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The American Yawp, Volume 1, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 11 · pp. 339–377
This chapter follows the United States through the 1830s, when Andrew Jackson's presidency set off arguments about government power, banks, political parties, immigration, Native removal, slavery and reform. It also covers the cotton economy of the South, the Texas Revolution and the Second Great Awakening. The sections below start with Jackson's rise and the political fights inside his own administration.
Americans of the 1830s could not agree on who Jackson was. Some saw him as the first great champion of the "common man." Others saw a tyrant who threatened republican government. Both views make sense because his presidency came at a turning point. The country was arguing about what government should do, how the economy should work, how politics should run, who belonged in the nation, and what its moral character should be. Each question became a flashpoint under Jackson, so the fights over him reveal the larger fights of the age. (p. 339)
Jackson's supporters were a loose coalition: small farmers, skilled city workers called mechanics, and Southern planters. They had no clear shared plan for reform. Jackson tried to manage the rivalry between Vice President John C. Calhoun and his adviser Martin Van Buren by picking a cabinet from different regions and viewpoints. But allies split over issues like taxes, and the lack of a common vision made governing harder. (p. 339)
In 1829 Jackson began "rotation in office." His administration removed about nine hundred federal officials. Earlier presidents had rarely fired anyone unless they were dishonest or incompetent. Jackson argued that holding a post for years was an undemocratic privilege. Supporters called this fair. Critics said it replaced skilled public servants with inexperienced loyalists and named it the spoils system. The cabinet did uncover about 457,000 dollars in embezzlement. The practice of rewarding supporters with jobs continued under presidents for about fifty years. (pp. 339–340)
A personal crisis soon hurt the cabinet. Jackson named his friend John Eaton, a Tennessee senator, as secretary of war. Eaton had married Margaret O'Neale Timberlake only about nine months after her first husband, a navy officer, died. Rumors said the two had been involved earlier. She came from a family that ran a boardinghouse, and her humble background and outspoken manner fed the gossip. The cabinet wives, led by Calhoun's wife Floride, shunned her. Jackson's late wife Rachel had been the target of a similar scandal, so he defended Margaret. When he learned the gossip came from his own cabinet families, he turned against them, and a deep rift opened with Calhoun. (p. 340)
This was more than a quarrel about manners. Women could not vote or hold office, but Washington's social life was tied to politics. Elite women had real influence and rivalries as intense as the men's, and parties and visits were places where political deals were made. Snubbing Margaret Eaton therefore became a political crisis for the president. (p. 340)
The Tariff of 1828 was a tax on imports meant to protect Northern manufacturers from European competition. Southerners called it the Tariff of Abominations. It made manufactured goods more expensive for them. It also led countries like Britain to buy less Southern cotton in return. Many Southerners feared that a government able to pass such a law might one day act against slavery. South Carolina led the opposition. (pp. 340, 342)
Calhoun secretly wrote the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest" in 1828. It laid out nullification, the idea that a state can declare an unconstitutional federal law void inside its borders. He built on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799. He argued that states kept their sovereignty in the national compact, so they could nullify such laws or even leave the Union. When Jackson learned Calhoun was the author, he took it as personal betrayal and a challenge to his authority. (p. 342)
Jackson now leaned more on a private circle of advisers called the "kitchen cabinet," a name that set them apart from his divided official cabinet. (p. 342)
He also used the veto against his rivals. In 1830 he rejected the Maysville Road bill, which would have paid for internal improvements in Kentucky and was backed by Henry Clay and Calhoun. He called it a local matter, not a national one. Over his two terms he vetoed more bills than any earlier president. In March 1831 Van Buren offered to resign, which gave Jackson an opening to ask the anti-Eaton members to resign as well. Only one original cabinet member stayed. The new appointees were mostly loyal to Jackson himself. (p. 342)
The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 and traced back to Alexander Hamilton's financial plan. It was a private corporation with public duties: providing a national currency, regulating state banks and public credit, and holding and paying out federal funds. Some Democratic-Republicans doubted that it was reliable or constitutional, and they distrusted paper money. Jackson and others blamed it for the Panic of 1819. By the early 1830s, with federal land sales bringing in huge sums, critics feared the bank was squeezing state banks and businesses to make a profit. (pp. 342–343)
The bank's director, Nicholas Biddle, pushed for an early recharter in an election year. Biddle knew that a veto might hurt Jackson's reelection, and Jackson viewed this as blackmail. He vetoed the bill in 1832. His message called the bank unconstitutional because it held powers the Constitution never gave and said it was a way for the well-connected to grow rich at others' expense. Only a strictly limited government, he argued, treats everyone equally. Opposition to the bank became the main idea that united his supporters. (p. 343)
The bank's charter had not yet run out, so in 1833 Jackson weakened it by having the cabinet stop depositing federal money there. The government used selected state banks instead. Critics called these "pet banks" and charged that they were favored allies. (p. 343)
Congress lowered some tariff rates in 1832 but kept others high, which did not calm the South. A special convention in South Carolina declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 void, told customs officers not to collect them, and warned that it would secede if the federal government tried to enforce them. Jackson answered that disunion by armed force was treason. He got Congress to pass a Force Bill allowing the military to enforce the tariffs. No other Southern state joined South Carolina. Jackson also privately accepted compromise, so Clay and Calhoun worked out a bill that slowly lowered rates. South Carolina then rescinded its nullification of the tariffs but nullified the Force Bill. (pp. 343–344)
The crisis tied secession to states' rights, two ideas that had not been closely linked before. It also showed the political power of enslavers, who would raise nullification again in the 1840s and 1850s. (p. 345)
Jackson's supporters began calling themselves Democrats. Under Van Buren's leadership they built the first modern American party, with centralized leadership and one program applied at every level of government. Democrats opposed federal overreach, favored laissez-faire economics, backed expansion, and valued loyalty. (p. 345)
Jackson's opponents mocked him as "King Andrew the First" and took the name Whigs, after Revolutionary patriots. The party grew out of the National Republicans and was an odd mix, including proslavery Southerners angry over nullification and antislavery Yankees. This made a clear message hard. Whigs stressed Protestant culture and internal improvements and courted reform movements. Henry Clay, their 1832 nominee, lost badly, and the party was formally organized in 1834. (pp. 345, 348)
The Anti-Masonic Party opposed the Freemasons, a fraternal order many Americans distrusted for its secrecy and elitism. Suspicion grew after William Morgan, who planned to reveal the order's rituals, disappeared and was probably murdered. The party was small but strong in New York and parts of New England. It was the first party to hold a national nominating convention, a practice other parties later copied. After a poor result in 1832, it merged into the growing Whig movement. (pp. 345–346)
As more Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany reached American cities, some Americans reacted with fear. These people were called nativists. They saw the newcomers' religion, unfamiliar languages, and customs as alien. They also feared that Catholics would bring religious violence with them and gain political influence (p. 346).
Many nativists believed priests controlled how their parishioners voted, as if the pope ruled them. The Protestant minister Lyman Beecher gave lectures asking why Europe was sending so many poor immigrants who, he claimed, filled prisons and poorhouses and raised taxes (pp. 347–348). Because the Democratic Party was courting urban immigrant voters, nativists turned against it and later joined the anti-Jackson coalition (p. 348).
Nativist fear sometimes became violence. In the summer of 1834, a Protestant mob near Boston heard a rumor that nuns were holding a woman against her will. The mob broke into the Catholic convent and burned it down. Afterward a former student, Rebecca Reed, published a memoir claiming that novices and students had been abused. Protestants increasingly accused priests of sexual predation and of political control over their flocks (pp. 347–348). The attack was one of many nativist outbursts in the Northeast.
Many Irish immigrants also joined the industrial working class in Northern cities, where they met the politics of labor. Trade unions in single industries protected their members in two main ways. They set up closed shops, where an employer could hire only union members. They also went on strike to improve conditions (p. 346). By the 1840s, organizers wanted better pay, protection for child factory workers, and shorter hours. The Ten-Hour Movement argued that a ten-hour day would leave workers time for intellectual and moral improvement (p. 346).
Democrats usually backed workers' interests and won many urban workers' votes in 1832. Even so, many politicians condemned unions as unlawful combinations. In their view, unions put workers' narrow self-interest above property rights and the common good. Some skilled workers responded by forming political groups, such as the Workingmen's Party in Philadelphia in 1828 (p. 346).
The legal picture changed in 1842. In Commonwealth v. Hunt, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with a union of Boston bootmakers. It reasoned that workers could act in the way that best served their own interests, which made unions legally acceptable. Still, unions remained in a shaky legal position and often failed to reach their goals (p. 346).
After failing to stop Jackson's reelection, a fragile alliance of old National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and nativists organized as a new party in 1834. Henry Clay, a senator from Kentucky, held private meetings to persuade anti-Jackson leaders from different backgrounds to unite. He also gave the party its name, Whig, which pointed to opposition to royal power. The name suggested that Jackson acted like a king (p. 348).
Historians call the contest between Whigs and Democrats the Second Party System. It was the first time two cohesive, modern parties competed, and it lasted until 1854 (p. 348). At the start, the Whigs were still split by region and ideology. They focused on winning seats in Congress, since they could not win the presidency. In 1836, the Democrat Martin Van Buren, Jackson's vice president, won the presidency easily (p. 348).
Democrats hoped that beating the Second Bank would fix the nation's economic problems. It did not (p. 348). From 1834 to 1836, the economy boomed for three reasons. Cotton prices were high, credit was easy to get, and gold and silver (specie, or hard currency) flowed in from Europe. At the same time, the federal government's western land sales encouraged speculation. Lending was poorly regulated, and state-chartered banks multiplied and printed more paper notes than ever. The result was a real estate bubble (pp. 348, 350).
Jackson's Treasury worried that paper money was driving up prices. In 1836 it issued the Specie Circular, which required hard currency for federal land purchases. Credit tightened, foreign lenders demanded repayment of American loans, and specie became scarce. These pressures set off the Panic of 1837 (p. 350).
The panic began with bank runs in New York on May 4, 1837, when customers rushed to swap banknotes for gold and silver. By May 10, the New York banks had run out of specie and stopped redeeming notes, and banks across the country did the same (p. 350). A very large crowd gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and denounced banking as a system of fraud and oppression (p. 350).
A depression followed. Between 1839 and 1843, bank capital fell by 40 percent. New Orleans cotton prices dropped by half, about two hundred banks closed, and eight states defaulted on loans from British banks (p. 350).
The crisis damaged Van Buren. His opponents called him "Van Ruin" because his presidency was stuck dealing with the fallout. Democrats had expected the Bank's end to help the economy, so disappointed partisans now had a reason to back the Whigs. The Whigs became better organized and more popular (pp. 348, 350).
While politicians argued about tariffs and banking, the federal government was also threatening Native nations. Presidents since Jefferson had talked about removal, but Jackson acted most forcefully. He claimed that removal would open large areas to a dense, "civilized" population. His reputation as an Indian fighter won support from Americans who wanted Native land, and Southern voters understood that he would push Native peoples out of desirable lands east of the Mississippi (pp. 350–351). As a result, governments stopped trying to assimilate Native Americans and planned forced removal instead (p. 350).
Georgia was a key case. Starting in 1826, state officials asked Washington to negotiate for Cherokee land. The Adams administration resisted at first. Settler harassment of the Cherokee then pushed both Adams and Jackson toward talks. Georgia grew impatient and abolished earlier agreements that protected Cherokee movement and tribal law. Gold was found in Georgia in 1829, which made the pressure worse. Soon after taking office, Jackson urged the Cherokee and others to move west voluntarily (p. 351).
The Cherokee had adopted several Euro-American practices, and missionaries and settlers praised them as signs of becoming "civilized." These included a written syllabary created by Sequoyah, the newspaper the Cherokee Phoenix, and a constitution in 1827 modeled on the US Constitution (p. 352). For the Cherokee, though, these things had their own meaning. They united the tribe, set down its laws, built a national identity, and showed outsiders that the Cherokee were sovereign and equal. Elias Boudinot edited the Phoenix from 1828 to 1834 and wrote about removal (p. 352).
Many Americans opposed removal. Missionaries such as Jeremiah Evarts spoke out, and more than two hundred thousand people opposed it on legal grounds, including through religious newspapers (p. 352). In 1829, Catharine Beecher urged American women to petition Congress against the policy (pp. 352–353). Cherokee women, including Peggy Scott Vann Crutchfield, also sent petitions. They pointed out that they had followed the president's advice to farm, make their own clothes, and educate their children (p. 354).
The Cherokee also went to court. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Supreme Court said it lacked jurisdiction. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), it held that Georgia's laws did not apply inside Cherokee territory. It described Indian nations as distinct, independent political communities. Georgia ignored the ruling and did little to stop conflict between settlers and the Cherokee, so the decision did not stop the loss of Cherokee land (p. 354).
By 1830, the Cherokee had already tried to defend their land in court. In 1831 they appealed to the Supreme Court to stop Georgia from taking it. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia the Court said it had no jurisdiction. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832) it ruled that Georgia's laws did not apply inside Cherokee territory. Georgia ignored the ruling, and the state did little to stop conflict between settlers and the Cherokee. (p. 354)
Congress then passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It let the president open treaty talks to trade Native lands east of the Mississippi River for land in the West. (p. 354)
Jackson defended the plan with paternalism, the belief that the government acts in the best interest of Native peoples. In his 1830 State of the Union Address, he argued that removal would shield Native communities from outside influences. He said it would help them become "civilized" farmers. He also promised land in the West and the freedom to run their own governments with little US interference. That land later became known as the "Big Reservation." The message was addressed to Congress, but its real audience was Native people. (p. 354)
Native leaders saw through this language. The Muskogee chief Speckled Snake answered with sarcasm. He pretended to thank "our great father" for his kindness. Then he described how settlers were welcomed and fed, but kept growing and taking more land. (pp. 354–355)
Jackson sent Secretary of War Lewis Cass to offer the Cherokee western land and self-government in return for their eastern homeland. The talks took advantage of a split inside the nation:
The administration rejected any deal that fell short of large-scale removal. That fed a bitter fight between the two groups, and several treaty supporters were killed by members of the nationalist side. (p. 355)
Ridge's group hoped to prevent more bloodshed. In 1835 they signed the Treaty of New Echota, which gave up Georgia land for $5 million. Most Cherokee refused to follow it because they believed it was negotiated illegitimately. Ross pointed out the hypocrisy of the US. The Cherokee had done what they were asked: they gave up hunting and warrior life, formed a republican government, and changed their religion. Now they were being told to hand over their land. (p. 355)
In 1838 President Martin Van Buren used the treaty to order the army to remove, by force, the Cherokee who had not complied. Harsh weather, poor planning, and difficult travel made this journey, the Trail of Tears, deadly. About sixteen thousand Cherokee set out, and only ten thousand finished. That means roughly six thousand did not complete the journey. (pp. 355–356)
Not every removal was as deadly as the Cherokee case, and Native nations responded in different ways. Over sixty thousand Native Americans were pushed west before the Civil War. (pp. 355–356)
After removal, tribal nations slowly rebuilt. Leaders hoped education would help future generations defend their political sovereignty. The Cherokee Nation opened a public school system in 1841. It had eighteen schools within two years and twenty-one by 1852, with 1,100 students. Graduates became teachers, lawyers, physicians, officials, and politicians. Tribal nations mixed older practices, such as common ownership of land, with Western ones, such as constitutional government and common schools. Some also developed an elite class that enslaved people. (p. 357)
The demand for land that drove removal grew even stronger after Rush Nutt developed the Petit Gulf hybrid cotton in 1833. This strain passed through the cotton gin more easily than other types. Eli Whitney had developed the gin in 1794 to remove seeds from cotton. Petit Gulf also grew in tight clusters, so it gave more usable cotton. Together these changes started the Cotton Revolution. (p. 357)
A common mistake is to picture the antebellum South as an isolated, tradition-bound society cut off from the modern world. In fact, the South took up new technology and trade routes. It became part of a global economy linking Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and it modernized slavery and farming. Money flowed in from banks in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and London. Some buyers practiced speculation: they bought cheap land at auction and sold it, sometimes the next day, for double or triple the price. The market was fast, risky, and expensive. More wealth meant more land, which meant more enslaved workers, more credit, and more people to feed. (pp. 357, 361)
The numbers show the scale of the boom:
Land from removal, federal auctions, easy credit, and hopes of fast profit drove this growth. Historians describe the period as the heyday of American slavery. (p. 359)
The Cotton Revolution tied the South to slavery, since large-scale cotton farming depended on enslaved labor. Slavery was older than the cotton boom. But cotton gave new life to its economic and moral defenses, and to the urge to protect it. Planters, politicians, and merchants grew more committed to it. The enslaved population rose from under a million in 1800 to nearly four million by the eve of the Civil War. (pp. 359–360)
Enslaved people were the biggest expense for a cotton grower, and their prices rose with cotton. In 1820s Virginia, a woman of childbearing age sold for about 450, and children under thirteen for 150. Prices nearly doubled by the 1840s. By 1850, "prime field hands" averaged $1,600. (p. 360)
Sales forced people to act like property. Sellers expected them to look healthy and obedient. Solomon Northup compared a sale to a jockey inspecting a horse. Even so, buyers cared about a person's behavior and what they revealed, so enslaved people could sometimes influence their own sale. This was extremely risky. (p. 360)
After sale, enslaved people kept insisting on their humanity. Some resisted with violence. Many others built relationships, followed their own interests, and tried to make their places of bondage feel like home. (pp. 360–361)
Enslaved women faced added dangers: sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, and childcare on top of field work. Harriet Jacobs described her successful resistance to her enslaver's assaults as "something akin to freedom." Many women had no such choice. Enslavers used rape as terror to force obedience and increase production, sometimes making men watch the abuse of their family members. (p. 362)
This paternalism placed both white and Black women below white men and supported the racial hierarchy. Religion backed it up. Most religious Southerners were Baptists or Methodists. Their churches briefly criticized slavery but then became some of its strongest defenders. (p. 362)
Cotton also drove city growth from 1820 to 1860. New Orleans, Richmond, Charleston, and St. Louis grew fast as merchants, skilled workers, and traders served the cotton trade. (p. 362)
The rural South had two main classes: a landowning elite that held political power and most capital, and a working poor on subsistence farms or in unskilled jobs. Port cities added a middle class of craftsmen, merchants, traders, speculators, and store owners. They formed benevolent societies to help orphans and the poor. These groups also kept outsiders away, which protected wealth and status. Members married each other's sisters, served as godparents to each other's children, and acted as executors of each other's wills. (pp. 362–364)
Southern society was shaped by white men. Women, whether white or free women of color, could not vote and had no direct voice in making law. In most states, marriage effectively gave a wife's property to her husband. Divorce rarely helped women, and a successful divorce could ruin a wife's reputation. (p. 364)
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. It welcomed settlers to Texas as a buffer against the Comanche, and most came from the southern United States. Over the next twenty-five years, worries about Anglo influence and possible American designs on the area caused friction. In 1829 Mexico banned slavery and required new immigrants to become Catholic. American settlers, eager to expand farming, mostly ignored these rules. In 1830 Mexico closed Texas to new immigration, but Americans often ignored that too and squatted on public land. (p. 364)
In 1834 General Antonio López de Santa Anna rose to power in Mexico after a fight between federalists (who wanted power shared with the states) and centralists (who wanted a strong national government). He ruled as a dictator, threw out the federalist Constitution of 1824, and crushed revolts in several regions. (p. 365)
Anglo settlers in Mexican Texas, who called themselves Texians, objected to this. In November 1835 they met and said they stood by the 1824 Constitution. They declared Texas a separate state inside Mexico. Mexico's government angrily refused. The Texians then gave up on the old constitution and declared full independence on March 2, 1836. This is why the Texas Revolution is described as a successful secession. (p. 365)
Early fighting went badly for the rebels. At the Alamo and at Goliad, Santa Anna's forces defeated small Texian units and killed hundreds of prisoners. The Mexican army then chased the Texian army deep into East Texas. American civilians fled in a mass panic known as the Runaway Scrape. (pp. 365–366)
The tide turned at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Santa Anna, overconfident, had not set up proper defenses. Sam Houston's smaller army attacked by surprise and won in only eighteen minutes. The Texians took revenge for earlier Mexican killings by shooting soldiers who were fleeing or trying to surrender. Santa Anna was captured and signed the Treaty of Velasco on May 14, 1836. He promised to pull his army out and to accept Texas independence. Mexico's new government never recognized the republic, but the United States and several other countries did. (p. 366)
The Second Great Awakening was a wave of religious revivals that matched the democratic spirit of the 1830s. Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches grew fast, and new groups appeared, including the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Latter-Day Saints. Western and central New York had so many revivals that Charles Finney called it the Burned-Over District. His point was that there were few people left who had not already been stirred. (p. 366)
The movement also challenged Calvinism. Calvinists taught that all people are tainted by sin and that God predestined only some to be saved. Many worshippers found this too gloomy. They wanted a role in their own salvation. Revivalists like Finney spoke to emotions and to personal choice. Even Lyman Beecher, a more conservative leader, loosened strict Calvinist teaching. The two men disagreed on much, but both helped spread the belief that all souls are equal and anyone can be saved by surrendering to God. Perfectionism (the hope of improving oneself and society) and spiritual equality were lasting results. (pp. 366–367)
Reform groups of the "benevolent empire" ran into trouble when they took on openly political issues. The campaign against Indian Removal failed, but it was the first large petition drive by American women. Catharine Beecher, already known for women's education reform and linked to missionary circles, led it anonymously. She argued from religion and morality that women could speak out on a clearly moral cause. The effort did not stop removal, but it opened the way for later women's activism. (p. 367)
Revival ideas of salvation and disinterested benevolence led some evangelicals to see slavery as the worst sin in the nation. Earlier organized efforts supported only gradual emancipation (as in some Northern states after the Revolution) and colonization, sending Black Americans to Africa. By the 1830s, free Black Northerners were rejecting colonization, and white evangelical reformers were more committed to social change. Together these pushed immediatism, the demand for immediate emancipation, to the center. (p. 367)
Immediatists relied on moral suasion. They hoped to convince enslavers to free people voluntarily by appealing to Christian conscience. They tied their cause to the Declaration of Independence and to scripture. (p. 367)
William Lloyd Garrison, a white abolitionist, founded The Liberator in 1831 and the American Anti-slavery Society in 1833. But the approach depended on Black Northerners, such as James Forten, who paid for The Liberator, and on Black thinkers, such as the three thousand free Black men who met in Philadelphia in 1817 to claim equal rights. Even so, the movement was full of racism and kept Black activists in lesser roles. (p. 368)
Some Black activists doubted moral suasion. David Walker's 1829 Appeal defended slave rebellion and argued that force might be needed. In 1843 Henry Highland Garnet, who had escaped slavery as a child, urged the enslaved to strike for their freedom. He pointed to the American and Haitian Revolutions. After the backlash of the 1830s, Black activists increasingly accepted a politics of force, since nonresistance had neither protected Black people nor ended slavery. (pp. 368, 370)
Abolitionists used every tool available. Steam-powered presses let them flood the free states with pamphlets and newspapers. They also used lectures and broadsides. Wendell Phillips and Angelina Grimké exposed Northern involvement in returning fugitives. Women ran fairs to raise money. In 1835 they mailed appeals to Southern enslavers, and in 1836 they launched the Great Petition Campaign to Congress. Activity peaked from 1831 to 1837. (pp. 368–369)
Most white Americans, North and South, still despised abolitionists. They were accused of threatening disunion. Many people also disliked the mix of races and the sight of women speaking in public. Northern mobs smashed presses and killed editor Elijah Lovejoy in 1837. (p. 369)
Enslaved people resisted daily. Breaking a hoe, running a wagon off the road, running away, or delaying work all slowed production. These acts formed a shared, unspoken language of resistance. A few turned to armed revolt. (p. 369)
Nat Turner led the deadliest such revolt. He believed visions called him to do God's work. On August 22, 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia, he and six others began the uprising. It grew to more than fifty men and killed fifty-seven white people on eleven farms. Militia and local whites captured or killed everyone except Turner, who hid for weeks before being caught and executed. Recent scholars stress that his wider community, including women, supported the resistance. (pp. 369–370)
The aftermath was harsh. Southern whites blamed abolitionists and drove out antislavery voices. They passed more antiliteracy laws and put Black-led churches under white ministers. In 1836 Whigs and Democrats together passed the gag rule, which banned House discussion of abolitionist petitions. In 1838 mobs attacked the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women and burned Pennsylvania Hall. (p. 370)
Jackson's presidency created a new idea of executive power. It stressed personal and party loyalty, joined populist language with authoritarian habits, and accepted violence. Not everyone shared these values. Fights over patronage, banking, tariffs, Indian Removal, immigration, and slavery's growth in the cotton economy produced an opposition party. After the Panic of 1837, the Whigs were ready to be a major force in the 1840s. (p. 371)
