1. James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage Susan M. Hartmann CHAPTER 12 The New West and the Free North, 1840-1860 The American Promise A History of the United States Fifth Edition Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's

2. I. Economic and Industrial Evolution A. Agriculture and Land Policy 1. Populating the Midwest 2. Technological innovations John Deere invented the “singing plow” in 1837; in the 1850s, Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper allowed famers to harvest twelve acres a day; reapers and plows allowed farmers to double corn and wheat harvests between 1840 and 1860. 3. Federal land policy B. Manufacturing and Mechanization 1. The American system 2. A dynamic national economy New England led the nation in manufacturing; southern states produced commodities such as wheat, pork, whiskey, tobacco, and cotton; Pennsylvania and Ohio produced millions of tons of coal for industrial fuel. 3. The domestic market manufacturers specialized in producing for the domestic market rather than for export; British goods dominated the international market and, in general, were cheaper and better made.

3. I. Economic and Industrial Evolution C. Railroads: Breaking the Bonds of Nature 1. Increasing mileage in 1830, trains steamed along 9,000 miles of tracks, most of it in New England and the Middle Atlantic by 1850, it increased to 30,000 miles of tracks, about as much as the rest of the world combined made the United States the world’s second-greatest industrial power behind Great Britain. 2. Propelling other industries propelled the growth of iron and communications by 1861, more than 50,000 miles of Samuel F.B. Morse’s telegraph stretched across the continent, often alongside railroad tracks. 3. Private corporations Almost all railroads were built and owned by private companies rather than the federal government the government supported these investors, especially with federal and grants.

5. II. Free Labor: Promise and Reality A. The Free-Labor Ideal 1. Free labor 2. Universal education communities in the North and West supported public schools to make learning available to young children textbooks and teachers drummed into students the lessons of the free-labor system: self-reliance, discipline, and especially hard work. B. Economic Inequality 1. Measuring success 1860, the nation had about forty millionaires most Americans, however, measured success in more modest terms average wealth of an adult white man in the North barely topped $2,000; nearly half had no wealth at all, and about 60 percent owned no land. 2. Justifying inequality 3. Social and geographic mobility created restless social and geographic mobility two-thirds of the rural population moved every decade; population turnover in cities was even greater.

7. II. Free Labor: Promise and Reality C. Immigrants and the Free-Labor Ladder 1. Rising immigration almost 4.5 million immigrants arrived between 1840 and 1860 nearly three out of every four immigrants who arrived between 1840 and 1860 came from either Germany or Ireland. 2. German immigrants relatively few worked as wage laborers or domestic servants. 3. Irish immigrants and ethnic discrimination entered at the bottom of the free-labor ladder and had difficulty climbing up roughly three out of four worked as laborers or domestic servants faced widespread prejudice (“No Irish Need Apply”), but they still earned more money in America than they did in Ireland free-labor system often did not live up to expectations; many wage laborers could not realistically aspire to become independent, self-sufficient property holders.

11. III. The Westward Movement A. Manifest Destiny 1. “Civilizing” the West 2. Manifest Destiny coined in 1845 by New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan; called on Americans to resist any foreign power that attempted to thwart their move westward; as important as national pride and racial arrogance were to manifest destiny, economic gain made up its core. B. Oregon and the Overland Trail 1. Joint occupation 2. The Plains Indians settlers began to trickle along the Oregon Trail; by 1869, approximately 350,000 emigrants had made the trip in wagon trains; emigrants encountered the Plains Indians; some Indians were peaceful, sedentary farmers, but the majority of the tribes from the central and southern Plains were horse- mounted, nomadic, nonagricultural peoples whose warriors symbolized the “savage Indian” in the white mind. 3. Indian concentration 4. Women’s hardships

15. III. The Westward Movement C. The Mormon Exodus 1. Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon in 1830; claimed to have translated the work from tablets buried near his home founded the Church of Latter Day Saints converts were attracted to the promise of a pure faith in the midst of antebellum America’s social turmoil and rampant materialism. 2. Exodus and Brigham Young Neighbors branded Mormons heretics; persecution drove Smith and his followers from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally in 1839 to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they built a prosperous community dissenters accused Smith of advocating polygamy opponents of the church arrested Smith and his brother on June 27, 1844, a mob stormed a jail and shot Smith and his brother church turned to Brigham Young as its new leader; the Mormons arrived in their new home by the Great Salt Lake in 1847. 3. Annexation of Utah to the United States as the Utah Territory in 1850 outraged at the Mormon practice of polygamy, the United States sent an army of 2,500 troops to invade Salt Lake City in what was known as the Mormon War demonstrated most Americans viewed Mormons as a threat to American morality.

16. III. The Westward Movement D. The Mexican Borderlands 1. The Mexican Southwest Mexico found it increasingly difficult to defend its ill-defined borders, especially when faced with a northern neighbor convinced of its supremacy and bent on territorial acquisition. 2. Americans in Texas 3. Texans revolt 4. California Mexican government tried to lure Mexicans to California by granting them huge estates called ranchos, but the plan did not work Americans who championed manifest destiny sought to woo American emigrants from Oregon Country to California as more settlers arrived, the Mexican government grew alarmed the U.S. government made no secret of its desire to acquire California President Jackson tried to purchase it in 1846 John C. Frémont raised an independence movement known as the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846.

19. IV. Expansion and the Mexican- American War A. The Politics of Expansion 1. The problem of Texas 2. The politics of annexation Tyler decided to risk annexing Texas; inflamed sectional tension; for the 1844 election, the Whigs nominated Henry Clay, an opponent of annexation; the Democrats chose expansionist James K. Polk, who promised to deliver Texas and Oregon to the United States; Polk won the election on a campaign based on manifest destiny. 3. “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” February 1845, Congress approved a joint resolution offering the Republic of Texas admission as the fifteenth slave state; rather than risk war with Great Britain, Polk agreed to a compromise, dividing the Oregon Territory along the forty-ninth parallel; the Senate approved the treaty B. The Mexican American War, 1846–1848 1. Polk’s desire for land 2. Divisive war ordered General Zachary Taylor to march his 4,000-man army from its position on the Nueces River, the southern boundary of Texas according to the Mexicans, to the banks of the Rio Grande 150 miles south, the boundary claimed by Texas; on April 25, 1846, Mexican cavalry attacked American soldiers; Congress passed a declaration of war and began raising an army. 3. Polk’s plan 4. Early successes Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny occupied Los Angeles after several severe losses; by September 1845, Taylor had driven into the interior of Mexico; in February 1847, after a five-day siege, Santa Anna finally withdrew his army.

21. IV. Expansion and the Mexican- American War C. Victory in Mexico 1. Mexican persistence 2. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo February 2, 1848; Mexico agreed to give up all claims to Texas north of the Rio Grande and to cede the provinces of New Mexico and California—more than 500,000 square miles—to the United States. The United States agreed to pay Mexico $15 million and to assume $3.25 million in claims that American citizens had against Mexico; gave America a two-ocean economy while Mexico faced a sharply diminished economic future. D. Golden California 1. The gold rush Rush—James Marshall discovered gold in the American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in January 1848; led to the California gold rush; between 1849 and 1852, more than 250,000 forty-niners entered California, hoping to strike it rich. 2. Life in the mining towns 3. Anti-immigrant sentiment 25,000 Chinese lived in California in 1851; California levied higher taxes on non-Americans to drive them from the goldfields; Chinese people fought back, but they still faced racial violence. 4. Effects on Native American population

23. V. Reforming Self and Society A. The Pursuit of Perfection: Transcendentalists and Utopians 1. Transcendentalists 2. Fourier phalanxes 3. Oneida community B. Woman’s Rights Activists 1. Seneca Falls 2. Free labor arguments

25. V. Reforming Self and Society C. Abolitionists and the American Ideal 1. Tactics and response 2. Black abolitionists 3. Emigration 4. The Underground Railroad