81
people, who disliked their religious vision and some of their beliefs. The Mormon community was driven out of several areas. The leader of the community finally moved his people to the distant frontier. Near the valley of the Great Salt Lake, the group stopped, looked around and said, ”This is the place.” The land outside their city was desert. But the Mormons built irrigation ditches and brought fresh water to the land. They grew crops and made everything they needed with their own hands. They had found a place where they could support themselves and practice their religion freely. In the years that followed, the Mormons turned the settlement into Salt Lake City, where they built the famous Mormon Temple and through discipline and hard work also constructed an exemplary society.
California
Group after group of Americans traveled over the Mountains to California, a distant outpost. By the 1840s, a few thousand Americans lived there. At the beginning of 1848, James Marshall and about twenty men, were sent to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to build a sawmill. It was nearly complete when a glint of something on the bottom of a shallow river caught Marshall’s eye. Later he wrote, “I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and shape of a pea. Then I saw another.”
Suddenly people in California got “gold fever.” Half the population of San Francisco left their homes and went to look for gold. In the rush for gold, sailors deserted their ships when they arrived at San Francisco. By the end of the year, whispers of gold strike had drifted across the countrybut few easterners believed it until President James Polk made a statement to Congress on December 5 1848. The discovery, he declared was a fact. Within days “gold fever” descended on the country. The news was telegraphed to every village, to every town. Hundreds of thousands of people, almost all of them men, began to prepare for the epic journey west. They sold possessions, mortgaged farms, borrowed money, and banded together with others from their towns to form joint stock companies. They said their goodbyes and streamed west – more than 80,000 young adventures willing to take a chance on gold: a year of pain in return for a lifetime of riches. They were called “forty-niners” because they left home in 1849 and they all dreamed of making their fortune. Some came from South America and Mexico; more than 25,000 came from China. In new California, some people appeared to be in the way, some got disillusioned and left the state. Some had the best opportunity to capitalize on the discovery of gold. A German businessman named Levi Straus bought strong denim canvas and used it to make sturdy overalls for gold prospectors and miners. He called them Levi’s. Today jeans are known and worn worldwide. Until
82
the1840s, San Francisco was a settlement of some 200 people. Thanks to the Gold Rush, it grew and became important. In a few years its population had grown to 50 thousand.
Questions
1. What did the phrase “Go West, young man” express? 2. How was “Indian problem” settled by the US government? 3. What is “The Trail of Tears”? 4. Why did the
Americans want to settle Florida? 5. Why did Spain sell Florida to the US? 6. Did the Mexican government welcome the Americans to settle in Texas? On what condition? 7. What were the contradictions between the Americans and Mexicans? 8. Was Texas an independent country? 9. Who was elected the President of the Republic of Texas? What did the Texans call their land and why? 10. What caused a war on Mexico? What was the result of the 1846-1848 War? 11. What lands did the Oregon Territory occupy? 12.
What influenced people to move to the Far West? 13 What was the ‘Oregon Trail’? 14.
What were the dangers faced by pioneers on the trail? 15. When and how was Utah settled? 16. Why did a lot of people begin coming to California? 17. Who were “fortyniners”? Where did they come from? 18. What city grew thanks to “gold rush”? 19.
How did Levi Straus make his name famous? 20. Who is James Marshall?
Chapter 7 New Ways, Old Ways in the New Nation
The United States was a growing nation in the first half of the 19th century. The spirit of democracy grew with the growing nation. Formerly, only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. Women, blacks, American Indians and poor white men could not vote. Each new state that joined the Union after 1800 gave the right to vote to all white men, rich and poor. Gradually the older states in the East changed their laws. However, women, blacks and American Indians did not enjoy the right to vote.
DEMOCRACY GROWS: WOMEN’S RIGHTS
American women had almost no rights. A married woman could not hold property hold in her own name, and in divorce proceedings men were commonly awarded permanent legal care of any children. Women of color and women of working class were always expected to toil in the fields and factories, and to except inferior wages and treatment. When there were forests to be cleared, crops planted, business to be run, and a household economy to be managed, women and men both became indispensable partners in the daily struggle to survive and prosper. But their roles were regarded in terms of their being “devoted, subservient housewives and mothers” with severely limited capacity to act freely in the public arena or pursue economic aspirations.
83
Elizabeth (Cady) Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the early American feminists and ardent abolitionists dedicated their lives to working for women’s rights. 1848 the first convention that would address the social, civil and religious rights of women took place in New York, where Cady Stanton presented a “Declaration of Sentiments” listing 18 grievances against male suppression of women. First, married women had no right to their children if they left an abusive husband or sought a divorce. Second, if a woman was granted a divorce, there was no way for her to make a professional living unless she chose to write or teach. Third, women could not testify against their husbands in court. Then, married women who worked in factories, were not entitled to keep their earnings, but had to turn them over to their husbands. In addition, single women who owned property were taxed without the right to vote for the law-makers who imposed those taxes – one of the very reasons why the American colonies had broken away from Great Britain.
Convention attendees passed the resolution unanimously with the exception of the one - women’s suffrage (the right to vote).Only after an impassioned speech in favor of women’s right to vote by Frederick Douglas, the black abolitionist, did the resolution pass. Still, it seemed an incredibly radical idea at that time. Stanton and her group of suffragists, the National Woman Suffrage Association, began winning some battles as states changed their property laws so that women could own property.
Later, Cady Stanton declared that she had earlier realized that without the right to vote, women would never achieve their goal of becoming equal with men. She saw that the key to success in any endeavor lay in changing public opinion, and not in party action. By awakening women to the injustices under which they labored, the convention became that catalyst for future changes. Soon other women’s rights conventions were held and other women would come to the forefront of the movement for political and social equality. Slowly women gained more and more rights. Colleges for women were opened; some men’s colleges began accepting women students. Some women began to enter jobs that only men had done before. In 1848, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school. A constitutional amendment guaranteeing US women the right to vote was first introduced in 1878. Stanton and her cohorts also helped women in other countries in their struggle to win rights such as to vote. The suffrage, it was believed, would help transform society, even as it promoted women into a larger role of responsibility and equality.
THE DILEMMA OF NEGRO SLAVERY
In the middle of the 19th century, the country’s future seemed bright, except for one large problem. The North, the South and the West were developing in different ways.
84
The crisis was brought about by a national rivalry between the agricultural slaveowning states of the South and the industrializing states of the North. America’s acquisition of vast territories extending to the Pacific Ocean led to a conflict between those (Southerners) who wanted to extend slavery to the new western lands and those (Northerners) who did not. Many people hoped that a peaceful solution could be found to the differences between the North and the South. But in the end, these differences led to war. These were sad years when the people of the United States faced each other on the battlefield.
The democracy that was spreading was not shared by black Americans. Most of them were slaves. An active slave trade was operating during the 18th century. An estimated 5.5 million slaves were brought from West Africa to the New World. The American colonies alone imported nearly a half million slaves. They were bought and sold as if they were objects, not human beings. The American Constitution recognized slavery as a local institution within the legal rights of the individual states. But in the North, slavery was not adaptable to the local economy, and to many, it contradicted the compelling vision of the Founding Fathers of the United States for a free and democratic society in which “no individual could claim inherent rights over another”, for a nation in which “all men are to be free.” By 1830, slavery was outlawed in all Northern states. The South, with vast cotton plantations and slaves as an important source of labor, considered slavery a necessary institution for the plantation economy. Slavery was linked to the local culture and society.
The mass migration of Africans to North America began in1619just 12 years after the founding of Jamestown, the first British colony. The first slaves were not regarded as slaves. They were looked upon as indentured servants- as bondsmen for a period of a fixed term of years who could look forward to freedom. Many whites came to America under similar circumstances. By 1661, blacks became to be bondsmen for life - this was the beginning of slavery in the U.S.A.
An active slave trade operated during the 18th century. An estimated 5.5 million Africans, in shackles and chains were brought to the New World as slaves to be sold at public auctions. Families were divided up and sold to different owners. Little children were often taken from their mothers. Slaves had no rights under the law. The Constitution counted each Negro slave as three-fifth of a white man. Slaves were forced into humiliating obedience. It was illegal to teach a slave how to read or write. They could not travel without permission; they were not allowed to meet together in public. Slaves could be physically punished for disobedience and even put to death.
85
More and more people in America were beginning to understand that slavery was shameful for a democratic society; that the institution of slavery went against basic values of the new American nation. How could a free society deny equal rights to some of its members? It was a contradiction of democratic rights and liberty. It was to be abolished. Abolitionist movement grew stronger; it gained much more supporters in
1851, after a woman from New England, named Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin”, an antislavery novel that galvanized political opinion across the nation. Largely as a result of that best-selling melodramatic story, a slavery question became a passionately debated political issue.
The first great struggle toward that realization was the war against slavery. There was a secret rout called the “Underground Railroad” to help fugitive slaves to escape from the
South to the North and Canada. Strangely, called so, the rout had nothing to do with either trains or underground. People, who knew the way, guided slaves along the footpath at night to avoid being seen. In the daytime, the slaves were hidden in the homes of supporters. These homes were called “stations”, and the guides were called “conductors.”
Sometimes blacks fought back violently against slavery. But these revolts were ruthlessly suppressed.
Say True or False
1.Each new state that joined the Union after 1800 gave the right to vote to all white rich man.
2.Women, blacks and American Indians did not enjoy the right to vote.
4. Women and men were indispensable partners in the daily struggle.
5.Declaration of Sentiments listed 16 grievances against white men suppression of slaves.
6.If a woman was granted a divorce, she couldn’t make a professional living.
7.Women could not testify against their husbands.
8.Single women who owned property were not taxed.
9.Convention did not pass the resolution on women’s suffrage because Fred Douglas was against.
10.In 1878 that the constitutional amendment on women’s suffrage was adopted.
Questions for Discussion
1. Who wanted slavery to be allowed in the new western lands? 2.How did the US Constitution count each slave? 3. Did American Constitution recognize the local slavery? 4. Was slavery linked to the local culture and society in the South? 5. Who