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Promoters of English colonization in North America

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Promoters of English colonization in North America

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People who hoped to gain something from colonization (like getting more profit from import and export of raw materials and goods, expansion of market, spread Protestantism), promoted advantages of life in America to those who lost land or job in England, even though they had never been to the New World themselves.

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The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands (now Belgium). The treaty restored relations between the two nations to status quo ante bellum, restoring the borders of the two countries to the lines before the war started in June 1812.

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a word used for people who practise religion which in not prominent in a certain area. It usually referred to polytheism. In the beginning of colonialism of America, non-Christians were considered pagans.

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a person coming from a rural region, usually land lass and jobless because of the transition from agriculture to live-stock raising.

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The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the Defence of Fort M'Henry, a poem written on September 14, 1814, by the then 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory.

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Guerrière was a 38-gun frigate of the French Navy, designed by Forfait. The British captured her and recommissioned her as HMS Guerriere. She is most famous for her fight against USS Constitution.

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were young and poor English people who signed in England in order to work in Chesapeake colonies on tobacco plantations. They worked for a couple of years and received freedom dues which included food and other provisions, and in some cases a land.

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USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat. She was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed.

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Tecumseh's Confederacy was a confederation of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region of the United States that began to form in the early 19th century around the teaching of Tenskwatawa (The Prophet). The confederation grew over several years and came to include several thousand warriors. Shawnee leader Tecumseh, the brother of The Prophet, developed into the leader of the group as early as 1808. Together, they worked to unite the various tribes against the American settlers coming across the Appalachian Mountains and onto their land.

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refers to time when early settlers of Jamestown almost died of poor health and hunger caused by frequent fights with natives , lack of food and winter. It lasted for a few months.

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A war hawk, or simply hawk, is a term used in politics for someone favoring war in a debate over whether to go to war, or whether to continue or escalate an existing war. War hawks are the opposite of doves. The terms are derived by analogy with the birds of the same name: hawks are predators that attack and eat other animals, whereas doves mostly eat seeds and fruit and are historically a symbol of peace.

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involve (someone) deeply in an argument, conflict, or difficult situation.

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The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon who brought many of its principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies.

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This is a human right to practise the  religion one wants without punishment from the government, or other repercussions.

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to obtain a profit from an investment.

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an official ban on trade or other commercial activity with a particular country

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this is a place where religious people can practice their religious life (most often in a community) protected from mundane world affairs. William Penn created one in his colony.

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a system for implementing a trade boycott with Great Britain by the First Continental Congress in 1774

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punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. They were ment to punish the Massachusetts colonists.

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the exclussive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.

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clothes made from cloth that has been manufactured at home

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is a set of ethical criteria about permissibility of acting when one’s otherwise legitimate act may also cause an effect one would otherwise be obliged to avoid, promoted by Christian philosophers and some others.

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relating to or consisting of money

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refers to very rich people who lived on a region called Tidewater or Coastal Plain. They owned tobacco plantations and become very wealthy by forcing imported slaves to work for them

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The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) was founded in December 1833 and dissolved in March 1870 following the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

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The Jim Crow persona was a racist theatre character by Thomas D. Rice and an ethnic depiction in accordance with contemporary white ideas of African-Americans and their culture. The character was based on a folk trickster named Jim Crow that had long been popular among black slaves. Rice also adapted and popularized a traditional slave song called "Jump Jim Crow" (1828).

The character is dressed in rags and wears a battered hat and torn shoes. Rice blackened his face and hands using burnt cork and impersonated a very nimble and irreverently witty African American field hand who sang, "Come listen all you galls and boys, I'm going to sing a little song, my name is Jim Crow, weel about and turn about and do jis so, eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”

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The Nullification Crisis was a United States sectional political crisis in 1832–33, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state.

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a union or association formed for mutual benefit, especially between countries or organizations.

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The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame.

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A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future.

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The Specie Circular is a United States presidential executive order issued by President Andrew Jackson in 1836 pursuant to the Coinage Act. It required payment for government land to be in gold and silver.

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Transportation revolution spurred the communications revolution. Congress funded a telegraph line from Washington DC to Baltimore. The news now travelled much faster which was a great deal for many affairs going on in the States, as their reaction to distant event was now prompt.

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Transcendental Club (Hedge's club, initially called) was founded in 1836 by a small group of Harvard graduates.  Although without a framed religion or philosophy, they shared their views on spirituality. They believed that a person should develop their inner life which pertained to spiritual aspect of existence,  innate morality, respect of genuine instincts and emotions, reconnection to nature, and inspired action. They were influenced by British Romanticism, German Idealism and Eastern philosophies.

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Is a religious lifestyle where the practitioner is abstinent from sexual activities, thoughts and words as well as indulgence in sense gratification, like eating opulent foodstuff, listening to mundane music for enjoyment, dress attractively etc. Such celibacy was observed by Shakers.

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This is a spiritual concept that all soul can be saved regardless of their position in the world, and that all people can achieve Heaven if they surrender to God. This idea was very well received by settlers.

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Circuit riders were preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church who had a mission to spread their religion to specific territories and to convert the settlers and to organize congregation. They were quite successful.

The following is an illustration of a circuit rider by Edward Eggleston made in 1874.

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Many revivalists abandoned formal worship which included a strictly determined pattern of rituals which were mostly performed in silence or while chanting prayers, and adopted a more spontaneous way of worship which implied loud singing, dancing, exclamations, hands-clapping, etc.

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It is a preacher who revives ideas, costumes, institutions etc of a religion.  In the 19th century in America many religions were revived and this new wave of renewed practices was called The Second Great Awakening. The preachers travelled on the horseback and shared the message to everyone they met.

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When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.

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The Declaration of Sentiments

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer. while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyrranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizedn, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardles of the happiness of women--the law, in all cases, going upon a flase supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most homorable to himself. As a teacher of theoloy, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in church, as well as state, but a suborinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her conficence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

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The Declaration of Sentiments begins by asserting the equality of all men and women and reiterates that both genders are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It argues that women are oppressed by the government and the patriarchal society of which they are a part. The text then lists 16 facts illustrating the extent of this oppression, including the lack of women’s suffrage, participation, and representation in the government; women’s lack of property rights in marriage; inequality in divorce law; and inequality in education and employment opportunities. The document insists that women be viewed as full citizens of the United States and be granted all the same rights and privileges that were granted to men.

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Abolitionists and the Fight for Freedom in the 19th Century

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Abolitionists and the Fight for Freedom in the 19th Century

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Presley gives a rundown of some of the many black women, both famous and lesser-known, who worked toward the abolition of slavery.

We’ve all heard of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. Many other black women made important contributions to the abolitionist movement, too. But the collective efforts of black women had been largely ignored until scholarship in the late 20th century. Though some black women abolitionists came from comfortable middle-class families, many others were working-class women relegated to the poorly paid jobs of laundress and domestic. The Forten family and Sarah Douglass were freeborn, but many others were former slaves. But, for all these women, abolition had a different and more personal meaning than it did for whites. Though black men welcomed them, says historian Shirley Yee, the expectation that they would play subsidiary roles confined to “women’s sphere” was no different than the expectations of white men abolitionists in regard to white women’s participation. Not surprisingly, both the white and the black women saw things differently than the men.

Champions of Justice

Black women were in the forefront of abolitionist lecturing and writing.

In September, 1832, free black domestic Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) became the first American women to address a public audience of women and men. She spoke out against slavery, criticizing black men for not standing up and being heard on the subject of rights. Maria wrote both pamphlets and speeches for William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator till she retired in 1833. Another black woman, Mary Prince (1788-c. 1833) wrote a book, The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, which exposed the horrors of the Caribbean slave trade. She was the first woman to present an anti-slavery petition to Parliament.

Sarah Mapp Douglass (1806-1882) was an abolitionist, writer and educator. The freeborn daughter of Robert and Grace Douglass, a distinguished black abolitionist family in Philadelphia, she joined her mother Grace as a founding member of the bi-racial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFAS) in 1833. Throughout her abolitionist career, Douglass also served as recording secretary, librarian, and manager for the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, contributed to both the Liberator and the Anglo-African Magazine, became a fundraiser for the black press, and gave numerous public lectures. She ran a school for free black children in Philadelphia. “A passionate educator,” she also taught black children and adults in New York.  In 1853, she took over the girls’ preparatory department at the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth, offering courses in literature, science, and anatomy. Douglass maintained a long and close friendship with prominent white abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of South Carolina slaveholders.  In her letters to Sarah Grimké, Douglass revealed the pain of encountering race prejudice among fellow Quakers.

Grace Douglass and daughter Sarah, along with white feminist Lucretia Mott, were often able to persuade white organizations to include a black abolitionist perspective. Thus, as historian Janice Sumler-Lewis points out, they became not just well-meaning ladies but an “aggressive, persistent force for change in the Philadelphia area.”

The Forten women (mother Charlotte; daughters Sarah, Margaretta, and Harriet; granddaughter Charlotte L.) were major driving forces in the abolitionist movement. Through three generations, the Fortens remained active members of and financial contributors to the abolitionist movement. Not only did they organize informational fairs and run petition drives, they published and lectured as well as assisting runaway slaves. They were so admired by Garrison and other abolitionists that Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier lauded them in his poem “To the Daughters of James Forten.”  Sarah Forten (1814-1893), a regular contributor to The Liberator, recruited her mother, Charlotte, and her two sisters, Margaretta and Harriet to join in founding PFAS. Sarah Forten, along with Sarah Douglass, were among the most articulate and persistent voices in the antislavery movement. Sarah Forten served three consecutive terms on the Board of Directors of PFAS. Charlotte L. Forten Grimke (1837-1914), granddaughter of Charlotte, contributed to The Liberator and was a poet and educator.

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman: Icons of the Movement

Sojourner Truth (c. 1791-1883) was born as Isabella, a slave of Dutch-speaking settlers in New York. As a result of her experiences of injustice and inequality, as well as contact with feminists and abolitionists, she lectured extensively on antislavery and women’s rights, becoming one of the most well-known and respected heroes of the abolitionist movement. By 1846 Sojourner Truth had joined the antislavery circuit, traveling with Abby Kelly Foster, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and British member of Parliament George Thompson. An electrifying public orator, she soon became one of the most popular speakers for the abolitionist cause. Her fame was heightened by the publication of her Narrative in 1850, related and transcribed by Olive Gilbert. With proceeds from its sale she purchased a Northampton home. In 1851, speaking before a National Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth defended the physical and spiritual strength of women, in her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. In 1853 Sojourner’s antislavery, spiritualist, and temperance advocacy took her to the Midwest, where she settled among spiritualists in Harmonia, Michigan.

“I cannot read a book,” said Sojourner Truth, “but I can read the people.” She dissected political and social issues through parables of everyday life. The Constitution, silent on black rights, had a “little weevil in it.” She was known for her captivating one-line retorts. An Indiana audience threatened to torch the building if she spoke. Sojourner Truth replied, “Then I will speak to the ashes.” In the late 1840s, grounded in faith that God and moral suasion would eradicate bondage, she challenged her despairing friend Douglass with “Frederick, is God dead?” In 1858, when a group of men questioned her gender, claiming she wasn’t properly feminine in her demeanor, Sojourner Truth, a bold early feminist, exposed her bosom to the entire assembly, proclaiming that shame was not hers but theirs.

Every American school child has heard of Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), undoubtedly the best known of all the female abolitionists. Called “General Tubman” and the “Moses of her people,” she has taken on a larger-than-life persona. Frederick Douglass said of Tubman: “The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witness of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.” In her own day she was called “the most remarkable woman of her age for her courage and success in guiding fugitive slaves out of slave territory in the 1850s and for her Union service behind Confederate lines,” reports one of her biographers, Jean Humez.

Escaping from slavery in 1849, Tubman quickly became involved with abolitionism. Though she was not a lecturer, partly because of a speech impediment from an injury sustained while a slave, she was a tireless activist, making alliances with women’s rights groups as well as abolitionist groups. Respected by both blacks and whites, she worked with abolitionists as part of the Underground Railway, and probably even brought fugitives to the home of Frederick Douglass.

Though she did not start the Underground Railway, Tubman is the name most associated with it. Recent scholarship suggests that the number of slaves she spirited away from the South may be less than once thought, but this in no way diminishes her courage and cleverness. The estimates range from as few as 10 trips up to about 19, with the number rescued ranging from 57 to 200. But nonetheless, she risked her life to rescue many slaves, both relatives and other men and women, leading them through dangerous and difficult Southern terrain to freedom in the North and in Canada. Her successes were due to both clever disguises and unwavering courage. Fierce in her determination, she would not tolerate slaves who were faint-hearted along the way, even threatening some with guns. Babies were given paregoric (a kind of sedative) to keep them from crying. She became so notorious for her exploits that that a large reward of $12,000 was offered by the South for her capture.

Other Prominent Black Women Activists

There were many more black women abolitionist activists than will fit in this column. But there are some who should be mentioned for their outstanding courage and ability.

Elizabeth Freeman (1742-1829) was born into slavery in Claverack, New York in 1742. Upon suffering physical abuse from her master’s wife, Freeman escaped her home and refused to return. She found a sympathetic ear with attorney Theodore Sedgwick, the father of the writer Catherine Sedgwick. Apparently, as she served dinner to her masters, she had heard them speaking of freedom—in this case freedom from England—and she applied the concepts of equality and freedom for all to herself.

In 1781 Freeman, with the assistance of Sedgwick, initiated the case Brom and Bett v. Ashley that set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. According to the Massachusetts Judicial Review, the 1781 Berkshire county case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley, often referred to as the “Mum Bett” or “Elizabeth Freeman” case, was unique because it occurred less than one year after the adoption of the Massachusetts Constitution and because, in contrast to prior freedom suits, there was no claim that John Ashley, the slave owner, had violated a specific law. This case was a direct challenge to the very existence of slavery in Massachusetts.

Once free, Freeman stayed with the Sedgwick family as a servant. Sedgwick, in arguing a later case, used the example of Freeman when he said in defense of the abolition of slavery, “If there could be a practical refutation of the imagined superiority of our race to hers, the life and character of this woman would afford that refutation.”

Sarah Parker Remond (1824-1894) was an African-American lecturer, abolitionist, and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Born of free blacks, she made her first speech against slavery when she was only sixteen years old. As a young woman, Remond delivered antislavery speeches throughout the Northeast United States. She traveled to England to gather support for the abolitionist cause in the United States. When she was older, she became a physician in Italy where she stayed until her death.

Poet and orator Frances E.W. Harper (1825-1911), the child of two free black parents, advocated for abolition and education in her speeches and publications. Her first poem collection, Forest Leaves, was published around 1845. The delivery of her public speech, “Education and the Elevation of the Colored Race,” resulted in a two-year lecture tour for the Anti-Slavery Society.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893) was the first female black newspaper editor, starting a publication titled The Provincial Freeman in Canada. Her abolitionist activities came naturally to her. Her father worked for the Liberator run by famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. After the war, Cary earned in 1883 a law degree from Howard University, making her the second African-American woman in the United States to earn this degree.

Ellen Craft (1826–1891) along with her husband William Craft (1824–1900) were slaves who escaped to the North in 1848 by traveling openly by train and steamboat, finally arriving in Philadelphia.  She posed as a white male planter and he as her personal servant. The light-skinned daughter of a mulatto slave and her white master, Ellen Craft used her appearance to pass as a white man, dressing in appropriate clothing. Their daring escape was widely publicized, making them among the most famous of fugitive slaves. Abolitionists featured them in public lectures to gain support in the struggle to end the institution.

The Crafts lectured publicly about their escape. In 1860 they published a written account, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. One of the most compelling of the many slave narratives published before the American Civil War, their book reached wide audiences in Great Britain and the United States. After their return to the US in 1868, the Crafts opened an agricultural school for freedman’s children in Georgia and worked the farm until 1890.

Conclusion

Thus there was far more to the abolitionist movement than just the more well-known William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, and even more than just the heroic Truth and Tubman. Many black women (as well as white women, whom I will write about next month) helped make the abolitionist movement a success. Other black women contributed to the cause of equality in the 19th century as well. In a time when women were supposed to be quiet, submissive, and apolitical; when racial prejudice was rampant in the North as well as the South; these women dared to speak out. They should not be forgotten.

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Figure 2. Mrs. W. J. Roach, Mrs. E. J. Graham, and Mrs. W. I. Scott sell copies of the Woman's Journal in New Orleans, ca. 1910s. Courtesy Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library, Bryn Mawr, PA.

Susan B. Anthony

At war's end, the link between women's rights and rights for freed people remained, shaping postwar strategies and conflicts. At the 1866 national women's rights convention, the first since before the war, white and Black reformers founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to secure suffrage "irrespective of race, color, or sex." Lucretia Mott, known for her commitment to equal rights and her ability to mediate between opposing factions, served as president. Association members traveled the lecture circuit, even influencing some southern states to consider equal rights. However, when, with the Fourteenth Amendment, legislators tied representation in Congress to the number of male voters, suffragists divided over their loyalties. By the 1869 AERA convention, during congressional debates on the Fifteenth Amendment to enfranchise Black men, Douglass, Stanton, Anthony, and Massachusetts Lucy Stone

Two new organizations resulted that grew in strength and political expertise as their leadership developed increasingly effective ways to promote woman suffrage. Anthony and Stanton immediately established the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) with an all-female membership, demanding a sixteenth amendment enfranchising citizens without regard to sex. Their weekly newspaper, the Revolution, publicized their views on woman suffrage, politics, labor, and other subjects. By September, rivals Stone and Blackwell founded the less militant American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Its members, which included women and men, focused on state campaigns to demand or expand woman suffrage, staying away from other issues. Stone also began the Woman's Journal in 1870, which became the most successful and longest lasting suffrage newspaper. (Figure 2) Whether states or the federal government should dictate who had the right to vote remained a contentious issue throughout the movement.

Sojourner Truth Harriet Tubman Charlotte Forten Frances Ellen Watkins Harper supported the AWSA. Although most Black women's benevolent and literary clubs supported suffrage for women, Sarah Smith Thompson Garnett founded the first known organization of Black women devoted specifically to suffrage, the Brooklyn Colored Woman's Equal Suffrage League, in the late 1880s. African American suffragists operated in dynamic networks of support in Black communities in cities throughout the nation but tended to work outside the mainstream movement, in part because white women, particularly in the South, rarely welcomed their Black sisters.

further tested the understanding of citizenship as plaintiff in Matilda Joslyn Gage Virginia Minor Missouri Minor v. Happersett in the 1874 United States Supreme Court. Justices unanimously determined that the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend that woman suffrage be guaranteed. The case marked a serious setback not just for the woman suffrage movement, but for civil rights of all citizens, and refocused attention on a federal amendment.

After years of hard work, in 1887 members of the NWSA and legislative supporters finally brought a proposal for a federal amendment to a vote in Congress. It failed, prompting suffragists to revise their strategies yet again, beginning with uniting disparate suffrage factions. Lucy Stone Wisconsin, who feared the loss of attention to a federal amendment, opposed the merger. Nevertheless, the two groups became the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in February 1890. Many state and local political equality and suffrage clubs, once affiliated with one or the other of the former associations, formalized their affiliation with the new association.

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Flexing Feminine Muscles: Strategies and Conflicts in the Suffrage Movement (U.S. National Park Service)

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Susan B. Anthony At war's end, the link between women's rights and rights for freed people remained, shaping postwar strategies and conflicts. At the 1866 national women's rights convention, the first since before the war, white and Black reformers founded the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to secure suffrage "irrespective of race, color, or sex."

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Free Love, Socialism, and Women’s Rights

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Free Love, Socialism, and Women’s Rights

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Scottish freethinker Frances “Fanny” Wright was among the first women to go on the lecture circuit. Her utopian socialist ideas and unconventional lifestyle attracted women’s rights advocates, including women’s education proponent Emma Willard and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had worked with Wright’s protégée Ernestine Rose to reform married women’s property laws in 1840s New York. Stanton acknowledged Wright’s influence by placing the Scotswoman’s picture on the frontispiece of volume one of the History of Woman Suffrage.

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Before women’s rights activists established national organizations in 1869, the women’s rights movement was oriented around grassroots, local activism. Women met at annual conventions, read women’s rights newspapers, and attended lectures. Going to a lecture might not sound fun to us, but they were a very popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century. Speakers discussed a range of topics, such as politics, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and phrenology (the study of the contours of your head to determine your strengths and weaknesses).

In the 1860s and 1870s, women’s rights activists took to the lecture circuit to win supporters for their cause. Anna Dickinson was one of the most popular speakers of the era. She even spoke before Congress. Sojourner Truth attracted attention as one of the few black women who lectured widely in support of the rights of women and African Americans. In 1872, Victoria Woodhull—a popular lecturer, stockbroker, and self-proclaimed psychic—became the first woman to run for president. Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled the nation to support women’s rights, an activity she preferred to organizational duties. Some women’s rights lecturers spoke as many as 200 nights a year. The money they earned from their lectures helped support them and their cause.

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In 1838, women in Brookline, Massachusetts, reacted with “astonishment and alarm” at the recently adopted gag rule, which tabled all antislavery petitions. They signed their names to a brief but searing petition to the U.S. House of Representatives: “Your memorialists ‘consider this resolution a violation of the Constitution of the United States—of the right of the people of the United States to petition—and the right of their Representatives to freedom of speech.’” For women, who, before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, could not vote, petitions enabled them to engage with the political process and find their voices as citizens.

Petitioning is a right granted by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”). In the case of House records, petitions are requests for relief or action from an individual, group, or organization, sent to the U.S. Congress. They are among the most voluminous, complex, and emotionally charged categories of House records. They are also part of the bedrock of American civic life. Americans in the early Republic dearly valued the right to petition; colonial frustrations about the lack of representation in Great Britain were still very fresh.  The issue was so important that the Founders included petitioning in the Bill of Rights as a way for citizens to interact with their new government.

Between 1820 and 1860, the nation’s economic and political growth had far-reaching effects on women’s lives. They found increased opportunities for education, work, and public roles. Middle class women began to engage with politics in unprecedented ways.

Petitions for the Public Good

I. Indian Removal

Memorial from the Ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, Protesting Indian Removal, February 15, 1830

For most of its early history, petitioning was a right exercised almost exclusively by men. Women first petitioned on political issues during the debate over proposed legislation to remove Indian tribes in the Southeast to the West to accommodate white settlement. Very little was expected, let alone permitted, of women in terms of intellectual ability. However, they were perceived as paragons of virtue and particularly in tune with sentiments like empathy. Causes like Indian removal, tinged with a moral imperative, allowed women to participate in the political conversation of the time without upending it.

In 1830, women in Steubenville, Ohio, signed a petition that read: “When, therefore, injury and oppression threaten to crush a hapless people within our borders, we, the feeblest of the feeble, appeal with confidence to those who should be the representatives of national virtues as they are the depositories of national powers, and implore them to succor the weak & unfortunate.” Members of Congress publicly ridiculed their efforts. Senator Thomas Hart Benton responded to the tide of petitions by saying, “I would recommend to these ladies, not to douse their bonnets, and tuck up their coats, for such a race, but to sit down on the way side, and wait for the coming of the conquerors.”

Although the Indian Removal Act became law in 1830, the experience women gained mobilizing for a cause set the stage for the antislavery movement and transformed the way women interacted with their government and the political process. It also equipped them with new and necessary skills, such as outreach, education, political acumen, and crafting of persuasive arguments that translated to effective petitions.

II. Antislavery

Petition to Rescind Gag Rule, February 14, 1838

Beginning in the 1830s, abolitionists inundated Congress with petitions, many the result of nationwide drives to gather signatures. In 1836, the House passed the “gag rule,” which immediately tabled all antislavery petitions. This meant no action would be taken on the petitions, including hearing their contents. In 1838, women in Brookline, Massachusetts, petitioned Congress, asking that the gag rule be rescinded: “Your memorialists . . . regard it as an assumption of authority, at once dangerous and destructive to the fundamental principles of republican government, to the rights of minorities, to the sovereignty of the People and TO THE UNION OF THESE UNITED STATES.” Emboldened by work on the antiremoval cause, the initially subservient tone of women’s petitions started to change, showing that they now viewed themselves as political participants rather than bystanders. The top two signers are sisters Sarah M. Grimké and Angelina E. Grimké, ardent abolitionists and early women’s rights activists, who operated far outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior for women at the time. During an 1837 women’s antislavery convention in Boston, Angelina Grimké introduced a resolution saying that “the right of petition is natural and inalienable, derived immediately from God, and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.” Any attack on this right was a “high-handed usurpation of power, and an attempt to strike a death-blow at the freedom of the people.” Just days after this petition was signed, Angelina became the first woman in the United States to speak before a legislative body, when she addressed a committee of the Massachusetts legislature on the subject of slavery.

The antislavery debate completed the transformation of women's use of the petition first begun during the antiremoval protests. Although barred from making their voice heard at the polls, women forced some recognition of their opinions through petitions. Women started to ask: What did it mean to be a female citizen? What were women’s rights?

III. Women’s Suffrage

Petition for Woman Suffrage Committee, April 10, 1917

The conception of female citizenship continued to widen in the 1860s, as women worked in and contributed to realms outside the home during the Civil War. However, women were excluded from the “equal protection of the laws” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution when it was ratified in 1868. The moment arrived for women to use the experience gained during the antiremoval and antislavery petition campaigns for their own benefit.

As the women’s suffrage movement made its final push in the 1910s, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Carrie Chapman Catt demonstrated the fruit of previous petition drives. Using the political savvy developed and honed by her predecessors, she expertly petitioned Speaker of the House Champ Clark in 1917 for a Committee on Woman Suffrage. She deftly appealed to his vanity as a powerful man, by turning the stereotypical female petition on its head. Her tone is ostensibly one of supplication, but it’s accompanied by a sly wink. Catt knew she was on the right side of the argument—and history—and used flattery and guile to her advantage. “You have had a long and successful political career and that means you know men and women . . . . Mr. Speaker, the women of our country appreciate the fact that you are yourself an advocate of our cause, but we do not presume upon your interest when we ask for a House Suffrage Committee. We ask it because the world is calling to the Congress of the United States to make better time if it would hold its place as Leader in the march of world democracy.” Catt understood that the creation of a House committee to consider a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage would finalize the movement started with hundreds of petitions. The House Committee on Woman Suffrage was created in 1917, and the 19th Amendment granting women national suffrage was ratified in 1920.

Recycling many of the tactics and connections and some of the rhetoric used during previous campaigns, at the end of the 19th century and turn of the 20th, the women’s suffrage movement used the petition to make women’s voices heard in Congress and spread their message nationally.

Petitions for Private Relief

Relief from individual hardship characterized many petitions sent to Congress. Without full citizenship, women could not seek remedies available to men in times of personal struggle, leaving them vulnerable to economic hardship. Instead, tragedy or personal crisis often forced women to seek public relief.

IV. Divorce

Petition Seeking Divorce, 1804

Ann Alricks petitioned Congress for a divorce in 1803. Alricks was 15 when she married. She lived together with her husband for four years “very unhappily” before he abandoned her. Alricks pleads, “That your petitioner being yet possessed of youth and health, and not destitute of respectable friends and connections, indulges the hope, that a prudent and discreet conduit, might enable her to better much her situation, was she freed from those matrimonial obligations contracted with Mr Alricks, almost in her infancy, which have long since become equally embarrassing and intolerable to them both.” To obtain relief from her situation, Alricks was forced to expose the deeply private and intimate details of her life to Congress. Early divorces could be obtained only by a legislative act of the state, when they could be obtained at all, meaning the process was public, potentially lengthy and costly, and required a certain level of understanding of how the political system worked. In the District of Columbia, without statehood, Congress received petitions for divorce under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, Alricks’s situation was not unique in early America—dependent on her husband for her social standing and financial well-being and unable to improve her station/situation without the permission of other men. Until 1801, no divorces were granted by Congress to residents of the District. In 1801, jurisdiction over separation and alimony cases was moved from Congress to the Circuit Court, and in 1860, so was jurisdiction over divorce. This shift was in line with what was taking place in other states, as the number of petitions for divorce grew steadily in the first half of the 19th century. Alricks was ultimately granted a divorce by the district court of the District of Columbia. Divorce petitions, although limited, specific, and personal, were the first incremental steps for women in crafting a political identity separate from men by taking ownership of the right to request relief.

V. Widows’ Pensions

Petition of Mary Todd Lincoln, January 26, 1869

Unable to support themselves without their husbands, widows and dependents requested pensions, or payments, for soldiers who died during the Civil War. Even a destitute former First Lady swallowed her pride and exercised her right to petition Congress for relief in 1869.

Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of President Abraham Lincoln, petitioned Congress four years after her husband’s death, seeking a pension. Although her husband did not die on the battlefield, she regarded his death as a direct result of the Civil War. Mary Lincoln, ill and living abroad, used language familiar from other women’s petitions. She emphasized her distress and desperation, and threw herself on the mercy of men in a position to relieve her suffering. “In consideration of the great services my dearly beloved husband has rendered to the United States and of the fearful loss I have sustained by his untimely death his martyrdom I may say, I respectfully submit to your Honorable body this petition hoping that a yearly pension may be granted me.” Finding no other options for relief from her difficult circumstances, in 1870, a bill was passed giving Mary Lincoln $3,000 per year.

For the first half of American history, petitions were one of the only formal means available for women to participate in politics. Writing and disseminating petitions expanded the role of women in politics, leading to national suffrage, and ultimately to women serving in Congress. The petitions that women signed and sent to Congress tell the story of the United States as it expanded and changed. But the petitions also chronicle the stories of individual women as citizens of this country, told in their own words.

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In a manual entitled Female Piety, or a Young Woman’s Friend and Guide Through Life to Immortality, published in New York in 1853, Congregationalist preacher John Angell James wrote that

‘woman was the finishing grace of the creation. Woman was the completeness of man’s bliss in Paradise. Woman was the cause of sin and death to our world. The world was redeemed by the seed of the woman. Woman is the mother of the human race; our companion, counselor, and comforter in the pilgrimage of life; our tempter, scourge, and destroyer. Our sweetest cup of earthly happiness, or our bitterest draught of sorrow is mixed and administered by her hand. She not only renders smooth or rough our path to the grave, but helps or hinders our progress to immortality. In heaven we shall bless God for her aid in assisting us to reach that blissful state; or amidst the torments of unutterable woe in another region, we shall deplore the fatality of her influence. (1)

This text was among the numerous edifying publications, which rolled off American presses in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, urging female readers to cultivate the virtues of piety, purity, submission, and domesticity. (2 ) These four attributes became the cornerstone of an ideology first conceptualized by historian Barbara Welter as ‘True Womanhood’ in her seminal monographic study Dimity Convictions (1976). (3 )
‘True Womanhood’ provided a narrative through which women could invest their existence and their role in the world with meaning and purpose. In Victorian America, in fact, middle- and upper-middle-class women were not admitted to centers of public power; being relegated to the private sphere, namely, the domestic milieu, they had only one socially respectable function (4) – that of a wife and mother – while the masculine sphere of action was the public one, the realm of business and politics.
This rigid role differentiation, which affirmed the social supremacy of men over women, was allegedly sanctioned by God and by nature as well. Being divinely ordained, it would tolerate no refutation. From a sociopolitical viewpoint, this ethos, which has been referred to also as ‘The Cult of Domesticity’(5), can be construed a unifying ideological force, which was instrumental in providing order and stability in the country at a time of massive social, political, and economic transformations.

2. The Republican mother

Barbara Welter, who employs the manuals of conduct published in the mid-nineteenth century to show how the ideology of ‘True Womanhood’ was purveyed, observes that the wifely role was not only about subservience and compliance. Marriage, in fact, was also deemed an opportunity for women to rise in status. (6)
In The Sphere and Duties of Woman: A Course of Lectures, Unitarian minister George Washington Burnap states that marriage elevates the female character not only because ‘it puts her under the best possible tuition, that of the affections, and affords scope to her active energies, but because it gives her higher aims, and a more dignified position’. (7) As a consequence, it was in middle- class women’s best interest to promote and secure the Cult of Domesticity, as it was the only way for them to gain some power, even if it was limited to the private sphere.
The natural consequence of marriage was motherhood, which was regarded as an additional source of social prestige. From the 1790s to the first decades of the 1800s, a new emphasis was, in fact, placed on women’s responsibility for the moral and religious training of children in the domestic environment. This phenomenon invested motherhood with a new political meaning, thus giving rise to the concept of ‘Republican Motherhood’.
Historian Mary Beth Norton states that citizens of the new Republic sincerely believed that the success of the newly formed country was firmly based on the collective and personal virtues of the population. What is more, she concurs (8) with Linda K. Kerber’s claim that women expressed their political voice within the homes as nurturers and supporters of patriotic values, which they went on to instill in their children.(9)
Given that the future of the Republican society was entrusted to mothers, a failure in this supremely important function might have serious, if not downright catastrophic consequences.

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Thomas Day just wanted to find a wife. He had tried all the usual ways-Day had been educated at Oxford and met plenty of eligible young women, sisters of his peers, including one to whom he became engaged. But Day was not a charming man, and his demand for perfection in a companion combined with his disdain for personal hygiene quickly ended that affair. He moved on to other women who also showed no promise, although he needn't have waited long. Day was living in an era-the mid-18th century-that was in the process of setting up a structure that would turn every woman into the domestic goddess he sought, both submissive and good in the kitchen.

Before we had drones and personal computers and vacuuming robots, America had the spinning jenny. And the cotton gin. And steam power. The Industrial Revolution saw the creation of all kinds of gadgets that made it easier for people to do quick, repetitive work, and moved the locus of production from the home to the factory, and from the farm to the city. Along with its newfangled inventions and urban emphasis, the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era in gender relations in America and Europe, an era in which men became the ones who left the house to make money and the women stayed behind to care for it. Men had historically been the earners of their families, but this time they were paid not in favors or food but in cash, which was newly tied to the gold standard. This further stratified society into those who made money and those who didn't. This was the beginning of one of the longest-lasting, furthest-reaching, and most terrifying cults in American history: the cult of domesticity.

Thwarted in his search for the perfect woman, Day decided he would create his ideal wife by adopting two young orphans and molding them into submissive, virtuous, and meek young women, selecting one of them to become his wife. The two girls-Ann Kingston and Dorcas Car-were renamed Sabrina and Lucretia and trained by Day in the ways that a woman should be. Day prized female virtue and purity, inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in his novel Emile, or On Education that women should be weak and passive, and "early learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the wrongs inflicted on her by her husband without complaint."

Day and Rousseau lived in the 18th century, at the very beginning of the school of thought (and practice) that would come to be known as the cult of domesticity. In Emile, Rousseau argued that "The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalization, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical." In other words, women should stay home and attend to the demands of her household-laundry, cooking, children-avoiding more lofty, intellectual pursuits. Rousseau was encouraging the virtue of domesticity, one of four virtues that comprised the cult of domesticity (or the cult of true womanhood, if you were really sold on it). The other three virtues, according to historian Barbara Welter, were piety, purity, and submission.

Henry F. Harrington called the suffragettes "semi-women, mental hermaphrodites." The message was clear: Reject the role of submissive wife and you can never be truly a woman.

Women's magazines and religious literature were two of the primary ways the cult of domesticity was promulgated; kitsch aimed at wives was a third way the message got across. (The female-centric kitsch we see today-coffee mugs and T-shirts and magnets proclaiming that it's "wine o'clock!" and "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee!" are descendants of this way of thinking: Women are still in charge of the home, only now it stresses them out.) Magazines like Ladies' Companion and Godey's Lady's Book established in the public conscience the idea that women ought to care primarily about the care of their homes for the sake of their families. Religious literature turned the words of progressive feminists against them, as in the poem "The Rights of Women:"

The rights of woman! What are they?
The right to labour, love and pray,
The right to weep with those who weep,
The right to wake when others sleep.

In her 1850 letter to the Ohio Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton railed against the cult of domesticity when she suggested that women's involvement in politics could have kept America out of its "aggressive warfare" with Native Americans and put an end to the slave trade. Stanton's underlying premise was that men were the sole benefactors of the American Revolution, which had given them autonomy. Women, meanwhile, were frozen in time with little autonomy of their own, as the cult of domesticity only formalized what had been true for decades already.

Along with Stanton, other women resisted the cult's strictures and, in so doing, incurred the wrath of its gatekeepers. In an 1838 article in the Ladies' Companion, the Reverend Henry F. Harrington called such rabble-rousers "semi-women, mental hermaphrodites." The message was clear: Reject the role of submissive wife and you can never be truly a woman. That rhetoric isn't unlike some of what we hear today, when feminists are called oppressive or ugly as a way of reminding them that, with their views, they can never be "real" women.

The literature of the day reflected the dividing line between public and private, male and female, office and home. "Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort," Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse declared. One of the most famous texts of this era was a poem called the "Angel in the House," written in 1854 by Coventry Patmore. Patmore extolled the virtues of a woman called Honoria, believed to be based on his wife Emily, and offered general commentary on the gender roles dictated by the cult of domesticity: "Man must be pleased; but him to please / Is woman's pleasure." The wifely Angel was pure, devout, and, above all, knew her role.

The cult of domesticity encouraged women to envision the home as their place of industry: The kitchen their factory; their children their test subjects; quiet efficiency their ultimate goal.

The development of the cult of domesticity also leaned heavily on religious principles. It drew especially from a chapter of the Bible at the end of the book of Proverbs, which reads in part:

A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.

Both Proverbs 31 and the "Angel in the House" decry the vice of "unthrift" in wasteful women, and both extol the virtues of resourcefulness and fear of the Lord. The chapter in Proverbs also praises the capable wife for her strength, service to the poor, and wisdom-virtues that weren't exactly considered Angelic at the time, and weren't included in the poem.

Stanton eviscerated the notion of the angel in the house: "Men like to call her an angel, [and suggest she] needs their care and protection. Care and protection? Such as the wolf gives to the lamb." Coventry Patmore's view of women-indeed, the popular view of women throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries-is what led Virginia Woolf in a 1931 address to say, "Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."

More than one historian has pointed out the importance of the timelessness of female virtue in an age when society was rapidly changing. The Industrial Revolution thrust society into an advanced and confusing state. Men weren't quite sure whether their jobs would exist the next day, but they could take some comfort in knowing they would always come home to a patient, gentle, submissive wife. The cult of domesticity encouraged women to envision the home as their place of industry: The kitchen their factory; their children their test subjects; quiet efficiency their ultimate goal. In times of national turmoil, one could take comfort in the fact that the angel would always be in the house.

Of course, different groups of women had different experiences with the cult of domesticity. Women of color, immigrants, and poor women were largely ignored by the movement. "[T]he cult of domesticity was simply not feasible for many poor women, especially immigrants and women of color, who had few opportunities to enjoy the private sphere and relative leisure assumed to be available for the ideal True Woman for domestic duties," wrote Susan Hill Lindley in You Have Stept Our of Your Place: A History of Women and Religion in America. Women who were the first or second in their families to live in America also brought with them traditions inherited from their country of origin, which may or may not have involved purity, submission, piety, and domesticity. In her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs writes: "I wanted to keep myself pure; and, under the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery." Inasmuch as the cult leaders thought of the individual women who made up their adherents, they were mostly white, Protestant, and wealthy.

The pressures of the Industrial Revolution and 1950s America have been recycled for our modern area. The notion of the home as the domain of the feminine persists to this day.

Jacobs ends her book with an account of her freedom, "not in the usual way, with marriage." Marriage, for a slave girl, was not associated with freedom; her actual freedom was at stake. So while getting married might have been the pinnacle of a well-off white woman's life, the arc of the life of a slave girl looked different This was Jacobs' implicit critique of true womanhood: It wasn't for everyone. In many regards, feminism itself has suffered from a blinkered focus on the advancement of white women, often at the expense of immigrants and women of color. In 2013, black feminist writer Mikki Kendall created the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen on Twitter after observing how "mainstream feminism sideline[s] the concerns and safety of marginalized women." Leaving women of color out of the conversation about true womanhood has had lasting effects, both in terms of its initial narrow scope and its legacy of exclusion.

The principles behind the cult of domesticity were so far-reaching that in 1890, only 4.5 percent of married women were employed-and only 40.5 percent of single women. (The numbers were especially low among European-Americans; 30 years later, when the numbers were measured again, fully 18.5 percent of married Asian-American women and 32.5 percent of African-American women were employed outside the home, compared with 6.5 percent of European-American women.) Domesticity wasn't just a sensibility or a vocation; it was an obstacle to female economic participation. Curt Muller, an Oregon laundry owner, was convicted of violating state labor laws when he made a female employee work more than 10 hours in one day. The 1908 Supreme Court decision in the case of Muller v. Oregon found that Oregon's labor laws, which prohibited women from working more than 10 hours a day, were constitutional, citing public interest in women's childbearing ability to enforce gender discrimination in the workplace: "[A]s healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring," wrote Justice David Josiah Brewer, "the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest."

Eighteen years earlier, in 1890, the average annual wage for female workers across all industries was $268. According to that year's census, there were 17,661,009 women between the ages of 15 and 60 in the United States, the vast majority of whom would have been married (or about to be). If only 50 percent of them had gone to work that year, their collective earnings would have been $2,366,575,206. (And $2.3 trillion in 1890 money is, well, a lot of money.) There are women who, given the choice, would have worked outside the home in the 18th and early-19th centuries. Their wages are lost to time, and to men.

National nostalgia for pre-war days, combined with a return of women from the workplace to the home, conspired to rejuvenate the American cult of domesticity after World War II. Never mind that some women had enjoyed working outside the home while Johnny was overseas; the national threshhold for social progress had been exhausted, and women were encouraged to become more like June Cleaver than Eleanor Roosevelt. It was a version of the cult of domesticity that Betty Friedan was addressing when she wrote about "the problem that has no name" in the Feminine Mystique. "What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor?" Friedan asked, responding to the notion that women should not aspire to more than their domestic duties require of them. "She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it."

Some women would choose to stay, and some would choose to leave, but the place of choice came, paradoxically, from a place of constraint.

In our ever-more interconnected world, women are sharing more and more of their feelings-but it isn't always dissatisfaction with their role at home. In some ways, websites like Pinterest have become shrines in the new cult of domesticity. Over 80 percent of Pinterest users are female, and boards filled with pristine Restoration Hardware rugs and immaculate floral arrangements can be more tyrannical than inspirational, continuing to exert pressure on women to make their homes a perfect place of rest and repose in this hectic world. The pressures of the Industrial Revolution and 1950s America have been recycled for our modern area. The notion of the home as the domain of the feminine persists to this day.

Another, ironic hardship of life after the cult of domesticity is that women today who choose to stay home and raise children often get hassled for their decision. During the 2012 election season, Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney, a stay-at-home-mother, "has never actually worked a day in her whole life." Quicker than Rosen could say, "I'm sorry," editorials popped up defending her comments. Rosen's words came at a time when the "mommy wars" have replaced arguments over the doctrine of the separate spheres, but this evolution may be more semantic than significant. The question of whether women can "have it all" is, in many ways, no different from the central question being asked by the cult of domesticity: What is a woman's role? Now we ask what kind of mommy is best rather than what kind of china we should buy, but the underlying conflict remains, and it pits women against each other.

We can also see this battle being waged in contemporary religious circles. Complementarianism-the notion that men and women occupy different but complementary roles in marriage and society-was a direct antecedent of 19th-century thinking about women. That doctrine still has a foothold among conservative Christians, in local churches and organizations like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It is rooted in verses like Ephesians 5:23 ("For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church..."), and gained prominence with the rise of domesticity as a virtue. Complementarianism often looks like a return to 1950s gender roles, and continues to insist in its most extreme forms that women remain at home to raise as many children as they can bear.

The cult of domesticity created a box that stifled women, and continues to do so. But if it relegated women to a restricted area, it also gave them the gift of being able to have their own space. Together, they could share housekeeping tips, parenting advice, and begin to foment a revolution against the patriarchy that had sought to draw the lines for them. Some women would choose to stay, and some would choose to leave, but the place of choice came, paradoxically, from a place of constraint.

Thomas Day never did create the perfect wife. He gave up on Sabrina and Lucretia and eventually married Esther Milnes, an heiress who wrote bad poetry. Day also wrote, mostly children's books, and died in 1789 when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to train. The horse would have none of it.

Cults and (Sub)cultures is Pacific Standard's series of reported essays on all things cult, from religion to pop culture.

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How the Cult of Domesticity Still Reigns in the 21st Century

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On the cost-and subtle persistence-of the cult of domesticity.

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Women's rights advocates of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and Harriet Martineau, were widely accused of disrupting the natural order of things and condemned as unfeminine. "They are only semi-women, mental hermaphrodites," wrote Henry F. Harrington in the Ladies' Companion.[33] However, after the Jacksonian Era (1812 to 1850) saw the expansion of voting rights to virtually all white males in the United States, many women believed it was their opportunity for increased civil liberties. Early feminist opposition to many of the values promoted by the Cult of Domesticity (especially concerning women's suffrage, political activism, and legal independence) culminated in the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Susan M. Cruea postulated that although the “Cult of True Womanhood” set many societal restrictions that took away women's working rights and freedom, it nonetheless laid the groundwork for the later development of feminism by crediting women with a moral authority which implicitly empowered them to extend their moral influence outside the home. The ideal woman was expected to act as a status symbol for men and reflect her husband's wealth and success, and was to create babies and care for them so that her husband’s legacy of success would continue, but she was also seen as the “Angel in the House” whose purpose was to guide her family morally. Because of the perceived importance of the role, this ideology was imprinted on girls at a very young age; these girls were taught to value their virginity as the “‘pearl of great price’ which was her greatest asset” and to develop the skills to manage a household and rear children, but they were also taught to see themselves as “a pillar of strength and virtue” who was key not only in providing her husband a proper image but in raising boys who would later have a direct impact on the success of the nation.[34]

During the Progressive Era,[35] the ideal of the New Woman emerged as a response to the Cult of True Womanhood.[36] The New Woman, frequently associated with the suffrage movement,[37] represented an ideal of femininity which was strongly opposed to the values of the Cult of True Womanhood.[38] With demands expressed in the Declaration of Sentiments, written at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, women finally gained ratification of a constitutional amendment and the right to vote in 1920. After emancipation, these New Women could be identified by as “cigarette-smoking, lipsticked and rouged, jazz-dancing, birth-control-using types known as ‘modern girls’ or flappers.”[39]

World War II brought about a restructuring of the labor market as women stepped into the war effort on the home front. In the era after World War II, many of the ideas of the "Cult of Domesticity" were stressed again as American society sought to integrate veterans and emphasize the revival of family life. Once the troops returned home, men were encouraged to embrace family life and enter companionship marriages. Veterans returned home to be the head of the family and women who had been involved in high-paying and high-skilled wartime jobs were pushed back into the home. The remaking of the private life was central to this era. Anticommunism structured much of the American life, emphasizing the free enterprise system which brought about a period of economic prosperity and a consumer culture.

In the 1950s television shows often presented series that depicted fictional families in which the mother's primary work was to raise the children and run the household. Men's and women's spheres were increasingly separated as many families lived in suburban settings, from which men commuted to other cities for work. However, this image of separate spheres disguised the reality that all groups of women continued to work for pay; many did not stop working after the men returned home from the war, they were instead forced into lower-paying jobs. Wages were low and there was little room for advancement. Women that did enter into professional fields were under intense scrutiny for going against the feminine domestic ideal. Despite neo-domestic ideals, many middle-class mothers were burdened by women’s double shift of working in the home and also a job. At the same time, women had independent lives during the day and were often active in volunteer and community activities, particularly around issues of education, health, children, and welfare. The "Cult of Domesticity" paved the way for the nuclear family.[40] Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique summed up the expectations of female nature of this time, with a focus on “consumerism, sexualized marriage, and civic activism.”[41] Opposition to those ideas influenced the second wave of feminism.

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Part of the separate spheres ideology, the "Cult of Domesticity" identified the home as women's "proper sphere".[12] Women were supposed to inhabit the private sphere, running the household and production of food (including servants), rearing the children, and taking care of the husband.[13][14] According to Barbara Welter (1966), "True Women" were to hold and practice the four cardinal virtues:[3]

1. Piety – Religion was valued because—unlike intellectual pursuits—it did not take a woman away from her "proper sphere," the home, and because it controlled women's longings.

2. Purity – Virginity, a woman's greatest treasure, must not be lost until her marriage night, and a married woman had to remain committed only to her husband.

3. Submission – True women were required to be as submissive and obedient "as little children" because men were regarded as women's superiors "by God's appointment".

4. Domesticity – A woman's proper place was in the home and her role as a wife was to create a refuge for her husband and children. Cooking, needlework, making beds, and tending flowers were considered naturally feminine activities, whereas reading anything other than religious biographies was discouraged.

According to Welter, an ideal True Woman was "frail", too mentally and physically weak to leave her home. The care of her home supposedly made her feminine, and she depended on men to protect her within the shelter of it.[15] Wilma Pearl Mankiller agrees, claiming that a "True Woman" was expected to be delicate, soft, and weak. She should not engage in strenuous physical activity that would damage her “much more delicate nervous system."[16]

Frances B. Cogan, however, described an overlapping but competing ideology that she called the ideal of "Real Womanhood," in which women were encouraged to be physically fit and active, involved in their communities, well educated, and artistically accomplished, although usually within the broader idea that women were best suited to the domestic sphere. The conflation of "Domesticity" and "True Womanhood" can be misleading in that dedication to the domestic sphere did not necessarily imply purity, submission, or weakness.[17]

The characteristics of "True Womanhood" were described in sermons, books, and religious texts as well as women's magazines.[18] [19] Prescriptive literature advised women on how to transform their homes into domestic sanctuaries for their husbands and children. Fashion was also stressed because a woman had to stay up to date in order to please her husband. Instructions for seamstresses were often included in magazines.[20] Magazines which promoted the values of the "Cult of Domesticity" fared better financially than those competing magazines which offered a more progressive view in terms of women's roles.[11] In the United States, Peterson's Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book were the most widely circulated women's magazines and were popular among both women and men.[21] With a circulation of 150,000 by 1860,[22] Godey's reflected and supported some of the ideals of the "Cult of True Womanhood."[11] The magazine's paintings and pictures illustrated the four virtues, often showing women with children or behind husbands. It also equated womanhood with motherhood and being a wife, declaring that the "perfection of womanhood (...) is the wife and mother".[23][24] The magazine presented motherhood as a woman's natural and most satisfying role and encouraged women to find their fulfillment and their contributions to society mainly within the home.[25] At the same time, the long-time editor of Godey's, Sarah Josepha Hale, encouraged women to improve themselves intellectually, to write, and to take action that would improve the moral character of their communities and their nation. Hale promoted Vassar College, advocated for female physicians, and published many of the most important female writers of the nineteenth century.[26] Frances B. Cogan argued that Godey's supported "Real Womanhood" more than "True Womanhood." Reflecting the ideals of both "True Womanhood" and "Real Womanhood," Godey's considered mothers as crucial in preserving the memory of the American Revolution and in securing its legacy by raising the next generation of citizens

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The Culture of Domesticity (often shortened to Cult of Domesticity[1]) or Cult of True Womanhood[a] is a term used by historians to describe what they consider to have been a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the 19th Century in the United States[2] and the United Kingdom. This value system emphasized new ideas of femininity, the woman's role within the home and the dynamics of work and family. "True women", according to this idea, were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. The idea revolved around the woman being the center of the family; she was considered "the light of the home".[3][4]

The women and men who most actively promoted these standards were generally white and Protestant; the most prominent of them lived in New England and the Northeastern United States.[5] Although all women were supposed to emulate this ideal of femininity, black, working class, and immigrant women were often excluded from the definition of "true women" because of social prejudice.[6][7][8][9]

Since the idea was first advanced by Barbara Welter in 1966, many historians have argued that the subject is far more complex and nuanced than terms such as "Cult of Domesticity" or "True Womanhood" suggest, and that the roles played by and expected of women within the middle-class, 19th-Century context were quite varied and often contradictory; for example, it has been argued that much of what has been considered as anti-feminist in the past, in fact, helped lead to feminism.[10]

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The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship

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The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship

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Black and white abolitionists in the first half of the nineteenth century waged a biracial assault against slavery. Their efforts proved to be extremely effective. Abolitionists focused attention on slavery and made it difficult to ignore. They heightened the rift that had threatened to destroy the unity of the nation even as early as the Constitutional Convention.

Although some Quakers were slaveholders, members of that religious group were among the earliest to protest the African slave trade, the perpetual bondage of its captives, and the practice of separating enslaved family members by sale to different masters.

As the nineteenth century progressed, many abolitionists united to form numerous antislavery societies. These groups sent petitions with thousands of signatures to Congress, held abolition meetings and conferences, boycotted products made with slave labor, printed mountains of literature, and gave innumerable speeches for their cause. Individual abolitionists sometimes advocated violent means for bringing slavery to an end.

Although black and white abolitionists often worked together, by the 1840s they differed in philosophy and method. While many white abolitionists focused only on slavery, black Americans tended to couple anti-slavery activities with demands for racial equality and justice.

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Sarah was twenty-six when she accompanied her father, who was in need of medical attention, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she became acquainted with the Quakers. The Quakers had liberal views on slavery and gender equality, and Sarah was fascinated with their religious sincerity and simplicity, and also their disapproval of gender inequality and slavery. Because of her father's death, Sarah had to leave Philadelphia in 1818, and return to Charleston. There, her abolitionist views grew stronger, while she also influenced Angelina.

Sarah left Charleston for good a short time later and relocated to Philadelphia, where Angelina joined her in 1829. The sisters became very involved in the Quaker community.[8] In 1835 Angelina wrote a letter to William Lloyd Garrison, editor and publisher of The Liberator, which he published without her knowledge.[9] As Quakers of the time were strict on traditional manners, as well as on individuals' deference to all decisions of the congregation before taking public actions, immediately both sisters were rebuked by the Quaker community — yet sought out by the abolitionist movement. The sisters had to choose: recant and become members in good standing in the Quaker community, or actively work to oppose slavery. They chose the latter course.

Alice S. Rossi says that this choice "seemed to free both sisters for a rapidly escalating awareness of the many restrictions upon their lives. Their physical and intellectual energies were soon fully expanded, as though they and their ideas had been suddenly released after a long period of germination." Abolitionist Theodore Weld, who would later marry Angelina, trained them to be abolition speakers. Contact with like-minded individuals for the first time in their lives enlivened the sisters.

Sarah was rebuked again in 1836 by Quakers when she tried to discuss abolition in a meeting. Following the earlier example of the African American orator, Maria. W. Stewart of Boston,[10] the Grimké sisters were among the first female public speakers in the United States. The Grimké sisters first spoke to "parlor meetings," which consisted of women only, as was considered proper. Interested men frequently sneaked into the meetings. The sisters gained attention because of their class and background in having slaves, and coming from a wealthy planter family.[11]

As they attracted larger audiences, the Grimké sisters began to speak in front of a mixed audience (both men and women.) They challenged social conventions in two ways: speaking for the antislavery movement at a time when there was widespread disapproval of this; many male public speakers on this issue were criticized by the press. Secondly, their very act of public speaking was criticized, as it was not believed suitable for women. A group of ministers wrote a letter citing the Bible and reprimanding the sisters for stepping out of the "woman's proper sphere," which was characterized by silence and subordination. They came to understand that women were oppressed and, without power, women could not address or right the wrongs of society. They became ardent feminists.

Angelina Grimké wrote her first tract, "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" (1836), to encourage Southern women to join the abolitionist movement for the sake of white womanhood as well as black slaves. She addressed Southern women in sisterly, reasonable tones. She began her piece by demonstrating that slavery was contrary to the United States' Declaration of Independence and to the teachings of Christ. She discussed the damage both to slaves and to society. She advocated teaching slaves to read, and freeing any slaves her readers might own. Although legal codes of slave states restricted or prohibited both of these actions, she urged her readers to ignore wrongful laws and do what was right. "Consequences, my friends, belong no more to you than they did to [the] apostles. Duty is ours and events are God's." She closed by exhorting her readers to "arise and gird yourselves for this great moral conflict."[citation needed]

The sisters created more controversy when Sarah published "Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States" (1836) and Angelina republished her "Appeal" in 1837. That year they went on a lecture tour, addressing Congregationalist churches in the Northeast. In addition to denouncing slavery, the sisters denounced race prejudice. Further, they argued that (white) women had a natural bond with female, black slaves. These last two ideas were extreme even for radical abolitionists. Their public speaking for the abolitionist cause continued to draw criticism, each attack making the Grimké sisters more determined. Responding to an attack by Catharine Beecher on her public speaking, Angelina wrote a series of letters to Beecher, later published with the title Letters to Catharine Beecher. She staunchly defended the abolitionist cause and her right to publicly speak for that cause. By the end of the year, the sisters were being denounced from Congregationalist pulpits. The following year Sarah responded to the ministers' attacks by writing a series of letters addressed to the President of the abolitionist society which sponsored their speeches. These became known as Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, in which she defended women's right to the public platform. By 1838, thousands of people flocked to hear their Boston lecture series.

In 1839 the sisters, with Weld, edited American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, a collection of eyewitness testimony and stories from Southern newspapers.

Until 1854, Theodore was often away from home, either on the lecture circuit or in Washington, DC. After that, financial pressures forced him to take up a more lucrative profession. For a time they lived on a farm in New Jersey and operated a boarding school. Many abolitionists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sent their children to the school. Eventually, it developed as a cooperative, the Raritan Bay Union. Although the sisters no longer spoke on the lecture circuit, they continued to be privately active as both abolitionists and feminists.[citation needed]

Neither Sarah nor Angelina initially sought to become feminists, but felt the role was forced onto them. Devoutly religious, these Quaker converts' works are predominantly religious in nature, with strong biblical arguments. Indeed, both their abolitionist sentiments and their feminism sprang from deeply held religious convictions. Both Sarah, who eventually emphasized feminism over abolitionism, and Angelina, who remained primarily interested in the abolitionist movement, were powerful writers. They neatly summarized the abolitionist arguments which would eventually lead to the Civil War. Sarah's work addressed, 150 years early, many issues that are familiar to the modern feminist movement.

Before the Civil War, the sisters discovered that their late brother Henry had had a relationship with Nancy Weston, an enslaved mixed-race woman, after he became a widower. They lived together and had three mixed-race sons: Archibald, Francis and John (who was born a couple of months after their father died). The sisters arranged for the oldest two nephews to come north for education and helped support them. Francis J. Grimké became a Presbyterian minister who graduated from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) and Princeton Theological Seminary. In December 1878, Francis married Charlotte Forten, a noted educator and author, and had one daughter, Theodora Cornelia, who died as an infant. The daughter of Archibald, Angelina Weld Grimké, (named after her aunt) became a noted poet.

When Sarah was nearly 80, to test the 15th Amendment, the sisters attempted to vote

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Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké[1] (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were the first American female advocates of abolition of slavery and women's rights.[2][page needed] They were writers, orators, and educators.

They grew up in a slave-holding family in the Southern United States but moved to the North in the 1820s, settling for a time in Philadelphia and becoming part of its substantial Quaker community. They became more deeply involved with the abolitionist movement, traveling on its lecture circuit and recounting their firsthand experiences with slavery on their family's plantation. Among the first American women to act publicly in social reform movements, they were ridiculed for their abolitionist activity. They became early activists in the women's rights movement. They eventually developed a private school.

Learning that their late brother had had three mixed-race sons, they helped the boys get educations in the North. Archibald and Francis J. Grimké stayed in the North, Francis becoming a Presbyterian preacher, but their younger brother John returned to the South.

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Abolishing the slave trade: 1787-1823

Although slavery was effectively illegal in England from 1772 and in Scotland from 1778, campaigns to abolish both the trade and the institution have continued ever since. Women participated in the campaign from its beginning and were gradually able to move from the private into the political arena as strategies changed.

Similar strategies were employed and developed during the 1866-1928 women's suffrage campaign, with the same individuals and families active in both campaigns.

In the early years, women influenced the campaign to abolish slavery, but they were not direct activists. This accorded with the prevalent view of women as a moral not a political force. As the campaign gained popularity, many women - ranging from the Whig aristocrat, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, to the Bristol milk-woman Ann Yearsley - published anti-slavery poems and stories.

Yearsley's patron, Hannah More, publicised the campaign with 'Slavery, a Poem' (1788), which dramatically depicted the predicament of an enslaved woman, ill-used and separated from her children. This theme was repeatedly emphasised by women campaigners.

More was a member of a group of evangelicals associated with the anti-slavery campaign. Her friend, Lady Margaret Middleton, is credited with encouraging both the group's leaders, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, to take up the cause. Although, because she was a woman, Lady Middleton had no direct political power she was able to cajole her influential friends.

Ironically, it was against the necessity for women to exercise such wiles that Mary Wollstonecraft railed in 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman' (1792), writing 'When therefore I call women slaves, I mean in a political and civil sense; for, indirectly they obtain too much power and are debased by the exertions to obtain illicit sway.'

Influenced by the anti-slavery debate, she repeatedly likened men's domination of women to the planters' domination of slaves: 'Is one half of the human species, like the poor African slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalise them...only to sweeten the cup of men.'

This last reference was to sugar, grown on plantations that were dependent on the labour of enslaved people. Working- and middle-class families were encouraged by appeals to women to buy sugar produced in the East Indies using free labour. More than 300,000 people joined this boycott of sugar grown on plantations using slave labour.

Objects such as Wedgwood's cameos featuring the image of a kneeling, chained, black slave were bought by women to be used in bracelets and hairpins to publicise their support for the cause.

As well as these indirect contributions, in 1788 the Abolition Society and its provincial committees had 206 female subscribers. They were mainly of the 'middling sort' - wives and daughters of merchants, professionals, manufacturers and shopkeepers - drawn from Quaker, Unitarian and Evangelical families.

But women were not officers of these committees and were generally not invited to sign the thousands of petitions organised by the Abolition Society.

Women continued to be involved in the popular campaign until its collapse in 1792. The radicalism it inspired was no longer acceptable as France was ravaged by revolution. A decade and a half later, when national interests coincided with those of the abolitionists, smart parliamentary tactics ensured the Abolition Act was passed in 1807.

Abolishing slavery in the British colonies: 1823-1838

After Britain ended its direct involvement in the slave trade, there was no immediate clamour to end slavery in its colonies. However, when Wilberforce and Clarkson formed the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823 to end slavery in Britain's colonies, women once more took a direct part in the campaign, contributing to a change in strategy for the organisation.

In 1824, Elizabeth Heyrick, a Leicester Quaker, published 'Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition', which proposed the immediate emancipation of slaves in the British colonies rather than the gradual abolition suggested by the Anti-Slavery Society. Women's societies took up the call and in 1830, the Anti-Slavery Society agreed to the change.

The first women-only society was formed in Birmingham in 1825. Others followed, representing the campaign's major organisational development. There was opposition, however, to women's growing public participation in these societies.

Wilberforce commented: 'I fear its tendency would be to mix them in all the multiform warfare of political life.' His fear was well-grounded. A slight cultural change now permitted women to sign petitions and so make their views known to parliament.

In 1833 anti-slavery petitions bore the signatures of 298,785 women, nearly a quarter of the total presented that year. Campaigners built on previous experience. The women of the Birmingham society adopted an original Wedgwood cameo image as their logo. It featured a kneeling female slave and was captioned 'Am I not a Woman and a Sister'. Many groups now reject these passive, supplicant images produced by Wedgwood.

Women were still keen to boycott sugar produced on plantations using slave labour and, now they were organised, they were more able to promote local campaigns.

Many women were also involved with Chartists in the campaign for parliamentary reform and to repeal the Corn Laws. The resulting synergy strengthened each campaign, and created the cultural climate that allowed the reformed parliament to pass the act to end slavery in the British colonies in 1833.

The act became law in 1834 and imposed a period of 'apprenticeship' on slaves that finished in 1838. A national women's petition was organised on behalf of the apprentices and addressed to Queen Victoria. The petition carried 700,000 signatures of women, which was described as 'unprecedented in the annals of petitioning'.

Worldwide abolition: 1838-1870

When the 'apprenticeship' system ended, women joined the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) to fight slavery throughout the world. At this point they were still not accepted as officials of the national society, and they could not speak at mixed public meetings.

In 1840, the BFASS organised the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and among the American delegates were several women who had made their interest in other causes, such as women's rights, clear. Their subsequent exclusion from the convention led to the birth of the women's suffrage campaign in the US.

By the 1850s, there were more women's anti-slavery societies than men's. Now that the aim was to exert pressure on other countries, the ability of men to influence parliament was not as important. Moral pressure, considered particularly the realm of women, was required.

That pressure was mainly exercised as support for the American abolitionist campaign, with the bazaar becoming the women's way of raising money. Women made the goods, many of which were sent for sale at US societies' bazaars, and were the main purchasers.

They also continued to write for the cause. Harriet Martineau, who witnessed slavery in the US, published 'The Martyr Age of the United States' (1838), which linked the status of women and slaves.

American women were invited by women's societies to lecture in Britain. In 1853, the Glasgow society sponsored a tour by Harriet Beecher Stowe whose novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had already sold 1.5 million copies in Britain. Several African-American women, including former slaves, also lectured.

The first African-American woman to address mass mixed audiences was Sarah Remond. Her lectures covered both anti-slavery and women's rights. She was very popular and wrote: 'I have been received here as the sister of the white woman.'

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Although slavery was effectively illegal in England from 1772 and in Scotland from 1778, campaigns to abolish both the trade and the institution have continued ever since. Women participated in the campaign from its beginning and were gradually able to move from the private into the political arena as strategies changed.

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Woman's rughts activist during the Civil War

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Woman's rughts activist during the Civil War

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During the Civil War, reformers focused on the war effort rather than organizing women’s rights meetings. Many woman's rights activists supported the abolition of slavery, so they rallied to ensure that the war would end this inhumane practice.

Some women’s rights activists, like Clara Barton, served as nurses. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony established the Women’s Loyal National League. The group called for the immediate end of slavery and full citizenship rights for newly freed blacks. Women’s rights activists also were part of the United States Sanitary Commission, a large national volunteer association that raised money and sent supplies to Union soldiers.

African American women played a crucial part in the war effort. Harriet Tubman had been helping slaves escape to freedom since 1851. Because of her network of friends and familiarity with the landscape, she also became a spy for the Union Army during the war. The Women’s Loyal National League raised money to support Tubman’s work. Sojourner Truth, the prominent reformer and lecturer, envisioned what life would be like for newly freed men and women and led efforts to settle freed people in Kansas.

Although the Civil War temporarily disrupted the women’s rights movement, women’s efforts and the organizations they created laid the foundations for a stronger movement after the war.

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We are in the midst of a global commemorative epoch. The Great War ended a century ago, an anniversary that has been widely celebrated. The centenaries of the Easter Rising and the Russian Revolution were observed in 2016 and 2017 respectively, while 2018 saw South Africa hail the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. This year, Britain has observed 100 years of women’s suffrage by honouring the Representation of the People Act of 1918, while New Zealand celebrated 125 years of women’s enfranchisement. The United States will soon witness the centenary of the Nineteenth Amendment in 2020, that enfranchised most American women.

With all this commemorative fervour, social media and popular culture have become platforms that offer insight into what our feminist foremothers said to advocate for women’s enfranchisement. To celebrate the Representation of the People Act, for example, the UK bookseller Waterstones chose a historical quotation from the leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Tweeting: ‘I would rather be a rebel than a slave.’ – Emmeline Pankhurst #vote100’ on 6 February 2018.

Waterstones had missed the memo. Their since-deleted Tweet quoted a slogan that had become infamous only three years earlier. Prior to the October 2015 release of Sarah Gavron’s much-anticipated film Suffragette, a regrettable photoshoot was produced with the magazine Time Out London, for which the film’s stars Carey Mulligan, Romola Garai, Anne-Marie Duff and Meryl Streep wore promotional T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: ‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.’ This created a furore on social media, which then spread to various other media outlets. Why has this rallying cry become so inflammatory in the 21st century?

Suffrage histories illustrate both the best and the worst of the early 20th-century women’s movement. In today’s commemorative moment, many of us have been confronted – sometimes for the first time – with the hard, incontrovertible evidence of the racism and classism in the history of feminism. Seen from a 21st-century viewpoint, this particular Pankhurst quote is typical of much turn-of-the-century feminist rhetoric. It is illustrative of the exclusionary character of the global campaign for women’s suffrage.

In 1918, the Representation of the People Act did not, in fact, enfranchise all British women. Only those above 30 years of age who also met certain property or educational requirements were eligible to vote under this legislation. To earn the right to cast her ballot in 1918, a British woman needed to live in a home valuable enough to pay the £5 annual property tax (around £270 in 2017 figures) or be a university graduate – lofty bars by any measure, especially since few universities admitted women students at the time. It was another decade before all British women were enfranchised through the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act of 1928. At the end of 2018, many Britons are likely more aware of these important nuances than they had been at the start of the year, because historians and journalists have been at pains to illustrate the minutiae of the nation’s suffrage history.

Across the world, other early suffrage legislation was characterised by even more exclusionary legislative provisions. In 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing colony in the British empire to enfranchise all women over the age of 21. But when Australia extended the franchise in 1902, the new legislation applied only to women of European descent. A similar situation transpired in South Africa, where only white women were enfranchised in 1930. In the US, a federal suffrage amendment finally passed in 1920 but, even then, various judicial and extrajudicial methods of exclusion meant not all African-American women – or men – could exercise their right to vote. Only after the gains achieved by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s could more African Americans cast their ballot, while Australia extended the vote to indigenous people as late as 1962. Following the fall of South Africa’s apartheid regime, the country’s black people were finally enfranchised in 1994.

As noted by Mari Takayanagi, a senior archivist at the UK’s Parliamentary Archive and co-curator of the recent exhibition Voice and Vote: Women’s Place in Parliament, the realities of suffrage history make the celebration of suffrage centenaries a challenging enterprise. Since it became impolitic to describe disenfranchisement in terms of slavery only quite recently, suffrage history is littered with what now seems to be scandalous rhetoric – such as that Pankhurst quote. Countless challenges emerge when we reflect closely on exactly what was said by advocates of women’s suffrage. Some of these details are both surprising and disturbing.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a work long recognised as an early classic of feminist philosophy. Wollstonecraft argued for women’s education and opportunities in society beyond the confines of marriage; to do so, she repeatedly used analogies between slavery and the status of women. This approach might seem odd and even untenable to many of us today. Of course, previous generations often expressed their thoughts in language that can seem antiquated and inappropriate to the contemporary reader. But just as Wollstonecraft inspired many subsequent generations of women’s rights reformers, suffragists and feminists, the process of comparing women’s oppression to that of enslaved peoples is actually a form of political rhetoric that has both persisted and taken on new connotations in the centuries since.

How exactly did Wollstonecraft express these ideas in her most famous work? Women, she wrote, ‘may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.’ The 18th century, we must recall, was an era that witnessed the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade. Many of her contemporaries, men such as Thomas Paine, embraced the slavery analogy to articulate the rights of man – rights that they did not necessarily view as extending to women. As the historian Moira Ferguson observes, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman made more than 80 references to slavery. This was in deep contrast to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), which referred to slavery on only a handful of occasions. It is difficult to fully account for such a stark difference, yet this suggests that she viewed slavery as a more apt analogy for the condition of women than for the condition of humanity.

Wollstonecraft was far from alone in advocating for women’s rights using the slavery analogy. Other British women, from the 18th-century writer Mary Astell to the 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Martineau, embraced similar rhetoric. So did John Stuart Mill, a renowned British philosopher and member of parliament (MP). Alongside women such as Helen Taylor, Frances Power Cobbe, Emily Davies, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and other members of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Mill and fellow MP Henry Fawcett were some of the earliest and most vocal supporters of women’s enfranchisement in Britain. Mill’s classic work The Subjection of Women (1869) – which was much influenced by conversations with Taylor – also described women’s oppression in terms of slavery. As he wrote: ‘[N]o slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.’

This language gained even greater currency in the US. Chattel slavery was a far more visible institution in the new world than the old. Across the 17th and 18th centuries, the British colonies that would later become the US grew more and more reliant on the transatlantic slave trade. As part of the discontent that led to the American Revolution, British settlers – some of whom were slaveholders – described their own taxation and disenfranchisement by the British crown as a form of slavery. By the early 19th century, the northern states had begun to pursue the gradual abolition of chattel slavery. However, despite a growing antislavery movement, the institution continued to expand in the agrarian economy of the American South until the eve of the nation’s Civil War (1861-65).

Suffragists proved all too willing to descend to racist arguments in support of women’s enfranchisement

The 1830s witnessed the emergence of an antislavery movement dedicated to the immediate, rather than gradual, abolition of chattel slavery. Through a growing network of female antislavery societies, more and more American women became involved in advocating abolitionism. In the process, some articulated a sense that their own lack of legal and political rights was in some way comparable to that of enslaved people of African descent. While some historians question the degree to which this represented political rhetoric or personal epiphany, the manner in which these women expressed themselves was clear enough. For example, in her influential work Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837), the abolitionist and women’s rights reformer Sarah Grimké signed each letter with: ‘Thine in the bonds of womanhood.’ Since ‘bonds’ were understood to be symbolic of chattel slavery, the historian Nancy F Cott in 1977 suggested that Grimké endowed the phrase with a double meaning: ‘womanhood bound women together even as it bound them down’.

From the 1850s onwards, women’s rights periodicals in the US were littered with examples of this kind of rhetoric. Counterintuitively perhaps, this trend actually increased after the abolition of chattel slavery in 1865. These years were defined by an impasse between social reformers: those who supported the federal government’s plan to enfranchise formerly enslaved African-American men and those who believed that women, too, should be included in these new voting provisions. Suffragists in the latter camp, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, proved all too willing to descend to racist arguments in support of women’s enfranchisement.

Stanton and Anthony’s radical but short-lived suffrage periodical, The Revolution, testified to the increasing racism of many white suffragists in the aftermath of the civil war. ‘Slavery is not yet abolished in the United States,’ read an article in 1870 entitled ‘The Slave-Women of America’. Although it described how all women remained disenfranchised and therefore disempowered, the article – despite its title – spoke less of those formerly enslaved women who had only recently been emancipated, and more of the nation’s free – ostensibly white – women. ‘They should no longer tamely submit to the bondage in which custom and education have for ages held them,’ the article emphasised, ‘but break off the shackles which bind them.’

This refiguring of language – from an era when ‘bonds’ had a double meaning to an era when white suffragists made attempts to co-opt such concepts for themselves alone – coincided with the emergence of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection. When first applied to humans by the scientist Francis Galton in the 1880s, this became known as eugenics. As the women’s suffrage movement expanded in both the US and Britain at the turn of the 20th century, earlier rhetorical ploys were repeated but now combined with eugenic imagery.

At the 1901 convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, for example, Laura Clay, the co-founder of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, delivered a speech grounded in eugenicist thought. Clay believed that the ‘common stock’ could be ‘improved and invigorated by the acquired qualities of individuals, without regard to sex’, yet she suggested that social and political traditions had impeded human development on account of the ‘shackles which bound her’ – ‘her’ being the supposedly ‘universal’ woman, who most white suffragists envisioned as a middle-class white woman. ‘The world is not more called upon to rejoice in the triumphs of his genius in freedom than to mourn over the wasted possibilities of hers in bonds.’

Looking back today, it can be useful for us to think about this language as being both connected to and disconnected from ideas about chattel slavery. What is clear, however, is that generations of women’s rights reformers and suffragists developed specific imaginative and rhetorical connections to achieve certain ends, and they exploited these connections when they perceived it would be to their benefit.

Since the 1970s, historians and feminist scholars, including luminaries such as bell hooks and Angela Y Davis, have condemned the language that so many white women reformers used to express themselves. Others have criticised the racism of the suffrage movement more generally, a phenomenon connected to the white supremacist politics and science in which so many white suffragists were embroiled by the end of the 19th century.

Social reformers used the language of slavery to denounce the legal and political subjugation of women. Indeed, women had few legal and political rights or privileges before the 20th century. For women who could not vote and whose civic engagement was discouraged, it could be impossible to gain redress against violent husbands, obtain a divorce, be granted custody of children or become economically self-sufficient. The problem was that, in using such language, many women’s rights reformers and suffragists came to focus on the situation of middle-class white women alone. In doing so, many social reformers sidelined the differing situations of formerly enslaved African Americans as well as immigrant and working-class women.

This is the complex legacy with which popular culture is confronted as we commemorate suffrage centenaries. The social-media response to the marketing campaign for the film Suffragette was swift, insightful, and unforgiving. As BuzzFeed reported at the time, onlookers had been ‘upset’ by the choice of slogan on the T-shirts. Many historically astute Tweets directed attention towards the racial limits of so many of the original suffrage provisions at the same time as they criticised the film’s lack of diversity: Suffragette envisioned a cross-class suffrage movement but gave no thought to people of colour, including prominent South Asian suffragettes such as Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who had been very active in Britain. In The Daily Telegraph, Radhika Sanghani observed how the film’s marketing campaign very clearly reflected the racism of the suffrage movement itself.

These women clearly understood associations of such words as ‘slavery’, ‘bonds’ and ‘shackles’

That marketing campaign was certainly all these things. Few, however, alluded to the far deeper historical roots of the quote ‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.’ The publicity developed by Time Out London in 2015, and commemoratively repeated by Waterstones in 2018, was based on a speech that Pankhurst delivered at a WSPU meeting in 1913. This speech was later published in its newspaper, The Suffragette. At this meeting, Pankhurst declared to her fellow suffragettes: ‘I would rather be a rebel than a slave. I would rather die than submit; and that is the spirit that animates this movement.’

Under Pankhurst’s leadership, the WSPU led a militant campaign for women’s voting rights in the decade prior to the First World War. These suffragettes and their contemporaries found what they saw as a relevant historical example in the idea of slavery; the metaphor could refer to ‘both the enslavement of Africans in the Americas and to the sexual enslavement of white British women’, as the historian Laura E Nym Mayhall put it. The first pages of Pankhurst’s autobiography My Own Story (1914) described the antislavery education that her parents had instilled in her since childhood: ‘Young as I was … I knew perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation.’ This suggests that these women clearly understood the imaginative and emotional associations that could be fostered through such words as ‘slavery’, ‘bonds’ and ‘shackles’.

We might wonder how the analogy between women and enslaved people has surfaced with such force in popular culture today. But this rhetoric was not only used in the meetings of the WSPU. It was equally evident in other publications, such as the suffrage newspaper Votes for Women. In 1912, Emmeline’s daughter Christabel Pankhurst – also a leading figure in the WSPU – declared in support of suffragette militancy: ‘Woman Suffrage … is a case of one sex being held in bondage by the other sex.’ All these words and phrases were central to how the suffragettes presented themselves to the world, making it no surprise that they should reemerge in the 21st century.

One hundred years later, Suffragette cast Meryl Streep in the role of Emmeline Pankhurst. The film features her only in brief cameo, when a fictionalised Pankhurst delivers a rousing speech from a balcony to a crowd of devoted WSPU followers below. ‘We do not want to be law-breakers,’ she tells the militants gathered before her. ‘We want to be law-makers.’ The fictionalised Pankhurst then declares: ‘I would rather be a rebel than a slave!’ before being whisked away to avoid arrest and further imprisonment.

Some commentators have been reluctant to focus too closely on this phrase, which has so clearly failed the test of time. As Tiffany Thomas suggested in Bustle, we might seek inspiration in Pankhurst’s many other speeches and writings. This is certainly true: Pankhurst is a laudable figure who should be duly celebrated. Her vision and valiant leadership were crucial to the success of the suffrage movement. Her speeches and writings are no small part of this legacy.

But Pankhurst was equally a product of her time. As she reflected in her autobiography: ‘[I]f civilisation is to advance at all in the future, it must be through the help of women, women freed of their political shackles, women with full power to work their will in society.’ Pankhurst went on to attack the idea that women should endure the ‘bonds of slavery’ to maintain the veneer of respectability. Such utterances bely the idea that looking beyond an offensive quotation here and there allows us to see historical figures more clearly, for their ideas should really appear in equal parts inspiring and alien to us today. ‘If it is right for men to fight for their freedom,’ Pankhurst continued, ‘then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear. On this declaration of the faith the militant women of England rest their case.’

Using slavery as an analogy demeans the history and the racism experienced by people of African descent

After all British women above the age of 21 were finally enfranchised in 1928, the former suffragettes began to curate and create the historical memory of their own movement. In doing so, many attested to the significance this rhetoric held in the 1910s by embracing it as part of their legacy. For example, Christabel Pankhurst’s history of the WSPU was titled Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote (1959).

The controversy that engulfed Suffragette only days before its 2015 release illustrated just how quickly one very public misstep can dominate the media coverage of a historical film. It also suggests that something has changed in present-day expectations for public discourse. The kinds of language our foremothers used to describe women’s oppression and disenfranchisement have undergone criticism to such an extent that certain modes and words are neither commonplace nor tolerated today. As more and more feminists have come to realise, using slavery as an analogy is not acceptable; it demeans the history of chattel slavery and the racism that people of African descent continue to experience. What’s more, as the historian Gerda Lerner reflected in 1979, it fails to evoke the many and varied kinds of oppression experienced by women. And yet, in spite of what might be seen as an emergent collective insight, we continue to witness the language of slavery being embraced to celebrate the heroic achievements of the suffragettes.

Our commemoration must be more judicious. We should not venerate the suffragettes’ hard-won successes by esteeming their worst oratorical moments. Interestingly, the Pankhurst quote had been just one of the film’s advertising slogans. Widely circulated posters, graced by the visages of Mulligan and Streep as well as their co-star Helena Bonham Carter, featured far more innocuous words: ‘Mothers. Daughters. Rebels.’ But neither should we cherrypick our memorialisation to the degree that we forget about the racism, classism and other shortcomings of the suffrage movement. Both approaches fail to do justice to their complex legacy. As I wrote in 2015: ‘To understand the suffragettes, we need to consider what they said and why they said it; to view them as the fallible products of their time as well as the radicals they were.’

The same must be said of their American sisters, the suffragists. As we approach the centenary of women’s enfranchisement in the US, important insights can be drawn from Emmeline Pankhurst’s legacy as it has emerged on social media and in popular culture. Arguably, white suffragists in the US embraced the language of slavery with far greater frequency and vigour than their British sisters. Ironically, theirs was a movement that actively excluded African-American women and cooperated with white supremacist politics. As we approach 2020, we must ensure justice is accorded to both their achievements and their shortcomings.

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How was the women's rights movement and abolition similar?

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How was the women's rights movement and abolition similar?

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Seeking their own rights, women used more peaceful tactics but suffered long delays. ... The women's rights movement was the offspring of abolition. Many people actively supported both reforms. Several participants in the 1848 First Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls had already labored in the anti-slavery movement.

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Abolition, Women's Rights, and Temperance Movements - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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The early women's rights movement built upon the principles and experiences of other efforts to promote social justice and to improve the human condition. Collectively these efforts are known as reform. Among these were the Abolition and Temperance movements.The personal and historical relationships that came together, and at times split apart the movement for women's rights existed before 1848, have progressed over the subsequent century and a half.

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Neither Ballots nor Bullets: The Contest for Civil Rights
"Women can neither take the Ballot nor the Bullet . . .therefore to us, the right to petition is the one sacred right which we ought not to neglect."
Susan B. Anthony, Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society,1863

"It is, perhaps, too late to bring slavery to an end by peaceable means, -- too late to vote it down. For many years I have feared, and published my fears, that it would go out in blood. These fears have grown into a belief."
Gerrit Smith, Utica Daily Observer, 1859

Two great early 19th-century social movements sought to end slavery and secure equal rights for women. Gerrit Smith and Susan B. Anthony helped shape these two movements. The anti-slavery movement grew from peaceful origins after the American Revolution to a Civil War, or War Between the States, that effectively ended slavery while severely damaging the women's rights movement.

Wielding the ballot and the bullet as well as the petition to win the legal, political, and military contest of the Civil War, abolitionists decided the fate of slavery with the 1865 passage of the 13th Amendment. Seeking their own rights, women used more peaceful tactics but suffered long delays. Not until 1920 did women add the ballot to their arsenal of political tools.

The women's rights movement was the offspring of abolition. Many people actively supported both reforms. Several participants in the 1848 First Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls had already labored in the anti-slavery movement. The organizers and their families - the Motts, Wrights, Stantons, M'Clintocks and Hunts - were active abolitionists to a greater or lesser degree. Noted abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass attended and addressed the 1848 Convention.

Both movements promoted the expansion of the American promise of liberty and equality - to African Americans and to women. How did these two movements develop and how were they related to each other? How did each develop strategies and deal with the contradiction of violence and war that results from the advocacy of peaceful change?

"...the flagrant injustice and deep sin of slavery"
Preamble to the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Constitution, 1833
After the American Revolution, northern states began to abolish slavery. Many slaveholders in the upper South also freed slaves. In 1817, the American Colonization Society formed to resettle freed slaves in Africa. However, the South depended on slave labor as cotton production expanded after the 1793 invention of the cotton gin. Repressive laws and public justification of slavery followed southern slave revolts in the 1820s and 1830s.

Religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening intensified anti-slavery activity after 1830. Seeking to perfect society, adherents targeted slavery as an evil that destroyed individual free will as moral beings. Abolitionists began to demand immediate, uncompensated emancipation of slaves.

In 1833, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, Quaker Lucretia Mott, and several others formed the American Anti-Slavery Society. Women were a large part of the general membership and formed separate, local female anti-slavery branches. Mott also helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, an organization, noted for its promotion of racial and gender equality, that included African American and white women as leaders and members.

Many anti-slavery reformers, like the Quakers, came from pacifist backgrounds or espoused nonviolent social reform. They shaped public opinion by distributing newspapers and tracts, sending out organizers and lecturers, and hosting fundraising fairs. Garrison, who saw the U.S. Constitution and federal government as pro-slavery forces, observed Independence Day as a day of mourning. Lucretia Mott and Thomas M'Clintock helped form the Philadelphia Free Produce Society, which boycotted slave-made products.

Between 1838 and 1840, the American Anti-Slavery Society split in three, in part over the issue of women's leadership, specifically Abby Kelley's appointment to the business committee. Radical abolitionists and women's rights supporters, known as "Garrisonian" abolitionists, remained in the American Anti-Slavery Society. The newly formed American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society restricted membership to males, with auxiliaries for females. The politically minded formed the Liberty Party, limiting women's participation to fundraising. The discrimination of women in abolition and other reform movements led them to advocate for women's rights.

"Justice and Equality:" Antislavery and Women's Rights
"…this is the only organization on God's footstool where the humanity of woman is recognized, and these are the only men who have ever echoed back her cries for justice and equality…. All time will not be long enough to pay the debt of gratitude we owe these noble men…who roused us to a sense of our own rights, to the dignity of our high calling."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860.

At the 1848 First Women's Rights Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments, drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Elizabeth and Mary Ann M'Clintock, was read and signed by 100 men and women. Claiming that "all Men and Women are created equal," the signers called for extending to women the right to vote, control property, sign legal documents, serve on juries, and enjoy equal access to education and the professions.

Arguments for women's rights came from experiences in the anti-slavery movement. Angelina and Sarah Grimké of South Carolina were Quakers and effective anti-slavery speakers, although it was considered improper for women to speak before "promiscuous" audiences composed of both men and women. During a petition drive in Massachusetts in 1837, male listeners thronged to female-only lectures. While condemning slavery, the Grimkés upheld "the cause of woman as a moral being." "Sister Sarah does preach up woman's rights most nobly and fearlessly," reported Angelina to a friend. Rebuked by Congregational ministers and others for speaking to promiscuous audiences, they held their ground. To do otherwise would have been "…a violation of our fundamental principle that man & woman are created equal, & have the same duties & the same responsibilities as moral beings."

As reformers, women developed organizational skills necessary for a successful social movement. They learned to write persuasively, raise funds, organize supporters and events, and speak to large groups of men and women about important political and social issues. In the service of anti-slavery, women found their voices. Between 1850 and 1860, women's rights advocates held state and national conventions and campaigned for legal changes.

The Emergence of Violence
By 1848, the Liberty Party, which had earlier split from the American Anti-Slavery Society, joined a coalition to create the Free Soil Party. Free Soilers sought to limit slavery by denying it to new territories entering the union. In July, 1848, a Free Soil Convention was held in Seneca Falls, just before the Women's Rights Convention. Some male village residents attended both conventions. Jacob P. Chamberlain and Saron Phillips, who signed the Declaration of Sentiments, were chosen as delegates to the Free Soil Party's national convention.

The 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law authorized federal marshals to seize and return fugitive slaves. Northern free blacks had little protection against false claims by southern slaveholders. While many free blacks fled to Canada, previously neutral northerners were enraged at the injustice.

As the U.S. expanded, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, allowing each new area to decide whether it would allow slavery. Slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed into Kansas to claim it for their side. In 1856, after anti-slavery settlers died during an attack in Lawrence, Kansas, John Brown led a raid against pro-slavery homes along Pottawatomie Creek, killing five men in retaliation.

With a warrant out for his arrest, John Brown returned east to plan a daring raid. He hoped to create a large slave insurrection in Virginia. Brown sought support among prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, provided financial support. A decade earlier, he had sold Brown a parcel of land in a settlement for free blacks in the Adirondacks. Now, Brown asked Smith to help finance his scheme. Smith agreed, becoming one of the "Secret Six" financiers of John Brown's raid.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one followers launched an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When the anticipated slave revolt failed to materialize, the raid ended in dismal failure. Brown and his men were tried, convicted, and hanged. A letter in Brown's possession incriminated Smith, who went insane as a result of the publicity and threat of prosecution. A martyr in the eyes of non-violent abolitionists, Brown became a symbol of escalating violence in pursuit of emancipation.

"How Glass Our House Is:" An Uneasy Truce with the War
"The death of my father, the worse than death of my dear cousin Gerrit, the martyrdom of that great and glorious John Brown, all conspire to make me regret more than ever my dwarfed womanhood.…in times like these, everyone should do the work of a full grown man."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony, 1859

Many nonviolent reformers, concluding that slavery could only be purged by war, welcomed the outbreak of the Civil War in April, 1861. Even Quaker pacifists reluctantly supported the war if it would bring an end to slavery. David Wright's support of the war brought no criticism from sister-in-law Lucretia Mott, considering, "how glass our house is." She hoped the war "would be prosecuted with energy and faith since it was founded on so good a cause." When Horace Greeley and others pointed out that these hardly seemed the words of a pacifist, she responded, "…as the natural result of our wrong-doings and our atrocious cruelties, terrible as war must ever be, let us hope it will not be stayed by any compromise which shall continue the unequal, cruel war on the rights and liberties of millions of our unoffending fellow beings.…"

Meanwhile, the national conventions for women's rights ended. In 1864, the National Woman's Loyal League, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, gathered 400,000 signatures on a petition for an immediate end to slavery. Having neither access to the vote nor military service, women used the petition to support the 13th Amendment.

The Civil War ended in 1865, followed by passage of the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery. In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote. Stanton and others fought, and lost, the battle to include women in expanded suffrage.

In victory over slavery, decades-long alliances were broken. The women's rights movement split and old friends in the abolition and women's rights movements parted company. Just as anti-slavery forces had divided, so too did organizations struggling for women's suffrage.

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The Second Great Awakening sparked a wildfire of a multitude of revolutionary and unorthodox practices which spread all across the American continent and shook traditionally-established religious and ethical norms to their foundation. But mot everyone took to the revivals: the early nineteenth century also saw the rise of Unitarianism, as a group of ministers and their followers came to question and ultimately reject the key aspects of Protestant dogma, such as the divinity of Christ. The Christians of New England participated in Unitarianist debates as Harvard University was becoming a contested center in the Unitarianist and Trinitarianist struggle for authority. A group of Unitarianist ministers significantly impacted the world of reform by founding the Transcendental Club in 1836. It met for four years and included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, James Freeman Clarke and Theodore Parker as its members. It was at first limited to ministers and former ministers, but it managed to expans swiftly by counting the membership of many literary intellectuals of the day, such as Henry David Thoreau, the profeminist literary critic Margaret Fuller, as well as the educational reformer Elizabeth Peabody.

Transcendentalism had no established creed, but this was so intentionally. Transcendentalists found unison through their belief in a higher spiritual principle which each person had within themselves and which would guarantee that each person could be entrusted with discovering the truth, guidance toward moral action and artistic inspiration; this principle was often referred to as Soul, Spirit, Mind or Reason. It also drew deep influences from British romanticism and German idealism and their celebration of individual artistic creation and inspiration and spiritual experience, also encompassing those aspects of human existence which could not easily be explained via means of logic and reason. By developing distinctly American ideas which highlighted the ideals of individualism, optimism, oneness with nature and a modern orientation towards the future instead of the past granted the Transcendentalists an enduring and profound legacy.

Emerson proposed a religious worldview wherein God, 'the eternal ONE', was embodied by and manifested through the special harmony between individual souls and nature. In his works "The American Scholar" (1837) and "Self-Reliance" (1841), he emphasized the reliability and sufficiency found in each soul and encouraged his audience to overcome the "long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." This meant that, in Emerson view, Americans were ready declare their intellectual independence alongside their political independence from Europe. Thoreau's idea of 'rugged individualism' also promoted ideals of simple living and communion with nature, also yielded "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849).

Several Transcendentalists also participated in communal living experiments; in the 1840s, for example, George Ripley, alongside other members of the utopian Brook Farm community, began to promote Fourierism, which envisioned a society founded upon cooperative principles, as a viable alternative to capitalist exploitation.

In conclusion, many of the different types of responses espoused by each denomination toward the religious turmoil at the time met at similar endpoints in that they promoted the embracement of voluntary association and social reform work. Many American Christians responded by organizing themselves to alleviate the pressures brought on by industrialization and urbanization and by aiming to adress specific social needs. These problems included intemperance, vice and crime among others, which reached new and distressing scales that older solutions, such as almhouses, weren't fit to handle anymore. Voluntary benevolent societies were established in order to tackle the widespread issues of poverty and illiteracy; they printed and distributed Protestant tracts, taught Sunday school, provided outdoor relief and held sermons in frontier towns and urban slums alike. These associations and their initiatives also lent moral backing and workers eager to carry out large-scale social reform projects, including the temperance movement which sought to curb consumption of alcohol, promoted the abolitionist campaign to eradicate slavery, and supported womens' claim to political and economic rights. Evangelical Christians thus formed a 'benevolent empire' which became one of the significant headstones of the antebellum period in America.

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In accordance with the emergence of newly-established powerful social and political currents of the day, the early nineteenth century in America saw the rise of numerous religious revivals across the land, all collectively known as the Second Great Awakening. Revivalist and itinerant preachers travelled across the nation and, through their newly-acquired prophesizing which accentuated individual believers as opposed to the more tradition-oriented institutional models, reshaped the religious landscape of America. Revivals largely provided the faithful with unifying sense of moral order and a close-knit, spiritual community, especially to those struggling with the enormous changes taking place at the time (the Market Revolution, western expansion, European immigration), which posed a great challenge to the established bonds of authority. Thus the revivalist camps and communition spread throughout the American soil, and inspired positive trends of increasing church membership, establishing new Christian denominations, promoting social reform as well as promising equal measures of excitement and order for all.

One of the earliest revivalist camps was based in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, gathered over a one-week period in August 1801. It brought together thousands of believers, and this assembly was very different from previous annual gatherings of the faithful in rural areas for the purpose of receiving communion: these Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian preachers, as opposed to their counterparts from other denominations, delivered passionate sermons which encouraged their crowds to seek the salvation of their souls by themselves. These sermons were held inside buildings, outdoors under the open sky; the preachers sometimes even went so far as to use tree stumps as makeshift pulpits, all for the purpose of reaching their faithful and enthusiastic flock as much as possible with their advent. Even women were allowed to exhort, which was a break from common practice; all in all, all attendees were often moved by the preachers' religious ecstacy and responded with oftentimes delirious crying, jumping, speaking in tongues or even fainting. The Cane Ridge Revival and other similar revivalist denominations abandoned the formal style of worship which dominated the well-established Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches in favor of embracing more impassioned forms of worship which included a number of eccentric practices, such as spontaneous jumping, shouting and gesturing found in the up-and-coming revivalist alternatives. This evangelical fervour spread to such an extent, in fact, that one swath of western and central New York came to be known as the Burned-Over District. The term was coined by Charles Grandison Finney, an influential revivalist preacher, who explained it by claiming that the residents of these areas had experienced so many revivals by a multitude of different religious groups that there were no more souls left that still needed to be awakened to the fire of spiritual conversion.

What historians now refer to as the American spiritual marketplace has been created by the removal of government support of churches. Methodism was the denomination which won the most success, enjoying the highest denominational increase in American history, and by 1850 becoming the most popular Christian denomination among Americans, constituting 34% of total American church membership by the mid-nineteenth century. After the Methodist leaders' departure from the Church of England in order to form an independent American denomination in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) achieved the aforementioned growth via means of innovation: itinerant preachers, also known as circuit riders, which won converts by following the routes of western expansion which went over the Alleghenies and into the Ohio River Valley, and sought to bring spiritual awakening to new settlers hungry to have their religious needs attended to. The practice of circuit riding brought these preachers into homes, meetinghouses and churches, all mapped out over a journey which took approximately two weeks to complete.

The idea of spiritual egalitarianism was another significant transformation which emerged in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, as revolutionary rhetoric also largely informed the theological critique pushed forward by orthodox Calvinism which produced far-reaching consequences for religious individuals as well as society as a whole. Calvinists believed all of humankind to be eternally mired by sin, and only some were predestined for salvation by God. Attitudes such as these began to be seen as overly pessimistic by the majority of American Christians, who had increasingly started to take the responsibility for their individual spiritual fates by adopting those theologies which accentuated human action in the process of achieving salvation - a cultural shift which revivalist preachers were swift to observe and elaborate on. Radicals, such as Finney, evangelized the crowds by appealing to their hearts and emotions, putting arbitrary theological disputes aside, while even more conservative leaders, such Lyman Beecher, a Congregationalist preacher, sought to appeal to younger generations by purporting a less orthodox approach to the Calvinist doctrine. Although these two men never really saw eye to eye, both gave their own contribution to the emerging consensus among the faithful: that all souls are equal in salvation and each person can be saved by surrendering themselves to God.

Besides the many divisions between evangelical and nonevangelical religious cohorts brought about by the Second Great Awakening, later revivalist endeavours which produced subsquent evangelical expansion also revealed strains within the Methodist and Baptist churches, with each witnessing several schisms during the 1820s and 1830s which saw an emergence of advocates demanding the return of earlier practices and policies. Many abandoned mainstream Protestantism altogether, instead opting to establish their own churches. Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, for example, advocated the restoration of New Testament Christianity, which would be stripped of centuries of additional teachings and practices. Others sought to further the trends posited by evangelical churches through criticizing the mainstream Protestant denomination as well as seeking to traverse beyond the boundaries established by contemporary Christian orthodoxy; self-proclaimed prophets declared that God had summoned them to errect new churches and restore the lost teachings, forms of worship and scripture of early, 'pure' Christianity.

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(also known as an itinerant minister or evangelist or circuit rider) is a Christian evangelist who preaches the basic Christian redemption message while traveling around to different groups of people within a relatively short period of time

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a member of the clergy who travels about to conduct revivals

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move or go together in a crowd

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Like the later Great Depression, the Long Depression affected different countries at different times, at different rates, and some countries accomplished rapid growth over certain periods. Globally, however, the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s were a period of falling price levels and rates of economic growth significantly below the periods preceding and following.

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In 1874, a year after the 1873 crash, the United States Congress passed legislation called the Inflation Bill of 1874 designed to confront the issue of falling prices by injecting fresh greenbacks into the money supply.Under pressure from business interests, President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the measure.In 1878, Congress overrode President Rutherford B. Hayes's veto to pass the Silver Purchase Act, a similar but more successful attempt to promote "easy money".

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The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in 1873 and running either through the spring of 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used.It was the most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. The episode was labeled the "Great Depression" at the time, and it held that designation until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though a period of general deflation and a general contraction, it did not have the severe economic retrogression of the Great Depression.

It was most notable in Western Europe and North America, at least in part because reliable data from the period is most readily available in those parts of the world. The United Kingdom is often considered to have been the hardest hit; during this period it lost some of its large industrial lead over the economies of continental Europe.While it was occurring, the view was prominent that the economy of the United Kingdom had been in continuous depression from 1873 to as late as 1896 and some texts refer to the period as the Great Depression of 1873–1896.

In the United States, economists typically refer to the Long Depression as the Depression of 1873–1879, kicked off by the Panic of 1873, and followed by the Panic of 1893, book-ending the entire period of the wider Long Depression.The U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months of contraction.[In the United States, from 1873 to 1879, 18,000 businesses went bankrupt, including 89 railroads.Ten states and hundreds of banks went bankrupt.[Unemployment peaked in 1878, long after the initial financial panic of 1873 had ended. Different sources peg the peak U.S. unemployment rate anywhere from 8.25% to 14%

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There have been many recessions, large and small, throughout U.S. history. Most of these were noteworthy in some way because of their impacts, which included ​ changes in federal laws.

The Panic of 1797 resulted from land speculation in the newly-formed United States. The bubble burst just as deflation in Europe impacted the rest of the world. Robert Morris, who helped finance the Revolutionary War, ended up in prison for his debts. He was in debt despite owning more land at that time than anyone else in the United States.

The Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company failed. In addition, approximately 5,000 businesses went under during the first year of a panic that lasted about 18 months.

Jay Cooke & Company was the largest U.S. bank when it failed. Subsequent labor issues led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The recession lasted more than five years.

The failure of the Reading Railroad was a key component of this recession, which lasted approximately four years. Unemployment topped 10%. About 500 banks closed.

Congress created the Federal Reserve System in response to the collapse of New York's Knickerbocker Trust Co. The stock market dropped about 50% during this recession, which lasted about a year.

The Great Depression

Lasting from 1929 until 1938, it was the biggest economic crisis in U.S. history. Unemployment reached 25% in 1933 and remained at 19% in 1938. The Depression ended because of three things: the New Deal, the end of the drought that caused the Dust Bowl, and increased spending for World War II.

This recession lasted eight months, from February to October, although it felt longer to those who endured it. GDP continued falling until it reached -11.6% in 1946. It was a natural result of the demobilization from World War II and the sharp drop in demand for military weapons. Government spending also dropped, although business spending was robust.

This 11-month recession began in November 1948. It lasted until October 1949, when unemployment reached a peak of 7.9%. It was a mild adjustment as the economy continued adapting to peacetime production.

This recession lasted 10 months, from July 1953 to May 1954. It resulted from demobilization following the Korean War. Unemployment didn't reach its peak of 6.1% until September 1954, four months after the recession ended. In 1953, GDP contracted 2.2% in the third quarter and 5.9% in Q4. In 1954, it contracted 1.9% in Q1.

In this recession, which took place from August 1957 to April 1958, GDP fell 4.1% in Q4 1957, then plummeted another 10% in Q1 1958. Unemployment didn't reach its peak of 7.5% until July 1958. The Fed's contractionary monetary policy is considered the cause of this economic slowdown.

Starting in April 1960, this recession lasted 10 months, until February 1961. GDP was -2.1% in Q2 1960, rose 2.0% in Q3, but was -5.0% in Q4. Unemployment reached a peak of 7.1% in May 1961. President John F. Kennedy ended the recession with stimulus spending. His opponent, Richard Nixon, said the recession cost him the election. He had been vice president, so voters blamed the Republicans for causing it.

This recession was relatively mild, lasting 11 months-from December 1969 to November 1970. GDP was -1.9% in Q4 1969. It was -0.6% in Q1, then rose 0.6% in Q2 and 3.7% in Q3. In Q4, it was -4.2% before rising 11.3% in Q1 1971. Unemployment peaked at 6.1% in December 1970.

First, President Nixon instituted wage-price controls. This kept prices too high, reducing demand. Wage controls made salaries too high and forced businesses to lay off workers. Second, Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in response to a run on the gold held at Fort Knox, which led to inflation. The price of gold skyrocketed to $120 an ounce while the dollar's value plummeted.

The result was stagflation and five quarters of negative GDP growth: 1973 Q3, -2.1%; 1974 Q1, -3.4%; Q3, -3.7%; Q4, -1.5%; and 1975 Q1, -4.8%. Unemployment reached a peak of 9% in May 1975, two months after the recession had ended.

The economy suffered a double whammy of two recessions in this period. There was one during the first six months of 1980. The second lasted 16 months, from July 1981 to November 1982.

The Fed caused this recession by raising interest rates to combat inflation. That reduced business spending. The Iranian oil embargo aggravated economic conditions by reducing U.S. oil supplies, which drove up prices.

GDP was negative for six of the 12 quarters. The worst was Q2 1980 at -8.0%. Until the 2008-2009 recession, that was the worst quarterly decline since the Great Depression. Unemployment rose to 10.8% in November and December 1982, the highest level in any modern recession. It was above 10% for 10 months. President Reagan lowered the tax rate and boosted the defense budget, helping to end the recession.

This recession ran nine months, from July 1990 to March 1991. The 1989 savings and loan crisis caused it. GDP was -3.6% in Q4 1990 and -1.9% in Q1 1991. Unemployment peaked at 7.8% in June 1992.

The 2001 recession lasted eight months, from March to November. It was caused by a boom and subsequent bust in dot-com businesses. The boom was partially created by the Y2K scare in 2000. Companies bought billions of dollars' worth of new software because they were afraid the old systems weren't designed to transition from the 1900s to the 2000s. But many dot-com businesses were significantly overvalued and failed.

The 9/11 attack worsened the recession. The economy contracted in two quarters: Q1, -1.1% and Q3, -1.7%. Unemployment continued rising until it peaked at 6.3% in June 2003.

The Great Recession was the worst financial crisis in the United States since the 1929 Depression. It also was the longest-lasting: from December 2007 to June 2009. The subprime mortgage crisis was the trigger. That created a global bank credit crisis in 2007. By 2008, the credit crisis had spread to the general economy through the widespread use of derivatives.

The economy shrank in five quarters, including four quarters in a row. Two quarters contracted more than 5%. In Q4 2008, GDP was -8.4%, worse than any other recession since the Great Depression. The recession ended in Q3 2009, when GDP turned positive, thanks to an economic stimulus package.

Tracking Recessions

The BEA revises its GDP estimates as it receives new data. It often recalibrates its estimates in July of each year. Using the 2008-2009 recession as an example, here are the final estimates compared to the initial estimates made one month after the quarter ended. These numbers demonstrate how difficult it is to correct a recession until it's already started. They also serve as a reminder of how difficult it is to time the market with your investments.

Q1: The economy shrank 2.3%. Initially, the BEA thought it grew 0.6%.

Q2: The economy rebounded 2.1%. The initial release said it grew 1.9%. Everyone thought the Fed's rescue of Bear Stearns ended the threat to financial markets.

Q3: The economy shrank 2.1%, much more than the -0.3% initial estimate.

Q4: The economy collapsed, shrinking 8.4%. The BEA initially said it shrank only 3.8%, which seemed bad enough.

Q1: The economy shrank 4.4%. The initial estimate said it shrank 4.9%.

Q2: The economy contracted 0.6%, better than the initial estimate of -1.0%.

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There have been many recessions, large and small, throughout U.S. history. Most of these were noteworthy in some way because of their impacts, which included ​ changes in federal laws. The Panic of 1797 resulted from land speculation in the newly-formed United States. The bubble burst just as deflation in Europe impacted the rest of the world.

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The Panic of 1837 was one such incident involving an unstable currency and financial system resulting in a lack of confidence in both government and the banks. An independent treasury system emerged when President Andrew Jackson transferred in 1833 government funds from the Bank of the United States to state banks.

The Bank of the United States was a national bank created by the U.S. Congress. The first bank (1791-1811), proposed by Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, aroused opposition, especially from the West, for its conservative policies, which meant it was against inflating the money supply through means of unbacked paper currency. Its charter was therefore allowed to expire. Difficulties in financing the War of 1812 caused the creation of a second Bank of the United States (1816-36). It prospered under the management of Nicholas Biddle and effectively served as a central bank. However, this again was viewed as a "TOOL" of eastern commercial interests by the Jacksonians.

Andrew Jackson came to fame when in 1818 he led a reprisal against the Seminoles in Florida and captured Pensacola, involving the US in serious trouble with Spain and Britain. The conduct of "Old Hickory," as he was called, pleased the people of the West and he was regarded as the greatest hero of his time. Jackson became associated with the increased popular participation in government, which later became known as "Jacksonian Democracy." His liberal style movement almost won him the presidency in 1824, but the election ended in the House of Representatives, with a victory for John Q. Adams. This left a bitter taste in Jackson's mouth and seriously injured his pride. Still, Jackson ran again and won the US presidency in 1828. Jackson's victory brought a strong element of "personalism" to Washington and his administration became known as his "Kitchen Cabinet." Andrew Jackson was also the first President to create the "SPOILS SYSTEM," which simply meant that all your buddies who helped in the election got fat paying jobs in government - the "spoils" of victory were given to your political supporters.

From this anti-establishment and anti-Eastern States perspective, the fight against the Bank of the United States became an important issue in the presidential election of 1832, in which Jackson defeated Henry Clay. Following his victory, Jackson went about destroying the central banking system of the United States and transferred federal assets to chosen state banks, which became known as Jackson's "pet" banks. This action seriously impaired the confidence in the currency and in 1836 Jackson issued the "Specie Circular," which stated that all public lands must be paid for in specie. This in effect hastened the Panic of 1837 and tended to contradict the private script system where individual banks were allowed to issue their own paper currency.

Thanks to the irresponsible actions of Andrew Jackson, the U.S. entered a serious economic depression following the failure of the New Orleans cotton brokerage firm, Herman Briggs & Co in March of 1837. Inflated land values, speculation and wildcat banking contributed to the crisis, which became known as the "Hard Times of 1837-1843." New York banks suspended payments in gold on May 10th and financial panic ensued. At least 800 US banks suspended payment in gold and 618 banks failed before the year was out. Gold disappeared from circulation and employers were forced to pay their help with what became commonly referred to as "shinplasters," which were private bank currency of dubious value and far to often outright counterfeit.

In destroying the central bank, Jackson had moved the Treasury deposits to state banks. They called this "Jackson's Roulette". This lent tremendous credibility to these state banks that all began to issue their own money. This became known as the Broken Bank Era to collectors. These "shinplasters" were effectively worthless and Jackson set off a massive depression. By the mid 1840s, states were going bankrupt for they had issued bonds trying to bail out the banks. Jackson proved one thing - the need for a central bank.

Over 39,000 Americans went bankrupt, losing some $741 million as the depression reduced many to starvation. The depression spread to Britain and the rest of Europe. Congress authorized the issue of U.S. Treasury notes not to exceed $10 million on October 12th in a move to help ease the devastating economic financial crisis. By 1839 the depression had not improved very much. Within the next few years, the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland defaulted on their bond issues.

In 1840, under President Martin Van Buren, an independent treasury isolated from all banks was set up. However, in 1841 the Whigs repealed the law, and it was not until 1846 that the Democrats restored the independent treasury system. The Act of 1846 ordered that public revenues be retained in the Treasury building or in subtreasury in various cities. The Treasury was to pay out its own funds and be completely independent o f the banking and financial system of the nation; all payments in and out were to be in exclusively specie. In practice, the system created problems in prosperous times by amassing surplus revenue and thus restraining legitimate expansion of trade; in depressed times, the treasury's insistence on being paid in specie reduced the amount of specie available for private credit. The large expenditures of the Civil War also revealed problems, and Congress created the national banking system in 1863-1864. The independent Treasury was later used to stabilize the money market, but the Panic of 1907 proved the attempt futile. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 marked the end of the system and the emergence of our current reserve bank establishment.

During the Hard Times of 1837-1843, gold made two sharp rallies consisting of two individual 5.6 year cyclical movements. The collapse of the banking system was primarily caused by the fact that the U.S. government in general refrained from producing paper currency between 1793-1861. What had taken place was that the country was prospering, and it soon became apparent that there was insufficient money in actual circulation to meet th e demand of commerce.

Due to the fact that there was a shortage of money and gold between 1793-1837, the States granted charters to hundreds of private banks within their jurisdiction. By the mere terms of these charters, a bank was authorized to print and circulate its own currency. The banking for this currency was the amount of money held on deposit in the bank. However, abuse became the norm and the tragic consequence was that many banks issued currency against deposits and gold reserves that did not exist. Even those banks that had operated above-board often failed when borrowers defaulted on their loans or when depositors withdrew their funds as other banks were failing. This left even the honest banks with no recourse but to close their doors as they literally went broke. This led to the term "wildcat," which was applied to both the banks and their currency. Under such an unregulated banking system, it is not difficult to comprehend why gold virtually soared in purchasing power between 1800 and 1843.

The Great Financial Panics in History

by Martin A. Armstrong

© Princeton Economic Institute

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The Panic of 1837 was one such incident involving an unstable currency and financial system resulting in a lack of confidence in both government and the banks. An independent treasury system emerged when President Andrew Jackson transferred in 1833 government funds from the Bank of the United States to state banks.

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The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis based on speculative fever: Inflation rose after federal deposits were withdrawn due to the assumption that the government was selling land for state bank notes of questionable value.

The Panic of 1837 was partly caused by the economic policies of President Jackson, who created the Specie Circular by executive order and refused to renew the charter of Second Bank of the United States.

The Panic of 1837 was followed by a five-year depression characterized by failed banks and unprecedented unemployment levels.

specie: Money, especially in the form of coins made from precious metal, that has an intrinsic value; coinage.

speculative fever: A term used in the housing market that represents the frequent action of buying and selling housing properties.

Second Bank of the United States: The nation’s federally authorized central bank during its 20-year charter from February 1817 to January 1836.

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Most economists agree that there was a brief recovery from 1838 to 1839, which then ended as the Bank of England and Dutch creditors raised interest rates.Economic historian Peter Temin has argued that, when corrected for deflation, the economy grew after 1838. According to economist and historian Murray Rothbard, between 1839 and 1843, real consumption increased by 21 percent and real gross national product increased by 16 percent, while real investment fell by 23 percent and the money supply shrank by 34 percent.

In 1842, the American economy was able to rebound somewhat and overcome the five-year depression, but according to most accounts, the economy did not recover until 1843.The recovery from the depression intensified after the California gold rush started in 1848, greatly increasing the money supply. By 1850, the U.S. economy was booming again.

Intangible factors like confidence and psychology played powerful roles, helping to explain the magnitude and depth of the panic. Central banks had only limited abilities to control prices and employment at the time, making runs on banks common. When a few banks collapsed, alarm quickly spread throughout the community, heightened by partisan newspapers. Anxious investors rushed to other banks, demanding to have their deposits withdrawn. When faced with such pressure, even healthy banks had to make further curtailments – calling in loans and demanding payment from their borrowers. This fed the hysteria even further, leading to a downward spiral or snowball effect. In other words, anxiety, fear, and a pervasive lack of confidence initiated devastating, self-sustaining feedback loops. Many economists today understand this phenomenon as an information asymmetry. Essentially, bank depositors reacted to imperfect information: they did not know if their deposits were safe, and fearing further risk, they withdrew their deposits, even as this caused more damage. The same concept of downward spiral was true for many southern planters, who speculated in land, cotton, and slaves. Many planters took out loans from banks under the assumption that cotton prices would continue to rise. When cotton prices dropped, however, planters could not pay back their loans, jeopardizing the solvency of many banks. These factors were particularly crucial given the lack of deposit insurance in banks. When bank customers are not assured that their deposits are safe, they are more likely to make rash decisions that can imperil the rest of the economy. Economists today have concluded that suspension of convertibility, deposit insurance, and sufficient capital requirements in banks can limit the possibility of bank runs.

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The crisis followed a period of economic expansion from mid-1834 to mid-1836. The prices of land, cotton, and slaves rose sharply in these years. The origins of this boom had many sources, both domestic and international. Because of the peculiar factors (Specie Circular) of international trade at the time, abundant amounts of silver were coming into the United States from Mexico and China. Land sales and tariffs on imports were also generating substantial federal revenues. Through lucrative cotton exports and the marketing of state-backed bonds in British money markets, the United States acquired significant capital investment from Great Britain. These bonds financed transportation projects in the United States. British loans, made available through Anglo-American banking houses like Baring Brothers, fueled much of the United States's westward expansion, infrastructure improvements, industrial expansion, and economic development during the antebellum era.

This hunger in America was not felt by England, as her wheat crops improved every year from 1831 to 1836, and European imports of American wheat had dropped to "almost nothing" by 1836. The directors of the Bank of England, wanting to increase monetary reserves (And cushion American defaults) indicated that they would gradually raise interest rates from 3 to 5 percent. The conventional financial theory held that banks should raise interest rates and curb lending when faced with low monetary reserves. Raising interest rates, according to the laws of supply and demand, was supposed to attract species since money generally flows where it will generate the greatest return (assuming equal risk among possible investments). In the open economy of the 1830s, characterized by free trade and relatively weak trade barriers, the monetary policies of the hegemonic power – in this case, Great Britain – were transmitted to the rest of the interconnected global economic system, including the U.S. The result was that as the Bank of England raised interest rates, major banks in the United States were forced to do the same.

An 1837 caricature blames Andrew Jackson for hard times.

When New York banks raised interest rates and scaled back on lending, the effects were damaging. Since the price of a bond bears an inverse relationship to the yield (or interest rate), the increase in prevailing interest rates would have forced down the price of American securities. Importantly, demand for cotton plummeted. The price of cotton fell by 25% in February and March 1837. The United States economy, especially in the southern states, was heavily dependent on stable cotton prices. Receipts from cotton sales provided funding for some schools, balanced the nation's trade deficit, fortified the US dollar, and procured foreign exchange earnings in British pound sterling, the world's reserve currency at the time. Since the United States was still a predominantly agricultural economy centered on the export of staple crops and an incipient manufacturing sector,a collapse in cotton prices had massive reverberations.

Within the United States, there were several contributing factors. In July 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States (BUS), the nation's central bank and fiscal agent. As the BUS wound up its operations in the next four years, state-chartered banks in the West and South relaxed their lending standards, maintaining unsafe reserve ratios.Two domestic policies exacerbated an already volatile situation. The Specie Circular of 1836 mandated that western lands could be purchased only with gold and silver coin. The circular was an executive order issued by Andrew Jackson and favored by Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and other hard-money advocates. The intent was to curb speculation in public lands, but the circular set off a real estate and commodity price crash as most buyers were unable to come up with sufficient hard money or "specie" (gold or silver coins) to pay for the land. Secondly, the Deposit and Distribution Act of 1836 placed federal revenues in various local banks (derisively termed "pet banks") across the country. Many of these banks were located in western regions. The effect of these two policies was to transfer specie away from the nation's main commercial centers on the East Coast. With lower monetary reserves in their vaults, major banks and financial institutions on the East Coast had to scale back their loans, which was a major cause of the panic along with the real estate crash.

Americans at the time attributed the cause of the panic principally to domestic political conflicts. Democrats typically blamed the bankers. Whigs blamed Jackson for refusing to renew the charter of the Bank, resulting in the withdrawal of government funds from the bank.Martin Van Buren, who became president in March 1837, was largely blamed for the panic even though his inauguration preceded the panic by only five weeks. Van Buren's refusal to use government intervention to address the crisis (such as emergency relief and increasing spending on public infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment) according to his opponents, contributed further to the hardship and duration of the depression that followed the panic. Jacksonian Democrats, on the other hand, blamed the National Bank, both in funding rampant speculation and in introducing inflationary paper money. Some modern economists view Van Buren's deregulatory economic policy as successful in the long term, and argue that it played an important role in revitalizing banks after the panic.

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The paper money issued by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 was the first authorized by any government in the Western world. False notes as well as genuine notes altered by criminals followed promptly.

From colonial notes to the much-maligned Continental Currency to the "broken-bank" notes prior to the Civil War, paper money was widely distrusted in early America. Only with increasing Federal government control of paper money during and after the Civil War did paper currency gradually come to predominate.

Paper Money in Early America

When paper money was issued in America, it became the first authorized by any government in the Western world. The Massachusetts Bay Colony financed a military expedition to Canada in 1690 by issuing bills of credit. Subsequent military campaigns and other expenses by other Colonies were funded in a similar way. By the time of the Revolutionary War, each of the thirteen colonies' governments had emitted their own currency issues although Great Britain opposed and tried to suppress them. In all cases, they were a financial expedient adopted to cover a lack of funds by promising to "pay later."

The Continental Congress, the union of former colonies in rebellion against the British monarchy, introduced the first American national paper money in 1775, trying to meet military expenditures. Bullion backing for the issues never appeared, however, and this Continental Currency was rapidly devalued. The Congress asked the states to redeem it, but they were floundering financially themselves. In fact, the individual states issued their own paper money to cover their governmental and military costs. Such notes frequently carried propaganda messages: images of the King trampling on the Magna Carta and setting fire to an American city, American Liberty trampling on slavery while backed by an army, patriotic "Minute Men" brandishing their weapons, or allusions to the Union's strength (or fragility). All became devalued by war's end.

The British prohibited circulation of rebel money in areas they occupied, and tried to undermine the American economy and public confidence by emitting counterfeits. By 1780, economic circumstances combined to cause the reduction of Continental Currency notes to one-fortieth of their original face values, and the Congress ceased printing them.

Massachusetts Bay Colony. General Court Promissory note, February 3, 1690 issue, 20s. (altered) (Courtesy of the Stack Family)

The first colonial paper currency, to cover Massachusetts' expenses for an abortive attack on Canada at the beginning of the so-called French and Indian Wars, was followed within a few years by notes from the other colonies, emitted for similar reasons. Such notes were later properly redeemed and destroyed, so that survivors today are usually only false notes or ones that happened to have been altered by criminals, and hence could not be converted to specie.

Pennsylvania Colony. Provincial Promissory note, May 1, 1760 issue, 50s. (ANS 0000.999.29333)

Pennsylvania Colony. Provincial Promissory note, May 1, 1760 issue, £5 (100s.) (ANS 0000.999.29334)

Ingenious Benjamin Franklin, an accomplished printer, introduced plate blocks molded from actual leaves in the effort to combat early counterfeiters. With his partner David Hall, he prospered providing currency for his own province as well as for colonial New Jersey and Delaware. Counterfeiting was very widespread during the colonial era.

Revolutionary War: Continental Congress. Continental Currency promissory notes, May 10, 1775 issue, $1 (ANS 0000.999.29827)

Paper money issued by the Congress became proverbially worthless by war's end, when the phrase "not worth a Continental" was commonplace. Most were printed by the successor to Franklin's firm. In 1776, the "one dollar denomination" was left out in anticipation of minting an actual coin intended to be worth a Spanish 8-reales piece, the "dollar" of the day.

A New World of Finance

Wartime experience left Americans bitter toward the use of paper money, largely regarded as fraudulent due to extreme depreciation and lack of redemption. To stabilize government expenditures, Alexander Hamilton, as first Secretary of the Treasury, was instrumental in founding the Bank of the United States in 1791 establishing a system of badly-needed credit for the government. This bank, and other pioneering financial institutions chartered by the states, began issuing private currencies to facilitate borrowing and lending.

With the adoption of the Constitution, monetary production was redefined and restricted as a national prerogative. Creation of the United States mint, in Philadelphia, was one of the important accomplishments of President Washington's first administration. Coinage, though, was wholly inadequate for financing growth. With ever-growing needs for a medium of exchange, numerous banks and other businesses issued quantities of their own paper currency. Although the actual states were constitutionally forbidden to issue their own money, hundreds of private firms circumvented the law by producing what became generally known as "broken-bank notes." Counterfeiting abounded.

Demands for money in the Civil War rapidly exceeded the availability of specie (gold and silver) and the capacities of the private banking system. The governments in both the North and the South began to print their own currencies as a temporary wartime expedient. In the Union, competing currencies were eventually curtailed by a 10% tax on privately printed notes. Many of the former note-issuing businesses successfully liquidated or amalgamated and others were converted into "national banks" under the National Banking Act of 1863.

United States. Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, July 21, 1796, cashier's check for $100 (ANS 0000.999.59177)

The Bank of the United States, although officially private, was the first central bank of the country. It was intended to handle government deposits and disbursements and to facilitate commerce. Producing its own checks and currency notes, it stirred opposition in some quarters of the public.

United States. Legal Tender note, August 1, 1862 issue, $1 (ANS 0000.999.59174)

"Demand Notes," the first federal issues of the Civil War, were immediately exchangeable in gold or silver "on demand" at seven banks spread across the country. They were quickly replaced by very similar-looking "legal tender" notes that could not be readily converted to specie. These issues were notable for the bright, dark green imprints on their backs, and ever since then American paper currency has been familiarly nicknamed "greenbacks."

United States. National Currency, Merchants National Bank of the City of New York, First Charter period, original series, July 19, 1865, $20 (ANS 0000.999.59176)

Under the National Banking Act, sound private banks were permitted to issue their own notes as part of a new, unified national currency system. Two series were introduced during the first charter period, ending in 1882. Banks chartered after that date used variant types through the second charter period, ending in 1902, followed by new designs and eventually, in the 1920s, by small-sized notes of modern appearance.

Paper Money Predominates

Confederate paper money became famously worthless at the end of the war. Likewise, the Federal government never made good on its own promises to retire its paper currency. The strength of the country and its economy stood behind its paper, but there was still serious distrust. A variety of different forms of issues were offered: interest-bearing notes, notes redeemable in gold or silver, notes convertible to silver or gold, notes usable for paying taxes, notes for handling small amounts in the absence of coins, notes representing the collateral assets of nationally chartered banks and, especially, "legal tender" notes (also called "United States notes")-bills that were legally required to be accepted when presented in payments.

Following the financial panic of 1907, the Federal Reserve banking system was established to provide a safety "buffer" between the government and the economy. A new Federal Reserve Bank Note currency was able to be sustained through the Great Depression of the 1930s while most other forms of American currency were abandoned. Silver certificates lasted until the end of precious metal coinage minting in the 1960s. United States notes (direct "legal tender" obligations of the government) were also eliminated at this time, leaving the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve central bank notes as the only surviving American paper money. Universal acceptance of the currency and precautions against counterfeiting remain important issues today, along with vast production.

United States. Gold Coin note, First National Gold Bank of San Francisco, November 30, 1870, $5 (ANS 0000.999.53028)

Wealth emanating from the California gold rush led to issuance not only of relatively abundant gold coinage and "gold certificates" but of special national currency notes valued in gold coin, representing the collateral of a limited number of banks. These rare bills depicted contemporary American gold coins on the back, using gold-brown ink and yellowish paper.

United States. Treasury note, Series 1890, $5 (serial number A1*). (ANS 2001.4.2; gift of Paul R. Wilson)

Treasury notes of 1890 and 1891 resulted from the government's policies of unlimited silver coinage, purchasing silver for inflated prices. These notes could be converted by the recipients into more precious gold, enriching certain wealthy mining interests and thus helping lead to the financial collapse of 1894. Largely redeemed, such notes are quite rare today.

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United States. Silver certificate, Series 1896 ("Educational Series"), $1. (ANS 1980.67.17; gift of the Chase Manhattan Bank, NA)

The 1896 series of one, two, and five dollars are considered to be the most artistically attractive of all United States currency issues. They are the only ones whose face designs were taken and adapted from paintings, and because of this, it was found difficult to control the quality of inking on printing plates. The name "Educational Series" is given to the notes due to the title and imagery of the one-dollar bill: "History Instructing Youth," from a mural by Will H. Low.

United States. Silver certificate, Series 1896 ("Educational Series"), $2. (ANS 1980.67.16; gift of the Chase Manhattan Bank, NA)

The two dollar "Educational Series" note depicted on its face a design by Edwin H. Blashfield called "Science Presenting Steam and Electricity to Commerce and Manufacture."

United States. Legal Tender ("United States") note, Series 1963, $2. (ANS 1989.47.1; gift of William B. Warden, Jr.)

In the heyday of obsolete bank notes, $2 and $3 bills were commonly issued as well as a variety of other sometimes surprising denominations. In the original Legal Tender issue of 1862, the government had intended to produce a three dollar bill, but never did. Two dollar notes, occasionally produced even today, remained popular for betting at horse racing tracks, but are seldom seen elsewhere.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, Richmond E5, Series 1999: uncut sheet of four $1 notes. (ANS 2005.13.67; gift of Dr. David Menchell)

American notes are printed today in 32-subject sheets, with each individual note so marked that it can be determined in exactly which position in which quadrant it was created. For collectors, the Treasury Department makes available several versions of uncut or partially-cut sheets, which show how the serial numbering sequences vary.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, Atlanta F6, Series 1977: $1 note, package label. (ANS 2005.30.19; gift of Roger deWardt Lane)

This is an original package label from the wrapper that was around a "brick" of notes, as issued to banks by the Federal Reserve system. It is unusual for production packaging materials such as this to have been preserved. They help provide us with a picture of how shipments of money are assembled.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, Atlanta F6, Series 1977: $1 note. (ANS 2005.30.18; gift of Roger deWardt Lane)

This note was the first that came from the original package or "brick" of notes from which the above wrapper label was taken, as indicated by the serial number, F512396001A. Notes are cut from sheets in stacks of thousands, the serial numbers per package reflecting the number assembled together.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, Atlanta F6, Series 1995, $5, replacement ("star note") issue. (ANS 2005.13.68; gift of Dr. David Menchell)

Special replacement notes are printed by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing to keep the place and correct count in stacks of notes when particular individual sheets are removed for examination or testing, or are rejected on account of technical flaws. Notes on these sheets are marked with an asterisk ("star") by their serial numbers to indicate that they are not part of a normal sequence. Understandably, they are far scarcer than the ordinary notes seen by the public, and are widely appreciated by collectors.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, New York B2, Series 1977A, $10. (ANS 2005.5.66; gift of Dr. David Menchell)

Each design change on paper currency is reflected in a new series designation; suffix letters indicate a change in government official signatories, namely the Treasurer of the United States and/or the Secretary of the Treasury. Federal Reserve notes are issued from each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts, marked in the past by the seal of the particular bank and today by just the bank's letter-number combination.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, New York B2, Series 1985, $50. (ANS 2005.5.73; gift of Dr. David Menchell)

Since the 1930s, $100 notes have been the highest denominated American currency. Representing the wealth of the country and also serving as a cash supply for the rest of the world, Federal Reserve notes are purchased from the Government Bureau of Engraving and Printing at a profit for the Treasury and then distributed through the twelve Federal Reserve banking districts as the needs of the economy dictate.

United States. Federal Reserve notes, Cleveland D4, Series 2004, $20. (ANS 2005.13.69; gift of Dr. David Menchell)

In recent years, the Treasury Department has been thoroughly redesigning American paper money, incorporating advanced anti-counterfeiting measures while at the same time retaining traditional features such as the portraits, motifs, and colors of past United States paper money issues.

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The paper money issued by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 was the first authorized by any government in the Western world. False notes as well as genuine notes altered by criminals followed promptly. From colonial notes to the much-maligned Continental Currency to the "broken-bank" notes prior to the Civil War, paper money was widely distrusted in early America.

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However, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill to renew the Bank's charter, withdrew United States Treasury funds from the Bank, and ceased all United States Government involvement in the Bank's operations. In 1837, the trustees of the Bank secured a charter from the State of Pennsylvania. Then, they paid the United States Government for its outstanding interest and swapped old stock for new stock on a one-to-one share basis. The Bank's name changed to the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania.

After 1837, the history of the Bank was very rocky. On February 4, 1841, the Bank closed its doors. This action left many creditors, including the London Merchant Bank, Baring Brothers, and the Rothschild family, with over $25 million in claims. They were lucky to receive one-third value for their claims.

Because the Treasury Department did not issue these notes, we have no way of verifying their authenticity or figuring out their value. It is likely, though, that the is part of a series of antiqued reproductions issued in various denominations and forms for use in advertising campaigns. The most popular of these bear the serial number 8894. These notes are so widespread that they were the subject of an August 5, 1970, article in COIN WORLD.

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Multiple types of banknotes of the United States dollar have been issued, including Federal Reserve Notes, Silver Certificates, Gold certificates and United States Notes.

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Ah, the enduring appeal - and influence - of gold. Even though it is no longer used as a primary form of currency in developed nations, the yellow metal continues to have a strong impact on the value of those currencies. Moreover, there is a strong correlation between its value and the strength of currencies trading on foreign exchanges. (For a quick primer, see " Gold: The Other Currency.")

To help illustrate this relationship between gold and foreign exchange trading, consider these five important features of the yellow stuff:

As early as the Byzantine Empire, gold was used to support fiat currencies - that is, those considered legal tender in their nation of origin. Gold was also used as the world reserve currency up through most of the 20 th century; the United States used the gold standard until 1971 when President Nixon discontinued it.

Until the gold standard was abandoned, countries couldn't simply print their fiat currencies ad nauseam; the paper money had to be backed up by an equal amount of gold in their reserves (then, as now, countries kept supplies of gold bullion on hand). Although the gold standard has long fallen out of in the developed world, some economists feel we should return to it due to the volatility of the U.S. dollar and other currencies; they like that it limited the amount of money nations were allowed to print.

Investors typically buy large quantities of gold when their country is experiencing high levels of inflation. The demand for gold increases during inflationary times due to its inherent value and limited supply. As it cannot be diluted, gold is able to retain value much better than other forms of currency. (For related reading, see " The Great Inflation of the 1970s.")

For example, in April 2011, investors feared declining values of fiat currency and drove the price of gold to a staggering $1,500 an ounce. This indicates there was little confidence in the currencies on the world market and that expectations of future economic stability were grim.

The value of a nation's currency is strongly tied to the value of its imports and exports. When a country imports more than it exports, the value of its currency will decline. On the other hand, the value of its currency will increase when a country is a net exporter. Thus, a country that exports gold or has access to gold reserves will see an increase in the strength of its currency when gold prices increase, since this increases the value of the country's total exports. (For related reading, see " What Is Wrong With Gold?")

In other words, an increase in the price of gold can create a trade surplus or help offset a trade deficit. Conversely, countries that are large importers of gold will inevitably end up having a weaker currency when the price of gold rises. For example, countries that specialize in producing products made with gold, but lack their own reserves, will be large importers of gold. Thus, they will be particularly susceptible to increases in the price of gold.

When central banks purchase gold, it affects the supply and demand of the domestic currency and may result in inflation. This is largely due to the fact that banks rely on printing more money to buy gold, and thereby create an excess supply of the fiat currency. (The metal's rich history stems from its ability to maintain value over the long term. For more, see " 8 Reasons to Own Gold.")

Many people mistakenly use gold as a definitive proxy for valuing a country's currency. Although there is undoubtedly a relationship between gold prices and the value of a fiat currency, it is not always an inverse relationship as many people assume.

For example, if there is high demand from an industry that requires gold for production, it will cause gold prices to rise. But this will say nothing about the local currency, which may very well be highly valued at the same time. Thus, while the price of gold can often be used as a reflection of the value of the U.S. dollar, or any currency, conditions need to be analyzed to determine if an inverse relationship is indeed appropriate.

Gold has a profound impact on the value of world currencies. Even though the gold standard has been abandoned, gold as a commodity can act as a substitute for fiat currencies and be used as an effective hedge against inflation. There is no doubt that gold will continue to play an integral role in the foreign exchange markets. Therefore, it is an important metal to follow and analyze for its unique ability to represent the health of both local and international economies.

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Ah, the enduring appeal - and influence - of gold. Even though it is no longer used as a primary form of currency in developed nations, the yellow metal continues to have a strong impact on the value of those currencies. Moreover, there is a strong correlation between its value and the strength of currencies trading on foreign exchanges.

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Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

On your assembling to perform the high trusts which the people of the United States have confided to you, of legislating for their common welfare, it gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon the happy condition of our beloved country. By the favor of Divine Providence health is again restored to us, peace reigns within our borders, abundance crowns the labors of our fields, commerce and domestic industry flourish and increase, and individual happiness rewards the private virtue and enterprise of our citizens.

Our condition abroad is no less honorable than it is prosperous at home. Seeking nothing that is not right and determined to submit to nothing that is wrong, but desiring honest friendships and liberal intercourse with all nations, the United States have gained throughout the world the confidence and respect which are due to a policy so just and so congenial to the character of the American people and to the spirit of their institutions.

In bringing to your notice the particular state of our foreign affairs, it affords me high gratification to inform you that they are in a condition which promises the continuance of friendship with all nations.

With Great Britain the interesting question of our North East boundary remains still undecided. A negotiation, however, upon that subject has been renewed since the close of the last Congress, and a proposition has been submitted to the British Government with the view of establishing, in conformity with the resolution of the Senate, the line designated by the treaty of 1783. Though no definitive answer has been received, it may be daily looked for, and I entertain a hope that the overture may ultimately lead to a satisfactory adjustment of this important matter.

I have the satisfaction to inform you that a negotiation which, by desire of the House of Representatives, was opened some years ago with the British Government, for the erection of light houses on the Bahamas, has been successful. Those works, when completed, together with those which the United States have constructed on the western side of the Gulf of Florida, will contribute essentially to the safety of navigation in that sea. This joint participation in establishments interesting to humanity and beneficial to commerce is worthy of two enlightened nations, and indicates feelings which can not fail to have a happy influence upon their political relations. It is gratifying to the friends of both to perceive that the intercourse between the two people is becoming daily more extensive, and that sentiments of mutual good will have grown up befitting their common origin and justifying the hope that by wise counsels on each side not only unsettled questions may be satisfactorily terminated, but new causes of misunderstanding prevented.

Not withstanding that I continue to receive the most amicable assurances from the Government of France, and that in all other respects the most friendly relations exist between the United States and that Government, it is to be regretted that the stipulations of the convention concluded on July 4th, 1831 remain in some important parts unfulfilled.

By the second article of that convention it was stipulated that the sum payable to the United States should be paid at Paris, in six annual installments, into the hands of such person or persons as should be authorized by the Government of the United States to receive it, and by the same article the first installment was payable on February 2d, 1833. By the act of Congress of July 13th, 1832 it was made the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to cause the several installments, with the interest thereon, to be received from the French Government and transferred to the United States in such manner as he may deem best; and by the same act of Congress the stipulations on the part of the United States in the convention were in all respects fulfilled. Not doubting that a treaty thus made and ratified by the two Governments, and faithfully executed by the United States, would be promptly complied with by the other party, and desiring to avoid the risk and expense of intermediate agencies, the Secretary of the Treasury deemed it advisable to receive and transfer the first installment by means of a draft upon the French minister of finance.

A draft for this purpose was accordingly drawn in favor of the cashier of the Bank of the United States for the amount accruing to the United States out of the first installment, and the interest payable with it. This bill was not drawn at Washington until five days after the installment was payable at Paris, and was accompanied by a special authority from the President authorizing the cashier or his assigns to receive the amount. The mode thus adopted of receiving the installment was officially made known to the French Government by the American charge d'affaires at Paris, pursuant to instructions from the Department of State. The bill, however, though not presented for payment until March 23d, 1833, was not paid, and for the reason assigned by the French minister of finance that no appropriation had been made by the French Chambers. It is not known to me that up to that period any appropriation had been required of the Chambers, and although a communication was subsequently made to the Chambers by direction of the King, recommending that the necessary provision should be made for carrying the convention into effect, it was at an advanced period of the session, and the subject was finally postponed until the next meeting of the Chambers.

Not withstanding it has been supposed by the French ministry that the financial stipulations of the treaty can not be carried into effect without an appropriation by the Chambers, it appears to me to be not only consistent with the character of France, but due to the character of both Governments, as well as to the rights of our citizens, to treat the convention, made and ratified in proper form, as pledging the good faith of the French Government for its execution, and as imposing upon each department an obligation to fulfill it; and I have received assurances through our charge d'affaires at Paris and the French minister plenipotentiary at Washington, and more recently through the minister of the United States at Paris, that the delay has not proceeded from any indisposition on the part of the King and his ministers to fulfill their treaty, and that measures will be presented at the next meeting of the Chambers, and with a reasonable hope of success, to obtain the necessary appropriation.

It is necessary to state, however, that the documents, except certain lists of vessels captured, condemned, or burnt at sea, proper to facilitate the examination and liquidation of the reclamations comprised in the stipulations of the convention, and which by the 6th article France engaged to communicate to the United States by the intermediary of the legation, though repeatedly applied for by the American charge d'affaires under instructions from this Government, have not yet been communicated; and this delay, it is apprehended, will necessarily prevent the completion of the duties assigned to the commissioners within the time at present prescribed by law.

The reasons for delaying to communicate these documents have not been explicitly stated, and this is the more to be regretted as it is not understood that the interposition of the Chambers is in any manner required for the delivery of those papers.

Under these circumstances, in a case so important to the interests of our citizens and to the character of our country, and under disappointments so unexpected, I deemed it my duty, however I might respect the general assurances to which I have adverted, no longer to delay the appointment of a minister plenipotentiary to Paris, but to dispatch him in season to communicate the result of his application to the French Government at an early period of your session. I accordingly appointed a distinguished citizen for this purpose, who proceeded on his mission in August last and was presented to the King early in the month of October. He is particularly instructed as to all matters connected with the present posture of affairs, and I indulge the hope that with the representations he is instructed to make, and from the disposition manifested by the King and his ministers in their recent assurances to our minister at Paris, the subject will be early considered, and satisfactorily disposed of at the next meeting of the Chambers.

As this subject involves important interests and has attracted a considerable share of the public attention, I have deemed it proper to make this explicit statement of its actual condition, and should I be disappointed in the hope now entertained the subject will be again brought to the notice of Congress in such manner as the occasion may require.

The friendly relations which have always been maintained between the United States and Russia have been further extended and strengthened by the treaty of navigation and commerce concluded on December 6th, 1832, and sanctioned by the Senate before the close of its last session. The ratifications having been since exchanged, the liberal provisions of the treaty are now in full force, and under the encouragement which they have secured a flourishing and increasing commerce, yielding its benefits to the enterprise of both nations, affords to each the just recompense of wise measures, and adds new motives for that mutual friendship which the two countries have hitherto cherished toward each other.

It affords me peculiar satisfaction to state that the Government of Spain has at length yielded to the justice of the claims which have been so long urged in behalf of our citizens, and has expressed a willingness to provide an indemnification as soon as the proper amount can be agreed upon. Upon this latter point it is probable an understanding had taken place between the minister of the United States and the Spanish Government before the decease of the late King of Spain; and, unless that event may have delayed its completion, there is reason to hope that it may be in my power to announce to you early in your present session the conclusion of a convention upon terms not less favorable than those entered into for similar objects with other nations. That act of justice would well accord with the character of Spain, and is due to the United States from their ancient friend. It could not fail to strengthen the sentiments of amity and good will between the two nations which it is so much the wish of the United States to cherish and so truly the interest of both to maintain.

By the first section of an act of Congress passed on July 13th, 1832 the tonnage duty on Spanish ships arriving from the ports of Spain previous to October 20th, 1817, being five cents per ton. That act was intended to give effect on our side to an arrangement made with the Spanish Government by which discriminating duties of tonnage were to be abolished in the ports of the United States and Spain on he vessels of the two nations. Pursuant to that arrangement, which was carried into effect on the part of Spain on May 20th, 1832, by a royal order dated April 29th, 1832, American vessels in the ports of Spain have paid five cents per ton, which rate of duty is also paid in those ports by Spanish ships; but as American vessels pay no tonnage duty in the ports of the United States, the duty of five cents payable in our ports by Spanish vessels under the act above mentioned is really a discriminating duty, operating to the disadvantage of Spain.

Though no complaint has yet been made on the part of Spain, we are not the less bound by the obligations of good faith to remove the discrimination, and I recommend that the act be amended accordingly. As the royal order above alluded to includes the ports of the Balearic and Canary islands as well as those of Spain, it would seem that the provisions of the act of Congress should be equally extensive, and that for the repayments of such duties as may have been improperly received an addition should be made to the sum appropriated at the last session of Congress for refunding discriminating duties.

As the arrangement referred to, however, did not embrace the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, discriminating duties to the prejudice of American shipping continue to be levied there. From the extent of the commerce carried on between the United States and those islands, particularly the former, this discrimination causes serious injury to one of those great national interests which it has been considered an essential part of our policy to cherish, and has given rise to complaints on the part of our merchants. Under instructions given to our minister at Madrid, earnest representations have been made by him to the Spanish Government upon this subject, and there is reason to expect, from the friendly disposition which is entertained toward this country, that a beneficial change will be produced.

The disadvantage, however, to which our shipping is subjected by the operation of these discriminating duties requires that they be met by suitable countervailing duties during your present session, power being at the same time vested in the President to modify or discontinue them as the discriminating duties on American vessels or their cargoes may be modified or discontinued at those islands. Intimations have been given to the Spanish Government that the United States may be obliged to resort to such measures as are of necessary self-defense, and there is no reason to apprehend that it would be unfavorably received. The proposed proceeding if adopted would not be permitted, however, in any degree to induce a relaxation in the efforts of our minister to effect a repeal of this irregularity by friendly negotiation, and it might serve to give force to his representations by showing the dangers to which that valuable trade is exposed by the obstructions and burdens which a system of discriminating and countervailing duties necessarily produces.

The selection and preparation of the Florida archives for the purpose of being delivered over to the United States, in conformity with the royal order as mentioned in my last annual message, though in progress, has not yet been completed. This delay has been produced partly by causes which were unavoidable, particularly the prevalence of the cholera at Havana; but measures have been taken which it is believed will expedite the delivery of those important records.

Congress were informed at the opening of the last session that "owing, as was alleged, to embarrassments in the finances of Portugal, consequent upon the civil war in which that nation was engaged", payment had been made of only one installment of the amount which the Portuguese Government had stipulated to pay for indemnifying our citizens for property illegally captured in the blockade of Terceira. Since that time a postponement for two years, with interest, of the two remaining installments was requested by the Portuguese Government, and as a consideration it offered to stipulate that rice of the United States should be admitted into Portugal at the same duties as Brazilian rice. Being satisfied that no better arrangement could be made, my consent was given, and a royal order of the King of Portugal was accordingly issued on February 4th, 1833 for the reduction of the duty on rice of the United States. It would give me great pleasure if in speaking of that country, in whose prosperity the United States are so much interested, and with whom a long-subsisting, extensive, and mutually advantageous commercial intercourse has strengthened the relation of friendship, I could announce to you the restoration of its internal tranquillity.

Subsequently to the commencement of the last session of Congress the final installment payable by Denmark under the convention of March 28th, 1830 was received. The commissioners for examining the claims have since terminated their labors, and their awards have been paid at the Treasury as they have been called for. The justice rendered to our citizens by that Government is thus completed, and a pledge is thereby afforded for the maintenance of that friendly intercourse becoming the relations that the two nations mutually bear to each other.

It is satisfactory to inform you that the Danish Government have recently issued an ordinance by which the commerce with the island of St. Croix is placed on a more liberal footing than heretofore. This change can not fail to prove beneficial to the trade between the United States and that colony, and the advantages likely to flow from it may lead to greater relaxations in the colonial systems of other nations.

The ratifications of the convention with the King of the two Sicilies have been duly exchanged, and the commissioners appointed for examining the claims under it have entered upon the duties assigned to them by law. The friendship that the interests of the two nations require of them being now established, it may be hoped that each will enjoy the benefits which a liberal commerce should yield to both.

A treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and Belgium was concluded during the last winter and received the sanction of the Senate, but the exchange of the ratifications has been hitherto delayed, in consequence, in the first instance, of some delay in the reception of the treaty at Brussels, and, subsequently, of the absence of the Belgian minister of foreign affairs at the important conferences in which his Government is engaged at London. That treaty does but embody those enlarged principles of friendly policy which it is sincerely hoped will always regulate the conduct of the two nations having such strong motives to maintain amicable relations toward each other and so sincerely desirous to cherish them.

With all the other European powers with whom the United States have formed diplomatic relations and with the Sublime Porte the best understanding prevails. From all I continue to receive assurances of good will toward the United States-assurances which it gives me no less pleasure to reciprocate than to receive. With all, the engagements which have been entered into are fulfilled with good faith on both sides. Measures have also been taken to enlarge our friendly relations and extend our commercial intercourse with other States. The system we have pursued of aiming at no exclusive advantages, of dealing with all on terms of fair and equal reciprocity, and of adhering scrupulously to all our engagements is well calculated to give success to efforts intended to be mutually beneficial.

The wars of which the southern part of this continent was so long the theater, and which were carried on either by the mother country against the States which had formerly been her colonies or by the States against each other, having terminated, and their civil dissensions having so far subsided as with few exceptions no longer to disturb the public tranquillity, it is earnestly hoped those States will be able to employ themselves without interruption in perfecting their institutions, cultivating the arts of peace, and promoting by wise councils and able exertions the public and private prosperity which their patriotic struggles so well entitle them to enjoy.

With those States our relations have under-gone but little change during the present year. No reunion having yet taken place between the States which composed the Republic of Colombia, our charge d'affaires at Bogota has been accredited to the Government of New Grenada, and we have, therefore, no diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Equator, except as they may be included in those heretofore formed with the Colombian Republic.

It is understood that representatives from the three states were about to assemble at Bogota to confer on the subject of their mutual interests, particularly that of their union, and if the result should render it necessary, measures will be taken on our part to preserve with each that friendship and those liberal commercial connections which it has been the constant desire of the United States to cultivate with their sister Republics of this hemisphere. Until the important question of reunion shall be settled, however, the different matters which have been under discussion between the United States and the Republic of Colombia, or either of the States which composed it, are not likely to be brought to a satisfactory issue.

In consequence of the illness of the charge d'affaires appointed to Central America at the last session of Congress, he was prevented from proceeding on his mission until the month of October. It is hoped, however, that he is by this time at his post, and that the official intercourse, unfortunately so long interrupted, has been thus renewed on the part of the two nations so amicably and advantageously connected by engagements founded on the most enlarged principles of commercial reciprocity.

It is gratifying to state that since my last annual message some of the most important claims of our fellow citizens upon the Government of Brazil have been satisfactorily adjusted, and a reliance is placed on the friendly dispositions manifested by it that justice will also be done in others. No new causes of complaint have arisen, and the trade between the two countries flourishes under the encouragement secured to it by the liberal provisions of the treaty.

It is cause of regret that, owing, probably, to the civil dissensions which have occupied the attention of the Mexican Government, the time fixed by the treaty of limits with the United States for the meeting of the commissioners to define the boundaries between the two nations has been suffered to expire without the appointment of any commissioners on the part of that Government. While the true boundary remains in doubt by either party it is difficult to give effect to those measures which are necessary to the protection and quiet of our numerous citizens residing near that frontier. The subject is one of great solicitude to the United States, and will not fail to receive my earnest attention.

The treaty concluded with Chili and approved by the Senate at its last session was also ratified by the Chilian Government, but with certain additional and explanatory articles of a nature to have required it to be again submitted to the Senate. The time limited for the exchange of the ratification, however, having since expired, the action of both Governments on the treaty will again become necessary.

The negotiations commenced with the Argentine Republic relative to the outrages committed on our vessels engaged in the fisheries at the Falkland Islands by persons acting under the color of its authority, as well as the other matters in controversy between the two Governments, have been suspended by the departure of the charge d'affaires of the United States from Buenos Ayres. It is understood, however, that a minister was subsequently appointed by that Government to renew the negotiation in the United States, but though daily expected he has not yet arrived in this country.

With Peru no treaty has yet been formed, and with Bolivia no diplomatic intercourse has yet been established. It will be my endeavor to encourage those sentiments of amity and that liberal commerce which belong to the relations in which all the independent States of this continent stand toward each other.

I deem it proper to recommend to your notice the revision of our consular system. This has become an important branch of the public service, in as much as it is intimately connected with the preservation of our national character abroad, with the interest of our citizens in foreign countries, with the regulation and care of our commerce, and with the protection of our sea men. At the close of the last session of Congress I communicated a report from the Secretary of State upon the subject, to which I now refer, as containing information which may be useful in any inquiries that Congress may see fit to institute with a view to a salutary reform of the system.

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate you upon the prosperous condition of the finances of the country, as will appear from the report which the Secretary of the Treasury will in due time lay before you. The receipts into the Treasury during the present year will amount to more than $32,000,000. The revenue derived from customs will, it is believed, be more than $28,000,000, and the public lands will yield about $3,0900,000. The expenditures within the year for all objects, including $2,572,240.99 on account of the public debt, will not amount to $25,000,000, and a large balance will remain in the Treasury after satisfying all the appropriations chargeable on the revenue for the present year.

The measures taken by the Secretary of the Treasury will probably enable to pay off in the course of the present year the residue of the exchanged 4.5% stock, redeemable on January 1st, 1834. It has therefore been included in the estimated expenditures of this year, and forms a part of the sum above stated to have been paid on account of the public debt. The payment of this stock will reduce the whole debt of the United States, funded and unfunded, to the sum of $4,760,082.08, and as provision has already been made for the 4.5% stocks above mentioned, and charged in the expenses of the present year, the sum last stated is all that now remains of the national debt; and the revenue of the coming year, together with the balance now in the Treasury, will be sufficient to discharge it, after meeting the current expenses of the Government. Under the power given to the commissioners of the sinking fund, it will, I have no doubt, be purchased on favorable terms within the year.

From this view of the state of the finances and the public engagements yet to be fulfilled you will perceive that if Providence permits me to meet you at another session I shall have the high gratification of announcing to you that the national debt is extinguished. I can not refrain from expressing the pleasure I feel at the near approach of that desirable event. The short period of time within which the public debt will have been discharged is strong evidence of the abundant resources of the country and of the prudence and economy with which the Government has heretofore been administered. We have waged two wars since we became a nation, with one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world, both of them undertaken in defense of our dearest rights, been successfully prosecuted and honorably terminated; and many of those who partook in the first struggle as well as in the second will have lived to see the last item of the debt incurred in these necessary but expensive conflicts faithfully and honestly discharged. And we shall have the proud satisfaction of bequeathing to the public servants who follow us in the administration of the Government the rare blessing of a revenue sufficiently abundant, raised without injustice or oppression to our citizens, and unencumbered with any burdens but what they themselves shall think proper to impose upon it.

The flourishing state of the finances ought not, however, to encourage us to indulge in a lavish expenditure of the public treasure. The receipts of the present year do not furnish the test by which we are to estimate the income of the next. The changes made in our revenue system by the acts of Congress of 1832 and 1833, and more especially by the former, have swelled the receipts of the present year far beyond the amount to be expected in future years upon the reduced tariff of duties. The shortened credits on revenue bonds and the cash duties on woolens which were introduced by the act of 1832, and took effect on March 4th, 1832, have brought large sums into the Treasury in 1833, which, according to the credits formerly given, would not have been payable until 1834, and would have formed a part of the income of that year. These causes would of themselves produce a great diminution of the receipts in the year 1834 as compared with the present one, and they will be still more diminished by the reduced rates of duties which take place on January 1st, 1834 on some of the most important and productive articles.

Upon the best estimates that can be made the receipts of the next year, with the aid of the unappropriated amount now in the Treasury, will not be much more than sufficient to meet the expenses of the year and pay the small remnant of the national debt which yet remains unsatisfied. I can not, therefore, recommend to you any alteration in the present tariff of duties. The rate as now fixed by law on the various articles was adopted at the last session of Congress, as a matter of compromise, with unusual unanimity, and unless it is found to produce more than the necessities of the Government call for there would seem to be no reason at this time to justify a change.

But while I forbear to recommend any further reduction of the duties beyond that already provided for by the existing laws, I must earnestly and respectfully press upon Congress the importance of abstaining from all appropriations which are not absolutely required for the public interest and authorized by the powers clearly delegated to the United States. We are beginning a new era in our Government. The national debt, which has so long been a burden on the Treasury, will be finally discharged in the course of the ensuing year. No more memory will afterwards be needed than what may be necessary to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government. Now, then, is the proper moment to fix our system of expenditure on firm and durable principles, and I can not too strongly urge the necessity of a rigid economy and an inflexible determination not to enlarge the income beyond the real necessities of the Government and not to increase the wants of the Government by unnecessary and profuse expenditures.

If a contrary course should be pursued, it may happen that the revenue of 1834 will fall short of the demands upon it, and after reducing the tariff in order to lighten the burdens of the people, and providing for a still further reduction to take effect hereafter, it would be much to be deplored if at the end of another year we should find ourselves obliged to retrace our steps and impose additional taxes to meet unnecessary expenditures.

It is my duty on this occasion to call your attention to the destruction of the public building occupied by the Treasury Department, which happened since the last adjournment of Congress. A thorough inquiry into the causes of this loss was directed and made at the time, the result of which will be duly communicated to you. I take pleasure, however, in stating here that by the laudable exertions of the officers of the Department and many of the citizens of the District but few papers were lost, and none that will materially affect the public interest.

The public convenience requires that another building should be erected as soon as practicable, and in providing for it it will be advisable to enlarge in some manner the accommodations for the public officers of the several Departments, and to authorize the erection of suitable depositories for the safe-keeping of the public documents and records.

Since the last adjournment of Congress the Secretary of the Treasury has directed the money of the United States to be deposited in certain State banks designated by him, and he will immediately lay before you his reasons for this direction. I concur with him entirely in the view he has taken on the subject, and some months before the removal I urged upon the Department the propriety of taking that step. The near approach of the day on which the charger will expire, as well as the conduct of the bank, appeared to me to call for this measure upon the high considerations of public interest and public duty. The extent of its misconduct, however, although known to be great, was not at that time fully developed by proof. It was not until late in the month of August that I received from the Government directors an official report establishing beyond question that this great and powerful institution had been actively engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers by means of its money, and that, in violation of the express provisions of its charter, it had by a formal resolution placed its funds at the disposition of its president to be employed in sustaining the political power of the bank. A copy of this resolution is contained in the report of the Government directors before referred to, and how ever the object may be disguised by cautious language, no one can doubt that this money was in truth intended for electioneering purposes, and the particular uses to which it was proved to have been applied abundantly show that it was so understood. Not only was the evidence complete as to the past application of the money and power of the bank to electioneering purposes, but that the resolution of the board of directors authorized the same course to be pursued in future.

It being thus established by unquestionable proof that the Bank of the United States was converted into a permanent electioneering engine, it appeared to me that the path of duty which the executive department of the Government ought to pursue was not doubtful. As by the terms of the bank charter no officer but the Secretary of the Treasury could remove the deposits, it seemed to me that this authority ought to be at once exerted to deprive that great corporation of the support and countenance of the Government in such an use of its and such an exertion of its power. In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions. It must now be determined whether the bank is to have its candidates for all offices in the country, from the highest to the lowest, or whether candidates on both sides of political questions shall be brought forward as heretofore and supported by the usual means.

At this time the efforts of the bank to control public opinion, through the distresses of some and the fears of others, are equally apparent, and, if possible, more objectionable. By a curtailment of its accommodations more rapid than any emergency requires, and even while it retains specie to an almost unprecedented amount in its vaults, it is attempting to produce great embarrassment in one portion of the community, while through presses known to have been sustained by its money it attempts by unfounded alarms to create a panic in all.

These are the means by which it seems to expect that it can force a restoration of the deposits, and as a necessary consequence extort from Congress a renewal of its charter. I am happy to know that through the good sense of our people the effort to get up a panic has hitherto failed, and that through the increased accommodations which the State banks have been enabled to afford, no public distress has followed the exertions of the bank, and it can not be doubted that the exercise of its power and the expenditure of its money, as well as its efforts to spread groundless alarm, will be met and rebuked as they deserve. In my own sphere of duty I should feel myself called on by the facts disclosed to order a scire facias against the bank, with a view to put an end to the chartered rights it has so palpably violated, were it not that the charter itself will expire as soon as a decision would probably be obtained from the court of last resort.

I called the attention of Congress to this subject in my last annual message, and informed them that such measures as were within the reach of the Secretary of the Treasury had been taken to enable him to judge whether the public deposits in the Bank of the United States were entirely safe; but that as his single powers might be inadequate to the object, I recommended the subject to Congress as worthy of their serious investigation, declaring it as my opinion that an inquiry into the transactions of that institution, embracing the branches as well as the principal bank, was called for by the credit which was given throughout the country to many serious charges impeaching their character, and which, if true, might justly excite the apprehension that they were no longer a safe depository for the public money. The extent to which the examination thus recommended was gone into is spread upon your journals, and is too well known to require to be stated. Such as was made resulted in a report from a majority of the Committee of Ways and Means touching certain specified points only, concluding with a resolution that the Government deposits might safely be continued in the Bank of the United States. This resolution was adopted at the close of the session by the vote of a majority of the House of Representatives.

Although I may not always be able to concur in the views of the public interest or the duties of its agents which may be taken by the other departments of the Government or either of its branches, I am, not withstanding, wholly incapable of receiving otherwise than with the most sincere respect all opinions or suggestions proceeding from such a source, and in respect to none am I more inclined to do so than to the House of Representatives. But it will be seen from the brief views at this time taken of the subject by myself, as well as the more ample ones presented by the Secretary of the Treasury, that the change in the deposits which has been ordered has been deemed to be called for by considerations which are not affected by the proceedings referred to, and which, if correctly viewed by that Department, rendered its act a matter of imperious duty.

Coming as you do, for the most part, immediately from the people and the States by election, and possessing the fullest opportunity to know their sentiments, the present Congress will be sincerely solicitous to carry into full and fair effect the will of their constituents in regard to this institution. It will be for those in whose behalf we all act to decide whether the executive department of the Government, in the steps which it has taken on this subject, has been found in the line of its duty.

The accompanying report of the Secretary of War, with the documents annexed to it, exhibits the operations of the War Department for the past year and the condition of the various subjects intrusted to its administration.

It will be seen from them that the Army maintains the character it has heretofore acquired for efficiency and military knowledge. Nothing has occurred since your last session to require its services beyond the ordinary routine duties which upon the sea-board and the in-land frontier devolve upon it in a time of peace. The system so wisely adopted and so long pursued of constructing fortifications at exposed points and of preparing and collecting the supplies necessary for the military defense of the country, and thus providently furnishing in peace the means of defense in war, has been continued with the usual results. I recommend to your consideration the various subjects suggested in the report of the Secretary of War. Their adoption would promote the public service and meliorate the condition of the Army.

Our relations with the various Indian tribes have been undisturbed since the termination of the difficulties growing out of the hostile aggressions of the Sac and Fox Indians. Several treaties have been formed for the relinquishment of territory to the United States and for the migration of the occupants of the region assigned for their residence West of the Mississippi. Should these treaties be ratified by the Senate, provision will have been made for the removal of almost all the tribes remaining E of that river and for the termination of many difficult and embarrassing questions arising out of their anomalous political condition.

It is to be hoped that those portions of two of the Southern tribes, which in that event will present the only remaining difficulties, will realize the necessity of emigration, and will speedily resort to it. My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength. That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.

Such has been their fate heretofore, and if it is to be averted-and it is-it can only be done by a general removal beyond our boundary and by the reorganization of their political system upon principles adapted to the new relations in which they will be placed. The experiment which has been recently made has so far proved successful. The emigrants generally are represented to be prosperous and contented, the country suitable to their wants and habits, and the essential articles of subsistence easily procured. When the report of the commissioners now engaged in investigating the condition and prospects of these Indians and in devising a plan for their intercourse and government is received, I trust ample means of information will be in possession of the Government for adjusting all the unsettled questions connected with this interesting subject.

The operations of the Navy during the year and its present condition are fully exhibited in the annual report from the Navy Department.

Suggestions are made by the Secretary of various improvements, which deserve careful consideration, and most of which, if adopted, bid fair to promote the efficiency of this important branch of the public service. Among these are the new organization of the Navy Board, the revision of the pay to officers, and a change in the period of time or in the manner of making the annual appropriations, to which I beg leave to call your particular attention.

The views which are presented on almost every portion of our naval concerns, and especially on the amount of force and the number of officers, and the general course of policy appropriate in the present state of our country for securing the great and useful purposes of naval protection in peace and due preparation for the contingencies of war, meet with my entire approbation.

It will be perceived from the report referred to that the fiscal concerns of the establishment are in an excellent condition, and it is hoped that Congress may feel disposed to make promptly every suitable provision desired either for preserving or improving the system.

The general Post Office Department has continued, upon the strength of its own resources, to facilitate the means of communication between the various portions of the Union with increased activity. The method, however, in which the accounts of the transportation of the mail have always been kept appears to have presented an imperfect view of its expenses. It has recently been discovered that from the earliest records of the Department the annual statements have been calculated to exhibit an amount considerably short of the actual expense incurred for that service. These illusory statements, together with the expense of carrying into effect the law of the last session of Congress establishing new mail routes, and a disposition on the part of the head of the Department to gratify the wishes of the public in the extension of mail facilities, have induced him to incur responsibilities for their improvement beyond what the current resources of the Department would sustain. As soon as he had discovered the imperfection of the method he caused an investigation to be made of its results and applied the proper remedy to correct the evil. It became necessary for him to withdraw some of the improvements which he had made to bring the expenses of the Department within its own resources. These expenses were incurred for the public good, and the public have enjoyed their benefit. They are now but partially suspended, and that where they may be discontinued with the least inconvenience to the country.

The progressive increase in the income from postages has equaled the highest expectations, and it affords demonstrative evidence of the growing importance and great utility of this Department. The details are exhibited in the accompanying report of the Post Master General.

The many distressing accidents which have of late occurred in that portion of our navigation carried on by the use of steam power deserve the immediate and unremitting attention of the constituted authorities of the country. The fact that the number of those fatal disasters is constantly increasing, not withstanding the great improvements which are every where made in the machinery employed and in the rapid advances which have made in that branch of science, shows very clearly that they are in a great degree the result of criminal negligence on the part of those by whom the vessels are navigated and to whose care and attention the lives and property of our citizens are so extensively intrusted.

That these evils may be greatly lessened, if not substantially removed, by means of precautionary and penal legislation seems to be highly probably. So far, therefore, as the subject can be regarded as within the constitutional purview of Congress I earnestly recommend it to your prompt and serious consideration.

I would also call your attention to the views I have heretofore expressed of the propriety of amending the Constitution in relation to the mode of electing the President and the Vice-President of the United States. Regarding it as all important to the future quiet and harmony of the people that every intermediate agency in the election of these officers should be removed and that their eligibility should be limited to one term of either four or six years, I can not too earnestly invite your consideration of the subject.

Trusting that your deliberations on all the topics of general interest to which I have adverted, and such others as your more extensive knowledge of the wants of our beloved country may suggest, may be crowned with success, I tender you in conclusion the cooperation which it may be in my power to afford them.

Famous Ship Canals and Waterways The Supreme Court: Stone Court, 1941 to 1946

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Andrew Jackson (December 3, 1833)

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

On your assembling to perform the high trusts which the people of the United States have confided to you, of legislating for their common welfare, it gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon the happy condition of our beloved country. By the favor of Divine Providence health is again restored to us, peace reigns within our borders, abundance crowns the labors of our fields, commerce and domestic industry flourish and increase, and individual happiness rewards the private virtue and enterprise of our citizens.

Our condition abroad is no less honorable than it is prosperous at home. Seeking nothing that is not right and determined to submit to nothing that is wrong, but desiring honest friendships and liberal intercourse with all nations, the United States have gained throughout the world the confidence and respect which are due to a policy so just and so congenial to the character of the American people and to the spirit of their institutions.

In bringing to your notice the particular state of our foreign affairs, it affords me high gratification to inform you that they are in a condition which promises the continuance of friendship with all nations.

With Great Britain the interesting question of our North East boundary remains still undecided. A negotiation, however, upon that subject has been renewed since the close of the last Congress, and a proposition has been submitted to the British Government with the view of establishing, in conformity with the resolution of the Senate, the line designated by the treaty of 1783. Though no definitive answer has been received, it may be daily looked for, and I entertain a hope that the overture may ultimately lead to a satisfactory adjustment of this important matter.

I have the satisfaction to inform you that a negotiation which, by desire of the House of Representatives, was opened some years ago with the British Government, for the erection of light houses on the Bahamas, has been successful. Those works, when completed, together with those which the United States have constructed on the western side of the Gulf of Florida, will contribute essentially to the safety of navigation in that sea. This joint participation in establishments interesting to humanity and beneficial to commerce is worthy of two enlightened nations, and indicates feelings which can not fail to have a happy influence upon their political relations. It is gratifying to the friends of both to perceive that the intercourse between the two people is becoming daily more extensive, and that sentiments of mutual good will have grown up befitting their common origin and justifying the hope that by wise counsels on each side not only unsettled questions may be satisfactorily terminated, but new causes of misunderstanding prevented.

Not withstanding that I continue to receive the most amicable assurances from the Government of France, and that in all other respects the most friendly relations exist between the United States and that Government, it is to be regretted that the stipulations of the convention concluded on July 4th, 1831 remain in some important parts unfulfilled.

By the second article of that convention it was stipulated that the sum payable to the United States should be paid at Paris, in six annual installments, into the hands of such person or persons as should be authorized by the Government of the United States to receive it, and by the same article the first installment was payable on February 2d, 1833. By the act of Congress of July 13th, 1832 it was made the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to cause the several installments, with the interest thereon, to be received from the French Government and transferred to the United States in such manner as he may deem best; and by the same act of Congress the stipulations on the part of the United States in the convention were in all respects fulfilled. Not doubting that a treaty thus made and ratified by the two Governments, and faithfully executed by the United States, would be promptly complied with by the other party, and desiring to avoid the risk and expense of intermediate agencies, the Secretary of the Treasury deemed it advisable to receive and transfer the first installment by means of a draft upon the French minister of finance.

A draft for this purpose was accordingly drawn in favor of the cashier of the Bank of the United States for the amount accruing to the United States out of the first installment, and the interest payable with it. This bill was not drawn at Washington until five days after the installment was payable at Paris, and was accompanied by a special authority from the President authorizing the cashier or his assigns to receive the amount. The mode thus adopted of receiving the installment was officially made known to the French Government by the American charge d'affaires at Paris, pursuant to instructions from the Department of State. The bill, however, though not presented for payment until March 23d, 1833, was not paid, and for the reason assigned by the French minister of finance that no appropriation had been made by the French Chambers. It is not known to me that up to that period any appropriation had been required of the Chambers, and although a communication was subsequently made to the Chambers by direction of the King, recommending that the necessary provision should be made for carrying the convention into effect, it was at an advanced period of the session, and the subject was finally postponed until the next meeting of the Chambers.

Not withstanding it has been supposed by the French ministry that the financial stipulations of the treaty can not be carried into effect without an appropriation by the Chambers, it appears to me to be not only consistent with the character of France, but due to the character of both Governments, as well as to the rights of our citizens, to treat the convention, made and ratified in proper form, as pledging the good faith of the French Government for its execution, and as imposing upon each department an obligation to fulfill it; and I have received assurances through our charge d'affaires at Paris and the French minister plenipotentiary at Washington, and more recently through the minister of the United States at Paris, that the delay has not proceeded from any indisposition on the part of the King and his ministers to fulfill their treaty, and that measures will be presented at the next meeting of the Chambers, and with a reasonable hope of success, to obtain the necessary appropriation.

It is necessary to state, however, that the documents, except certain lists of vessels captured, condemned, or burnt at sea, proper to facilitate the examination and liquidation of the reclamations comprised in the stipulations of the convention, and which by the 6th article France engaged to communicate to the United States by the intermediary of the legation, though repeatedly applied for by the American charge d'affaires under instructions from this Government, have not yet been communicated; and this delay, it is apprehended, will necessarily prevent the completion of the duties assigned to the commissioners within the time at present prescribed by law.

The reasons for delaying to communicate these documents have not been explicitly stated, and this is the more to be regretted as it is not understood that the interposition of the Chambers is in any manner required for the delivery of those papers.

Under these circumstances, in a case so important to the interests of our citizens and to the character of our country, and under disappointments so unexpected, I deemed it my duty, however I might respect the general assurances to which I have adverted, no longer to delay the appointment of a minister plenipotentiary to Paris, but to dispatch him in season to communicate the result of his application to the French Government at an early period of your session. I accordingly appointed a distinguished citizen for this purpose, who proceeded on his mission in August last and was presented to the King early in the month of October. He is particularly instructed as to all matters connected with the present posture of affairs, and I indulge the hope that with the representations he is instructed to make, and from the disposition manifested by the King and his ministers in their recent assurances to our minister at Paris, the subject will be early considered, and satisfactorily disposed of at the next meeting of the Chambers.

As this subject involves important interests and has attracted a considerable share of the public attention, I have deemed it proper to make this explicit statement of its actual condition, and should I be disappointed in the hope now entertained the subject will be again brought to the notice of Congress in such manner as the occasion may require.

The friendly relations which have always been maintained between the United States and Russia have been further extended and strengthened by the treaty of navigation and commerce concluded on December 6th, 1832, and sanctioned by the Senate before the close of its last session. The ratifications having been since exchanged, the liberal provisions of the treaty are now in full force, and under the encouragement which they have secured a flourishing and increasing commerce, yielding its benefits to the enterprise of both nations, affords to each the just recompense of wise measures, and adds new motives for that mutual friendship which the two countries have hitherto cherished toward each other.

It affords me peculiar satisfaction to state that the Government of Spain has at length yielded to the justice of the claims which have been so long urged in behalf of our citizens, and has expressed a willingness to provide an indemnification as soon as the proper amount can be agreed upon. Upon this latter point it is probable an understanding had taken place between the minister of the United States and the Spanish Government before the decease of the late King of Spain; and, unless that event may have delayed its completion, there is reason to hope that it may be in my power to announce to you early in your present session the conclusion of a convention upon terms not less favorable than those entered into for similar objects with other nations. That act of justice would well accord with the character of Spain, and is due to the United States from their ancient friend. It could not fail to strengthen the sentiments of amity and good will between the two nations which it is so much the wish of the United States to cherish and so truly the interest of both to maintain.

By the first section of an act of Congress passed on July 13th, 1832 the tonnage duty on Spanish ships arriving from the ports of Spain previous to October 20th, 1817, being five cents per ton. That act was intended to give effect on our side to an arrangement made with the Spanish Government by which discriminating duties of tonnage were to be abolished in the ports of the United States and Spain on he vessels of the two nations. Pursuant to that arrangement, which was carried into effect on the part of Spain on May 20th, 1832, by a royal order dated April 29th, 1832, American vessels in the ports of Spain have paid five cents per ton, which rate of duty is also paid in those ports by Spanish ships; but as American vessels pay no tonnage duty in the ports of the United States, the duty of five cents payable in our ports by Spanish vessels under the act above mentioned is really a discriminating duty, operating to the disadvantage of Spain.

Though no complaint has yet been made on the part of Spain, we are not the less bound by the obligations of good faith to remove the discrimination, and I recommend that the act be amended accordingly. As the royal order above alluded to includes the ports of the Balearic and Canary islands as well as those of Spain, it would seem that the provisions of the act of Congress should be equally extensive, and that for the repayments of such duties as may have been improperly received an addition should be made to the sum appropriated at the last session of Congress for refunding discriminating duties.

As the arrangement referred to, however, did not embrace the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, discriminating duties to the prejudice of American shipping continue to be levied there. From the extent of the commerce carried on between the United States and those islands, particularly the former, this discrimination causes serious injury to one of those great national interests which it has been considered an essential part of our policy to cherish, and has given rise to complaints on the part of our merchants. Under instructions given to our minister at Madrid, earnest representations have been made by him to the Spanish Government upon this subject, and there is reason to expect, from the friendly disposition which is entertained toward this country, that a beneficial change will be produced.

The disadvantage, however, to which our shipping is subjected by the operation of these discriminating duties requires that they be met by suitable countervailing duties during your present session, power being at the same time vested in the President to modify or discontinue them as the discriminating duties on American vessels or their cargoes may be modified or discontinued at those islands. Intimations have been given to the Spanish Government that the United States may be obliged to resort to such measures as are of necessary self-defense, and there is no reason to apprehend that it would be unfavorably received. The proposed proceeding if adopted would not be permitted, however, in any degree to induce a relaxation in the efforts of our minister to effect a repeal of this irregularity by friendly negotiation, and it might serve to give force to his representations by showing the dangers to which that valuable trade is exposed by the obstructions and burdens which a system of discriminating and countervailing duties necessarily produces.

The selection and preparation of the Florida archives for the purpose of being delivered over to the United States, in conformity with the royal order as mentioned in my last annual message, though in progress, has not yet been completed. This delay has been produced partly by causes which were unavoidable, particularly the prevalence of the cholera at Havana; but measures have been taken which it is believed will expedite the delivery of those important records.

Congress were informed at the opening of the last session that "owing, as was alleged, to embarrassments in the finances of Portugal, consequent upon the civil war in which that nation was engaged", payment had been made of only one installment of the amount which the Portuguese Government had stipulated to pay for indemnifying our citizens for property illegally captured in the blockade of Terceira. Since that time a postponement for two years, with interest, of the two remaining installments was requested by the Portuguese Government, and as a consideration it offered to stipulate that rice of the United States should be admitted into Portugal at the same duties as Brazilian rice. Being satisfied that no better arrangement could be made, my consent was given, and a royal order of the King of Portugal was accordingly issued on February 4th, 1833 for the reduction of the duty on rice of the United States. It would give me great pleasure if in speaking of that country, in whose prosperity the United States are so much interested, and with whom a long-subsisting, extensive, and mutually advantageous commercial intercourse has strengthened the relation of friendship, I could announce to you the restoration of its internal tranquillity.

Subsequently to the commencement of the last session of Congress the final installment payable by Denmark under the convention of March 28th, 1830 was received. The commissioners for examining the claims have since terminated their labors, and their awards have been paid at the Treasury as they have been called for. The justice rendered to our citizens by that Government is thus completed, and a pledge is thereby afforded for the maintenance of that friendly intercourse becoming the relations that the two nations mutually bear to each other.

It is satisfactory to inform you that the Danish Government have recently issued an ordinance by which the commerce with the island of St. Croix is placed on a more liberal footing than heretofore. This change can not fail to prove beneficial to the trade between the United States and that colony, and the advantages likely to flow from it may lead to greater relaxations in the colonial systems of other nations.

The ratifications of the convention with the King of the two Sicilies have been duly exchanged, and the commissioners appointed for examining the claims under it have entered upon the duties assigned to them by law. The friendship that the interests of the two nations require of them being now established, it may be hoped that each will enjoy the benefits which a liberal commerce should yield to both.

A treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and Belgium was concluded during the last winter and received the sanction of the Senate, but the exchange of the ratifications has been hitherto delayed, in consequence, in the first instance, of some delay in the reception of the treaty at Brussels, and, subsequently, of the absence of the Belgian minister of foreign affairs at the important conferences in which his Government is engaged at London. That treaty does but embody those enlarged principles of friendly policy which it is sincerely hoped will always regulate the conduct of the two nations having such strong motives to maintain amicable relations toward each other and so sincerely desirous to cherish them.

With all the other European powers with whom the United States have formed diplomatic relations and with the Sublime Porte the best understanding prevails. From all I continue to receive assurances of good will toward the United States-assurances which it gives me no less pleasure to reciprocate than to receive. With all, the engagements which have been entered into are fulfilled with good faith on both sides. Measures have also been taken to enlarge our friendly relations and extend our commercial intercourse with other States. The system we have pursued of aiming at no exclusive advantages, of dealing with all on terms of fair and equal reciprocity, and of adhering scrupulously to all our engagements is well calculated to give success to efforts intended to be mutually beneficial.

The wars of which the southern part of this continent was so long the theater, and which were carried on either by the mother country against the States which had formerly been her colonies or by the States against each other, having terminated, and their civil dissensions having so far subsided as with few exceptions no longer to disturb the public tranquillity, it is earnestly hoped those States will be able to employ themselves without interruption in perfecting their institutions, cultivating the arts of peace, and promoting by wise councils and able exertions the public and private prosperity which their patriotic struggles so well entitle them to enjoy.

With those States our relations have under-gone but little change during the present year. No reunion having yet taken place between the States which composed the Republic of Colombia, our charge d'affaires at Bogota has been accredited to the Government of New Grenada, and we have, therefore, no diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Equator, except as they may be included in those heretofore formed with the Colombian Republic.

It is understood that representatives from the three states were about to assemble at Bogota to confer on the subject of their mutual interests, particularly that of their union, and if the result should render it necessary, measures will be taken on our part to preserve with each that friendship and those liberal commercial connections which it has been the constant desire of the United States to cultivate with their sister Republics of this hemisphere. Until the important question of reunion shall be settled, however, the different matters which have been under discussion between the United States and the Republic of Colombia, or either of the States which composed it, are not likely to be brought to a satisfactory issue.

In consequence of the illness of the charge d'affaires appointed to Central America at the last session of Congress, he was prevented from proceeding on his mission until the month of October. It is hoped, however, that he is by this time at his post, and that the official intercourse, unfortunately so long interrupted, has been thus renewed on the part of the two nations so amicably and advantageously connected by engagements founded on the most enlarged principles of commercial reciprocity.

It is gratifying to state that since my last annual message some of the most important claims of our fellow citizens upon the Government of Brazil have been satisfactorily adjusted, and a reliance is placed on the friendly dispositions manifested by it that justice will also be done in others. No new causes of complaint have arisen, and the trade between the two countries flourishes under the encouragement secured to it by the liberal provisions of the treaty.

It is cause of regret that, owing, probably, to the civil dissensions which have occupied the attention of the Mexican Government, the time fixed by the treaty of limits with the United States for the meeting of the commissioners to define the boundaries between the two nations has been suffered to expire without the appointment of any commissioners on the part of that Government. While the true boundary remains in doubt by either party it is difficult to give effect to those measures which are necessary to the protection and quiet of our numerous citizens residing near that frontier. The subject is one of great solicitude to the United States, and will not fail to receive my earnest attention.

The treaty concluded with Chili and approved by the Senate at its last session was also ratified by the Chilian Government, but with certain additional and explanatory articles of a nature to have required it to be again submitted to the Senate. The time limited for the exchange of the ratification, however, having since expired, the action of both Governments on the treaty will again become necessary.

The negotiations commenced with the Argentine Republic relative to the outrages committed on our vessels engaged in the fisheries at the Falkland Islands by persons acting under the color of its authority, as well as the other matters in controversy between the two Governments, have been suspended by the departure of the charge d'affaires of the United States from Buenos Ayres. It is understood, however, that a minister was subsequently appointed by that Government to renew the negotiation in the United States, but though daily expected he has not yet arrived in this country.

With Peru no treaty has yet been formed, and with Bolivia no diplomatic intercourse has yet been established. It will be my endeavor to encourage those sentiments of amity and that liberal commerce which belong to the relations in which all the independent States of this continent stand toward each other.

I deem it proper to recommend to your notice the revision of our consular system. This has become an important branch of the public service, in as much as it is intimately connected with the preservation of our national character abroad, with the interest of our citizens in foreign countries, with the regulation and care of our commerce, and with the protection of our sea men. At the close of the last session of Congress I communicated a report from the Secretary of State upon the subject, to which I now refer, as containing information which may be useful in any inquiries that Congress may see fit to institute with a view to a salutary reform of the system.

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate you upon the prosperous condition of the finances of the country, as will appear from the report which the Secretary of the Treasury will in due time lay before you. The receipts into the Treasury during the present year will amount to more than $32,000,000. The revenue derived from customs will, it is believed, be more than $28,000,000, and the public lands will yield about $3,0900,000. The expenditures within the year for all objects, including $2,572,240.99 on account of the public debt, will not amount to $25,000,000, and a large balance will remain in the Treasury after satisfying all the appropriations chargeable on the revenue for the present year.

The measures taken by the Secretary of the Treasury will probably enable to pay off in the course of the present year the residue of the exchanged 4.5% stock, redeemable on January 1st, 1834. It has therefore been included in the estimated expenditures of this year, and forms a part of the sum above stated to have been paid on account of the public debt. The payment of this stock will reduce the whole debt of the United States, funded and unfunded, to the sum of $4,760,082.08, and as provision has already been made for the 4.5% stocks above mentioned, and charged in the expenses of the present year, the sum last stated is all that now remains of the national debt; and the revenue of the coming year, together with the balance now in the Treasury, will be sufficient to discharge it, after meeting the current expenses of the Government. Under the power given to the commissioners of the sinking fund, it will, I have no doubt, be purchased on favorable terms within the year.

From this view of the state of the finances and the public engagements yet to be fulfilled you will perceive that if Providence permits me to meet you at another session I shall have the high gratification of announcing to you that the national debt is extinguished. I can not refrain from expressing the pleasure I feel at the near approach of that desirable event. The short period of time within which the public debt will have been discharged is strong evidence of the abundant resources of the country and of the prudence and economy with which the Government has heretofore been administered. We have waged two wars since we became a nation, with one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world, both of them undertaken in defense of our dearest rights, been successfully prosecuted and honorably terminated; and many of those who partook in the first struggle as well as in the second will have lived to see the last item of the debt incurred in these necessary but expensive conflicts faithfully and honestly discharged. And we shall have the proud satisfaction of bequeathing to the public servants who follow us in the administration of the Government the rare blessing of a revenue sufficiently abundant, raised without injustice or oppression to our citizens, and unencumbered with any burdens but what they themselves shall think proper to impose upon it.

The flourishing state of the finances ought not, however, to encourage us to indulge in a lavish expenditure of the public treasure. The receipts of the present year do not furnish the test by which we are to estimate the income of the next. The changes made in our revenue system by the acts of Congress of 1832 and 1833, and more especially by the former, have swelled the receipts of the present year far beyond the amount to be expected in future years upon the reduced tariff of duties. The shortened credits on revenue bonds and the cash duties on woolens which were introduced by the act of 1832, and took effect on March 4th, 1832, have brought large sums into the Treasury in 1833, which, according to the credits formerly given, would not have been payable until 1834, and would have formed a part of the income of that year. These causes would of themselves produce a great diminution of the receipts in the year 1834 as compared with the present one, and they will be still more diminished by the reduced rates of duties which take place on January 1st, 1834 on some of the most important and productive articles.

Upon the best estimates that can be made the receipts of the next year, with the aid of the unappropriated amount now in the Treasury, will not be much more than sufficient to meet the expenses of the year and pay the small remnant of the national debt which yet remains unsatisfied. I can not, therefore, recommend to you any alteration in the present tariff of duties. The rate as now fixed by law on the various articles was adopted at the last session of Congress, as a matter of compromise, with unusual unanimity, and unless it is found to produce more than the necessities of the Government call for there would seem to be no reason at this time to justify a change.

But while I forbear to recommend any further reduction of the duties beyond that already provided for by the existing laws, I must earnestly and respectfully press upon Congress the importance of abstaining from all appropriations which are not absolutely required for the public interest and authorized by the powers clearly delegated to the United States. We are beginning a new era in our Government. The national debt, which has so long been a burden on the Treasury, will be finally discharged in the course of the ensuing year. No more memory will afterwards be needed than what may be necessary to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government. Now, then, is the proper moment to fix our system of expenditure on firm and durable principles, and I can not too strongly urge the necessity of a rigid economy and an inflexible determination not to enlarge the income beyond the real necessities of the Government and not to increase the wants of the Government by unnecessary and profuse expenditures.

If a contrary course should be pursued, it may happen that the revenue of 1834 will fall short of the demands upon it, and after reducing the tariff in order to lighten the burdens of the people, and providing for a still further reduction to take effect hereafter, it would be much to be deplored if at the end of another year we should find ourselves obliged to retrace our steps and impose additional taxes to meet unnecessary expenditures.

It is my duty on this occasion to call your attention to the destruction of the public building occupied by the Treasury Department, which happened since the last adjournment of Congress. A thorough inquiry into the causes of this loss was directed and made at the time, the result of which will be duly communicated to you. I take pleasure, however, in stating here that by the laudable exertions of the officers of the Department and many of the citizens of the District but few papers were lost, and none that will materially affect the public interest.

The public convenience requires that another building should be erected as soon as practicable, and in providing for it it will be advisable to enlarge in some manner the accommodations for the public officers of the several Departments, and to authorize the erection of suitable depositories for the safe-keeping of the public documents and records.

Since the last adjournment of Congress the Secretary of the Treasury has directed the money of the United States to be deposited in certain State banks designated by him, and he will immediately lay before you his reasons for this direction. I concur with him entirely in the view he has taken on the subject, and some months before the removal I urged upon the Department the propriety of taking that step. The near approach of the day on which the charger will expire, as well as the conduct of the bank, appeared to me to call for this measure upon the high considerations of public interest and public duty. The extent of its misconduct, however, although known to be great, was not at that time fully developed by proof. It was not until late in the month of August that I received from the Government directors an official report establishing beyond question that this great and powerful institution had been actively engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers by means of its money, and that, in violation of the express provisions of its charter, it had by a formal resolution placed its funds at the disposition of its president to be employed in sustaining the political power of the bank. A copy of this resolution is contained in the report of the Government directors before referred to, and how ever the object may be disguised by cautious language, no one can doubt that this money was in truth intended for electioneering purposes, and the particular uses to which it was proved to have been applied abundantly show that it was so understood. Not only was the evidence complete as to the past application of the money and power of the bank to electioneering purposes, but that the resolution of the board of directors authorized the same course to be pursued in future.

It being thus established by unquestionable proof that the Bank of the United States was converted into a permanent electioneering engine, it appeared to me that the path of duty which the executive department of the Government ought to pursue was not doubtful. As by the terms of the bank charter no officer but the Secretary of the Treasury could remove the deposits, it seemed to me that this authority ought to be at once exerted to deprive that great corporation of the support and countenance of the Government in such an use of its and such an exertion of its power. In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions. It must now be determined whether the bank is to have its candidates for all offices in the country, from the highest to the lowest, or whether candidates on both sides of political questions shall be brought forward as heretofore and supported by the usual means.

At this time the efforts of the bank to control public opinion, through the distresses of some and the fears of others, are equally apparent, and, if possible, more objectionable. By a curtailment of its accommodations more rapid than any emergency requires, and even while it retains specie to an almost unprecedented amount in its vaults, it is attempting to produce great embarrassment in one portion of the community, while through presses known to have been sustained by its money it attempts by unfounded alarms to create a panic in all.

These are the means by which it seems to expect that it can force a restoration of the deposits, and as a necessary consequence extort from Congress a renewal of its charter. I am happy to know that through the good sense of our people the effort to get up a panic has hitherto failed, and that through the increased accommodations which the State banks have been enabled to afford, no public distress has followed the exertions of the bank, and it can not be doubted that the exercise of its power and the expenditure of its money, as well as its efforts to spread groundless alarm, will be met and rebuked as they deserve. In my own sphere of duty I should feel myself called on by the facts disclosed to order a scire facias against the bank, with a view to put an end to the chartered rights it has so palpably violated, were it not that the charter itself will expire as soon as a decision would probably be obtained from the court of last resort.

I called the attention of Congress to this subject in my last annual message, and informed them that such measures as were within the reach of the Secretary of the Treasury had been taken to enable him to judge whether the public deposits in the Bank of the United States were entirely safe; but that as his single powers might be inadequate to the object, I recommended the subject to Congress as worthy of their serious investigation, declaring it as my opinion that an inquiry into the transactions of that institution, embracing the branches as well as the principal bank, was called for by the credit which was given throughout the country to many serious charges impeaching their character, and which, if true, might justly excite the apprehension that they were no longer a safe depository for the public money. The extent to which the examination thus recommended was gone into is spread upon your journals, and is too well known to require to be stated. Such as was made resulted in a report from a majority of the Committee of Ways and Means touching certain specified points only, concluding with a resolution that the Government deposits might safely be continued in the Bank of the United States. This resolution was adopted at the close of the session by the vote of a majority of the House of Representatives.

Although I may not always be able to concur in the views of the public interest or the duties of its agents which may be taken by the other departments of the Government or either of its branches, I am, not withstanding, wholly incapable of receiving otherwise than with the most sincere respect all opinions or suggestions proceeding from such a source, and in respect to none am I more inclined to do so than to the House of Representatives. But it will be seen from the brief views at this time taken of the subject by myself, as well as the more ample ones presented by the Secretary of the Treasury, that the change in the deposits which has been ordered has been deemed to be called for by considerations which are not affected by the proceedings referred to, and which, if correctly viewed by that Department, rendered its act a matter of imperious duty.

Coming as you do, for the most part, immediately from the people and the States by election, and possessing the fullest opportunity to know their sentiments, the present Congress will be sincerely solicitous to carry into full and fair effect the will of their constituents in regard to this institution. It will be for those in whose behalf we all act to decide whether the executive department of the Government, in the steps which it has taken on this subject, has been found in the line of its duty.

The accompanying report of the Secretary of War, with the documents annexed to it, exhibits the operations of the War Department for the past year and the condition of the various subjects intrusted to its administration.

It will be seen from them that the Army maintains the character it has heretofore acquired for efficiency and military knowledge. Nothing has occurred since your last session to require its services beyond the ordinary routine duties which upon the sea-board and the in-land frontier devolve upon it in a time of peace. The system so wisely adopted and so long pursued of constructing fortifications at exposed points and of preparing and collecting the supplies necessary for the military defense of the country, and thus providently furnishing in peace the means of defense in war, has been continued with the usual results. I recommend to your consideration the various subjects suggested in the report of the Secretary of War. Their adoption would promote the public service and meliorate the condition of the Army.

Our relations with the various Indian tribes have been undisturbed since the termination of the difficulties growing out of the hostile aggressions of the Sac and Fox Indians. Several treaties have been formed for the relinquishment of territory to the United States and for the migration of the occupants of the region assigned for their residence West of the Mississippi. Should these treaties be ratified by the Senate, provision will have been made for the removal of almost all the tribes remaining E of that river and for the termination of many difficult and embarrassing questions arising out of their anomalous political condition.

It is to be hoped that those portions of two of the Southern tribes, which in that event will present the only remaining difficulties, will realize the necessity of emigration, and will speedily resort to it. My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength. That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.

Such has been their fate heretofore, and if it is to be averted-and it is-it can only be done by a general removal beyond our boundary and by the reorganization of their political system upon principles adapted to the new relations in which they will be placed. The experiment which has been recently made has so far proved successful. The emigrants generally are represented to be prosperous and contented, the country suitable to their wants and habits, and the essential articles of subsistence easily procured. When the report of the commissioners now engaged in investigating the condition and prospects of these Indians and in devising a plan for their intercourse and government is received, I trust ample means of information will be in possession of the Government for adjusting all the unsettled questions connected with this interesting subject.

The operations of the Navy during the year and its present condition are fully exhibited in the annual report from the Navy Department.

Suggestions are made by the Secretary of various improvements, which deserve careful consideration, and most of which, if adopted, bid fair to promote the efficiency of this important branch of the public service. Among these are the new organization of the Navy Board, the revision of the pay to officers, and a change in the period of time or in the manner of making the annual appropriations, to which I beg leave to call your particular attention.

The views which are presented on almost every portion of our naval concerns, and especially on the amount of force and the number of officers, and the general course of policy appropriate in the present state of our country for securing the great and useful purposes of naval protection in peace and due preparation for the contingencies of war, meet with my entire approbation.

It will be perceived from the report referred to that the fiscal concerns of the establishment are in an excellent condition, and it is hoped that Congress may feel disposed to make promptly every suitable provision desired either for preserving or improving the system.

The general Post Office Department has continued, upon the strength of its own resources, to facilitate the means of communication between the various portions of the Union with increased activity. The method, however, in which the accounts of the transportation of the mail have always been kept appears to have presented an imperfect view of its expenses. It has recently been discovered that from the earliest records of the Department the annual statements have been calculated to exhibit an amount considerably short of the actual expense incurred for that service. These illusory statements, together with the expense of carrying into effect the law of the last session of Congress establishing new mail routes, and a disposition on the part of the head of the Department to gratify the wishes of the public in the extension of mail facilities, have induced him to incur responsibilities for their improvement beyond what the current resources of the Department would sustain. As soon as he had discovered the imperfection of the method he caused an investigation to be made of its results and applied the proper remedy to correct the evil. It became necessary for him to withdraw some of the improvements which he had made to bring the expenses of the Department within its own resources. These expenses were incurred for the public good, and the public have enjoyed their benefit. They are now but partially suspended, and that where they may be discontinued with the least inconvenience to the country.

The progressive increase in the income from postages has equaled the highest expectations, and it affords demonstrative evidence of the growing importance and great utility of this Department. The details are exhibited in the accompanying report of the Post Master General.

The many distressing accidents which have of late occurred in that portion of our navigation carried on by the use of steam power deserve the immediate and unremitting attention of the constituted authorities of the country. The fact that the number of those fatal disasters is constantly increasing, not withstanding the great improvements which are every where made in the machinery employed and in the rapid advances which have made in that branch of science, shows very clearly that they are in a great degree the result of criminal negligence on the part of those by whom the vessels are navigated and to whose care and attention the lives and property of our citizens are so extensively intrusted.

That these evils may be greatly lessened, if not substantially removed, by means of precautionary and penal legislation seems to be highly probably. So far, therefore, as the subject can be regarded as within the constitutional purview of Congress I earnestly recommend it to your prompt and serious consideration.

I would also call your attention to the views I have heretofore expressed of the propriety of amending the Constitution in relation to the mode of electing the President and the Vice-President of the United States. Regarding it as all important to the future quiet and harmony of the people that every intermediate agency in the election of these officers should be removed and that their eligibility should be limited to one term of either four or six years, I can not too earnestly invite your consideration of the subject.

Trusting that your deliberations on all the topics of general interest to which I have adverted, and such others as your more extensive knowledge of the wants of our beloved country may suggest, may be crowned with success, I tender you in conclusion the cooperation which it may be in my power to afford them.

Famous Ship Canals and Waterways The Supreme Court: Stone Court, 1941 to 1946

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State of the Union Address: Andrew Jackson (December 3, 1833)

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Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: On your assembling to perform the high trusts which the people of the United States have confided to you, of legislating for their common welfare, it gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon the happy condition of our beloved country.

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to reduce or be reduced in size or importance

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Politics and news often influence economic performance. Here's what was happening at the time:

Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, orders British troops to storm Ciudad Rodrigo after a 10-day-long siege.

The 1812 War begins as the United States declares war against Britain.

Napoleon's occupation of Moscow begins.

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, today's prices in 2019 are 1,834.93% higher than average prices throughout 1812. The dollar experienced an average inflation rate of 1.44% per year during this period, meaning the real value of a dollar decreased.

In other words, $173,000,000 in 1812 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $3,347,432,932.33 in 2019, a difference of $3,174,432,932.33 over 207 years.

The 1812 inflation rate was 1.53%. The current inflation rate (2018 to 2019) is now 1.76%¹. If this number holds, $173,000,000 today will be equivalent in buying power to $176,051,794.29 next year.

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The Panic of 1819 is a good case in point. Neptune in Sagittarius had created in inflation due to the War of 1812. The war led to a price inflation that sent wholesale prices up 35% from 1811 to 1815. From 1811 to 1815, the number of banks rose from 117 to 212. With foreign trade cut off by the conflict, some important commodities rose by 70%.Banks tended to inflate the currency in the following way. They held legal money, specie (gold and silver), but they issued notes in excess of the amount of money that they had on deposit. As a result, bank notes tended to depreciate in proportion to their distance from the home office because transportation costs were high and communication was poor. Up sprang a generation of money brokers, who would buy up bank bills and travel to the bank to demand payment.During this time, there was a transiting T-square of Neptune opposite the Uranian planet Apollon*, both square Pluto. Pluto is the planet of government, and they played a big part in the inflationary boom. Here is how. During the panic of 1819, the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland enacted laws on February 15 that compelled banks to pay off their bills in specie, or lose their charters. Two days later, the states passed laws relieving the banks of such obligations to brokers, “the major force ensuring the people of this state from the evil arising from the demands made on the banks of this state for gold and silver by brokers.” The governments protected the banks by blocking those who sought legal money for their paper. The government (Pluto) aided in the fraud (Neptune).

*Apollon symbolizes peace, honor, fame, pursuit of glory. Note that a statue of the god Apollo depicts him as chasing the Sun. This planet brings a desire to pursue or to be on a quest. Apollon-Mercury would confer a desire to know. Whereas Jupiter represents size, Apollon represents many. Apollon brings multiplication or proliferation. A man with Mercury/Apollon= MC was a magazine distributor. Jupiter-Apollon represents money in circulation. This planet rules free trade, as we will see in the horoscope of President Andrew Jackson.

What happened to those who tried to extract their legal money from a bank?In 1808, a Boston man named Hireh Durkee demanded $9000 in notes from the state-owned Vermont State Bank. He was met with an indictment, being called an “evil-disposed person” to “realize a filthy gain.” In Georgia, a businessman was told that he could have his $30,000 back, if he accepted payment in pennies. Some depositors were charged outrageous fees. In Connecticut, Isaac Bronson sued NY banks, only to lose and then be called an agent of misery and ruin by the NY press.Government chose to protect those who benefited from the inflation. Professor Murray Rothbard called it “….one of the most flagrant violations of property rights in American history.” We should also note that there was widespread fraud, as symbolized by Neptune-Apollon, right out of the Uranian Book of Rules for Planetary Pictures. From August of 1814 to February of 1817, banks were permitted to issue fiat money with no backing in gold.

In The Rationale of Central Banking, Vera Smith makes the point that this is not ‘free banking.’ In a free system, banks would be treated like any other business. That is, they would be required to meet contractual obligations like any other enterprise. In the USA at the time, banking was protected by the government.In 1816, the Democrats established the second bank of the US, a privately-owned corporation in which the government owned a small part of the shares. Hard money advocates insisted that this bank honor its obligations to pay in specie. This was agreed, but the requirements were relaxed and the banks went on with their unsound practices. Widespread fraud (Neptune-Apollon) abounded, especially at the Philadelphia and Baltimore branches.The Panic of 1819The inflation ended in 1819 with Neptune in late Sagittarius as Saturn moved up to square it. The solar eclipse on September 19, 1819 opposed Saturn and Pluto and squares Neptune and Uranus, thus serving as a trigger for the deflationary aspects that had formed in the sky. Also note that this was only one of six eclipses that occurred in 1819, adding to the tendency for this year to be a turning point. Note that the series began in the Aries-Libra axis and ended in the money signs of Taurus-Scorpio.Taurus-ScorpioThe Taurus-Scorpio axis is frequently energized at financial turning points. In 1638 with Pluto in Taurus and Jupiter was in Scorpio, the English King Charles I needed money shortly before the outbreak of civil war. In those days, there were no banks of deposit, so merchants placed their gold in the royal mint. Charles confiscated the bullion, calling it a loan. He did return it, but the episode shook the confidence of the merchants who began to deposit their loot with private goldsmiths. They, in turn, issued paper receipts. In the 1660s, the smiths succumbed to the temptation to issue more receipts than they had gold (inflation). In 1740, the Massachusetts Land Bank issued notes and lent them out backed by real estate. This first venture in private banking occurred when Pluto was in Scorpio and Jupiter was in Taurus. The Panic of 1837 was accompanied by eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio.The AftermathIn the spring of 1818, the bank realized its precarious position and began to contract the money supply, cutting it in half over the course of the next year. This led to a mass of defaults, bankruptcies, and falling land prices.The entire episode can be summed up by an exchange between the English economist David Ricardo and America’s first economist, Condy Raguet. The latter wrote to Ricardo in 1821:“You state in your letter that you find it difficult to comprehend, why persons who had the right to demand coin from the banks in payment of their notes, so long forebore to exercise it. This no doubt appears paradoxical to one who resides in a country where an act of parliament was necessary to protect a bank, but the difficulty is easily solved. The whole of our population are either stockholders of banks or in debt to them. It is not the interest of the first to press the banks and the rest afraid. This is the whole secret. An independent man, who was neither a stockholder nor debtor, who would have ventured to compel the banks to do justice, would have been persecuted as an enemy of society.”The preceding quote is reflective of the fire-sign mentality. As happens in inflationary economies, a segment of the population learns how to benefit from the economic climate, so a pro-inflation lobby forms. This has occurred in many South American economies in recent times.Similarity to 1980Neptune was in Sagittarius in the 1970s. The great commodity inflation ended when Saturn squared Neptune in March of 1980. On the day of the square, the Hunt Brothers attempted corner on the silver market collapsed, and so did the great inflation.

updated 08/18/2005

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The Panic brought attention, for the first time, to issues regarding debt-relief policy, as well as poor relief.City and state governments began to more effectively approach the public policy reform issues surrounding the poor; a classification system was also created (able-bodied vs. disabled, temporary vs. long-term, etc.). Public attention to solving poverty issues consequently led to public education systems.

Public support was great once again for protective tariffs. However, when the "Tariff of Abominations" was implemented in 1828, regional discontent led to the outbreak of the Nullification Crisis. The Crisis is seen as a "critical precedent for democratic action."

On a more contemporary note, many economic historians today agree that the Panic of 1819 marked the United States' entrance into the modern business cycle.

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President Monroe, interpreting the economic crisis in the narrow monetary terms then current, limited governmental action to economizing and ensuring fiscal stability. He acquiesced in suspending specie payments to bank depositors, setting a precedent for the Panics of 1837 & 1857.Although Monroe agreed that improved transportation facilities were needed, he refused to approve appropriations for internal improvements without constitutional amendments.

In 1821, Congress passed the Relief for Public Land Debtors Act. The bill allowed debtors who owed money on land purchased from the government to keep the part of land they had already paid for and relinquish the remaining amount. It further extended the schedule of payments by several years, with a discount for quick payment. With the exception of New England states, most of the country strongly supported the measure. Many state legislatures, particularly in rural western states, passed extra relief measures for debtors.

Another response to the panic was monetary expansion, primarily at the state level. In Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois, state banks suspended specie payments and issued large amounts of inconvertible notes. However, most other states avoided inflationist policies and enforced the payment of specie. Every state witnessed vigorous debate on the merits of each policy. Treasury Secretary Crawford advocated restricting bank credit as a measure to prevent a future crisis. Banking regulation was seen as primarily a state responsibility, and several states passed regulations in the years following the panic that required banks to maintain certain fixed ratios of capital to ensure their ability to convert to specie.

A further effect of the Panic of 1819 was increased support for protective tariffs for American industry. Vocal protectionists, such as Philadelphia printer Mathew Carey, blamed free trade for the depression and argued that tariffs would protect American prosperity. In general, support for tariffs was strongest in the mid-Atlantic states and was opposed by export-heavy southern states.

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The Second Bank, just like the first, met steep opposition. Northern and Eastern businessmen were in favor of the bank, largely because it gave them access to loans for their various ventures and speculations. Meanwhile, farmers in the South and West didn't trust the bank, and disliked that it catered to the interests of the North and East. Many questioned whether the Second Bank of the United States was constitutional, or something Congress could legally do based on the Constitution.

The way the Second Bank was run was also a concern. All of the federal government's money was deposited at the Second Bank, but the government was not actually in charge of running the bank. Instead, it was overseen by a board of directors made up of private citizens and businessmen. For many Americans, this did not make any sense...how could they be sure the board of directors would act responsibly? What if the directors were corrupt?

The Second Bank found itself in a sticky situation in 1819. The Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland brought up the constitutionality of the bank. Ultimately, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the bank was in fact constitutional, but that did not do much to change the minds of the American public. That same year, the Second Bank took measures to help control inflation (the value of money relative to how much things actually cost) by calling in loans and decreasing the amount of credit it offered. Many businessmen were unable to pay back their debts; this along with falling crop prices sent the country into a depression. Referred to as the Panic of 1819, people across the country suffered, especially Western farmers. Even though the depression didn't last long, the image of the Second Bank was severely damaged

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When the United States first came into existence, the Founding Fathers had many different opinions about how the new country should be run. Who should have more power, the federal government or the states? Where should the new capital be, in the North or the South? How should the federal government manage its money? This last question was very controversial. Men like Alexander Hamilton thought the United States should have a national bank to hold its tax revenues and to pay off the country's debts. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson, disagreed; nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can create its own bank. Ultimately, the First Bank of the United States was created in 1791 and had a 20-year charter. The bank would expire in 1811 unless Congress decided to renew its charter.

By 1811, the debate over a national bank was still very heated. The anti-bank faction let the First Bank of the United States die. For five years, the country went without a national bank, but the War of 1812 (which happened during this time) had created a problem: to fight a war against England, the U.S. had to borrow money from other countries. It was decided that there should once again be a central bank to help deal with the national debt. In 1816 the Second Bank of the United States was created, and like the First Bank, had a 20-year charter.

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National Bank, in the United States, any commercial bank chartered and supervised by the federal government and operated by private individuals.

first Bank of the United States

First Bank of the United States, Philadelphia; now part of Independence National Historical Park, U.S. National Park Service.

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The first Bank of the United States (1791–1811) and the second Bank of the United States (1816–36) had functioned as agents of the U.S. Treasury and competed with the state, or private, banks, thereby ensuring that the private banks redeemed their banknotes at full value. In spite of its contribution to national monetary stability, the second Bank of the United States had come under attack by President Andrew Jackson, and its charter failed to be renewed in 1836; a chaotic period of state banking resulted that lasted until the American Civil War. The difficulties in financing that war pointed to the need for a better banking system and a sounder currency.

The National Bank Act of 1863 provided for the federal charter and supervision of a system of banks known as national banks; they were to circulate a stable, uniform national currency secured by federal bonds deposited by each bank with the comptroller of the currency (often called the national banking administrator). The act regulated the minimum capital requirements of national banks, the kinds of loans they could make, and the reserves that were to be held against notes and deposits; it also provided for the supervision and examination of banks and for the protection of noteholders. The 1863 act did not prohibit state banks from issuing their own currency, but Congress did impose a 10 percent tax on state banknotes that effectively eliminated such a rival currency.

The inflexibility of national banknote supplies and a lack of reserves led to the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. By 1935 the national banks had transferred their note-issuing powers to the Federal Reserve. National banks have become primarily commercial in nature, although some also maintain savings and trust functions. The Federal Reserve shares supervisory and regulatory authority with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which charters, regulates, and supervises national banks.

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The Bank War was the name given to the campaign begun by President Andrew Jackson in 1833 to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, after his reelection convinced him that his opposition to the bank had won national support.

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The Bank War was the name given to the campaign begun by President Andrew Jackson in 1833 to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, after his reelection convinced him that his opposition to the bank had won national support. The Second Bank had been established in 1816, as a successor to the First Bank of the United States, whose charter had been permitted to expire in 1811.

In 1832, Jackson had vetoed a bill calling for an early renewal of the Second Bank’s charter, but renewal was still possible when the charter expired in 1836; to prevent that from happening, he set out to reduce the bank’s economic power. Acting against the advice of congressional committees and over the opposition of several cabinet members, and after replacing two resistant secretaries of the treasury with a more amenable appointee (Roger Taney), Jackson announced that, effective October 1, 1833, federal funds would no longer be deposited in the Bank of the United States. Instead, he began placing them in various state banks; by the end of 1833, twenty-three ‘pet banks’ (as they were popularly known) had been selected.

The president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, anticipating Jackson’s actions, began a countermove in August 1833; he started presenting state bank notes for redemption, calling in loans, and generally contracting credit. A financial crisis, he thought, would dramatize the need for a central bank, ensuring support for charter renewal in 1836. In fact, Biddle’s campaign appears to have had less effect than either his supporters or his detractors believed at the time, but the Bank War became a matter of intense debate in Congress, in the press, and among the public. Deputations of businessmen descended on Washington, complaining about business conditions and seeking an end to the Bank War, while administration spokesmen argued that Biddle’s capacity to disrupt the economy only highlighted the dangers of a central bank. The federal deposits were not returned to the Second Bank, and its charter expired in 1836. President Jackson had won the Bank War.

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In the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, the rates of divorce in the U.S. rose relatively rapidly, with Americans obtaining more divorces annually than were granted across Europe. The increase in divorce rates can be caused by lowering prices and facilitating divorce for people with limited resources. In the past, mainly the middle and high-class divorces were granted because of its costs.

In the early 20th century, the rate of divorce continued to rise. Three pairs per thousand were divorced in 1890 and eight couples per thousand divorced by 1920.

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The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, and morality while man’s sphere was the public world – economic striving, political maneuvering, and social competition. Each sex, according to Catherine Beecher, was superior within its assigned sphere, and thus a sort of equality was achieved. Beecher believed that “it is in America, alone, that women are raised to an equality with the other sex.” This very influential woman, the daughter of the prominent minister Lyman Beecher and the sister of the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote in her “Treatise on Domestic Economy,”

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As household production by women declined and the traditional economic role of women diminished, the “home” appeared as a topic to be discussed and an ideal to be lauded. Less a place of production than a spiritually sanctified retreat from the hurly-burly of economic life, the home was where women nurtured men and children into becoming morally elevated beings. It could be said that what we think of as the traditional “home” was actually an invention of nineteenth-century Americans.

In colonial America, men were considered superior to women – in all ways, even in terms of morality. In a world of strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth and political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, and all matters of right and wrong. In the early part of the nineteenth century, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. What we now view as old-fashioned and even oppressive was then new and potentially liberating.

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Journeymen's associations recapitulated traditions of craft organization with roots deep in the English past and with scattered precursors in the colonies. They were, however, certainly not the new nation's only expression of concerted labor action. Riots and strikes over working and living conditions also occurred among unskilled workers: canal diggers, mostly working in rural areas (particularly as the economy began to improve after 1825); waterfront workers on several occasions in the second half of the 1820s; and New York's building laborers (1816). Strikes also occurred among urban female tailors (New York, 1825) and among rural textile factory workers—the first in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (1824), another at the Slater Mills in Dudley, Massachusetts (1827).

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The turn to wage labor meant friction over terms. How the price and hours of labor should be set and enforced became the object of intense debate from the 1780s onward, accompanied by resort to association on both sides and competing declarations of standards for a trade throughout a given locality. Journeymen enforced their declarations by "turn outs"—refusals to work except on the terms they prescribed or with any person not part of their fraternity. These tactics earned them indictment, and usually conviction, for conspiracy. Between 1806 and 1815 at least half a dozen conspiracy trials took place in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. The depression of 1819 put a halt to journeymen's organizing activities, but another cluster of prosecutions came between 1823 and 1829 as the economy revived. Shoemakers and tailors were the most frequent defendants, but urban textile workers—spinners and weavers—were also indicted.

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The growing opportunities within manufacturing attracted a new batch of entrepreneurs: men who may not have had experience in a particular trade, but knew how to organize production and access the capital needed to operate on a large scale. These "merchant-capitalists," with their more efficient and cost-effective scale of production, quickly drove many of the small craftsmen out of business, or probably, to be more precise, into the ranks of wage earners employed by merchant capitalists.

More than the master craftsmen and small shop owners were affected by the arrival of merchant capitalists, so too were the apprentices and journeymen working for the master craftsmen. In the past, a master craftsman may have employed a handful of people, and master and employee worked side by side and often lived in the master craftsman's home. Certainly the apprentices did.

In fact, room and board were part of the arrangement along with the understanding that the master was responsible for the oversight of the young men placed in his charge. But when these master craftsmen were driven into the employment of merchant capitalists, the apprentices and journeymen were driven out of their former homes. They too may have found work with the larger manufacturers, but they now lived independently, in boarding houses or rented rooms.

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The Market Revolution - King Cotton & slavery

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The Market Revolution - King Cotton & slavery

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The Market Revolution further exacerbated sectional tensions in the United States. Slave labor helped the Market Revolution prosper, but by the early 19th century, states north of the Mason-Dixon Line started including legislative acts for the purpose of abolition and emancipation of the enslaved black communities in their state constitution, as well as other significant government policies. However, this did not mean the immediate release of all enslaved human beings, as many northern states also adopted gradualism, which meant that they only promised to liberate future children born to enslaved mothers. These laws also demanded that children remain in indentured servitude to their mother's master, to compensate for the slaveholder's loss.

Voluntary manumission, escape or direct emancipation by masters were quicker routes to achieving liberty for the enslaved population, but they were not only rare, but also often more dangerous than remaining in the clutches of human bondage. Nonetheless, emancipation in the North proceeded slowly, but steadily. A growing number of members of freed black communities saw the rise of the African-American struggle for civil rights, which were brought to fruition, for instance, in numerous New England locales, as there free African-Americans were allowed to vote and enrol their children in state public schools. On top of this, most northern states ensured their black citizens the right to own property and the right to trial by jury.

But even so, the national trend was different, as the slave population saw further growth, especially in the fertile cotton industry which had been established in the South and which demanded more labor forces in order to maintain productivity. As King Cotton became the primary crop in the South,  the increased use of slaves was essential in producing and exporting crops. The North and European countries banned slavery in their countries/regions, and attempted to push the South to abolish slavery as well.

Although the slave trade ended, slavery did not end, due to the increase of speculation on slavery brought about by the boom in the textile industry; as it drastically increased in the North, changing women and children's roles and further revolutionizing family structure, the demand for raw products such as cotton increased as well, meaning an increase in the South's demand for more labor. Ironically, this Northern demand for more cotton for the textile industry increased the Southern demand for slavery, making it harder for the North to end slavery in the South. This increase of labor and industry brought the United States into the world picture for economy and commerce, planting the seed for the United States to increase in wealth and power majority of the time.

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The Market Revolution - technological and agricultural developments

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The Market Revolution - technological and agricultural developments

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The Market Revolution also brought about a change in industry and agriculture. Eli Whitney perfected a system of producing muskets with interchangeable parts. Prior to Whitney's invention, most muskets - and all other goods - had been handmade with parts specially designed for each particular musket. The trigger of one musket, for example, could not be used to replace a broken trigger on another musket. With interchangeable parts, however, all triggers fit the same model of the musket, as did all ramrods, all flash pans, all hammers, and all bullets. Manufacturers in many different industries soon took advantage of Whitney's invention to make a variety of goods with interchangeable parts.

Many new products revolutionized agriculture in America. John Deere invented the horse-pulled steel plow to replace the difficult oxen-driven wooden plows that farmers had used for centuries. The steel plow allowed farmers to till soil faster and more cheaply without having to make repairs as often.

In the 1830s, Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical mower-reaper that quintupled the efficiency of wheat farming. Prior to the mower-reaper, wheat farming had been too difficult, so farmers had instead produced corn, which was less profitable. As in the South after the cotton gin, farmers in the West raked in huge profits as they acquired more lands to plant more and more wheat. More importantly, farmers for the first time began producing more wheat than the West could consume. Rather than let it go to waste, they began to transport crop surpluses to sell in the manufacturing Northeast.