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University of Chamberlain

HIST405N: United States History

Week 3: Market Revolution

Welcome to Week 3!

Welcome to Week 3! By the end of this week, you will be able to describe the key events of the Market Revolution that swept the United States between 1812 and the 1860s. During this time, America turned away from Europe and toward itself. The economic revolution transformed America from a colonial outpost to an economically self-sufficient nation. Combining tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank, the American System of economics was the driving force of the Market Revolution. Proposed by Henry Clay after the War of 1812 and ratified by Congress, the American System led to the rapid growth of cities, increased immigration, and also increased religious tension. The old Protestant consensus was challenged by a growing Irish Catholic minority. Inspired by the Second Great Awakening, Protestant reformers joined with secular reformers in a variety of causes, in particular, abolitionism and women’s rights – giving rise to mass democracy under Andrew Jackson’s leadership.

 

While domestic improvements were growing stronger, America sought to strengthen its borders. The answer came in 1824 as the Monroe Doctrine was born. The Monroe Doctirne was a warning to the European powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere by noncolonization and nonintervention. The Monroe Doctrine gained momentum under President Polk’s administration. The presidency of James Polk (1845-1849) is one that is little-known to most Americans, yet Polk, in his one term, added more territory to the United States than any president since Jefferson:

• Successfully completed the annexation of Texas
• Settled the Canadian boundary dispute with Great Britain
• Led a war against Mexico that ceded California and New Mexico to the United States

This land grab precipitated a bitter dispute over the expansion of slavery into the new territories that would eventually lead to the Compromise of 1850 and the American Civil War.

Here are some basic questions we will address this week:

• What were the three specific parts of the American System in early 19th-century America?
• What were some of the movements toward reform during the early 19th century?
• What differences evolved between the social life of the commercialized North and the more agricultural South?
• What was Manifest Destiny and how did it affect the conquest of the West?
• To what extent did the Monroe Doctrine aid Westward Expansion?