inheritance of the colonies treated abortion as a criminal offense only in the case of a

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quickened fetus. Unlike England, which began in 1803 to ban abortions prior to quickening, American courts continued to regard termination of pregnancy during the early phase as beyond regulation. The New York abortion law of 1828 even expanded the availability of postquickening abortions by sanctioning the termination of pregnancy at any point in cases of medical necessity. During the following decade an English immigrant born as Caroline Lohman, who styled herself "Madam Restell," became a celebrity as the most prominent abortionist in New York; by the mid 1840s she supplemented her Fifth Avenue brownstone with offices in Boston and Philadelphia. But the prosecution of Restell for violation of an 1845 antiabortion statute, albeit a misdemeanor offense, signaled a shift in attitudes. Toward midcentury judges increasingly suggested that legislatures follow the more rigorous antiabortion laws of England. New Jersey lawmakers implemented this proposal in 1849 following a decision by the state supreme court that applied the principle of quickening to dismiss criminal charges against an abortionist. The stage was set for a post-Civil War crusade against birth control that would considerably expand the criminal regulation of contraception and abortion. Custody Rights. Anglo-American law prior to the Revolutionary era regarded children as legal dependents of the male head of a household. Fathers enjoyed complete rights to the custody, services, and earnings of their children. The great English jurist Lord Mansfield helped to crack this patriarchal structure in Rex v. Delaval(1763), which asserted the authority of courts to consider the interests of children in custody disputes. With the elaboration of the ideals of domesticity in America after 1815, courts used the precedent of Rex v. Delava/to dismantle the patriarchal tradition. An 1834 decision by Massachusetts chief justice Lemuel Shaw identified one possible alternative by finding that fathers retained presumptive custody rights, although the interests of a child might nonetheless require an award to the mother if the father were unfit. By the 1840s New York and Massachusetts had passed statutes providing that "the rights of the parents to their children, in the absence of misconduct, are equal and the happiness and welfare of the child are to determine its care and custody." Source: Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

JUDICIAL NATIONALISM

Federalism. Many of the most important Supreme Court decisions between 1815 and 1850 centered on the relationship between the federal government and the states. Several landmark decisions during the first decade of the period contributed significantly to the strengthening of the federal government. This judicial nationalism was less an expansive than a defensive tendency; rather

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than identifying new spheres of federal action, the Court's decisions sought to prevent the states from absorbing and fragmenting federal powers. Nevertheless, the assertion of federal authority was highly controversial, especially during 1819-1821. Fears that the Marshall court was consolidating power in the federal government played an important part in the coalescence of the Jacksonian Democrats on a platform of strict construction of the Constitution. In response the Court adopted a more moderate course in the late 1820s and 1830s. Under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney the Court went on to articulate new limits to the power of the national institution that the Marshall Court had most zealously sustained, the federal judiciary. Supreme Court Supremacy. The fundamental nature of sovereignty in the federal Union was at the heart of litigation over the authority of the United States Supreme Court to review decisions by the highest state courts. The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided for Supreme Court review in cases in which state courts found federal laws to be invalid and those in which state courts rejected an argument that a state law was "repugnant to the constitution, or laws of the United States." The Supreme Court addressed this provision in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), a case involving title to land that had been owned by Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. After the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by the Virginia Court of Appeals that state property laws took precedence over the Treaty of Paris in determining ownership of the land, the Virginia court found that the review powers outlined in the Judiciary Act of 1789 violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in turn, found that the review powers established by Congress were not merely consistent with the Constitution but compelled by it: the country could not function without a central arbiter to resolve issues of federal law. Although Virginia maintained that the state was a sovereign partner in the Union, with no less authority than the United States Supreme Court to interpret federal law, Justice Story's majority opinion observed that "the constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by 'the people of the United States.' " Story reasoned that the Constitution served to "invest the general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary," including the power to protect federal law from misinterpretation by states.

challenged for many years, but even more for other debates over the implied powers of Congress, especially the controversy over federally funded "internal improvements" projects such as roads and canals. Writing for the Court, Marshall took a broad view of the implied powers enjoyed by Congress under the Necessary and Proper clause. As long as legislation pursued a legitimate goal and did not violate a specific constitutional prohibition, Marshall wrote, any method Congress chose to achieve its ends was valid. Marshall also wrote in broadly national terms on the second issue in McCulloch, whether states had the power to tax the bank. Marshall emphasized that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy" and denied states the power to drive out the Bank of the United States with taxes that would reserve banking for state-chartered institutions. The states, Marshall maintained, "have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress."

McCulloch v. Maryland. The assertion of judicial nationalism that attracted the most attention during the period was McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which at a time of economic upheaval focused on the most visible federal economic institution, the Second Bank of the United States. The first issue in the case, whether Congress had authority under the Constitution to charter the bank, was important not only in the instance of the bank, the constitutionality of which had not been seriously

Protest. The judicial nationalism of Martin v. Hunter's Lessee and McCulloch v. Maryland sparked several different attacks by advocates of state sovereignty. McCulloch prompted a vigorous newspaper debate, into which Marshall entered in a series of anonymous essays. The aging Jefferson emerged from retirement to complain that the judiciary was "a subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederate fabric." With Jeffer-

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John Marshall, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1801-1835

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A CONSTITUTION WE ARE EXPOUNDING

Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion for the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. (17 U.S.) 316 (1819), was one of his most important decisions. It was also one of the best examples of his philosophy of jurisprudence, in that he cited no judicial precedents, but instead relied on a close reading of the constitutional text and on inferences drawn from what he identified as the goals of the framers: This government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers, . . . But the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted, is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.... A constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves.... In considering this question, then we must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding. son's encouragement Justice William Johnson soon announced that he would break Court ranks and issue individual opinions in constitutional cases. The Virginia legislature and the influential Richmond Enquirer set out to reverse or limit Martin in a subsequent case, Cohens v. Virginia (1821), but Marshall's opinion in Cohens firmly upheld the principles of Supreme Court jurisdiction established in Martin. Enquirer editor Thomas Ritchie soon shifted his constitutional tactics, joining with Martin Van Buren of New York to form the national Democratic Party. From the outset the organization vowed opposition to the McCulloch doctrine of implied powers, culminating in President Andrew Jackson's successful war against the Bank of the United States and the resistance of the party to internal improvements. This circumvention of the Court was supplemented by direct assaults. After the Court found in Green v. Biddle (1821) that Kentucky land laws violated the Contract clause, Sen. Richard Johnson of Kentucky proposed a constitutional amendment that would have shifted to the Senate the power to resolve challenges to the constitutionality of state laws. Concurrent Sovereignty. If, as McCulloch indicated, state legislation would not be permitted to interfere with congressional enactments, the question remained whether states could regulate activities over which Congress enjoyed an authority that it had not chosen to exer-

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cise. Analysis of this recurring issue began with Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), a popular decision that helped to quell the controversy surrounding the Court. Gibbons grew out of the steam transportation that was transforming American commerce. The New York legislature had granted inventor Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston an exclusive license to operate steamboats in New York waters. Former New Jersey governor Aaron Ogden, who purchased a franchise under this license to conduct a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, sued to fend off competition from an unauthorized ferry owned by Thomas Gibbons and piloted by young Cornelius Vanderbilt, the future railroad tycoon. James Kent's ruling in the New York Court of Chancery held that the state of New York had the power to regulate commerce in a navigable interstate waterway as long as the state's laws did not directly collide with congressional legislation. Daniel Webster, seeking reversal in the Supreme Court, maintained that power to regulate interstate commerce belonged to Congress and Congress alone, under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Marshall's majority opinion sought a compromise by finding that Congress in fact had enacted a statute that authorized Gibbons's ferry to ply the coastal waters; since Congress had acted, the touchy issue of whether states could regulate interstate commerce in the absence of congressional action was avoided. The decision not to assert exclusive congressional authority over interstate commerce significantly tempered the judicial nationalism of recent years. The view that the states enjoyed a concurrent sovereignty over interstate commerce, when not in direct conflict with federal legislation, continued to grow. The doctrine maybe said to have reached maturity with Cooleyv. Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia (1851), in which the Court held that local pilotage regulations, including the assessment of fees, did not violate Congress's control over interstate commerce. Bill of Rights. Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore (1835) was the most important example of the restrained nationalism that marked the latter years of the Marshall Court. A dock owner sued the city of Baltimore (which had damaged his wharf while paving streets) under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that private property shall not be taken for public use "without just compensation." The case turned on whether the Fifth Amendment, and more broadly the Bill of Rights, applied to state governments (and the cities they created). If it did, state government activities would have been significantly restricted; indeed, the application of the Bill of Rights to the states would prove to be one of the major themes of American constitutional development after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Court in Barron instead attached more importance to the history of the Bill of Rights, which had developed primarily to assuage fears that the federal government would be too powerful. Observing that the case was one of "great importance, but not of

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much difficulty," the Court declined to use the Bill of Rights to restrain the state governments. Federal Common Law. The last great triumph of judicial nationalism during the years from 1815 to 1850 was Justice Story's opinion for the Court in Swift v. Tyson (1842), which has sparked more scholarly commentary than any other decision of the period. The case illustrated the "diversity jurisdiction" of the federal courts, that is, the power of federal courts to hear lawsuits between citizens of different states. The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that federal courts should apply state law in deciding diversity cases. In Swift v. Tyson, however, the Court ruled that the Judiciary Act only obliged federal courts to follow enactments by state legislatures; decisions by state courts were not "law," Justice Story wrote, and therefore did not bind federal courts. As a result federal courts could formulate their own rules of decision in the many areas not governed by statutes, and in the following years a federal common law emerged in such crucial areas as the administration of wills and the allocation of mineral rights. Almost a full century after Swift v. Tyson the Supreme Court overturned the ruling and held in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938) that federal courts considering diversity cases were obliged to follow applicable state-court decisions. Limits. The expansion of federal judicial power dramatized by Swift v. Tyson was the most consistent theme in the nationalism of the Supreme Court, for even when the Court affirmed state legislation or state-court rulings, federal decision-making authority was enhanced. In Luther v. Borden (1849), however, the Court sought to define limits to its own competence. The case grew out of the so-called Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island, in which a group of suffrage reformers called a People's Convention to replace the state charter with a new constitution, leading to the election of Thomas Dorr as governor. But the existing government called out the state militia to suppress the Dorrites, who then appealed to Congress and the Supreme Court to enforce Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." Congress refused to act, and Chief Justice Roger Taney used this opportunity to elaborate the doctrine that some constitutional issues, including the enforcement of Article IV, Section 4, are "political questions" to be resolved by Congress rather than the courts. This doctrine became an important self-imposed limit on the authority of the federal judiciary. Sources: Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, second edition (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1988); Edward G. White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1850 (New York: Macmillan, 1988).

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LAW AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Economic Growth. Many Americans saw the stimulation of economic growth as one of the central responsibilities of government. This expectation accounted for the legislative preoccupation with economic regulation, most notably banking issues, and it equally influenced court dockets. Economic development was at the heart of cases that focused on a wide variety of legal issues. The impetus for the Cherokee litigation was the expansion of cotton cultivation through the Southwest; the landmark federalism cases of McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden affirmed congressional power to manage the national economy and sought to promote economic competition. A particularly crucial line of cases defined the property interests that courts would recognize. In the Supreme Court these cases centered on the Contract Clause, which barred states from passing any "Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." Equally important decisions in the state courts transformed the common law into an instrument for the promotion of economic expansion. Corporations. Traditionally, people wishing to participate in joint economic enterprises formed partnerships, organizations in which each partner was entitled to a share of managerial authority and each was personally liable for the entire debt of the organization. The corporation, in contrast, was (and still is) a limited-liability organization; each investor risks only the capital she puts into it. Corporations rapidly became more central to the American economy than to that of any other country. By 1817 there were more corporations chartered in Massachusetts than in all European countries combined. The early stages of industrialization promised the further growth of corporations as vehicles for pooling investments. The authority of state legislatures to alter corporate charters, considered by the Supreme Court in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), therefore had vast economic implications. The Court invalidated the state statutes revising Dartmouth's corporate charter (granted by King George III in 1769), holding that a private corporation's charter was a contract and thus protected by the Constitution against impairment by the states. Previously, many courts had regarded all corporations as public institutions subject to direct government control; as one court opinion stated, "it seems difficult to conceive of a corporation established for merely private purposes." When in Dartmouth College the Supreme Court recognized corporations funded by private capital as private entities, entitled to the same legal protections as individuals, it was a crucial turning point in the development of American law and American industry. By protecting corporations the Court ensured the security of the legal structure on which the manufacturing firms of New England would soon build. Bankruptcy. Debtor-creditor relations, an issue of immense practical significance in the aftermath of the Panics of 1819 and 1837, posed some of the most vexa-

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Stock certificate for a New York business (Lightfoot Collection)

tious constitutional problems of the era. In the capitalhungry and unpredictable American economy, moral condemnation no longer seemed an appropriate response to economic failure. States ceased to imprison debtors and began to pass bankruptcy laws. Bankruptcy allowed a person hopelessly in debt to make a fresh start, having all of his debts discharged by agreeing to a court-approved plan of partial repayment. Such laws pitted creditors' expectations of full repayment against the public's interest in encouraging investors to take risks and helping debtors to return to economic productivity. Although authorized by the Constitution to do so, Congress failed to pass bankruptcy legislation, leaving the states to act individually. Ogden v. Saunders (1827), the climax of a series of bankruptcy cases decided by the Supreme Court since 1819, dramatized the depth of disagreement over debtor-creditor relations. When the Court held that the application of state bankruptcy laws did not necessarily violate the Contract Clause, Chief Justice Marshall issued his first (and only) dissent from a Court opinion interpreting the Constitution. Monopolies. In Dartmouth College the Supreme Court had encouraged investors by making corporations more secure. But by approving bankruptcy legislation in Ogden v. Saunders the Supreme Court encouraged entrepreneurs to take risks that might reduce the security of investors. These two principles, security and risktaking, collided head-on in the great Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge decision of 1837. The case involved a claim by stockholders in a toll bridge chartered by Massachusetts to connect Boston with Charlestown. In the forty years following construction of the Charles River

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Bridge in 1785, the population of Boston roughly tripled, to about 60,000; the toll bridge, which had involved a total capital investment of perhaps $70,000, was annually collecting a tremendous profit of $30,000 in tolls. These earnings were quickly destroyed, however, when the state chartered the rival Warren Bridge (which charged no tolls after it was paid for), a few hundred feet from the old bridge. The stockholders of the Charles River Bridge claimed that the new bridge violated the implied monopoly granted in their charter. Had the stockholders won, they would have set a precedent that would, in effect, have granted similar monopoly status to other existing bridges, turnpikes, and canals throughout the country and choked off the growth of railroads, new bridges, and other rival forms of transportation. The conflicting property interests deadlocked the Marshall Court, but over a vigorous dissent by Story, new Chief Justice Roger B. Taney forged a majority in favor of the new bridge. Taney emphasized that the charter of the original bridge had not expressly conferred monopoly privileges and maintained that "in grants by the public, nothing passes by implication." The decision further defined the American conception of the corporate charter, not as a way for government to bestow special favors like monopolies, but as a simple license to conduct business. Common Law. Less publicized than the Contract Clause decisions of the Supreme Court, but no less significant to economic development, were numerous state-court decisions that defined property rights under the common law. For example, the law of riparian rights (control over a river's current by an owner of property on the banks) commanded extensive attention, because in-

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ALLOCATING THE BURDENS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

One of the consequences of the growth of factories and railroads was an enormous increase in the number of industrial accidents. Lawsuits based on personal injuries from these accidents contributed to the emergence of the new subject of torts, which covered civil (as opposed to criminal) wrongdoing. One of the first important principles of tort law was the "fellow servant rule," which barred workers from suing their employers for injuries that took place on the job as a result of a fellow worker's negligence. The most influential decision in the American adoption of this rule (which shifted a significant cost of economic growth from entrepreneurs to employees) was Lemuel Shaw's opinion in Farwellv. The Boston and Worcester Railroad Co., 4 Met. (45 Mass.) 49 (1842), in which the Massachusetts Supreme Court denied recovery to a railroad engineer who lost his right hand in a train derailment after a switchman failed to move the track. Shaw wrote in part: Where several persons are employed in the conduct of one common enterprise or undertaking, and the safety of each depends much on the care and skill with which each other shall perform his appropriate duty, each is an observer of the conduct of the others, can give notice of any misconduct, incapacity or neglect of duty, and leave the service, if the common employer will not take such precautions, and employ such agents as the safety of the whole party may require. By these means, the safety of each will be much more effectually secured, than could be done by a resort to the common employer for indemnity in case of loss by the negligence of each other.

dustrialization depended on the power generated by flowing water. Upon publishing the second volume of his treatise Watercourses in 1833, Joseph K. Angell observed that more riparian-rights cases had been decided since the appearance of the first edition in 1824 than in the entire previous history of Anglo-American common law. Consistent with the demand for economic growth, judges in riparian cases tended to move away from the traditional rule of finding people liable if they interfered with a stream's "natural flow," since that would have applied to every owner of a water-powered mill. One alternative approach was "prior appropriation," under which courts protected the water flow of the first mill owner to build a dam. The triumphant doctrine, however, was the principle of "reasonable use," under which courts decided whether dams built to aid manufacturing served "the needs and wants of the community." The new standard, best articulated by Massachusetts chief justice Lemuel Shaw in Gary v. Daniels (1844), avoided the

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anti-development potential of "natural flow" and the monopolistic tendencies of "prior appropriation." The balancing test of "reasonable use" was a clear example of how judges assumed discretionary policy-making authority to contribute to economic growth. Equity. In the Anglo-American tradition equity courts comprised a judicial system distinct from the law courts. Originating in England as a royal dispensation of mercy, equity had tempered the rigors of the law by enforcing a general rule of fairness; it would not come to the aid of a party with what were called "unclean hands," or enforce an unfair bargain. American states had both law and equity courts; the great jurist James Kent was the chancellor of equity for New York, the chief judge of the state equity courts. But America's rapidly fluctuating market economy had no place for the intrusion of informal and at times idiosyncratic moral judgments about fairness, and equity soon declined. Courts declined to consider whether the terms of contracts were just, and considered only the will of the parties to determine whether enforceable contracts had been formed. A leading example of this changing approach to contract was the New York case of Seymour v. Delancey (1824), in which Kent applied the principles of equity to refuse to enforce a land-sale contract because the price was grossly inadequate. The High Court of Errors reversed, leaving sellers of land to fend for themselves in the real estate market rather than relying on courts to redress bad bargains. Seymour was a harbinger of the disintegration of the idea of equity. Joseph Story's Commentaries on Equity (1836) helped to recast equity as a set of procedures, rather than principles. The decline of equity culminated with the passage of the Field Code in New York in 1848, which merged the courts of law and equity. Sources: Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); J. Willard Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the NineteenthCentury United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956); Leonard Levy, The Law of the Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957); G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1835 (New York: Macmillan, 1988).

THE LEGAL PROFESSION Golden Age. The plasticity of American law and its strategic position in American cultural life helped to make 1815 to 1850 a period that would be remembered as a golden age of the bar. The most glamorous attorneys of the era were the great advocates of the seaboard cities, including Daniel Webster, William Wirt, Rufus Choate, Horace Binney, and William Pinkney. Their principal stage was the Supreme Court, where crowds packed the galleries to hear their erudite and dramatic performances. The justices and the spectators were both important audiences, for these attorneys not only contributed to judicial decision making but were major figures

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Trial proceedings in a rural court, circa 1840

in a national literature that remained centered on oratory. Webster, the dominant lawyer of his generation, argued numerous cases before the Court, prevailing in such landmark decisions as Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), McCulloch v.Maryland(1819), Cohensv. Virginia (1821), and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). His tear-jerking peroration on behalf of his alma mater in Dartmouth College ("It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.") was one of the most famous moments in American oratory. The Court encouraged the emergence of legal argument as civic theater; an observer reported in 1824 that "counsel are heard in silence for hours, without being stopped or interrupted." The literary dimension of the law helped to attract many ambitious young men who had made successful beginnings in the less prestigious profession of writing, such as Wirt, John Pendleton Kennedy, and Richard Henry Dana Jr. At the same time, the subsequent careers of such former attorneys as Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant demonstrated that the bridge between law and literature could be crossed in the opposite direction. Riding Circuit. While counsel before the Supreme Court traded rhetorical flourishes, a different but equally legendary legal culture emerged in the rapidly settling West. The typical lawyer on the frontier scrambled for business by traveling to the local courthouses of a judicial circuit as the judge made rounds to hear cases. Abraham Lincoln regularly rode the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illinois in the 1840s with Judge David Davis, whom he would later appoint to the Supreme Court. The Eighth Circuit included approximately twenty counties spread

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over eleven thousand square miles; visits to every county seat took a total of ten weeks and were conducted twice each year. Upon arriving in each town Lincoln and the other lawyers would pick up a variety of cases—some criminal, some civil—that would have to be prepared and presented on a highly compressed schedule. Limited time and resources reduced the role of research and citations in frontier litigation, which called instead for common sense, the skill to analyze disputes effectively, and the charisma to sway a jury. Just as Webster personified the oratorical grandeur and consensus-building savvy of Supreme Court practice, Lincoln's instinct for the main issue in any controversy, his psychological perceptiveness, and his ability to win audiences as a raconteur and to portray himself as a representative of the common man made him the archetypal lawyer of the prairie. Opportunities. The legal cultures of Webster and Lincoln reflected different aspects of the profession as a path to social mobility and political advancement. Ambitious young men (no women would be admitted to the bar for decades) regarded a successful legal practice as the first step to becoming a "self-made man," an expression coined during the period to describe the Kentucky lawyer-turned-statesman Henry Clay. The loose regulation of admission to the bar encouraged these hopes. Standards differed from state to state, but in 1840 only eleven states prescribed a specific period of study for admission to the bar. Under the Jacksonian assault on monopoly privileges, including professional licensing, New Hampshire eliminated all requirements except good moral character in 1842, and Maine followed suit the

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next year. Local variations added to the looseness of regulation. The prevailing system in the half-century after the Revolution had been for each county court to admit its own attorneys. In the 1830s it became commonplace for admission by any local court to confer a license to practice throughout the state. To be sure, a privileged background remained an asset in the law, especially in the seaboard states. Almost three-fourths of the attorneys admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and Maine between 1760 and 1840 had attended college. Of fortyeight lawyers whose deaths were reported in the Monthly Law Magazine shortly before midcentury, thirty-four were the sons of lawyers, judges, doctors, or merchants; fourteen were the sons of farmers, mechanics, or soldiers. But the doors of opportunity remained considerably more open than they would become when professionalization intensified after 1870. Education. Most candidates for the bar trained in the office of an established practitioner, observing the attorney at work, performing routine tasks such as the copying of documents, and discussing readings from the classic works of English jurists Sir Edward Coke and William Blackstone. Some attorneys attracted many students; the highly regarded teaching of Newburyport lawyer Theophilus Parsons prompted Massachusetts to establish a rule limiting attorneys to three students at one time. A few lawyers decided to specialize in teaching rather than practice. The program of Tapping Reeve and James Gould at Litchfield, Connecticut, founded in 1784 as the first law school in the country, remained highly successful into the late 1820s before closing in 1833 and graduated many of the most prominent men in American public life. After 1815, however, formal educational institutions dominated legal training. The College of William and Mary had already established the first American chair of law, held by George Wythe, but Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, became the model for the profession by creating a separate faculty that paralleled the schools of theology and medicine. The addition of Justice Joseph Story as a part-time professor in 1829 significantly increased Harvard's influenc and enrollments, which reached 163 students in 1844. In many ways, however, the law schools patterned on Harvard resembled the system of office training from which they had evolved. Legal education continued to focus on the elaboration of judicial doctrine, isolated from the study of government and the laws created by legislative enactment. The period of training for the bar remained brief. And although Story used hypothetical cases to test his students' analytic abilities, lecturing remained the dominant form of instruction. American Blackstones. While changes in legal education between 1815 and 1850 were superficial, an important transformation took place in legal scholarship. Previous commentaries on law, such as James Wilson's lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in 1790 and James Kent's lectures at Columbia College in 1794, had em-

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AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

Struck by the social mobility, the equalitarian impulses, and the power of voters that he observed in the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville devoted extensive attention in his Democracy in America (1835-1840) to the law as a source of stability. Although he recognized that "under all free governments, of whatever sort, one finds lawyers in the leading ranks of all parties," he argued that the distinctive American political and social conditions tended to make legal precedence a powerful conservative force: Study and specialized knowledge of the law give a man a rank apart in society and make of lawyers a somewhat privileged intellectual class. The exercise of their profession daily reminds them of this superiority; they are the masters of a necessary and not widely understood science; they serve as arbiters between the citizens; and the habit of directing the blind passions of the litigants toward the objective gives them a certain scorn for the judgment of the crowd. Add that they naturally form a body. It is not that they have come to an understanding among themselves and direct their combined energies toward one objective, but common studies and like methods link their intellects, as common interest may link their desires. So, hidden at the bottom of a lawyer's soul one finds some of the tastes and habits of an aristocracy. They share its instinctive preference for order and its natural love of formalities; like it, they conceive a great distaste for the behavior of the multitude and secretly scorn the government of the people. . . . If you ask me where the American aristocracy is found, I have no hesitation in answering that it is not among the rich, who have no common link uniting them. It is at the bar or the bench that the American aristocracy is found... . The more one reflects on what happens in the United States, the more one feels convinced that the legal body forms the most powerful and, so today, the only counterbalance to democracy in that country. Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by J. P. Mayer, translated by George Lawrence (New York: Harper &, Row, 1969), pp. 264-268.

phasized constitutional and political questions. The publication of state courts' opinions, however, made possible innovative examinations of the common law. By the 1820s commentators were regularly drawing on these reports and on English precedents to offer new syntheses of American law. The model for their efforts was Blacks t o n e ' s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), which Henry St. George Tucker had edited in 1803 in a thoughtful and influential version that incorporated American cases. John Reed even published a three-volume Pennsylvania Blackstone (1831). Chancel-

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lor Kent's four-volume Commentaries on American Law (1826-1830) did not merely adapt Blackstone but provided a comparable overview of the entire common law. Although Blackstone remained a staple of legal literature, Kent's Commentaries represented a declaration of independence for American law and a maturation of American legal scholarship. Treatises. Following the publication of Kent's Commentaries, legal writers, led by the prolific Story, increasingly focused on the close analysis of specific branches of law. Although it might seem odd that a jurist as talented and ambitious as Story would write an entire book on bailments (loans of property), the new treatises proved influential. A timely treatise, aimed at practicing attorneys and judges, could shape the development of a specific doctrine or even determine what the branches of law were and which cases were comparable. For example, the identification of insurance law as a distinct field, reinforced by Willard Phillips's Treatise on the Law of Insurance (1823), meant that principles used to decide insurance cases would no longer necessarily be applicable in other types of contract disputes. Treatises were both a cause and a result of the increasing specialization of American common law. Codification. Another response to the rapid proliferation of judicial decisions, beginning in the 1820s, was the call to replace ad hoc, judge-made common-law rules with comprehensive legislative codes. To some Jacksonian reformers, most prominently Robert Rantoul Jr. of Massachusetts, codification was a matter of political legitimacy and class relations. The common law did not reflect the sovereignty of the people, he argued. More-

ADVICE TO ASPIRING LAWYERS The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done. Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will be business enough. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief [that lawyers are necessarily dishonest]—resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Source: Abraham Lincoln, "Notes for a Law Lecture," 1850 [?], in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, nine volumes, edited by Roy P. Easier (New B r u n s w i c k , N.J.: R u t g e r s U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1953-1955), H: pp. 81-82.

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over, the shaping of the common law was dominated by the wealthy and well educated, who could understand its complexities and afford counsel to represent their interests. Other reformers, led initially by Justice Story and Timothy Walker of Ohio, did not share Rantoul's concerns about the legitimacy or class fairness of the common law but favored codes for economic reasons. They believed that legislative codes of laws would provide uniformity and simplicity and would promote economic development by facilitating the resolution of commercial disputes. Results. The codification movement achieved mixed results, in part because by 1850 most states had shifted from appointed to elected judges, undercutting Rantoul's critique of the common law as antidemocratic. The state of Louisiana, with its distinctive Continental legal heritage, emerged as America's only civil-law (as opposed to common-law) state, after reformer Edward Livingston led the way in developing Louisiana's civil code. The most ambitious codification advocate, New York attorney David Dudley Field, emerged in the 1840s as the successor to Story's call for uniform, simple law codes, written by professionals. Although Field lobbied assiduously for codification of much of the common law, he enjoyed significant success only in the area of civil procedure (the rules for filing and litigating cases). New York adopted the Field Code of civil procedure in 1848, but the West proved to be the most fertile field for codification. Missouri enacted a version of the Field Code in 1849, and California followed suit in 1851 with the prodding of Field's brother, future Supreme Court justice Stephen J. Field. Codification continued to enjoy sporadic successes after the Civil War but only approached Field's aims in the mid twentieth century with the promulgation of the Uniform Commercial Code and the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Sources: Maxwell Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); Robert A. Ferguson, Law and Letters in American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984); Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, second edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985).

SLAVERY AND RACE Peculiar Institution. The most significant federal slavery cases in the years after 1815 grew out of the deepening problem that some jurisdictions permitted slavery while others did not. Congress had prohibited American participation in the international slave trade as of 1 January 1808. All of the states north of the Mason-Dixon Line had abolished slavery since the Revolution, although the plans of gradual emancipation adopted in New York and New Jersey left some African Americans in bondage. The Northwest Ordinance had excluded slavery from the territories north of the Ohio River (now beginning to enter the Union as states), but the institution had taken root in the Southwest, and a conflict was

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Broadside announcing the sale of African Americans

looming over the status of slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory. Lord Mansfield's seminal decision in Somerset's Case (1772) provided the basic legal framework for addressing conflicts between jurisdictions that barred slavery and the increasingly peculiar jurisdictions that permitted it. Freeing a slave who had been brought to England, Mansfield had observed that the institution was "so odious, that nothing can be sufficed to support it, but positive law." This presumption of freedom would remain central to American legal analysis of slavery issues, entering into politics in the Free Soil argument that the Constitution barred slavery from federal territories under the principle that "freedom is national; slavery is local." The courts would ultimately be unable to resolve the politically volatile conflict between free and slave jurisdictions, but slavery cases did help to clarify the authority of natural law as a source of judicial rules. International Slave Trade. American opposition to the Atlantic slave trade intensified after the War of 1812. Prodded by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Congress took action in 1818 and 1820 to enforce the prohibition of American participation in the trade. The result

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was increased conflict with Spain, Portugal, and the Latin American countries that continued to engage in the importation of slaves. In The Antelope (1825) the Supreme Court had to decide the fate of more than 250 African slaves taken by privateers from Spanish, Portuguese, and American vessels and loaded onto a Spanish ship that had been captured by the privateers, then seized by an American revenue cutter and brought into the port of Savannah. The governments of Spain, Portugal, and the United States all filed claims for the slaves; the Adams administration of course intended to free the captives pursuant to American law prohibiting the slave trade. In the similar case ofLaJeune Eugenie (1822) Joseph Story had ruled as a circuit judge that American courts interpreting international law should not recognize claims by slaveholding nations because the institution violated natural law, an argument that William Wirt repeated before the Supreme Court (aided by Francis Scott Key, an active supporter of the antislavery American Colonization Society in the years since he composed "The Star-Spangled Banner"). In the lower court Justice William Johnson of South Carolina had given no weight

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A COVENANT WITH DEATH

Alluding to Isaiah 28:15, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison declared in January 1843 that "the compact which exists between the North and the South [i.e. the Constitution] is 'a covenant with death and an agreement with hell'—involving both parties in atrocious criminality—and should be immediately annulled." Garrison and his allies Wendell Phillips and Maria Weston Chapman explained their reading of the Constitution in a statement of the American AntiSlavery Society in 1844: The American Constitution is the exponent of the national compact. We affirm that it is an instrument which no man can innocently bind himself to support, because its anti-republican and anti-Christian requirements are explicit and peremptory;—at least, so explicit that, in regard to all the clauses pertaining to slavery, they have been uniformly understood and enforced in the same way by all the courts and by all the people; and so peremptory that no individual interpretation or authority can set them aside with impunity. It is not a ball of clay, to be moulded into any shape that party contrivance or caprice may choose it to assume. . . . It means precisely what those who framed and adopted it meant—NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, as a matter of bargain and compromise. Even if it can be construed to mean something else, without violence to its language, such construction is not to be tolerated against the wishes of either party. No just or honest use of it can be made, in opposition to the plain intention of its framers, except to declare the contract at an end, and to refuse to serve under it. Source: Wendell Phillips G a r r i s o n , William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879, four volum0es (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894), III: pp. 88, 107.

to natural law and had ordered the division of the slaves of The Antelope among Spain, Portugal, and the United States. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion for the Supreme Court in The Antelope sought to compromise between Story and Johnson. On the facts of the case Marshall favored the American claim to most of the slaves (wh were freed and transported to Liberia) and acknowledged that slavery was "contrary to the law of nature." But more important, he held that the slave trade was enforceable under the law of nations because it "remained lawful to those whose governments have not forbidden it." Marshall's approach not only left forty slaves to be awarded to Spain and ultimately sold into slavery in Florida, it eliminated the role of natural law as a basis for legal rules. His law of nations was based on national acts and established practices, not on abstract moral principles. Mutinies. Two other international incidents drew attention to slavery as a violation of natural law but failed to change the judicial principles adopted in The Antelope.

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In The Amistad (1841) the Supreme Court considered the case of African slaves who had mutinied on a Spanish ship bound for Cuba. After killing the captain the slaves ordered the surviving crew to set course for Africa. The Cuban purchasers complied during the day but steered toward the United States by night, hoping to reach the slaveholding South. After the ship wound up in Long Island Sound, the Cubans sought to recover the slaves. Former president John Quincy Adams helped to represent the Africans before the Supreme Court, which in an opinion by Story found that no evidence had been presented that the Africans were slaves. The Creole incident of 1842 similarly involved a slave mutiny, this time on an American ship diverted to the Bahamas, where the slaves were freed by British law. After Daniel Webster, secretary of state in the proslavery administration of John Tyler, demanded compensation for the lost property, antislavery Congressman Joshua Giddings submitted a resolution calling for application of the Somerset principle that the mutineers ceased to be slaves when they reached free soil. The incident resulted in no litigation, but the controversy over Giddings's Creole resolutions contributed to the end of the gag rule that had banned the introduction of antislavery initiatives in the House of Representatives. Fugitive Slaves. More explosive than the international cases were conflicts over slaves who escaped to the free states. Representing alleged runaway Matilda Lawrence in Ohio in 1837, abolitionists James G. Birney and Salmon P. Chase argued that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was unconstitutional, in part because it failed to provide adequate procedural protections for African Americans. The Ohio court upheld the act, as would the Supreme Court would a decade later in Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), and Matilda Lawrence was sent down the river for sale in New Orleans. But the widely publicized case contributed to a growing resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. Several northern states had already passed "personal liberty laws," providing for jury trials and the writ of habeas corpus for fugitive slaves. The Supreme Court assessed the validity of these laws in Priggv. Pennsylvania (1842). The seven different opinions filed by the justices made it difficult to find common threads beyond an endorsement of the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The most frequently cited opinion, by Story, concluded that states could not enact laws to determine the methods for enforcing federal legislation, thereby invalidating the Pennsylvania personal liberty law at issue. Story attempted to make the ruling an antislavery victory by reasoning further that states could bar sheriffs, judges, and other officials from aiding in the enforcement of federal law. The main consequence of th confusion left by Prigg, however, was a southern desire for a stronger law that ultimately led to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Resistance. The attempt of a Virginia slave owner to retrieve George Latimer from Boston in 1843, the mos

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important fugitive slave controversy before midcentury, helped to turn some opponents of slavery from legal strategies to civil disobedience. Protests against the slave owner's claim dominated the 1843 session of the Massachusetts legislature, culminating in the passage of a personal liberty law along the lines suggested by Story in Priggv. Pennsylvania. Although Chief Justice Shaw rejected abolitionist appeals for the release of Latimer, the legal expenses mounted to the point that the slaveholder eventually agreed to sell his rights to the Latimer Defense Committee, which immediately freed the fugitive. The incident prompted William Lloyd Garrison and his followers to adopt a more radical course: they now denounced the Constitution as "a covenant with death" and called for the breakup of the Union. While Garrisonian abolitionists continued to profess non-violence, a convention of African Americans meeting in Rochester, New York, resolved that the Latimer case called for forcible resistance to the fugitive slave law. Race in the North. Paralleling the intensified attack on slavery was increased controversy over the civil rights of African Americans in the North. In two major cases the courts did little to advance racial equality. Pennsylvania chief justice John Bannister Gibson, one of the leading members of the American bench, ruled in Hobbs v. Fogg (1837) that African Americans could not vote in Pennsylvania because a black person was not a "freeman" within the meaning of the state constitution. Acknowledging that the decision reflected his own racial bias, Gibson cited no precedent or other legal authority in support of this judicial disfranchisement. Revision of the state constitutional convention soon ratified his decision, however, by expressly limiting suffrage to whites. Similarly, the distinguished Massachusetts judge Lemuel Shaw upheld the racial segregation of Boston public schools in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849). In an argument that anticipated by more than a century the rationale of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Charles Sumner had argued that segregation intrinsically violated the guarantee of equality under the state constitution and imposed a psychological burden on schoolchildren. Shaw concluded instead that the legislature was authorized to determine the meaning of equality. Following the sharp escalation of the sectional conflict in the next few years, Massachusetts enacted a statute that prohibited racial segregation in schools. Southern Law of Slavery. As a fundamental social and economic institution, slavery posed a constant stream of legal problems to southern state courts. What judicial process was required for slaves charged with criminal offenses? Were masters liable for accidental damage caused by their slaves, as an employer was liable for the negligence of an employee? Did the law afford slaves any protection whatsoever from

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THE POWER OF MASTERS OVER SLAVES When John Mann shot a rented slave in the back for running away to avoid a beating, he was convicted of battery. In State v. Mann, 2 Dev. (13 N.C.) 229 (1829), the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the conviction; Thomas Ruffm's opinion for the court held that "the slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible, that there is no appeal from his master," and revealed the brutal reality of slavery: [Arguments drawn from the well established principles which confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed on us. The Court does not recognize their application. There is no likeness between the cases. They are in opposition to each other, and there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery—and a greater cannot be imagined.. , , [The slave's] obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect. I most freely confess my sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man can. And as a principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it. But in the actual condition of things, it must be so.—There is no remedy.

abuse? Could a slaveholder's will bequeath unborn children? The conflict between slaves-as-people and slavesas-property was inescapable—even the enforcement of a pure property concept, like the foreclosure of a mortgage in slaves, could have intensely human consequences in the breakup of a family sold not voluntarily, but by a court or sheriff to satisfy the master's debts. Southern courts and legislatures elaborated the law governing slavery, but even then the formal law was not always an accurate guide to the way things really worked. For example, with the enactment of new laws in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama between 1816 and 1821, almost all southern states provided for punishment for the murder of a slave. In practice, however, few homicides of slaves were prosecuted. Those that were ended in acquittals or (in the most repellent cases) verdicts of manslaughter, which carried a much lighter penalty. The artificiality of the law of slavery was a reflection of the ways in which white Southerners struggled to reconcile the contradictions of the peculiar institution. Sources: Harold M. Hyman, and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice Under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835-1875 (New York: Harper 6c Row, 1982); Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996);

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The first issue of the newspaper founded by the Cherokee tribal leader Sequoya

John T. Noonan, The Antelope: The Ordeal of the Recaptured Africans in the Administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF NATIVE AMERICANS Racial Assumptions. Several important Supreme Court decisions centered on the status of Native Americans in the United States. Two types of conflicts were particularly significant. The first involved Native Americans' relationship to the land. Whites claiming to have purchased land from Indians found themselves in conflict with whites claiming to have been granted the same land by a state government. In litigation to determine the title, the fundamental question was whether Native Americans owned the land on which they lived, since ownership of land included the right to convey it. A second important controversy involved the autonomy of Native Americans who lived within the boundaries of a state. Could the state government assert jurisdiction over these people? Were Indian tribes in effect independent nations that governed themselves? Supreme Court decisions on these issues reflected racial stereotypes about Native Americans, whom whites commonly regarded as savage, indolent, and childlike. Some whites argued passionately that Indians had the capacity to adopt the ways of "civilized" Americans of European descent, while others maintained equally firmly that Indians could never be assimilated into the United States and would have to be "removed" to distant lands. Neither side contemplated the possibility of according Native Americans respect as separate peoples with distinct cultures.

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Land Title. Disputes over land demonstrated the ways in which racial assumptions informed legal reasoning. The ownership rights of Indians had of course become a significant question shortly after Columbus encountered the New World and its inhabitants, and several Supreme Court cases touched on the issue before 1815. The subject received its most authoritative American judicial exposition, however, in Johnson v. Mclntosh (1819), in which the plaintiffs father had purchased a tract of land from the Piankeshaw Indians in 1775, nine years before the state of Virginia granted the same tract of land to the defendant. Explaining the Court's decision in favor of the defendant, Chief Justice John Marshall observed that Europeans had in effect conquered the native occupants of the country. But the defect in Indian title, he indicated, resulted not so much from sheer power relations as from "the character and habits of the people whose rights have been wrested away from them." To recognize the Piankeshaws and other tribes as landowners would be "to leave the country a wilderness." If the conquered peoples had been different, the chief justice suggested, they might have retained more property rights. But because Native Americans were "a people with whom it was impossible to mix," the principles that "ought to regulate . . . the relations between conqueror and conquered" were "incapable of application." As a result, American law would regard Indians not as owners but merely as occupants of the land they possessed, unable to transfer their interests and dependent on the federal government for permission to continue their occupancy.

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Autonomy Attacked. In the decade after Johnson v. Mclntosh restricted the power of Indians to sell the land they occupied, federal and state governments put new pressures on Indians who sought to remain in possession of their land. The federal government had for some time sought removal of Native Americans to the territories west of the Mississippi River. Under a land allotment policy adopted in 1816, however, Indians who "demonstrated their capacity for civilization by establishing farms" were entitled to hold their lands. This pressure prompted an upheaval among Cherokees, who not only proved their adeptness at agriculture but also developed an alphabet and reconsidered tribal customs; in 1827 the Cherokees adopted a constitution and declared themselves an independent nation. The state of Georgia responded by asserting its jurisdiction over Native Americans living within the state boundaries. Like laws adopted in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, the legislation imposed taxes, required militia service, and established criminal sanctions for enforcement of Cherokee law. Under Andrew Jackson, an aggressive enemy of Native Americans, the federal government backed the extension of state authority as part of the removal bill passed by Congress in May 1830. Meanwhile, the workings of the allotment policy and infringements from state land distributions caused Cherokees and other Indians to lose property through fraud and harassment, undermining their attempts to avoid removal through a strategy of acculturation. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. Following passage of Jackson's removal bill, the Cherokees began planning a legal campaign to prevent the assertion of jurisdiction by the state of Georgia. The Cherokees retained as their lawyer the capable William Wirt, who had served as attorney general in the Monroe and Adams administrations and would run against Jackson for president in 1832. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) Wirt called on the Supreme Court to review the Georgia statutes pursuant to its power to consider suits between a state and a foreign country, pointing to the long record of treaties as evidence that American law regarded Indian tribes as separate nations. The Court, however, concluded that Indian tribes were not foreign states for purposes of federal jurisdiction but were instead "domestic dependent nations." Chief Justice Marshall noted that the Constitution authorized Congress to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes," suggesting that Indian tribes were not foreign nations. He also pointed out that Native Americans and their lands were "so com pletely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States" that they could not be considered independent political entities. Finally, he invoked commonplace racial assumptions about the "habits and usages of the Indians" to conclude that the framers of the Constitution did not expect Native Americans to use the federal courts. William Johnson's concurring opinion argued

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THE CHEROKEES AND THE PROMISE OF LAW

Cherokee acceptance of the federal initiative to "civilize" Native Americans resulted in a profound legal transformation of their traditional society, culminating in 1827 with adoption of a written constitution on the pattern of that of the United States. When the Jackson administration and the state of Georgia nonetheless intensified the pressure for removal, editor Ellas Boudinot of the Cherokee Phoenix expressed the tribe's frustrated sense of betrayal on 17 June 1829: Why were we not told long ago, that we could not b permitted to establish a government within the limits of any state? Then we could have borne the disappointment much easier than now. The pretext for Georgia to extend her jurisdiction over the Cherokees has always existed. The Cherokees have always had a government of their own. Nothing, however, was said when we were gov erned by savage laws, when the abominable law of retaliation carried death in our midst, when it was a lawful act to shed the blood of a person charged with witchcraft, when a brother could kill a brother with impunity, or an innocent man suffer for an offending relative. At that time it might have been a matter of charity to have extended over us the mantle of Christian laws 6c regulations. But how happens it now, after being fostered by the U. States, and advised by great and good men to establish a government of regular law; when the aid and protection of the General Government have been pledged to us; when we, as dutiful Children' of the President, have followed his instructions and advice, and have established for ourselves a government of regular law; when everything looks so promising around us, that a storm is raised by the extension of tyrannical and unchristian laws, which threatens to blast all our rising hopes and expectations? Source: Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green, eds., The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History -with Documents (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 130.

similarly, though more stridently, that "there are strong reasons for doubting the applicability of the epithet state, to a people so low in the grade of organized society as our Indian tribes most generally are"; he regarded Indians as "nothing more than wandering hordes, held together only by ties of blood and habit, and having neither laws or government, beyond what is required in a savage state." Once again, the rights of Native Americans turned not only on the letter of the law but also on assumptions about racial character. Worcester v. Georgia. Because the Court concluded that it did not have authority to hear Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, it did not consider the validity of the Georgia laws asserting jurisdiction over Native Americans. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion hinted, however, that the laws would be struck down in a case that fell within the

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Court's jurisdiction, and the Cherokees and Wirt lost no time in presenting their arguments in a different form. Missionaries Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler, sentenced in 1831 to four years in prison for violating a state law that prohibited whites from living in Cherokee territory without a license, appealed their convictions to the Supreme Court. Writing for the majority in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall combined his sympathy for the Cherokees with his zealous protection of federal power against state encroachment and concluded that the federal government had exclusive constitutional authority over Indian affairs. The state of Georgia, which refused to participate in Cherokee Nation or Worcester, in turn announced that it would not abide by the Court's decision. This presented a dilemma for President Andrew Jackson, whose anti-Indian prejudice was matched only by his devotion to the Union. If he enforced the Court's decision,

Jackson would weaken his campaign for Indian removal, but if he allowed Georgia to defy the Court he would undermine his position in the ongoing nullification controversy with the state of South Carolina. The predicament was resolved when Worcester and Butler accepted a pardon from the governor of Georgia in January 1833, ending the case and clearing the way for Jackson to ask Congress for approval to force South Carolina to comply with the federal tariff. But the Cherokee litigation campaign had failed in its effort to use the Constitution to defeat the greed and racism that would lead to the Trail of Tears. Sources: William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986); G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1835 (New York: Macmillan, 1988).

HEADLINE MAKERS

JAMES KENT 1763-1847 JURIST AND SCHOLAR Training. James Kent's early years illustrated the development of the elite bar in post-Revolutionary New York that also featured Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Edward Livingston. Kent's father, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was an attorney in Dutchess County, New York, where James was born in 1763. The future jurist entered Yale College in 1777 but did not graduate until 1781 because the Revolutionary War periodically interrupted his studies. During one suspension of classes he read William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769); he later recalled that the classic work "inspired me, at the age of fifteen with awe, and I fondly determined to be a lawyer." After preparing for three years in the Poughkeepsie office of Attorney General Egbert Benson, he was admitted to the New York bar in 1785 and joined a partnership with Gilbert Livingston. Eight years later he moved to New York City.

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Federalist Politics. After observing the constitutional convention held in Poughkeepsie in 1788, Kent became an ardent admirer of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. His subsequent support for the Federalist Party resulted in a brief career in the New York Assembly and a series of important political appointments. In 1793 he was named the first professor of law at Columbia College, a position that he held until 1798. In February 1796 he also assumed the financially rewarding position of master in the Court of Chancery, to which he added one year later an appointment as recorder of the City of New York. He resigned both offices in February 1798 upon his appointment to the New York Supreme Court. Six years later he became the chief judge, and in February 1814 he became chancellor of the state Chancery Court. He participated prominently in the New York constitutional convention of 1821 and vigorously opposed the elimination of property requirements for voters, a reform that Martin Van Buren would make the starting point for the organization of the Jacksonian party system. Judge. Kent's service on the bench contributed substantially to the expanded power and prestige of the American judiciary. Through a long-term collaboration with court reporter William Johnson, he systematized the publication of New York judicial decisions. In this form Kent's opinions were read and followed by judges around the country. He exercised particular influence as

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chancellor of the state's equity courts, later recalling that in deciding cases "I saw where justice lay and the moral sense decided the cause half the time, &I then set down to search the authorities until I had exhausted my books, & I might once Sc a while be embarrassed by a technical rule, but I most always found principles suited to my views of the case'' The jurisdiction of the equity court, which included such crucial economic duties as the supervision of mortgages and corporate charters, gave Kent an opportunity to shape many of the doctrines that had a direct impact on the lives of Americans. Commentaries on American Law. Because the New York constitution of 1821 required judges to retire at the age of sixty, Kent stepped down from the bench in 1823. Upon moving back from Albany to New York City, he was reappointed to the law professorship at Columbia College that had remained vacant since his resignation a quarter-century earlier. Much like his previous experience of teaching, the lectures he delivered at the school from February 1824 to May 1825 and from October 1825 to April 1826 wearied him and attracted relatively few students. But on the suggestion of his son he undertook to expand the lectures for publication. He published his Commentaries on American Law in four volumes from 1826 to 1830. Dedicated to Johnson, the treatise marked the maturation of American law by presenting a survey worthy of comparison with Blackstone's Commentaries. Every set of the first edition was sold by December 1830, and Kent saw five subsequent editions through the press before his death. The work remained in print for many years; young Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. prepared the twelfth edition in 1873. Influence. Kent's Commentaries divided the law into six parts: the law of nations; constitutional law; municipal law of the states; the rights of persons; the law of personal property; and the law of real property. The work was marked by a lucid prose style and a practical, toughminded approach to legal questions. Discussing a widow's rights to the property left by her husband, for example, he expressed relief that "in this country, we are, happily, not very liable to be perplexed by such abstruse questions and artificial rules, which have encumbered the subject . . . in England to a grievous extent." Kent's eagerness to rationalize jurisprudence was part of his utilitarian philosophy. He remained a forceful exponent of Hamiltonian principles, eager to use the powers of the state to advance economic growth. He spent his last years mostly in reading and preparing new editions of the Commentaries until his death in 1847. Sources: John Theodore Horton, James Kent: A Study in American Conservatism (New York: Appleton, 1939); William Kent, Memoir and Letters of James Kent, LL.D. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1898); Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America:from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, Brace Sc World, 1965).

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EDWARD LIVINGSTON 1764-1836 CODIFIER New York Aristocrat. Edward Livingston was born in 1764 into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in America. His father was the largest landholder in New York, owning on the eve of the Revolution more than 250,000 acres between Manhattan and Albany. Edward Livingston's older brother, Robert R. Livingston, helped to draft the Declaration of Independence before becoming a distinguished chancellor of New York, and his cousin Brockholst Livingston would sit on the United States Supreme Court. After graduating from Princeton in 1781, Edward entered law, practiced for several years, and took a seat in Congress in 1794. His political affiliation followed a sudden twist in the longrunning factional saga of the Livingstons and their rivals, the Schuylers. Although the families had united briefly to support ratification of the Constitution, the Livingstons felt snubbed by the distribution of patronage under Alexander Hamilton, who had married into the Schuyler family, and allied themselves with the Jeffersonians. Remaining in Congress for three terms, Edward Livingston loyally supported Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800 against Aaron Burr, an intimate friend from the New York elite. Jefferson accordingly appointed him U.S. attorney for the District of New York, a position that Livingston held while also assuming the lucrative office of mayor of New York. New Orleans. For the next three decades Livingston's financial adventures would shift his career in unexpected directions. After one of his agents absconded in 1803 with more than $40,000 in federal funds, for which Livingston acknowledged liability, his public and private debts came close to the immense sum of $250,000. He resigned his offices, sold his property to the partial satisfaction of his creditors, and set out to revive his fortunes by participating in the absorption of New Orleans into the United States. There he fell out of favor with Jefferson, partly because Livingston's repayment of a debt to Burr prompted allegations that he was involved in the conspiracy to detach a western empire, and partly as a result of Livingston's shrewd land speculations. Most sensitive was his claim to a large tract of tremendously valuable waterfront property in New Orleans known as the Batture, which the city and federal governments also claimed. But through his many services on behalf of Andrew Jackson in the Louisiana theater during the War of 1812, which included most sensationally the recruitment of the pirates Jean and Pierre Lafflte to the American

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side, Livingston formed a new connection that would eventually prove to be politically valuable. Civil Law. Livingston's greatest fame resulted from his work in codifying the laws of Louisiana. French control of the territory until 1769 and subsequent Spanish possession had left Louisiana with a hybrid, confusing legal framework derived from the Roman civil law. Attempts following the Louisiana Purchase to substitute the Anglo-American common law met with strong local resistance. The territory took a few steps to rationalize its French and Spanish codes, most notably by adopting legislation drafted by Livingston in 1805 to regulate civil procedure and by adopting a partial civil code in 1808. Thoroughgoing overhaul began in March 1822, however, when the state legislature commissioned Livingston and two others to prepare a full revision of the civil code, a commercial code, and a comprehensive code of civil procedure. The only commissioner trained both in civil law and the common law, Livingston led the way in establishing the foundations of a legal framework that would remain unique among American states. The commission adopted the bulk of the Civil Code from the Napoleonic Code, a vital legacy of the French Revolution, but Livingston effectively incorporated key common-law principles of property and contract into the continental framework. As the author of the 1805 legislation governing civil procedure, he also took primary responsibility for the new Code of Practice that provided an important precedent for the Field Code adopted in New York in 1848 and the widespread codification of procedural rules which gradually followed. Penal Reform. Observers applauded the codification of civil law and procedure in Louisiana, but Livingston's proposals for criminal law brought him even greater renown. In the four separate codes that he presented to the Louisiana legislature in 1825 and published as System of Penal Laws for the United States of America in 1828, Livingston embodied the results of an exhaustive study of the Enlightenment principles of crime and punishment developed by Beccaria, Montesquieu, and Jeremy Bentham as well as the laws of Spain, France, and England. Livingston envisioned a more comprehensible and humane approach to criminal justice, requiring plain legislative sanctions and abolishing all penalties except imprisonment, fines, and deprivation of civil and political privileges. His conception of the penitentiary—the cornerstone of a system that rejected executions, maiming, and ritual humiliation—was one of the most important statements in the American debate over criminal punishment during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Although not adopted by the Louisiana legislature, the penal code made Livingston an international celebrity. The rulers of Russia, Sweden, and the Netherlands praised his work, as did James Kent, Joseph Story, and John Marshall. Jeremy Bentham urged Parliament to use the Louisiana proposals for guidance, and Thomas Macaulay considered implementing them in India. Victor

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Hugo ranked Livingston "among the men of this age who have deserved most and best of mankind," and the English scholar Sir Henry Maine declared him "the first legal genius of modern times." Diplomat. A partial victory in the litigation over the Batture, which continued long after Livingston's death, enabled him in 1826 to repay his debts. Freed from the financial pressures that had brought him to New Orleans, he gradually loosened his ties to Louisiana, although he represented the state in Congress for three terms beginning in 1822, followed by one term in the Senate. Andrew Jackson appointed him secretary of state in 1831, then minister to France in 1833. Livingston died at Montgomery Place, a family estate he had inherited on the Hudson River, in April 1836. Source: William B. Hatcher, Edward Livingston: Jeffersonian Republican and Jacksonian Democrat (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1940).

THOMAS RUFFIN 1787-187O

JUDGE Southerner. Because economic development created so many of the challenging issues in state law from 1815 to 1850, most of the celebrated judges of the era sat on the courts of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and other economically advanced jurisdictions. The foremost exception was Thomas Ruffin, the best-known member of the southern judiciary in the second quarter of the century. Born in rural King and Queen County, Virginia, Ruffin was related to the famous southern nationalist Edmund Ruffin. He received his early education in Warrenton, North Carolina, and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1805. After studying briefly for the law in Petersburg, Virginia, he joined his family in moving to North Carolina and settled in Hillsboro. Path to the Bench. A fervent Jeffersonian Republican, Ruffin represented Hillsboro in the North Carolina legislature and served as speaker in 1816. He was then elected a trial judge, but he resigned after only two years to return to private practice. Notwithstanding the difficulty of travel in North Carolina, he customarily attended the weekly meetings of two courts for forty-two weeks each year. As he prospered he became immersed in banking matters and became president of the state bank. He was elected associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1829 and four years later became chief justice, a position he held until 1852. Judicial Style. Ruffin, no less than his northeastern contemporaries, represented what the legal scholar Karl Llewellyn called the "grand style" of ju-

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dicial reasoning. His more than fourteen hundred opinions were distinguished by their plain exposition and their reliance on logic and policy considerations rather than precedent. Consistent with his early interest in banking, he was generally favorable to the Whig program. In his most remarkable Whig decision Ruffin found in Hoke v. Henderson (1833) that an officeholder's property interest in his position could not be eliminated unless the state abolished the office. Hoke was contrary to all other federal and state judicial decisions on the issue and was reversed by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1903, but the United States Supreme Court adopted a similar analysis of government employment as a property interest in the 1970s. Slavery. Ruffin differed from his northern contemporaries, however, in that he routinely decided cases relating to slavery. His opinion in State v. Mann (1829), characteristically based on Ruffm's social and philosophical analysis of the peculiar institution, is perhaps the most famous southern judicial examination of slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe observed in her Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) that "no one can read this decision, so fine and clear in expression, so dignified and solemn in its earnestness, and so dreadful in its results, without feeling at once deep respect for the man and horror for the system." But Ruffin, like other southern jurists, frequently found that his logic in slavery cases led to conclusions that he did not want to accept. Despite his argument of State v. Mann that masters must enjoy "absolute dominion" over slaves, Ruffin refused in Parham v. Blackwelder (1848) to hold masters liable for damages resulting from mistakes committed by their slaves, such as cutting timber on the wrong side of a property line. Throughout his slavery cases he struggled with the abject legal status of slaves and his acknowledgment that they were "responsible human beings, having intelligence to know right from wrong, and perceptions of pleasure and pain." At times he invoked natural law to resolve the conflict. In Cox v. Williams (1845) he upheld a challenge to a will that bequeathed slaves, upon their consent, to the American Colonization Society for transport to Africa. Ruffin ruled that if the slaves elected to remain in North Carolina in bondage, their children must nevertheless enjoy the right to decide upon reaching the age of fourteen whether to remain in the country. In this reasoning, slavery was so contrary to natural law that parents could not choose it for their children. Reluctant Rebel. After resigning from the bench in 1852, Ruffin returned for one more year in 1858 but for the most part dedicated himself to the promotion of scientific farming methods as president of the state agricultural society from 1854 to 1860. Like many Whigs in the border states, he energetically sought to avoid disunion. He served in the North

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Carolina delegation to the Washington Peace Conference of 1861 and worked for compromise in the secession convention. He followed his state into the Confederacy, however, and loyally supported it during the war. In 1866 he led the rejection of the new state constitution proposed under Andrew Johnson's plan of reconstruction. He was aghast at the ascendancy of Congress and the beginnings of Radical Reconstruction. He died at his home in Hillsboro in 1870. Sources: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ed., The Papers of Thomas Ruffin, four volumes (Raleigh, N.C.: Edwards Sc Broughton, 1918-1920); Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

JOSEPH STORY 1779-1845

LEGAL POLYMATH Massachusetts Elite. Joseph Story personified the dominant forces in early-nineteenth-century Boston much as Edward Livingston typified the aristocracy of old New York. Born in 1779 in Marblehead, then an active port city, he was the oldest of eleven children, although his father also had seven children by a previous marriage. His father, a physician, had been a member of the Sons of Liberty and joined in the Boston Tea Party, while his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Loyalist merchant. He graduated from Harvard College in 1798, ranked second behind the future Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, and returned to Marblehead to study law in the office of Samuel Sewall, then serving in Congress but soon to become chief justice of Massachusetts. Sewall's other commitments left Story to depend on his own industry and self-discipline, which proved to be prodigious. No figure in the history of American law has ever matched the level of intellectual energy sustained by Story, who for months at a time routinely studied the most technical legal literature for fourteen hours each day. Moving to Salem when Sewall took the bench, Story opened a law office in 1801. Youngest Justice. Although Essex County, Massachusetts, was the citadel of the extreme wing of the Federalist Party, Story entered public life as a Jeffersonian Republican. He represented Salem in the state legislature from 1805 to 1808, when he was elected to Congress to fill the vacancy created by the death of Jacob Crowninshield, a member of the prominent shipping family that Story often represented in court. He declined to stand for election for the full term, preferring to pursue his private practice and finding it difficult to reconcile his Republican affiliation with the devastating effects of the Jeffer-

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sonian embargo on the Massachusetts economy. Jefferson would blame the repeal of the Embargo on "one pseudo-Republican, Story." Returned to the Massachusetts legislature, Story became Speaker of the House in January 1811. Ten months later President James Madison made the thirty-two-year-old Story the youngest person ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court. In an era when Supreme Court seats were rigidly assigned to particular geographic areas, the appointment partly reflected the scarcity of Republicans in New England. John Quincy Adams and Jefferson's attorney general, Levi Lincoln, had already turned down Madison's offer of the appointment, and the Senate had refused to confirm Alexander Wolcott of Connecticut. Court Leadership. His youth notwithstanding, Story quickly became a powerful influence on the Court through the force of his vast learning, his boundless energy, and his sympathy with the nationalist principles of Chief Justice John Marshall. Another element in his success was his mastery of admiralty (law of the sea), Story's specialty in his thriving private practice. Each justice was required to travel through an assigned circuit to hear cases when the Supreme Court was not in session, and in the aftermath of the Embargo and the War of 1812, the New England circuit was dominated by cases in admiralty. Story's decisions as circuit judge in such cases as DeLovio v. Boit (1815), which addressed the scope of admiralty jurisdiction, and La Jeune Eugenie (1822), which analyzed the international slave trade, were scarcely less influential than his 286 Supreme Court opinions, which included such classics as his opinions for the Court in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816) and Swift v. Tyson (1842), his concurring opinion in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), and his dissenting opinion in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837). Teacher and Scholar. Although Harvard Law School had been established in 1817, the institution only began to develop when Story became Dane Professor of Law in 1829. Story taught through an engaging combination of informal discussions and analysis of hypothetical cases, and enrollment grew from the eighteen students in Story's first class to 150 students at the time of his death. While teaching, Story also enriched legal scholarship by publishing a series of Commentaries on various branches of law. Writing with phenomenal swiftness on difficult, technical subjects, Story produced his Commentaries on the Law of Bailments in 1832; three volumes of Commentaries on the Constitution in 1833; Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws in 1834; two volumes of Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence in 1836; Commentaries on Equity Pleading in 1838; Commentaries on Agency in 1839; Commentaries on Partnership in 1841; Commentaries on Bills of Exchange in 1843; and Commentaries on Promissory Notes in 1845. Although sometimes indulging in unnecessary pyrotechnics of erudition, these volumes reshaped and in several cases invented entire fields of American law.

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Civic Force. Story did not content himself with merely sitting on the Supreme Court, riding circuit in New England, teaching at Harvard Law School, and preparing his Commentaries. He also supported his friend Daniel Webster and the Whig Party from behind the scenes, for example, by drafting the Bankruptcy Act of 1841; he served on the governing board of Harvard College; he wrote countless occasional pieces and speeches; and he was one of the most celebrated conversationalists in Boston. He died in September 1845 and was buried in Mount Auburn cemetery, for which he had served as the first president and a longtime member of the governing board. Sources: Gerald T. Dunne, Justice Joseph Story and the Rise of the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971); R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

TIMOTHY WALKER 18O6-1856

EDUCATOR AND PUBLICIST Transplantation. Timothy Walker typified the spread of New Englanders and New England values across the Old Northwest. A direct descendant of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower, Walker was born in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in 1806. He entered Harvard College at the standard age of sixteen and graduated in 1826 at the head of his class. For the following three years he taught mathematics at George Bancroft's famous Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, and wrote articles for the North American Review as well as a geometry textbook. In 1829 he joined the first class to attend Harvard Law School subsequent to the reorganization that accompanied the appointment of Joseph Story to the faculty. After one year of instruction he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, then the rapidly growing capital of the West and one of the most exciting intellectual environments in the country. Cincinnati. A characteristic child of the Puritans, Walker practiced law in Ohio for only two years before joining with a local judge to establish a small private law school. In 1835 the school became affiliated with Cincinnati College; as the University of Cincinnati Law School it would be the fourth oldest law school in the country (behind William and Mary, Harvard, and Yale) a century and a half later. By 1850 the assigned reading included James Kent's Commentaries on American Law (1826-1830), William Blacks t o n e ' s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), and treatises on evidence, equity, pleading, and mercantile law. The centerpiece of the curriculum was Walker's lectures, which he published

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in 1837 as Introduction to American Law and dedicated to his mentor Story. The overview reflected Walker's aim to provide "a first book upon the law of this country" useful to students rather than practitioners. Disclaiming any originality, profundity, or erudition, he sought to provide a clear, concise survey of the various branches of law, with guidance for further learning. Walker's work ably filled a gap in the literature—a generation later, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. would call it the best general introduction that he found as a student—and the book remained in print through eleven editions into the early twentieth century. Reform Editor. In 1843 Walker established the Western Law Journal, which immediately became one of the most important legal publications in the country. Like other legal periodicals of the era, it sought to meet the everyday needs of practitioners; the advent of academic law journals staffed by students remained in the distant future. In addition to presenting recent case reports and other basic information, Walker made the Western Law Journal an influential voice on behalf of various reforms. He advocated codification along the same lines as Kent and Story, as a streamlining of the common law to secure recent innovations and achieve efficiency. Troubled by the Jacksonian argument that codification would rein in a privileged professional elite, Walker warned that "the spirit of the hour is a spirit of radicalism; a spirit of selfsufficiency, which regards the wisdom and experience of the past as mere dry dust." Walker similarly sought to follow a moderate course by calling for expansion of woman's rights to hold property and make contracts, while opposing the extension of suffrage or rights of officeholding because "the general participation of that sex in political affairs, could have no other effect than to transform them into a race of Amazons." Beyond Settlement. As Cincinnati matured, the Western Law Journal under Walker's leadership remained a vital forum for the discussion of such social and economic aspects of law as the power of railroad corporations to condemn private property, the merits of establishing an institution for juvenile delinquents in a populous city, and the disposition of the vast, unsettled domain owned by the federal government. When Ohio was divided into two federal judicial districts in 1855, Walker was appointed to draft the rules of practice for the courts of the new southern district. After a carriage accident later in the same year, he died at his home in Cincinnati. Sources: Charles M. Haar, ed., The Golden Age of American Law (New York: George Braziller, 1965); Walter Theodore Hitchcock, Timothy Walker, Antebellum Lawyer (New York: Garland, 1990).

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WILLIAM WIRT 1772-1834

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Emergence. The career of William Wirt demonstrated the social, political, and literary paths by which countless young lawyers sought to achieve fame in the years following the War of 1812. The youngest son of Swiss and German immigrants who kept a tavern in Bladensburg, Maryland, he was orphaned in childhood but obtained some schooling through the assistance of his uncle and a family friend. At seventeen he took up the study of law in Montgomery County, Maryland, and upon learning of an opportunity in Culpeper County, Virginia, he moved there and after five months was admitted to the bar. In Culpeper he became attached to a genial and cultivated social circle, which included the son of Thomas Jefferson's close friend Dabney Carr. When Wirt's wife died in 1799 after four years of marriage, the twentyseven-year-old attorney moved to Richmond and began to participate in public life. Jeffersonian Lieutenant. Upon his arrival in the Virginia capital Wirt was elected clerk of the House of Delegates, a post of strategic significance in the partisan machinery that he held for three sessions. In May 1800 he first achieved widespread notice as a member of the defense team that represented Jeffersonian editor James Thomson Callender in his highly publicized trial for violation of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Chosen by the state legislature two years later to ride circuit on a newly created chancery court headquartered in Williamsburg, Wirt served briefly as chancellor before settling in Norfolk and entering private practice. He built a strong professional reputation, and shortly after returning to Richmond he vaulted into prominence through his performance as a one of the lawyers prosecuting Aaron Burr for treason in 1807. Jefferson gratefully recommended that Wirt take a seat in Congress, but although elected to the House of Delegates he showed little enthusiasm for political campaigning. He actively supported the presidential candidacy of James Madison, however, and in 1816 Madison appointed him U.S. attorney for the district of Richmond. Man of Letters. While rendering valuable services to the Jeffersonian Republicans and reaping his share of patronage, Wirt was simultaneously achieving distinction as one of the most important authors in the country. His Letters of the British Spy (1803) was a witty, genteel series of essays on Virginia manners that enjoyed sensational popularity and subsequently furnished an important model for such writers as Washington Irving and John Pendleton Kennedy. He followed this success in 1810

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with another series of essays titled The Old Bachelor, and in 1817 he published one of the most interesting American biographies of the era, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry. Although regarded as a dubious portrait by those who knew Henry, Wirt's work was an important and original contribution to the mythology of the early republic. He depicted Henry as an embodiment of romantic nationalism, a self-made orator rising from the countryside and the common people to articulate the demand for independence. Attorney General. About the same time that Wirt published his life of Henry, President James Monroe appointed him attorney general. He held the position for twelve years, through the administrations of Monroe and John Quincy Adams, while following the example of his predecessors by continuing to engage in private practice, most actively in Baltimore. Wirt helped to systematize the somewhat informal office of attorney general by preserving his official opinions as a body of precedents. He also participated in many of the major Supreme Court cases of the era, including McCulloch v. Maryland, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and Gibbons v. Ogden. Wirt's stature as an orator was recognized in 1826 by his appointment to deliver the principal address before the House of Representatives at a service in memory of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Opponent of Jackson. A quintessential Whig long before the party organized, Wirt swiftly moved into opposition to Andrew Jackson after leaving office. Recommended by Daniel Webster, he ably directed the politically charged litigation campaign to forestall the removal of the Cherokees. Although he favored the candidacy of Henry Clay for the presidency in 1832, he accepted the nomination of the Anti-Masonic Party in the vain hope that he would unite the opponents of Jackson. Upon Wirt's death two years later, Congress and the Supreme Court adjourned in recognition of his stature, and President Jackson and the cabinet attended the funeral. Popular writers similarly acknowledged him as one of the representative men of the age. John Pendleton Kennedy, whose life closely followed Wirt's model, dedicated the important novel Swallow-Barn (1829) to him and published a two-volume biography in 1849. E. D. E. N. Southworth, one of the best-selling authors of the nineteenth century, based her novel Ishmael (1884) on Wirt's life. Sources: John Pendleton Kennedy, Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Attorney General of the United States (Philadelphia: Lea ScBlanchard, 1849); G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1835 (New York: Macmillan, 1988).

PUBLICATIONS

Joseph K. Angell, Watercourses (Boston: Little, Brown, 1824)—oft-cited guide to the law governing the key source of power for the early Industrial Revolution; Angell and Samuel Ames, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations Aggregate (Boston: Little & J. Brown, 1832)—the first American treatise on corporate law; Henry Baldwin, A General View of the Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of the United States (Philadelphia: J. C. Clark, 1837)—a rambling rebuttal to Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution (1833) by a colleague on the Supreme Court; Nathan Dane, A General Abridgement and Digest of American Law, nine volumes (Boston: Cummings, Milliard, 1823-1829)—a compendium rather than a systematic treatise; its earnings enabled the author to

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endow the Harvard Law School professorship held by Joseph Story; Dorothea Dix, Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline (Boston: Printed by Munroe &, Francis, 1845)—a survey of state penitentiaries and local prisons, combined with an argument in support of the Pennsylvania system of penal management; James Gould, A Treatise on the Principles of Pleading in Civil Actions (New York, 1832)—a manual for practitioners by a professor at the Litchfield Law School; Simon Greenleaf, Treatise on the Law of Evidence (Boston: C. C. Little & J. Brown, 1846-1856)—the standard synthesis of the subject; Francis Hilliard, Elements of Law (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1835)—an overview of the law by a Boston lawyer who would later write the first treatise on torts;

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David Hoffman, A Course of Legal Study (Baltimore: Published by Coate & Maxwell, 1817)—a series of lectures by a Baltimore attorney chosen by the University of Maryland to organize a law school; James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, four volumes (New York: O. Halsted, 1826-1830)—as a worthy counterpart to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), it signified the maturity of American legal writing; Edward Livingston, System of Penal Laws for the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: Gales & Seaton, 1828)—although neither the Louisiana legislature nor the Congress chose to adopt it, this exposition of current thought on crime and punishment was influential throughout the world; James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (Washington, B.C.: Taylor 8c Maury, 1840)—published after Madison's death, the notes provided the first substantial information about the convention and contributed to the reinterpretation of the Constitution; Edward Mansfield, The Legal Rights, Liabilities, and Duties of Women (Salem, Mass.: J. P. Jewett, 1845)—a survey of the state of the law on the eve of the woman's rights movement; John Belton O'Neall, Negro Law of South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: Printed by J. G. Bowman, 1848)—the law of race relations in the jurisdiction most firmly committed to slavery; Wendell Phillips, ed., The Constitution, a Pro-Slavery Compact, or Selections from the Madison Papers (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1844)—an abolitionist interpretation of the Constitution as "a covenant with death"; Robert Rantoul Jr., Oration at Scituate (Boston, 1836)—one of the most powerful appeals for codification of the law;

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Tapping Reeve, Law of Baron and Femme (New Haven: Printed by Oliver Steele, 1816)—the first American treatise on the law of domestic relations; Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, three volumes (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1833)—one of Story's many Commentaries, this became one of the most influential works in the entire literature of American law; William Wetmore Story, A Treatise on the Law of Contracts Not Under Seal (Boston: C. C. Little & J. Brown, 1844)—written by the son of Joseph Story, this remained a standard reference long after the author had abandoned his father's footsteps to live in Rome as a sculptor; St. George Tucker, Commentaries on the Laws of Virginia (Richmond, 1831)—the annotator of the most important American edition of Blackstone turns his attention to the laws of his home state; Tucker, Lectures on Constitutional Law (Washington, D.C., 1843)—a rebuttal to Joseph Story's Commentaries (1833) by one of the foremost legal thinkers in the South; Gulian Verplanck, An Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts: Being An Inquiry How Contracts Are Affected in Law and Morals (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1825)—an attack on the doctrine of caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware") that more broadly addresses the ethical structure of contract law; Timothy Walker, Introduction to American Law (Philadelphia: P. H. Nicklin &T. Johnson, 1837)—a guide for students by one of the leading legal educators of the period; Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law (London: B. Fellowes, 1836)—a treatise by the reporter of Supreme Court opinions from 1815 to 1827.

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LIFESTYLES, SOCIAL TRENDS, AND FASHION

by ANNE BOYD

CONTENTS

CHRONOLOGY 246

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

Entertaining at Home: An Englishwoman** View.. „ * 26O 261 The Life Cycle 263 Living in the North Scenes of Poverty in New York... 263 266 Living in the South 268 Race and Society 268 The Underground Railroad Reform Movements:

Food and Clothing .256 Dress Reform: 257 The Bloomer Look Gender: Separate Spheres for 258 Men and Women The LowellMill Girls. 258 259 Homes and Home Life

The Murder ofLovejoy Reform Movements: Temperance Declaration of Sentiments Reform Movements: Women's Rights

OVERVIEW 254

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Abolition

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The Social World of 274 the Slaves Utopian Communities 276 Transcendental Wild Oats ...... 277

HEADLINE MAKERS Black Hawk Frederick Douglass William Lloyd Garrison Lucy Larcom Elizabeth C ady Stanton

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PUBLICATIONS 283

Sidebars and tables are listed in italics.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1815

The James cookstove, the first widely available stove, is patented in Troy, New York, but stoves remain rare in American households. Reversing a trend toward lighter and simpler women's dress, fashion returns to tight corsets, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and full skirts that later expand into hoop skirts.

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June

1817

The American Colonization Society is organized with the goal of emancipating slaves and transporting them to Africa.

1818

A financial crisis and rising unemployment create the first wave of nativist (anti-immigration) sentiment in America.

4 Apr.

1819

The country's first gas company is organized in Baltimore, Maryland.

Congress decides on an American flag consisting of thirteen stripes, with the number of stars to increase with each state added to the Union.

In Philadelphia racial violence erupts as three white women stone a black woman to death. The country's first food-canning business is founded in New York City by Eza Daggett and Thomas Kensett.

1820

ensus ofmillion the United lists thecenter population at 9,638,453 ing 1.5 slaves). States The geographical of the country's population(inclu is sixteen miles east of Moorefield, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Ten thousand immigrants, most from England, arrive each year in the 1820s. Cookstoves begin to appear in wealthy households, replacing the hard-to-use open hearth for cooking. The first football games, similar to modern soccer, are played at American colleges. The Underground Railroad is in operation. Free blacks and white abolitionists act as conductors, guiding slaves along a network of secret hiding places to freedom in the North.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1821

A colony of former Amercian slaves is founded in Africa. The colony becomes the independent nation of Liberia in 1847. Gas lighting, supplied by coal-distillation plants, is provided for homes in Baltimore. Within ten years homes in New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia will also have gas lights.

1822

The publication of songbooks makes popular and classical music more available to the average American, while the pianoforte, forerunner to today's piano, begins to come within the buying power of an emerging middle class. In a land of tea drinkers coffee becomes a popular drink although some fear its effects and consider it an aphrodisiac. June

1823

• 27 May

1824

Plans for Lowell, Massachusetts, one of America's first prosperous mill towns, are laid; within twenty years it grows to a bustling city of twenty thousand. The first national horse race is held in America at the Union Course on Long Island. One hundred thousand spectators see the competition between American Eclipse, a Northern horse, and Sir Henry, a Southern horse, the former taking home the twenty-thousand-dollar purse.

Female employees are recorded as participating in a strike for the first time when weavers in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, fight a proposed decrease in wages and increase in hours.

Thomas Kensett obtains a U.S. patent for tin-plated cans, used for canning food.

1825

A Norwegian community, the first settlement of Scandinavians in America in the nineteenth century, is established at Kendall, New York. 3 Jan.

Robert Owen establishes the nation's first secular Utopian community at New Harmony, Indiana.

Frances Wright founds Nashoba Colony near Memphis, Tennessee, an experiment in interracial utopianism, with the goal of educating slaves and allowing them to earn money to purchase their freedom.

1826

LIFESTYLES

Denmark Vesey attempts to organize a slave insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina, designed to take control of the city. As many as nine thousand slaves are believed to be involved. The plot fails, and thirty-five (including Vesey) are executed.

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The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, the first national temperance organization, is founded in Boston.

1827

Ice becomes available in New York City as wagons travel through the streets selling it to households with iceboxes.

1828

The Utopian community of New Harmony, Indiana, disbands. •

Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

•

As part of the Cherokee effort to adapt to mainstream American culture, the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper begins publication.

1829

Ohio passes a law mandating that all free black people must post a $500 bond promising peaceful behavior or leave the state. David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World is published.

16 Oct.

1830

Boston's Tremont Hotel opens with many luxuries available for the first time, most notably indoor plumbing (eight bathtubs and eight toilets).

The census records the population at 12,866,020 (including two million slaves); the geographical center of the population has moved thirty-five miles west since 1820. Immigration rises to 60,000 annually; many arrivals are from Ireland. There are 10.5 farmers for every city dweller in the United States.

1831

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Delmonico's Restaurant, the gathering place of wealthy, discriminating diners for the rest of the century, opens in New York City.

1 Jan.

The first issue of the radical abolitionist magazine The Liberator is published in Boston under the editorship of William Lloyd Garrison.

21 Aug.

Nat Turner's Rebellion, the bloodiest slave insurrection in America's history, begins in Southampton County, Virginia, sparking panic throughout the South. It is suppressed within two days, but leaves hundreds dead.

1832 A proposal to abolish slavery in Virginia is defeated by the state legislature.

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Oranges and lemons, previously delicacies for the wealthy, are introduced to the American public with the first large shipment from Sicily. A cholera epidemic spreads from Montreal to New Orleans, killing tens of thousands in its wake, primarily in urban areas.

One °f trie first local public libraries in America is founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Public libraries offer access to reading material for middleand lower-class Americans, increasing the popularity of reading as a leisure activity.

1833 3 Sept.

The heyday of the penny papers begins with the publication of the New York Sun. These sensationalist newspapers become the most popular reading material in America.

4 Dec.

The American Anti-Slavery Society, the first abolitionist organization in America, is formed in Philadelphia. Its first president is Arthur Tappan.

Tomatoes are introduced to the American diet, but they would not become popular for decades. Many Americans believe they are poisonous.

1834

The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance boasts five thousand local chapters and a membership of one million.

July

In New York a mob breaks up an integrated antislavery meeting and ransacks the home of abolitionist leader Arthur Tappan.

The American Anti-Slavery Society begins a massive campaign to inundate the South with abolitionist literature.

1835

A mob drags abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston; he is nearly hanged before authorities step in to rescue him. Southern legislatures try Northern abolitionists in absentia and offer bounties on them, dead or alive. P. T. Barnum begins his illustrious career with the exhibition of Joice Heth, a slave he claims is 161 years old and George Washington's former nurse.

Nativist nati-Catholicism heightens with the puplication of Awful Disclosures of

1836

Maria Monk, as Exhibited in a Narrative of Her Suffering During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years as a Black Nuny in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal, later proven to be a hoax. Cold-water societies are organized in Sunday schools by the Reverend Thomas P. Hunt. These temperance societies enlist children to collect pledges from people to abstain from drinking.

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The American Temperance Society is founded.

1837

The Panic of 1837, the worst economic depression America had yet known, causes cities such as New York to restrict immigration. Nativist sentiment ' reaches new heights. Sarah Josepha Hale becomes editor of Godeys Lady's Book, the most influential women's magazine of the century. She would hold the post until 1877. 7 Nov.

In Alton, Illinois, a proslavery mob kills Elijah P. Lovejoy, whose printing press had been destroyed three times previously for publishing antislavery materials. Lovejoy becomes a martyr for the abolitionist cause.

Massachusetts prohibits the sale of hard liquor in quantities of less than fifteen gallons, but repeals the law two years later.

1838

Sarah Grimke publishes one of the first written arguments for women's rights, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women. A Utopian community near Putney, Vermont, is founded by John Humphrey J Noyes.

May

1839

A mob gathers outside the Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia while William Lloyd Garrison addresses a women's antislavery convention. Windows are broken, and the next day a mob breaks into the building and burns it.

Theodore Weld publishes his collection of atrocities committed in the slave South, Slavery as It Is. A U.S. Navy ship captures a Spanish vessel, fa&Amistad, off the coast of Long Island. Slaves aboard had seized the ship, hoping to return to Africa. Abolitionists and proslavery politicians tangle over whether to hand the slaves over to Spain.

184O

The census enumerates 17,069,453 Americans. Five cities (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans) have populations of 90,000 or moreNew York alone has 312,000 inhabitants. There are 5.5 farmers for every city dweller in the United States. The American Anti-Slavery Society names eight female delegates to a World Anti-Slavery Convention to be held in London. When they are barred from the proceedings, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton devise the idea of the women's rights movement.

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The American Anti-Slavery Society splits when New York delegates leave after William Lloyd Garrison and his followers elect a woman to head the business office. The Washington Temperance Society is formed. Over the next three years it claims to reform half a million heavy drinkers and one hundred thousand alcoholics. Tableaux vivants, in which people pose in sometimes elaborate costumes to approximate scenes in classical literature and art, become a popular form of parlor entertainment in the 1840s.

1841

Brook Farm, a transcendentalist Utopian community, is founded near Boston, under the leadership of George Ripley. Godeys Lady's Book announces a new fashion trend: tight sleeves on ladies' dresses. Bowling is banned in Connecticut because of its association with gambling. 9 Mar.

The U.S. Supreme Court decides in favor of the Africans captured on \h.zAmistad'm 1839, arguing that they had been illegally kidnapped by the Spanish. The Africans, defended by former president John Quincy Adams, return home.

The most popular spectator sport, horse racing, draws tens of thousands to view a match race between entries from the North and South at the Union Course on Long Island. The Southern horse wins.

1842

P. T. Barnum opens his American Museum in New York City, exhibiting oddities and exotics to millions of curious Americans. The museum burns down twice during its existence, the last time in 1868 when Barnum decides to close it for good. The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, the first organized baseball team in America, is formed in New York City.

1843

The North American Phalanx, a Utopian community based on the ideas of Charles Fourier, is founded at Red Bank, New Jersey. The community has twelve hundred members and lasts until a fire destroys the mill in 1854. The transcendentalist community of Fruitlands, started by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane, is founded near Harvard, Massachusetts. Scandinavian immigration to Wisconsin and Minnesota grows; an average of twenty-one hundred arrive each year from 1843 to 1860. The tobacco tycoon Pierre Lorillard becomes the first man to be called a "millionaire."

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Harvard organizes a rowing team, and Yale students adopt the sport the following year. In 1852 the two schools begin to compete in the first American organized intercollegiate sporting events.

1844

The New York Hotel installs the first private bath in an American hotel. Maine grants women property rights equal to those of men. One hundred fifty million pounds of coffee are imported into the United States, up from twelve million pounds in 1821.

1845

The Irish potato famine begins, initiating the mass migration of the Irish to America. A Southern horse wins the North-South battle at the Union Course on Long Island. Fifty thousand fans tie up the roads leading to the track so that some spectators are not able to reach the event. As Texas is annexed, the phrase "manifest destiny" comes into popular usage as an expression of the nation's desire to expand across the continent. Alexander Cartwright, owner of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York, is the first to write down and codify the rules of the game.

1846

Maine passes the first statewide prohibition act banning the sale of liquor. Sarah Josepha Hale begins her campaign for a national holiday called Thanksgiving Day. By 1858 all but six states adopt the holiday. Irish women comprise approximately seven to eight thousand of the ten thousand American domestic servants. 19 June

In an event traditionally described as the first modern baseball game, the New York Club defeats the Knickerbockers at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, by a score of 23-1.

1847 Vermont passes a law granting women full ownership of property they held before marriage or received as a gift after marriage. A fire destroys the buildings at Brook Farm and ends the Utopian experiment.

1848

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New York adopts a law granting women property rights equal to those of men.

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John Humphrey Noyes moves his Utopian community to Oneida, New York, after local opposition to the community's practice of "complex marriage." Revolutions in Europe have a profound impact on American immigration as European refugees, especially from Germany, flee starvation and violence.

July

1849

The first women's rights convention, organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, convenes at Seneca Falls, New York, demanding that women be granted the rights guaranteed to all U.S. citizens.

The illegal sport of prizefighting remains popular; huge crowds go to Peel Island, Maryland, where a fight between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan is stopped by the militia. Amelia Bloomer begins publication of her temperance and women's rights magazine Lily.

The U.S. Census records America's population as 23,191,876, centered at a point twenty-three miles southeast of Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). Towns of eight thousand or more inhabitants have doubled in size since 1830, and the combined population of America's three largest cities (New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) has tripled since 1820.

185O

Spurred by the potato famine in Ireland and revolutions on the European continent, 369,980 people immigrate to America. Amelia Bloomer gains notoriety for wearing loose-fitting trousers under her skirt. The garment, soon to be called "bloomers," was designed in the mid 1840s. The American Vegetarian Society is founded.

LIFESTYLES

11 Sept.

Jenny Lind, dubbed the "Swedish Nightingale," appears in her American debut at Castle Garden Theater in New York City. Her American tour, arranged by P. T. Barnum, is a national sensation.

18 Sept.

The Fugitive Slave Law, passed by Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850, dictates that all citizens must assist in the capture of runaway slaves. The law galvanizes the North against slavery.

Oct.

The first national women's rights convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts; delegates from nine states attend.

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OVERVIEW

Expansion. The first half of the nineteenth century was marked by more rapid and revolutionary change in everyday life than any previous American generation had experienced. Large-scale demographic, political, and social transformations irrevocably changed the daily routines of Americans by altering their communities, the houses in which they lived in, the food they ate, the work they did, the way they spent their leisure time, and the way they viewed their places in society. Two of the most basic changes were the growth of population, from 9.6 million in 1820 to 23 million in 1850, and the expansion of the country's western boundary, from the Mississippi River in 1800 all the way to the Pacific Ocean by 1848. As the nation grew, regional differences took on increasing importance. More and more, Americans perceived the country as split into two antagonistic sections, the North and the South, as well as a third as yet unformed region: the vast expanse of the West. The North and the South saw each other as separate, alien cultures where people held different beliefs, did different kinds of work, ate different food, and participated in different, separate economies. Rapid Change. The growth of cities was another source of change. Many Americans, mostly in the North, moved away from their farms to find more lucrative work in mills and factories. When they did so, they left behind traditional, tight-knit communities where people relied on one another for their livelihood and leisure, and they began to live in new worlds where their neighbors were strangers. They were willing to accept this social insecurity because the cities provided economic abundance. Advances in transportation brought a wide variety of foods, reading materials, and other consumer goods from all over the country to the cities of the eastern seaboard. And the everexpanding economy gave an unprecedented number of people the buying power to furnish their houses and clothe themselves with the latest fashions, thereby supporting the new industries that were created to produce such items. A large middle class began to emerge and claim the right to refinement and prosperity, purchasing ready-made clothing, dinnerware, and furniture of higher quality than had previously been available to anyone other than the very wealthy. Americans also began to take advantage of new inventions that made a comfortable lifestyle more accessible, such as the cookstove, gas lighting, and indoor plumbing.

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Work. Much of the work available in the new cities revolved around the emerging industries that produced the clothing, shoes, and other household items that were once made in the home. Large factories, where men and women performed monotonous and usually unskilled labor, began to replace the workshops of small-scale manufacturers manned by skilled craftsmen. And with the increase of immigration in the 1830s and 1840s many native-born Americans were replaced by less well paid Irish and German workers. At the same time the emerging industries had a profound effect on people's homes. Whereas women had previously produced their own fabric, clothing, soap, and candles at home, they could now purchase these items cheaply and use their time to beautify their homes, raise their children, and improve society by participating in religious or social reform movements. Men, who had traditionally worked in shops or on farms that were near their homes, now had to leave home for the workday and enter another, separate sphere. Slowly Americans began to perceive that where there had been one, collaborative world in which all participated (although tasks may have been differentiated by gender), American society was now split into two worlds: one for women and one for men. Home. The home had previously been a place where a large "family," which included apprentices and journeymen as well as parents and children, worked, ate, enjoyed their leisure hours, and slept. By the middle of the century the popular idea of the home had evolved into that of a haven to which the father could return after a long day in the harried, outside world to be restored in the bosom of his nuclear family, which comprised only parents and children. As the home and the workplace became two separate worlds, leisure time grew in importance. Bachelors, who had once lived as apprentices with their employers' families, now lived on their own in boardinghouses and so tended to form bonds with each other that revolved around sports, gambling, and other leisure activities. Because so many workers were relegated to unskilled labor in factories and had no hope of moving on to better work, the time spent away from work grew in importance. Amusement became a compensation for unrewarding work, and an entertainment industry began to form in response to the need. Optimism. During this period as Americans witnessed the growing economy, the new advances in technology, and

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the nation's expanding borders, they began to believe that the amount of progress the nation could achieve was limitless. Opportunities for individuals to better their lives seemed to be growing every day. Social boundaries were fluid rather than fixed, giving anyone the chance to rise on the social ladder. The term "self-made man" was coined at this time, expressing the period's emphasis on material gain and social mobility. President Andrew Jackson, a man who rose from humble beginnings to become the most powerful man in the nation, embodied the era's creed that hard work led to rewards no matter who you were. Americans also believed that society itself was headed in a positive direction because people, as God's creation, could do nothing other than realize his vision of justice, equality, and prosperity. Such was the promise that each individual and society, as a sum of those individuals, possessed. Everywhere one looked—in newspaper editorials, essays in magazines, children's readers, sermons, lectures, and political speeches— America was trumpeted as "the freest, the happiest, and soon to be the greatest and most powerful country in the world," as one contemporary observer wrote. Perfectionism. Inherent in the idea of America as a nation of progress was the belief that society, and the individuals who comprised it, could be perfected. Improvement was the motto of the age. Religious evangelism had taught Americans that they were responsible for their own salvation. From the Enlightenment, Americans inherited the belief that they had the capacity to perfect themselves, and from Romanticism, the notion that they were released from tradition and the past to create their own ideal future. But at a time when Americans' faith in their nation's progress seemed unbounded, some began to feel uneasy about the direction in which the country was headed. To most Americans progress meant the accumulation of money. Alexis de Tocqueville, an astute foreign observer, noted, "I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men." America had been taken over by the drive to obtain wealth at the expense of improving one's mind and morals, many believed, and as a result the nation was on the verge of moral bankruptcy. In the midst of unlimited optimism, then, could be found an equally earnest despair about the country's future. Reform and Utopianism. Some Americans felt that the pursuit of wealth was a hollow goal with dire consequences, including increased disparity between the rich and poor, the revitalization of slave labor in response to the skyrocketing demand for cotton to supply the new textile industry, and a base neglect of those less fortunate in the mad rush for one's own gain. America needed a solution, according to some, and organizations sprang up all over, especially in the Northeast, to address a wide variety of social ills: the horrific conditions in mental hospitals and prisons, excessive drinking, the lack of a proper education for most Americans, juvenile delinquency, and the enslavement of one-seventh of the nation's population. Most reformers

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were influenced by the evangelical belief that humans can and should act to improve their own souls and, by extension, the souls of others. They believed that a perfect society, known for its justice and equality, could be created here on Earth; there was no need to wait for Heaven. A corollary impulse led to the creation of Utopian communities, some of which were religious in nature and others secular. For many of these communities the need to retreat from a corrupt society was paramount, but for most the intent was to establish an improved social order on a small scale that could then be reproduced in other locales and thereby influence the larger society. Utopian communities, particularly the secular ones, strove to create environments in which each individual could flourish and reach his or her ultimate potential and happiness, a goal that many believed American society promised but had not yet achieved. For many of these communities the path to such an Eden on Earth was through the establishment of equality across lines of class, gender, and (in one case) race. Inequality. Despite the expansion of voting privileges to include all white males and the growing emphasis on equal opportunity in Jacksonian America, the reality of social inequality remained all-pervasive. Mainstream society held the view that Caucasians, especially Anglo-Saxons, were inherently superior to all other people. African Americans and Native Americans were deemed to be biologically, intellectually, and morally inferior and hence unfit to participate in civilized society. Such assumptions led to the continued justification of slavery, prejudice and violence against free blacks, and the removal of Indians from their lands to make way for white settlers. Immigrants, especially those from Ireland, also faced discrimination. Many Americans inherited the English prejudice against the Irish as slovenly, ignorant, and unclean. But most alarming to Americans, who were overwhelmingly Protestant, was the fact that most of the immigrants they saw arriving in ever-increasing numbers were Catholic. Nativist and anti-Catholic groups attempted to modify naturalization laws to limit the voting privileges of immigrants. Women. Women were the largest group of people denied full political and legal rights. By law or custom women were not allowed to vote, to speak in public, or to sue or be sued; when allowed to work at all, they found only limited kinds of jobs open to them, and they were paid less than men for the same work. A woman lost all claim to her own property and wages (which belonged solely to her husband) if she married, and she lost claim to her children in the case of separation. While white, native-born males began to enjoy more rights and privileges during this period, the promise of equal rights for all was still far from being realized for most Americans, a fact recognized by the growing number of reformers and members of Utopian communities who began the slow process of "freedom's ferment," as one historian has called it.

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TOPICS IN THE NEWS

FOOD AND CLOTHING Food in the North. In 1815 few methods were available to preserve foods through the winter. Meat could be salted or smoked, and root crops could be stored in a cellar if one was available. But generally there was little variation in the average American's daily diet although there were regional differences. In the North bread made from wheat or rye flour and Indian corn were staples, along with beef, milk, cheese, and butter. New Englanders of the coastal areas drew their sustenance from the sea; fish, shrimp, oysters, and clams were eaten alone or used to create fish cakes and chowders. Baked beans, pork and beans, and boiled dinners or stews made of meat and vegetables were also popular. For flavor molasses, cranberry sauce, and maple sugar were often added to dishes, and apples were a favorite ingredient for desserts. Americans rarely drank water; instead they drank alcoholic cider, beer, and coffee or tea. In the 1820s wealthy households began to use iceboxes, forerunners of the refrigerator, in which large blocks of ice kept vegetables, meat, and dairy products cool. In the cities food vendors roamed the streets, and markets were set up to sell a wide variety of produce, meat, and prepared foods. But for

A top hat made from beaver pelts in the 1830s (Missouri Historical Center)

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poor urban families such items remained out of reach. Instead they survived largely on bread and potatoes with an occasional supplement of meat. Food in the South. In the South pork, corn, and rice were the staples, although the favorable growing conditions allowed wealthy planters to produce a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Poor Southerners ate corn pone, hominy, sweet potatoes, and pork. Wild game and fish and shellfish were popular, along with regional specialties such as peanuts, figs, okra, and turtles. Wealthy Southerners included tropical fruits, fresh meats, and many fresh vegetables in their diets. Slaves who worked as domestic servants sometimes got to eat the same food they prepared for their masters, but field hands received only a weekly ration of a peck of corn (which they had to grind to make corn pone) and, for the fortunate, a few pounds of bacon. Some slaves, though, were allowed to keep their own garden plots to supplement their diets, and they often fished or hunted (with dogs or traps, as slaves were not allowed to possess guns) or even stole from their masters to get enough food to survive. Cooking. In the first decades of the nineteenth century almost all cooking was done over the tremendous heat of an open fireplace. Pots and kettles were sus pended over the fire or placed directly in the hot coals. Cooking was a laborious task as the fire had to be tended; heavy pots had to be lifted; bread had to be kneaded; water had to be carried; and spices, salt, sugar, and coffee all had to be ground by hand. The job got somewhat easier after 1820 when the cookstove, the first kitchen appliance in America, was introduced to wealthy households. After 1830 it began to appear in middle-class kitchens in many cities, and by 1850 the cookstove was well on its way to becoming a standard fixture all across the North. The cookstove retained a good deal of the heat it produced and had cooking surfaces at waist level, where they were more accessible. But women in the South continued the back-straining labor of cooking over fireplaces for decades to come. Cookbooks. A total of 160 new cookbooks were published between 1800 and 1850, making the cook's job a little easier. Eliza Leslie's The Lady's Receipt Book (1847) was one of the most popular. It included recipes (called

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DRESS REFORM: THE BLOOMER LOOK The Bloomer c o s t u m e , n a m e d after Amelia Bloomer, editor of a temperance magazine and advocate of dress reform, became popular among the prominent women's rights workers, notably Lucy Stone, Angelina Weld Grimke, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Many of the women who adopted the outfit also cut their hair short and were denounced as radicals who were trying to promote free love. The costume consisted of a dress or coat (of shorter length than was usual) worn over loose pants that were tucked into boots or gathered above slippers. Bloomers had been invented at a water-cure resort and were promoted as a healthier alternative to the corsets and long dresses filled out with layers of petticoats that limited women's breathing and mobility. Stanton explained why she adopted the trend: To see my cousin (who was wearing bloomers), with a lamp in one hand and a baby in the other, walk upstairs with ease and grace, while, with flowing robes, I pulled myself up with difficulty, lamp and baby out of the question, readily convinced me that there was sore need of a reform in woman's dress. . . . why "the drapery" is quite too much—one might as well work with a ball and chain. Is being born a woman so criminal an offense, that we must be doomed to this everlasting bondage?

But the fad only lasted about two years. Women reformers grew tired of the ridicule they received for their unorthodox mode of dress, feeling that it took attention away from the more important battles they were fighting. Source: Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962).

"receipts") for everything from temperance plum pudding to apple pie to elaborate French dishes. But recipes during this period were notoriously imprecise. Catharine Esther Beecher, in her Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book (1846), lamented the recipes whose instructions were no more than "Take a pinch of this, and a little of that, and considerable of the other, and cook them till they are done about right"'' In frustration she called for more standardized measurements, which did not become common until later in the century. Fashion. In 1815 only a few older men could be seen in the knee breeches, long-tailed coats, buckles, and powdered wigs of the eighteenth century. American men had adopted a simpler costume of full-length pants, short coats, and stove-pipe hats. Women's fashion, on the other hand, was ever-changing and could be anything but simple. In 1815 women were wearing dresses

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A Bradbury stove made between 1820 and 1840 (Old Sturbridge Village Collections)

in the Classical style: close-fitting dresses that exposed the neck and arms. But by 1820 styles were already shifting to a more Romantic mode: full dresses with puffy sleeves and high necklines. Underneath these dresses women wore petticoats and corsets that were tightened to produce a smaller waist. Unfortunately they also restricted breathing, and many well-dressed women suffered discomfort and fatigue as the price of fashion. Ready-Made Clothing. The fashion plates of Godey's Lady's Book kept women all over the North apprised of the latest styles. But not all could afford them. While upper-class women had access to the imported styles of Paris and London, middle-class women could only attempt to imitate them at home. They could not truly dress like the wealthy until ready-made clothing became available in the 1840s. Poorer women benefited from factory-made cotton and woolens by the end of the period. While many people still wore home-spun garments, the laborious process of spinning wool and making linen at home was being replaced by a trip to the local storekeeper, where fabrics in an array of colors and prints could be bought for reasonable prices. The emerging textile industry helped democratize American fashion by allowing more women than ever before to follow the trends set by the wealthy. Sources:

Richard J. Hooker, FoodandDrink in America: A History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981); Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).

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GENDER: SEPARATE SPHERES FOR MEN AND WOMEN Different Worlds. Men and women grew up in different worlds. Americans assumed that men and women naturally belonged in what they called separate "spheres." Women inhabited a sphere comprising the home, church, and social visits they exchanged with each other. Men's sphere was outside the home in the world of industry, commerce, and politics. These separate spheres were especially well defined among the middle class in the cities and small towns. On farms and plantations men's and women's worlds were not so rigidly separate although different roles were assigned to each sex. Even though most men and women married and raised families together, they tended to identify strongly with these separate social worlds throughout their lives. Women's Sphere. Only privileged girls of the upper and middle classes enjoyed much education, sometimes in female academies but more often under the superviTHE LOWELL MILL GIRLS

The New England farm girls who worked in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, were fascinating to their contemporaries not only because they were the first female factory-labor force in American history but also because of their commitment to self-culture that led to the establishment of a library; a lyceum lecture series, "Improvement Circles"; and a magazine called The Lowell Offering that published the stories, essays, and poems of the female mill operatives, Lowell was viewed as an idyllic factory community, and it attracted the attention of visitors such as Charles Dickens and Harriet Martineau as well as American presidents and other politicians. Davy Crockett visited Lowell in 1834 and made special note of the "mile of gals," as they were commonly called: "All well dressed, lively, and genteel in their appearance; indeed, the girls looked as if they were coming from a quilting frolic/* The reputation of the Lowell mill girls did much to contradict the stigma attached to factory work, especially for women, and the intelligence they displayed in their magazine drew curious subscribers from all over America and abroad. More than anything, though, their magazine proved that intellectual improvement was available to all, even farm girls who worked all day in the factories and then applied themtselves in the evenings to serious study. Sources: Benita Eisler, ed., The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845) (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1977); Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),

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sion of their scholarly fathers. Most girls were raised under the wings of their mothers, preparing to take on the same responsibilities one day. They often cared fo younger siblings and generally tried to lighten their mothers' loads. The home was the young woman's schoolroom, and the social activities in which she engaged were conducted in the company of other girls and women. The quilting circles, reading groups, and benevolent societies to which she belonged were composed largely (or entirely) of women. Bonds with sisters, mothers, and close female friends were maintained, even over long distances, by ritual visits women made to each other's homes. Visiting was an everyday activity for many women who made the rounds to check in on neighbors and share gossip or a cup of tea. As families moved out West, female family members from the East would make extended visits, staying weeks or months at a time. Men's Sphere. Men often felt only tentatively linked to the home, expressing at times a feeling of exclusion. Young boys were nurtured at home, but they early learned that their sphere was elsewhere. They grew up under the tutelage of their fathers, preparing for their future careers. Boys who grew up on farms attended their fathers at chores and trips to town to conduct business. Boys who grew up in middle- and upper-class households received extensive educations, sometimes including college. Because they were surrounded only by men throughout their schooling and grew up to work in fields such as politics, law, or medicine that included only men, they developed friendships and socialized within an allmale world. Many men, especially bachelors, spent much of their leisure time at sporting events or in taverns (often one and the same). Cult of Domesticity. As the capitalist economy grew and technological advances mechanized the methods of production, the realm of business moved outside the home, where previously families had kept shops and manufactured wares for sale, and into factories and specialized business districts. As these economic activities moved out of the house, men went with them, at least during the working day, leaving women and children at home. Of course, many families could not afford to lose the earning power of women and children, but in most middle-class homes women ceased to produce goods for sale and focused their energies on keeping a home and raising children. As a result the home itself was elevated in status. Perceiving the outside world of politics and business to be full of corruption and greed, Americans viewed the home as a haven or sanctuary where young children acquired from their mothers the civic and personal virtues that would sustain the republic. The family and home became idealized as the moral center of society, a harbor of republican values in the face of rampant capitalism. True Womanhood. As keepers of the home women possessed a special role in republican America. They were the backbone of society, responsible for protecting

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American virtues, largely by the example they set for others. Lydia Howard Sigourney summed up the new idealization of the home and women's role in her Whisper to a Bride (1850): "Home! Blessed bride, thou art about to enter this sanctuary, and to become a priestess at its altar!" Sermons and magazine articles described what were called "true women," which meant those who were excellent managers of the home, submissive to the men in their lives, pure in thought and action, devout in their Christian faith, and committed to their families as mothers, wives, daughters, or sisters. The middle-class ideal of the true woman played a strong role in women's lives by setting up expectations for all women to follow. Respect. While not all could live up to the ideal of the true woman, many women fitted comfortably into their prescribed sphere. Some even made careers out of advocating it for others despite the fact that true women were not supposed to have careers. Catharine Beecher, for example, campaigned both for greater respect for the role of the "true woman" and an increased rigor on the part of women in their adoption of that role. Her Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) collected an exhaustive amount of information on every aspect of housekeeping, from building the house itself to rearing the children within it. Believing that women were not adequately prepared to assume their roles as wives and mothers, she sought to modernize and regularize housework by easing the anxieties of women about their duties and offering them practical advice on how to perform them in the most effective way. Her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, would go on to popularize the image of the true woman in her fiction, but Sarah Josepha Hale, author of many novels and editor of Godey's Lady's Book, the most popular women's magazine of its time, would become the culture's foremost spokeswoman for domesticity and the true woman. Idealization of Motherhood. The most important, even sacred, role for a woman to play, according to nineteenth-century advisers, was to bear, nurture, and educate her children. A woman who did not desire to have children was thought to be unnatural. Motherhood was considered the source of a woman's most intense happiness while at the same time conferring authority on women; as mothers they assumed the responsibility for ensuring the moral health of the nation through the values they transmitted to their children. Lydia Sigourney, in Letters to Mothers (1838), advised women, "If in becoming a mother, you have reached the climax of your happiness, you have also taken a higher place in the scale of being . . . you have gained an increase in power." If middle-class women had lost some influence in the culture when they ceased to contribute to the family's livelihood, they made up for it by an elevation in their status as mothers. "The acquisition of wealth, the advancement of his children in worldly honor—these are [the father's] self-imposed tasks," wrote Emma Embury in the Ladies' Companion, while it was the mother who shaped "the inLlFESTYLES

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Richard Caton Woodville's Politics in an Oyster House (1848), which portrays activities belonging to "man's sphere" (Walters Art Gallery)

fant mind as yet untainted by contact with evil . . . like wax beneath the plastic hand of the mother." Sources: Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Knopf, 1985); Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976).

HOMES AND HOME LIFE

Housing. The houses that dotted the American landscape became increasingly important symbols of American progress. Large houses that reflected current architectural trends were signs of individual and national prosperity. Small houses reflected the simple tastes of average Americans who worked hard and were the kings of their own humble cottages. And log cabins on the frontier represented the growth of civilization as it overtook the wilderness and made way for more permanent towns. In Northern cities and manufacturing towns housing ranged from mansions to multiple-family houses to row houses, while in rural areas and small towns singlefamily dwellings were the norm. The elaborate mansions of the North or the plantation homes of the South conTRENDS

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tained as many as twenty rooms, many of them quite large. The dining room, for instance, could often seat twenty or more. As the wealth of individuals increased at midcentury, these houses became ostentatious symbols of power and excess. Specialization of Rooms. In the Northern countryside the average house was usually one-storied and consisted of two rooms: one for cooking, eating, and working and one where the parents slept and entertained guests. This bedroom/guestroom was considered the best room in the house, and people saw no incompatibility between the private sleeping and public visiting they did in this room. Children often slept in an unfinished attic space or loft. Over time, though, Americans began to design houses with rooms for more-specialized purposes. Bedrooms became separate, private places, and a ENTERTAINING AT HOME: AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S VIEW

Frances Trollope on the inadequacy of evening entertainments in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1828: Whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet together in society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting is sufficient to paralyze conversation. The women invariably herd together at one part of the room, and the men at the other.... Sometimes a small attempt at music produces a partial reunion; a few of the most daring youths, animated by the consciousness of curled hair and smart waistcoats, approach the piano-forte, and begin to mutter a little to the half-grown pretty things, who are comparing with one another "how many quarters' music they have had." Where the mansion is of sufficient dignity to have two drawing-rooms, the piano, the little ladies, and the slender gentlemen are left to themselves, and on such occasions the sound of laughter is often heard to issue from among them. But the fate of the more dignified personages, who are left in the other room, is extremely dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce, and spit again. The ladies look at each other's dresses till they know every pin by heart; talk of Parson Somebody's last sermon on the day of judgment, on Dr. T'otherbody's new pills for dyspepsia, till the "tea" is an nounced, when they all console themselves together for whatever they may have suffered in keeping awake, by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and custard, hoe cake, johnny cake, waffle cake, and dodger cake, pickled peaches, and preserved cucumbers, ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, and pickled oysters, than ever were prepared in any other country of the known world. After this massive meal is over, they return to the drawingroom, and it always appeared to me that they remained together as long as they could bear it, and then they rise en masse, cloak, bonnet, shawl, and exit. Source: Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 2 volumes (London: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832).

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parlor was created for entertaining and displaying the family's best furnishings. Kitchens and dining rooms were also created to separate the cooking and eating of food from the family's other work activities. Two-story houses were a symbol of prosperity, and they more clearly separated the private rooms from the areas where guests could be received by placing bedrooms upstairs. Most housing in the rural South was smaller than that in the North. Two-room houses, with a breezeway, or "dogtrot," separating the rooms, were common, as were the log cabins usually associated with the Western frontier. Slave quarters varied, some being single-family houses, others having two or three families to a house. But most slaves' houses were crude log cabins that consisted of only one room and no windows. Parlor and Sitting Room. Borrowed from the mansions of the elite, the parlor became an important addition to middle-class homes as Americans attempted to adopt more-genteel lifestyles. The parlor was the best room in the house, where the family's finest furnishings were displayed. If the family were very well-to-do, a pianoforte (precursor to the piano) might be prominently placed in the room. Since a pianoforte could cost from two to six hundred dollars (more than a year's income for most workers), its presence was a sure sign of social elevation. Bookcases might line the wall, attesting to the family's education. The parlor was a formal room intended to put the family's best possible face forward and was used primarily to entertain guests, or perhaps to host meetings of local social or literary clubs. When the family was home alone, they rarely set foot within the decorous walls of the parlor. Instead they retired to a library or a sitting room where family members sewed or knitted, wrote letters, discussed the day's events, read the newspaper, or listened while someone told stories or read a favorite book aloud. So were spent many of the leisure hours of middle-class families, especially in rural areas where there existed few entertainments outside the home. Reading. Americans of all classes were encouraged by writers, teachers, and family members to pick up reading materials in their spare moments away from domestic duties or work in the factory or fields. Magazines and novels promoted an idealized image of the family sitting around a small lamp in the evenings reading to each other. Catharine Maria Sedgwick, in the novel Home (1835), depicted the wise decision of an artisan, who lived modestly in the city with his family, to purchase books instead of an expensive Swiss clock. The father read to his family from Mason Locke Weems's The Life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin (1815), "making now and then such remarks as would tend to impress its valuable instruction on his children." As this novel reflects, Americans widely believed that reading could not only enlighten the individual but also help improve his or her status in society. The spread of knowledge was deemed to be essential to a democracy, but Americans began to

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read for pleasure as much as for enrichment. Often the two purposes of reading were united in domestic, religious, and reform literature. Novels about young women who learned to become Christian exemplars to those around them or who learned to shun fashion and pomp in favor of wholesome virtues like nurturing and humility were widely read by 1850. Parlor Music. Sentimental songs distributed as sheet music for performance in the parlors of middle- and upper-class homes were among the most common forms of popular music. These ballads set themselves apart from the traditional tunes popular among the less well educated by forgoing sexually explicit lyrics in favor of more-genteel expressions of devotion and affection for family members and beaus. These parlor songs gradually pushed aside the older bawdy songs among the lower classes, who learned them from newspapers and by ear. Songs from minstrel shows were also widely popular, with Stephen Foster being one of the most influential songwriters. These songs were derived from the music of slaves but also incorporated many other musical influences. Dancing. Dancing was another domestic leisure activity, taking place primarily in private homes rather than public dance halls. Dance music was most often played by fiddlers, who were usually men, for dances that concluded neighborhood barn raisings, huskings, and quiltings in the North and South. Barbecues were popular in the South, and guests, who often included slaves, were entertained by a fiddler and maybe a banjo player playing dance music that reflected both the Celtic origins of much of the planter class and the African origins of their slaves. Many Southern fiddlers were slaves whose musical skills were prized by their owners. In the elite households of the North and South, balls were also held. These were grand events at which professional musicians played, and French dancing teachers watched as their pupils performed newly learned steps. In the early 1800s cotillion dancing, in which four couples danced together, became popular. But despite the widespread popularity of dancing many ministers scorned the practice as sinful because of the proximity in which men and women danced. Their opposition to dancing increased as the waltz, which replaced group dancing with individual couples who clasped hands and danced face-to-face, arrived in America in the 1820s. The clergy were effective in their attacks, as dancing decreased in popularity, especially among middling families in rural areas. Sources: Jan Cohn, The Palace or the Poorhouse: The American House as Cultural Symbo/(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1979); Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Russel B. Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).

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Argand lamps, circa 1830, found in the homes of wealthy American families in the early nineteenth century (Old Sturbridge Village Collections)

THE LIFE CYCLE Birth. In the absence of hospitals women gave birth at home, usually in the parents' bedroom and surrounded by female family members and neighbors. The birth was attended by a doctor (if the family could afford one) or a midwife (especially in rural areas and slave quarters), but childbirth remained a risky procedure for American women of all classes and regions. Many husbands lost their wives, and children their mothers, from complicated pregnancies, often as the result of puerperal, or "childbed," fever. If the afterbirth were not completely removed, infection would set in and often result in death. Even without complications the strain of bearing children year after year eventually took its toll on many women. With limited birth-control methods available, birthrates were high, although they began to decline by 1850. This decline, primarily due to abstinence, reflected women's increased authority in marriage. But the mother was not the only one at risk. Among white infants, one in six or seven died before age one while, among slaves, the number was one in three. It was common for a family to have lost at least one child. Childhood. The idea that children were simply miniature adults gradually gave way to a new view of children, one that recognized their innocence and impressionability. The theory of tabula rasa—the idea that a child's mind was a blank slate on which anything could be written—gained wide acceptance. Advice books abounded that instructed parents on the proper way to raise their children, no two theories being the same. This was a period of experimentation as parents and teachers sought the best way to instill in their children the virtues of patience, obedience, and self-control. Louisa May Alcott's father, the educator Bronson Alcott, even had his daughter keep a diary in which she described both her

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The Ephraim Hubbard Foster Family, circa 1824, by Ralph E. W. Earl (Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee)

freedom to play and explore her world as well as the strict lessons her father taught about controlling her temper and learning self-denial. But many other children were not as lucky as Louisa, who had the freedom to "climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy," as she described the fondest memories of her youth. Many children were forced to work in mills or factories to help support their families. Farm children were also put to work, sometimes beginning to help with chores when only five or six and learning over the next five or six years to master all of the tasks adults did in an effort to ease the heavy burden of farmwork for their parents. Slave children were often protected from the knowledge that they were slaves until they had to begin to work. Those who were destined for the big house began at an early age, but those who were going to work in the fields often did not start until they were at least ten even though they were required at an earlier age to perform some tasks around the plantation. Courtship. Whereas relations between young men and women had been much freer in the previous century, parents in antebellum America began to restrict their children's contact with the opposite sex and to preach self-control of the passions. Young adults waited longer to marry than had their parents and had longer engagements, taking more time to get to know each other in a more controlled atmosphere. Courting couples met most often in parlors, at dances, and, in rural communities, at sleigh parties, barn raisings, and huskings. Parents also played a smaller role in selecting their children's mates than they had in the previous century. But children still

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desired their parents' approval, so even though most young men proposed directly to their beloveds, the next step after acceptance was to discuss the matter with the bride-to-be's father (and perhaps mother too). Of utmost importance to the parents was the assurance of their future son-in-law's financial stability. In fact most young men delayed marriage until they had established themselves in their careers or gained their inheritances. As a result the average age when men married was in the mid to late twenties. But for women the average age varied. Among the planter class in the South the average age was only twenty, and many married as young as sixteen. In the North women married on average at age twentyfour. One result of the new attitudes about courtship and marriage was the decline in the number of pregnant brides: at the turn of the century it was one in three; by 1840 the number had dropped to one in five or six. Marriage. The choice of a spouse was widely considered the most important decision a man or a woman would ever make. Divorce was rare and only considered an option in cases of excessive abuse, so a person could not easily escape the consequences of his or her decision, on which so much future happiness depended. A young male law student contemplated what marriage meant to men and women in 1820: "The contract is so much more important in its consequences to females than to males, for besides leaving everything else to unite themselves to one man they subject themselves to his authority—they depend more upon their husband than he does upon the wife for society & for the happiness & enjoyment of their

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lives." A woman essentially lost her individual identity when she married. She was expected to follow her husband's lead in all matters. She also lost her identity in the eyes of the law. In most states a married woman had no right to her own property or her own wages, and all that she had possessed before her marriage now belonged to her husband. Although most Americans married, some chose to remain single, and most of those who did were women. Even those women who did not marry did not necessarily lead independent lives, for they were expected to care for aging parents or help married sisters or sisters-in-law with their many duties of keeping house and raising children. Death. A constant reality was death; almost all Americans had lost someone close to them by the time they reached adulthood. The life expectancy of white Americans in the 1800s was roughly forty to forty-three years, a result of child mortality rates and the fact that the first eighteen years of life and the childbearing years of the thirties for women were especially dangerous. One out of every four or five children did not reach maturity. Among slaves, whose life expectancy was only twenty-one to twenty-two years, almost half never reached the age of eighteen. Without effective vaccines (except for smallpox), infectious diseases were common, especially in cities, sometimes taking many children from the same family. Diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever, influenza, tuberculosis, and malaria were all devastating diseases. The cholera epidemic of 1832 was one of the most deadly, spreading from Montreal to New Orleans and killing more than twenty-five hundred in New York in only two months. Funeral customs were generally austere. Mary Livermore described the typical funerals of the day "as desolate and devoid of comfort as they could be. . . . Black, black, everywhere,—no flowers,—no uplifting music,—no helpful words of faith, hope, or blessedness. The tendency of the service was towards instruction, and warning to the young. They were liable to be overtaken by sudden death, and, if unprepared for it, how sad their doom!" Sources: Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982); Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

LIVING IN THE NORTH Urbanization. In 1800 America was a rural nation composed almost entirely of farms and small towns. People made their living working off the land or by manufacturing items in their homes to sell to the farmers who lived nearby. But as the economy changed in the 1820s and 1830s, the lure of steady work precipitated unprecedented growth in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and other cities, most of them in the

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SCENES OF POVERTY IN NEW YORK

In Letters from New-York (1843) Lydia Maria Child, a member of the middle class, described the scenes of abject want that shocked wealthier Americans as they walked the city streets. On one walk Child first met "a little ragged urchin, about four years old/' selling newspapers, his voice "prematurely cracked into shrillness, by screaming street cries/' Then she encountered "two young boys fighting furiously for some coppers" while their mother, "a ragged, emaciated woman," sat nearby and watched. As Child turned into the street where she lived, "something lay across my path. It was a woman apparently dead. . . . Those who gathered around, said she had fallen in intoxication, and was rendered senseless by the force of the blow/' She waited until the woman was carried away, but when she arrived at home, she wrote, "I hid my face in the pillow, and wept; for 'my heart was almost breaking with the misery of my kind/" Many middle-class Americans felt as Child did, appalled at the vast differences between their secure, comfortable lives and the wretched conditions in which the poor lived. Their concern for those less fortunate helped fuel reform movements aimed at lifting the poor out of misery and degradation. Source: Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New-York (Boston: Charles S. Francis, 1843).

North. New York, the nation's largest city in 1810 with 100,000 inhabitants, more than doubled in size in two decades. By 1840 its population was 312,000. Overal the nation's urban population grew at a rate of 60 percent per decade. Although only one of every nine Americans lived in a city by 1840, the urban areas of the North had become important centers of commerce, industry, and manufacturing. They also changed forever the way people viewed their communities. Whereas people in small villages knew all their neighbors intimately, city dwellers were confronted with strangers every time they left their houses. The communal aspects of labor and leisure were fading. In a sea of unfamiliar faces people tended to pull back into smaller circles of friends, creating social islands usually defined by class. Distrust of those who were unknown or different marked the lives of city people in a way it never had before. Living Conditions. The rapid growth of America's cities led to a crisis in living conditions that included the prevalence of contaminated drinking water, the lack of sanitary conditions for waste disposal, and the resultant spread of disease. Most urban dwellers did not have indoor toilets, so they used outdoor privies, the sewage from which often leaked into the water supply. In addi-

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A circa 1850 daguerreotype of a middle-class Northern family relaxing in their parlor

tion, streets were filled with the manure produced by the many horses that were used for transportation, making an ordinary walk a dirty and dangerous proposition. Inhabitants also threw their refuse out of their windows and into the streets, where pigs, goats, and dogs roamed as the only method of trash removal. Improved living conditions came slowly to America's cities, where they were enjoyed first by the wealthy, who began to build indoor water closets in their homes in 1815. They also lighted their homes with lamps that burned sperm oil from whales and kept themselves warm with coalburning stoves that were more efficient than fireplaces. In the 1820s some fortunate homes even received gas lighting. The urban poor, meanwhile, were lucky to have light at all in the evenings or a hearth to keep them warm in the winter. In 1815 slums began to appear in the largest cities, crowding the poorest inhabitants into cellars and ill-ventilated apartments. New York's Lower East Side housed more than eighteen thousand people who lived in the most unsanitary conditions. Elites. Although America was founded as a republic and hence sought to discard the social stratification of the Old World, there persisted in the North a small aristocratic class that borrowed its notions of gentility from England. In the previous century many had believed that only those who were born into genteel families, and

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hence exhibited "good breeding," could be considered part of this elite. But the North's upper class came to differ significantly from its English counterpart in that its members valued hard work rather than leisure and saw themselves as shining examples of America's work ethic. The new upper classes of the North were made up of the families of wealthy manufacturers, professionals such as lawyers or judges, and those engaged in real estate, finance, and commerce. They could be recognized by the fruits of their labor: their extensive educations, their fine clothing, their large mansions, and the elaborate furnishings within. In a climate of economic opportunity many of these families had risen to prominence in a single generation rather than inheriting ancient fortunes. Americans held dear the notion that anyone could strike it rich and rise in social status although only a small percentage achieved such a transformation in fortune. Equally important was the reality that a wealthy family, once it had arrived in the upper echelons, was not immune to fluctuations in the market and could be ruined at any time by an economic downturn. Membership in the elite was not as fixed as it was in Europe; the permeability of the boundaries between classes kept alive the notion that all were free and equal in America. Middle Class. Between the rich and the poor, Northern society was increasingly dominated by a new middle

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class of merchants, artisans, factory managers, bankers, brokers, schoolteachers, and some farmers who were able to acquire enough money to provide reasonably comfortable lives for themselves and their families. They looked to the elite for measures of success and imitated their genteel manners, their fine dress, and their style of houses. Whole new industries arose that catered to the tastes of the middle class, producing items such as cloth and ready-made clothing, fashionable hats, cookstoves, iceboxes, and reading materials that could now be sold on a mass scale as the number of families who could afford them increased. Items that had previously been available only to the elite, such as Wedgwood china, carriages, carpets, and bookcases, came within reach. To some, such materialism and adoption of aristocratic standards stood in stark contrast to the democratic ideals of early America, but most saw the spread of wealth to more people as evidence of the nation's progress. Values. Although individual middle-class families remained vulnerable to the vagaries of an unstable economy (as reflected by the prolific advice that poured forth in the press for Americans to spend their money wisely and live frugally), the middle class continued to grow in numbers and influence. Its values—that education and self-culture were of paramount importance, that Christianity was necessary to maintain a moral society, that motherhood was a sacred duty on which the future of the republic rested, and that productivity was the sign of a moral life—were widely accepted as the way to secure not only individual happiness but the progress of civilization, and many members of the middle class (both men and women) became active in reform movements that sought to extend these values to the poor, disadvantaged, or enslaved. Urban Poor. In the cities of the North the gulf between the rich and the poor was so wide that many Americans questioned the efficacy of the burgeoning capitalist economy in spreading America's wealth. In most large cities, only a few blocks from the opulent new mansions, elaborately decorated hotels, and fashionable boutiques, could be found hundreds of the poorest Americans living in the most wretched conditions. Lydia Maria Child, in Lettersfrom New York (1843), vividly described the disparity of wealth in the city: "Wealth dozes on French couches, thrice piled, and canopied with damask, while Poverty camps on the dirty pavement, or sleeps off its wretchedness in the watch-house." Many of these poor were newly arrived immigrants or the sons and daughters of farmers who had come to the city looking for jobs in the manufacturing and transportation industries. They were unskilled workers who performed heavy manual labor or monotonous tasks in factories for insufficient wages. Few men of this class could support their families alone, so their wives and children also worked as domestic servants or factory workers, contributing as much as one-third of the family's income. The labor required to keep a family fed, clothed, and shelLIFESTYLES

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tered was incessant, but the biggest worry was having no job at all. In an uncertain economy the working poor were the most at risk, and the threat of losing one's job due to a host of uncontrollable factors such as fluctuations in the market, illness, or injury was ever present. The streets of America's major cities were filled with unemployed families who had no place to live or decent food to eat. Immigrants. In the 1820s an estimated 10,000 immigrants landed each year. Most were from England or Scotland and they had a relatively easy time fitting into their adopted country because they were Protestants and spoke English. In the 1830s immigration climbed to 60,000 a year. In the late 1840s, when crop failures and political upheavals struck large sections of Europe, the figure reached 150,000 per year. By far the largest group of immigrants to arrive in America in the first half of the century were the Irish, driven from their homes by famine resulting from the failure of the potato crop. Between 1845 and 1851 a million people traveled from Ireland to America hoping to find work and food. These new immigrants and other large contingents from Germany and Scandinavia were either Catholic, or non—English speakers, or both and had a more difficult time assimilating than had earlier immigrants. Most settled in Northern port cities, especially Boston and New York, where Irish immigrants would comprise approximately half of the population by the 1850s. Because they were unskilled, male Irish workers were relegated to menial jobs such as canal digging while Irish women worked in the textile mills or became domestic servants in upper-class AngloProtestant homes. Many Irish were unable to find work and filled the almshouses to overflowing. They also had to combat negative stereotypes that depicted the Irish as lazy, drunk, ignorant, depraved, and barely human. Nonetheless, because of the spread of universal white male suffrage, the Irish were able to establish themselves quickly in urban politics and would soon exert substantial political influence. Nativism. Before 1818 there were no legal restrictions on immigration in the United States. Anyone who could afford passage was welcome, and no one paid much attention until the winter of 1818—1819, when America experienced its first wave of large-scale unemployment as a result of the country's first banking crisis. Recently arrived immigrants were among the first to lose their jobs, but because it took a while for the news that there was no work available to reach Europe, immigrants kept coming in large numbers. When the scenario was repeated after the Panic of 1837 initiated the worst economic depression America had yet experienced, nativist (or antiimmigration) sentiment reached new heights. Many native-born Americans began to fear that the country was being overrun by the poorest and most degraded inhabitants of Europe, who because they would work for lower wages were taking jobs from American laborers. The dramatic rise in Irish immigration in the 1840s fuTRENDS

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eled these sentiments. Because the Irish were Catholic (a religion associated with despotic and monarchical governments in the minds of Americans with English ancestry) and quick to become involved in politics, nativist societies sprung up in an attempt to stem their influence. Samuel F. B. Morse wrote many articles on the subject, calling for an end to naturalization laws that allowed immigrants to obtain the vote after five years' residence. Sources: Gunther Earth, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Knopf, 1992); Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1990).

LIVING IN THE SOUTH Stereotypes. Americans, North and South, believed that two separate cultures had grown into existence, characterized by differences in manners, principles, and outlooks on life. As the popular novelist Joseph Holt Ingraham wrote in 1835, "There are many causes, both moral and physical, which concur to render the inhabitants of the South dissimilar to those of the North. . . . The difference is clearly distinguishable through all its grades and ramifications, and so strongly marked as to stamp the Southern character with traits sufficiently distinctive to be dignified with the term 'national.' " Out of this climate of perceived differences arose the "plantation legend," a stereotypical view of the South that was propagated by popular writers from both regions. Minstrel songs and novels depicted the South as a land of sprawling cotton plantations, where cavaliers and their belles strolled the verandas, mint juleps in hand, and where benevolent slaveholders headed large "families" of whites and contented slaves who sang in the fields while they worked. This popular image of the South idealized its leisurely pace of life, traditions of chivalry and honor, and paternalistic relations between whites and blacks and contrasted these to the bustling North preoccupied with monetary gain. Yeoman Farmers. The reality of the South was much different. Three-fourths of all Southern whites never owned slaves, and the majority of those who did lived on small farms rather than large plantations. Non-slaveholding families were sometimes city dwellers, but most often they were poor farmers who could not afford slave labor and instead relied on the labor of their family members for their livelihood. They also relied on their neighbors, many of whom were relatives, to help with necessary tasks such as maintaining roads and fences, bringing in crops, and building barns or houses. Corn shuckings

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and quilting bees, common in the North among farming families who relied on communal labor, were also prevalent among yeoman families of the South. Labor on small farms was divided by gender, with men cultivating the fields and women taking charge of the daily needs of the family by tending the gardens and dairy cattle, cooking meals, and making clothing. Because of their relative poverty and limited access to markets, such women produced up to one-half of their families' basic needs by spinning or weaving their own cloth and making clothing, soap, and candles. If money were left over to purchase goods, a slave who could help increase the production of crops was usually the first priority. Small Slaveholders. Despite the Southern stereotype the vast majority of slaveholders did not own plantations. In fact a large portion of the South was not suitable for plantation farming. The average slaveholder owned fewer than five slaves, lived in a log cabin, and labored alongside his slaves in the fields of his small farm. The small slaveholder, who closely resembled the yeoman farmer and probably had been one himself not long before, lived in near poverty, sometimes producing food to sell but more often than not using everything the farm produced for his family's subsistence. Far from living lives of leisure and gentility, all members of the household—fathers, mothers, children, and slaves—labored together constantly to survive. Slaves became integral members of the household, eating the same food, performing the same work, and often sleeping in the same rooms as their masters. Planters. While the majority of slaveholders owned only a few slaves and small farms, most of the South's slaves were owned by planters who ran large plantations and owned more than twenty slaves. The planter class made up only about 10 percent of the South's population but controlled 90 percent of its wealth, in the form of land and slaves. More closely resembling Europe's landed aristocracy than the wealthy elite of the North, the Southern planters monopolized their region's political power as well as its wealth. They viewed themselves as having a paternalistic obligation to look after the rest of society and regarded it as their duty to serve in public office; the planter class produced the South's leading politicians. But they saw as their primary responsibility the welfare of their own families and slaves. If the head of the planter household were not in Washington or the state's capital, his job was to supervise the management of the plantation, which was handled by his wife, overseers, and drivers. He usually set down rules for the plantation's operation and the management of slaves. Like the average slaveholder's household, the plantation's population was racially mixed, although on a much larger scale. And while a few slaves might become like members of the family, most lived separately in their own quarters and worked only in the fields. Plantations. The plantation centered around the "big house" where the slaveholding family lived and where

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Ye Southern Planter (1838), showing a plantation owner supervising his field hands (Collection of Dr. Richard Saloom)

slaves, called house servants, performed every task necessary for the upkeep of the house and family. Slave cabins were set away from the big house, providing cramped and often unsanitary accommodations for the slaves. Many other buildings, such as barns, stables, workshops, storehouses, and sometimes infirmaries, completed the plantation, which was a self-sufficient community producing nearly all of its own food, clothing, and other necessities. The slaveholders' mansions, as the symbol of their great wealth, often lived up to the popular image of plantations: they were elaborate mansions in the Greek Revival style, and they included parlors, ballrooms, and many guest rooms furnished with the most luxurious sofas, finely detailed mahogany tables and chairs, gilt mirrors, and pianos, all imported from Europe. But before the 1850s many planters, rather than invest their money in these luxuries, still concentrated their wealth in their slaves and livestock. Emily Burke, a New England schoolteacher who taught at a female seminary in Georgia, wrote in 1845, "I have visited plantations where the master's residence had not a pane of glass in the windows nor a door between the apartments."

of the true woman who lived for others and was subservient to her husband. The wives of small farmers worked alongside their slaves, making candles, cooking, producing cloth, and making clothes, while the wives of planters were entrusted with the households' management and often with that of the plantations while their husbands were away. The most important function of a planter's wife was to bear and raise children to inherit the plantation and perpetuate the planter class. But she was also responsible for the food produced in the garden that would feed the household, sometimes working in the garden herself, and for the livestock raised to feed the family and slaves. She was also in charge of clothing the slaves, making sure they were cared for when sick, and distributing food staples such as corn, milk, and pork to them. She was responsible for the household budget and, in the absence of her husband, the entire plantation's finances. But despite these many responsibilities plantation mistresses were not allowed to conduct business in the public sphere. They were still bound by conventions that restricted women's activities.

Slaveholders' Wives. The wives of slaveholders often carried heavy burdens, whether their husbands were small farmers or rich planters. Southern white women tended to marry earlier and bear more children than their Northern counterparts. Whether rich or poor, the Southern woman was the center of the domestic circle and was expected to conform to the ideal

Sources: Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World the \ Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982);

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RACE AND SOCIETY Racial Theories. White America inherited a view of racial classification from eighteenth-century scientists who considered humans a species that was broken down into racial subsets, each of which possessed distinct intellectual, moral, and physical capacities. The basic assumption of these scientists was that Caucasians, or white people, were the superior race while Native Americans and Africans were the most inferior races. Harvard professor Louis Agassiz represented the view of many when he wrote that black people were so different from white people that he considered them almost an entirely separate species. When one observes "their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth," he wrote, it is difficult "to repress the feeling that they are not of the same blood as us." The effect of these theories was to legitimize what many white Americans already felt: that Native Americans and African Americans were not only different from them but somehow not fully human. Both THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Beginning about 1830 a loosely organized system of escape routes for slaves became known to Americans although it had long been in operation, Later called the Underground Railroad because it was illegal, it was run by white abolitionists and African Americans, many of whom were fugitives or former slaves themselves. Some conductors housed, fed, and clothed fugitive slaves, and others made runs into the South to lead slaves along escape routes to havens in the North or across the border to Canada. The unofficial president of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin, a Quaker who ran a mill in Newport, Indiana, is said to have helped three thousand slaves escape. The fugitive slave Harriet Tubman, known as "Moses," was the most famous of the Underground Railroad conductors due to her bravery in making nineteen trips into the South during the 1850s and leading out approximately three hundred slaves. John P. Parker, another Underground Railroad conductor who made trips into the South, described how frightening it was for slaves to make the dangerous trip north, even when p r o m i s e d the help of o t h e r s on the Northern side of the Mason-Dixon line. One group of slaves he was helping to escape was "so badly demoralized some of them wanted to give themselves up, rather than face the unknown," he wrote. Sources: John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes (New York: Knopf, 1947); John P. Parker, His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P, Parker^ Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (New York: Norton, 1986).

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popular opinion and governmental policy were influenced by these views, justifying slavery and the removal of Indians and free blacks to reservations or African colonies on the grounds that these "inferior" races could never fit into mainstream American society. Indian Removal. The desire to remove Native Americans from their lands in order to open up space for white settlement was not new, but Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to some of the most bitter resistance and tragic consequences. When Jackson entered office in 1829, 125,000 Native Americans still lived east of the Mississippi River, with 60,000 inhabiting the fertile land that would become the Cotton Kingdom. Many of them, particularly the Five Civilized Tribes (Seminole, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw) had made extensive efforts to adopt agriculture and "civilized" customs, but Jackson believed that Indians could not be integrated into American society and had to be removed. Jackson's "benevolent policy," as he described it, convinced some of the Five Civilized Tribes to make treaties with the government, but they soon found out that the land in present-day Oklahoma and Arkansas to which they were being sent was barren. When the Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee resisted, they were removed by force, and thousands of Indians died of starvation and exposure on the eight-hundred-mile journey referred to as the Trail of Tears. In the North, the government battled with the Sauk and Fox Indians, who had been removed from their land but decided to return after near starvation in 1832. Chief Black Hawk led the resistance, known as the Black Hawk War, which lasted only four and one-half months and left the Indians in defeat. All in all, one hundred million acres of land (purchased for about $68 million) were cleared of Native Americans for white settlement. Freedmen in the South. About 55 percent of the nation's free African American population lived in the South, where most were impoverished tenant farmers or small-farm owners. Some earned a decent living at trades such as blacksmithing and carpentry, and a small minority became successful planters and bought slaves to work their land. William Ellison, who had been a slave in his youth, learned to make cotton gins and saved enough money to buy his freedom at the age of twenty-six, then went on to build an empire that at his death included sixty-three slaves and was worth one hundred thousand dollars. Ellison was an exception; most of the few free African American slave owners were not entrepreneurs but had purchased members of their own families to rescue them and then were forbidden by law from manumitting them. Generally, free blacks were afforded greater economic opportunity in the South than in the North; North Carolina and Tennessee allowed some of them to vote until the 1830s, and Louisiana even longer. But many of the restrictions placed on slaves extended to freedmen as well, limiting their civil rights. All over the South (except in Louisiana) black people were consid-

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ered slaves unless they could prove otherwise, forcing free African Americans to carry papers proving their freedom to prevent being jailed and sold into bondage. In addition they were subject to curfews, prohibited from assembling, and denied the right to bear arms. They also could not testify in court against whites or obtain a trial by jury. African Americans in the North. Conditions in the North were not much better. Other than a small minority of abolitionists, most white Northerners feared the economic competition that an influx of black people into the North would bring, and they thus systematically excluded African Americans from lucrative professions and forced them into menial jobs. Interracial marriages and black suffrage were also prohibited in most states, and African Americans were relegated to separate schools, jails, and even cemeteries. They usually lived in segregated ghettos, often in the most appalling conditions. Many who had escaped slavery only to be confronted with racism in the North deemed segregation to be as great a threat to the future of racial equality as slavery in the South. As antislavery agitation increased in the 1830s, so did the dangers that faced African Americans, who became the targets (along with white abolitionists) of mob violence in Philadelphia, New York City, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and other cities. Nevertheless, African Americans in the North did possess some legal recourse and were able, with the help of prominent whites, to agitate for improved conditions, a right not afforded those in the South. Colonization. Some Americans, both black and white, believed that a just multiracial society was impossible. Accordingly, they proposed that black people leave the country altogether. Some suggested that they move to Africa to live in colonies established by organizations such as the American Colonization Society, founded in 1817. Most supporters of colonization shared the racial assumptions that underlay the Indian removal policies of the Jackson administration: that black people (or Indians) were inferior morally and mentally and thus could never live in peace in a civilized country such as America. Colonization was popular among Southerners who hoped to rid themselves of troublesome free blacks, whose self-sufficiency undermined by example the paternalistic underpinnings of slavery. It was also popular with some Northern antislavery advocates, who believed it might make slaveholders more willing to free their slaves. Some African Americans also endorsed the idea, accepting the premise that there was no place for them in American society. In 1831 John Russwurm, a prominent black supporter of the American Colonization Society, stated, "Our rightful place is in Africa," and moved to Liberia, where a colony had been established by the society. But more typical was the response of James Forten, who agreed that African Americans would "never become a people until they came out from amongst the white people" but argued that colonization would only strengthen

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A free black man being sold in Washington, D.C., to pay his debts, 1836

slavery by removing those most likely to agitate against it. The point was moot since most slaves had been born in America, considered themselves to be Americans first and foremost, and were unwilling to give up hope of achieving the rights that Jefferson had claimed to be the province of "all men." The American Colonization Society had sent only fourteen hundred African Americans to live in Liberia by 1830, when support for the plan began to diminish. Sources: Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Philip S. Foner, History of Black Americans: From the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom to the Eve of the Compromise of 1850 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983); Russel B. Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Robert V. Remini, Thejacksonian Era (Arlington Heights, 111.: Harlan Davidson, 1989).

REFORM MOVEMENTS: ABOLITION Immediate Action. The abolitionist movement gained momentum in the early 1830s when prominent white leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison left the American Colonization Society and adopted the position that nothing short of the immediate abolition of the institution would bring about its demise. The new zeal was sparked in part by Garrison's periodical, The Liberator, which began publication on 1 January 1831. In the first issue Garrison explained, "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation." Many new recruits agreed with Garrison that drastic language was necessary, for they believed the soul of the nation was in a state of crisis.

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A mid-nineteenth-century game manufactured in Maine and meant to teach children about the barbarity of slave auctions (Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art, New York City)

Ideology. For the new abolitionists the imperative to end slavery was based on their understanding of Christian principles and the intentions of the founding fathers. When the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded by Garrison in 1833, its declaration drew on the Declaration of Independence's proclamation "That all men are created equal." Garrison wrote, "We have met together for the achievement of an enterprise, without which that of our fathers is incomplete." He also outlined the main tenets of the antislavery argument: "We further maintain that no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandise; to keep back his hire by fraud; or to brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral improvement. The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah." For one man to hold another in bondage was a sin, abolitionists believed; in the words of William Ellery Channing, a Unitarian minister from Boston, slavery was "radically, essentially evil." This crusade to end the injustice of slavery and the suffering of two million helpless souls was a religious quest born of the revivalist zeal that was sweeping the North. One prominent abolitionist leader, Theodore Weld, used evangelical appeals to win converts to the cause. He sought "hearts and heads and tongues—for faith and works," he told his listeners at camp-style meetings in Ohio and New York "If your hearts ache and bleed we want you, you will help us; but if you merely adopt our principles as dry theories, do let us alone."

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Southern Reaction. By 1830 there were virtually no outspoken antislavery advocates left in the South. Most had stifled their objections or moved north of the Mason-Dixon line, like the Grimke sisters (Sarah and Angelina Weld) and James Birney. In the 1830s resistance to abolition in the South reached a fevered pitch. After David Walker, an African American from the North, published his 1829 Appeal for: violent resistance, Southern states swiftly enacted laws forbidding anyone to teach slaves to read or write, an effort to prevent such incendiary ideas from reaching a slave audience. The Liberator, which was read by only a small section of the Northern public, ironically gained notoriety because its views were disseminated by Southern editors who quoted the magazine's radical rhetoric as evidence of what they saw as growing anti-Southern sentiment in the North. Southern legislatures demanded that the paper be suppressed in the North (as it was in the South) and that its editor be thrown in prison. When Nat Turner's insurrection occurred in 1831, Southerners felt vindicated in their fear of abolitionist rhetoric. In 1835 they demanded the extradition of Northern abolitionist leaders to the South for trial and tried them in absentia, offering bounties on them dead or alive. Northern Reaction. Many Northerners also opposed Garrison's radical abolitionism. Unskilled workers who feared economic competition with freed slaves, incited by merchants who profited from trade with the South, disrupted meetings, destroyed abolitionist printing presses, and participated in mob attacks on white abolitionists and free African Americans. Lewis Tappan, a prominent abolitionist leader in New York, had his house ransacked; Weld and his followers were pelted with rotten eggs and stones in Ohio; and Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston by a rope and nearly hanged before authorities stepped in to rescue him. Hundreds of African Americans were also subject to violence. But after the murder of abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy many Northerners were appalled by proslavery infringements on the rights of white citizens to express their views freely; they sympathized with the abolitionists' right to speak even if they were not aroused by their cause. Black Abolitionists. Free African Americans were integral to the abolition movement. Black readers supported The Liberator, making up the majority of subscribers and many of the contributors. Maria Stewart, one of the first black women to speak publicly, wrote articles opposing colonization and Northern prejudice and calling for the immediate abolition of slavery. Many black abolitionists, such as David Walker, also supported Garrison financially, even sending him to England in 1833 to raise money for the cause. Some of the greatest contributions to the movement came from fugitive slaves such as Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Tubman, who spoke to antislavery meetings and shared their firsthand accounts of what slavery was like,

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THE MURDER OF LOVE JOY Elijah Lovejoy, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, was an outspoken advocate of abolition, supporting gradual emancipation and colonization. His publication of these views in his weekly paper, The St. Louis Observer, led to threats of violence. In 1836 he decided to move from Missouri, a slave state, to Alton in the free state of Illinois. Here again his views made him unpopular, especially when he decided to advocate immediate emancipation of slaves. Three times his printing press was thrown into the Mississippi River by angry mobs. But the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society continued to support Lovejoy, each time paying to replace the press. When the fourth press arrived, it was secured in a warehouse amid the most violent threats Lovejoy had yet received. Despite pleas from friends to leave town, Lovejoy's commitment to his right to express his views freely was only strengthened. On 7 November 1837 a mob gathered, stormed the barn, and killed Lovejoy. He immediately became recognized as the first martyr to the cause of abolition, and his death brought the movement even more support from citizens who were outraged by the denial of free speech and the tyranny of mob violence in the North. Sources: Paul Simon, Freedom's Champion: Elijah Lovejoy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper 8c Brothers, 1962).

even at the risk of being recognized, captured, and sent back into captivity. Many fugitives or former slaves also wrote narratives, funded and published by antislavery groups, that told the stories of their lives and promoted the movement. Douglass, whose articulate speeches drew claims from whites that he could not have been a slave, wrote his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, in an attempt to convince Northerners that he had indeed been a slave and that his experiences were real. Many black abolitionists, most notably Tubman, also aided in the escape of slaves by organizing the Underground Railroad and helping fugitives establish new lives for themselves in the North.

American Anti-Slavery Society the abolitionist movement broke into factions when Garrison appointed a woman to the business committee against the objection of the New York group. Garrison gained control of the society, which became the American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society. The other faction formed the Liberty Party and fought for abolition through political channels. The party nominated Birney for president in 1840, when he won only seven thousand votes, and in 1844, when his sixty-two thousand votes were enough to prevent Henry Clay from gaining the presidency. In 1848 the Liberty Party became the Free Soil Party, one of the precursors of the Republican Party, which in 1856 would adopt the abolition slogan "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." In the meantime a diverse spectrum of abolitionist societies were formed, incorporating people who held a wide range of views from radical immediatism to conservative colonization or gradual abolition. Fugitive Slave Law. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which sought to ease the capture of runaway slaves by permitting any black person to be sent South solely on the affidavit of anyone claiming to be his or her owner. In practice this meant that free African Americans were in danger of being sent into slavery as well. The law also stripped runaway slaves of basic legal rights such as the right to testify in their own defense and have a jury trial. Most galling of all to Northerners was the requirement that all citizens assist in the capture of escaped slaves. Anyone who harbored a fugitive slave or interfered in the arrest of a fugitive slave could be heavily fined and imprisoned. The law caused an uproar in the North and led many Northerners who had previously felt that the issue of slavery should be left up to individual states to change their minds about slavery. They feared the power of the South and felt that their own rights were being infringed. Abolitionist societies gained new support in the North, and the nation became even more sharply divided. Sources: Philip S. Foner, History of Black Americans: From the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom to the Eve of the Compromise of 1850 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983); Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1972); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1944).

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Division. After 1835 the abolition movement began to divide. One group, led by Garrison, favored radical rhetoric and supported such wide-ranging reform causes as women's rights and international peace. The other, led by New York abolitionists such as Weld, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, and the Kentuckian Birney, wanted to concentrate on the abolition of slavery and felt that other causes were unrelated. At the 1840 meeting of the

Way of Life. The consumption of hard liquor and fermented beverages such as cider, beer, and wine was an everyday occurrence for most Americans in the early 1800s. Workers received grog from their employers as part of their pay or during morning and afternoon breaks. Clean drinking water was not always available, but in the North and West where apple groves flourished, fermented cider was plentiful, so many Americans drank cider and other alcoholic beverages with meals and

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to quench their thirst. Americans also believed that liquor had restorative or medicinal properties and that it was essentially healthy. A drink of whiskey before breakfast was recommended, as was a nip of hard liquor before a meal to aid in digestion or before bed at night to hasten sleep. Liquor was also a part of the social fabric. Politicians passed out drinks freely to their constituents before elections, even on election day. Horace Greeley, who grew up in rural Vermont, recalled, "In my childhood there was no merry-making, there was no entertainment of relatives or friends, there was scarcely a casual gathering of two or three neighbors for an evening's social chat, without strong drink." In the first two decades of the nineteenth century alcohol consumption rose sharply as whiskey became widely available and its price plummeted to twenty-five cents a gallon. By 1820 the average American drank seven gallons of alcoholic beverages a year. Social Evil. Although some in the early 1800s had warned about the individual and social effects of so much drinking, organized efforts at curbing alcohol consumption did not begin until the 1820s, at a time when Americans were drinking more than ever. The clergy spearheaded the movement, which was grounded in the revivalism that was spreading across the nation. Liquor was portrayed as a sinister temptation from the devil, and many clergymen saw it as their duty to rescue their fellow Christians. The Reverend John Pierpont preached, "If I be willingly accessory to my brother's death, by a pistol or a cord, the law holds me guilty; but guiltless if I mix his death drink in a cup. The halter is my reward if I bring him his death in a bowl of hemloc; if in a glass of spirits, I am rewarded with his purse." To those who rose up in opposition to alcohol, intemperate drinking seemed to be the root of all social evil: it filled the prisons with criminals, the almshouses with the destitute, and the reform schools with juvenile delinquents. Perhaps most shocking, it caused otherwise upright husbands to leave their families destitute, spending all their money on drink instead of clothing and food, and committing violent acts against their wives and children when they came home drunk at night. Moved by what they saw as a social crisis as well as one of the soul, temperance reformers organized in unprecedented numbers. Abstinence. Through the early 1820s the temperance campaign reached mostly middle-class Christians (many of them women) who joined the movement by promising to drink only moderately although most were not heavy drinkers to begin with. Some temperance leaders, dissatisfied with limited progress, called for more-drastic measures in the form of abstinence from hard liquor (although many still allowed the consumption of fermented drinks such as cider, beer, and wine). Hundreds of temperance societies sprang up, and the first national temperance organization, the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, was created in 1826. By 1834 the Society boasted five thousand local chapters and a na-

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tional membership of one million. Lecturers, or missionaries, gave rousing sermons to the unconverted, urging them to sign abstinence pledges. Pamphlets and periodicals full of pleas for boycotts of grogshops and taverns as well as illustrative stories of drunken depravity were dispersed all over the country. Temperance hotels were built so that travelers could stay at dry establishments. Temperance women patronized only those grocery stores that had banned liquor. Members of Congress even caught the bug, eager to show their constituents that they too had signed pledges of abstinence. The temperance movement had a profound impact on America's drinking habits, with the result that the average American drank only three gallons of alcohol a year in 1840 (down from seven in 1820). Prohibition. More than individual abstinence was needed, though, according to some leaders. Within the ranks of the national society, some members called for an emphasis not on the drinker but on the maker and seller of alcoholic beverages. In the mid 1830s, when the American Temperance Union was formed out of the American Temperance Society and other local societies, it quickly broke into factions: those supporting legislative prohibition of alcohol and those resisting such measures. In the process the temperance movement lost much of its power although prohibitionists did gain some victories. Massachusetts passed a bill in 1838 prohibiting the sale of liquor in quantities smaller than fifteen gallons. The law was repealed in 1840, but the state passed a local option law that allowed localities to ban liquor, which proved to be effective. In 1845 one hundred towns in the state were liquor free. Maine witnessed the most intense efforts at prohibition, with Neal Dow leading the fight. By 1846 the state passed a statewide prohibition act, precursor to the more sweeping Maine Law of 1851. Other states were inspired by Maine's lead, and throughout the 1850s fourteen states from Rhode Island to Wisconsin passed "Maine laws." Washingtonians. While the national temperance movement foundered on the issue of prohibition, another crusade to end drinking picked up momentum. In 1840 a small group of Baltimore's working-class men, themselves heavy drinkers, were convinced by the reasoning of a temperance lecturer to give up drink and decided to form their own society, named after the nation's first president, to help others do the same. What was different about this group was that the members once had been heavy drinkers themselves, the types temperance leaders railed against and warned good Christians about. Unlike middle-class temperance workers, who tended to believe that drunkards were irredeemable, the Washingtonians hoped to reach men like themselves with the appeal of shared experience. The group adopted methods that prefigured Alcoholics Anonymous: new members first pledged total abstinence, then told their own stories of depravity and regeneration, gained support from other members who had had similar experiences, and, finally,

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encouraged others to join them in their pledge. The movement quickly swept across the country, and by 1842 the organization claimed to have gained six hundred thousand pledges of abstinence. Although the Washingtonians gained the support of many mainstream temperance workers, others disdained their emotionalism and suspected that the reform was not genuine. While the group changed the lives of many supposedly irredeemable alcoholics who would have been otherwise neglected by the predominately middle-class temperance movement, it is clear that there were also many backsliders who returned to their old ways once the initial euphoria had passed. By 1843 most members had joined other societies, many of them new fraternal organizations such as the Order of the Sons of Temperance. Sources: Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History (New York: Free Press, 1987); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper &, Row, 1944).

DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;. . . The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners. . . . He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. Now,. . . because women feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.. .. Source: From the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, read at the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention,

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REFORM MOVEMENTS: WOMEN'S RIGHTS Limitations. The women who threw themselves into reform movements such as temperance and abolition discovered in those crusades the urgent need for another movement, one to secure their own rights. At every turn their active participation in these causes was limited. They were encouraged to form separate women's societies, which held prayer meetings and social functions, but many women wanted to contribute more directly. They especially desired the right to speak on behalf of their beliefs but were prohibited by social custom from speaking publicly to a "mixed" crowd, or one made up of both sexes. Female abolitionists who challenged this dictum met with little success. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were shouted down and jeered at by unreceptive audiences. The American Anti-Slavery Society itself split over the issue of women's rights in 1840. In the same year a call was issued for a World's Anti-Slavery Convention to be held in London, and eight or nine women were sent (many of them with their husbands) as part of the American delegation. A long and acrimonious debate followed on whether to allow the women to speak. The final vote excluded the women by an overwhelming majority; to add insult to injury, the women were asked to listen to the proceedings from behind a curtain. Garrison, who arrived too late to protest on the women's behalf, was outraged by their treatment, withdrew from the

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convention, and joined the ladies in their curtained section, much to the consternation of British abolitionists. Seneca Falls. The women at the London meeting, especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, began discussing the prospect of holding their own convention for women's rights. When they returned to America, they became distracted by other duties, Stanton by motherhood and Mott by her involvement in the antislavery movement. They did not meet again until 1848, when they decided that the time was ripe. They published an announcement in the Seneca Falls County Courier on 14 July inviting women and men to attend a "Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." From one hundred to three hundred people attended the two-day meeting, which featured speeches by women and Stanton's reading of a "Declaration of Sentiments." The document was modeled on the Declaration of Independence, substituting "man" for "King George" as the oppressive agent. The convention unanimously adopted eleven of twelve resolutions but divided over one stating that "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." Although the resolution was pushed through by a majority, with the help of Frederick Douglass, many of the one hundred signers later removed their signatures after the demand

for the vote proved too radical and caused an uproar in the press. Still, when a second women's rights convention was held the following month in Rochester, New York, the movement gained momentum. Race. Although one of the first women to speak publicly for the antislavery cause was an African American, Maria Stewart, women of color were from the beginning kept out of the women's rights movement, which was composed mainly of middle-class white women. Fearing that it would hurt their recruiting efforts, organizers of women's rights societies and conventions did not invite black women, none of whom attended the Seneca Falls convention. When Sojourner Truth appeared at the women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, loud whispers filled the hall proclaiming "An abolition affair!" and "Women's rights and niggers! I told you so!" Many requested that she not be allowed to speak for fear that women's rights would be dragged through the mud with abolitionism, but the convention's president, Frances Dana Gage, invited Truth to the podium, where she gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech amid hisses from the audience. In response to male claims that women were too delicate to assume roles that were meant for men, she said, "Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! I have ploughed, planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?" Truth attended many women's rights conventions but usually was the only African American woman present. The determination of the movement to disassociate itself from abolitionism kept out other black women activists, who concentrated their efforts within African American abolitionist societies such as the American Moral Reform Society, which granted them speaking and voting rights as early as 1839. While the mainstream women's rights movement remained an almost all-white campaign, African American women formed their own parallel movement in black abolitionist societies, fighting against sexism and racism at the same time; for them, unlike for white women, the two issues could not be easily separated. Sources: Janet Zollinger Giele, Temperance, Suffrage, and the Origins of Modern Feminism (New York: Twayne, 1995); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1944); Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828-1860 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

THE SOCIAL WORLD OF THE SLAVES

Interior of an African American cabin in Virginia (drawing by Edwin Forbes; Library of Congress)

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Family Life. Despite the facts that marriages between slaves were not recognized by law and family members could be sold away at any time, most slaves married, maintained monogamous relationships throughout their lives, and lived in households headed by mothers and fathers. Indeed, slaveholders often encouraged their slaves to marry (in part to increase the number of slaves they

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owned), but the threat of separation remained an everpresent barrier to stability. Precise numbers are impossible to determine, but some historians believe that approximately one-third of all slave marriages were broken by the sale of the husband or wife. In the face of this instability slaves established strong communities based on extended family members and nonrelatives, who were often called "aunt" or "uncle." Young children often were not raised solely by their mothers—who had to return to their labor in the big house or in the fields as soon as possible after they had given birth—but were cared for by a network of older slave women. In his Narrative Frederick Douglass explained, "I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life" because her master had hired her out to another planter. Douglass's experience reveals most vividly what abolitionists claimed to be one of the most virulent evils of slavery: that slaves were deprived of one of the most basic comforts of life, a family. Even for those who did grow up with their families one of the first lessons they learned about their fate as slaves was that their parents were not the ultimate authority—the master or mistress was. Parents could not protect their children from punishment or abuse but could only help their children develop ways to cope with their master's or mistress's maltreatment. Field and House. Slaves who lived on small farms performed a wide variety of tasks alongside their owners, men and women following the gendered divisions of labor their masters and mistresses performed. On large plantations most slaves were field hands who generally worked from sunrise until sunset every day but Sunday. Those who were skilled artisans, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, or shoemakers, were not only relieved from the drudgery of field work but were likely to be hired out to ironworks, laundries, textile mills, shipyards, sawmills, or even white artisans' homes, where they would earn wages, a portion of which each might be allowed to keep. The most coveted work on the plantation, though, was in the big house. The household servants, most of whom were women, were viewed as the master's and mistress's pets, and often slept in the same house, ate the same food, and wore the same clothes as the master's family. While their living conditions were thus better, household servants were just as overworked as field hands and often received equally brutal punishments. Female household servants not only worked all day but might be required to be available at all hours of the night as well, sleeping outside the doors of the children's rooms. Harriet Jacobs told how her aunt, the "nightnurse" to her mistress's children, "was compelled to lie at her door, until one midnight she was forced to leave, to give premature birth to a child. In a fortnight she was required to resume her place on the entry floor," treatment which eventually ruined her health. Although household servants were often overworked and abused, they were still viewed as privileged; mistresses used the threat of sending them to the fields to control their behavior. In

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Two banjos crafted by African American slaves in the mid nineteenth century (Blue Ridge Institute, Ferrum College)

fact many household servants were sent to the fields, permanently or during harvest time, and many had families in the quarters, indicating that house and field slaves were not as socially separate as historians once believed. Enslaved Women. Harriet Jacobs, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave G/r/(1861), one of the few slave narratives written by a woman, wrote, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women." They worked in the fields just like men, but then they had to perform their womanly duties at home, doing the cooking, cleaning, and washing even though they had worked as long and as hard as men all day. Inheriting a social system of male dominance from their African ancestors, slave women were expected to be subservient to their husbands. Although they appeared to live under the same gender codes as white women, slave women were not accorded the same respect or allowed the same kind of modesty. Most were provided with only scanty clothing

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and often had to strip on the auction block for the inspection of prospective buyers. One slave woman recalled, "We was all chained and dey strips all our clothes off and de folks what gwine buys us comes and feels us all over. Iffen any de niggers don't want to take dere clothes off, de man gets a long, black whip and cuts dem up hard." And much as slave parents could not protect their children from their masters, neither could slave husbands protect their wives or daughters from the sexual advances of their masters, masters' sons, or overseers. Stories of sexual exploitation and abuse by slave owners abounded, suggesting that many of them took slave women as concubines. Any children born of the union only increased the master's stock of slaves, as the law dictated that the mother's status determined that of her children. This rule increased the emotional toll of childbirth for slave women, as they contemplated the fate of their children in slavery. And a slave woman who bore her master's child had to endure the additional burden of the wrath of the mistress, who could not ignore the lighter shade of the baby's skin or the resemblance to its father. The jealousy of mistresses often led to the sale of the mother and child and sometimes to violence. According to one anonymous account a mistress in Georgia "slipped in a colored gal's room and cut her baby's head clean off 'cause it belonged to her husband." Only a very small minority of slave women were able to escape the sexual abuse and violence they suffered because the flight to the North was a difficult one that few women attempted. Moments of Leisure. Although house servants lived under the constant supervision of their masters, field hands on large plantations and the slaves on smaller farms did have some time on Sundays and late at night to themselves. They then could gather in the slave quarters, the center of their social life, and share stories, dance, play music, sing, and perform "shouts," descendants of African tradition in which dancers formed a circle and chanted. Despite the myth propagated by slaveholders that the singing of slaves was evidence of their contentment, many slave songs were full of protest and lamentation. The spirituals sung in the fields and at religious meetings were an especially important outlet for feelings, such as the desire for freedom, that could not be expressed directly in the presence of whites. Likewise, folktales featured trickster figures such as Br'er Rabbit, who learned to outwit stronger but less intelligent animals. These tales taught lessons of survival and were adapted from African folklore into a unique African American oral tradition. As evangelical religion became increasingly influential among slaves, so did the injunctions to abandon dancing, which many did. But the religious meetings of slaves incorporated the emotional and spiritual expression of both joy and pain through handclapping, singing, and a rocking back and forth of bodies and heads, an important substitute for the expression afforded by dancing.

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Resistance and Revolt. Many slaves found subtle and not-so-subtle ways to resist the absolute control their masters had over them. Some sabotaged crops or withheld their labor by claiming to be sick. Others stole from their masters to supplement their meager rations or inadequate clothing, and some even committed arson or murder. Many hoped simply to run off, but the prospect of escaping was daunting. Men were loathe to leave children, wives, and mothers, few of whom were capable of such a dangerous journey on foot to the North. The Underground Railroad, a secret network of people in the North and South who helped runaway slaves reach freedom, operated from 1820 until the Civil War, aiding about one thousand slaves each year. Some tried desperate expedients: Henry "Box" Brown had himself shipped to Philadelphia in a box that was three feet long, two and one-half feet wide, and four and one-half feet high, while Harriet Jacobs hid herself in a crawl space in her grandmother's attic for seven years. The most desperate expedient of all, insurrection, was also tried. In 1822 a freedman named Denmark Vesey began secretly organizing slaves and free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, to take over the city. In 1822, just before he planned to act, a few slaves revealed the plan to their masters, preventing what could have been the bloodiest slave revolt in America's history. One hundred thirty-one African Americans were arrested and thirty-seven hanged, including Vesey. Nine years later in Virginia slaves under the charismatic leadership of Nat Turner started a bloody uprising in which they killed sixty white men, women, and children. Within forty-eight hours most of the rebels were killed or arrested, but Turner himself remained at large for more than two months before he was captured and executed. In the meantime hysteria had spread among whites all over the South. Black people were terrorized, their houses searched for evidence of plots, and many were killed at the whim of white patrols. State legislatures called emergency sessions to pass laws restricting the rights of free blacks and making manumission more difficult. All across the South whites tightened their hold over African Americans, both free and slave. Sources: Philip S. Foner, History of Black Americans: From the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom to the Eve of the Compromise of '1850 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss ]r.,From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, sixth edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988); Larry E. Hudson Jr., To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997).

UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES Ideal Societies. For some Americans who felt that the new nation's promise to make a better life for all was not

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being realized quickly enough, the answer was to withdraw from society and form Utopian communities, safe from the depravity and corruption of the rest of the world. These people were perfectionists, meaning that they believed it was possible to create an ideal society here on earth rather than having to wait until the next life. They held many different visions of the perfect society, almost as many as there were Utopian communities, but they can be divided into two types: those who withdrew from society to live in a more traditional, religious world safe from contamination; and those who hoped to reform (not escape) society by creating experimental communities that would serve as models for the rest of the world. While these communities varied in size and duration, they all shared the hope that through an experiment in communal living they could create a paradise here on earth, be it secular or religious. Transcendentalist Utopias. There were two wellknown transcendentalist Utopias, the first of which was Brook Farm, started by George Ripley in 1841 near Boston. The idea behind the community, Ripley wrote, was "to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; . . . and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity to our mode of life." Among the famous writers associated with Brook Farm were Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who both lived there for a while, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who made frequent visits. The community was a joint-stock venture and subsisted on communal labor, manufacturing items such as sashes, doors, and blinds. But the jewel of the community was its school, which attracted many students preparing for Harvard. When in 1846 a fire consumed a new (uninsured) building, members decided to dissolve Brook Farm due to financial troubles. A less successful transcendentalist community was Fruitlands, started by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in 1843 near Harvard, Massachusetts. Lane dictated that all members practice celibacy and follow a vegetarian diet and that their farm not utilize animal labor, which he considered as bad as enslaving human beings. If it had not been for the women and children, who brought in the crop while "some call of the Oversoul wafted all the men away," Louisa May Alcott wrote, the community would have starved. Within the year Lane left, withdrawing his money and leaving Fruitlands to dissolve. New Harmony. This secular Utopian community, the first of its kind in America, was founded in 1825 by Robert Owen, a British industrialist who had seen the degradation and poverty of the working class in England. Without a specific plan but a general faith in perfectionism, he hoped to create a society where workers labored together instead of viewing themselves as individuals, thus providing the inhabitants with economic security and a more satisfying social life. Intrigued by claims Owen made about the future of his society, nine hundred people appeared at New Harmony, Indiana, to undertake LlFESTYLES

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Louisa May Alcott's satirical account of what it was like to live in her father's experimental Utopian community, Fruitlands, describes the founders* intentions and reveals the stark differences between the spiritual concerns of her idealistic father and the more practical concerns of her mother: This prospective Eden at present consisted of an old red farm-house, a dilapidated barn, many acres of meadow* land, and a grove. Ten ancient apple trees were all the "chaste supply" which the place offered as yetj but, in the firm belief that plenteous orchards were soon to be evoked from their inner consciousness, these sanguine founders had christened their domain Fruitlands. Here Timon Lion (Charles Lane) intended to found a colony of Latter Day Saints, who, under his patriarchal sway, should regenerate the world and glorify his name for ever. Here Abel Lamb (Bronson Alcott), with the devoutest faith in the high ideal which was to him a living truth, desired to plant a Paradise, where Beauty, Virtue, Justice, and Love might live happily together, without the possibility of a serpent entering in. And here his wife, unconverted but faithful to the end, hoped, after many wanderings over the face of the earth, to find rest for herself and a home for her children. Source: Louisa May Alcott, Transcendental Wild Oats/ in Alternative Ahott> edited by Elaine Skowalter (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1988),

the experiment. To begin, Owen owned all of the land and equipment, intending eventually to ease the society into communal living. He and his sons were in charge, but Owen was absent for long periods of time and did not provide a clear, concrete vision for the community or precise rules for governing it in his absence. The community prospered economically, producing candles, soap, hats, and boots and operating saw- and gristmills, but housing was inadequate, and the town was overcrowded. Lacking leadership, the community had a difficult time solving these problems. And when in 1826 Owen broadcast his radical views denouncing private property, the institution of marriage, and organized religion, he was roundly attacked in the American press, weakening public support for the community. Many inhabitants, dissatisfied with Owen's views or desiring a religious emphasis in their everyday lives, left New Harmony to create their own offshoot communities. In 1828 Owen sold the land and property to community members and withdrew from the experiment. Many lived on in New Harmony as small-time farmers or artisans. Nashoba. Frances Wright, a Scottish reformer, was inspired by the New Harmony experiment to form her own community in 1826. She had a plan to end slavery in the South without negative repercussions for slaveholdTRENDS

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New Harmony, Indiana, as it appeared in 1832 (watercolor by Karl Bodmer; Joslyn Art Museum)

ers by creating communities where slaves could work the land, learn skills they could use to support themselves, and eventually buy their freedom. After they were free, Wright intended that they would be sent to Haiti or Africa. In addition, she hoped to create a cooperative community where people of both races could live together based on the Owenite model. She bought 640 acres in western Tennessee, called Nashoba, where she implemented a pilot program. She bought fifteen slaves who worked under an overseer, but the land was difficult to farm, and little was accomplished. Owen, who visited Nashoba in 1827, described what he saw: "Three or four squared log houses and a few small cabins for the slaves the only buildings. Slaves released from the fear of the lash worked indolently under the management of Whitby (the overseer), whose education in an easy-going Shaker village had not at all fitted him for the post of plantation overseer." Eventually Wright had to accept

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that her dreams of an interracial community that allowed all of its inhabitants to reach their greatest potential were not being realized. She spent most of her time away from Nashoba, either at New Harmony or promoting her ideas, which included free love, sexual equality, and interracial relationships, all of which drew intense censure from an American public that branded her "a female monster whom all decent people ought to avoid" and made her plan untenable. In 1828 she returned to Nashoba to find it bankrupt. She had the slaves freed, transported to Haiti, and set up in their own homes. Sources: Seymour R. Kesten, Episodes: Daily Life in Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing the World (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1944).

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HEADLINE MAKERS

BLACK HAWK 1767-1838 SAUK TRIBAL LEADER Early Life. Black Hawk was born in the village of Saukenauk where the Mississippi and Rock Rivers meet, at present-day Rock Island, Illinois. A member of the Thunder clan of the Sauk nation, he was a descendant of the tribe's first chief. His father carried the medicine bundle of his band until his death; Black Hawk, who was nineteen, then assumed the sacred responsibility. Black Hawk was also recognized early for his warrior spirit. When he was only fifteen he became a brave for wounding an enemy. White Settlement. White settlers began moving into Sauk territory in the early 1800s. The Sauk and their allies the Fox felt the pressure, and some bands gave up their lands and moved west. When in 1804 some of the southern bands were convinced to cede their lands by William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, who plied the Indians with alcohol, the northern Sauk and Fox insisted that they had not been represented at the treaty signing and stayed on their land. Black Hawk strongly opposed white settlement and fought on the side of the British during the War of 1812, hoping to stem the tide of American migration to the West. When Illinois became a state in 1818, pressure to relocate intensified. Keokuk, a rival of Black Hawk, convinced many Sauk to negotiate with the U.S. government. On behalf of the tribe they accepted land in Iowa and an annuity in exchange for the Sauk land, but Black Hawk and his supporters remained in Saukenauk. In 1829, when Black Hawk and his band returned from their winter hunt, they found that the village had been taken over by whites, some of whom had taken up residence in the Indian lodges. The two groups lived together relatively peacefully for two seasons, but when Black Hawk returned in the spring of 1831 from another winter hunt, he and his followers were not welcome. The

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Illinois governor called out the state militia, and Black Hawk and his band fled across the Mississippi, although not permanently. "They are now running their plows through our graveyard, turning up the bones and ashes of our sacred dead, whose spirits are calling on us from the land of dreams for vengeance on the despoilers," Black Hawk said. Black Hawk War. When Black Hawk returned in the spring of 1832, he attempted to gain the support of neighboring tribes such as the Winnebago, Kickapoo, and Potawatomi, urging them to help protect the traditional lands and way of life. But only a few joined the Sauk and Fox, bringing the total of Black Hawk's followers to two thousand, six hundred of whom were warriors. They began to attack white families living in the isolated frontier, causing the militia to return. Two months of minor skirmishes and malnutrition followed for the Indians, whose forces were greatly weakened. After a confrontation with an armed steamboat, Black Hawk decided to move north into Chippewa territory, but only fifty of his followers agreed to go with him. Federal troops cornered those who stayed behind, pushing them up against the banks of the Mississippi and killing five hundred men, women, and children as they tried to escape across the river. Black Hawk surrendered at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in August. Prisoner. Black Hawk was imprisoned for several months at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and then taken on a tour of the eastern seaboard. He was paraded in front of large, cheering crowds eager to see a defeated Indian chief and taken to the White House to meet President Andrew Jackson. Black Hawk told him, "I am a man and you are another." When Jackson admonished him for his unwillingness to accept a treaty and his preference for war, the chief told him, "I took up the hatchet, for my part, to revenge injuries which my people could no longer endure. Had I borne them longer without striking, my people would have said, 'Black Hawk is a woman; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sac.' " But he also accepted his defeat and promised to live in peace with the whites and retreat to Iowa. Jackson recognized his rival Keokuk as the official chief of the Sauk, and Black Hawk was forced to live under Keokuk's leadership. After he died in

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1838, his grave was robbed, and his bones were placed on display until 1855, when the historical society where they were kept burned down. Sources: Black Hawk, "Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk," in Native American Autobiography, edited by Arnold Krupat (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Cyrenus Cole, I Am a Man: The Indian Black Hawk (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1938).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS 1817-1895

REFORMER, LECTURER, AND JOURNALIST Youth. Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He often lamented that he did not know the exact date on which he was born. His father, it was whispered, was his white master, and his mother was Harriet Bailey, whom he barely knew because she was sent to work on a plantation twelve miles away. When he was seven his mother stopped coming for her irregular nighttime visits (the only time she could get away from her work), and he was later informed that she had died. "Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger," he wrote in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). At the age of eight he was sent to Baltimore, where he served as a houseboy and in a shipyard. His mistress also began to teach him to read and write, but when her husband found out, he told her, within Douglass's hearing, "Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now, if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave." This warning made a deep impression. "From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom," Douglass wrote. He learned to read and write by enlisting the unwitting aid of his white playmates in the Baltimore streets. Escape. When he was returned to the Maryland plantation in 1832, Douglass made up his mind to escape. His first attempt was unsuccessful, and his master again sent him to Baltimore in 1836, where Douglass became a skilled craftsman in the shipyards. On 3 September 1838 Douglass borrowed the uniform and papers of a free black sailor and sailed north to freedom. On 15 September he married Anna Murray, a free black woman he had met in Baltimore. Together they moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass hoped to find work in the shipyards but instead had his first lesson in Northern

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prejudice. Unable to find work in his field, he and his wife lived on the meager wages of a day laborer. All the while, though, Douglass was an avid reader of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator and attended antislavery meetings. Reformer. In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Douglass was asked to ascend the platform and talk about his experiences as a slave. Thus began his new career as a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass traveled the lecture circuit for four years, becoming the most prominent black figure in America. But his exceptional skill as an orator led many white audiences to question his slave upbringing and hence the veracity of his stories condemning slavery. In response he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one of the few slave narratives that was not ghostwritten. It explained his early life and how he came to gain his extensive knowledge and oratorical skills. But his narrative also put him in danger because its publication revealed his whereabouts to his master. As a result Douglass traveled to England, where he met many sympathetic abolitionists who helped him raise the money to buy his freedom. He also was given enough money to begin his own abolitionist newspaper, which he did when he returned to America in 1847, calling it the North Star. The paper championed the abolitionist cause as well as civil rights for free blacks. It was published, under various names, until 1863. Throughout this period Douglass was also active in other reform movements, including temperance and women's rights. He participated in the 1848 Seneca Falls convention and argued for women's equal participation in African American abolitionist societies, but he always felt that the abolition of slavery had to be his first cause. In an 1855 speech to a women's abolitionist group he categorized the split of the American Anti-Slavery Society over the "side issue" of women's active participation as a serious weakening of the abolitionist movement. "The battle of Women's Rights should be fought on its own ground," he told the audience. Legacy. Douglass devoted his life to the cause of racial uplift in all aspects, seeking justice as well as freedom for African Americans in the North and the South. He helped more than four hundred slaves reach freedom through his printing shop (which was a stop on the Underground Railroad), campaigned against the discrimination that kept African Americans out of jobs as skilled laborers, challenged racial segregation on public transportation and in businesses, and encouraged free blacks to adopt the middle-class values of industry, thrift, and temperance as the path to American success. Douglass also became politically active in his fight to abolish slavery, supporting the Republican Party and rejecting Garrisonian abolitionism's sole reliance on moral suasion. Douglass came to support violent uprisings among slaves, violent resistance to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and direct involvement in politics to

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create a party that could oppose the concessions Congress was making to powerful Southern legislators. Even as the abolitionist movement came to an end, Douglass continued his fight for equality. During the Civil War, Douglass fought for the inclusion of black soldiers in the Northern ranks. After the war he focused his efforts on voting rights. "Slavery is not abolished," he said, "until the black man has the ballot." Throughout Reconstruction he actively pursued his commitment to civil rights for African Americans. After the failure of Reconstruction, Douglass rejected migration to the North as an escape from the often violent prejudice of the South and insisted that African Americans be fully protected by the law everywhere in America. The unrelenting Douglass lectured to the National Council of Women on the day that he died, 20 February 1895. Sources: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Mentor, 1987); Nathan Irvin Huggins, Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980).

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 18O5-1879

ABOLITIONIST, REFORMER Dedication to the Cause. Garrison was born on 10 December 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to a poor family. When he was thirteen he became a printer's apprentice, leading to a career in journalism. At twenty-one he was coeditor of the temperance paper, the National Philanthropist, that brought him into contact with other reform movements. The Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy convinced him to devote his energies to abolitionism in 1828, and Garrison helped Lundy edi the antislavery paper Genius of Universal Emancipation, which promoted the colonization of freed slaves in Africa. Leader. Soon Garrison came to reject colonization as an effective method of emancipation, and he broke with Lundy to form his own abolitionist paper, The Liberator. In his new paper Garrison called for immediate emancipation of the slaves without compensation for their owners. He also adopted a militant tone that gained him such notoriety that in the South rewards were offered for his capture and delivery to stand trial. "On this subject I do not wish to think, speak, or write with moderation," he wrote in the first issue of The Liberator. "I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I WILL BE HEARD." Through his writing and his leadership in the American AntiLlFESTYLES

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Slavery Society, Garrison became the most prominent spokesman for the abolitionist cause. When he visited England in 1833 British abolitionists welcomed him a the leader of the movement in America. But back home many other abolitionists disapproved of his extreme rhetoric, which often provoked mob violence. Others within the American Anti-Slavery Society disagreed with his insistence that moral suasion to change the hearts of individuals was the only route to ending slavery and favored direct political action. The society split in 1840, with Garrison and his followers maintaining control of the weakened organization. Reformer. In addition to his commitment to abolition Garrison supported other reforms such as temperance and women's rights. His advocacy of the latter was so strong that he refused to participate in the World AntiSlavery Convention in London in 1840 when wome were barred from participation. Garrison believed that the equal rights of women were necessary in the fight to abolish slavery, a position that lost him many of his followers. "Garrisonianism" became a general term for radical reform, pressing well beyond the bounds with which most Americans were comfortable. After the passage of the harsh Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, however, Garrison's position suddenly seemed less radical. By 1859 when other prominent abolitionists were lionizing John Brown for his attempt to start a slave uprising, Garrison only reluctantly supported Brown's violent action; the radicalism of the movement had gone beyond that of the man who had once burned a copy of the Constitution for its tacit endorsement of slavery. End of the Fight. When the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was passed in 1865, Garrison ceased publication of The Liberator, feeling that the fight against slavery was over. But he continued to battle for equal rights for African Americans and women until his death in 1879 at the age of seventy-three. Sources: Walter M. Merrill, Against the Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955).

LUCY LARCOM 1824-1893

AUTHOR, TEACHER, AND MILL WORKER Childhood. Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, where she spent the first nine years of her life. As the second youngest in a family of ten children she was often left free to play outdoors and to read, her favorite activities. She began her schooling under the tuTRENDS

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telage of an aunt, a schoolteacher, at the age of two and was reading before she was three. Later she went to private school with her sisters and progressed rapidly. At eight, she wrote her first poem and shortly thereafter stitched together her own illustrated book of tales. Her family encouraged her precocious love of words. Lowell Mills. Her father died in 1835, deep in debt, and the Larcom family moved to Lowell, where the mills had earned a reputation for providing steady, profitable, and respectable work for young women. Within a year Lucy joined her older sisters in the mills. She was a doffer, like many other children, a position that required little attention, simply changing the bobbins every half hour. For three months of the year she was sent to school, and at thirteen she was ready for high school but was not able to attend because her family needed her income from the mills. So Larcom labored hard as a spinner (a woman's job), twelve hours a day, six days a week for $1.75 a week. But the long hours and noise of the machines took their toll. She wrote of the machine on which she worked: "I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great groaning joints and whizzing fans, was aware of my incapacity to manage it, and had a fiendish spite against me." Within three years she moved on to a job as bookkeeper, which allowed her more time to study and write. She contributed many poems to The Lowell Offering, the magazine produced by the mill girls, and some of her poems were reprinted in other periodicals. More than one reviewer foresaw a bright future for Larcom, and although she taught for many years before establishing her literary career, she went on to become the most famous product of the Lowell mills. Independence. While most girls worked at the mills for a few years, saving up money before marriage, Larcom spent ten years in Lowell and became determined to live an independent life. When her sister Emmeline and her husband decided to move west in 1846, Lucy joined them and began teaching, one of the few respectable careers open to women. She first taught in a small school in a prairie community, then at Monticello Seminary near Alton, Illinois, for three years, finally returning east in 1854 to teach at Wheaton Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts. Throughout these years she also began to develop a career as a writer. While her writing alone never made her financially secure, combined with her teaching and later editing they allowed her to maintain an independent existence. She never married. Fame. Larcom received her first success in 1854 when her poem "Call to Kansas" won a national contest and was widely printed. In the same year she published her first book, Similitudesfrom Ocean Prairie. Her collection, Poems (1869), solidified her fame and was republished in 1884 in a "Household Edition" by Houghton, Mifflin, a sign of its popularity. Larcom's name was a household word along with those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Helen Hunt Jackson, and other poets of her generation. But her most famous book was A New England Girlhood

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(1892), a memoir of her early years in the Lowell mills. When she died the following year, Boston newspapers carried headlines of her death. Beloved as a poet, she was also remembered as representative of a generation of young women who grew up in the Lowell mills and discovered there the promise of an independent life, a promise that she fulfilled. Source: Shirley Marchalonis, The Worlds of Lucy Larcom, 1824-1893 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989).

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 1815-19O2

REFORMER, SUFFRAGIST, AND WRITER Marriage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York, the daughter of a prominent lawyer. As a girl she was moved by the grief of her father's female clients who learned that they had no legal identity as wives, that they were not the owners of their own property and wages, and that their children could be taken from them if they separated from their abusive or drunkard husbands. Such scenes convinced her early that women were at a serious disadvantage in society. While young she was provided with no formal education, but she worked hard to educate herself, borrowing her brother's books to learn Greek and Latin. At the age of sixteen she left home to attend Emma Willard's Female Seminary in Troy, New York. Going to college was not an option as none was yet open to women. When she returned home she developed an interest in the temperance and abolition movements through the influence of her cousin Gerrit Smith, and at the age of twenty-four she married the abolitionist Henry Stanton. Elizabeth insisted on absolute equality in the marriage, a stipulation that Henry accepted by agreeing to leave out the word obey from their marriage vows. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon in London as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention, where Elizabeth was precluded from participating. Instead she spent her days with Lucretia Mott, who convinced her of the necessity of fighting for the rights of women as well as slaves. The two decided that they would continue their conversations in the United States. Motherhood and Reform. Stanton had seven children, and her duties as a mother limited her participation in the reform movements that had won her heart. Over the years, while her responsibilities kept her at home, she trained herself as a writer and used her pen to fight for justice. In 1848, when she met up with Mott again for the first time since their days in London, the two women organized the first American women's rights convention

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at Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments and resolutions that the convention adopted. She was especially insistent that the enfranchisement resolution be adopted, despite the resistance of many of those present, and thus launched the suffrage movement that would gather momentum at the end of the century. In the years following the Seneca Falls convention Stanton continued to attend women's rights meetings, developing a close relationship with Susan B. Anthony, whom she convinced to transfer her energies from temperance reform to women's rights. For Stanton women's rights became a necessary preliminary to all other reform because women's participation in other reform causes was being challenged at every turn. Stanton believed that "it is woman's duty to speak whenever she feels the impression to do so; . . . it is her right to be present in all the councils of Church and State." Stanton and Anthony became the leaders of the movement as Stanton wrote speeches and developed her ideas while Anthony, who was not married, traveled around the country drumming up support. Stanton, more than any other early women's rights advocate, articulated objectives more radical than most believed would be acceptable to the public, including not only the right to vote but also the reform of married women's property laws and divorce laws. On these issues she made some progress; in 1860 New York State granted women guardianship of their children in case of divorce and the right to their own property and wages while married.

After the War. While the Civil War diverted attention away from reform, Stanton picked up where she left off once the war was over. With her children grown she devoted more time and energy to the cause. She ran for Congress in 1866, receiving twenty-four out of twelve hundred votes (all cast by men). As the Fifteenth Amendment was debated, women rallied for their right to vote along with African American males. When the American Woman Suffrage Association voted to back away from the issue and not fight for women to be included, Stanton retorted that she would "cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman." Anthony joined Stanton in creating a new organization in 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association, to push for a constitutional amendment granting women the vote. Stanton served as president of the organization from 1890 to 1892, and continued to lecture and write on behalf of the broad-ranging reforms that were needed to improve women's lives, including woman suffrage, educational opportunities, dress reform, divorce, and opposition to oppression of organized religion. She retained her commitment to the larger picture that had convinced her to help initiate a movement for women's rights in 1848. Sources: Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radicalfor Woman's Rights (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); Elizabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

PUBLICATIONS

Catharine Esther Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (New York: Harper, 1841)—a source book of domestic advice that became a housekeeping bible for many American women and promoted the idea that domesticity was a vocation as important as those of men;

Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (Boston: Allen St Ticknor, 1833)—a plea against both slavery and racial prejudice, which Child considered the result of ignorance and "opposed to the spirit of our religion and contrary to the instinctive good feelings of our nature";

Black Hawk, Life ofMa-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk (Boston: Russell, Odiorne & Metcalf, 1834)—the story of the Sauk tribe's encounters and conflicts with white settlers, recorded while Black Hawk was imprisoned for leading the Sauk and Fox Indians in the uprising of 1832; the book went through four editions in its first year of publication;

Charles Dickens, American Notes (New York: Harper, 1842)—the popular English writer's rather critical description of American society as he saw it during his 1842 celebrity tour of the United States; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845)—the most influential slave narrative published in America;

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Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845)—the first fullscale examination of the condition of women in the United States from a feminist perspective; Fuller emphasized the need for woman "as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded" over the need to agitate in the political arena; Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (Boston: I. Knapp, 1838)—in this series of articles, Grimke answered the arguments of clergymen who barred women from speaking publicly on behalf of the abolition movement; Eliza Leslie, The Lady's Receipt Book (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1847)—the best-selling cookbook in the antebellum period; Samuel F. B. Morse, Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States Through Foreign Immigration, and the Present State of the Naturalization Laws (New York: E. B. Clayton, 1835)—an influential argument against the naturalization of and extension of voting rights to Catholic immigrants;

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The Pro-Slavery Argument: as Maintained by the Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States, Containing Several Essays, on the Subject, of Chancellor Harper, Governor Hammond, Dr. Simms, and Professor Dew (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Richards, 1852)—a collection of proslavery articles by prominent Southern writers and politicians; Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 2 volumes (London: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832)—another foreign observer's critical view of American society; Nat Turner and Thomas Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner (Baltimore: Thomas R. Gray, 1831)—Turner's life story and explanation of the slave rebellion he led, as dictated to a white lawyer, Thomas Gray, while Turner awaited trial; David Walker, Walker s Appeal in Four Articles, Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States (Boston: David Walker, 1829)—this warning to the nation to repent the evils of slavery and racism in order to avoid bloody conflict shocked many white readers and led to laws restricting black literacy.

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OVERVIEW 291 TOPICS IN THE NEWS African American Christianity.............. 294 Nat Turner; Msligim and Rebellion .. 294 Catholicism. .296 Judaism 298

City&fRefage ..,.,, 298 Mormonism 299 Native Americans and 300 Christianit Nativisni 302 Priests* Prisons 302 Revivalism 303 The Burned-Over District...... 3O4 Shakers........ ....305 Social Reform 307 Magicandtbe Occult 3O7 Southern Protestantism 3O9 Transcendentalism 310 Women and Religion .........311 Rochester Rapping* 312

HEADLINE MAKERS Ridtard Allen. .........313 Lyman Beecher 314 Alexander Campbell. 315 William M i l l e r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 Phoebe Palmer .........317

PUBLICATIONS 318

Sidebars and tables are listed in italics.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1815

Presbyterian philanthropist David Dow Dodge founds the New York Peace Society, the first of many multidenominational organizations dedicated to the eradication of war on moral principles. In Charleston, South Carolina, white Methodists abolish a large black Methodist conference and deny African Americans the right to maintain their own financial and disciplinary affairs.

1816

Richard Allen becomes bishop of the one of the first black denominations, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Philadelphia. The American Bible Society is founded with the aim of putting Bibles into every home in the nation.

1817 1818

Forty-three hundred African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, secede from their church to affiliate with the Northern African Methodist Episcopal denomination.

The Presbyterian Church denounces slavery as "utterly inconsistent with the law of God." In The Conversion of the World missionaries Gordon Hall and Samuel Newell argue that with dedicated evangelism the entire world can be converted in twenty years.

1819

WiliamEleryChanningpreachesasermonsefinimgthebeliefsofUnitarians.

1820

The first Roman Catholic school in New England is founded in Boston, enrolling more than one hundred girls in its first year.

1821 1822

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The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a new African American denomination, is organized in New York City.

The African Church of Charleston is destroyed and worship forbidden after white authorities discover that most of the slaves implicated in the Denmark Vesey conspiracy belong to this church.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1823

1824

Alexander Campbell begins publication of the Christian Baptist, a monthly periodical that draws many readers into the effort to restore the practices of the early Christians.

Members of the Orthodox Sephardic synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, withdraw to form the first Reform congregation in the United States. The American Sunday School Union is founded and dedicated to establishing a Sunday school in every place with sufficient population.

1825

The American Unitarian Association is founded, implying that Unitarianism is becoming a distinct denomination. The American Tract Society commissions hundreds of people to distribute religious literature throughout the Mississippi Valley.

1826

Publication of yman Beecher's Six Sermons on Intemperance moblizes increas ing numbers to fight the evils of drink. The American Home Missionary Society is founded to promote the spread of the gospel in the West. Its missionaries become important cultural, civic, and educational leaders in their communities, in addition to providing religious instruction.

1827

Eighteen Presbyterian and Congregationalist ministers gather in New Lebanon,

1828

Missionaries Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler are jailed for acts of civil disobedience in defense of the Cherokees.

New York, to debate the proper conduct and style of revivals.

Nat Turner becomes convinced that he is an instrument of God with a mission to avenge the wrongs of slavery.

1829

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The nation's Catholic population reaches five hundred thousand.

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The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York. The appearance of the "Golden Bible," as it is referred to in derision, is noted with curiosity and suspicion in newspapers as far away as Ohio. Charles Grandison Finney begins the series of revivals in Rochester, New York, that will give tremendous energy to reform movements and catapult Finney to national prominence.

1831 1832

Facing persecution, the Mormons leave New York for Kiitland, Ohio.

AlexanderCampbell's"disciplesofChrist"mergewithBartonStone's

"Christians," forming what will become the Disciples of Christ denomination. Lyman Beecher brings his reforming and evangelizing efforts to the West when he becomes the first president of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1833 Having resigned his pulpit in the Unitarian Church, Ralph Waldo Emerson launches his career as a public lecturer.

1834 The Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, is burned down amid anti-Catholic rioting.

1835

Lyman Beecher publishes A Pleafor the West, outlining the threat to American values posed by the spread of Catholicism to the western frontier. William Miller publishes his lectures on the Second Coming, alerting audiences that the return of Christ to earth is near. Charles Grandison Finney becomes professor of theology at Oberlin College, which soon experiences a period of revivalism and perfectionist fervor.

1836 The Methodist Church disclaims any "right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relationship between master and slave."

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1837

Perfectionist Phoebe Palmer experiences sanctification and begins her career as an evangelist.

The Presbyterian Church divides over the issue of slavery.

1838 1839 184O 1841

In Philadelphia, Rebecca Gratz starts the nation's first Jewish Sunday school in an effort to counteract Protestant attempts to convert Jews.

The Mormons found the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where for a time they are able to prosper.

The American Baptist Missionary Convention, the first of a series of African American Baptist conventions, is organized.

Theodore Parker sets off controversy among Unitarians with his sermon on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," which denies the importance of the historical Jesus Christ. Roman Catholic bishop John Hughes begins his "School War" with the Public School Society in New York. His failure to win public funds for Catholic schools provokes a rapid rise in the construction of private Catholic schools.

1842

The Talmud, Torah and Hebrew Institute is founded in New York. As the cohesiveness of older Jewish communities declines, schools such as this become important centers of community life. Ellen G. Harmon (later Ellen Harmon White), future leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, joins William Miller's Adventist movement.

1843

The first date set by William Miller for the Second Coming passes. Bronson Alcott founds Fruitlands, a communitarian experiment partially based on Transcendentalist ideals.

1844

The final date set by Mil er passes, leaving the world intact and thousands

deeply disappointed.

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Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his brother are murdered in Carthage, Illinois, leaving a temporary vacuum in church leadership. The Methodist Church divides into Northern and Southern branches after disagreements over the issue of church discipline for slaveholders.

1845 1846

1847 1848 1849 1850

The formation of the Southern Baptist Convention marks the first time the Baptists adopt a true denominational structure.

Ravaged by fire and facing bankruptcy, the Transcendentalist commune Brook Farm loses most of its members. Brigham Young leads hundred Great Salt Lake valley.

The Fox sisters first report the rapping noises they claim are communications from the dead, sparking the Spiritualist craze.

The nativist American Party, better known as the Know-Nothing Party, is founded with the aim of keeping foreigners and Catholics out of public office.

The rapidly growing Disciples of Christ Church claims 118,000 members. Phoebe Palmer defends the right of women to preach in The Promise of the Father.

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OVERVIEW Religious Resurgence. Visiting the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "there is no country in the world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men." While his statement probably seemed accurate to most of his contemporaries, just thirty years earlier the situation had been vastly different. In the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution the disestablishment of the state churches, the religious radicalism of prominent revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, and the demands of forming a new nation had left church membership at an all-time low. Over the first third of the nineteenth century, however, Americans joined churches and religious organizations with unprecedented enthusiasm as a series of religious revivals, collectively known as the Second Great Awakening, swept the nation. Beginning with camp meetings on the Western frontier and spreading into both the South and the Northeast, the awakening brought thousands of new converts into the Protestant fold and evoked a renewal of faith in thousands more who had long felt disconnected from the religious traditions in which they had been raised. Evangelical Protestantism surged to the forefront of cultural and social influence in the nation in the 1820s and 1830s as wealthy businessmen and influential families of the Northeast increasingly brought their faith to bear upon public life. Revivalism and Urbanization. While it is impossible to provide a single explanation for the dramatic success of urban revivalism in the 1820s and 1830s, most historians have focused on the rapid economic changes experienced in the Northeast between 1815 and 1850. This period saw the onset of industrialization and the growth of cities as improved transportation networks enlarged the scope of commercial activity. Population growth had begun to outstrip land in many places, so children could no longer expect to inherit a farm sufficiently large to support a family. While some who could afford the cost of migration headed westward in an effort to duplicate the self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle of their parents, thousands of young men and women converged on the cities, where they became wage earners in shops and factories. In the process they were forced to abandon the networks of cooperation and extended family ties that had charac-

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terized rural farm life. As single people moved to the cities to live in boardinghouses and artisans who had once lived in their masters' households resettled in workingclass neighborhoods, traditional lines of authority and social organization were disrupted. Surely for some this brought a welcome sense of freedom, but others felt isolated and disoriented. Equally affected by economic change were middle- and upper-class men and women, in whom the new pace of urban existence evoked anxieties about the corrupting potential of excessive wealth as well as concern about the rise of vice among the unsupervised working classes. Under these circumstances many people turned to religion in an effort to make sense of the changing world and order their lives. The Northern Revivals. Like the great frontier revivals that took place at the turn of the nineteenth century, some of the most successful urban revivals were prolonged affairs in which prayer meetings were held in the same locations for several consecutive nights. They were attended by thousands and led by energetic men such as Charles Grandison Finney, who worked hard to be both persuasive and entertaining as they prompted the assembled crowds to consider the state of their souls and convert to Christ. The response was enthusiastic as audiences were drawn into a state of heady excitement and heightened awareness of their spiritual conditions. Conversions and public confessions of sin were frequent, and it was understood that a truly converted person would experience a change of life, becoming entirely guided by virtue and Christian duty in the conduct of everyday affairs. Most of the revivals in the Northeast were led by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, the denominations that historically held sway in the region, but Methodists (who held their primary influence in the South and West) had an impact as well. Although the denominations did compete for membership, on the whole revivalism was an ecumenical phenomenon, in which members of different denominations prayed together and worked together to convert as many souls as possible. In 1831 alone one hundred thousand new members were added to church rolls across the nation. Millennialism. Defined as the belief in the imminent return of Christ (the "Second Coming") to establish his kingdom on earth, millennialism was one of the domi-

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nant themes of nineteenth-century American religious thought. Widespread belief that the "end times" are near has characterized numerous societies over the course of Christian history, often during periods of war, famine, or social stress. Times of affluence and religious enthusiasm have also sparked millennial hopes, usually among people who believed that their societies were approaching a state of perfection that would inaugurate the thousandyear period of peace and happiness that was to accompany Christ's return. Both of these forms of millennial belief existed in early-nineteenth-century America. One was an essentially pessimistic view that saw the social changes wrought by population growth and industrialization as a sign of the impending apocalypse, the other an optimistic view that saw the increased religious fervor and the economic prosperity of the nation as progress toward perfection. The latter view was far more common, for the success of the American Revolution, the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening, and the elevation of religious elements in public life seemed to demonstrate what many had suspected since the Puritans arrived in New England: America was a nation specially chosen by God. Here and now, they believed, society would be perfected and the millennium of peace and harmony begin. Not surprisingly, however, there were many competing notions of what a perfect society should look like. While evangelicals sought perfection through revivals and reform movements that would eliminate sin throughout the nation, there were thousands of people who turned their backs on society and withdrew into Utopian communities where they attempted to construct the millennial order within the limits of their own walls. Visions of perfection were diverse, but all contributed to a sense of expectation that permeated the American consciousness. Reform. Inspired by millennial expectation and confidence in human ability to improve and perhaps even perfect the world, most Northern urban revivalists urged good Christians to play active roles in the moral and social progress of the nation. The first efforts to follow their dictates were made by laymen and laywomen who traveled long distances, both at home and abroad, to distribute Bibles and spread the Christian message. Following quickly on the heels of these missionary efforts were a host of social and moral reform movements that emerged in the 1830s and 1840s and continued for many decades. These included societies to promote peace, Sabbathkeeping, and religious education and societies to curb such antisocial behaviors as drinking, gambling, dueling, and prostitution. Other organizations promoted health, which was seen as closely linked to virtue, through proper diet and manual labor. These crusades, intended to rid America of behaviors defined as sinful, received the support and voluntary efforts of thousands of Protestants who hoped to use moral suasion to protect the nation from emerging spiritual dangers. Deeply concerned with the corruption and vice they saw in the cities and on the frontier, they were equally confident that the situa-

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tion could be changed for the better. Women had a particularly important role in these movements since many social ills were viewed as direct threats to the safety and stability of the family. Furthermore, many middle- and upper-class urban women, freed from domestic chores as their husbands succeeded in business, were able to achieve personal satisfaction and positions of authority as active leaders in the battle against sin. Ultimately, the most important reform movement was the crusade against slavery. Religious sentiment, particularly a pervasive belief that the national sin of slavery was the main obstacle standing in the way of the millennium, was the driving motivation for a significant number of antislavery activists. Southern Evangelism. During the colonial period the Anglican Church (Church of England) had dominated the religious life of the South. Beginning in the 1770s, however, two new groups, the Methodists and the Baptists, began to experience rapid growth in the region. Not only did they convert large numbers of white Southerners, but they also succeeded (where Anglicans had largely failed) in converting thousands of black slaves to Christianity. Much of the success of these denominations among Southerners of both races was rooted in their styles of preaching and worship. While erudite Anglican ministers held solemn and orderly services in which they expounded at length on matters of theology and doctrine, early Baptist and Methodist preachers led rousing, emotionally charged meetings that focused on the spiritual experiences of believers. Their dynamic exhortations, tales of dreams and visions, and use of Scripture stories to elucidate everyday events appealed to poorer, less educated Southerners who sought religious experience but were left unmoved by Anglican sermonizing. During the period from 1815 to 1850 these strongly evangelical denominations grew rapidly, with Baptist membership surging from about two hundred thousand in 1812 to more than one million in 1850. Methodist growth was even more impressive. The Churches Divide. Over the course of this period both denominations, but particularly the Methodists, became increasingly socially respectable. Colleges and seminaries were established, producing a crop of learned ministers quite different from the zealous men of little formal education who had first brought life to the churches. Men and women of greater economic means and social standing were converted. Missionary societies were founded, and groups that had once met in homes built churches and established regular Sunday-school classes. At the same time, under pressure from influential members of Southern society, the message of spiritual equality and the antislavery position that had attracted slaves in the late eighteenth century were replaced by an emphasis on the natural inferiority of black people. Ministers offered scriptural "proof that slavery was approved by God and supported slaveholders in the belief that they were "moral stewards," whose Christian duty was to care

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for the bodies and souls of a less civilized people who would be lost without their protection. This position was not accepted by nonsoutherners, and as a result the 1830s saw schisms between Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian Churches. The Black Churches. For many African Americans, both enslaved and free, the church was the most important center of community life. In the South the Christianity of the Methodists and Baptists blended with some elements of African religious belief and practice, resulting in a unique and vibrant form of religious worship that focused on emotion, music, and dance. In the eighteenth century slaves generally heard white preachers and worshiped with whites, but as the number of black converts grew in the nineteenth century, the number of black ministers grew as well. Black Christians formed their own congregations, and even when owners prohibited religious gatherings, slaves often managed to meet in secret for preaching, prayer, and singing. Like the style of their worship, the themes of their meetings were often different from those of their white neighbors. While slaveholders looked to the behavior of the Old Testament patriarchs to justify slavery, their slaves turned to the book of Exodus, where the struggle of the Israelites gave them hope for deliverance from bondage. For some this idea was simply a comfort; for others it was a call to action. The two most well-known slave revolts of the period, the Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822 and Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831, were guided by religious visionaries. More commonly, Christianity gave slaves a sense of self-worth and strength for smaller forms of resistance in everyday life on the plantation. In the free North the church became a crucial locus not only for spiritual guidance but also for helping people build social networks and community identity in the face of tremendous hostility. In 1816 Richard Allen, a minister and former slave who lived in Philadelphia, organized the first African American denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. By the 1820s African American churches had begun to send out missionaries to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Haiti. African American church leaders were important participants in the abolitionist movement, and many also participated in other reform movements of the day. Immigration. Until the 1830s the vast majority of Americans of European descent were Protestants. Although Catholics and Jews had lived in America since the early colonial period, their relatively small communities posed no challenge to the cultural dominance of Protestantism. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, a variety of economic, political, and religious hardships had driven millions of Irish and Germans, most of them Catholic, to leave their homelands for the promise of America. Jews also began to immigrate to the United States, mostly from Germany. Many Catholic and Jewish immigrants initially hoped to retain the distinctive character of their faiths and cultures but faced pressure and prejudice from the

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Protestant majority that made it hard for them to gain social acceptance and economic success. Catholics in particular faced accusations of antirepublicanism and conspiracy for their perceived alliance to a foreign power (the Pope). As a result, conflicts arose among both Catholics and Jews over the extent to which they should "Americanize," or accommodate their lifestyles to those of the Protestant majority. Significant changes did occur, as the structure of the Catholic Church became more democratic and the more liberal Reform tradition became a force in American Judaism. At the same time, some Catholics achieved considerable success in politics, many Jews gained wealth and social status, and more immigrants arrived each year, guaranteeing the continued growth of both faiths. Religious Diversity. Although evangelical Protestants comprised the most visible religious group in the early nineteenth century, democratic America proved to have room for variety. By midcentury the nation had become a virtual "spiritual hothouse" as dozens of new religious movements and Utopian communities arose across the country, offering competing conceptions of religious life, social norms, and national destiny. Some sects, such as the German Rappites and the English Shakers, migrated from Europe in search of an opportunity to practice their faiths without opposition. Many other sects, such as the "Christians," or Disciples of Christ, led by Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, arose on American soil, often motivated by dissatisfaction with the beliefs, practices, or cultural assumptions of the mainstream denominations. Best known of these groups were the Mormons, founded by selfdeclared prophet Joseph Smith, whose claims of divine revelations, miracles, visions, and promises of admission to the glorious Kingdom of God for all who joined him attracted thousands of Americans of low socio-economic status who sought a better life. For those who found themselves unaffected by the calls of revival preachers and uninterested in the claims of sects and their prophets, there were various new, informal spiritual movements with no institutional structures. These included Transcendentalism, which stressed the divinity of man and nature and incorporated the beliefs of Eastern religions and ancient philosophers, and Mesmerism, a healing technique that was also said to foster insight into occult mysteries and provide some subjects with extraordinary mental powers, including extrasensory perception. The teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, with his innovative biblical interpretations and mystical doctrines of the connectedness of all aspects of man, God, and the physical universe, had gained a wide audience by midcentury. Finally, the opportunity to communicate with the dead promised by Spiritualism became immensely popular after 1848. By 1850 the extraordinary spiritual vitality and creativity of the early national period insured that the Protestant hegemony that had existed since the nation's founding could no longer be taken for granted.

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TOPICS IN THE NEWS

AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY Conversion. Prior to the American Revolution few African slaves had converted to Christianity. Missionaries were scarce, and language barriers, cultural differences, and the resistance of masters (who feared that the conversion of slaves might negate the master-slave relationship) all stood as barriers to their efforts. Those Anglican missionaries who did gain access to the slaves found few interested in the lengthy process of instruction required for conversion, which included learning to read and memorize catechisms, creeds, and prayers. During the late eighteenth century, however, the emergence of evangelical Protestantism in the South dramatically altered this situation. Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian revival preachers brought a new, livelier, and more accessible form of Christianity to both slaves and masters. In contrast to the Anglican process of slow indoctrination, the evangelicals focused on the single experience of a heartfelt conversion as the primary requirement for baptism into the faith. Preaching was dramatic and emotionally charged, and converts often wept, shouted, sang, and fell into trance states at revivals. People of all races

and social classes were welcomed into these gatherings, where they found opportunities to preach, exhort, and pray. By 1800 thousands of slaves as well as many masters had joined the evangelical fold. Worship. One reason for the new success in converting slaves was that revival experiences often resembled traditional forms of African worship. The trance states achieved under evangelical preachers, for example, were akin to the experience of spirit possession in the festivals honoring the gods of Africa. Perhaps even more important to the success of Christianity among slaves was the fact that Methodists and Baptists brought a message of spiritual egalitarianism and followed through on it by licensing black as well as white preachers. Several independent black churches were established in which both slave and free members joined together in highly expressive worship that offered them some relief from both physical and psychological oppression. Music and dance were an integral part of worship, and Sundays became a time of joy and release for many slaves. During the early nineteenth century, however, masters became increasingly fearful that slaves might use religious gatherings as

NAT TURNER: RELIGION AND REBELLION Bom in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1800, Nat Turner was a deeply religious man, known to his fellow slaves as a seer, prophet, and preacher. In the 1820s he began to see visions of a struggle between black and white angels as the heavens ran red with blood. In 1828 he had a vision that "Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent/ Convinced that he had been chosen by God to lead the slaves out of bondage. Turner waited until the omen of an eclipse signaled that the time was right* In the early morning hours of 22 August 1831 he and five others began the bloodiest slave revolt in the history of the United States. Over the course of two days more than seventy slaves joined the re*volt, and about sixty whites were murdered. After

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the rebellion was suppressed by state and federal troops, a wave of terror swept the area as hundreds of innocent blacks were murdered in retribution, Turner hid for two months but was eventually caught and executed. Asked if he regretted his actions or his fate, he replied simply, "Was not Christ crucified?" The religious origins of the rebellion were duly noted, and slave owners began to supervise black worship much more closely, no longer allowing black preachers to speak without a white person present. Nonetheless, this and other religiously motivated rebellions lived on in the consciousness of slaves as signs that God might one day send an avenging angel to strike down the slaveholders and set them free. Source: Stephen B, Oates, The Fires ofjfnbttee; Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion (New York: Harper 6c Row, 1975).

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A service in the African Methodist Church, Cincinnati, circa 1830

opportunities to plan resistance or rebellion and began to insist that black worship be held only under white supervision. By 1850 most slaves who attended church belonged to mixed-race congregations controlled by whites. Free Black Churches. While the influence of slave owners restricted the proliferation of slave churches, it did little to hinder the growth of independent churches among free African Americans. Between 1790 and 1810 more than twenty distinctly African American Methodist and Baptist congregations were formed in the North and South. In response, white denominational leaders in several cities attempted unsuccessfully to reassert their authority. In Philadelphia, when white trustees tried in 1816 to take control of the church property of the allblack Bethel Church, the black congregation took its case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which decided in its favor. Bethel's minister, Richard Allen, then called a meeting of black Methodists from other cities where similar conflicts had occurred. Together they withdrew their congregations from the Methodist Church to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where they would be able, as Allen put it, "to regulate our affairs, temporal and spiritual, the same as if we were white people." Two other black Methodist denominations, the Union Church of Africans in Wilmington, Delaware, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of New York City, emerged by 1825, as

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did a black Episcopal denomination and several independent Baptist congregations. Community. By the 1830s these new denominations encompassed dozens of churches, some as far south as Charleston, South Carolina. With few institutions in place to serve the growing numbers of freedmen who were moving to the Northern cities in search of employment, these churches served as places to meet others and seek out educational or economic opportunities. Issues confronting the community were frequently addressed in the churches, where ministers might discuss politics or discrimination or urge their congregants to demonstrate the ability of their race to prosper through education and hard work. Presbyterian minister Samuel Cornish founded Freedom's Journal m 1827 to serve as a medium through which African Americans could voice their concerns and instill attitudes of independence and confidence in their fellows. Black clergymen supported the temperance movement and other moral crusades of the day, but above all they were vocal abolitionists. Cornish, Christopher Rush, Theodore Wright, Henry Highland Garnet, and many other ministers preached, wrote, organized, and campaigned for the abolition of slavery. Many emphasized the need for white Northerners to recognize their own racism as an important step toward broader social change. Solidarity and Deliverance. Those who were still in bondage also condemned the institution of slavery but

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Interior of St. Mary's Cathedral in Baltimore

did so in secret, often through the medium of religious worship and belief. Denied the right to unsupervised religious gatherings, slaves often risked punishment by meeting in the woods, where they could hold prayer meetings and voice their own version of the gospel rather than the white version that justified slavery and ordered them to obey their masters. Black worship was filled with themes of justice and deliverance, as were the spirituals slaves sang as they worked. Christianity provided a tool that allowed some slaves to come to terms with their lot in the current life, knowing that they would be liberated in the next. For others, however, biblical tales of deliverance from evil spoke to the here and now. Some believed that they themselves were to act as the instruments of God's wrath against the evil of slavery and slaveholders, and several slave revolts took root in such beliefs. For the most part, however, slaves drew from Christianity both a

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group solidarity and a sense of individual self-worth and hope that helped them to endure the horrors of their daily lives. After they were freed, most continued to worship as they had before, drawing strength and stability from the church as they made their way amid the turmoil of Reconstruction. Sources: Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Albert). Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

CATHOLICISM

Immigration. During the first half of the nineteenth century the Roman Catholic Church in the United

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States was transformed from a tiny religious minority into the largest church in the nation. There had been many Catholics among the earliest European explorers and settlers of the North American continent, and the colony of Maryland became a haven for English Catholics. But Catholicism was still the smallest denomination in the nation, with only 195,000 members. In the 1830s this situation began to change dramatically as tens of thousands of Catholic immigrants flooded into the United States from Ireland and Germany. These new immigrants greatly altered the ethnic makeup of the American Catholic Church, which grew to 1,600,000 members by 1850, and changed the religious composition of the United States as a whole. Irish and Germans. The first significant wave of Irish immigration to America was prompted largely by social and economic stresses caused by rapid population growth in Ireland. Job opportunities at home were limited, and the lure of positions in American factories was strong. In 1845 the potato blight hit Ireland, causing widespread famine and a new surge in emigration. Most Irish immigrants were single men and women with little money who settled primarily in the growing port cities of New England and the Middle Atlantic states, where work was easy to find. German immigrants, in contrast, tended to arrive in family units and settle in both urban and rural areas. Some German Catholics left Europe in the face of political and religious conflict, but as in Ireland, population growth was a major factor prompting emigration. Crop failures, scarce land, and industrialization had begun to eliminate traditional occupations. Many German farmers and artisans chose to leave for America rather than adapt to the factory system. Because they had more money than Irish immigrants, they were often able to head inland and take advantage of farming opportunities, settling in western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the upper Midwest. Anti-Catholicism. The transition to life in America was not easy for most of these new immigrants, who faced not only the hardships of finding homes and work but also the anti-Catholic prejudices of a largely Protestant population. In the cities immigrants brought unwelcome competition for industrial jobs and, because of their poverty, placed economic burdens on their communities. Their religious beliefs and rituals seemed alien and deeply suspect to many non-Catholics, and these feelings merged with negative ethnic stereotypes, particularly of the Irish, who were thought to be lazy, depraved, corrupt, and prone to drunkenness. Additionally, many Protestants felt that the authoritarian and hierarchical nature of the Catholic church, along with its allegiance to a foreign power in the figure of the Pope, made the religion inherently incompatible with American values and potentially subversive. Bolstered by the growing Protestant press, anti-Catholicism made integration into American life difficult for many immigrants and sometimes sparked violence. Social Resources. As the Catholic community grew, so did its social resources. Catholic relief agencies were estab-

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lished to aid impoverished immigrants, and local parishes offered housing and employment opportunities. Dozens of Catholic schools were built to provide an alternative to the newly developed American public school system. While many non-Catholics felt that the public schools simply transmitted the religiously neutral ideals of republicanism and democracy, most Catholics believed the schools propagated Protestant views that threatened the faith of Catholic schoolchildren. In 1840 New York's Bishop John Hughes sought to secure public funds for Catholic schools. He failed to win enough support, however, and it became clear that Catholic education would have to rely on private resources. Ethnic Differences. Throughout much of the nineteenth century ethnic differences simultaneously strengthened the American Catholic Church and kept it from being fully united. Catholics from England, France, Ireland, Germany, and later Italy and eastern Europe not only spoke different languages but also had different cultures and styles of worship. Rituals for births, weddings, and funerals differed, as did tastes in sacred music. Most Catholic immigrants preferred to live, work, and worship within ethnically defined parishes, where they could maintain their native languages and customs. At the same time, however, strong ethnic identification served to create conflict. Well after Irish and German Catholics became numerically dominant, the church hierarchy continued to be occupied by bishops of English and French heritage. When assigning priests to local parishes, these bishops often antagonized immigrant Catholics by ignoring their desires to have German priests appointed to German churches or Irish priests to Irish churches. Imbued with American democratic ideology, many laymen argued that they should have the power to select their own priests. Others proposed further "Americanist" innovations such as allowing the laity, rather than the clergy, to control church property, as did most Protestant congregations. Bishops strongly opposed such innovations, and they worked during the 1830s and 1840s to increase uniformity and centralized authority in the church. This was a challenge, however, since the appearance of Irish and German bishops resulted in sharp differences and power struggles even among church leaders. Cultural Prominence. Despite internal differences and opposition from outside, Catholics made significant progress toward becoming a strong cultural force in American life. By 1850, as the flow of immigration continued unabated, dozens of Catholic newspapers issued from the presses, often carrying news of the remarkable successes of Irish-Catholic politicians. Denominational colleges such as Holy Cross and Notre Dame had been established, and great advances had been made in women's education. Though some Catholics left the fold to join Protestant churches, more notable were the number of prominent intellectuals who converted to Catholicism in the 1840s and 1850s. These included Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker, both of whom became eloquent spokesmen for the

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growing importance of the Catholic Church in Protestant America. Sources: Jay Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985); James Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

JUDAISM

Immigration. Although there were Jews living in Britain's American colonies as early as 1654, it was not until the nineteenth century that Jews began migrating to North America in large numbers. Most came during the second half of the century, but the earlier period also saw a significant increase in the Jewish population. Some Jews came after the end of the wars in Europe in 1815, others on the heels of the revolutionary movements in Germany of 1830 and 1848. The first large-scale immigration came in 1836, when extended families and even entire communities left Bavaria, where in a time of economic depression they had been subjected to extra taxes and restrictions that limited their chances for financial success. Between 1836 and 1850 the Jewish community in the United States grew from fewer than 15,000 to about 50,000. By 1860 the population had reached 160,000.

CITY OF REFUGE

On 15 September 1825 Manuel Mordecai Noah dedicated the city of Ararat, a settlement on an island in the Niagara River (near Buffalo, New York) that was to be a homeland to American Jews. Noah was a journalist, politician, playwright, and probably the most prominent Jewish public figure of his day* He hoped to provide a place of refuge and gathering for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe. Jewish immigrants, most of whom had backgrounds in manufacturing and commerce, would be retrained in agricultural and industrial skills, to be used when they eventually settled in the Holy Land of Palestine. The project was a failure and has been described as nothing mote than a wild fantasy. The motivation behind it, however, was the product of real issues facing Jews in nineteenth-century America. In the face of pressure from evangelical Protestants to convert to Christianity and pressure from society at large to conform to American customs, Jews faced important decisions about whether to adapt or band together in an effort to preserve Jewish identity. Source: Jonathan Sarna, Jacksonian Jew: The Two WorMs of Mordecai Noah (New York: Holmes 6c Meier, 1981),

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Adaptation. In these early years of immigration the newcomers were generally poor people with limited education who were relatively orthodox in observance and belief. Most lived in the cities and worked as peddlers and small-scale merchants. Because of the Jewish emphasis on reading sacred Scripture, most Jews were literate when they arrived, and they were quick to learn English. Too small a minority to attract the kind of prejudice and hostility faced by Catholic immigrants, they adapted to American life with remarkable ease. Poverty always existed in the Jewish community, but nonetheless each generation experienced a significant rise in wealth and social status. Like other immigrant groups, Jews joined together for mutual support and social activities, many of which were centered around their synagogues. Two hundred new synagogues were constructed across the nation during the 1840s and 1850s. Reform. While almost all of these new synagogues adhered to Orthodoxy at first, many soon adopted Reform Judaism, a new mode of worship that had emerged in Germany. Reform Judaism began as a movement of intellectual Jews of middle to high social status who felt that old-fashioned, "unenlightened" forms of worship, dress, and behavior put Jews at a social and cultural disadvantage. Seeking to conform to the rest of German society, they made several "modernizing" alterations to their religious services. Americans with similar aspirations followed their lead, establishing many Reform congregations in the 1840s. To the dismay of traditionalists, some of the ceremonies and observances of Orthodox Judaism were set aside. The traditional garb of hats and prayer shawls was abandoned, as were "medieval" practices such as ritual chanting. Organs, traditionally used in Christian services, were installed in the synagogues; the number of Hebrew prayers was reduced; and men and women were no longer seated separately. Lay Involvement. Much of the impetus for reform came from the laity. Like other Americans, most Jews were confident in their ability to exercise authority in their religious affairs. They built the synagogues and paid the rabbis' salaries, so they felt they had a natural right to a voice in debates over ritual practice. Most of the changes they advocated were not theologically or ideologically grounded but simply seemed natural and preferable. It made sense to them that prayers would be in English, that synagogues should be quiet and decorous like churches, and that women (who played vital roles in maintaining Jewish culture in America) should be allowed to sit where men did. Community. The changes brought about by the laity, and later also by rabbis who had been trained in the secular universities of central Europe, altered the character of Jewish life in America. The traditional ritual life of the religion was deemphasized, and Jews blended easily into the society around them. But this did not mean that religious life became unimportant or that Jews wanted to lose their distinctive identity. On the contrary, they

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Brigham Young leading Mormons from Missouri to Utah, 1847 (Museum of Fine Arts, Brigham Young University)

lived, worked, and socialized together,' forming closeknit groups bound together not only by synagogues but also by schools, clubs, charitable societies, and other community organizations. They continued to practice their faith and nourish their culture in ways that made sense for them not only as Jews but as Americans as well. Sources: Hasia R. Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration: 1820-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America (New York: Simon Sc Schuster, 1989); Howard M. Schar, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Knopf, 1992).

MORMONISM

Origins. The Mormon church, formally called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was the most successful of the dozens of new sects and communitarian movements that emerged in nineteenth-century America. Formed in rural New York with about thirty members in 1830, by the end of the twentieth century the church boasted over nine million members worldwide. The founder and prophet of the Mormon church was a young man of humble origins named Joseph Smith. Raised in an area of New York known for its frequent revivals and religious experimentation, Smith, like many of his day, felt bewildered by the array of competing religious claims. Uncertain of which church offered the truth, he prayed for guidance. According to his account,

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written years later, God responded to his entreaty, instructing him to join no church since all were flawed. Instead Smith was to await further instruction about a mission for which he had been divinely chosen. A few years later, Smith recounted, he was guided by an angel to a hill in the woods near his home, where he dug up a set of golden plates inscribed with ancient writing. With divine aid, the untutored Smith wrote, he was able to translate the plates into an English version, published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. Words of Christ. The Book of Mormon presents itself as an historical narrative about the descendants of one of the lost tribes of ancient Israel, who migrated to the Americas long before the birth of Christ. The work is said to be "another testament of Jesus Christ" because it relates a visit of Christ to the New World after his resurrection. Through Christ's preaching, the book relates, the true church was established in America, only to be lost after one faction of the people, known as the Lamanites, had become unfaithful and eventually defeated the faithful Nephites. According to this account the Lamanites were the ancestors of the American Indians. It was one of the last remaining Nephites, their military leader, Mormon, who inscribed their history on the golden plates and instructed an angel to bury them until the time when Smith was directed to them. Appeal. To many who read the Book of Mormon this new "testament" seemed nothing more than the fantasy

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of a young man with an active imagination. To others it was more threatening, a heretical document composed by a fraudulent prophet who hoped to fleece the gullible. But there were also those who found in the book the answers they had been seeking. It offered authoritative resolutions of many of the doctrinal controversies of the day and stressed the free will of man and the free grace of God. It provided comfort and hope to the dispossessed and downplayed the distinction between clergy and laity. Perhaps most appealingly, it portrayed America as the chosen land in which the kingdom of God would ultimately be established. Those who followed its teachings were promised a primary role in building that kingdom and were assured that they would be present when Christ returned to earth. Flight from Persecution. In the early years of the church the Mormons moved frequently, in part because they were searching for the place to found God's kingdom and in part because they faced a nearly constant onslaught of anti-Mormon propaganda and sometimes outright persecution. Their first move, in 1831, was from New York to Kirtland, Ohio, where they had been invited by Sidney Rigdon, a former Disciples of Christ preacher who was attracted by Smith's advocacy of a communitarian lifestyle. They bought land, set up businesses, constructed a temple, and sent out dozens of missionaries across Ohio and to the West. Their membership grew rapidly, but their growth, along with their debts and other financial difficulties, aroused resentment in the surrounding communities. In 1837 they left Kirtland for a new settlement near Independence, Missouri. Smith had long before named Missouri as Zion, the location on which the city of God was to be built. But there, too, they faced overwhelming hostility from other settlers who disliked Mormon proselytizing and had no desire to see the Mormon Kingdom erected in their midst. After encounters with an armed militia the Mormons were forced to flee to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they arrived in 1839. Nauvoo. For a few years it seemed that Smith and his followers had at last found a home. Nauvoo became the largest and fastest-growing city in Illinois. Many of the new settlers were Mormon converts who had left their homes to join the Prophet; many others were converted upon their arrival. Between 1841 and 1843, however, their relatively peaceful existence was disturbed when Smith introduced a series of new doctrines and practices into the church. The most controversial of these, the practice of polygamy, or "plural marriage," caused conflict within the Mormon community, while rumors of the practice (which was kept secret) caused increased hostility from nonMormons. Hostility grew into violence after Joseph Smith, who had declared himself a candidate in the 1844 race for president of the United States, illegally destroyed the opposition press in Nauvoo. An out-

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raged citizen militia seized Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, who were thrown in a Carthage, Illinois, jail. On 27 June 1844 a mob stormed the jail and murdered both men. Brigham Young. A struggle for leadership of the Mormon Church followed Smith's death. One faction denied polygamy and other recent revelations and settled in Missouri as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Smaller splinter groups settled elsewhere in the Midwest. But the largest faction followed Brigham Young on a long trek (1846-1848) to the unsettled territory of what would become Salt Lake City, Utah. Young was a brilliant organizer, and under his guidance the Mormon community prospered. Utah became a formal territory of the United States in 1850, and old conflicts between Mormon ways and the laws and norms of the United States were renewed. Eventually the Mormons renounced polygamy and increasingly conformed to American cultural norms. They have nonetheless maintained their distinctive character, while becoming an accepted and vibrant element of the American religious milieu. Sources: Klaus Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).

NATIVE AMERICANS AND CHRISTIANITY

Religious Diversity. There were more than three hundred Native American tribes in the United States in the nineteenth century, and each had a distinct culture with its own religious beliefs and practices. Because of this diversity it is difficult to provide a single accurate description of Native American religion. Such an effort is further complicated by the fact that spiritual beliefs permeated the social and cultural life of most Indian tribes so deeply that they were often inseparable from community life as a whole. Ceremonies that might have seemed specifically religious to whites were often for Indians simply an extension of daily life. But one thing all tribes shared in common was that at some point they faced an encounter with white Christians. White Attitudes. Among whites there were two common religiously based attitudes toward Native Americans. One was expressed in the notion of Manifest Destiny, the idea that white Christians had a God-given mission to expand their civilization and its ideals of liberty and democracy across the entire North American continent. From this point of view Indians who occupied valuable lands could be removed or even exterminated with few moral qualms. A second point of view held that the Indians did not have to be seen as a hindrance to white progress. Rather, they were simply ignorant heathens who

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could become part of American society if they were allowed to benefit from the civilizing instruction of whites. The first step toward civilization was believed to be conversion to Christianity. Although earlier missionaries to the Indians had produced few converts and much antagonism, the revivals of the early nineteenth century brought new impetus to the missionary movement. Most Protestant denominations as well as the Roman Catholic Church sent men and women to Indian tribes across the country, where they preached, distributed Bibles, and established schools. Indian Responses. Indian responses to missionaries were as diverse as their forms of religious practice. Most tribes at least initially welcomed the missionaries, although reactions were mixed even among members of the same tribe. Impressed by white technology, many Indians believed that white culture must hold some spiritual power as well, and they were willing to hear what the missionaries had to offer. Some became practicing Christian converts while others were violently opposed to any white influence at all. Perhaps most common were those who were attracted to specific elements of Christianity that could be incorporated into their own belief systems. Native American religions, like the African ones brought by the slaves, were generally inclusivist, open to the addition of new religious experiences, stories, or visions. Thus many Indians found it possible to "accept" Christianity without actually relinquishing their own beliefs. Much to the frustration of the missionaries, however, most Indians were uninterested in the fine points of doctrine. Many found original sin and the fall of man to be particularly odd concepts. Others were puzzled (as were many whites) by the multitude of denominations. One Seneca chief wondered, "If there is but one Religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?" Mission to the Cherokees. One of the most successful efforts at evangelization, at least by white standards, was the mission to the Cherokee tribe in the southeastern United States. Moravians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists all sent missionaries to the tribe in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, and they were pleased with the response they received. Not only did the Cherokees become Christians in large numbers, but they also chose to adopt many other aspects of the white culture that surrounded them. They constructed roads and developed a political system and constitution based on that of the United States. Sequoia created a written form of the Cherokee language, and the tribe began publishing its own books and newspapers. Unquestionably, there was resistance to missionary and "civilizing" efforts. As in many other tribes, periodic revivals of wholly native religion occurred among the Cherokees, and at those times tribal leaders encouraged the total rejection of white civilization. Nonetheless, the missionaries were proud to hold the tribe up as an example of the successful integration of Indians into American society. In late 1828, however, gold was discovered in northern Georgia, and

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A six-foot-high "learning ladder" drawn by a Presbyterian missionary in the late 1830s. The path at the right represents the true route to salvation (Oregon Historical Society).

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the push to move the Cherokees to the West grew strong. With the full support of President Andrew Jackson, a forced removal was begun. Many missionaries were dismayed, and the most dedicated took a formal stand against Indian removal and against their own government. They argued that their progress in civilizing and converting the Cherokees placed a moral obligation on the United States to accept the tribe's ownership of its hereditary lands. But their pleas went unheeded. Thus the tribe that had been most willing to accept the gifts of some white Christians found themselves marching to an uncertain fate on the "Trail of Tears" created by other white Christians—who were equally certain that they acted in the name of God and country. Sources: Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787-1862 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965);

areas (which many feared were havens for drunkenness and immorality) were magnified by the influx of poor Irish immigrants into the cities. Among Protestant workingmen already in the cities, Catholics represented unwelcome competition for jobs. A more abstract but equally pervasive source of anti-Catholic sentiment lay in uncertainty about the stability of the American republic. While such anxieties were rooted in the newness of the American political system and the changes wrought by rapid economic development and westward expansion, they were often expressed in the belief that Catholics were proponents of hierarchy and tyranny who would reject republican ideals and undermine the political system. Rather than allowing their congregants to think and act for themselves, they argued, Catholic priests sought to tyrannize people and bring them under control, "covering their hypocrisy with the cloak of religion, and with

William G. McLoughlin, The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794-1870 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994).

NATIVISM Definition. The term nativism describes a generalized hostility to foreigners, immigrants, and outsiders that has characterized several periods in American history. While it is not inherently religious in nature, nativist sentiment has often been couched in religious terms and has been associated historically with Protestants of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. The targets of nativism are usually seen as subversive elements that threaten the security of the American nation, its institutions, and its ideals. Anti-Catholicism. During the nineteenth century nativist attacks were most commonly directed against Catholics. Anti-Catholic sentiment came to America with the first British settlers^ some of whom had arrived intent upon purifying their own religion from any remaining popish elements. Over the years the intensity of anti-Catholicism rose and fell in relation to both local and international events. Hostility declined somewhat during the revolutionary period due to the support of American Catholics for the revolution as well as the aid of Catholic France. Indeed, for a time Britain itself became the focus of much of the rhetoric about luxury and corruption formerly reserved for the Catholic Church. During the early national period, however, as Britain became an ally and revolutionary France an object of some suspicion, feelings toward Catholics shifted again. After the 1820s, when Catholic immigrants began to arrive en masse, antiCatholicism took on a newly virulent form, manifested in political opposition, propaganda in dozens of Protestant newspapers and periodicals, and individual and mob violence. National Anxieties. Hatred of Catholics became an outlet for many of the common anxieties of the day. Concern about social conditions in the growing urban

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PRIESTS' PRISONS

On 11 August 1834 a Protestant mob attacked the Irish quarter in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and burned down the Ursuline Convent, In America as elsewhere many Protestants harbored deep suspicions about what went on behind the walls of convents, or "priests' prisons." The celibacy practiced by priests and nuns seemed unnatural and certain to provoke immoral acts. One Protestant rioter said of the convent he helped to destroy: "the institution was a bad one; . , , the bishops and priests pretended to live without wives, but the nuns were kept to supply the deficiency in that particular/ This sentiment found popular expression in a new genre of anticonvent literature that included Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent, an expose of convent life ostensibly written by a young girl who had escaped after three years of captivity and abuse. Reed's book sold ten thousand copies in Boston in its first week of publication, but even more popular was Maria Monk's 1836 Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, which offered lurid tales of sexual abuse and infanticide and sold three hundred thousand copies by 1860, becoming the best-selling American book of its time. Although Awful Disclosures was eventually revealed as a fraud after Monk's mother testified that her daughter had been a prostitute and the inmate of an insane asylum rather than a convent, a Nunnery Committee was formed to investigate Mas* sachusetts convents. The committee turned up no evidence to support the claims of Reed's or Monk's books, but this hardly lessened the impact of their anti-Catholic message. Source: Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome. The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

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A riot of Catholics and Protestants in Philadelphia, 1844

more than the serpent's guile, worming themselves into the confidence and affections of their unsuspecting victims." Clergyman Lyman Beecher's influential essay A Pleafor the West, which warned of the dangers to republican freedom and true Christianity that might result from the further spread of Catholicism in the new Western territories, was typical of a new genre of anti-Catholic literature. Some writers went so far as to suggest there was a papal plot to conquer the United States. Mormons and Masons. Similar anxieties about the preservation of the republic lay behind the nativist sentiment directed at groups other than Catholics. Mormons attracted widespread public opposition because their beliefs not only differed from common notions of religious orthodoxy but also seemed antidemocratic. Most non-Mormons knew little about Mormon practices, many of which were kept secret, but they suspected the worst. Mormon leaders seemed to have an almost dictatorial control over their followers, who would probably vote and act according to their wishes. Those wishes, many feared, might directly contradict the interests of the United States. Similarly, the 1820s and 1830s saw a surge in opposition to the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, a secret fraternal order with members and lodges across the nation. The Masons were suspected of having heretical beliefs, harboring infidels, practicing magic, and plotting to destroy the nation. Anti-Masonic sentiment reached its peak after 1827, when William Morgan of Batavia, New York, disappeared under mysterious circumstances after threatening to expose Masonic secrets. The anti-Masonic political platform that emerged in response to this incident received widespread support on the local level, although it had little impact on national politics.

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The Know-Nothing Party. The most significant political expression of nativist sentiment came in the form of the American Party, also known as the KnowNothings. Founded in New York in 1849 as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, the Know-Nothings were a secretive group dedicated to preserving the "native" American stock of Anglo-Saxon blood by keeping out immigrants. They received their informal name from their tendency to answer "I don't know" in response to outsiders' questions about their beliefs and goals. Membership in the group was limited to American-born Protestant men without Catholic wives or parents, all of whom swore to oppose the election of foreigners and Roman Catholics to public office. During the 1850s seventy-five Know-Nothing candidates were elected to the United States Congress. Their cause, and nativist sentiment in general, waned in the late 1850s as the threat of sectional conflict came to overshadow other issues. After the Civil War, however, immigration and industrialization progressed, and nativism emerged again with full force. Sources: David B. Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (1960): 205-224; Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

REVIVALISM Origins. Revivalism has been an important aspect of American religious life since the middle of the eighteenth century, when dozens of towns—first in New England, then in the Middle Atlantic and South—experienced a sudden surge in religious fervor and a rash of conversions collectively known as the Great Awak-

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THE BURNED-OVER DISTRICT

The Burned-Over District was a popular nineteenth-century term for western New York State, a region unusually prone to religious enthusiasm and innovation. The name, first used by evangelical preacher Charles Grandison Finney, derived from the fact that the area had been repeatedly swept by the "flames* of religious revival Revivals occurred in 1799-1800, 1807-1808,and 1818-1819 and reached a peak between 1825 and 1837 as people flocked to the area for jobs created by the newly opened Erie Canal, Many of these people were converted in the great Rochester revivals of 1830-1831, others by the Methodist itinerants who circled the rural areas holding frequent camp meetings. Novel religious movements also found an open door in western New York. Several Utopian communities that had been persecuted elsewhere settled there, including John Humphrey Noyes's Oneida Community and Anne Jemima Wilkinson's "New Jerusalem.* Adventist preacher William Miller, who declared that Christ would r e t u r n in 1843, lived in the Burned-Over District, as did many of his followers. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith founded his church in the area, and the national passion for Spiritualism (communication with the dead) also began in Rochester. Source; Whitney Cross, The Burned Over District (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950).

ening. Since then the nation has been touched intermittently by times of religious revival, but perhaps none of such enduring significance as the period between about 1800 and 1835, referred to as the Second Great Awakening. Beginning with an enormous camp meeting at which hundreds were converted at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, revivalistic fervor spread both north an south, taking hold in the colleges of New England in the first decade of the century and reaching many of the urban centers of the Northeast by the 1820s. The efforts of skillful preachers brought new converts pouring into the ranks of the evangelical denominations, primarily the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, and spurred many on to participation in missionary work and social reform movements. The revivals were led by a diverse group of ministers (and some lay exhorters) with a range of opinions about theology and religious experience. But there were some opinions most held in common, including an optimistic belief in the ability of man to turn his will to God and faith in the moral and civil progress of human society. A New Vision. During the Great Awakening of the 1740s most people agreed with esteemed theologian

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and revivalist Jonathan Edwards that the revivals were "the surprising work of God." They were unpredictable events that occurred according to a divine plan unaffected by human efforts. A minister might pray for a revival and might preach with all his heart, but souls would be converted only if it was God's will. During the early nineteenth century, however, there were two significant shifts in popular beliefs about the nature of religious conversion. The first emerged with the idea that every individual has the ability to hear the gospel and then accept or reject it of his or her own free will rather than according to the predetermined plan of God. Following from this belief was the assumption that if evangelists used the proper techniques under the right conditions, if they presented the gospel in a truly compelling manner, they could ensure that a revival would occur and that souls would be saved. Charles Grandison Finney. The leading proponent of this new, action-oriented vision of revival and conversion was Charles Grandison Finney. Born in 1792 and raised in western New York, Finney began his career as a lawyer. Concerned with the state of his soul, he engaged in systematic study of the Bible and in 1821 came to the conclusion that God would save him if he had faith and the desire to be saved. This realization evoked in him a spiritual experience similar to that described by many who were later converted under his guidance: "The Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God." The following day Finney abandoned the legal profession to become an evangelist. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1824, and over the following decade he traveled throughout the Northeastern United States, sparking revivals as he went. His language was simple, direct, and popular, his manner of speaking energetic and filled with a sense of personal concern for the souls of his listeners. Over six feet tall with piercing eyes, Finney had a commanding presence in the pulpit, and in part his success can be attributed to personal charisma. But equally important was his belief that "a revival is not a miracle, or dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means." The New Measures. For Finney and others who followed him, "right use of the constituted means" meant the application of a set of revival techniques known as the "new measures" that were highly effective in bringing audiences to a heightened sense of concern for their souls and a desire to accept the truth of the Christian message. These methods were not in fact new but rather an adoption of some informal techniques of frontier revivalists (primarily Methodists) for system-

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Men and women singing at a revival encampment in 1834 (Old Sturbridge Village)

atic use in an urban setting. The most common element of this style of revival was the use of protracted religious gatherings held over the course of several days or evenings. The steady flow of preaching and exhorting at such meetings served to reduce listeners gradually to a state of despair over their sinful lives until they eventually broke down and committed themselves to Christ. Another effective tool was the "anxious bench," a seat at the front of the room (or tent) where those wrestling with the decision to convert would sit under the direct scrutiny of the preacher and the crowd, often encouraged in their struggles by personal appeals for their souls. Finney also urged women to pray and testify in public, and employed both men and women as assistants who would circulate in the crowd as he preached, urging sinners to respond to his calls. Opposition. Revivalists who employed these "new measures" often evoked dramatic physical results that were common enough on the frontier but startled and offended many Easterners. People who believed themselves under the influence of the Holy Spirit might experience uncontrollable jerking or twitching, or might weep, laugh, moan, or even faint. While Finney and many Western ministers argued that such manifestations bespoke the vitality and effectiveness of the revivals, many Eastern clergymen found such displays excessively emotional, indecorous, and of dubious religious significance. Some critics argued that these strange behaviors demonstrated that the revivals were, as Finney himself said, the work of man and not God, and that Finney's converts had simply been swept up in the excitement of the moment. They had not truly become Christians and would soon revert to their former sinful lives. While some converts did revert as predicted, most did not, and a large number went on to show their dedication to the Christian life through participation in benevolent societies and moral reform movements. The enduring success of Finney's techniques made them the norm rather than the exception, providing a model for generations of evangelists and

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making revivals an enduring facet of the American religious experience. Sources: Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper s Millennium. Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill ScWang, 1978); William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America 1607-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Timothy Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).

SHAKERS Early Years. The Shakers, formally called the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, were a small but prominent religious order whose communitarian lifestyle and practice of celibacy drew both harsh criticism and extensive praise from nineteenth-century Americans. The group was founded in England in the early 1770s by a Quaker named Ann Lee, who concluded after several unsuccessful pregnancies that sexual intercourse was at the root of all sin. Lee and her small group of followers held meetings characterized by trembling, shaking, shouting, and singing, earning them the name "Shaking Quakers," or "Shakers." Faced with persecution in England, the Shakers immigrated to New York in 1774. They acquired some land near Albany, where they lived communally and practiced celibacy. They believed that Christ had returned to earth in spirit to begin the thousand years of peace and harmony known as the millennium. Christ's spirit would come to reside in all who lived in harmony and abstained from sin. Beginning in the 1790s, after Ann Lee's death, the Shakers began to make substantial progress in their efforts to convert others to their beliefs and way of life. Under the leadership of Lucy Wright and Joseph Meacham, the Shakers spread to the North and to the West, establishing nineteen communities between Maine and Indiana. By 1825 there were about six thousand people living in Shaker villages. Communal Lifestyle. The Shakers were like many other Americans of the antebellum period in their desire

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A Shaker service in the 1840s

to unite religious ideals with their vision of a perfect society. The society they developed, however, was quite distinctive and unusually successful. Shaker communities were made up of extended "families" of men, women, and children who lived together in large houses that were divided into male and female living quarters. Men and women worked and ate separately, and all goods and chores were shared equally. The children, who joined the communities either with their parents or as orphans, were raised communally. Each village was presided over by groups of elders, both male and female, who dealt with the outside world and carefully regulated both work and leisure within the community in an effort to keep people from tiring at any one task. These efforts must have succeeded, for Shaker fields and shops produced far more than was needed to sustain the community, and the surplus was sold to the outside world. Shaker villages became widely known for their industry and inventiveness, and simple, elegant furniture based on Shaker designs is still highly valued today. The group also made advances in herbal medicine, invented many common items such as the clothespin and the flat broom, and was the first to develop an extensive business selling packaged seeds. Suspicion from Outside. While they had a prosperous and relatively harmonious relationship with the outside world in terms of business, the Shakers were also an object of intense suspicion because of their unusual beliefs and social arrangements. They had their own printing presses, from which they issued numerous books and tracts explaining their beliefs. These publications gained them some converts but also fed the fire of anti-Shaker sentiment that occasionally erupted into mob violence. Some people objected to the Shakers' communal economic arrangements or felt threatened by their economic success, but many more had strong objections to the

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practice of celibacy. On a practical level celibacy seemed a highly unusual practice for a religious group that clearly desired to increase its numbers—leading to accusations that the Shakers abducted children for this purpose. More important, celibacy was seen as inherently contrary to nature, God, and the sanctity of marriage. Traditional notions of the family were further threatened by the unusually prominent role of women in the church. In an age where most men and many women believed that women should remain in positions of deference, the Shakers (whose first leader and visionary was a woman) defied social norms by giving women equal authority in both spiritual and temporal affairs. Even more radical was their belief that God was both male and female, and that Ann Lee had been the feminine incarnation of Jesus. Worship. To those who could accept the choices made by Shakers, the group became something of a marvel. Numerous foreign visitors, as well as such notable American tourists as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, visited Shaker villages and wrote accounts of their remarkable industry and prosperity, the apparent contentment of their members, and the well-tended appearance of their houses and gardens. Many were also fascinated by the distinctive character of Shaker worship. Indeed, this was probably the most important aspect of life for the Shakers themselves. Men and women participated together in highly emotional services that placed great importance on music and dancing. Hundreds of Shaker songs composed during the nineteenth century still survive. Speaking in tongues and falling into trances were also common in Shaker meetings. Between 1837 and 1847, in an early manifestation of the Spiritualist craze that overtook the nation after 1848, public seances became an important part of Shaker religious life. The mediums, who were usually adolescents or older women,

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conveyed messages from deceased members of the Shaker community, Native American "spirit guides," and historical figures ranging from Jesus to George Washington. Eventually, however, most of the mediums left the Shakers, and after 1850 Shaker membership in general began to decline rapidly. Nonetheless, on the whole the group was remarkable in its longevity and stands as one of the nation's most successful communitarian experiments. A small group of Shakers still exists today in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Sources: Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality, The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

SOCIAL REFORM The Push for Reform. As rapid economic development, urbanization, and westward expansion altered the social fabric of American society, many Americans perceived a decline in public morality and civic-minded behavior and a rise in antisocial activities such as drinking, dueling, gambling, and prostitution. If such tendencies were not curbed, they believed, the republic itself, based as it was on notions of responsible citizenship, was threatened with corruption and eventual extinction. The revivals of the Second Great Awakening fed into this current of concern and encouraged people to take action against vice. The primary concern of most revival preachers was to exhort their listeners to follow the way of Christ in their hearts and in their individual conduct. But a true convert, they argued, would be more than simply a pious individual; he or she would also be an upstanding and responsible citizen who would actively seek to better the world. This sentiment was given impetus by the optimistic notion of Charles Grandison Finney and other revivalists that both individual human beings and society as a whole could progress to a state of perfection. If Americans could be converted and convinced to abandon their sins, it was believed, then Christ would return to earth to inaugurate the thousand-year period of peace and harmony known as the millennium. Thus it was with a measure of fear as well as an optimistic belief in human potential that tens of thousands of Americans in the early and mid nineteenth century committed their energies to movements for social and moral reform. Temperance. The first and most enduring moral crusade was the battle against intemperance. For some, intemperance meant the excessive consumption of alcohol, but for others it meant any drinking at all. While opponents thought temperance advocates were overzealous, concerns about drinking were certainly not unfounded: in the 1820s annual per capita consumption of alcohol was about three times what it is today. The fight against alcohol was institutionalized as early as 1813, when Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher founded the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals. Initial attacks were based on a civic- and business-minded rationale, which argued that

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MAGIC AND THE OCCULT

Despite the avowedly Christian character of the United States many Americans in the early nineteenth century continued to believe in forms of $upernaturali$m and divine knowledge that fell beyond the bounds of Christianity. It was not unusual for people to believe in witches* demons, and spells or to practice alchemy or consult fortune tellers. Treasure hunting was m common practice among those who thought that supernatural guidance through dreams, "seer stones,* and divining rods might point the way to untold wonders buried in the earth. Folk magic was practiced for a variety of purposes, from healing illness to enticing chickens to lay eggs. Many educated men o>f the middle and upper classes who might scorn such popular beliefs were proud to belong to the Ancient Free aed Accepted Masons, a secretive organisation that claimed to offer its members access to ancient sources of divine wisdom and spiritual power. Between 1790 and 1840 as many as one hundred thousand men became Freemasons. Although most Masons continued to attend church and expressed reverence for Christ, many Christians condemned them as heretical for their interest in magic and their belief that all people, Christian or non-Christian* would eventually be saved. Source: J<m Butter, A<wmk m & $m &fPmt&: Ckri$ti&nming tktAm&imn Ptdph (Cambridge, M$S$J Hazard Unhrefsitf Fret&, 1990).

drinking made workers unhealthy and less productive and made people in general less capable of responsible behavior toward their families and community. As revivalists took up the cause over the succeeding decades, alcohol consumption came to be increasingly associated not only with irresponsibility and ill health, but also with sin. Hundreds of local temperance societies were organized, as well as national ones such as the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, founded in 1826, and the American Temperance Union, founded in 1836. These organizations sponsored revivals, newspaper advertisements, and public lectures on the evils of alcohol and provided statistics demonstrating the harm caused by drink. While some temperance advocates hoped to make alcohol illegal (and in some states succeeded), others simply opted to use moral tactics to make people ashamed and unwilling to drink. Efforts were particularly aimed at businessmen, who were encouraged to end their long-standing practice of providing drink for their employees. Many complied and even went further, watching to see if their workers drank off the job and remonstrating with them when they did. Others, however, showed little interest in following evangelical dictates. These resisters often experienced the full force of evan-

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Signing the Pledge (1846), a temperance lithograph

gelical opinion when temperance advocates organized successful boycotts of their businesses. Sabbatarianism. Conflict between evangelicals and unconvinced, resentful businessmen also emerged over the issue of Sabbatarianism, or opposition to the conduct of worldly affairs on Sundays. As the American economy became increasingly market-oriented and competitive, entrepreneurs frequently found it necessary to do business seven days a week. Many evangelicals believed that working rather than worshiping on the Sabbath was a sin that threatened the moral foundation of society. In the busy canal town of Rochester, New York, Sabbatarians attempted to put pressure on the shipping industry, which operated both freight and passenger boats seven days a week, by announcing "we will give our business and patronage to such lines as do not travel on the Sabbath." Leading evangelicals Lyman Beecher and Lewis Tappan worked together to oppose transportation and delivery of mail on Sundays. Sabbatarianism was highly controversial and was opposed by many leading Christians. Some were angered by the use of boycotts, which they found unduly coercive. Others found the Sabbatarian campaigns downright un-American since they mandated religious observance rather than allowing the exercise of individual conscience. Other Causes. Evangelical reformers pursued many other causes in their efforts to create moral order and to perfect society. In the 1810s and 1820s they founded hundreds of societies for the distribution of Bibles and religious tracts and the establishment of Sunday schools and mis-

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sions. Religious instruction was to be extended to all levels of society, from the urban poor to the well-educated members of sects whose beliefs were deemed dangerous or immoral. Other reformers founded organizations to promote peace, and still others worked for health reform, believing that the perfection of humanity and society had to include attention to the human body. Most famous among health reformers was Sylvester Graham, inventor of the "graham cracker," who emphasized self-mastery, arguing that improper eating and sexual indulgence hindered both individual salvation and social progress. The reform movement of the most lasting significance was the struggle against slavery, which emerged as a national force in the 1830s. Many prominent participants in the movement were evangelical Protestants whose motivations were religious as well as humanitarian. Slavery supplanted intemperance as the national sin and was portrayed by many evangelicals as the ultimate obstacle to the perfection of American society. Disagreement about the proper tactics for securing an end to slavery, however, ultimately brought discord to the evangelical community. In the late 1830s the established churches came under fire for their unwillingness to take action against slaveholders. Their refusal to take a clear stance against this greatest of all sins resulted in the departure of many of the most radical abolitionists from evangelical ranks. Sources: Robert Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Social Reformers and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);

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Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978); Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers 1815-1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978).

SOUTHERN PROTESTANTISM Southern Custom. The South, like the North, was deeply affected by the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. Until the late eighteenth century, Southerners as a group were not particularly pious. Southern culture was dominated by a wealthy male aristocracy often more interested in personal honor than in salvation. Although nominally members of the Anglican Church (Church of England), many Southern aristocrats viewed church services as little more than social occasions and were given to cursing, gambling, and dueling the other six days of the week. The wave of religious revivals that swept the South in the 1790s and early 1800s, when zealous preachers began a fullfledged missionary effort there, dramatically altered this traditional culture. Many members of the Anglican aristocracy were converted and convinced to alter their values and behavior and to respect the Christian values of love and kindness. More significantly, the revivals brought large numbers of previously unchurched middle- and lower-class Southerners into the evangelical churches and gave them a new sense of self-worth and stature in Southern society. Revivals and Cultural Change. The Southern revivals, held primarily by Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, were characterized by a high degree of emotionalism similar to that of the camp meetings of the Western frontier. Preachers stressed the importance of a dramatic conversion experience and sought to bring their listeners to a state of acute awareness of their sins using a variety of techniques, including the recounting of dreams, visions, and personal struggles with sin. Many were unlettered men who spoke colloquially and appealed to poor and uneducated people who had been passed over by the staid and unwelcoming services of the Anglican Church. Influenced by the rhetoric of the American Revolution, preachers emphasized the equality of all men before God and the ability of all to think for themselves and guide their own lives. By valuing the achievement of salvation and personal piety above all, they offered an appealing alternative to old ways of determining stature in Southern society. Money and personal valor became less important as formerly disconnected individuals united in a solid community of the converted that used public preaching and disciplinary action to reinforce the sense of distance between Christians and non-Christians. Women gained respect as naturally pious teachers and nurturers, and the newly converted poor were able to feel a dignity that had formerly been denied them. Decline of Antislavery. The emphasis on social reform that accompanied Northern revivalism was largely absent in the South. Rather than engaging directly with the nation's political and social institutions, Southern evangelicals preferred to influence the world by personal example. They placed a high value on the outward life of the individual and

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The Reverend Henry Spalding, a Presbyterian missionary who went west in late 1836. He is holding a Bible and a hoe, representing his dual mission to the Indians.

argued that it was the duty of each saved person to be a holy example to the unrepentant. Conspicuously absent from nineteenth-century Southern evangelical culture was the antislavery sentiment so common among Northern evangelicals. The Methodist and Baptist preachers who had come to the South in the eighteenth century had spoken of the spiritual equality of both races, offered the same sense of dignity and self-respect to all races, licensed African Americans as preachers, and had spoken out directly against the evils of slavery. In 1784 the Methodists pledged to excommunicate all members who did not free their slaves within two years. By 1815, however, pressure from converted slaveholders and other proslavery whites had led both denominations to abandon their stance against the institution. White Southerners had become increasingly uncomfortable with integrated worship and began to oppose the authority of African Americans in the church. By the 1830s most white Southern evangelicals had completely rejected the heritage of an earlier generation that had valued people of color as church members and had been deeply influenced by African forms of spirituality and worship. In 1843 Methodists in the South owned more than two hundred thousand slaves.

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Brook Farm (1844) by Josiah Wolcott (Massachusetts Historical Society)

Christian Arguments for Slavery. The alteration of the evangelical position on slavery resulted from several factors, including the increasing economic dependence of the South on slave labor, the rising volume of abolitionist sentiment in the North, and the fear caused by several slave insurrections that had been rooted in Christian sentiment. Although some slaveholders believed religion made slaves unruly and thus refused to allow missionaries or revival preachers to address their slaves at all, most continued to favor the religious instruction of slaves. They hoped that a carefully controlled plan of religious education would engender respect and obedience and would convince slaves to accept their lot in life with Christian humility. Equally important, the evangelization of their slaves provided masters with a powerful justification for slavery that could be used in the struggle against abolitionist sentiment. They had long used a scriptural justification for slavery based on the idea that God had sanctioned slavery both among the Old Testament patriarchs and in the time of Jesus, but now they could also argue that they were ensuring the salvation of the souls of savages who would otherwise be damned. Slavery, they asserted, was a good, Christian institution in which masters did a service for their slaves that could not be matched in the North, where free blacks were left to wander alone without the much-needed nurturing and guidance of whites. While few Northerners could accept this argument, prominent missionaries such as Presbyterian Charles Colcock Jones and Methodist William Capers, concerned about the lack of regular church attendance among most slaves and eager to promote the Christianization of the institution of slavery, were willing to accommodate their message to the wishes of slaveholders. Schisms. By the mid 1830s both Northerners and Southerners held deeply entrenched attitudes toward slavery that they believed were rooted in Christian morality.

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The disparity in these attitudes ultimately led to divisions within the evangelical denominations along the lines that would soon divide the nation. In 1837 the Presbyterian Church split into two factions known as the Old School and the New School. Most of the Presbyterians who were leading the abolitionist fight in the North belonged to the New School, which officially repudiated the scriptural argument for slavery, while proslavery Southerners made up much of the Old School. The Methodist Church experienced a schism in 1844 as opposing sides at the denomination's General Conference came to a deadlock over whether slaveholders should be subject to discipline by the church. And in 1845 the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention marked the formal division of the Baptist Church along sectional lines. Although most other churches remained formally united, none could escape the disruptive effect of the slavery question. The conflict provoked within the churches led to increasingly elaborate scriptural and moral arguments on both sides of the issue and became a powerful force in the hardening of opinions that resulted in civil war. Sources: Anne C. Loveland, Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800-1860(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980); Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

TRANSCENDENTALISM Origins. Transcendentalism was a literary, religious, and philosophical movement that began in New England in the 1830s. It had no formal structure or doctrine but rather consisted of the ideas of a group of people who shared a common outlook and interests. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Mar-

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garet Fuller, Orestes Augustus Brownson, and many others met frequently near Boston for conversation and in 1840 began publishing a periodical, The Dial, to express their views. While topics of discussion ranged over a variety of subjects from education to slavery to the distinctiveness of the American character, most Transcendentalists saw the movement as essentially spiritual. Like many others of their day, they were religious seekers with enthusiasm for utopianism and social reform. They were distinguished, however, by the intellectual rigor with which they explored their interests and their incorporation of a wide variety of traditions, including ancient mysticism and other nonChristian beliefs, in their quest for spiritual truth. Inward Experience. Although several Transcendentalists, notably James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and William Henry Channing, were Unitarian ministers, as a general rule the movement was not based around the practice of public worship in a church. Dissatisfied with the doctrines and styles of worship of the established churches, most Transcendentalists rejected religious dogma in favor of a simple belief in human moral potential and intuitive capacity for discovering spiritual truth. They believed that divinity lay in man and nature, and so true religion meant seeking the divine in oneself and one's surroundings. Inward experience was seen as the ultimate path to spiritual satisfaction, and thus they cultivated a lifestyle that encouraged contemplation, communing with nature, continuing education, and creative expression. Many kept regular journals, which they considered invaluable tools in the process of self-examination. Communal Interests. Along with their commitment to the development of the individual, many Transcendentalists also held a deep appreciation for communal activities. They shared their private journals with one another and laid almost ritual significance on their regular meetings for conversation. Several became involved in the development of Utopian communities, which they believed might provide ideal conditions for personal growth and living in harmony with nature. In 1841 Unitarian minister George Ripley established a 160-acre community called Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where all members worked together at agriculture, industry, and crafts. Many Transcendentalists became frequent visitors or members of the farm, where they created a well-respected school and held cultural events and public conversations, until a fire destroyed much of the community in 1846. In 1843 Alcott established another community, Fruitlands, thirty miles from Boston. Members were required to conform to restrictive patterns of eating, dress, and hygiene that were intended to be socially conscious (cotton was forbidden because it was produced by the slavery of people, wool because of the slavery of sheep) and conducive to personal development. Some of the ideals set for the community proved hard to meet, and when one influential member sought to introduce celibacy, the experiment came to an end after only seven months.

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Reform and Influence. The impulse toward improving or even perfecting society that drew many Transcendentalists to utopianism was also manifest in their involvement in social reform movements and educational endeavors. Drawing on the liberal, rationalistic tradition of Unitarianism, they rejected the widespread Calvinist notion that humans are innately sinful and helpless before God, accepting instead that man is a moral creature with a natural capacity to do good. Seeking to cultivate this capacity in themselves and others, they spoke out on social issues from economic inequality to slavery to women's rights. While Transcendentalist publications were poorly circulated in their time, Emerson and others drew public attention to their ideas on religion, literature, philosophy, and social issues by traveling the country on a lecture circuit where they addressed as many as fifty thousand people at a time. Many of their listeners were undoubtedly moved by what they heard, but the diffuse and informal nature of the Transcendentalist movement makes its popular influence difficult to gauge. It is clear, however, that Transcendentalism had a lasting impact on American literature, particularly through the works of Emerson, and laid the groundwork for new movements as diverse as the tradition of theological liberalism of the later nineteenth century and the environmental conservation movement of the early twentieth century. Sources: Catherine L. Albanese, Corresponding Motion: Transcendental Religion and the New America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977); Paul F. Boiler Jr. .American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (New York: Putnam, 1974).

WOMEN AND RELIGION Female Piety. The role of women in religious life expanded tremendously during the nineteenth century and helped elevate the position of women in public life in general. In colonial times women made up the majority of most churches, often constituting as much as two-thirds of a given congregation. But church leaders were traditionally men, who were believed to hold the only authority to speak on religious matters. After the American Revolution, however, this situation began to change. The state churches were disestablished, and ministers and their churches lost their official public roles. As religion became more personal and voluntary, it also became more clearly connected with home life, and by extension, with women. Women were thought to be pious and moral by nature, while men, who dealt with the secular world, were inclined toward brutish behavior and vice. It was the proper role of women, therefore, to instruct their husbands and children in spiritual matters. This duty became all the more important as the nation expanded. Families migrated to unpopulated areas where there were often no churches for dozens or even hundreds of miles. Mothers, it was believed, had the innate and vitally important ability to ensure that a moral and virtuous society was maintained. New Roles. While the changes wrought by disestablishment elevated female spiritual authority in the public eye,

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they did little to alter the traditional notion that a woman's place was in the home. Rather, that notion was reinforced by the pervasive idea that a virtuous republic could be maintained only if there were good, selfsacrificing wives and mothers at home to give moral strength to their families. But the revivals of the 1820s and 1830s began to expand women's roles into the world beyond the home. The novel experience of offering public testimony of their faith at a revival offered many women a form of emancipation from their cloistered domestic lives. Revival preachers encouraged all of their converts, male and female, to share their experiences with the larger community, and many heeded their call, going door-to-door or holding prayer meetings in their homes. In doing so, women ceased to be simply objects of the revivals and became active evangelists themselves. Public Life. Formal ordination for women was rare in the nineteenth century, but there were other ways to become active in the evangelical drive to convert the world. Many women became missionaries, both at home and abroad, often remaining unmarried in order to devote themselves fully to their godly professions. Others traveled on revival circuits, preaching and exhorting on an informal basis before large audiences. Nancy Towle, a Free Will Baptist, began preaching and holding revivals as early as 1815 and was once invited to preach before the United States Congress. At first many people of both sexes were startled or even offended by the idea of women speaking in public. Some attended religious gatherings simply to gape at the spectacle where women were lecturing or preaching. Once there, however, many were moved by the power of the speakers and began to abandon some of their prejudices. By midcentury female religious authority had become sufficiently accepted to allow several women to lead new religious movements and denominations. Most notably, Ellen Harmon White became the prophetess and leader of Seventh Day Adventism and Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science. Reform. Participation in religious life also helped women move into broader spheres of activity outside the home that offered many a much-needed sense of intellectual fulfillment. Encouraged by revivalists such as Finney, many women became leading activists in the social reform movements of their day. Separate female benevolent societies were formed by some women, while others came to stand on equal footing with men in established societies. Again they met resistance, this time from people who felt it indecent for women and men to mingle behind the closed doors of committee meetings, but they held their ground. With stature gained from participation in the religious realm, women began to give public lectures against intemperance, gambling, prostitution, and other sins. Sarah and Angelina Weld Grimke, Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott, and others emerged as prominent voices in the anti-

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ROCHESTER RAPPINGS In March 1848 two young sisters named Kate and Margaret Fox began hearing mysterious rapping noises in their house near Rochester, New York, Interpreting the sounds as communications from the dead, the girls set up a code system by which the spirits could respond to their questions. Friends and neighbors flocked to the Fox house to ask their own questions and speak to deceased loved ones. The following year an older sister became the girls' publicity manager; P. T. Barnum made them part of his show; and they were soon national celebrities. As their fame spread, so did the national enthusiasm for Spiritualism, the belief in communication between living humans and disembodied spirits, generally through a medium. At seances across the country objects moved by themselves; instruments played in locked cabinets; and men and women revealed apparently unknowable information while in trance states, convincing thousands of the reality of the spirit world. Some enthusiasts, mindful of accusations of fraud against many mediums, were content to view spiritualist seances as simple entertainment. For others, however, seances were deeply religious experiences, offering "scientific" proof of the existence of the human soul after death. Spiritualist mediums and writers tended to reject the claims of the clergy to any special religious authority and to stress the ability of every individual to follow his or her conscience. Many rejected the idea of hell as unjust and argued that all people would eventually be saved. The movement had widespread appeal to people of all social and educational levels, and served as both an extension of and an alternative to mainstream religious beliefs.

Source: R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

slavery crusade. Empowered by these roles, many of the same women in turn became leading figures in the struggle for woman's rights. Sources: Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Janet W. James, ed., Women in American Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980); Rosemary E. Ruether and Rosemary S. Keller, Women and Religion in America: A Documentary History, volume 1 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981).

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HEADLINE MAKERS

RICHARD ALLEN 176O-1831

bers of the church walked out, never to return. Some formed an Episcopal church and others, following Allen, remained Methodists and formed the Bethel African Church in 1794.

Early Life. Richard Allen was born a slave in Philadelphia in 1760 and sold to a man in Delaware while still a child. He experienced a religious conversion as a teenager, joined the Methodist Church, and began preaching the Gospel to all who would listen. Though Allen's master was not a churchgoer, he permitted Allen and his brother to attend Methodist meetings. At Allen's request, he also allowed a renowned Methodist preacher to speak in his house. The sermon convinced the master that slaveholding was wrong, and he gave Allen the opportunity to purchase his freedom. Allen worked at a variety of jobs and traveled extensively, preaching and offering religious counsel as he went.

Community Leadership. Allen remained committed to Methodism because he felt its informal preaching style was suited to the unlettered men and women he hoped to reach. Furthermore, he believed that the Methodist system of discipline, in which each member kept watch over all the others, would help reform behavior and uplift people into sober and pious lives. The size of the Bethel African Church and the extent of Allen's influence in the black community grew rapidly. Committed not only to the spiritual development of his flock but also to their moral, educational, and political improvement, Allen helped found numerous societies to pursue these goals, including the Bethel Benevolent Society and the African Society for the Education of Youth. These organizations were meant to foster community action and racial pride and to help African Americans get out of poverty through discipline and hard work. Only by leading upright lives, Allen believed, could they alter racist assumptions about their inferiority.

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Philadelphia Ministry. Once free, Allen returned to Philadelphia, where he had been asked to minister to the black members of Saint George's Church. He was extremely successful and added many more African Americans to the church rolls. The black community in Philadelphia was largely uneducated, poor, and unchurched and included many recently freed slaves who had migrated north in search of work. Allen wanted to reach out to these "long forgotten people," as he called them, and believed that the best way to do so would be to establish an all-black church. Although rebuffed in this effort by the white elder of Saint George's, Allen and another black church member, Absalom Jones, decided in 1787 to organize a nondenominational religious group, the Free African Society, to serve as a mutual aid organization and a source of religious and moral guidance for African Americans. The members of the society continued to belong to the mixed-race (and white-run) Saint George's Church until 1792, when black members were suddenly commanded to sit upstairs in the gallery instead of on their normal benches on the main floor. After Absalom Jones was forcefully relocated by white trustees during a prayer session, all of the black mem-

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Formation of the A.M.E. Church. During the first decade of the nineteenth century Allen's Bethel African Church increasingly came into conflict with the white elders of the Methodist conference to which the church belonged. The elders wanted to control the church property, as well as to determine who preached there, while the black church members sought to retain these privileges for themselves. Similar struggles were occurring in other cities, and in 1816 Allen called black Methodists from Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to a convention in Philadelphia. After discussing their common problems, the delegates resolved to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, which they hoped would "preserve us from that spiritual despotism which we have so recently experienced." Richard Allen was elected the church's first bishop. Growth of the Church. Not all church leaders supported Allen's ideas about church structure and discipline, and many thought him overly ambitious. He was criticized for being too public in his condemnation of white people and thus promoting racial tension and was falsely accused

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of improper use of church funds. By 1821 two additional black denominations had been established by those who rejected Allen's leadership. Nonetheless, the A.M.E. church prospered under his guidance. By 1826 membership in the denomination had grown to almost eight thousand people, who were served by seventeen itinerant ministers. By 1827 the church had sent missionaries west to Ohio, north to Canada, and as far south as Haiti. Allen continued his single-minded effort to improve the situation of African Americans. In 1827 he published a statement condemning colonization (the plan to send freed slaves to Africa), arguing that "this land which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds, and the gospel is free." In 1830 he served as the president of the national Negro convention, which made recommendations to black leaders for encouraging racial unity, self-help, and education in agriculture and the mechanical arts. A year later Allen died at the age of seventy-one, having taken important steps toward making his country a place where African Americans might prosper and live with dignity. Source: Albert J. Raboteau, "Richard Allen and the African Church Movement," in Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Leon Litwack and August Meier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

LYMAN BEECHER 1775-1863

CLERGYMAN AND MORAL CRUSADER Leader. Lyman Beecher was one of the best-known and most influential clergymen of his day. Like many of his contemporaries, Beecher believed that the United States was a chosen land, where the kingdom of God would be established once society was sufficiently reformed. He took it upon himself, therefore, to provide a voice of leadership both in the conversion of souls and in numerous moral crusades. A successful revivalist whose deep concern with national destiny spoke to the hopes and sensibilities of many Americans, Beecher was also a staunch anti-Catholic, who did his best to exclude one segment of the population from full acceptance as American citizens. Education. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on 12 October 1775, Beecher was raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle. He had little interest in agriculture, and he declined to become heir to his uncle's property and profession. Instead, he left the farm in 1793 for Yale College, where he came under the influence of the college's esteemed president, Timothy Dwight. Dwight, a poet, essayist, and Con-

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gregationalist minister, believed that New England tradition, and indeed the fabric of American society, were threatened by the enlightenment radicalism of infidels and Deists. He devoted his efforts at Yale to ensuring that his students did not stray down these paths, advocating instead a view of the religious life as the active pursuit of a godly social order. Beecher was converted under Dwight's tutelage and preaching, as were Asahel Nettleton, Nathaniel William Taylor, and others who would become leading ministers of their day. Dwight remained an important figure and role model for Beecher for years to come. First Ministry. Beecher entered the ministry in 1799 and established his reputation as a moral reformer soon afterward. His first ministerial post was at a Presbyterian church in East Hampton, New York. There he proved himself an effective revivalist and also launched a crusade against the practice of dueling, inspired by Alexander Hamilton's death in a duel with Aaron Burr. Beecher saw the practice of dueling as emblematic of the decline of the social order without which a free and virtuous republic could not survive. Duelists, he argued, were members of a privileged social class who believed themselves above the law and common morality. He advocated voting duelists out of office and offered a vision of politics guided by the notion of the United States as a sacred land. Defense of Orthodoxy. In 1810 Beecher accepted the ministry of the First Church in Litchfield, Connecticut, where he engaged in a protracted battle against Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Deists in defense of Calvinist or Puritan orthodoxy. Congregationalism remained the established religion of Connecticut, and Beecher hoped to keep it that way, calling for a return to the sacred order of New England's Puritan founders through the diligent enforcement of laws against intemperance, Sabbath breaking, and other forms of immorality. Despite his efforts Congregationalism was disestablished as the official church of the state of Connecticut in 1818. In many ways this signaled an end to the traditional religious culture of Puritan New England and the rise of the new Protestant evangelical ethos. Although Beecher initially reacted to his defeat by sinking into a depression, he later called disestablishment "the best thing that ever happened to the State of Connecticut," for disestablishment created a stronger need for an active and zealous clergy who "by voluntary efforts, societies, missions, and revivals" could "exert a deeper influence than ever they could [before]." Reform Efforts. True to his word, after disestablishment Beecher devoted himself wholeheartedly to the association of evangelism with moral reform and social benevolence. He helped establish missionary organizations, pressured influential men to keep their businesses closed on Sundays, and became a leading voice in the temperance movement, publishing his Six Sermons on Intemperance in 1826. That same year he moved to the Hanover Street Congregational Church in Boston, where he became a leading conservative voice against liberals and Unitarians as

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well as against the new revivalist style of Charles Grandison Finney. These opponents, he believed, wrongfully stressed human will to the detriment of traditional Calvinist emphases on original sin and divine sovereignty. Battle for the West. In 1832 Beecher gained further prominence when he moved west to head Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. He accepted the post because he firmly believed that "the moral destiny of our nation, and all our institutions and hopes, the world's hopes, turns on the character of the West." The West was a land of promise, but for Beecher its potential could be fulfilled only if evangelical Protestantism gained as much influence there as it had in the East. In A Plea for the West, published in 1835, Beecher articulated the popular notion that the greatest threat to the West lay in Catholicism. Protestants, he argued, had made great strides toward reforming the nation and preparing for the thousand-year reign of Christ. But Catholic immigrants were spreading rapidly toward the Mississippi Valley, where they might claim American soil for the Pope and thwart Protestant efforts to perfect the nation. Beecher spread his anti-Catholic message wherever he went and delivered three anti-Catholic sermons to large congregations in Boston the night before a mob burned down the Ursuline Convent in nearby Charlestown. Legacy. Beecher ended his preaching career in 1843 and retired from Lane Seminary in 1850. By then he had become more liberal in his thinking, believing less in human sinfulness and divine sovereignty and more in the potential for human progress. He had married three times and fathered eleven children, of whom Edward, Henry Ward, Catharine, and Harriet (Beecher Stowe) followed in his footsteps to become important figures in American religious history. He died on 10 January 1863. Sources: James Fraser, Pedagogue for God's Kingdom: Lyman Beecher and the Second Great Awakening (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985); Vincent Harding, A Certain Magnificence: Lyman Beecher and the Transformation of American Protestantism 1775-1863 (New York: Carlson, 1991).

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL 1788-1866

CHRISTIAN REFORMER Early Disaffection. Alexander Campbell was one of the founders of the denomination known today as the Disciples of Christ and was the most influential figure in the Restoration Movement, an effort to restore the practices of the early Christians to nineteenth-century Protestantism. A gifted speaker and prolific writer with a sharp wit, Campbell engaged in numerous public debates and gained a widespread repu-

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tation as a dedicated reformer and a rigorous religious thinker. Although his family was of Scottish origin, Campbell was born in Ireland on 12 September 1788. His father, Thomas, was a reform-minded Presbyterian minister who educated his son at home before sending him to the University of Glasgow in Scotland. There Alexander gained an impressive knowledge of the Bible but also became disturbed by the division of the Presbyterian Church into factions that quarreled over petty points of doctrine and demanded rigid and unquestioning allegiance from their members. He began to distance himself from his strict Presbyterian upbringing, eventually walking out in the midst of a communion service. Scripture Alone. Campbell arrived in the United States in 1809 and settled in western Pennsylvania, where his father had been living for more than a year. Much to their delight, the two men found that during their separation their thoughts had run along similar lines. Both were deeply concerned that sectarianism, even more prominent in America than it had been in Scotland, was destroying the unity of the Christian church. Each sect had its own set of beliefs by which it defined itself against all others. Most had a creed, or "test of fellowship," consisting of a list of beliefs to which any candidate for church membership was required to subscribe. And most actively competed with other sects to convince potential converts that theirs was the one true faith. The Campbells believed that most points of contention among these sects were based not in the divine authority of the Bible, but in human innovations made over the centuries since the establishment of the Christian Church. It was their great hope that if such human creeds could be eliminated, eventually all believers could abandon their denominations to be simply Christians, united in one true faith. Thus, in 1811 father and son organized their own church at Brush Run, Pennsylvania, which had no denominational name and no test of fellowship for membership, and was guided by a single phrase coined by Thomas Campbell: "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." Disciples of Christ. Although for a time the Campbells remained loosely affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, and then with the Baptist Church, by the late 1820s they had emerged as a distinct religious group under Alexander's leadership. After marrying the daughter of a wealthy farmer, the younger Campbell acquired a sizable estate in present-day West Virginia, where he established his own printing business. In 1823 he began editing and publishing a monthly periodical, the Christian Baptist, in which he explicated the characteristics of the original apostolic, or "primitive," church, as he had come to understand them through careful biblical study. He and other likeminded ministers traveled through much of the Mid-

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west and upper South, preaching and urging their listeners to read the Bible for themselves and then abandon their creeds and doctrines in the name of Christian unity. The simplicity of Campbell's message, its appeal to biblical authority, and its nonhierarchical, democratic sensibility attracted many people who joined together to worship as they believed the apostles had, calling themselves simply "disciples of Christ." In 1832 Campbell's movement merged with Barton Stone's "Christians," a similar group that had emerged in Kentucky around the turn of the century. The Christians, like Campbell's group, had hoped to promote unity by eschewing a name or a formal institutional foundation. But the merging of the two groups, which together encompassed twenty-two thousand people, brought more structure to the movement, and over the next two decades it developed into a new denomination, complete with annual meetings, educational facilities, and missionary societies. Known as the Disciples of Christ, the denomination had grown to almost two hundred thousand members by 1860. Public Life. While Campbell's interests were primarily focused on religious matters, he was unquestionably concerned about secular society as well. He believed that his plan for Christian union would promote harmony and progress in society as a whole, and he engaged in frequent debates to popularize his ideas. Most famous was his nine-day duel with a renowned infidel, the British social reformer Robert Owen, in which Campbell defended the validity of Christianity. The debate, held in Cincinnati in 1829, was attended by more than twelve thousand people and earned Campbell (who was judged the winner) widespread acclaim. In the same year Campbell was elected to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, where he served as a vigorous advocate for his constituency and became close friends with James Madison, who was impressed with his abilities as a preacher. In 1830 Campbell discontinued publication of the Christian Baptist and began the MillennialHarbinger (published until 1863), a monthly periodical whose title captured Campbell's optimistic belief that American society was progressing and Christ's return to earth (the millennium) might occur soon. Campbell was also deeply dedicated to education, for women as well as men. He ran several secondary schools, and in 1840 he founded the Disciples' first institution of higher learning, Bethany College. He served as president of Bethany from 1840 until his death in 1866, having ensured that a corps of educated and enthusiastic ministers would carry on his work in the rapidly expanding church. Sources: Lester G. McAllister and William E. Tucker, A Journey in Faith: A History of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1975); Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Cincinnati: R. W. Carrol, 1872).

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WILLIAM MILLER 1782-1849 MILLENARIAN PROPHET A Skeptical Youth. William Miller provided the impetus behind one of the most intense periods of millennial expectation in American history. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on 15 February 1782 and raised on the Vermont frontier, he grew up in the formative years of the new nation. His father was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and though his mother was the daughter of a minister, Miller himself was moved early on by the rationalistic, enlightenment principles expounded by some of the most prominent revolutionaries. He proclaimed himself a Deist and rejected Christianity as superstition. When he returned home after service in the War of 1812, however, his attitude had changed. Observing that the United States had won the war despite the failings of many individuals who participated, he concluded that God had played a direct role in his nation's victory. He began attending revival meetings and in 1815 had a dramatic conversion experience. As he described it, "God by his Holy Spirit opened my eyes. I saw Jesus as a friend, and my only help, and the Word of God as a perfect rule of duty." He joined the Baptist Church and began to study the Bible in earnest. Bible Study. Within a few years of his conversion Miller had reached the conclusion that would raise great expectations in the hearts of thousands of believers: Christ would return to earth to usher in the thousandyear period of peace and prosperity known as the millennium in 1843. While expectation of the millennium (or the Advent) was common in the early nineteenth century, prediction of such a precise date for its arrival was not. But Miller had approached the Bible with the same rational mind that had once made him a skeptic. In the course of two years of intense study he had scrutinized the Bible word by word, seeking to prove the truth of its contents by demonstrating its internal consistency. He devoted special attention to the parts of Scripture that dealt with the end of the world, or apocalypse. By seemingly logical manipulation of symbolic numbers in the Book of Daniel he was able to calculate a precise year when the millennium would come. "I was thus brought," he later wrote, "at the close of my two-year study of the Scriptures, to the solemn conclusion that in about twenty-five years from that time [1818] all the affairs of our present state would be wound up." Public Life. Though initially reluctant to air his prediction in public, by the early 1830s Miller felt a calling from God to go out and spread the word of Christ's impending return. He became a successful lay preacher,

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sparking revivals as he traveled through New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. In 1833 he was ordained as a Baptist minister. In 1835 he published a book explaining his beliefs and how they had developed. While the book was relatively well received, Miller achieved national prominence only after 1839, when he and his cause were taken up by a Boston minister named Joshua V. Himes. Himes was a skilled publicist and organizer, and he arranged meetings across the country at which Miller would preach his Adventist message. In one six-month period Miller preached more than three hundred times. To reinforce Miller's message Himes published two millennialist newspapers, a book of millennial hymns, and numerous tracts urging people to prepare themselves for Christ's return. Opposition and Success. The revivals of the Second Great Awakening had already raised expectations among thousands of men and women who believed the millennium was near. Although millennial fervor had cooled somewhat after the economic depression of 1837, it was quickly revived by the popular preaching of Miller and his followers in the early 1840s. Many leaders of the established denominations took great exception to Miller's teachings, believing it highly imprudent to place the Second Coming at such a precise time. Others simply felt Miller's calculations were incorrect. And many felt threatened as increasing numbers of their congregants joined Miller's movement. Miller, however, had no desire to start a new denomination and urged people to continue attending their own churches in addition to Adventist meetings. Most of them obeyed. Estimates of the total membership of the movement at its peak range from ten thousand to as many as a million. It is likely that the lower number is more representative of those who were fully committed to the movement, commonly referred to as Millerinarianism. Thousands more, however, were no doubt intrigued by Miller's prediction, and must have felt tremendous anticipation as the year 1843 approached. Disappointment. It was Miller's belief that Christ would return sometime between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844. When the latter date came and went without incident, Miller reported that he had been mistaken in his original calculation and named 22 October 1844 as the correct date. But that day, too, passed. The world seemed the same as ever, and Miller and thousands of other believers faced what has been called "the great disappointment." Most of Miller's followers abandoned the movement, some in disgust, others in despair. Yet a small group continued to believe the millennium was imminent even though an exact date could no longer be predicted. In 1845 a group of these steadfast Adventists, including William Miller, convened in Albany, where they began planning a congregational structure for an Adventist church. This marked a significant departure from the earlier nonsectarian character of the movement. There was, however, little agreement among the Advent-

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ists about what the specific beliefs and practices of the new church would be. Debates raged over evangelism, reform, observance of the Sabbath, and the very nature of the millennium itself. The movement was still torn by conflicting opinion when William Miller died in 1849. He ended his life disheartened and confused, just one of many in a generation of seekers who hoped, at least for a moment, to put a finger on the truth. Nonetheless, his legacy lives on today in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which emerged from one faction of the Albany congregants and flourished in the later nineteenth century under the leadership of Ellen H. White. Sources: Ruth Alden Doan, The Miller Heresy, Millennialismy and American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); David Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets. Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 1800-1850 (Chico, Cal.: Scholars, 1985).

PHOEBE PALMER 18O7-1874

EVANGELIST

Spiritual Longing. Phoebe Palmer was among the best-known female evangelists of the mid nineteenth century. She was also a leading figure in the holiness movement, which was guided by the belief that Christians could obtain complete freedom from sin. Born Phoebe Warrall in New York City on 18 December 1807, she was raised in a devout Methodist family. She was deeply pious from an early age but was troubled by the fact that she had never experienced the kind of dramatic conversion experience that convinced most believers of their own sin and salvation. In 1827 she married Walter Palmer, a young Methodist physician with whom she felt a deep spiritual bond. During the early years of their marriage the couple struggled through the deaths of three young children. Although devastated by her loss, Phoebe Palmer retained her faith and continued to work as a private Bible teacher, still longing for a deeper religious experience. This came at last on 26 July 1837, when she suddenly felt the Spirit of God within her and experienced sanctification, a sense that she had been freed from the necessity of sin and called to full devotion to God. After that "day of days," she later noted, she felt "that I would rather die than knowingly sin against God. I have enjoyed the consciousness that He is the supreme object of my affections." Sanctification. Phoebe Palmer's experience of sanctification occurred while she was attending a series of weekly prayer meetings run by her sister, Sarah Lankford. Known as the "Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness," these gatherings were rooted in the theology of Methodist founder John Wesley. Wesley had contended that after an initial conversion experience, in which one's sins were forgiven by God, one might experience a "second blessing" (or sanctification) that would

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make one holy, released from all intentional or conscious sin, and capable of moral perfection. Although it originated among the Methodists, from the 1830s onward this doctrine of sanctification became popular among revivalists from other denominations as well, many of whom urged their congregants to strive for a perfect state of sinlessness. After Phoebe Palmer experienced sanctification, she took over leadership of the Tuesday meetings, which were open to both men and women and attracted a distinguished group of believers, including leading members of several denominations and prominent teachers of holiness from throughout the Englishspeaking world. There she first expounded upon her view that holiness was available to all who had faith in Christ and truly surrendered their souls to his service. The response to her simple message was enthusiastic, and in 1839 editor Timothy Merrit launched a monthly periodical called the Guide to Holiness that printed the testimonies heard at her meetings. A Woman's Right. Although Palmer was at first reluctant to share her experiences in the presence of men, the enthusiastic support of many ministers, including Methodist leader Nathan Bangs, began to alter her thinking and encouraged her to set social conventions aside. After a prominent Congregationalist minister, Thomas Upham, received the second blessing under her guidance, she lost what reservations remained and began to write for the religious press and to travel broadly, speaking at revivals in front of large audiences. In 1843 some of her essays were collected into a volume called The Way of Holiness, an immediate international success that sold twenty-four thousand copies by 1851. Nine more books followed. While Palmer worked to avoid calling attention to herself when she spoke, at the same

time she insisted that God's grace fell on men and women equally and that every person who experienced such a great gift had a duty to share and pass it on to others. She avoided the woman's rights movement and cannot be called a feminist, but she contributed much to the movement by example and in 1850 published The Promise of the Father, in which she unwaveringly defended the right of women to preach. Benevolence. Motivated by her commitment to the possibility of moral and spiritual perfection for every human being, Phoebe Palmer actively engaged in missionary and benevolent work. Hoping to save the souls of the poor, she sponsored and worked for several missionary efforts, including the first Methodist mission to China. While distributing religious tracts in the slums of New York City, she came to see that the need for food and shelter might have to come before salvation. She helped to provide both, donating time and money and occasionally acting as a foster parent. At her insistence the Ladies Home Missionary Society in 1850 established a mission in the desperately poor Five Points district of New York, where people in need could have access to rent-free apartments, a chapel, schools, and public baths. After 1850 Palmer and her husband became increasingly active as revivalists. Her Tuesday Meetings remained popular after the Civil War and were continued after her death in 1874. Interest in holiness and the attainment of Christian perfection is still strong today. Sources: Timothy Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Charles Edward White, The Beauty of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer as Theologian, Revivalist, Feminist, and Humanitarian (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Francis Asbury Press, 1986).

PUBLICATIONS

Lyman Beecher, A Pleafor the West (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith, 1835)—originally a fundraising speech for Lane Theological Seminary, this anti-Catholic pamphlet became a classic statement of nativist fears as well as an optimistic tribute to the potential of the American West; Orestes Brownson, New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church (Boston: James Munroe, 1836)—this work brought the reform-minded Brownson, who

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later became one of the nation's most prominent converts to Catholicism, to the forefront of the Transcendentalist movement; Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelation and a Voice to Mankind (New York: S. S. Lyon &W. Fishbough, 1847)—reportedly dictated to scribes while Davis, the leading philosopher of Spiritualism, was in a trance state. This work treats such topics as utopianism, deistic naturalism, and hu-

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man progress, capturing much of the expansive religious spirit of the 1840s; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (Boston: James Munroe, 1836)—an optimistic tribute to individualism and human potential that became one of the first authoritative expositions of Transcendentalist thought; Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Leavitt, 1835)—a "how-to" manual for professional revivalists; Ann Hasseltine Judson, A Particular Relation of the American Mission to the Burmese Empire (Washington: J. S. Meehan, 1823)—typical of the popular personal accounts that stimulated enthusiasm for the missionary movement; Asa Mahan, Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection (Boston: D. S. King, 1840)—a description of how a believer might obtain full victory over sin, reflecting the perfectionist ideas of the 1830s and 1840s, by the president of Oberlin College; William Miller, Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, About the Year 1843 (Syracuse, N.Y.: T. A. & S. F. Smith, 1835)—provided exact calculations showing that Christ would return to earth in 1843;

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Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as Exhibited in a Narrative of Her Suffering During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years as a Black Nun, in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal (New York: Published by Maria Monk, 1836)—the most popular of the fraudulent anti-Catholic convent-expose books of the 1830s; Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness (New York: Foster & Palmer Jr., 1843)—an influential collection of essays describing the author's experience of attaining sanctification; Theodore Parker, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity (Boston, 1841)—originally delivered as a sermon, this tract created controversy among Unitarians with the argument that the true essence of Christianity was not based on any of the historical claims of the Bible such as miracles, the divinity of Christ, or even the existence of Christ as an historical figure; rather, true and enduring faith came only from an individual's natural intuition of the divine; Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon (Palmyra, N.Y., 1830)—initially scorned by most readers, this new scripture eventually drew thousands into the Mormon faith, convincing them that Christ had visited America and would return here to establish his kingdom on earth.

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The circuit rider Peter Cartwright

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SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

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CONTENTS CHRONOLOGY 322

OVERVIEW

328 TOPICS IN THE NEWS The Asylum Movement....... 329 EarlyPublicHealthMovement... 33O The Cholera Epidemic of$832> New York City... . .331 Orthodox Medicine , , . . , 332 TbeBurgeonoftfaFket .... 332 Heroic Medicine: Arguments for and Against Bloodletting 333

Philadelphia's Scientific Community 333 W 0» the Effects and Treatment of Contact with Mm Rudicans" (Poisonlvy) 334 Science and Technology ...... 334 Scientific Associations 33S The Harvard Astronomical Observatory 335 Sectarian Medicine 337 Thomsonian Principles 337 How to Choose a Mate 338 The Smithsonian Institution.. 338 Surgery and Anesthesia 339 Women's Medical Education .. 34O

HEADLINE MAKERS Jacob Bigelow Dorothea Lynde !>&. Asa Gray Joseph Henry Harriot Kezia Hunt Benjamin Silliman Sr. ........

341 342 .343 344 345 345

PUBLICATIONS 347

Sidebars and tables are listed in italics.

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1815 1816 181

Thomas Eddy publishes his Hintsfor Introducing an Improved Mode of Treating the Insane in Asylums.

Parker Cleaveland publishes An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology.

Publication of Thomas Say s American Entomology; or Descriptions of the Insects of North America begins in Philadelphia, in four parts, to be completed in 1828. It includes illustrations by Titian Ramsey Peale. Philadelphia Quakers, Mowing the model of Samuel Tuke's York Retreat in England, establish the Frankford Retreat to treat the mentally ill. Amos Eaton publishes his Manual of Botanyfor the Northern States, which sees eight editions in the next twenty-five years. The Lyceum of Natural History of New York is founded; it becomes the New York Academy of Sciences in 1876. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia begins publishing \\s Journal.

1818

B E n a jm n iS m i li a n S r h ,e p ls t o f o u n d t h e A m e r c ia n J o u r n a o lf S c e in c e a n d t h e A r t s which he subsequently edits for twenty-eight years, and the Yale Medical School.

Thomas Nuttall publishes The Genera of North American Plants, and Catalogue of the Species to the Year 1817.

1819 John Gorham publishes his Elements of Chemical Science, the earliest chemistry textbook by an American. Benjamin Silliman Sr. and George Gibbs establish the American Geological Society, which survives until 1828.

1820 The American Antiquarian Society is established to promote the study of archaeology. Nathaniel Chapman begins the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1821 The architect Ithiel Town writes an article advocating a form of truss bridge with a diamond pattern of closely spaced diagonals.

1822

John C. Warren becomes the first American to publish a work on comparative anatomy, Comparative View of the Sensorial and Nervous Systems in Men and Animals.

1823

Denison Olmsted conducts the first state-sponsored geological survey in North Carolina.

1824

The Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts is established in Philadelphia. At the behest of Amos Eaton, who serves as its senior professor, Stephen Van Rensselaer establishes the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York, to promote the study of science and engineering. The school becomes Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1851.

1825

Amasa Holcomb of Southwick, Massachusetts, begins manufacturing reflecting and achromatic telescopes. Dr. Hans Burch Gram, a German immigrant, brings Samuel Hahneman's philosophy of homeopathic medicine to the United States.

1826

The Franklin Institute begins publishing its Journal.

1827

John James Audubon begins publishing his Birds of America, documenting 1,065 birds in 435 aquatints, in Great Britain, with the last volume appearing in 1838. The accompanying volumes of text, Ornithological Biography, appear between 1831 and 1839. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is established.

1828 The Yak Report promotes the idea of a natural-science curriculum.

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1829

James Smithson bequeaths $550,000 to the government of the United States to establish a scientific institution. Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps publishes her Familiar Lectures on Botany, one of the most popular botanical works of the nineteenth century. It has twenty-ni nine editions and sells 375,000 copies.

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1831 1832

Robert Dale Owen's Moral Physiology becomes the first treatise on birth control published in the United States.

Joseph Henry discovers electromagnetic induction independent of Michael

Faraday s work in England. The discovery makes possible Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph.

Johann Kaspar Spurzheim of Vienna introduces phrenology to the United States. The first major cholera epidemic occurs in the United States. Congress reauthorizes the dormant United States Coast Survey.

1833

Worcester State Lunatic Hospital opens in Massachusetts. William Beaumont publishes his Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion, one of the few major contributions by an American to science and medicine in the antebellum period.

1834 The United States government employs its first geologist, George William Featherstonhaugh.

1835 1836

The Western Academy of Natural Sciences is established in Cincinnati. Asa Gray publishes his The Elements of Botany, the first American botanical text to abandon the traditional Linnaean classification system.

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1837

William W. Gerard develops clinical tests to distinguish typhus and typhoid fever in diagnosis. Indiana and Massachusetts each authorize state geological surveys. Samuel F. B. Morse demonstrates the telegraph.

1838

Asa Gray and John Torrey begin publishing their Flora of North America using a modern classification system; the project is completed in 1843. Albert Hopkins establishes the first permanent astronomical observatory in the United States at Williams College in Massachusetts.

1839

Chapin Aaron Harris founds the American Journal of ^Dental Science. The Boston Lunatic Hospital is established.

J. Marion Sims begins to develop experimental surgical techniques for repairing vesico-vaginal fistulas, using slave women as subjects.

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Publication of an American edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America begins and is completed in 1844. Chapin Aaron Harris establishes the first dental school in the world, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, and also organizes the American Society of Dental Surgeons in New York City. John W. Draper, physicist and astronomer, is the first person to photograph the moon. Edward Hitchcock, Benjamin Silliman Sr., and Henry Darwin Rogers organize the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, predecessor to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

1842

Dr. Crawford W.surgery. Long of Georgia begins experimenting with the use of ether during James Espy becomes the first official meteorologist to the United States government. Funds to construct the United States Naval Observatory are appropriated. The American Ethnological Society is established. The Cincinnati Astronomical Society is established.

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1843

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes a treatise titled "The Contagiousness of Puerperal [Childbed] Fever" in The New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine. Dorothea Dix submits her Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts protesting the incarceration of the mentally ill in prisons. William Cranch Bond successfully raises a private subscription to establish the Harvard Astronomical Observatory.

1844

The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (later renamed the American Psychiatric Association) is established. John H. Griscom, M.D., delivers a lecture, "Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of New York," an important catalyst to the early public-health movement. Connecticut dentist Horace Wells uses nitrous oxide as an anesthetic while extracting teeth. Samuel Tyler publishes his Discourse on the Baconian Philosophy to defend and promote Baconianism as the foundation of American science. Josiah Nott of Alabama argues that the different races of humans were separately created.

1845 Scientific American is founded.

The 1829 bequest of James Smithson is finally put to use. The United States Congress establishes the Smithsonian Institution "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

1846

Benjamin Silliman Jr. and John Pitkin Norton establish the School of Applied Chemistry in New Haven, which later becomes Yale's Sheffield School of Science.

1847

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3 Oct.

Louis Agassiz arrives in the United States to lecture at the Lowell Institute in Boston.

16 Oct.

Dr. William T. G. Morton demonstrates the use of ether as an anesthetic for group of Boston physicians.

1 May

The Smithsonian Institution's first home is dedicated. Joseph Henry, a Princeton physicist, is named president.

7 May

The American Medical Association is organized in Philadelphia.

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IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1815-185O

1848

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Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sept.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is founded.

1 Nov.

The Boston Female Medical School is founded by Samuel Gregory.

1849

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree, graduates from Geneva Medical College in New York. The Smithsonian Institution initiates an international exchange program for scientific periodicals.

1850

The Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania is founded.

Dr. Jesse Kittredge Smith of Mount Vernon, New Hampshire, with scalpels, a lancet for bloodletting, and medicines; painting by Ezra Woolson, circa 1840 (Old Sturbridge Village Collections)

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OVERVIEW

National Pride. The period from 1815 to 1850 was not one of great achievement in American science and medicine. It was, however, a period during which distinctively American developments in science and medicine first began to emerge. Public interest in the sciences grew rapidly, and the institutional framework necessary to foster theoretical and applied research began to appear. Simultaneously, social and political conditions in the United States prompted a revolt against the medical establishment. Since European advances in anatomy and physiology would not produce practical treatments until the turn of the twentieth century, a wide variety of nontraditional medical therapies and practitioners filled the void in the anti-authoritarian atmosphere of Jacksonian America. Limited Resources. Prior to 1815 the United States looked to England and the European continent for leadership in science and medicine. American scientists and doctors sought formal academic training at universities in Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris. With the favorable conclusion of the War of 1812, however, a spirit of nationalism provoked a desire for cultural, as well as political, independence from the Old World. The development of an independent American scientific community would occur slowly, however, for excellence in research required significant capital investment and a strong institutional base in the form of major universities and government-sponsored institutes that the young republic lacked. Most American colleges and universities had been founded to provide students with a liberal education and to train ministers rather than to promote research. For decades the question of government funding for science was rendered moot by a political climate that favored a strict view of constitutional authority. In other words, the reigning political opinion of the nineteenth century saw such activities as outside the scope of the federal government as defined by the Constitution. Exploration. Nevertheless, some government support for scientific endeavors was forthcoming, primarily in the form of exploration. Numerous companies of explorers, comprised of military leaders, surveyors, cartographers, scientists, and artists, set out to map the littleknown areas west of the Mississippi River. Such activities were considered constitutional because they were

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needed to establish the borders of the nation for military and diplomatic purposes and to determine the commercial potential of regions not yet organized as states. Individual states sponsored their own internal geological surveys to identify mineralogical resources and evaluate soil for agricultural purposes. New Discoveries. Federal- and state-sponsored exploration yielded enormous quantities of new information in many fields, including geology, mineralogy, ornithology, botany, zoology, and ethnography. Explorers transported that information back east in the form of collected specimens; paintings and drawings of people, animals, plants, and rock formations; and written descriptions. Some of the new information overturned well-established European schools of thought, especially in geology. The discovery of previously unknown plants, animals, and birds complicated existing schemes for classifying living things. On the positive side, botanical researches, combined with information about herbal remedies gleaned from Native American tribes, resulted in a uniquely American pharmacology, codified by Jacob Bigelow between 1817 and 1821 in \iisAmerican Medical Botany. These new bodies of information sparked further scientific interest and bolstered national pride. Specialization. The sheer amount of information coming out of the American West, as well as that from European laboratories and research hospitals, promoted a trend toward the specialization of knowledge. The general study of nature (natural philosophy) steadily broke down into more-specialized fields such as mineralogy, geology, chemistry, and natural history (the study of plant and animal life). As the amount and complexity of information became impossible for nonspecialists to absorb, their understanding and support for science weakened. The growth of specialized knowledge thus produced a public backlash against physicians, and the growing community of professional scientists worked to stave off criticism by engaging in a public-relations campaign to demonstrate the utilitarian and patriotic benefits of their work. In a climate characterized by the exponential growth of evangelical Christianity, scientists also won support by claiming that science reinforced piety and morality by showing God at work in nature. New discoveries in geology regarding the age of the earth ap-

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peared to challenge the authority of the Bible, but debates over this issue were generally contained within the scientific community, and clashes between science and religion did not come to dominate public discourse until the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of&pe««in 1859. Science and Religion. The scientific and religious communities of antebellum America were not mutually exclusive. Most scientists considered themselves Christians, and Benjamin Silliman Sr., Joseph Henry, Asa Gray, and many others embraced the evangelical, revivalist Protestantism that dominated the period. The amicable relationship between science and religion derived largely from Baconianism, a way of thinking based on the work of seventeenth-century Scotsman Francis Bacon. Baconianism, the leading philosophy governing scientific pursuits in the United States, meant coming to con-

clusions base on an assembled boddy of observable facts (inductive reasoning). It entailed a conscious rejection of deductive reasoning that began with a premise or a hypothesis (the basis of the modern scientific method). For example, Silliman noted in 1818 that "Geology, at the present day, means not a merely theoretical and usually a visionary and baseless speculation, concerning the origin of the globe, but, on the contrary, the result of actual examination into the nature, structure, and arrangement of the materials of which it is composed." For this reason nineteenth-century American scientists focused on natural history, geology, and chemistry rather than the more theoretical and abstract fields of mathematics and physics. Such an emphasis worked well with the Baconian commitment to creating taxonomies, or classifications, of knowledge.

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

THE ASYLUM MOVEMENT Changing Perceptions. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries most Americans viewed mental illness as a spiritual problem, resulting from sin, guilt, or, at its worst, demonic possession. Throughout the eighteenth century a gradual shift occurred in which people began to emphasize the physical causes of mental maladies, in accordance with the practice of Enlightenment thinkers who were beginning to combine new scientific methods with the traditional approach to understanding the human body through humoral theory. Control. Throughout most of this period people who showed signs of madness were confined in institutions only if they became violent. For the most part the only available institutions were jails and almshouses. In America only the Pennsylvania Hospital, established in 1751, accepted mentally ill patients. Those patients received harsh treatment, generally being kept in chains in basement cells. The first hospital devoted exclusively to housing the mentally ill was established in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1773. After the Revolution the mad were often viewed as subversive to the social order; increasingly, lunatics were confined to jails and almshouses, while more hospitals established wards to confine the insane.

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Medical Treatment. As the concept of madness as a physical disease gained ground, it became common practice to try to cure such patients with traditional heroic medical therapies, including cupping, purging, and bleeding. Benjamin Rush, the leading physician of the Revolutionary and early national periods, favored those practices along with harsh discipline and physical restraint using straitjackets and chains. Rush articulated the prevailing view of mental illness in his Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812), the first important work on mental illness by an American. The practices that he advocated remained common through most of the antebellum period. Moral Treatment. At the same time, however, a movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill gained momentum. The asylum movement was part of a broader reform climate that addressed social problems such as crime, poverty, and alcohol abuse. It began in England when a Quaker named William Tuke established an asylum called the York Retreat and developed a method called "moral treatment" for managing the mentally ill. Tuke believed that mental illness was neither purely spiritual nor purely physical but that harmful environmental influences brought on mental disorders by affecting the individual's emotional and spiritual state. The idea of an asylum was to provide for the victim a ref-

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New York Lunatic Asylum, 1832

uge from the harmful environment causing his or her sickness. Asylums emphasized clean, comfortable living conditions in a tranquil, rural setting. Moral treatment entailed regular habits of exercise, work, and recreation, as well as strictly enforced rules of self-restraint and politeness. In Great Britain adherents of moral treatment condemned the use of physical restraints. In the United States, however, when voluntary cooperation did not produce the desired behavior, attendants would enforce calmness and stop offensive behavior by using such devices as straitjackets and mitts over the hands. Even so, moral treatment of the mentally ill was far more humane than previous methods. Asylums in America. The asylum movement quickly spread through Quaker contacts to the United States. The first asylum influenced by the York Retreat was the Friends Asylum near Frankford, Pennsylvania, established in 1817. The Hartford Retreat in Connecticut appeared the same year, while the McLean Asylum for the Insane was established in Boston the following year. The popularity and reputed success (although claims were exaggerated) of these private institutions produced calls for similar public institutions. The Massachusetts State Lunatic Hospital opened in 1833, while state institutions appeared in Augusta, Maine, in 1840 and Utica, New York, in 1843. State Hospitals. Private institutions, for the most part, were beyond the reach of the poor, and state hospitals were inadequate to meet the demand. Thus the old approach of confining the insane in penal institutions persisted even as the new asylums were coming into use. As late as the 1840s only a small minority of the mentally

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ill were confined to asylums; the rest were held in jails and almshouses, where they were subject to abuse and neglect. Such conditions prompted efforts in Massachusetts to enlarge the state institutions. Led by Dorothea Dix, the Massachusetts reform movement succeeded and quickly spread to other states. By the beginning of the Civil War most states had established public mental institutions, and the practice of keeping the mentally ill in jails and almshouses was in decline. Professionalization. Meanwhile a drive was under way to professionalize the treatment of the mentally ill as a medical specialty. The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane was founded in 1844 to establish standards for treatment and qualifications for practitioners. That organization exists today as the American Psychiatric Association. Source: Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes, Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

EARLY PUBLIC HEALTH MOVEMENT The Problem. Serious public health problems existed in the urban areas of the antebellum United States. Recurrent yellow fever epidemics, and major cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1849, aroused great concern. A rapidly expanding population fueled the growth of cities, but no concept of corporate social responsibility for sanitation existed. Procuring clean water and disposing of sewage and garbage were seen as individual rather than social problems. Furthermore, most people viewed dirt, disease, and poverty as inextricably linked to a common source, the immorality of the poor. The vibrant reform

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THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC OF NEW YORK CITY

1832,

A member of the Committee on the Cholera Epidemic of the Board of Commissioners of Health of the City of Boston wrote:

Patent drawing for a street sweeper

culture of this period attacked that trio of problems by attempting to raise public morals. Reformers believed that improved behavior would eliminate public health problems. Changing Assumptions. By the 1840s those assumptions were beginning to change. In 1842 British researcher Edwin Chatwick published a report of his study of the health of the British laboring classes. He maintained that poor people lacked good health and had short life expectancies but argued that their poor health was caused by their physical living and working environments, not by vice and immorality. Chatwick's attack on the evils of the modern industrial factory system spawned interest in sanitary reforms in England, and his ideas soon generated interest in the United States. Early Response. "Sanitary science," as the antebellum public health movement was called, had stronger roots outside the medical profession than within it. Most of its advocates were evangelical reformers motivated by charitable concerns. The leader of American sanitary science in this period, John Griscom, actually was a physician, but his interest in reform stemmed from his Quaker roots. In 1844 Griscom delivered his lecture, the "Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of New York," which was published as a pamphlet the following year. Griscom argued that health and morality were in fact related, but he reversed earlier assumptions. Poor health, he claimed, produced poor morals. He concluded that the living conditions of the working classes in New York City were terrible but that the people were victims and not causes of those conditions. Poor working people, he noted, did not have the time, energy, or money to find clean water or properly dispose of human and animal waste. He proposed that the city establish a permanent public health board to ensure a clean water supply, construct a sewage system, and clean up the streets. Cleaning up the living environment, he claimed, would improve the health of the city's poor as well as improve their morals and work ethic.

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The city council of Boston voted to send a medical delegation to New York, to inquire into the character of the epidemic, and the preparations to be made in case of its approach to Boston, A commission, consisting of Drs. Bigelow, Ware, and Flint, was sent to New York to investigate and report on the state of the disease in that place. In pursuance of their duty, this committee at once proceeded to New York, and spent several days in that city, most of the time being occupied in the cholera hospitals. The hospitals were all crowded, the attendance of suitable nurses could hardly be obtained, and the dead remained for a long time unremoved* In the hospital at Bellevue, we counted at one time thirty-one unremoved dead bodies, They were lying as chance might direct, in beds or on the floor, and in several instances a double bed was occupied by a living and a dead patient. The mortality from Cholera in New York that season amounted to about 3000, In some other American cities it was 2000. In Boston, a comparatively healthy place, it was less than 100. On our return from New York, in one of the Sound Steamers, we were stopped a mile below Providence by the health officers of that city, and forbidden to land. We learned that the whole population was in a state of panic from imagined contagion. After waiting a whole day, and sending various remonstrances to the city council, we were at last permitted to land at Seekonk in Massachusetts, from which place we made our way in stagecoaches, as we might, to Boston, Source: George Ellis, Memoir vfjacefr JBigefow> M.D., XJLIX (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson 5c Sons, 1880).

Reasons for Failure. Griscom did not see results from his efforts for another twenty years. The idea that the poor were responsible for their own health problems was too firmly entrenched to be quickly overthrown. No scientific basis existed as yet for advocating clean water and clean streets. Griscom simply believed that dirty conditions created miasma, or a generally unhealthy atmosphere. Furthermore, physicians on the whole took little interest in his ideas; preventive health measures were still the domain of medical sectarians and moral reformers. Finally, the unsettled economic conditions of the 1840s made city officials and state legislatures unresponsive to recommendations that would be expensive to implement and that offered no guarantee of success. Griscom's efforts did, however, lay the groundwork for future campaigns beginning in the 1860s after the third major cholera epidemic of the century. The public health

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his or her own unique balance of the four humors. Physicians believed that all the leading causes of death in the antebellum period, the endemic ("ever-present") diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia, dysentery, typhus, and malaria, resulted from a single general cause: imbalance of the humors. Such an imbalance could result from internal factors, such as teething, puberty, menstruation, worry, or overexpenditure of energy. External factors, such as a change in diet or exposure to miasma (bad air, foul smells, fumes), could also provoke imbalance and lead to disease.

An 1832 broadside announcing the outbreak of one of the deadliest diseases in the nineteenth century

movement that began then greatly improved sanitary conditions in some urban areas and contributed immeasurably to the late-nineteenth-century decline in infectious diseases as leading causes of death. Source: Charles E. Rosenberg and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Pietism and the Origins of the American Public Health Movement: A Note on John H. Griscom and Robert M. Hartley," in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).

ORTHODOX MEDICINE Medical Education. "Orthodox" or "regular" medical practitioners included those who had received recognized training in an apprenticeship, medical school, or both. Medical education was available at only a handful of institutions in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania began offering medical degrees in 1765, but eighteenth-century Americans had no other alternatives except apprenticeship or study in Europe, primarily Edinburgh, London, or Paris. Harvard University offered medical lectures as early as the 1780s but did not offer full medical degrees until 1810. Yale Medical School began offering degrees in 1818. American medical education generally did not include laboratory science other than anatomical dissection until midcentury. Students could acquire their degrees after as little as two sixteen-week terms, mostly spent listening to lectures. Clinical training was not a standard part of medical education until the late nineteenth century, but many (if not most) medical graduates supplemented their education by apprenticing themselves to established practitioners. Humoral Theory. The practice of medicine prior to the discovery of bacteria in the 1880s was governed by an understanding of the body that had prevailed for two thousand years. According to humoral theory, first articulated by the Roman physician Galen, the human body was composed of four humors, or fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Every individual had

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Treatment. Standard treatments for disease were driven by a desire to restore the balance of the humors. Physicians generally saw such physical manifestations as vomiting, diarrhea, or blood loss as signs of the body attempting to restore its own balance. The physician's job was to start that process or help it along. Standard treatments for most diseases therefore included bleeding by using the lancet or leeches, purging by using emetics to induce vomiting or diarrhea, and cupping, the application of a heated glass to the individual's back to raise blisters that were subsequently drained. From the late eighteenth century to the 1830s the practice of "heroic" therapeutics prevailed. Heroic therapeutics simply meant THE SURGEON OF THE FLEET Cadwallader Cuticle, M.D., an Honorary Member of the most distinguished Colleges of Surgeons both in Europe and America, was our Surgeon of the Fleet. Nor was he at all blind to the dignity of his position; to which, indeed he was rendered peculiarly competent, if the reputation he enjoyed was deserved. He had the name of being the foremost Surgeon in the Navy, a gentleman of remarkable science, and a veteran practitioner. [Njothing could exceed his coolness when actually employed in his imminent vocation. Surrounded by moans and shrieks, by features distorted with anguish inflicted by himself, he yet maintained a countenance almost super naturally calm; and unless the intense interest of the operation Hushed his wan face with a momentary tinge of professional enthusiasm, he toiled away, untouched by the keenest misery coming under a fleetsurgeon's eye. Indeed, long habituation to the dissecting-room and the amputation-table had made him seemingly impervious to the ordinary emotions of humanity. Yet you could not say that Cuticle was essentially a cruel-hearted man. His apparent heartlessness must have been of a purely scientific origin. But notwithstanding his marvellous indifference to the sufferings of his patients, and in spite even of his enthusiasm in his vocation , . , Cuticle, on some occasions, would effect a certain disrelish of his profession, and declaim against the necessity that forced a man of his humanity to perform a surgical operation. Source: Herman Melville, White Jttke*; Ort Tkt WvrM in a Man-of-War (New York: Harper, 1850).

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practicing the standard medical treatments to extremes, such as bleeding a patient until he fainted, or purging her to the point of causing extreme weakness. Prestige of Doctors. The practice of medicine had never been a highly regarded or remunerative profession in the United States, but doctors experienced a dramatic decline in prestige in the 1830s. This development had at least two causes. First, the 1820s and 1830s were years of rapid population growth, which led to increasing population density in urban areas. Endemic diseases had long been the leading causes of death, but in an age without adequate water or sewage systems, urban crowding resulted in major epidemics of yellow fever, typhoid fever, and typhus that provoked waves of panic throughout the early nineteenth century. Then, in 1832, a new and more frightening disease appeared. Cholera was a depletive disease with a high mortality, meaning that it struck swiftly, caused massive fluid loss through diarrhea and vomiting, and killed rapidly. A person could leave his house perfectly well in the morning and be dead by afternoon. Traditional medical treatments were devastating under these conditions because they exacerbated dehydration and hastened death. Doctors found themselves helpless in the face of an epidemic with a mortality rate of more than 50 percent. People lost faith in heroic treatments that, with epidemics raging, seemed ineffective in comparison to the amount of misery they caused. Second, a climate of anti-authoritarianism characterized the period. Many people viewed doctors as un-American because they monopolized information and tried to establish standards that would lead to an exclusive profession of the educated elite. Patients began to turn in large numbers to people who could provide gentler alternatives to traditional medicine. American Medical Association. One of the ways that physicians responded to their declining prestige was to form an association to try to enhance their professional status. Local and state medical societies already existed throughout the country, but in 1847 orthodox physicians joined forces to form the American Medical Association (AMA). The founders of the AMA had two major goals. First, they sought to define the boundaries of legitimate medical practice by drawing up a code of ethics that urged physicians not to consult with sectarian or other lay practitioners. Second, they sought educational reform. They wanted to raise the standards of medical training and establish uniform minimum requirements for medical degrees, emphasizing science and clinical training in hospitals. Leading medical schools did move in the direction of a science-based curriculum and clinical training, but most of the reforms envisioned by the AMA at its founding would not have a significant influence until the early twentieth century. Sources: Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849 and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962);

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HEROIC MEDICINE: ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST BLOODLETTING For: It would be difficult to determiee whether greater injury has risen in the practice of physic, from undue, or from inefficient bloodletting. To neglect the full u$e of this most important of our remedies when it m required, or to institute it when it is not $o, is equally to endanger the safety of the patient, Bloodletting is not only the most powerful and important, but the most generally used, of all our remedies. Scarcely a case of acute, or indeed of chronic disease, occurs in which it does not become necessary to consider the propriety of having recourse to the lancet, or to estimate the effects of bloodletting already instituted* Against; The practice of bleeding for the purpose of curing disease, I consider most unnatural and injurious* Nature never furnished the body with more blood than is necessary for the maintenance of health* * , * If the system is diseased, the blood becomes as much diseased as any other part; remove the cause of the disorder, and the blood will recover and become healthy as soon as any other part; but how taking part of it away can help to cure what remains, can never be reconciled with common sense. Sources: Marshall Hail, Researches Principally Relative to tke MorMd and Curative Effects &fL&$$ of&fo&d> second American edition (Philadelphia: E, L, Carey & A, ftet, 1835); Samuel Thomson, New Guide f* £&*//£» $r$Qt#nit Family Pkymian* ninth edition (Cokmbu$» Ohio: Jtrvis Mke* 1633),

Rosenberg and Morris J. Vogel, eds., The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979).

PHILADELPHIA'S SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

Scientific Capital. The "scientific capital" of antebellum America was indisputably Philadelphia, at least until the Smithsonian Institution was established in Washington in 1846. Since the days of Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, young Americans had gone to Philadelphia to study science and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania was, in fact, the only place an American could pursue a medical degree in the eighteenth century without crossing the Atlantic. The intellectual climate of Philadelphia helped sustain the American Philosophical Society and other scholarly organizations, which in turn promoted and patronized the study of the sciences. Naturalists as Explorers. In the early nineteenth century those institutions produced most of the naturalists and illustrators who accompanied the great exploring expeditions to the unknown reaches of the transMississippi West. Meriwether Lewis, for example, studied briefly in Philadelphia to prepare for his western trek. In 1819, at the behest of Secretary of War John C. Cal-

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"ON THE EFFECTS AND TREATMENT OF CONTACT WITH RHUS RUDICANS" (POISON I V Y ) Like the Rbus vtrnix, described in our first volume, this plant is regarded with aversion, and too frequently furnishes cause to he remembered by persons of susceptible constitution, who unwarily become exposed to its poisonous influence. The general recognition of its deleterious character is evinced in the application of the names Poison vine, Poison creeper, and Poison ivy, which are given to it in all parts of the United States, . . . These [symptoms] consist in itching, redness, and tumefaction of the affected parts, particularly of the face; succeeded by blisters, suppuration, aggravated swelling, heat, pain, and fever. When the disease is at its height, the skin becomes covered with a crust, and the swelling is so great in many instances to close the eyes and almost obliterate the features of the face. The symptoms begin a few hours after exposure, and are commonly at the height on the fourth or fifth day; after which, desquamation begins to take place, and the distress, in most instances, begins to diminish. The disease brought on by the different species of Rhus appears to be of an erysipelatous nature. It is to be treated by the means which resist inflammation, such as restj low diet, and evacuations. Purging with neutral salts is peculiarly useful, and in the case of plethoric constitutions, or where the fever and arterial excitement are very great, blood-letting has been found of service. The extreme irritability and burning sensation may be greatly mitigated by opium. Source: Jacob Btgelow, American Medical Botany, V&lume III (Boston: Ctrnimings & Milliard, 1817-1820).

houn, an expedition set out to establish a post near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. One of the six steamboats that plied the western waters carried the first corps of professional scientists to join such an expedition. The group included zoologist Thomas Say, founder of the Philadelphia Academy of the Natural Sciences, geologist Augustus E. Jessup, a member of the same institution, and Titian Ramsey Peale, scientific illustrator and member of the famous family of Philadelphia artists. Nathaniel Wyeth's 1834 expedition that opened the Oregon Trail included Philadelphia ornithologist John Kirk Townshend. Patronage of Science. The American Philosophical Society was already a venerable institution by the early nineteenth century, but it was an exclusive organization open only to the Philadelphia elite. Its wealthy members did, however, serve as patrons for penniless naturalists such as Thomas Nuttall, an English botanist who explored the Arkansas Territory in 1819 and years later joined the Wyeth expedition. Nuttall, though for many years a lecturer at Harvard, also became a member of the

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Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, which soon rivaled the American Philosophical Society in collections and reputation. Academy of Natural Sciences. The Academy of Natural Sciences was established in 1812 as a more democratic alternative to the elite American Philosophical Society. The six founders of the Academy of Natural Sciences included a radical political refugee from Ireland, a dentist, a liquor manufacturer, a Dutch immigrant who was a mineralogist, a commercial chemist, and an apothecary. The academy became one of the most important and successful scientific institutions in Philadelphia. Although it struggled financially for several years, it acquired popular support by offering public lectures on botany and chemistry, some of them specifically aimed at female audiences. Its leaders shared and helped promote the growing sentiment that national pride demanded an American scientific community and that American scientists should lead in exploring and reporting the discoveries in the newly acquired territories. The academy purchased its own press in 1817, and its members published a large number of significant works of natural history. Supplied by members who joined the western expeditions and by affluent local supporters, the academy soon amassed an enviable collection of geological and botanical specimens, scientific apparatuses, and publications and by the mid 1820s had acquired an international reputation for promoting a high standard of excellence in the study of the natural sciences. Sources: Simon Baatz, "Philadelphia Patronage: The Institutional Structure of Natural History in the New Republic, 1800-1833," journal of the Early Republic, 8 (Summer 1988): 111-138; William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: Knopf, 1966).

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY A Useful Art. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that "the social conditions and institutions of democracy prepare [Americans] to seek immediate and useful practical results of the sciences." The desire of scientists to promote their profession as a "useful art" rather than a purely theoretical discipline led to efforts to join the forces of scientific and technological innovation. Technological innovation had remained largely in the hands of artisans and mechanics, but the increasing sophistication of machinery and the demands of an industrializing society made cooperation with scientists both necessary and desirable. One important example of scientific influence on technological development was the research of Princeton scientist Joseph Henry into the principles of electromagnetism. The principles that Henry detailed in his work made it possible for Samuel F. B. Morse to develop an effective telegraph in 1837 and also proved fundamental to the development of electrical motors later in the century.

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butions to the application of steam power to printing and manufacturing, the improvement of locomotive technology, and the construction of roads and bridges. Source: David Freeman Hawke, Nuts and Bolts of the Past: A History of American Technology, 1776-1860(New York: Harper ScRow, 1988).

SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATIONS

An early electric motor, designed by Joseph Henry in 1837 (Princeton University Library Archives)

The Franklin Institute. By 1824 the democratic spirit of the age, together with the desire to promote concerted efforts between scientists and mechanical innovators, led to the founding of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Designed to bring together well-educated "gentlemen" scientists and working-class artisans and mechanics, the institute began as an educational enterprise. In addition to providing a scientific curriculum for the workers and holding annual exhibitions of their inventions, the institute published a journal designed to communicate useful scientific information in a manner that skilled but relatively uneducated workers could comprehend. The institute quickly attained a sound financial footing, a substantial membership, and a strong circulation for its journal. Engineering Profession. The Franklin Institute did not, however, succeed in bridging the class differences between artisans and mechanics on the one hand and scientists on the other. Instead it contributed to the rise of the engineer, a new kind of professional who combined both scientific education and mechanical skill. The Franklin Institute was the most famous of similar institutions established in the 1820s and 1830s that led to the establishment of the engineering profession. For example, in 1824 (the same year that the Franklin Institute was founded) Stephen Van Rensselaer established a school in upstate New York "for the purpose of instructing persons . . . in the application of science to the common purposes of life." That school would eventually become Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Engineers had already begun to make their presence felt by the early 1830s, having contributed to the design and construction of an elaborate system of canals in the Northeast, of which the Erie Canal, opened in 1825, was the most famous. Engineers would go on to make significant contri-

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Venerable Institutions. The two most important American scientific organizations existing in 1815 were the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. Most members of both societies were "gentlemen scholars," affluent laymen with a broad interest in the natural sciences. Both organizations fostered networks of correspondence and established libraries and reading rooms to serve their members. Each organization aspired to be national in scope, emulating counterparts in Great Britain and France. Although both remained prominent throughout the antebellum period, attracting local men of eminence and providing honorary membership to leading scholars outside the two cities, neither succeeded in becoming a truly national organization. Another attempt to form a national scientific organization was made in 1816, when the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Science was chartered in Washington, D.C. The nation's capital, however, was a cultural backwater. The absence of even a small scientific community guaranteed its failure, and by the 1830s the Columbian Institute had disappeared. Local Societies. More common in the first half of the nineteenth century were local organizations formed by THE H A R V A R D ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY

From the joint diary of William Cranch Bond and George Phillips Bond, astronomers of the Harvard Observatory: Saturday September 26th 1846 We have not found any observations on either of the comets of June 1845 and February and May 1846 continued so late as our own. I looked out for a nebulous patch which I marked for a comet and found it stationary. Jupiter has now two broad but rather faint belts and traces of two others. The two plainly visible are near the Equator—they are less distinct than they were last year—they fade away graduaEy at their extremities* They seem streaked or mottled. I think the diameter of the satellites might be very nicely found by the time occupied in passing behind Jupiter. I last week saw the passage of the shadow of one of them very finely it was as distinct as the satellites themselves . . . We see Saturn's ring double though it is pretty oblique we see generally five satellites (or stars) three very faint. Source: Bessie Z, JoneS) *Diary of the Two Bonds, First Directors of the Harvard College Observatory, 1846-1 $491* Harvard Li&r&ry Bulletin, 15 (October 1967): 368-386.

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Members of the Harvard Society for Medical Improvement (Harvard Medical Library)

inventor-entrepreneurs, educators, and educated professional men (usually doctors or clergymen) who pursued science in fairly sophisticated ways but were not devoted primarily to scientific pursuits. Such organizations proliferated in small towns throughout the nation and generally had brief lives. The most respectable and long-lived of these were formed in the larger eastern cities and included the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1812), the New York Lyceum (1817), the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (1824), and the Boston Society of Natural History (1830). Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. The 1830s and 1840s witnessed the emergence of the first generation in the United States to produce a significant number of professional men of science. As the study of science became increasingly popular as a hobby, fostered by the proliferation of local societies and the lyceum movement, some scientists sought to distinguish themselves from laymen and to establish an American community of professional men of science. Geologists were the first to achieve this goal. A group of New York geologists meeting in 1839 voted to call a national meeting for the following year, to which only geologists employed in state geological surveys would be invited. In 1840 that group formed the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, passing at its first meeting a resolution that explicitly limited membership to those "devoted to Geological research with scientific views and objects." The association sought to foster professionalization and encourage scientific discovery by holding meetings at which professional papers were delivered,

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and subsequently publishing those papers. In doing so they succeeded in gaining European recognition for American geologists. American Association for the Advancement of Science. The successful example of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists sparked the interest of scientists from other disciplines in forming a national organization that might include the broad range of scientific pursuits while continuing to limit membership to professional scientists. The association responded in 1847 by voting to transform itself into the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). A three-man committee comprising Louis Agassiz, a Swiss naturalist recently arrived in the United States, Benjamin Peirce, a mathematician and astronomer, and Henry Rogers, a chemist and geologist, wrote a two-page circular stating the intention to create a national organization for scientists and announcing a proposed organizational meeting date in September 1848. Professionalization. The 1848 meeting adopted a constitution that opened membership to "College Professors of Natural History, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Political Economy, and of the Theoretical and Applied Sciences generally; also Civil Engineers and Architects," as well as other "true men of science." The organization was subdivided into sections centered around common interests; annual meetings included sessions with the entire organization and smaller meetings of special-interest sections. Annual meetings were to migrate among cities in order to promote interaction between scientists in various parts of the country. The

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meetings provided an opportunity to exchange information on a formal and informal basis, to debate major scientific issues, and to give coherence and direction to the broad work of scientific investigation. In other words, it continued the effort to create an American scientific community. At the same time, the AAAS sought to promote broader interest in the study of science so that the public would come to value scientific pursuits and offer both esteem and financial support to scientists. Although the first few years of the AAAS's existence were governed by remarkable harmony, the organization later faced dissension over what constituted a "true man of science" and how to reconcile the seemingly contradictory goals of professionalization and popularization. Source: Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

SECTARIAN MEDICINE Appeal. "Sectarian" or alternative medicine referred to nontraditional medical practices offered by lay practitioners or people trained at sectarian medical schools. The appeal of sectarian medicine lay in its focus on nature's healing power. Treatments generally had few side effects and were often pleasant to experience. The gentler approach seemed more appropriate for children than the harsh treatments of regular physicians; women were thus attracted to sectarians in disproportionate numbers. Sectarian medicine was also relatively inexpensive, encouraging the use of medicines that could be made at home. Sectarians also frequently used scientific language to describe their treatments, thus lending their views an aura of authority. Botanic Medicine. Samuel Thomson offered one of the most popular alternatives to traditional medicine. Thomson criticized regular physicians for their harsh treatments and for foisting what he called poisonous chemicals on the unsuspecting masses. Like most traditional physicians, Thomson believed in a universal cause for all disease, but in his twist on traditional humoral theory he maintained that the body was like a stove which had food as its fuel. When the "stove" did not function properly it was merely clogged with "soot" and needed to be cleared out. The unclogging of the body could be accomplished with the use of his "universal cure," a system of gentle botanic medicines described in his New Guide to Health, or Botanic Family Physician, which first appeared in 1831. Homeopathic Medicine. Homeopathic medicine was developed by a German physician named Samuel Hahneman in the 1790s and imported to the United States by Dr. Hans Burch Gram in 1827. Hahneman also emphasized the healing power of nature, maintaining that if left alone the body would usually heal itself. In those instances where help was required he employed a guiding principle that he called the "law of infinitesimals," by

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MEDICINE

THOMSONIAN PRINCIPLES It is true, that the study of anatomy, or structure of the human body, and of the whole animal economy is pleasing and useful, , , , But it is no more necessary to mankind at large, to quality them to administer relief from pain and sickness, than to a cook in preparing food to satisfy hunger and nourish the body. There is one general cause of hunger, and one general supply of food; one general cause of disease, and one general remedy. . . . That medicine, therefore, that will remove obstructions, promote perspiration, and restore digestion, is suited to every patient, whatever form the disease assumes, and is universally applicable, Source: Samuel Thomson, JWw (?#*