Chapter 9: Democracy in America
Democracy
A system of government in which power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or through freely elected representatives.
Missouri Crisis
Tallmadge Amendment
Andrew Jackson
Election of 1824
The candidates consisted of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson with Adams being the winner and declared as the next president of the United States as declared by the House of Representatives.
Race and Suffrage
Nativism
- The revival or perpetuation of an indigenous culture especially in opposition to acculturation.
Pet Banks
Bank War
William Henry Harrison
Born on February 9, 1773 and died on April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison was the ninth president of the United States. He died 31 days after his inauguration, serving the shortest presidency in U.S. history. H joined the Army as a young man and fought American Indians to the U.S. frontier.
John Tyler
Born on March 29, 1790 and died on January 18, 1862 in Richmond, Virginia, he was the 10th president of the United States, serving from 1841-1845. He took office upon the death of President William Henry Harrison. He functioned as a political independent as a result of him being rejected in office by both the Democratic Party and the Whig Party.
Born on March 15, 1767 and died on June 8, 1845, Andrew Jackson was a military hero and served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829-1837. He was also the founder of the Democratic Party.
Petticoat Affair
Henry Clay
Missouri applied for statehood on December 18, 1818. This created a problem because the Northern states refused to allow another slave state to join the Union. In 1819, Maine applied for statehood. Then a compromise developed: Maine could join as a free state to balance out Missouri joining as a slave state.
Missouri Compromise
Born on April 12, 1777 and died on June 29, 1852, he was an American statesman, U.S. congressman, and U.S. senator who was noted for his American System (which integrated a national bank, the tariff, and internal improvements to promote economic stability and prosperity) and was a major promoter of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, which were both efforts to protect the American union from sectional discord over slavery.
Tariffs
A tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
A measure/agreement worked out between the Northern states and the Southern states that was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1820. It admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It also marked the beginning of the prolonged sectional conflict over the extension of slavery that led to the American Civil War.
Representative James Tallmadge proposed as a condition of Missouri's statehood that no further slaves could be imported into the state and all children born after Missouri's admission to the Union shall be born free. This condition set out a plan for gradual emancipation in Missouri.
Adams-Onis Treaty
A treaty between the U.S. and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain.
Panic of 1837
A financial crisis in the U.S. that touched off a major depression, which lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down, Westward expansion was stalled, unemployment went up, and pessimism abounded. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins.
Whig Party
- A policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants.
New laws were adopted by white men that made racial discrimination the basis of American democracy due to their fear of black men going in large numbers to voting polls.
A political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the U.S. It was founded by Henry Clay in 1833 and ceased operations in 1854. The Whigs favored an activist economic program known as the American System, which called for a protective tariff, federal subsidies for the construction of infrastructure, and support for a national bank.
Freemasonry
A political strategy that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States during Andrew Jackson's presidency.
A derogatory term for state banks selected by the U.S. Department of Treasury to receive surplus Treasury funds in 1833. They were given this name because people thought the banks were chosen on political grounds.
Fraternal organizations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients.
A political scandal involving members of President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet and their wives, from 1829-1831.
Nullification Crisis
A conflict between the U.S. state of South Carolina and the U.S. federal government from 1832-1833 over the former's attempt to declare null and void within the state the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832.
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