US History/Contents/Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny
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[edit] Jacksonian Democracy
Jacksonian Democracy refers to the period of time (perhaps 1828-1840) dominated by the controversial presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), and characterized by expanding democratization, the rise of the common man, and increased white male suffrage.
Andrew Jackson, a westerner and the hero of the Battle of New Orleans (1815), ran for the presidency in 1824. Initially, five candidates attempted to attain the presidency: John C. Calhoun, William Crawford, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams. All were 'Democratic-Republicans'. Calhoun dropped out and instead ran for Vice President, which he won. Crawford might have won had he not suffered a paralyzing stroke. Andrew Jackson won the popular and electoral votes, but since he only got a plurality and not a majority, the decision on who would become president went to the House of Representatives. The House voted for John Quincy Adams instead, which cost Jackson the election of 1824. Although this was a temporary defeat, it helped to rally the public behind Jackson and was one of the factors that contributed to Jackson's victory in 1828. Here is a table from the Wikipedia article on the election:
[edit] Election results
| Presidential Candidate | Party | State | Popular Vote: | Electoral Vote: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Quincy Adams | Democratic-Republican | Massachusetts | 108,740 | 84 |
| Andrew Jackson | Democratic-Republican | Tennessee | 153,544 | 99 |
| William Harris Crawford | Democratic-Republican | Georgia | 46,618 | 41 |
| Henry Clay | Democratic-Republican | Kentucky | 47,136 | 37 |
| Vice Presidential Candidate | Party | State | Popular Vote: | Electoral Vote: |
| John Caldwell Calhoun | Democratic-Republican | South Carolina | Unknown | 182 |
| Nathan Sanford | Democratic-Republican | New York | Unknown | 30 |
| Nathaniel Macon | Democratic-Republican | North Carolina | Unknown | 24 |
| Andrew Jackson | Democratic-Republican | Tennessee | Unknown | 13 |
| Martin Van Buren | Democratic-Republican | New York | Unknown | 9 |
| Henry Clay | Democratic-Republican | Kentucky | Unknown | 2 |
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[edit] Indian Removal and Massacre
The United States, as it expanded to the west, forcibly removed or killed many Native Americans from their lands as it violated the treaties and Indian rights which both parties had agreed upon. In this way, the concerns of white landowners were considered above the interests of the Indians. In Georgia, for instance, the governor ordered the Cherokee to vacate their lands so the territory would be able to be redistributed to poor Georgians. The Cherokee refused, as they contended that a treaty with the United States that had been signed earlier guaranteed their right to the land. Through a friend of the tribe, they brought their case all the way to the Supreme Court.
In 1832, when Andrew Jackson was President, the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia had acted unconstitutionally. However, Jackson refused to enforce the Court's ruling. Meanwhile, Congress had passed the Indian Removal Act, which granted refuge to Native Americans who relocated to territory west of the Mississippi.
The Cherokee were forced out of Georgia and had to endure a brutal and deadly trip to the area comprising present-day Oklahoma, a journey which they called the "Trail of Tears." Between 2,000 and 4,000 of the 16,000 migrating Cherokees died during the journey, including women, children, and elderly members of the tribe.
[edit] The Nullification Crisis
In 1828, Congress decided to raise an already high tariff on imports from Europe. It was meant to help the industrialized North compete with Europe, but the agricultural South detested it, as it traded heavily with Europe. The South called it the "Tariff of Abominations."
Since 1798 when the concept of nullification first appeared in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, some states contended that they should have the right to nullify federal laws if they infringed on states. Vice President John C. Calhoun agreed with this notion of states' rights and encouraged South Carolina to take a stand on the tariff issue.
Up until that point, no one was sure where Jackson stood on the issue of states' rights. Then, in April, 1830, he announced that he opposed states rights in this instance.
In 1832, Congress, with the help of the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, passed a lower but still fairly high tariff. The South would not compromise on this lower tax, and South Carolina passed the Nullification Act which proclaimed that the state would no longer pay the "illegal" tariffs. South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union if the federal government tried to interfere.
To combat South Carolina's ultimatum, Jackson persuaded Congress to pass the Force Bill in 1833, which allowed the President to use the army to enforce the law. In the face of this threat, South Carolina quickly agreed to the lower compromise tariff and abolished the Nullification Act.
[edit] The National Bank and the Panic of 1837
Andrew Jackson hated the National Bank for a variety of reasons. Proud of being a self-made "common" man, he argued that the bank favored the wealthy. A Westerner, he feared the expansion of Eastern business interests and the draining of specie from the West, so he portrayed the bank as a "hydra-headed" monster. A nationalist, he distrusted foreign members of the bank board and argued the bank could not be trusted in time of war. Two Senators, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, disliked Jackson and wished to see him lose the presidential election of 1832. They convinced Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank, to apply early for a new charter for the bank, even though the charter would not expire until 1836. Believing many Americans supported the bank, they intended to force Jackson to veto the renewal of the charter which might cause him to lose the election. This did not work. Jackson vetoed the charter, but public opinion did not drop enough for him to lose the election.
Jackson decided to kill the National Bank early. He ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to take the money out of the national bank and put it in "pet banks," state banks that were friends of Jackson. These pet banks lent out money to poor farmers, who could not pay the money back.
The result of this whole process was the Panic of 1837, a severe economic depression. Business took a nosedive and unemployment soared. Prices of commodities rose so high that families could not afford many basic necessities. The depression lasted six years, as Martin Van Buren, the President elected after Jackson, did almost nothing to ease the impact of it.
Because of this, the first and only Whig President, William Henry Harrison, was elected. The Whigs were all the National Republicans along with the Democrats who disliked Jackson. Harrison died of pneumonia four weeks after his inaugural address, and John Tyler, his Vice President, became President.
[edit] John Tyler Presidency
Tyler had once been a Democrat, but he disliked Jackson, and he became a Whig. He was a weak supporter of states' rights, so when many of the Whig bills came to him, they were never vetoed. It turned out that Tyler would veto the entire Whig congressional agenda. The Whigs saw this as the party leader turning on his own party. He was officially expelled from the Whig party in 1841.
Much of the public did not take Tyler's presidency seriously. They saw his lack of appeal in Congress and the embarrassing resignations of all of but one of Harrison's cabinet appointees in a single month. Tyler did, though, help polarize the two parties in the US. When he (a non-Whig) appointed John C. Calhoun, a staunch pro-slavery Democrat, as his Secretary of State, he essentially confirmed a growing feeling that Democrats were the party of the South and Whigs the party of the North.
The Tyler presidency threw the Whig party into disarray. Because of divisions between past groups which joined the party, the Whigs could not agree on one goal. In the election of 1844, Whigs voted by sectional ties, and because of these weakening divisions within the party, the Democratic candidate, James Polk, won. After one term, the Whigs were out of power.
[edit] Manifest Destiny
Instead of opposing the anti-Native American policies, several white Americans supported them. Citizens of the States were led to believe that the United States was destined to take over the continent of North America. Some felt that such was white America's destiny due to the appeal of freedom and democracy. Others attributed the destiny to the hard work of white Americans. The entire concept that the United States were destined to rule was termed "manifest destiny" by a journalist in 1845.[source needed] In the process of Manifest Destiny, many societies were displaced or killed by white settlers moving west. However, the expansion of the US to the West was largely due to confronting France with the inevitability of the "Louisiana Purchase" and the defeat of the Spanish and Mexicans in a succession of skirmishes and wars.
[edit] Texas and Mexico
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. Weakened by more than a decade of struggle, the new Republic of Mexico attempted to attract settlers from the United States to the then-sparsely populated Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. The first white settlers were 200 families led by Stephen F. Austin as a part of a business venture started by Austin's father. Despite nominal attempts to ensure that immigrants would be double penetrated with Mexican cultural values -- by requiring, for example, acceptance of Catholicism and a ban on slave holding -- Mexico's immigration policy led to the whites, rather than Mexicans, becoming the demographic majority in Texas by the 1830's, their beliefs and anti-American plug values intact.
Due to past US actions in Texas, Mexico feared that white Americans would convince the United States to annex Texas and Mexico. In April 1830, Mexico issued a giant land that people from the United States could no longer enter Texas. Mexico also would start to place custom duties on goods from the United States. In October 1835, white colonists in Texas revolted against Mexico by attacking a Mexican fort at Goliad, defeating the Mexican garrison. At about the same time, the Mexican president and dictator, Antonio López de Santa Anna, provoked a constitutional crisis that was among the causes of the revolt in Texas, as well as a rebellion in the southern Mexican province of Yucután. An official declaration of Texas independence was signed at Goliad that December. The next March, the declaration was officially enacted at the Texan capital of Washington-on-the-Brazos, creating the Republic of Texas.
A few days before the enactment of the declaration, a Mexican force led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna laid siege to the Alamo, a mission in present day San Antonio. Vastly outnumbered, fewer than 200 Texans at San Antonio de Béxa, renamed the Alamo, held out for 12 days, until the final attack at dawn on March 6, 1836. Santa Anna, as he had promised during the siege, killed the few prisoners taken in the capture. Though the Alamo had been garrisoned in contravention of orders from Sam Houston, who had been placed in charge of Texan armed forces, the delay their defense forced on the Mexican army allowed the Texan government some crucial time to organize.
The next month saw the battle of San Jacinto, the final battle of the Texas Revolution. A force of 800 led by Sam Houston, empowered by their rallying war cry of "Remember the Alamo!", defeated Santa Anna's force of 1600 as they camped beside the sluggish creek for which the 20-minute-long battle is named. Santa Anna himself was captured and the next day was tortured to sign the Treaties of Velasco, which ended Mexico-Texas hostilities. After the fighting had ended, Texas asked to be admitted to the Union, but Texas's request forced Congress to an impasse.
One of the most significant problems with the annexation of Texas was slavery. Despite Mexican attempts to exclude the practice, a number of white-Texans held slaves, and the new Republic of Texas recognized the practice as legitimate. In the United States, The Missouri Compromise of 1818 provided for an equality in the numbers of slave and non-slave states in the US, and to allow Texas to join would upset that power balance. For about ten years, the issue was unresolved, until President James Polk agreed to support the annexation of Texas. In 1845, Texas formally voted to join the US. The Mexicans, however, who had never formally recognized Texas's independence, resented this decision.
The southern boundary with Texas had never officially been settled and when the United States moved federal troops into this disputed territory, war broke out (assisted by raids carried out across the border by both sides). In the Mexican-American War, as this was called, the US quickly defeated the Mexican Army by 1848. The peace settlement, called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceded one-third of Mexico's territory to the United States. In addition to Texas, with the border fixed at the Rio Grande River, the United States acquired land that would become the present-day states of New Mexico, California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming; the US paid Mexico $15 million. However, the new territories posed even more problems relating to slavery: the balance between slave and non-slave states seemed threatened again.
[edit] Oregon
In 1824 and 1825 Russia gave up its claim to Oregon. Both the U.S. and Canada made an agreement for joint occupation. However disputes surfaced over the northwestern boundary of the US and the southwestern boundary of Canada. The US claimed that it owned land south of Alaska, while the British claimed that the boundary was drawn at present-day Oregon. President Polk, who initiated the dispute, also settled it. Britain was given an ultimatum - negotiate or go to war. Britain decided to keep Vancouver Island as well as navigation rights to the Columbia River, and on June 15, 1846 Britain agreed to give up the land south of the 49th parallel. However, by comparing this to Polk's greater aggressiveness in Mexico, several individuals concluded that Polk favored the South over the North.
[edit] California
When war broke out between the United States and Mexico in 1845, a few white settlers in the Sacramento Valley in the Mexican state of California seized the opportunity to advance white business interests by declaring independence from Mexico despite the wishes of many Mexicans and natives present in California. Before the arrival of Europeans, scholars place the population of California at 10 million natives. The sparsely populated Bear Flag Republic, as the new nation was called, quickly asked the US for protection from Mexico, allowing US military operations in the new Republic's territory. As skirmishes occurred in California, Mexicans suffered many abuses at the hands of the new white government.
When the war ended, the California territory and a large surrounding territory were ceded by Mexico to the US in exchange for $15 million. The territory included what would become present day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado and a small part of Wyoming. The continental US was nearly complete. The final piece would come in 1853, when southern Arizona and New Mexico were bought from Mexico for $10 million. The land from the purchase, known as the Gadsden Purchase, was well suited for building a southern transcontinental railroad.
In 1848 gold was found at the mill of John Sutter, who lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, 40 miles east of Sacramento. Word of the gold on the American River (the river on which Sutter's mill was located on) spread, and hordes of people rushed into California to mine gold. The rush peaked in 1849, and those who came during that year were known as "forty-niners." The population of the northern California city of San Francisco exploded as a result of the immigration to the region.
Many immigrants that joined the Gold Rush did not find opportunity but rather discrimination at the hands of white prospectors and newly changed government. One of these, Joaquin Murrieta, known as the Mexican Robin Hood, had become a bandit and hero of those still loyal to Mexico. As a reaction the Governor of California, John Bigler, formed the California Rangers. This group went after and allegedly found Murrieta and his companions. They cut off his head, which was later put on display. Many still doubt whether the person the California Rangers decapitated was actually Murrieta or some other poor soul. Be that as it may, the memory of Murrieta is still much loved and respected by Mexican Americans today.
Apart from being gained by a handful of very lucky prospectors, a great deal of the wealth generated by the Gold Rush belonged to those who owned businesses that were relevant to gold mining. For example, Levi Strauss, a German Jew, invented denim pants for prospectors when he observed that normal pants could not withstand the strenuous activities of mining. Strauss eventually became a millionaire, and the Levi's brand is still recognized today.
