04 The Early Republic, The Age of Democracy, and Westward Expansion, PWRPT

WEEK 4:
THE EARLY REPUBLIC, THE AGE OF

DEMOCRACY, AND WESTWARD EXPANSION
Professor Randall J. Stephens
John Lewis Krimmel, Election Day in Philadelphia (1815)

Objectives/Coverage
-Populism, democratization, anti-elitism
-The rise of a new cultural nationalism
and a new national identity
-Populist religion and evangelicalism
-The War of 1812
-Jacksonian Democracy
• Rejection of elites
• White man’s democracy Andrew Jackson
-Indian removal from the
southeast
-Westward Expansion
• Mexican-American War
• California Gold Rush
-The Legacies and Ironies of the Era
The Rise of Cultural Nationalism
-Establishment of a national culture
-Noah Webster
-Washington Irving
-4th of July Celebrations
Washington Irving
Noah Webster
Changes in Balance of American
Governmental Powers
-President John Adams’ midnight court
appointments
-The Supreme Court and Chief Justice
Marshall
-Assertion of Supreme Court power and John Adams
judicial review
John Marshall
Western Revivals, the Second Great
Awakening
-Frontier religion
• Westward expansion
• Social dilemmas
-Meaning of revivals
• Restorationism
• Anti-elitism African-American service
Unscripted service
Expanding into the Continent
Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

Expansion and War
-Lingering tensions with
Europe
• Conflict on the seas
• Risk to American ships
and sailors
A cartoon of President Jefferson caught

between England and France, 1805
Expansion and War
-Federalists vs. Democratic Republicans
-American attempted conquest of
Canada, 1812
-British invasion, 1814
-Treaty of Ghent, 1814
-The meaning and legacy of the war
• New military heroes
• Democratic Republican
strength
• International recognition
Andrew Jackson statue, Washington, DC

Jacksonian Democracy
-The rise of mass politics
• Expanding electorate
• Revolt against elite
Martin Van Buren
Philadelphia political parade

Expansion of the Vote, 1800-1830

Participation in Presidential Elections, 1824-1860
-Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)
• Military hero
• Frontier president
• Honor culture
-Jackson’s duel, 1806
Andrew Jackson
At the Battle of New Orleans

Harriet Martineau, Society in America (Paris, 1837), 42.
General Jackson was brought into office by an overpowering
majority, and after a series of strong party excitements. If ever
there was a possibility of a President marking his age, for good
or for evil, it would have been done during Jackson's
administration. He is a man made to impress a very distinct
idea of himself on all minds. He has great personal courage,
much sagacity, though frequently impaired by the strength of
his prejudices, violent passions, an indomitable will, and that
devotion to public affairs in which no President has ever failed. .
. . No physician in the world ever understood feeling the pulse,
and ordering his practice accordingly, better than President Jackson. Here are all the
requisites for success in a tyrannical administration. Even in England, we heard
rumours in 1828, and again in 1832, about the perils of the United States, under the
rule of a despotic soldier. The cry revived with every one of his high-handed deeds;
with every exercise of the veto—which he has used oftener than all the other
Presidents put together—with every appointment made in defiance of the Senate. . .
-Holding union together, a precursor to the
Civil War
-Opposition to the Bank of United States
• Financial Panic of 1837
-Democrats vs Whigs
• Intense regional and cultural dimension
• The coherence of the
Whig Party campaign
Democrats and the poster, 1848
disunity of the Whigs
Voting for the President

George Caleb Bingham, The County Election, (1852)
-Opposition to the Bank of United States
-Holding union together, a precursor to the
Civil War
-Democratic reform
• White man’s democracy
Jackson’s 1829 presidential inauguration

Regional
Cultures
Move West,
1720-1820
Dahlonega,
Georgia
Source: Bedford St.

Martin’s MapCentral
Native American Forced Removal
-The “Five Civilized Tribes”
• Agrarian tribes of the South
-Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw,
& Choctaw
• Removal Act (1830)
-Cherokee resistance
-Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears, 1838

Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (Viking, 2001), 250,
252.
But from start to finish the operation of the removal policy was a horror. Deliberate fraud,
corruption, mismanagement, and theft marked almost every step in the process. The Indians
were abused and mistreated. . . . [President Jackson] believed he had vastly improved the
ways the government treated Native Americans. . . . Jackson believed what he said. Never
mind the suffering it caused. All he could think about was that there would be no more
“collision” between whites and Indians and that the Gulf region was now safe—or at least
safer than it had been-from foreign invasion.
Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans

and the Road to Indian Territory (Norton, 2020), xv, xvii, xviii
[T]he state-administered mass expulsion of indigenous people was unprecedented. . . . the
state-sponsored expulsion of the 1830s was a turning point for indigenous peoples and for
the United States. . . . The expulsion of indigenous people was far from inevitable. . . . It is
not difficult to imagine an alternative history. Congressmen who were opposed to federal
spending, against the expansion of slavery, dedicated to Christianizing native peoples, hostile
to Andrew Jackson, or simply reluctant to overturn current policy might have found enough
common ground to join together temporarily to block the expulsion of Native Americans. Tah-chee , a
Cherokee chief
Expulsion of Native Peoples

John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol 10
(Philadelphia, 1876), 492.
July 30, 1841: Andrew Jackson, by the simultaneous

operation of fraudulent treaties and brutal force,
consummated the work. The Florida war is one of the
fruits of this policy, the conduct of which exhibits one
uninterrupted scene of the most profligate
corruption. All resistance against this abomination is
vain. It is among the heinous sins of this nation, for
which I believe God will one day bring them to
judgment. . . [Cherokee Chief John] Ross and his
colleagues are here, claiming indemnity for the
household furniture, goods, and cattle stolen from
their people when they were expelled from their dwellings, and a new treaty, to
give them some shadow of security for the permanent possession of the land to
which they have been driven.
John L. O’Sullivan on Manifest Destiny, “The Great Nation of Futurity,”
The United States Democratic Review, 1839
The American people having derived their origin from
many other nations, and the Declaration of National
Independence being entirely based on the great principle
of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our
disconnected position as regards any other nation—that
we have, in reality, but little connection with the past
history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity . . .
we may confidently assume that our country is destined
to be the great nation of futurity.
We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward
march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting
truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of
other lands, that ‘the gates of hell’—the powers of aristocracy and monarchy—’shall not
prevail against it.’”
Westward Expansion
-The war with Mexico
• Westward movement
• Land claims
Trails into the West, 1840

Westward Expansion
-The Mexican-American War (1846-48)
• Congress approves, 1846
• Whigs vs Democrats
Surrender of a Mexican city
American troops ready for war

Westward Expansion
-The Mexican-American War (1846-48)
• End of war and the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, 1848
-Acquiring western territory
-Discovery of gold in California, 1848
• Gold Rush (1848-1855)
-Impact on California Advert for passage West
Gold miners in California, 1852

John Gast, American Progress (1872)
A Typical Mid-19th Century Advertisement for
Travel to the West
Territorial Expansion to 1860

The Legacies and Ironies of the Era
-The Second Great Awakening and the
rejection of authority and expertise
-Slavery becomes more powerful and brutal as
white Democracy takes hold
• Jacksonian freedom and the democratic
impulse have severe limitations
-The growing myth of the boundless West
• Geography of hope
• Land of opportunity
• America’s inland empire
-Regional tensions that will result in Civil War
A classic western film

poster (1951)

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WEEK 4:

THE EARLY REPUBLIC, THE AGE OF

John Lewis Krimmel, Election Day in Philadelphia (1815)

Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

A cartoon of President Jefferson caught

Andrew Jackson statue, Washington, DC

Martin Van Buren

Philadelphia political parade

Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

At the Battle of New Orleans

Voting for the President

Jackson’s 1829 presidential inauguration

Source: Bedford St.

Trail of Tears, 1838

Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans

Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

July 30, 1841: Andrew Jackson, by the simultaneous

Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

Surrender of a Mexican city

American troops ready for war

Gold miners in California, 1852

Source: Bedford St. Martin’s MapCentral

A classic western film

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