Introduction for Chapter 12

12. The New West and the Free North, 1840–1860

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GOLD NUGGET Gold! Nuggets like this one scooped from a California river drove easterners crazy with excitement. Only a few of the quarter of a million men who joined the gold rush got rich. Wolffy/Alamy

CONTENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading and studying this chapter, you should be able to:

  • Identify the fundamental changes that transformed the American economy from 1840 to 1860.
  • Compare and contrast the promises and realities of free labor, including how free-labor proponents explained economic inequality in America.
  • Explain how the American nation expanded its boundaries and define the concept of “manifest destiny.”
  • Describe the issues that surrounded the debate on the annexation of Texas and Oregon, how the United States provoked war with Mexico and the consequences of the war.
  • Describe the “evangelical temperament,” and the reforms evangelical Protestants proposed, and explain how the women’s rights movement evolved from other reform movements.

EARLY IN NOVEMBER 1842, ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS NEW WIFE, Mary, moved into their first home in Springfield, Illinois, a small rented room on the second floor of the Globe Tavern, the nicest place that Abraham had ever lived and the worst place that Mary had ever inhabited. She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, attended by slaves in the elegant home of her father, a prosperous merchant and banker. In March 1861, the Lincolns moved into the presidential mansion in Washington, D.C.

Abraham Lincoln climbed from the Globe Tavern to the White House by work, ambition, and immense talent—traits he had honed since boyhood. Lincoln and many others celebrated his rise from humble origins as an example of the opportunities in the free-labor economy of the North and West. They attributed his spectacular ascent to his individual qualities and tended to ignore the help he received from Mary and many others.

Born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1809, Lincoln grew up on small, struggling farms as his family migrated west. His father, Thomas Lincoln, who had been born in Virginia, never learned to read and, as his son recalled, “never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name.” Lincoln’s mother, Nancy, could neither read nor write. In 1816, Thomas Lincoln moved his young family from Kentucky to the Indiana wilderness where Abraham learned the arts of agriculture, but “there was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education,” Lincoln recollected. In contrast, Mary Todd received ten years of schooling in Lexington’s best private academies for young women.

In 1830, Thomas Lincoln decided to move farther west and headed to central Illinois. The next spring, when Thomas moved yet again, Abraham set out on his own, a “friendless, uneducated, penniless boy,” as he described himself.

By dogged striving, Abraham Lincoln gained an education and the respect of his Illinois neighbors, although a steady income eluded him for years. The newlyweds received help from Mary’s father, including eighty acres of land and a yearly allowance of about $1,100 for six years that helped them move out of their room above the Globe Tavern and into their own home. Abraham eventually built a thriving law practice in Springfield, Illinois, and served in the state legislature and in Congress. Mary helped him in many ways, rearing their sons, tending their household, and integrating him into her wealthy and influential extended family in Illinois and Kentucky. Mary also shared Abraham’s keen interest in politics and ambition for power. With Mary’s support, Abraham became the first president born west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Like Lincoln, millions of Americans believed they could make something of themselves, whatever their origins, so long as they were willing to work. Individuals who were lazy, undisciplined, or foolish had only themselves to blame if they failed, advocates of free labor ideology declared. Work was a prerequisite for success, not a guarantee. This emphasis on work highlighted the individual efforts of men and tended to slight the many crucial contributions of women and family members to the successes of men like Lincoln. In addition, the rewards of work were skewed toward white men and away from women and free African Americans, as antislavery and women’s rights reformers pointed out. Nonetheless, the promise of such rewards spurred efforts that shaped the contours of America, plowing new fields and building railroads that pushed the boundaries of the nation ever westward to the Pacific Ocean. The nation’s economic, political, and geographic expansion raised anew the question of whether slavery should also move west, the question that Lincoln and other Americans confronted repeatedly following the Mexican-American War, yet another outgrowth of the nation’s ceaseless westward movement.

1830
  • The Book of Mormon published.
1836
  • Battle of the Alamo.
  • Texas declares independence from Mexico.
1837
  • Steel plow patented.
1840s
  • Practical mechanical reapers created.
  • Fourierist communities founded.
1841
  • First wagon trains head west on Oregon Trail.
  • Vice President John Tyler becomes president when William Henry Harrison dies.
1844
  • James K. Polk elected president.
  • Samuel F. B. Morse demonstrates telegraph.
1845
  • Term manifest destiny coined.
  • Texas enters Union as slave state.
  • Potato blight spurs Irish immigration.
1846
  • Bear Flag Revolt.
  • Congress declares war on Mexico.
  • United States and Great Britain divide Oregon Country.
1847
  • Mormons settle in Utah.
1848
  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
  • Oneida community organized.
  • Seneca Falls convention.
1849
  • California gold rush begins.
1850
  • Utah Territory annexed.
  • Railroads granted six square miles of land for every mile of track.
1851
  • Fort Laramie conference marks the beginning of Indian concentration.
1855
  • Massachusetts integrates public schools.
1857
  • Mormon War.
1861
  • California connected to nation by telegraph.
Table : CHRONOLOGY