Chapter 11

1. Chapter 11 Society, Culture, and Politics, 1820s-1840s Web

2. Political Factionalism in the North and West • Emergence of the Whig Party • Support among commercial farmers and new urban commercial classes in cities and towns • Grounded in market revolution, but supported broad political agenda • Activist government, economic development, moral progress • Emergence of the Democratic Party • Appealed to cultural traditionalists who had gained little from the market revolution and who had no use for Whig moralism • Especially popular among Irish Catholics • Opposed mixing of church and state that characterized Whig moralism

3. Politics in the South • Democrats strongest in up-country communities • Folks who either were or hoped to be beneficiaries of the market revolution • Whigs strongest in plantation counties and areas where their plans for internal improvement appealed to ambitious farmers • Demanded minimal government, low taxes, little interference with personal matters • Unlike North and West, southern political divisions had little to do with religion

4. The Politics of Economic Development • Party differences over the role of government • Whigs favored activist government to support the market • Democrats saw government as dangerous and wanted it limited • Banking question of central importance • Whigs saw banks as agents of economic progress

5. The Politics of Economic Development (cont.) • Democrats distrusted banks and wanted them abolished • Partisan squabbling over internal improvements • Democrats in Congress blocked federal involvement • Whigs favored direct action by state government to fund projects • Democrats opposed any direct government action • Feared inequality, favoritism, privilege, debt, corruption

6. The Politics of Social Reform • Political debate over public education • Parties agreed in principle on public education • Differed over extent and aims • Whigs favored extensive, expensive, and centralized system • Called for character building rather than skills training • Advocated state-level centralization

7. The Politics of Social Reform (cont.) • Democrats preferred local control • Question of parochial education after the mid-1840s • Catholics demanded reforms of public schools or chance to form their own schools • Opposed vehemently by Whigs • Partisan disagreement over prisons and asylums for the insane • Whigs favored institutions for rehabilitation • Democrats favored institutions that isolated deviants • Most state systems were a mixture of the two approaches • Whigs generally approved of expensive and humane moral treatment facilities for the insane • Most Democrats opposed better treatment for the insane as too expensive

8. Social Reform in the South • Whigs and Democrats generally united in opposing efforts at “social improvement” • Region was culturally similar • Common rejection of big, activist government • Favorer individual moral improvement, not public coercion • Reinforced personal independence and patriarchy

9. Temperance as a Political Issue in the 1830s • Whigs favored coercion rather than voluntarism • End licensing system for local liquor sales • Saw temperance as arm of evangelicalism • Democrats rejected idea of government intervention in people’s lives • Favored reliance on personal choice

10. The Politics of Race • Sizable free black population in many northern seaport cities • Took a variety of jobs • Discrimination became commonplace after the 1820s • Informal as well as official • African Americans formed their own institutions • Entertainment venues, often integrated

11. The Politics of Race (cont.) • Churches, schools, social clubs • Racism in the democratic Party • Incorporated racism into their political agenda • The consolidation of racist thought • Whites came to view blacks as treacherous and wicked • Democrats saw blacks as unfit to be citizens of the white republic

12. Emergence of an Antislavery Ideology • Not until the 1830s did many Americans actively oppose slavery • Northern abolition was implicit condemnation of slavery in the South • William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator began publishing in 1831 • American Anti-Slavery Society organized in 1833 • Logical extension of middle-class evangelicalism • Yet attracted only a minority among middle-class evangelicals • Demonstrated complicity of the Democratic Party in supporting slavery

13. Gender Issues as Political Questions • Democrats accused of abjuring sentimental domesticity • Whigs embraced “traditional” values • Focused on improving the character of individuals rather than institutions • Role of women in social improvement campaigns • Magdalen Society’s efforts to eliminate prostitution • Replaced by Female Moral Reform Society

14. Gender Issues as Political Questions (cont.) • Commitment to raise “proper” boys • Campaign against the sexual double standard • Assumed responsibility for defining what was respectable and what was not • Women’s rights movement • Assuming greater roles within the family • Played prominent role in antislavery movement • Logical step to think, then, of women’s equality with men • Seneca Falls Convention, 1848 • Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions Web