Industry & Democracy

Timeline:Industry & Democracy

• 1820 Missouri Compromise• 1825 Erie Canal opens• 1828 B & O Railroad opens• 1830 Indian Removal Act

Nullification CrisisPopular revolutions across Europe

• 1833 Britain abolishes slavery• 1837 Panic of 1837• 1838 Trail of Tears

Pennsylvania paper mill on the Brandywine River in 1835

the Lowell mills in 1850

Rail travel in 1827

New York City in 1850

The Erie Canal in 1830

Cincinnati in 1835

Canals and railroads, c.1840

How did woman first become subject to man? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will be, to the end of time, inferior to the white race, and, therefore, doomed to subjection. (New York Herald, 1852)

It was impossible to civilize Indians. … It was not in their nature. … They were destined to extinction, and, although he would never use or countenance inhumanity towards them, he did not think them ,as a race, worth preserving. (conversation with Henry Clay, 1825)

Parade of Victuallers, Philadelphia 1821

(banners read: “We feed the hungry”)

Nowhere in the world is everybody so regularly and continually busy as in Pittsburgh. I do not believe there is on the face of the earth, including the United States, … a single town in which the idea of amusement so seldom enters the heads of the inhabitants. (Michel Chevalier)

… there appears to be very little worthy of note. Nullification has blown over; the President’s tour has terminated; Black Hawk has gone home; the new race for President is not yet commenced, and everything seems settled down into a calm. Dull times, these, for us newspaper-makers. We wish the President or Major Downing or some other distinguished individual would happen along again and afford us material for a daily article. Or even if the sea-serpent would be so kind as to pay us a visit, we should be extremely obliged to him ...

INGRATITUDE OF A CAT.

PERSONALITY OF NAPOLEON.

WONDERFUL ANTICS OF FLEAS.

BROUGHT TO IT BY RUM.

The Hon. Daniel Webster will leave town this morning for Washington.

John Baker, the person whom we reported a short time since as being brought before the police for stealing a ham, died suddenly in his cell in Bellevue in the greatest agony – an awful warning to drunkards.

Colonel Crockett, it is expected, will visit the Bowery Theater this evening.

RUMOR – It was rumored in Washington on the 6th that a duel would take place the next day between two members of the House.

They alone deserve to be called free who participate in the formation of their political institutions. (Virginia petition, 1829)

For fifty years, the inhabitants of the United States have been repeatedly and constantly told that they are the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They … have an immensely high opinion of themselves and are not far from believing that they form a species apart from the rest of the human race. (Tocqueville, Democracy in America)

The procession was nearly a mile long. The democrats marched in very good order to the glare of torches: the banners were more numerous than I had ever seen in any religious festival; all were in transparency on account of the darkness. On some were inscribed the names of the democratic societies or sections; “Democratic young men of the ninth or eleventh ward;” others bore imprecations against the Bank of the United States; Nick Biddle and Old Nick here figured largely. … These scenes belong to history. They are the episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory to posterity, that of the coming of democracy. (Michel Chevalier, New York, 1834)

Democracy and the far west made Crockett: he is a product of forests, freedom, universal suffrage, and bear hunts. (English paper)

But the reader, I expect, would have no objection to know a little about my employment during the two years while my competitor was in Congress. In this space I had some pretty tuff times, and will relate some few things that happened to me. So here goes, …

Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee (1834)

No novelty in the United States struck me more vividly during my stay there than the equality of conditions. … it creates opinions, gives birth to feelings, suggests customs, and modifies whatever it does not create. … most rich men were born poor… (Tocqueville, Democracy in America)

It’s a damned uncreative man who can’t spell a word at least two ways. (Jackson)

Vote for Andrew Jackson who can fight, not John Quincy Adams who can write.

Bingham, “Canvassing for the Vote” (1851)

Bingham, “Stump Speaking” (1853)

“The Will of the PEOPLE the Supreme Law”

Bingham, “County Election” (1852)

Bingham, “The Verdict of the People” (1853)

“The President’s Levee, or All Creation Going to the White House”

Thousands and thousands of people, without distinction of rank, collected in an immense mass around the Capitol. … [broke] glass and bone china to the amount of several thousand dollars (Margaret Smith, 1829)

I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons have come from five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger! (Daniel Webster, 1829)

1788-1816Federalist vs. Democratic-Republican

• Washington• J. Adams• Jefferson• Madison

1816-1828Democratic-Republican

“The Era of Good Feelings”• Monroe• J. Q. Adams

1828-1852Whig vs. Democrat

• Jackson• Van Buren• Harrison/Tyler• Polk• Taylor• Pierce

1788-1796 1796-1800 1800-1808 1808-1816 1816-1824 1824-1828 1828-1836 1836-1840 1840-1844 Washington J.Adams Jefferson Madison Monroe J.Q.Adams Jackson Van Buren Harrison/Tyler

federal over staterepublicanism over democracy

west: for federal profitBritain over France

Constitution: “general welfare”

state over federaldemocratic republicanism

west: for the common manFrance over Britain

Constitution: constructionists

federal over statedemocracy

national bankThe American System & corporation

Constitution: “general welfare”constituents: the wealthy & industrial workers

state over federaldemocracy

hard money, anti-bankanti- American System & corporation

Constitution: constructionistconstituents: rural middle & lower classes

Federalist Democratic-Republican

Whig Democrat

sectionalism

1793: 5 million pounds per year

1820: 170 million pounds per year

[Cherokee territory] embraced five or six millions of acres of the best lands within the limits of the State. … The resources of Georgia could never be extensively developed by a well-devised system of internal improvements, and commercial and social intercourse with other portions of the Union, especially the great West, until this portion of the state was settled by our industrious, enlightened, free-hold population – entitled to, and meriting, all the privileges of citizenship. (Gov. Wilson Lumpkin)

John Ross

I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west....On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure...

The villages of the Indians have all been destroyed; and their cattle, horses, and other stock, with nearly all their other property, taken or destroyed. The swamps and hammocks have been every where penetrated, and the whole country traversed from the Georgia line to the southern extremity of Florida; and the small bands who remain dispersed over that extensive region, have nothing of value left but their rifles. (General Jessup, 1838)

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. (Webster)

Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress [i.e. by corporate law]. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. … It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. (Jackson’s veto speech, 1832)

All bank charters, all acts of incorporation are calculated to enhance the power of wealth, produce inequalities among the people and to subvert liberty. (Democratic newspaper)