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FireShot Capture 1 - the first continental congress - Google Search_ - https___www.google.com_search

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political machine, in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.

The rapid growth of American cities in the 19th century, a result of both immigration and migration from rural areas, created huge problems for city governments, which were often poorly structured and unable to provide services. In those conditions, political machines-such as Tammany Hall, run by boss William Magear Tweed (1823-73) in New York City -were able to build a loyal voter following, especially among immigrant groups, by performing such favours as providing jobs or housing.

Political machines are characterized by a disciplined and hierarchical organization, reaching down to neighbourhood and block organizers, that enables the machine to respond to the problems of individual neighbourhoods, or even families, in exchange for loyalty at the polls. The term refers to their ability to elect candidates or enact measures with mechanical efficiency and predictability.

Although the primary goal of a political machine is keeping itself in power rather than providing good government, machines have been responsible for restructuring city governments to centralize authority, improving facilities and services, helping to assimilate immigrant groups, and encouraging the growth of business and industry. Supporters of political machines say that they "work" and that consolidating power in the hands of a boss, like Mayor Richard J. Daley (1902-76) of Chicago, guarantees city governments the power and authority that they need to cope with urban problems effectively. However, because political machines in such cities as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Kansas City have also been responsible for many abuses of power, the term carries a pejorative sense.

Organizers who "deliver" the votes are often rewarded with patronage jobs. However, patronage can result in poorer service to the citizens because appointees may be neither qualified for their jobs nor interested in performing them. Control of both elective and appointed posts also gives a machine control of government salaries and revenues, which can be used to enrich the party at the public's expense. For example, the machine may accept donations or kickbacks from businesses in return for such favours as tax or zoning concessions or the award of lucrative public-works contracts. In some cities, machine business dealings have included accepting money from organized-crime syndicates in exchange for protection from legal interference.

In cities whose neighbourhoods are divided along ethnic or racial lines, machine patronage may aggravate hostilities by awarding most jobs and services to those people of the same background as the city's power elite. In practice, this made machine politics the last defense of white neighbourhoods against growing black populations, while black politicians who anticipated power viewed their constituents as merely the latest in a series of ethnic or racial groups that had benefited from the machine.

Since the 19th-century heyday of machine politics, civil service reforms limiting the number of patronage jobs, the institution of direct primaries rather than party nomination of candidates, the municipal operation of public utilities, and judicial review by state and federal courts have all reduced the power of political machines. The steady exodus of city residents to the suburbs since World War II and a more mobile population with fewer ties to particular neighbourhoods have also weakened the social base that once made political machines synonymous with city government.

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Political machine | Definition, History, & Facts

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political machine, in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.

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How did human beings first come to North America? Across the Bering Strait, on foot? Down the "kelp highway" by boat? Across the Atlantic via the polar ice cap? And when did they reach here? 10,000 years ago? 40,000? Or were they always here, as the Navajo and other Native American tribes believe? In his new book, Atlas Of A Lost World, author Craig Childs sets off to test these different theories on the ground, traveling from Alaska to Chile, Canada to Florida. What he finds, despite the best efforts of archaeologists and the latest technology, still remains in many ways a mystery.

Speaking from his home in Colorado, he explains why many Native Americans reject the idea that their ancestors migrated from somewhere else; how an archaeologist nicknamed Dr. Poop believes he has identified the first human excrement in America; and why diversity seems to have been built into America's DNA.

Let's cut straight to the chase: when did humans first arrive in North America?

The first arrivals keep getting older and older because we're finding more evidence as time goes on. Right now we can solidly say that people were across the Americas by 15,000 years ago. But that means people were probably already well in place by then; and there's enough evidence to suggest humans were widespread 20,000 years ago. There's some evidence of people as far back as 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, but the evidence gets thinner and thinner the further back you go. It appears there's not a single arrival date. No doubt there was a first person walking in, but when that happened is well before 20,000 years ago.

The solid dates of 15,000 are based on sites where you can find fire pits, burned bones and work stones that have been turned into scrapers and hammers and spear points. When you go back further, you're finding mammoths that have been shattered open in a way that's characteristic of humans. Then you start getting into these questions of what really counts as a sign of human presence, and what is just a trampled mammoth bone that happens to look like it was struck by a human with a rock.

Equally thorny is the question of how humans got here. Give us a quick 101.

[Laughs] The easiest way to get here is by foot. The Bering Land Bridge has been the longstanding theory because that's the clearest connection between Asia and North America, up in the Arctic, and it only appears when ice is locked up on land and sea levels drop. It's the only place where you could walk from one side to the other.

I spent some time up on an island that is a remnant of the land bridge between the coast of Siberia and Alaska. There, you can see walking across. But when you got to the other side, you'd be facing 5 million square miles of ice; and that's when you start looking at coastal migrations. People in the Ice Age were already moving up and down the coast of Japan, Kamchatka, and Korea, using boats, and the evidence is clear that they were getting out to places you can only reach with boats.

It makes sense that you would keep following the coast around. The land bridge has a coast, which would bring you down Alaska and British Colombia, to Washington and Oregon. This is the more viable way into North America, because there's what is called the kelp highway, a biotically rich region that follows the entire coast. During the Ice Age this coast was continuous from Sumatra to the tip of South America. But that coast is now under water, so any evidence of boats and people moving along it is much thinner than people being on the land mass.

The idea of an Atlantic crossing has also gained some traction. Tell us about the Clovis people, and why their stone tools may suggest a European origin.

This has been a big debate for some time, that people some 13,500 years ago were making distinct tools that you can find all over the Americas, so-called Clovis Weapons. This is a new style of weaponry: finely crafted, relatively flat spear points no thicker than an envelope, which required unique skills, and therefore stand out in the record.

Something happened, a cultural change or an arrival. For a long time they were seen as the first people. Now, we're seeing it more as the middle-age arrival in the Ice Age. Where these weapons came from has also been a huge question for archaeologists. Many have been trying to trace them back to the Bering Land Bridge, but the evidence just doesn't stack up. Others have tried to trace them to an Atlantic arrival by Palaeolithic Europeans around 20,000 years ago.

The weapons being found along the Eastern Seaboard are in some ways also identical to ones made in Palaeolithic Spain and Southern France during the Solutrean industry. So, it looks like people were crossing the Atlantic, hunting along the ice packs-following ice flows-with skin boats, and arriving in Maryland and Virginia.

I was fascinated to discover that many Native American tribes flatly reject the idea that their ancestors migrated from somewhere else. Tell us about the Navajo theory of the first people.

The first people there came out of the ground. These are stories related to origin and creation stories all over the Americas. Native tribes have clear stories about how they got here, coming out of caves or up through springs and underground sources.

The idea of coming from somewhere else might threaten the notion that they have primacy on the lands. But, they obviously do because they are coming from these much older stories than anybody else. I look at these stories of arrival and think, "Yeah, they come out of the ground because that is how deep their history goes." It's a non-scientific view of the world, but it gives us a window into what it means to be in a place for that long.

Of course, the world looked very different 15,000 years ago. Summon up a picture for us from the mists of time, and explain the importance of the woolly mammoth.

The landscape people walked into was substantially different. The animals were much larger. You have mammoths, dire wolves, and sabre tooth cats.

Everything is very big and very woolly, and in some places armoured. There were 300-pound armadillos living in Florida and Louisiana, so you're talking about a very different landscape and way of living. But there were many places that looked the same. Other parts, including most of Canada, were completely covered with ice.

There are a number of sites in Alaska, like Swan Point, where you can see signs of mammoth hunting. But mammoths probably weren't their mainstay. Early people were eating salmon, seaweed, deer, and rabbit. The mammoth hunts were probably culturally important, much like the northern whale hunts. At Swan Point multiple mammoths were killed at once, which you can imagine was a dramatic scene of people and dogs gathering together and going after this animal that's 13 feet tall and extremely dangerous. Hunting whales in the north out of skin boats is also a dangerous endeavour, and people have often been killed. I imagine the same thing happened while hunting mammoths. You would have these stories of epic mammoth hunts, who died and who lived, and these stories would have been passed down for thousands of years.

You actually recreated part of the journey across the land bridge on Alaska's Harding Icefield. Take us inside that adventure and what it told you about the first arrivals. Did you get dressed up in furs and carry a spear?

No, I decided that if I dressed up in furs and carried a spear, I would have probably died. [laughs] I took modern gear-sleds, skis, and backpacks- and made about a 4,000-foot ascent through fresh snow, trying to hit the ice field at the right time of year, just as winter was letting off. Once we got up there, we clicked in the skis, put our gear on a sled, and headed across the ice.

I wanted to get a sense of what it's like to travel as a group into a desolate ice landscape, climb up on the peaks that stand out on the ice field and get a sense of navigation in this landscape, which is a remnant of what was there during the Pleistocene. In one sense, it told me that this is the worst way to do it. [laughs] That crossing a giant ice field is a ridiculous notion. That's not to say it didn't happen. Humans have often done ridiculous things! Being out there on the ice I thought this is maybe where the crazy people went, the ones who were looking to fall off the edge of the Earth. At the same time, as we climbed the mountain ranges sticking up through the ice, I could see how you could have hopped your way from one summit to the next down the entire length of the ice sheet to arrive in the rest of North America.

But it also made me turn to the coastal migration theory, and say, "That makes sense!" There, you would be moving through a water landscape of islands and coasts rich with kelp and fish, as opposed to eating lichens and trying to catch birds on a 2,000-mile journey across an ice sheet. [laughs]

One of the experts you consult has the wonderful nickname, Doctor Poop. Tell us about him and his work on what you call "the earliest identified human craps in America."

This is Paisley Caves, in the desert of southern Oregon. There, Dr. Dennis Jenkins, aka Doctor Poop, found the oldest human coprolites, which I believe are 14,300 years old. He explained to me that, in the caves, he has also found the scat of American lions and other predators. My question to him was, "How do you know that these were pieces of human faeces and not humans that were eaten by American lions and then shat out in the caves?" His response was that either way, you'd know that humans were here. This is such a basic function: a human goes into a cave, craps, and leaves it there. This is a story of people arriving and leaving their sign behind.

Bring it home for us, Craig, by telling us what you believe is ultimately the real story of the populating of North America, and what surprised you most during your travels?

What I took away was that people came from everywhere. We think of the arrival of the first people as one group braving their way across a land bridge, when in fact it was many groups, many different languages, and technologies arriving at different times from different directions. This makes sense because that's how we do things as humans. It's not just one group. It is this complex story of many people, with many different stories.

For me, it was an opportunity to explore landscapes I wouldn't normally go to, like an island off the coast of Siberia or crossing an ice field in Alaska. The most fascinating place I saw was a back woods river south of Tallahassee, Florida, where human evidence from 14,500 years ago was found. Just being in these swamps with a boat, surrounded by alligators and poison snakes, gave me a sense of coming into a landscape I didn't know and encountering animals I wasn't familiar with. There were many moments like this, where I felt this must have been something like how it was to be first in a place; to have to figure out which direction is which, what animals you have to avoid, what plants you can eat or can't touch. For me, this was a new beginning, a way of coming into my own continent.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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what does it mean to be a native american?

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where does native american dna come from?

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When, How Did the First Americans Arrive? It's Complicated.

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How did human beings first come to North America? Across the Bering Strait, on foot? Down the "kelp highway" by boat? Across the Atlantic via the polar ice cap? And when did they reach here? 10,000 years ago? 40,000? Or were they always here, as the Navajo and other Native American tribes believe?

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“When, How Did the First Americans Arrive? It's Complicated.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 9 June 2018, news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/when-and-how-did-the-first-americans-arrive--its-complicated-/.

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“The First Europeans.” Andrew Carnegie Wealth June 1889 < 1876-1900 < Documents < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and Beyond, www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/early-america/the-first-europeans.php.

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/4848092987

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLT1XZTnEUo

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http://greene-co.com/files/NH22.pdf

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The First Europeans < Early America < History 1994 < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond

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Columbus, of course, never saw the mainland United States, but the first explorations of the continental United States were launched from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish. The first of these took place in 1513 when a group of men under Juan Ponce de Leon landed on the Florida coast near the present city of St.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COuei6Dd7M0

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Minster, Christopher, and VIVA Travel Guides. “10 Facts About the Spanish Conquistadors.” Thoughtco., Dotdash, www.thoughtco.com/facts-about-the-spanish-conquistadors-2136511.

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Map of DeSoto's 1539-43 exploration through the Southeast

Virginia was the first successful southern colony. While Puritan zeal was fueling New England's mercantile development, and Penn's Quaker experiment was turning the middle colonies into America's bread basket, the South was turning to cash crops. Geography and motive rendered the development of these colonies distinct from those that lay to the North.

Immediately to Virginia's north was Maryland. Begun as a Catholic experiment, the colony's economy would soon come to mirror that of Virginia, as tobacco became the most important crop. To the south lay the Carolinas, created after the English Civil War had been concluded. In the Deep South was Georgia, the last of the original thirteen colonies. Challenges from Spain and France led the king to desire a buffer zone between the cash crops of the Carolinas and foreign enemies. Georgia, a colony of debtors, would fulfill that need.

The Southern colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia.

English American Southerners would not enjoy the generally good health of their New England counterparts. Outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever kept life expectancies lower. Since the northern colonies attracted religious dissenters, they tended to migrate in families. Such family connections were less prevalent in the South.

The economy of growing cash crops would require a labor force that would be unknown north of Maryland. Slaves and indentured servants, although present in the North, were much more important to the South. They were the backbone of the Southern economy.

Settlers in the Southern colonies came to America to seek economic prosperity they could not find in Old England. The English countryside provided a grand existence of stately manors and high living. But rural England was full, and by law those great estates could only be passed on to the eldest son. America provided more space to realize a lifestyle the new arrivals could never dream to achieve in their native land.

Monticello
Follow Thomas Jefferson through a day. You will gain a sense of the extraordinary range of his talents, his insatiable thirst for knowledge, his watchful use of time, and the larger community that lived and worked at Monticello.

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Map of DeSoto's 1539-43 exploration through the Southeast Virginia was the first successful southern colony. While Puritan zeal was fueling New England's mercantile development, and Penn's Quaker experiment was turning the middle colonies into America's bread basket, the South was turning to cash crops.

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The New England Colonies [ushistory.org]

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William Penn paid 1200 pounds for the land he purchased from the Delaware Indians.

Americans have often prided themselves on their rich diversity. Nowhere was that diversity more evident in pre-Revolutionary America than in the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. European ethnic groups as manifold as English, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, Scots-Irish and French lived in closer proximity than in any location on continental Europe. The middle colonies contained Native American tribes of Algonkian and Iroquois language groups as well as a sizable percentage of African slaves during the early years. Unlike solidly Puritan New England, the middle colonies presented an assortment of religions. The presence of Quakers, Mennonites, Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, and Presbyterians made the dominance of one faith next to impossible.

The middle colonies included Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Advantaged by their central location, the middle colonies served as important distribution centers in the English mercantile system. New York and Philadelphia grew at a fantastic rate. These cities gave rise to brilliant thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, who earned respect on both sides of the Atlantic. In many ways, the middle colonies served as the crossroads of ideas during the colonial period.

In contrast to the South where the cash crop plantation system dominated, and New England whose rocky soil made large-scale agriculture difficult, The middle colonies were fertile. Land was generally acquired more easily than in New England or in the plantation South. Wheat and corn from local farms would feed the American colonies through their colonial infancy and revolutionary adolescence.

The middle colonies represented exactly that - a middle ground between its neighbors to the North and South. Elements of both New England towns and sprawling country estates could be found. Religious dissidents from all regions could settle in the relatively tolerant middle zone. Aspects of New England shipbuilding and lumbering and the large farms of the South could be found. Aptly named, they provided a perfect nucleus for English America.

Philadelphia 1681-1899
1729: The first treatise against slavery published in any part of the world appeared at Philadelphia, and was written by Ralph Sandiford. 1775: The first pianoforte manufactured in the United Stares was made by John Behrent, in Third Street below Brown. Explore this long list of Philadelphia firsts and a timeline of Philadelphia history.

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William Penn paid 1200 pounds for the land he purchased from the Delaware Indians. Americans have often prided themselves on their rich diversity. Nowhere was that diversity more evident in pre-Revolutionary America than in the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.

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¨The Southern Colonies.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/5.asp.

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“The New England Colonies.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/3.asp.

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“The Middle Colonies.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/4.asp.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wNnaQQ-zc

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“Conflict in the Colonies.” This Is Our HiStory, hdgioiahistory.weebly.com/conflict-in-the-colonies.html.

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America the Story of Us: Declaration of Independence | History

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The most important development of the past thousand years has been the growth of liberty, both because liberty is important in its own right and because it is what has made virtually all of the other achievements of humanity possible, as well, from science to art to material well being.

For that reason, I would locate the first of the most significant moments of the past thousand years in March of 1075, when Pope Gregory VII issued the Dictatus Papae, in which he formally announced the independence of the church from the state and the power of the church to check the state. As Article 27 states, "The Pope may absolve subjects of unjust men from their fealty." The great historian Lord Acton wrote, "To that conflict of four hundred years we owe the rise of civil liberty ... the aim of both contending parties was absolute authority. But although liberty was not the end for which they strove, it was the means by which the temporal and the spiritual power called the nations to their aid."

Second on my list would be the growth of European constitutionalism. This was a broadly European movement, but especially notable for the Anglo-American tradition is, of course, the issuance of Magna Carta on June 19, 1215. The Magna Carta explicitly limited the royal power, established the principle of the consent of the governed and guaranteed rights of due process, freedom of trade and more. These and other provisions later found their way into the U.S. Constitution.

Third would be the invention of movable type in Europe around 1436 or 1437 by Johann Gutenberg. This tremendous innovation broke the monopolies of the privileged few over knowledge. The printed book initiated an information sea change that is still going on; the worldwide Web is just the latest chapter in the freeing of information made possible by Gutenberg.

Fourth, in my view, is the rebirth of constitutionalism after its eclipse by absolutism and mercantilism. The struggle to place limits on government and at the same time to expand greatly the popular enjoyment of liberty took place dramatically in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries in the revolt of the Dutch against their Spanish overlords, the revolts of the English against the Stuart kings and the revolt of the Americans against the British crown and parliament. As the historian John Lothrop Motley wrote, "The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times... . The maintenance of the right by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the 16th, by Holland and England united in the 17th, and by the United States of America in the 18th centuries forms but a single chapter in the great volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland, England and America, are all links of one chain."

Or as John Figgis, professor of modern history at Cambridge University, noted at the turn of the century, "The sonorous phrases of the Declaration of Independence ... are not an original discovery, they are the heirs of all the ages, the depository of the emotions and the thoughts of 70 generations of culture."

The fifth item on my list is the rise and fall of the totalitarian state. As the classical liberalism that inspired the American revolution began to wane, various forms of collectivism - notably nationalism, racism and socialism - rose to challenge liberty. The classical liberal journalist E. L. Godkin wrote in chilling and depressing editorial on August 9, 1900, "Only a remnant, old men for the most part, still uphold the liberal doctrine, and when they are gone, it will have no champions." He predicted that the 20th Century would be a century of war and statism: "The old fallacy of divine right has once more reasserted its power, and before it is again repudiated, there must be international struggles on a terrific scale."

Those struggles - against fascism, National Socialism and communism - are now behind us. The struggle for liberty is not over, but, on the eve of the third millennium, the prospects are bright again.

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The most important development of the past thousand years has been the growth of liberty, both because liberty is important in its own right and because it is what has made virtually all of the other achievements of humanity possible, as well, from science to art to material well being.

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In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king.

The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.

The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the banner of "no taxation without representation," colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax.

With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.

Why Did the American Colonies Declare Independence?

Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade.

The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the " Boston Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some 18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.

The British Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops.

The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony.

In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.

Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens.

However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies.

How did the American Colonies Declare Independence?

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," an influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.

The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists.

The first section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.

When did American Colonies Declare Independence?

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.

The Revolutionary War would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.

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July 4, 1776: America Declares Independence from Great Britain | HISTORY.com

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In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb7MI8NQLoo

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Editors, History.com. “Continental Congress.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Feb. 2010, www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/the-continental-congress.

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Palmer, Tom G. “The Millennial Struggle for Liberty.” Cato Institute, 31 Dec. 1999, www.cato.org/publications/commentary/millennial-struggle-liberty.

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“July 4, 1776: America Declares Independence from Great Britain.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 24 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-declares-independence.

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The Articles of Confederation (video) | Khan Academy

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Before the United States had the Constitution, it had the Articles of Confederation, a much weaker government that lasted from 1777 to 1789. In this video, Kim and Leah discuss the pros and cons of the Articles, and the reasons they were discarded in favor of a new Constitution.

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FireShot Capture 3 - great compromise - Google Search_ - https___www.google.com_search

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federalism, mode of political organization that unites separate states or other polities within an overarching political system in a way that allows each to maintain its own integrity. Federal systems do this by requiring that basic policies be made and implemented through negotiation in some form, so that all the members can share in making and executing decisions. The political principles that animate federal systems emphasize the primacy of bargaining and negotiated coordination among several power centres; they stress the virtues of dispersed power centres as a means for safeguarding individual and local liberties.

The various political systems that call themselves federal differ in many ways. Certain characteristics and principles, however, are common to all truly federal systems.

Written constitution

First, the federal relationship must be established or confirmed through a perpetual covenant of union, usually embodied in a written constitution that outlines the terms by which power is divided or shared; the constitution can be altered only by extraordinary procedures. These constitutions are distinctive in being not simply compacts between rulers and ruled but involving the people, the general government, and the states constituting the federal union. The constituent states, moreover, often retain constitution-making rights of their own.

Elements maintaining union

Modern federal systems generally provide direct lines of communication between the citizenry and all the governments that serve them. The people may and usually do elect representatives to all the governments, and all of them may and usually do administer programs that directly serve the individual citizen.

The existence of those direct lines of communication is one of the features distinguishing federations from leagues or confederations. It is usually based on a sense of common nationality binding the constituent polities and people together. In some countries this sense of nationality has been inherited, as in Germany, while in the United States, Argentina, and Australia it had to be at least partly invented. Canada and Switzerland have had to evolve this sense in order to hold together strongly divergent nationality groups.

Geographic necessity has played a part in promoting the maintenance of union within federal systems. The Mississippi Valley in the United States, the Alps in Switzerland, the island character of the Australian continent, and the mountains and jungles surrounding Brazil have all been influences promoting unity; so have the pressures for Canadian union arising from that country's situation on the border of the United States and the pressures upon the German states generated by their neighbours to the east and west. In this connection, the necessity for a common defense against common enemies has stimulated federal union in the first place and acted to maintain it.

Elements maintaining noncentralization

The constituent polities in a federal system must be fairly equal in population and wealth or else balanced geographically or numerically in their inequalities. In the United States, each geographic section has included both great and small states. In Canada, the ethnic differences between the two largest and richest provinces have prevented them from combining against the others. Swiss federalism has been supported by the existence of groups of cantons of different sizes and religio-linguistic backgrounds. Similar distributions exist in every other successful federal system.

A major reason for the failure of federal systems has often been a lack of balance among the constituent polities. In the German federal empire of the late 19th century, Prussia was so dominant that the other states had little opportunity to provide national leadership or even a reasonably strong alternative to the policy of the king and government. During the Soviet era (1917-90/91), the existence of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic-occupying three-fourths of the area and containing three-fifths of the population-severely limited the possibility of authentic federal relationships in that country even if the communist system had not.

Successful federal systems have also been characterized by the permanence of their internal boundaries. Boundary changes may occur, but such changes are made only with the consent of the polities involved and are avoided except in extreme situations.

In a few very important cases, noncentralization is given support through the constitutionally guaranteed existence of different systems of law in the constituent polities. In the United States, each state's legal system stems directly and to a certain extent uniquely from English (and, in one case, French) law, while federal law occupies only an interstitial position binding the systems of the 50 states together. The resulting mixture of laws keeps the administration of justice substantially noncentralized, even in federal courts. In Canada, the existence of common-law and civil-law systems side by side has contributed to French-Canadian cultural survival. Federal systems more often provide for modification of national legal codes by the subnational governments to meet special local needs, as in Switzerland.

The point has often been made that in a truly federal system the constituent polities must have substantial influence over the formal or informal constitutional-amending process. Since constitutional changes are often made without formal constitutional amendment, the position of the constituent polities must be such that serious changes in the political order can be made only by the decision of dispersed majorities that reflect the areal division of powers. Federal theorists have argued that this is important for popular government as well as for federalism.

Noncentralization is also strengthened by giving the constituent polities guaranteed representation in the national legislature and often by giving them a guaranteed role in the national political process. The latter is guaranteed in the written constitutions of the United States and Switzerland. In other systems, such as those of Canada and Latin America, the constituent polities have acquired certain powers of participation, and these have become part of the unwritten constitution.

Perhaps the most important single element in the maintenance of federal noncentralization is the existence of a noncentralized party system. Noncentralized parties initially develop out of the constitutional arrangements of the federal compact, but once they have come into existence they tend to be self-perpetuating and to function as decentralizing forces in their own right. The United States and Canada provide examples of the forms that a noncentralized party system may take. In the two-party system of the United States, the parties are actually coalitions of the state parties (which may in turn be dominated by specific local party organizations) and generally function as national units only for the quadrennial presidential elections or for purposes of organizing the national Congress.

In Canada, on the other hand, the parliamentary form of government, with its requirements of party responsibility, means that on the national plane considerably more party cohesiveness must be maintained simply in order to gain and hold power. There has been a fragmentation of the parties along regional or provincial lines. The party victorious in national elections is likely to be the one able to expand its provincial electoral bases temporarily to national proportions.

Federal nations with less-developed party systems frequently gain some of the same decentralizing effects through what has been called caudillismo-in which power is diffused among strong local leaders operating in the constituent polities. Caudillistic noncentralization has apparently existed also in Nigeria and Malaysia.

Elements maintaining the federal principle

Several devices found in federal systems serve to maintain the federal principle itself. Two of these are of particular importance.

The maintenance of federalism requires that the central government and the constituent polities each have substantially complete governing institutions of their own, with the right to modify those institutions unilaterally within limits set by the compact. Both separate legislative and separate administrative institutions are necessary.

The contractual sharing of public responsibilities by all governments in the system appears to be a fundamental characteristic of federalism. Sharing, broadly conceived, includes common involvement in policy making, financing, and administration. Sharing may be formal or informal; in federal systems, it is usually contractual. The contract is used as a legal device to enable governments to engage in joint action while remaining independent entities. Even where there is no formal arrangement, the spirit of federalism tends to infuse a sense of contractual obligation.

Federal systems or systems strongly influenced by federal principles have been among the most stable and long-lasting of polities. But the successful operation of federal systems requires a particular kind of political environment, one that is conducive to popular government and has the requisite traditions of political cooperation and self-restraint. Beyond this, federal systems operate best in societies with sufficient homogeneity of fundamental interests to allow a great deal of latitude to local government and to permit reliance upon voluntary collaboration. The use of force to maintain domestic order is even more inimical to the successful maintenance of federal patterns of government than to other forms of popular government. Federal systems are most successful in societies that have the human resources to fill many public offices competently and the material resources to afford a measure of economic waste as part of the price of liberty.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Federalism | Definition, History, Characteristics, & Facts

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Federalism, mode of political organization that unites separate states or other polities within an overarching political system in a way that allows each to maintain its own integrity. Learn more about the history and characteristics of federalism in this article.

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The term "trias politica" or "separation of powers" was coined by Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, an 18th century French social and political philosopher. His publication, Spirit of the Laws, is considered one of the great works in the history of political theory and jurisprudence, and it inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States. Under his model, the political authority of the state is divided into legislative, executive and judicial powers. He asserted that, to most effectively promote liberty, these three powers must be separate and acting independently.

Separation of powers, therefore, refers to the division of government responsibilities into distinct branches to limit any one branch from exercising the core functions of another. The intent is to prevent the concentration of power and provide for checks and balances.

The traditional characterizations of the powers of the branches of American government are:

The legislative branch is responsible for enacting the laws of the state and appropriating the money necessary to operate the government.

The executive branch is responsible for implementing and administering the public policy enacted and funded by the legislative branch.

The judicial branch is responsible for interpreting the constitution and laws and applying their interpretations to controversies brought before it.

Forty state constitutions specify that government be divided into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. California illustrates this approach; "The powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial. Persons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others except as permitted by this Constitution."

While separation of powers is key to the workings of American government, no democratic system exists with an absolute separation of powers or an absolute lack of separation of powers. Governmental powers and responsibilities intentionally overlap; they are too complex and interrelated to be neatly compartmentalized. As a result, there is an inherent measure of competition and conflict among the branches of government. Throughout American history, there also has been an ebb and flow of preeminence among the governmental branches. Such experiences suggest that where power resides is part of an evolutionary process.

This page provides resources for legislators and staff to use in addressing separation of powers issues. It organizes them into broad categories and links to a diverse set of resources to illustrate how the doctrine applies to specific issues under each category. The resources include law review articles, court cases and legislative reports.

Resources

Alaska: Alaska Legislature, Separation of Powers
http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/docs/pdf/Separation_of_Powers.pdf

Iowa: Iowa Legislative Services Agency, Legislative Guide to Separation of Powers, 2005
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/DOCS/Central/Guides/lgseppwr.pdf

Minnesota: Minnesota House Research, Separation of Powers: When Statutes and Court Rules Conflict, 2005
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/ss/ssseppw.pdf
Receiving Information or Recommending Additions
If you have any questions, please contact Brenda Erickson in NCSL's Denver office at (303) 364-7700. Also, please contact Brenda if you would like to recommend legislative resources or case law that may enhance the Separation of Powers website.

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national conference of state legislatures

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The term "trias politica" or "separation of powers" was coined by Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, an 18th century French social and political philosopher. His publication, Spirit of the Laws, is considered one of the great works in the history of political theory and jurisprudence, and it inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States.

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The Constitution of the United States of America

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The Bill of Rights is one of the three founding documents. It was strongly influenced by the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason as well as English documents such as the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the English Bill of Rights, and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties.
PDF: Bill of Rights
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Second Amendment
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Third Amendment
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Seventh Amendment
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Eighth Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Ninth Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Tenth Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Who Wrote the Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. James Madison wrote the amendments as a solution to limit government power and protect individual liberties through the Constitution. For example, the Founders saw the ability to speak and worship freely as a natural right protected by the First Amendment. Congress is prohibited from making laws establishing religion or abridging freedom of speech. The Fourth Amendment safeguards citizens' right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion in their homes through the requirement of a warrant.

Why was the Bill of Rights added to the Constitution?

The Constitution lacked limits on government power. Federalists advocated for a strong national government. They believed the people and states automatically kept any powers not given to the federal government. Anti-Federalists wanted power to remain with state and local governments and favored a bill of rights to safeguard individual liberty.

Madison, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, altered the Constitution's text where he thought appropriate. However, several representatives, led by Roger Sherman, objected, saying that Congress had no authority to change the wording of the Constitution. Therefore, Madison's changes were presented as a list of amendments that would follow Article VII.

The House approved 17 amendments. Of these, the Senate approved 12, which were sent to the states for approval in August 1789. Ten amendments were approved (or ratified). Virginia's legislature was the final state legislature to ratify the amendments, approving them on December 15, 1791.

Primary Source by James Madison, George Mason (1791)

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Bill of Rights: The 1st Ten Amendments - Bill of Rights Institute

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The Bill of Rights is a founding documents written by James Madison. It makes up the first ten amendments to the Constitution including freedom of speech and due process.

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https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/road-to-revolution/creating-a-nation/v/the-articles-of-confederation

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https://www.history.com/news/how-the-great-compromise-affects-politics-today

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Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Federalism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Jan. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/federalism.

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Warnock. “Separation of Powers -- An Overview.” Affirmative Action | Overview, www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/separation-of-powers-an-overview.aspx.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSWl5ldEv6w

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“Bill of Rights.” Bill of Rights Institute, billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/.

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The Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute

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Founded in 2004, the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute is an educational, non-profit corporation based in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Institute's Charter is "To Perpetuate the Study of the Teachings and Examples of the Founders of the Republic." The Mission of the Institute is "To instill within educators and students of the rising generation a greater understanding of and appreciation for the Founding Fathers and the Founding Documents of the United States of America." The Institute has sponsored continuing education seminars for secondary school teachers that teach U.S. Government, Civics, and U.S. History in Virginia for the past ten years (20007-2017).

Download a Free Copy of "Jefferson & Madison's Guide to the Constitution." For teachers and citizens, the Guide is designed as a handbook for studying the Constitution in the tradition of the founders, using the source documents and writings identified by them as the "best guides" to its principles and meaning.

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The Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute

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Founded in 2004, the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute is an educational, non-profit corporation based in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Institute's Charter is "To Perpetuate the Study of the Teachings and Examples of the Founders of the Republic."

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http://wjmi.blogspot.com/

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FireShot Capture 001 - the corps of discovery - Google Search - www.google.com

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https://www.slideshare.net/kwatson16/the-louisiana-purchase-13486896

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The Oregon Trail was a 2,000-mile route to the West for thousands of settlers in 19th Century America. The Trail ran through what is now Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

The idea of reaching the West Coast began soon after Thomas Jefferson announced the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, and commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to chart the course of the territory through to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery spent the better part of the next three years getting there and back again, and their reports emboldened many others to travel westward, sometimes for good. An 1810 expedition financed by famed furrier John Jacob Astor mapped out a slightly different route west.

After the War of 1812, the British presence on what is now the western part of the Oregon Trail increased, mainly through the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company. So did the number of Americans traveling west, if more gradually. The first large wave of settlers set out in 1836, and numbers increased during the next few decades, in nearly inverse proportion to the decline of fur trading, as markets for new goods found more favor. Among the first organized group of settlers were the Peoria Party, named after the city from which they set out, Peoria, Ill. Led by Thomas J. Farnham, they carried a flag with the motto "Oregon or the Grave" and traveled most of the Oregon Trail, finally reaching the West Coast. More than 100 pioneers, led by Elijah White, set out in 1842, from Elm Grove, Mo.; not all of this group made it. In 1843 alone, up to 1,000 settlers left their homes for new living quarters in Oregon. This came to be known as the "Great Migration of 1843."

The U.S. Government sponsored more than just Lewis & Clark. Explorers like Captain Benjamin Bonneville, John C. Frémont, and Kit Carson ranged far and wide and wrote about their experiences.

The Oregon Trail wasn't an unbroken dirt road running direct from one place to the next; rather, it was a series of paths, trails, and wagon roads. Technically, the Trail wound from Independence, Mo., to Oregon City. As traffic on the Trail increased, other towns on the route became starting points; among these were the Kansas towns of Atchison and Leavenworth, the Missouri towns of St. Joseph and Weston; and the Nebraska town of Omaha.

Other well-known settler trails were the Bozeman Trail, California Trail, Chisholm Trail, Mormon Trail, and Santa Fe Trail. The longest and most popular, however, was the Oregon Trail.

The trails generally followed the Platte River and other waterways, passing through river valleys to enable access to fresh water and to grass for the animals doing the heavy lifting. Travelers were often in need of fire-burning materials. These often included trees, brush, abandoned wagons, and even animal droppings (the ever-popular "buffalo chips").

Settlers traveled west along the Oregon Trail using combinations of walking or riding horses, and carrying supplies and necessities in covered wagons, known as prairie schooners, which were pulled by anywhere from 4 to 10 oxen or mules. (Horses were used to pull the wagons only in later years.) The well-known Conestoga wagons were, for the most part, too large and unwieldy for the arduous Oregon Trail, so settlers used prairie schooners instead. These wagons were typically 11 feet long, feet wide, and feet high and featured cotton covers treated with linseed oil, in an attempt to keep out dust, rain, and wind. Wheels were made of iron-rimmed wood and were 40-50 inches in diameter. The wagons were, for the most part, much too bumpy to ride in, despite popular artwork to the contrary.

Travelers did not go west in straight lines. They spread out along the prairies and through the valleys, mainly to cut down on dust inhalation. They did resort to single file through narrow passes, however.

Journeys to Oregon commonly took four or five months. Travelers took lots of food, stored in watertight containers or carried in packs. Some travelers traded what they carried for other types of food grown by people along the way. Some travelers took chickens, cows, and pigs with them, to use as food. Cooking was done over campfires. Not all meals were cooked. Travelers carried water, sometimes lots of it, but also depended on getting water along the way. (For this reason, a good part of the Oregon Trail was along waterways.)

Travelers generally brought several sets of clothes, most importantly multiple sets of boots, and spare leather and threads and a few hand tools, to repair or replace clothing. Among the possessions kits were soap, washboards, and tubs, for cleaning the clothes.

The common sleeping arrangement was on thin bedrolls, on the ground, inside tents (or under the night sky if the weather was good). Pregnant or infirm travelers or very young children sometimes slept on feather beds, inside wagons. Sleeping inside a wagon was not unheard of for otherwise healthy travelers as well.

Conditions could be rough, and travelers commonly carried all manner of tools, including axes, shovels, hoes, hammers, saws, hatchets, picks, and crow bars.

Sharing was essential for many travelers. Pooling of resources, including money, was quite common. Money was also essential to replace or obtain things broken or forgotten.

With lots of time on their hands, travelers on the Oregon Trail found comfort in books, not just trail guides but as well the Bible and other popular publications. They also wrote letters, to drop at forts or posts along the way.

For the most part, expendable items got left behind. Some travelers filled needs by picking up items discarded by previous travelers; others returned home with discards, selling them for a profit.

Dangers were not unknown on the Oregon Trail. travelers encountered unfamiliar wildlife and sometimes hostile humans. Weather could be capricious, and supplies often ran low. Some mothers died in childbirth. Some young children didn't survive the ardors of the trip. Many travelers died, although exact figures are still not known, primarily because those who died along the way were usually buried in unmarked graves, to prevent looting.

Disease was also common. Travelers' diets were sometimes low in fresh fruits and vegetables; and during the four-month trip, some travelers suffered from scurvy because of a lack of vitamin C. Other diseases, such as cholera, were familiar killers.

One of the last stops on the journey west was Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River. For a time, John McLoughlin was in charge at this fort. He helped so many settlers reach new homesteads that he became known as the "Father of Oregon." Other Hudson's Bay Company outposts were Fort Boise and Fort Nez Perce, both of which were quite happy to sell supplies to Oregon Trail pioneers.

Travelers were still using the Oregon Trail while the Civil War was raging, but the advent of a railroad across Panama, allowing for ship-then-rail-then-ship-again travel, and then another, more famous railroad across the continental United States gave travelers much faster alternatives. The arrival of the automobile all but closed the Trail, with some state federal and state highways literally paving over parts of the Trail.

The Oregon Trail didn't just disappear one day. Its use declined gradually. Signs of it can still be seen today, as can some wagon wheel tracks. It is now a National Historic Trail, with designating markers in several states.

Many travelers didn't make it all the way to the West Coast, preferring to set up homestead along the way. This, in combination, with an influx of new settlers in Oregon and California, helped push the boundaries of the United States ever westward.

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The Oregon Trail was a 2,000-mile route to the West for thousands of settlers in 19th Century America. The Trail ran through what is now Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.

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Jefferson's Instructions
These were the final instructions given to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark before they embarked upon their journey into the Louisiana Purchase. The beauty they discovered was beyond their wildest expectations. The people they encountered represented dozens of unique cultures, and enabled the successful completion of their mission. The geography, flora, fauna and other natural phenomena they documented resulted in an enormous body of scientific information that was new to the western world. The indigenous Native Americans were already very familiar with these "discoveries." Even though an easy water route across the continent was not found, these accomplishments make the Lewis and Clark Expedition one of the most successful explorations of all time.

Jefferson's final instructions to Lewis reflect the broad range of the President's interests. The expedition was meant to prepare the way for the extension of the American fur trade and to advance geographical knowledge. Jefferson provided the best supplies, clothing, firearms, equipment and rations then available. Lewis and Clark were instructed to observe and record the entire range of natural history and ethnology of the areas they explored, and note possible resources which would support future settlement. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 had doubled the size of the nation, but a good share of the territory the expedition would explore was unmapped. Jefferson envisioned the nation's eventual expansion to the Pacific, and wanted to strengthen the American claim to the northwest Columbia Basin.

The Expedition Begins
In December 1803 William Clark established "Camp River Dubois" at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, north of St. Louis. While there he recruited and trained men, while Lewis spent time in St. Louis, conferring with traders about the Upper Missouri regions and obtaining maps made by earlier explorers. On May 14, 1804 William Clark and the Corps of Discovery left Camp River Dubois, and were joined by Meriwether Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri. The party numbered over 45, and included 27 young, unmarried soldiers, a French-Indian interpreter, and Clark's Black slave York. An additional group of men, engagés, would travel only to the Mandan country for the first winter, and these included six soldiers and several French boatmen.

Travel up the Missouri River was difficult and exhausting due to heat, injuries, insects, and the troublesome river itself, with its strong current and many snags. The expedition used a specially built keelboat and two smaller boats, called pirogues, to carry their supplies and equipment, averaging 15 miles per day. During this phase of the journey the group suffered the only casualty of the expedition, Sgt. Charles Floyd. Buried near modern-day Sioux City, Iowa, it is believed that Floyd died of a burst appendix. Relations with Native Americans were generally good, and councils were held with the Otos and Missouris. The explorers gave peace medals to the most important chiefs of each tribe. By October the Corps of Discovery reached the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, where they built "Fort Mandan" (near present-day Washburn, North Dakota), and spent the winter of 1804-1805.

During the winter Lewis and Clark made copious notes in their journals, drew maps, and learned of the geography that lay ahead from American Indians in the area of the camp. They recruited an interpreter named Toussaint Charbonneau, who brought along his Shoshoni Indian wife, Sacagawea, and her newborn baby boy, Jean Baptiste.

Westward To The Pacific
On April 7, 1805 Lewis and Clark sent the keelboat back to St. Louis with an extensive collection of zoological, botanical, and ethnological specimens as well as letters, reports, dispatches, and maps, and resumed their westward journey in two pirogues and six dugout canoes. The Corps of Discovery, now numbering 33, traveled into regions which had been explored and seen only by Native Americans. After crossing most of modern-day Montana the explorers were held up for over a month by the extensive waterfalls at Great Falls. Lewis tried to use a special collapsible boat he had manufactured at Harpers Ferry, but the animal skins could not be sealed over the boat's iron frame and it had to be abandoned. By August 17 they reached the navigable limits of the Missouri River near the Rocky Mountains, and turned south up the Jefferson River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide through Lemhi Pass, and purchased horses from the Shoshonis, Sacagawea's people. They traveled north to Lolo Pass where they crossed the Bitteroot Range on the Lolo Trail; this was the most difficult part of the journey. Nearly starved, Lewis and Clark reached the country of the Nez Perce on the Clearwater River in Idaho, and left their horses for dugout canoes. From there they floated down the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers, reaching the Pacific Ocean by November of 1805.

In December the explorers built Fort Clatsop on the south side of the Columbia River (near present-day Astoria, Oregon), and settled in for the winter. Lewis and Clark accomplished considerable scientific work while on the Pacific coast, gathering and recording information regarding the country and its inhabitants, despite constant rain and plaguing insects. A detail of men was assigned to make salt by boiling sea water.

The Return Journey
On March 23, 1806 the return trip began. After a tough journey up the Columbia against strong currents, the party retrieved their horses from the Nez Perce, and waited for the deep mountain snow to melt. After crossing the Bitteroots the party split at the Lolo Pass to add to the geographical knowledge they would gather. Confident of their survival, Lewis went north while Clark went south. While on the Marias River Lewis' party had a fight with a party of Blackfeet Indians, and were forced to kill two of them. This was the only violent incident of the entire journey. The Corps of Discovery was reunited in North Dakota, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. They left Charbonneau, Sacagawea and the baby at the Mandan villages, continued down the Missouri River, and arrived in St. Louis on September 23, 1806.

The Importance Of The Expedition
The results and accomplishments of the Lewis and Clark expedition were extensive. It altered the imperial struggle for the control of North America, particularity in the Pacific northwest, by strengthening the U.S. claim to the areas now including the states of Oregon and Washington. Lewis and Clark achieved an impressive record of peaceful cooperation with the Indians and generated American interest in the fur trade. This had a far reaching effect, since it led to further exploration and commercial exploitation of the West. Lewis and Clark added to geographic knowledge by determining the true course of the Upper Missouri and its major tributaries, and producing important maps of these areas. They forever destroyed the dream of a Northwest Passage, but proved the success of overland travel to the Pacific. The expedition compiled the first general survey of life and material culture of the Native American tribes they encountered.

Lewis and Clark made significant additions to the zoological and botanical knowledge of the continent, providing the first scientific descriptions of many new species of animals, including the grizzly bear, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, and mountain goat. They made the first attempt at a systematic record of the meteorology of the West, and less successfully attempted to determine the latitude and longitude of significant geographical points.

Lewis and Clark traveled over 8,000 miles in less than 2 1/2 years, losing only one member of their party, at a total cost to the taxpayer of $40,000. By any measure of scientific exploration, the Lewis and Clark expedition was phenomenally successful in terms of accomplishing its stated goals, expanding human knowledge, and spurring further curiosity and wonder about the vast American West.

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Corps of Discovery - Gateway Arch National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Jefferson's Instructions These were the final instructions given to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark before they embarked upon their journey into the Louisiana Purchase. The beauty they discovered was beyond their wildest expectations. The people they encountered represented dozens of unique cultures, and enabled the successful completion of their mission.

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Table of Contents

1. Causes of the War of 1812

2. The War of 1812 Breaks Out

3. War of 1812: Mixed Results for American Forces

4. Inspiration for 'The Star Spangled Banner'

5. End of the War of 1812 and Its Impact

6. Impact of the War of 1812

In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy's impressment of American seamen and America's desire to expand its territory.

The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812, including the capture and burning of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in August 1814. Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, boosting national confidence and fostering a new spirit of patriotism. The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815, ended the war but left many of the most contentious questions unresolved. Nonetheless, many in the United States celebrated the War of 1812 as a "second war of independence," beginning an era of partisan agreement and national pride.

Causes of the War of 1812

At the outset of the 19th century, Great Britain was locked in a long and bitter conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte's France. In an attempt to cut off supplies from reaching the enemy, both sides attempted to block the United States from trading with the other. In 1807, Britain passed the Orders in Council, which required neutral countries to obtain a license from its authorities before trading with France or French colonies. The Royal Navy also outraged Americans by its practice of impressment, or removing seamen from U.S. merchant vessels and forcing them to serve on behalf of the British.

In 1809, the U.S. Congress repealed Thomas Jefferson 's unpopular Embargo Act, which by restricting trade had hurt Americans more than either Britain or France. Its replacement, the Non-Intercourse Act, specifically prohibited trade with Britain and France. It also proved ineffective, and in turn was replaced with a May 1810 bill stating that if either power dropped trade restrictions against the United States, Congress would in turn resume non-intercourse with the opposing power.

After Napoleon hinted he would stop restrictions, President James Madison blocked all trade with Britain that November. Meanwhile, new members of Congress elected that year-led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun-had begun to agitate for war, based on their indignation over British violations of maritime rights as well as Britain's encouragement of Native American hostility against American westward expansion.

Did you know? The War of 1812 produced a new generation of great American generals, including Andrew Jackson, Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, and helped propel no fewer than four men to the presidency: Jackson, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe and William Henry Harrison.

The War of 1812 Breaks Out

In the fall of 1811, Indiana's territorial governor William Henry Harrison led U.S. troops to victory in the Battle of Tippecanoe. The defeat convinced many Indians in the Northwest Territory (including the celebrated Shawnee chief Tecumseh) that they needed British support to prevent American settlers from pushing them further out of their lands.

Meanwhile, by late 1811 the so-called "War Hawks" in Congress were putting more and more pressure on Madison, and on June 18, 1812, the president signed a declaration of war against Britain. Though Congress ultimately voted for war, both House and Senate were bitterly divided on the issue. Most Western and Southern congressmen supported war, while Federalists (especially New Englanders who relied heavily on trade with Britain) accused war advocates of using the excuse of maritime rights to promote their expansionist agenda.

In order to strike at Great Britain, U.S. forces almost immediately attacked Canada, which was then a British colony. American officials were overly optimistic about the invasion's success, especially given how underprepared U.S. troops were at the time. On the other side, they faced a well-managed defense coordinated by Sir Isaac Brock, the British soldier and administrator in charge in Upper Canada (modern Ontario).

On August 16, 1812, the United States suffered a humiliating defeat after Brock and Tecumseh's forces chased those led by Michigan William Hull across the Canadian border, scaring Hull into surrendering Detroit without any shots fired.

War of 1812: Mixed Results for American Forces

Things looked better for the United States in the West, as Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's brilliant success in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 placed the Northwest Territory firmly under American control. Harrison was subsequently able to retake Detroit with a victory in the Battle of Thames (in which Tecumseh was killed). Meanwhile, the U.S. navy had been able to score several victories over the Royal Navy in the early months of the war. With the defeat of Napoleon's armies in April 1814, however, Britain was able to turn its full attention to the war effort in North America.

As large numbers of troops arrived, British forces raided the Chesapeake Bay and moved in on the U.S. capital, capturing Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814, and burning government buildings including the Capitol and the White House.

Inspiration for 'The Star Spangled Banner'

On September 11, 1814, at the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain in New York, the American navy soundly defeated the British fleet. And on September 13, 1814, Baltimore's Fort McHenry withstood 25 hours of bombardment by the British Navy.

The following morning, the fort's soldiers hoisted an enormous American flag, a sight that inspired Francis Scott Key to write a poem that would later be set to music and become known as " The Star-Spangled Banner." (Set to the tune of an old English drinking song, it would later be adopted as the U.S. national anthem.) British forces subsequently left the Chesapeake Bay and began gathering their efforts for a campaign against New Orleans.

End of the War of 1812 and Its Impact

By that time, peace talks had already begun at Ghent (modern Belgium), and Britain moved for an armistice after the failure of the assault on Baltimore. In the negotiations that followed, the United States gave up its demands to end impressment, while Britain promised to leave Canada's borders unchanged and abandon efforts to create an Indian state in the Northwest. On December 24, 1814, commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent, which would be ratified the following February.

On January 8, 1815, unaware that peace had been concluded, British forces mounted a major attack in the Battle of New Orleans, only to meet with defeat at the hands of future U.S. president Andrew Jackson 's army. News of the battle boosted sagging U.S. morale and left Americans with the taste of victory, despite the fact that the country had achieved none of its pre-war objectives.

Impact of the War of 1812

Though the War of 1812 is remembered as a relatively minor conflict in the United States and Britain, it looms large for Canadians and for Native Americans, who see it as a decisive turning point in their losing struggle to govern themselves. In fact, the war had a far-reaching impact in the United States, as the Treaty of Ghent ended decades of bitter partisan infighting in government and ushered in the so-called "Era of Good Feelings."

The war also marked the demise of the Federalist Party, which had been accused of being unpatriotic for its antiwar stance, and reinforced a tradition of Anglophobia that had begun during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps most importantly, the war's outcome boosted national self-confidence and encouraged the growing spirit of American expansionism that would shape the better part of the 19th century.

HISTORY Vault

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In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future.

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https://www.nps.gov/jeff/learn/historyculture/corps-of-discovery.htm

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https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/politics-society-early-19th-c/v/the-monroe-doctrine

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https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-texas

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https://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/oregontrail.htm

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https://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/oregontrail.htm

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https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/v/manifest-destiny

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION | Educational Video for Kids.

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Table of Contents

1. Preindustrial Gunmaking

2. Eli Whitney's Impressive Display

3. The Impact of Interchangeable Parts

During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, machines took over most of the manufacturing work from men, and factories replaced craftsmen's workshops. The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or pre-manufactured parts that were for all practical purposes identical, into the firearms industry. Interchangeable parts, popularized in America when Eli Whitney used them to assemble muskets in the first years of the 19th century, allowed relatively unskilled workers to produce large numbers of weapons quickly and at lower cost, and made repair and replacement of parts infinitely easier.

Preindustrial Gunmaking

Gunmaking was considered an extremely skilled craft in the 18th century, and firearms, including pistols and muskets, were all constructed by hand. In this way, every gun was a one-of-a-kind possession, and a gun broken could not be easily repaired. At the very least, the process was time consuming and expensive, as the gun had to be brought to a craftsman and repaired to order.

Did you know? Eli Whitney first made his name at the tender age of 27 with his invention of the cotton gin, patented in 1794. This revolutionary device was easily copied, however, and several patent infringement lawsuits gained little to no financial reward for Whitney and his partners.

In the mid-18th century, the French gunsmith Honoré LeBlanc suggested the gun parts be made from standardized patterns, so that all gun parts would follow the same design and could be easily replaced if broken. LeBlanc was not alone in imagining the potential value of this concept; an English naval engineer Samuel Bentham had earlier pioneered the use of uniform parts in the production of wooden pulleys for sailing ships. LeBlanc's idea didn't catch on in the French gun market, however, as competing gunsmiths saw clearly the effect that it would have on their craft. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson, then serving as American minister to France, visited LeBlanc's workshop and was impressed by his methods. Despite LeBlanc's efforts, however, it would be left to another man to fully introduce interchangeable parts into the American-and later the international-weapons industry.

Eli Whitney's Impressive Display

In 1797, when Congress voted to prepare the nation for war with France, including the appropriation of a large amount of funds for new weapons, the young inventor Eli Whitney-already known for his invention of the cotton gin in 1794-seized an opportunity to try to make his fortune. In mid-1798, he obtained a government contract to manufacture 10,000 muskets within an extraordinarily short time frame of less than two years.

By January 1801, Whitney had failed to produce a single one of the promised weapons, and was called to Washington to justify his use of Treasury funds before a group that included outgoing president John Adams and Jefferson, now the president-elect. As the story goes, Whitney put on a display for the group, assembling muskets before their eyes by choosing (seemingly at random) from a supply of parts he brought with him. The performance earned Whitney widespread renown and renewed federal support. It was later proven, however, that Whitney's demonstration was a fake, and that he had marked the parts beforehand and they were not exactly interchangeable. Still, Whitney received credit for what Jefferson claimed was the dawn of the machine age.

The Impact of Interchangeable Parts

Whitney proved to be an effective businessman and manager, dividing labor efficiently among his largely unskilled work force and building precision equipment that enabled the production of large numbers of identical parts quickly and at a relatively low cost. The last of the 10,000 muskets that Whitney had promised in his original contract came in eight years late, but were judged to be of superior quality, and he produced 15,000 more within the next four years.

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Preindustrial Gunmaking Eli Whitney's Impressive Display The Impact of Interchangeable Parts During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, machines took over most of the manufacturing work from men, and factories replaced craftsmen's workshops. The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or pre-manufactured parts that were for all practical purposes identical, into the firearms industry.

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Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800-1850

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation

Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans' lives in the nineteenth century

Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West. Unlike their predecessors, who traveled by foot or wagon train, these settlers had new transport options. Their trek was made possible by the construction of roads, canals, and railroads, projects that required the funding of the federal government and the states.

New technologies, like the steamship and railroad lines, had brought about what historians call the transportation revolution. States competed for the honor of having the most advanced transport systems. People celebrated the transformation of the wilderness into an orderly world of improvement demonstrating the steady march of progress and the greatness of the republic. In 1817, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina looked to a future of rapid internal improvements, declaring, "Let us . . . bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals." Americans agreed that internal transportation routes would promote progress. By the eve of the Civil War, the United States had moved beyond roads and canals to a well-established and extensive system of railroads.

One key part of the transportation revolution was the widespread building of roads and turnpikes. In 1811, construction began on the Cumberland Road, a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois. The federal government funded this important artery to the West, beginning the creation of a transportation infrastructure for the benefit of settlers and farmers. Other entities built turnpikes, which (as today) charged fees for use. New York State, for instance, chartered turnpike companies that dramatically increased the miles of state roads from one thousand in 1810 to four thousand by 1820. New York led the way in building turnpikes.

Canal mania swept the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Promoters knew these artificial rivers could save travelers immense amounts of time and money. Even short waterways, such as the two-and-a-half-mile canal going around the rapids of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, proved a huge leap forward, in this case by opening a water route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The preeminent example was the Erie Canal ([link]), which linked the Hudson River, and thus New York City and the Atlantic seaboard, to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Valley.

With its central location, large harbor, and access to the hinterland via the Hudson River, New York City already commanded the lion's share of commerce. Still, the city's merchants worried about losing ground to their competitors in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their search for commercial advantage led to the dream of creating a water highway connecting the city's Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West. The result was the Erie Canal. Chartered in 1817 by the state of New York, the canal took seven years to complete. When it opened in 1825, it dramatically decreased the cost of shipping while reducing the time to travel to the West. Soon $15 million worth of goods (more than $200 million in today's money) was being transported on the 363-mile waterway every year.

Explore the Erie Canal on ErieCanal.org via an interactive map. Click throughout the map for images of and artifacts from this historic waterway.

The success of the Erie Canal led to other, similar projects. The Wabash and Erie Canal, which opened in the early 1840s, stretched over 450 miles, making it the longest canal in North America ([link]). Canals added immensely to the country's sense of progress. Indeed, they appeared to be the logical next step in the process of transforming wilderness into civilization.

As with highway projects such as the Cumberland Road, many canals were federally sponsored, especially during the presidency of John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s. Adams, along with Secretary of State Henry Clay, championed what was known as the American System, part of which included plans for a broad range of internal transportation improvements. Adams endorsed the creation of roads and canals to facilitate commerce and develop markets for agriculture as well as to advance settlement in the West.

Starting in the late 1820s, steam locomotives began to compete with horse-drawn locomotives. The railroads with steam locomotives offered a new mode of transportation that fascinated citizens, buoying their optimistic view of the possibilities of technological progress. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was the first to begin service with a steam locomotive. Its inaugural train ran in 1831 on a track outside Albany and covered twelve miles in twenty-five minutes. Soon it was traveling regularly between Albany and Schenectady.

Toward the middle of the century, railroad construction kicked into high gear, and eager investors quickly formed a number of railroad companies. As a railroad grid began to take shape, it stimulated a greater demand for coal, iron, and steel. Soon, both railroads and canals crisscrossed the states ([link]), providing a transportation infrastructure that fueled the growth of American commerce. Indeed, the transportation revolution led to development in the coal, iron, and steel industries, providing many Americans with new job opportunities.

The expansion of roads, canals, and railroads changed people's lives. In 1786, it had taken a minimum of four days to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. By 1840, the trip took half a day on a train. In the twenty-first century, this may seem intolerably slow, but people at the time were amazed by the railroad's speed. Its average of twenty miles per hour was twice as fast as other available modes of transportation.

By 1840, more than three thousand miles of canals had been dug in the United States, and thirty thousand miles of railroad track had been laid by the beginning of the Civil War. Together with the hundreds of steamboats that plied American rivers, these advances in transportation made it easier and less expensive to ship agricultural products from the West to feed people in eastern cities, and to send manufactured goods from the East to people in the West. Without this ability to transport goods, the market revolution would not have been possible. Rural families also became less isolated as a result of the transportation revolution. Traveling circuses, menageries, peddlers, and itinerant painters could now more easily make their way into rural districts, and people in search of work found cities and mill towns within their reach.

A transportation infrastructure rapidly took shape in the 1800s as American investors and the government began building roads, turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The time required to travel shrank vastly, and people marveled at their ability to conquer great distances, enhancing their sense of the steady advance of progress. The transportation revolution also made it possible to ship agricultural and manufactured goods throughout the country and enabled rural people to travel to towns and cities for employment opportunities.

Which of the following was not a factor in the transportation revolution?

What was the significance of the Cumberland Road?

What were the benefits of the transportation revolution?

The Cumberland Road made transportation to the West easier for new settlers. The Erie Canal facilitated trade with the West by connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Railroads shortened transportation times throughout the country, making it easier and less expensive to move people and goods.

Glossary

Cumberland Road

a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois

Erie Canal

a canal that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West

Mohawk and Hudson Railroad

the first steam-powered locomotive railroad in the United States

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On the Move: The Transportation Revolution

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Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800-1850 OpenStaxCollege [latexpage] By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans' lives in the nineteenth century Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West.

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Table of Contents

1. Whitney Learns About Cotton

2. A More Efficient Way

3. Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy

4. Interchangeable Parts

In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America's leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. Based in part on his reputation for creating the cotton gin, Whitney later secured a major contract to build muskets for the U.S. government. Through this project, he promoted the idea of interchangeable parts-standardized, identical parts that made for faster assembly and easier repair of various devices. For his work, he is credited as a pioneer of American manufacturing.

Whitney Learns About Cotton

Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts. Growing up, Whitney, whose father was a farmer, proved to be a talented mechanic and inventor. Among the objects he designed and built as a youth were a nail forge and a violin. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College (now Yale University), Whitney headed to the South. He originally planned to work as a private tutor but instead accepted an invitation to stay with Catherine Greene (1755-1814), the widow of American Revolutionary War (1775-83) general Nathanael Greene, on her plantation, known as Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Georgia. While there, Whitney learned about cotton production-in particular, the difficulty cotton farmers faced making a living.

Did you know? Some historians believe Catherine Greene devised the cotton gin and Eli Whitney merely built it and applied for the patent, since at that time women were not allowed to file for patents. Others believe the idea was Whitney's but Greene played an important role as both designer and financier.

In many ways, cotton was an ideal crop; it was easily grown, and unlike food crops its fibers could be stored for long periods of time. But cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult to separate from the soft fibers. A type of cotton known as long staple was easy to clean, but grew well only along coastal areas. The vast majority of cotton farmers were forced to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton, which had to be cleaned painstakingly by hand, one plant at a time. The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about one pound of short-staple cotton per day.

A More Efficient Way

Greene and her plantation manager, Phineas Miller (1764-1803), explained the problem with short-staple cotton to Whitney, and soon thereafter he built a machine that could effectively and efficiently remove the seeds from cotton plants. The invention, called the cotton gin ("gin" was derived from "engine"), worked something like a strainer or sieve: Cotton was run through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh. The mesh was too fine to let the seeds through but the hooks pulled the cotton fibers through with ease. Smaller gins could be cranked by hand; larger ones could be powered by a horse and, later, by a steam engine. Whitney's hand-cranked machine could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day. Whitney wrote to his father: "One man and a horse will do more than fifty men with the old machines...Tis generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a Fortune by it."

Whitney received a patent for his invention in 1794; he and Miller then formed a cotton gin manufacturing company. The two entrepreneurs planned to build cotton gins and install them on plantations throughout the South, taking as payment a portion of all the cotton produced by each plantation. While farmers were delighted with the idea of a machine that could boost cotton production so dramatically, they had no intention of sharing a significant percentage of their profits with Whitney and Miller. Instead, the design for the cotton gin was pirated and plantation owners constructed their own machines-many of them an improvement over Whitney's original model.

Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy

The patent laws of the time had loopholes that made it difficult for Whitney to protect his rights as an inventor. Even though the laws were changed a few years later, Whitney's patent expired before he ever realized much profit. Still, the cotton gin had transformed the American economy. For the South, it meant that cotton could be produced plentifully and cheaply for domestic use and for export, and by the mid-19th century, cotton was America's leading export. For the North, especially New England, cotton's rise meant a steady supply of raw materials for its textile mills.

One inadvertent result of the cotton gin's success, however, was that it helped strengthen slavery in the South. Although the cotton gin made cotton processing less labor-intensive, it helped planters earn greater profits, prompting them to grow larger crops, which in turn required more people. Because slavery was the cheapest form of labor, cotton farmers simply acquired more slaves.

Interchangeable Parts

Patent-law issues prevented Whitney from ever significantly profiting from the cotton gin; however, in 1798, he secured a contract from the U.S. government to produce 10,000 muskets in two years, an amount that had never been manufactured in such a short period. Whitney promoted the idea of interchangeable parts: standardized, identical parts that would make for faster assembly as well as easier repair of various objects and machines. At the time, guns were typically built individually by skilled craftsmen, so that each finished device was unique. Although it ultimately took Whitney some 10 years, instead of two, to fulfill his contract, he was credited with playing a pioneering role in the development of the American system of mass-production.

In 1817, Whitney, then in his early 50s, married Henrietta Edwards, with whom he would have four children. He died on January 8, 1825, at age 59.

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Whitney Learns About Cotton A More Efficient Way Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy Interchangeable Parts In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.

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Video: industrial revolution

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History.com Editors. “Interchangeable Parts.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 26 Apr. 2010: www.history.com/topics/inventions/interchangeable-parts.
interchangeable parts

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organized labor:

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Rice University, and OpenStax U.S. History. “On the Move: The Transportation Revolution.” US History, 7 May 2014, pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/on-the-move-the-transportation-revolution/:

transportation-revolution

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History.com Editors. “Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Feb. 2010: www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney cotton gin and eli whitney

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plantation life:

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Steamers carried Irish emigrants to Liverpool where their transatlantic voyage began

In the middle half of the nineteenth century, more than one-half of the population of Ireland emigrated to the United States. So did an equal number of Germans. Most of them came because of civil unrest, severe unemployment or almost inconceivable hardships at home. This wave of immigration affected almost every city and almost every person in America. From 1820 to 1870, over seven and a half million immigrants came to the United States - more than the entire population of the country in 1810. Nearly all of them came from northern and western Europe - about a third from Ireland and almost a third from Germany. Burgeoning companies were able to absorb all that wanted to work. Immigrants built canals and constructed railroads. They became involved in almost every labor-intensive endeavor in the country. Much of the country was built on their backs.

Letter to the London Times from an Irish Immigrant in America, 1850

I am exceedingly well pleased at coming to this land of plenty. On arrival I purchased 120 acres of land at $5 an acre. You must bear in mind that I have purchased the land out, and it is to me and mine an "estate for ever", without a landlord, an agent or tax-gatherer to trouble me. I would advise all my friends to quit Ireland - the country most dear to me; as long as they remain in it they will be in bondage and misery.

What you labour for is sweetened by contentment and happiness; there is no failure in the potato crop, and you can grow every crop you wish, without manuring the land during life. You need not mind feeding pigs, but let them into the woods and they will feed themselves, until you want to make bacon of them.

I shudder when I think that starvation prevails to such an extent in poor Ireland. After supplying the entire population of America, there would still be as much corn and provisions left us would supply the world, for there is no limit to cultivation or end to land. Here the meanest labourer has beef and mutton, with bread, bacon, tea, coffee, sugar and even pies, the whole year round - every day here is as good as Christmas day in Ireland.

Anti-Irish sentiment permeated the United States during the Industrial Revolution. The prejudice exhibited in advertisements like this one sometimes led to violent outbursts.

In Ireland almost half of the population lived on farms that produced little income. Because of their poverty, most Irish people depended on potatoes for food. When this crop failed three years in succession, it led to a great famine with horrendous consequences. Over 750,000 people starved to death. Over two million Irish eventually moved to the United States seeking relief from their desolated country. Impoverished, the Irish could not buy property. Instead, they congregated in the cities where they landed, almost all in the northeastern United States. Today, Ireland has just half the population it did in the early 1840s. There are now more Irish Americans than there are Irish nationals.

In the decade from 1845 to 1855, more than a million Germans fled to the United States to escape economic hardship. They also sought to escape the political unrest caused by riots, rebellion and eventually a revolution in 1848. The Germans had little choice - few other places besides the United States allowed German immigration. Unlike the Irish, many Germans had enough money to journey to the Midwest in search of farmland and work. The largest settlements of Germans were in New York City, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee.

With the vast numbers of German and Irish coming to America, hostility to them erupted. Part of the reason for the opposition was religious. All of the Irish and many of the Germans were Roman Catholic. Part of the opposition was political. Most immigrants living in cities became Democrats because the party focused on the needs of commoners. Part of the opposition occurred because Americans in low-paying jobs were threatened and sometimes replaced by groups willing to work for almost nothing in order to survive. Signs that read NINA - "No Irish Need Apply" - sprang up throughout the country.

The Know Nothing Party's platform included the repeal of all naturalization laws and a prohibition on immigrants from holding public office.

Ethnic and anti-Catholic rioting occurred in many northern cites, the largest occurring in Philadelphia in 1844 during a period of economic depression. Protestants, Catholics and local militia fought in the streets. 16 were killed, dozens were injured and over 40 buildings were demolished. "Nativist" political parties sprang up almost overnight. The most influential of these parties, the Know Nothings, was anti-Catholic and wanted to extend the amount of time it took immigrants to become citizens and voters. They also wanted to prevent foreign-born people from ever holding public office. Economic recovery after the 1844 depression reduced the number of serious confrontations for a time, as the country seemed to be able to use all the labor it could get.

But Nativism returned in the 1850s with a vengeance. In the 1854 elections, Nativists won control of state governments in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and California. They won elections in Maryland and Kentucky and took 45% of the vote in 5 other states. In 1856, Millard Fillmore was the American Party candidate for President and trumpeted anti-immigrant themes. Nativism caused much splintering in the political landscape, and the Republicans, with no platform or policies about it, benefited and rode to victory in the divisive election of 1860.

German Immigration to Texas
The first permanent German settlements in Texas date back to the early 1830's, and the upsurge in German immigration in the 1840's resulted in such towns as Fredericksburg and New Braunfels. By the mid 1850's, the populations of San Antonio, Houston, and Galveston were about one-third German.

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The Five Points Site: Rediscovery of a 19th-Century Neighborhood
The demolition of city buildings provides opportunities for archaeological investigation, and this website proves the value of digging into our past. Five Points was a mixed residential, commercial, and industrial neighborhood in New York City through several waves of immigration. The documentary record pictures Five Points as a frightening slum, but the archaeological record shows a thriving, working-class neighborhood. Both views are shown on this fascinating website.

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Views of the Famine
How did it feel to watch your children starve while your fields were barren? To get on a boat to a foreign land with little or no money because it was your only chance to survive? This website documents the Great Potato Famine of Ireland through contemporary articles from the Illustrated London Times, the Cork Examiner, and other publications. There is also a nicely organized master picture list and comprehensive list of online resources.

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Irish and German Immigration [ushistory.org]

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Steamers carried Irish emigrants to Liverpool where their transatlantic voyage began In the middle half of the nineteenth century, more than one-half of the population of Ireland emigrated to the United States. So did an equal number of Germans. Most of them came because of civil unrest, severe unemployment or almost inconceivable hardships at home.

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Facts, information and articles about Abolitionist Movement, one of the causes of the civil war

Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

Slavery Comes To The New World

African slavery began in North America in 1619 at Jamestown, Virginia. The first American-built slave ship, Desire, launched from Massachusetts in 1636, beginning the slave trade between Britain's American colonies and Africa. From the beginning, some white colonists were uncomfortable with the notion of slavery. At the time of the American Revolution against the English Crown, Delaware (1776) and Virginia (1778) prohibited importation of African slaves; Vermont became the first of the 13 colonies to abolish slavery (1777); Rhode Island prohibited taking slaves from the colony (1778); and Pennsylvania began gradual emancipation in 1780.

The Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded in 1789, the same year the former colonies replaced their Articles of Confederation with the new Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union."

When the U.S. Constitution was written, it made no specific mention of slavery, but it provided for the return of fugitives (which encompassed criminals, indentured servants and slaves). It allowed each slave within a state to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining population and representation in the House of Representatives (Article I, Section 3, says representation and direct taxation will be determined based on the number of "free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.")

The Constitution prohibited importation of slaves, to begin in 1808, but again managed to do so without using the words "slave" or "slavery." Slave trading became a capital offense in 1819. There existed a general feeling that slavery would gradually pass away. Improvements in technology-the cotton gin and sewing machine-increased the demand for slave labor, however, in order to produce more cotton in Southern states. By the 1830s, many Southerners had shifted from, "Slavery is a necessary evil," to "Slavery is a positive good." The institution existed because it was "God's will," a Christian duty to lift the African out of barbarism while still exerting control over his "animal passions."

Learn More About Slavery In America

The Missouri Compromise And Dred Scott

Missouri's appeal for statehood brought a confrontation between free and slave states in Congress in 1820; each feared the other would gain the upper hand. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 set a policy of admitting states in pairs, one slave, one free. (Maine came in at the same time as Missouri.) The compromise prohibited slavery above parallel 36 degrees, 30 minutes in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, and it included a national Fugitive Slave Law requiring all Americans to return runaway slaves to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Law was upheld in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, but the Missouri Compromise's prohibitions on the spread of slavery would be found unconstitutional in the 1857 Dred Scott decision.

Learn more about Dred Scott

The Abolitionism Movement Spreads

Although many New Englanders had grown wealthy in the slave trade before the importation of slaves was outlawed, that area of the country became the hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets sprang into existence. These were numerous enough by 1820 that South Carolina instituted penalties for anyone bringing written anti-slavery material into the state.

These publications argued against slavery as a social and moral evil and often used examples of African American writings and other achievements to demonstrate that Africans and their descendents were as capable of learning as were Europeans and their descendents in America, given the freedom to do so. To prove their case that one person owning another one was morally wrong, they first had to convince many, in all sections of the country, that Negroes, the term used for the race at the time, were human. Yet, even many people among the abolitionists did not believe the two races were equal.

In 1829, David Walker, a freeman of color originally from the South, published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a new benchmark, pushing abolitionists toward extreme militancy. He called for slaves to rise up against their masters and to defend themselves: "It is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty." As early as 1800, a Virginia slave known as Gabriel Prosser had attempted an uprising there, but it failed when two slaves betrayed the plan to their masters.

Walker's publication was too extreme even for most abolition leaders, including one of the most renowned, William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831, Garrison founded The Liberator, which would become the most famous and influential of abolitionist newspapers. That same year, Virginia debated emancipation, marking the last movement for abolition in the South prior to the Civil War. Instead, that year the Southampton Slave Riot, also called Nat Turner's Rebellion, resulted in Virginia passing new regulations against slaves. Fears of slave revolts like the bloody Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 were never far from Southerners' minds. Publications like An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World led white Southerners to conclude Northern abolitionists intended to commit genocide against them.

In 1833 in Philadelphia, the first American Anti-Slavery Society Convention convened. In a backlash, anti-abolition riots broke out in many northeastern cities, including New York and Philadelphia, during 1834-35. Several Southern states, beginning with the Carolinas, made formal requests to other states to suppress abolition groups and their literature. In Illinois, the legislature voted to condemn abolition societies and their agitation; Delegate Abraham Lincoln voted with the majority, then immediately co-sponsored a bill to mitigate some of the language of the earlier one. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a gag rule, automatically tabling abolitionist proposals.

The first national Anti-Slavery Convention was held in New York City in 1837, and the following year the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in Philadelphia; the latter resulted in pro-slavery riots. The Liberty Party, a political action group, held its first national convention, at Albany, N.Y., in 1839. That same year, Africans mutinied aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and asked New York courts to grant them freedom. Their plea was answered affirmatively by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841.

Frederick Douglass: A Black Abolitionist

Frederick Douglass-a former slave who had been known as Frederick Bailey while in slavery and who was the most famous black man among the abolitionists-broke with William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, after returning from a visit to Great Britain, and founded a black abolitionist paper, The North Star. The title was a reference to the directions given to runaway slaves trying to reach the Northern states and Canada: Follow the North Star. Garrison had earlier convinced the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to hire Douglass as an agent, touring with Garrison and telling audiences about his experiences in slavery. In England, however, Douglass had experienced a level of independence he'd never known in America and likely wanted greater independece for his actions here.

Working with Douglass on The North Star was another black man, Martin R. Delaney, who gave up publishing his own paper, The Mystery, to join with Douglass. Born to a free mother in Virginia (in what is now the eastern panhandle of West Virginia), Delaney had never been a slave, but he had traveled extensively in the South. After Uncle Tom's Cabin became a bestseller, he attempted to achieve similar success for himself by penning a semi-fictional account of his travels, Blake: The Huts of America. In 1850, he was one of three black men accepted into Harvard Medical School, but white students successfully petitioned to have them removed. No longer believing that merit and reason could allow members of his race to have an equal opportunity in white society, he became an ardent black nationalist. In 1859, he traveled to Africa and negotiated with eight tribal chiefs in Abbeokuta for land, on which he planned to establish a colony for skilled and educated African Americans. The agreement fell apart, and he returned to America where, near the end of the Civil War, he became the first black officer on a general's staff in the history of the U.S. Army.

The Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, the first Women's Rights convention was held, in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Outside of the Society of Friends ("Quakers"), women were often denied the opportunity to speak at abolitionist meetings. The women's rights movement produced many outspoken opponents of slavery, including Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In fact, women's equality and abolition became inextricably linked in the minds of many Southerners. In the 20th century, that lingering animosity nearly defeated the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

Although Delaney's planned African colony failed, in 1849 Great Britain recognized the African colony of Liberia as a sovereign state. It had been founded in 1822 as a colony for free-born blacks, freed slaves and mulattoes (mixed race) from the United States. A number of Americans who opposed slavery (including Abraham Lincoln for a time and the aforementioned Delany) felt that the two races could never live successfully together, and the best hope for Negroes was to return them to freedom in Africa. However, the slave trade between Africa and the Western Hemisphere (the Caribbean and South America) had never ended, and many American ship owners and captains were enjoying something of a golden era of slave-trading while the U.S. and Europe looked the other way. Even if freed slaves had been sent to Africa, many would have wound up back in slavery south of the United States. Only in the late 1850s did Britain step up its anti-slavery enforcement on the high seas, leading America to increase its efforts somewhat.

When the federal government passed a second, even more stringent fugitive slave act in 1850, several states responded by passing personal liberty laws. The following year, Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree) gave a now-famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman," at the Women's Rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Born a slave in New York, she walked away from her owner after she felt she had contributed enough to him. In the late 1840s, she dictated a memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, published by Garrison in 1850. She began to tour, speaking against slavery and in favor of women's rights.

Learn more about the Seneca Falls Convention

Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad

While Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Delaney and others wrote and spoke to end slavery, a former slave named Harriet Tubman, nee Harriet Ross, was actively leading slaves to freedom. After escaping from bondage herself, she made repeated trips into Dixie to help others. Believed to have helped some 300 slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting.

Tubman was an agent of the Underground Railroad, a system of "safe houses" and way stations that secretly helped runaways. The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada. Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act. Several communities and individuals claim to have created the term "Underground Railroad." In the southern section of states on the north bank of the Ohio River, a "reverse underground railroad" operated; blacks in those states were kidnapped, whether they had ever been slaves or not, and taken South to sell through a series of clandestine locations.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman
Learn more about the Underground Railroad

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Abolitionist and Author

In 1852, what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist who had come to know a number of escaped slaves while she was living in Cincinnati, authored the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;-stumbling,-leaping,-slipping-springing upwards again! Her shoes are-gone her stockings cut from her feet-while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank.

Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North (banned in the South) and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement. It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Reportedly, when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War he said to her, "So you're the little woman who started this big war."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abolitionists Invoke A Higher Law

Abolitionists became increasingly strident in their condemnations of slave owners and "the peculiar institution of slavery." Often, at Fourth of July gatherings of abolition societies, they reportedly used the occasion to denounce the U.S. Constitution as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." Many of them came to believe in "higher law," that a moral commitment to ending slavery took precedent over observing those parts of the Constitution that protected slavery and, in particular, they refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked. In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart.

Abolitionism, Politics and the Election Of Abraham Lincoln

The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. Although the Native American Party (derisively called the Know-Nothing Party because when member were asked about the secretive group they claimed to "know nothing") opposed immigrants, they also opposed slavery. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In 1856, these coalesced into the Republican Party. Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States.

John Brown: Abolitionism's Fiery Crusader

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence. After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in 1856, a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers. The territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

Learn more about John Brown

Dred Scott V. Sanford

The 1857 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship to anyone of African blood and held the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. While Southern states had been passing laws prohibiting "Negro citizenship" and further restricting the rights even of freemen of color (Virginia in 1857 prohibited slaves from smoking and from standing on sidewalks, among other restrictions), one Northern state after another had been passing laws granting citizenship to their black residents. The Court's findings upended that, and the ruling outraged many Northerners. Abraham Lincoln revived his personal political career, coming out of a self-imposed semi-retirement to speak out against the Dred Scott decision.

The year 1859 saw two events that were milestones in the history of slavery and abolition in America. The ship Clotilde landed in Mobile, Alabama. Though the importation of slaves had been illegal in America since 1808, Clotilde carried 110 to 160 African slaves. The last slave ship ever to land in the United States, it clearly demonstrated how lax the enforcement of the anti-importation laws was.

Learn more about the Dred Scott Decision

John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Nearly 1,000 miles northeast of Mobile, on the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown-the radical abolitionist who had killed proslavery settlers in Kansas-led 21 men in a raid to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Though Brown denied it, his plan was to use the arsenal's weapons to arm a slave uprising. He and his followers, 16 white men and five black ones, holed up in the arsenal after they were discovered, and were captured there by a group of U.S. Marines commanded by an Army lieutenant colonel, Robert E. Lee. Convicted of treason against Virginia, Brown was hanged December 2.

Initial reaction in the South was that this was the work of a small group of fanatics, but when Northern newspapers, authors and legislators began praising him as a martyr-a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier eulogizing Brown was published in the New York Herald Tribune less than a month after the execution-their actions were taken as further proof that Northern abolitionists wished to carry out genocide of white Southerners. The flames were fanned higher as information came out that Brown had talked other abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, about his plans and received financial assistance from some of them.
Learn more about John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Abraham Lincoln: Abolitionist President

Following Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Southern states began seceding from the Union. Though personally opposed to slavery and convinced the United States was going to have to be all free or all slave states-"a house divided against itself cannot stand"-he repeatedly said he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. But he adamantly opposed its expansion into territories where it did not exist, and slave owners were determined that they had to be free to take their human property with them if they chose to move into those territories.

Less than two years into the civil war that began over Southern secession, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed all slaves residing in areas of the nation currently in rebellion. Often ridiculed, both then and now, because it only freed slaves in areas that did not recognize Lincoln's authority, it meant that Union Army officers no longer had to return runaway slaves to their owners because, as the armies advanced, slaves in the newly captured areas were considered free. It also effectively prohibited European nations that had long since renounced slavery from entering the war on the side of the South.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln
Learn more about the Emancipation Proclamation

The 13th Amendment: The Abolitionism Movement Triumphs

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, declared ratified on December 18, 1865, ended slavery in the United States-at least in name. During the Reconstruction Era, Southern states found ways to "hire" black workers under terms that were slavery in all but name, even pursuing any who ran off, just as they had in the days of the Underground Railroad.

Abolition had been achieved, but the lessons learned by those in the abolition movement would be applied to other social concerns in the decades to come, notably the temperance and woman's suffrage movements.

Articles Featuring The Abolitionist Movement From History Net Magazines

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Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

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In the mid 19th century, women in the US began demanding improved property rights, employment opportunities, and the vote. Closely allied with the anti-slavery movement, many of its key participants were active in both causes, including Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass

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Sound Smart: Compromise of 1850 | History

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Kansas-Nebraska Act - Definition, Date & Significance | HISTORY

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that allowed settlers of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether slavery would be allowed within their state’s borders. The conflicts that arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act’s passage led to the period of violence known as Bleeding Kansas, and contributed to unrest that led to the American Civil War (1861-65).

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The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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“Irish and German Immigration.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association: www.ushistory.org/us/25f.asp.

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This is a photo of the second great awakening: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Tent_revival_during_the_Second_Great_Awakening.jpg

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“Abolitionist Movement.” HistoryNet: www.historynet.com/abolitionist-movement.

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“Women's Rights.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association: www.ushistory.org/us/26c.asp.

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A video on the compromise of 1850: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Bra5yBh6M

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History.com Editors. “Kansas-Nebraska Act.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009: www.history.com/topics/19th-century/kansas-nebraska-act.

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This a a picture of the Lincoln Douglas Debate: http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/blogdivided/files/2009/07/lincdougfirst2.jpg

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This is a video about the election of 1860: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNmeOOJCDY

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This is a photo of the fall of fort sumter: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/fort-sumter