American Society 18301860

1
American Society 1830-1860

• Northern and Western Societies
• African American Culture
• Diversity and Increasing Division between North
  and South

2
North and West

• Every town has its own culture and the North and
  West consisted of diverse peoples, communities,
  lifestyles, economies, and environments
• West weve talked about a great deal with
  WebQuest projects
• Country Life
• Urban areas

3
Country Life

• 19th century changed rural life
• Farm population declines as towns grew and
  manufacturing increased
• Also, many families moved West
• Market economy changed nature of farming

4
Country Life

• Railroad and post office
• Farms more connected to other communities
• Farm communities
• Still, largely communal
• Communal values
• Help out neighbors
• Recreation, parties, celebrations, growing food,
  all done together as a community
• Country Bees
• Neighbors gathered
• Make apple butter or preserves
• Eat, play, enjoy each others company

5
Urban areas

• Growth of cities
• Already discussed Europeans immigrants before
  Revolution started to settle in cities
• European immigrants continue to settle in cities
• Also large increase in Rural Migration
• Many free African Americans and newly freed
  slaves settled in cities
• 1830 population of US 12.9 million
• 1860 population of US 31.4 million
• 1830 only 23 cities with 10,000
• 1860 93 cities with 10,000
• 1860 9 cities exceeded 100,000

6
Urban Areas

• NYC was major commercial center
• Baltimore and New Orleans dominated South
• San Francisco was leading western city
• Midwest Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland
• Nationwide network of canals, roads, railroads
  and the telegraph

7
New York City

• Most populous city
• Major commercial center
• 1830 202,000 people
• 1860 over 814,000
• Irish and German immigrants
• Most residents only short-term
• NY was ever-changing, full of energy, reeking of
  sweat, horse dung and garbage p.304

8
Cities and Transportation

• Mass transit made city life possible
• Mass transit made city expansion possible
• Boundaries of NYC grew could no longer walk the
  length of city
• Horse-drawn streetcars
• Harlem railroad

9
City Life

• Influx of people
• Problems occur
• No sanitation system
• Disease
• Unhealthy and unsafe conditions
• These conditions that came to light in 1850s
  would be the main focus of the Progressive
  Movement by the 1890s

10
City Problems

• No sanitation (first sewers in 1850s)
• People relieved themselves outside
• Smell
• Spread disease
• Polluted water
• No garbage pickup (until late 1840s not
  regularly until much later)
• Cities disorderly, unsafe, unhealthy

11
Riots in Cities

• Why?
• What factors at play?
• Competition for jobs between native-born
  Americans and new immigrants
• Gangs of New York film
• Riots commonplace in 1830s economic, political,
  social, racial, and ethnic conflicts
• All classes involved professionals, merchants,
  craftsmen, laborers
• Slavery issue ignited riots between
  abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates
• Nativism
• Philadelphia
• 1828 native born workers attacked Irish
  weavers
• 1834 whites and blacks fought on the docks
• 1844 Protestant skilled workers attacked Irish
  Catholics

12
Public Education in Cities

• Although lacking in some public services, cities
  often led in the development of public schools
• 1800 only New England offered public education
• 1860 every state offered public education to
  whites

13
Public Education

• Horace Mann secretary of education from 1837 to
  1848 in Massachusetts
• Formalized training of teachers
• Minimum school year of 6 months
• Mann advocated free, state sponsored education
• Universal education
• Mann said it would end misery and crime
• Give diverse children shared values
• Women in educational system
• Universal not really universal racialized
  system
• Free black children often not included

14
Public Schools

• New values and purpose
• Previously, focused on literacy, religious
  training and discipline
• Mann
• Curriculum became secular
• Appropriate for future clerks, farmers, and
  workers
• Studied geography, history, math, science
• Retained moral education, but not focus on
  certain religion

15
Leisure in Cities

• New patterns of leisure
• Public sphere of socialization
• Streets, theaters, sports fields
• Unlike in rural areas where leisure took place in
  homes
• Leisure as commodity
• Leisure associations reflected ethnic, racial and
  class divisions

16
Leisure associations

• Extremely important to new immigrant groups
• Helped build communities within cities
• Leisure groups also started to provide public
  services for their members (banking, stores,
  etc.) Network and community building through
  leisure
• Race, ethnic, class and gender issues

17
Recreation and Leisure

• Taverns, drinking and games
• Fishing
• Church clubs as important socializing places
• Theater
• Sports

18
Recreation and Gender

• Theater
• Social sphere where men and women gathered
• Respectable place for women to be seen out in
  public
• Proper women did not frequent taverns
• Similar reasons to why the department store
  becomes a major development to increase womens
  role in society (in public)

19
City Culture and Communities

• Churches and church associations
• Public leisure
• Youth culture
• Streets of New York as place of leisure
• Appropriated streets for their recreation youth
  culture
• Young working women also experienced public
  recreation and leisure in NY
• Young working women differed from genteel,
  refined and proper women
• Class and gender and race all intertwined in
  defining leisure
• Also private clubs and associations
• Space and occasions for leisure outside of crowds
  and rowdiness
• Fragmented society
• Class, race, ethnic lines

20
Reading

• Did Literacy invoke the Civil War?
• What effect did it have?
• Widespread reading of newspapers
• Published accounts
• William Lloyd Garrisons Liberator
• Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

21
Power of Print

• The American Anti-Slavery Society was created in
  1833 by such leading abolitionists as Arthur and
  Lewis Tappan and William Lloyd Garrison.
• The organization published an annual almanac
  containing essays, poems, and illustrations in
  support of the abolitionist cause.
• This poster shows a collection of illustrations
  from the 1840 edition of the Anti-Slavery
  Almanac. The drawings depict the brutal treatment
  of slaves by their masters.

22
Illustration from The American Anti-Slavery
Almanac
23
Reading as great equalizer

• Literacy could allow more and more Americans to
  find out news and to learn about politics and to
  participate in politics
• Did this help further equality?
• Yes in what ways?
• No in what ways?

24
Wealth and Class Divisions

• Great fortunes to be made in cities
• 1845 - 19 millionaires in NY
• 1855 28 millionaires
• Wealth concentrated in hands of few
• NY 4 of population held 63-80 of wealth
• Many ordinary people lost wealth
• Bottom 2/3rds of families wealth decreased from
  10 to almost nothing from 1810-1841

25
Class Divisions

• Urban elite
• Fancy dinners
• Parties
• Country estates, ocean resorts, mineral spas,
  tours of Europe
• Wealth primarily inherited
• Urban slums
• Poor working men and women
• Feared and dreaded poverty, chronic illness,
  disability, old age, widowhood and desertion
• Tenements overcrowded
• Increased class, race and ethnic tensions

26
Middle class

• Distinct middle class
• Small in number, but significant
• Businessmen, traders, and professionals in market
  economy
• Middle class families
• Enjoyed some new consumer goods wool carpeting,
  wallpaper, furniture
• By 1850s used indoor toilets
• Children slept one to a bed
• Houses large with 4-6 rooms

27
Diversity in America

• Ethnic diversity
• Rise of immigration
• Why was there a rise in immigration?
• Market Economy

28
Immigrants lives

• 5 million immigrants from 1830-1860 entered US
• Immigrants
• Ireland (1.9 million)
• German (1.5 million)
• Britain (767,000)
• Largest era of immigration was 1851-1860
• Chinese immigrants mostly men

29
Immigration

• Promotion of Immigration
• Economic, political, religious reasons for coming
• Market economy needed workers so immigration was
  promoted by businesses
• Recruitment of immigrants
• North, West, Midwest

30
Immigrants lives

• Optimistic
• Disillusionment
• Hardships
• Letters home encouraged even more immigration
  there was work here, regardless of how horrible
  the conditions were
• Thousands returned home disappointed
• Too much hype parallels to Europeans first
  settlements in New England (Cronons article
  group 1, project 1)

31
Race and Ethnicity

• Racial ideas and immigration
• Language, dialect, facial features, religion as
  well as skin color many types of
  characteristics to distinguish race
• Race and ethnicity
• What is difference?
• Is there a difference between these two?
• Has there always been a difference?

32
Immigrants Lives

• Irish
• 1845-49 Ireland death by starvation,
  malnutrition and typhus
• 1 million died great famine
• 750,000 came to US
• Peak of immigration 1847-54
• New immigrants were young, female, poor, rural
  and Catholic
• Women worked in textile mills and houses
• Men worked transportation and construction
• Supported families and neighbors in Irish
  enclaves in cities
• Built many Catholic churches and schools
• Established networks of charitable and social
  organizations
• Often treated as non-whites
• What does this say about racial ideology?

33
Role of Religion

• Anti-Catholicism
• Why?
• Think of beginnings of nation
• Economics, anxiety, tensions, racial ideologies
• What effect did this have?
• What about our Presidents?
• John F. Kennedy (1960) first Catholic President

34
Immigrants Lives

• Germans
• Largely Protestant
• Viewed as white
• Maintained German customs and institutions
• Large number of craftsmen were German immigrants
• Non-Protestant Germans were not treated as well
  as Protestant Germans

35
Immigrants Lives

• Hispanics
• Florida to Texas, Southwest to California
• Became immigrants without moving anywhere
• Treaties placed them in US
• Some unhappy, some optimistic about the political
  democracy and self-government opportunities
• Didnt live up to promise
• Many Texas Mexicans had fought for independence
  but then treated as inferiors and foreigners
• Second-class citizens on land where they had
  lived for generations
• Still maintained culture and traditions
• Hispanics considered non-white
• Descended from Indians and Spaniards
• Anglo-Americans believed Spanish were inferior,
  lazy, and decadent and they applied these
  stereotypes of Hispanics

36
Diversity in North and West

• Not only religious and new immigrants groups
• Also, continued increase in free black population
• Was everyone in North and West open to the idea
  of free blacks settling in their communities?
• Was this really a tolerant place free of racism?

37
African American Communities

• African Americans celebrated freedom holidays,
  commemorating emancipation and protesting own
  inequality and the persistence of slavery
• August 1 anniversary of West Indian
  emancipation
• Douglass first of August is like the white
  mans 4th of July
• As black population grew, so did racism
• African American population
• 2.3 million in 1830 to 4.4 million in 1860 (slave
  and free)
• Half of free African American population lived in
  North
• Despite differences in occupation, wealth,
  education, religion and social status, free
  blacks were united and self-defense promoted
  solidarity
• Discrimination and Exclusion

38
Growth of African American population

• Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman cam north as
  fugitive slaves
• Why risk it?
• Why continually risk life by involvement in
  Underground Railroad?

39
African American Communities

• Always strong, even under slavery
• No surprise that free blacks built even stronger
  communities
• Churches
• Themes of equality, exodus and freedom
• Black churches male and female preachers
  played central roles in communities
• Voluntary Associations became hallmark of black
  communities
• Literary societies
• Schools
• Mutual aid societies

40
African American Communities

• Political Activism
• White racism dominant force in society
• Fought for equal rights
• Right to vote
• Middle class leadership
• Black newspapers
• Fought second-class status as well as end to
  slavery
• Abolitionism

41
Discrimination

• Northern and western states barred free blacks
  from entering or required bonds from 500-1000
  to guarantee their good conduct
• Voting only allowed in Massachusetts, New
  Hampshire, Vermont and Maine
• Oregon blacks could not own property, make
  contracts or sue in court
• Also, economic restrictions
• Excluded from many jobs
• Many opened restaurants, taverns, hotels, barber
  shops and employment agencies for domestic
  servants

42
African American Communities

• Growth of black middle class
• Forged own cultural identity
• Colored Americans instead of Africans to
  reflect growing participation in public life
• Dual identity
• African descendents
• Americans
• Dances and other forms of entertainment and
  recreation combined elements of African
  tradition as well as American culture

43
Social and Political Developments

• North and West
• Diversity
• Strong communities
• Middle Class
• Reform movements
• Literacy
• Religious movements
• Injustice of slavery becomes an issue

44
United States?

• North and West
• Social, cultural, political, economic differences
  from South
• Were we still a united states?
• Was any area really united?

45
North/West and South

• Similarities
• South shared much in common with rest of nation
• Geographic sizes roughly equal NS
• White southerners idolized Revolutionary heroes
• Spoke same language
• Worshiped same Protestant God
• Shared common mixture of nationalism and localism
• States rights doctrine important in both N S
• Westward dreams manifest destiny frontier
  visions
• Class divisions
• Wealth concentrated in hands of few elite white
  men
• Market economy affected both plantations in
  South as well as factories/mills in North

46
North/West and South

• Differences
• Climate and longer growing season
• Effect of the environment power of environment
  to affect society
• Rural and agricultural
• Intense attachment to place
• Biracial society of brutal inequality
• Liberty of one race depended on enslavement of
  another White wealth built upon black labor
• Low population density large, spread out
  plantations

47
North/West and South

• Differences
• Low population density means people were scarce
• Difficult to operate schools, churches,
  libraries, or even inns and restaurants
• Factories rare because planters invested capital
  in slaves
• South lagged behind North in industrial growth
• South only had 35 of the nations railroads by
  1860
• Some urban centers New Orleans, Charleston
• Small and not as developed cities as North
• Less immigration less jobs available