Art & Architecture

Traveling the country SLOWLY, one could see the saltbox home built from colonial times on, the Rotunda at U of Virginia (architect Thomas Jefferson), plantation houses, shaker style, and Spanish style churches and forts like San Francisco de Asis. Empire furniture, imported from France, was in fashion and featured marble, brass and claw feet.

• Nineteenth century American Art
• Women Artists of the 19th Century

Business and the Economy

There were 89 state chartered banks in 1811. Until then, the state banking system worked well.  The Bank of the United States functioned informally as a central bank at the heart of a network of state banks and was able to assert control over lending policies. Congress raised taxes on imported goods and issued $5 million in bonds to fund the War of 1812. But with the decision of Congress not to recharter the Bank of the United States in 1811, and the drain on government funds caused by the War of 1812, the American economy became destabilized. By1814, Congress had replaced the expired Non-Intercourse Act with a new system of protective tariffs. The Era of Good Feelings, so called due to the end of Federalism, began in 1815 and mirrored a growth in economic development of the country. An increase in regionalism occured as each region developed an economy based on a different industry. When Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States in 1816, confusion ended over the federal government's finances. But the recall of paper money which had not been "guaranteed" by the government bank or the state banks caused the Panic of 1819.

• The Avalon Project - Yale Law School presents major documents of the United States Government during the 19th Century
• Biography of America - Annenberg U.S. history project online.
• Evolution of Banking in a Market Economy - by Alan Greenspan, April 12, 1997

Books and Literature

Historical, political, and writings documenting the new nation continued; Hugh Williamson wrote The History of North Carolina. Josiah Quincy wrote against the admission of new states, Isaiah Thomas wrote History of Printing in America, Daniel Webster wrote against conscription (the draft), James Madison wrote for separating the civil and religious functions of the government, many statesmen wrote articles for and against war with England, and David Hosack, M.D. wrote on the progress of medical education. The people of the period were great letter writers, too. Many letters of statesmen have been preserved. (Look at state archives to find them.) James Kirke Paulding, a friend and coworker with Washington Irving(1778-1860), published The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, a satiric account of the founding and rebellion of the American colonies. Washington Irving published Rip Van Wrinkle at the end of the decade.

• Early American Fiction
• American Literary Movements

Migration & Immigration

Two young people made separate journeys to northeastern Ohio in the year 1811. Both Henry Leavitt Ellsworth and Margaret Van Horn Dwight kept journals that recounted the adventures and difficulties on their travels along Forbes Road  from "civilized" Connecticut to the "wild frontier" of the Western Reserve.  Five years later, in a letter to her parents in Connecticut, another young woman, Mary Hosmer, described her new home in Ohio. She lamented that she had seen only one woman since her arrival and that her nearest neighbor was three miles away.  Yet, despite the hardships, pioneers continued to stream into vacant land and filled in much of the Appalachian highlands in this decade.  As the population in the territories increased, more areas were admitted to the Union.  After the Battle of the Thames eased the Indian threat and land offices for the sale of public domain increased to thirty-four by 1820, the old Northwest Territory rapidly filled with pioneers. And, while Indian land holdings still impeded expansion in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the settlements in Tennessee managed to expand through these states to link up with the people in Louisiana.   The United States and Great Britain negotiated the Treaty of 1818 that designated the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains as the northern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase and opened the Oregon country for settlement.

About thirty thousand immigrants entered the United States in 1818 alone.  There were some tries in this decade to establish colonies of particular nationalities in unsettled parts of the country.  In 1817 Congress agreed to sell, on extended credit, four townships on the Tombigbee River in Alabama to the Vine and Olive Society.  The Society lured Frenchmen to this still primitive area of the country.   The colony was not successful, and Congress looked askance on any more such projects presented to it to foster a separate settlement by a particular nationality. Then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote a letter in 1818 which pretty well summed up the reaction to subsequent initiatives of this sort.  He stated that "the government invited none to come to America, and, while those who did would suffer no disabilities, they would also be offered no special advantages."  The young nation had a love/hate relationship with the new immigrants and was struggling to come up with a policy toward immigration - a struggle that continues into the twenty first century.  

BOOKS:

• John Quincy Adams   E377.N34 1997
• The American Frontier: Pioneers, Settlers & Cowboys, 1800-1899   F596.D265 1992
• The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860: a History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States   JV6451.H3 1961

• The Adams Chronicles   E178.6.W784 1976

• United States Population Growth Areas, 1810
• Immigration: the Living Mosaic of People, Culture, and Hope
  

Education

 During the teen years of the nineteenth century the country inched forward in its march to universal public education.  In 1816 the new state of Indiana included in its constitution a directive for the legislature to establish a system of free education for its citizens.  In 1818 the Pennsylvania legislature provided for public schools.  That same year the Boston Town Meeting established primary schools for children under the age of seven.  The Baptist Churches in the city had previously run five schools for the purpose of teaching the city's poor children reading and Christian morality but found they were unable to keep up with the increasing demand for educating these children.  In 1812 the first wood pencils produced in  America were manufactured by a cabinet maker in Concord, Massachusetts.  However, it wasn't until 1900 that the more expensive paper and pencil completely replaced the old slate and chalk, especially in rural schools.

In 1810 the college student ratio to the general population was only one to 1500.  There were the beginnings of advanced education for women as Emma Hart Willard organized the Middleburg Female Seminary in Vermont.  Her essay, " A Plan For Improving Female Education" was influential in promoting the cause of learning for women.  In 1819 Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in the founding of the University of Virginia, an accomplishment of which he was so proud that he instructed that it be engraved on his tombstone.  Also in 1819 the influential Supreme Court decision written by John Marshall, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, ruled that states could not alter contracts, regardless of age, and prohibited the state of New Hampshire from seizing control of the private college of Dartmouth.  Private colleges were thereafter protected from state control.

BOOKS:

• Encyclopedia of Education     REF LB15.E47 2003
• Historical  Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States   EBook
• Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present  LB1140.23.B43

INTERNET SITES:

• Nineteenth Century Textbooks
• Historical Timeline of Public Education in the U.S.
  

News and Events

Music and Theater

American music was, for the most part, a reflection of European music.  Popular theater included opera, with old standbys such as Beggars Opera, Love in a Village, and She Stoops to Conquer.  Dances were an important social outlet, and to provide entertainment,  negro slaves were often taught to play the fiddle.  They would play minuets, reels and jigs for the masters.   In time, the fiddle became part of the negro musical image along with the banjo, tambourine and bones.  The piano was growing in popularity.  Musical societies, performing musical works and oratorios, continued to spring up here and there, including the Handel & Hayden Society of Boston and the Handel Society of Portland.  Musical culture grew slowly.  The Girl I Left Behind Me and Blow the Man Down come from this era.

Bands of approximately 20 musicians were formed mainly for military purposes.  During training, they played marches to keep the troops marching in step. In battle, they were the primary means of communication.  Until this time, bands had primarily been a fife and drum corps, but during the War of 1812, buglers were added.  The defiance of Americans is expressed in the song, Ye Parliaments of England. Other wind instruments might also be included off the battlefield.  In 1814, while on a British ship negotiating for the release of a prisoner, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem, The Defense of Fort Henry, which was published in the Baltimore Sun.  By November, it was put to the tune of an English drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven, and renamed The Star Spangled Banner.  It wasn't until 1931 that it became our national anthem.  The first black-dialog song to be published in the United States was The Backside of Albany, or the Siege of Plattsburg, in 1815. Thomas Moore wrote several love sons during the period.

Pastimes - Fads, Fashions, Food, Sports

Fashions in clothing changed considerably during this decade. Ladies had light, muslin dresses, low cut, and shorter hair (not piled high). . Clothing styles in the first decade of the 19th century were influenced by the fashions in England and Europe. In 1800 the empire style ladies would wear shawls for warmth, but the shawl could also be a fashion accessory.  Hats and caps, decorated with ribbons and feathers were also popular.   Women and children wore a 'promenade dress' for walking, and the lady carried a parasol. By the end of the decade corsetts were worn once again   Men wore knee-length pantaloons, with buckles, silk stockings, and low-cut shoes. They also wore a wig. Long pants became popular later in the decade.

Cup plates became the rage. They were small plates with a center cavity. The drinker would perch his cup while sipping from his saucer. These stayed in vogue until the Civil War. American farmers ate huge breakfasts and worked long hours.

A lottery was held at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. The winner could draw up to $100,000. The Berkshire Cattle Show in Pittsfield, Mass. was a forerunner of the county fair. Card playing (in salons and tea rooms) and craps were popular forms of entertainment. A new mile record in horse racing was set by Timoleon, time: 1:47. Rowing races were popular. The first boxing champion in America was Jacob Hyer. Gambling on bowling had become very popular and was banned from some states. (Nine pins is played in Irving's Rip Van Winkle. Families enjoyed vocal performances and double-feature theatrical performances.

Science and Technology

Most medical doctors up to this time learned their profession through apprenticeship.  In 1810, Yale Medical School opened its doors.  Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was the medical guru of the day.  He advocated bloodletting with leeches and purging with calomel.  The stethoscope, a simple wooden tube, came into use in 1819.

The War of 1812 proved to be a munitions nightmare with badly manufactured arms that were hard to repair.  In 1816 Simeon North succeeded in making the firing mechanisms of pistols interchangeable.  When John C. Calhoun became secretary of war, he revamped  West Point to produce soldier-technologists.  He also promoted the building of roads and canals to prevent "disunion," and West Point graduates were responsible for most of the road building, bridges, and canals for the first half of the century. 

The greatest earthquake in recorded history occurred in the Mississippi Valley in 1811.  Cities were changing. In 1816, Baltimore was the first city to have coal gas street lights.  In 1817, 118 years after it was first suggested by a French engineer, construction was begun on the Erie Canal.  By 1819, a 96 mile stretch from Utica to Rome was navigable.  The conestoga wagon  moved people westward.  Stephen Long explored the Rocky Mountains, Mississippi & Missouri River Valleys. The first oceangoing steamship, the Savannah, sailed to Europe in 1819.  When its billowing smokestacks appeared off the coast of Ireland, the British, assuming it was on fire, sent out a rescue boat!

Worried that debased living conditions of factory workers in England would accompany industrialization in the United States, Thomas Jefferson had recommended that workshops remain in Europe.  Francis Cabot Lowell, however, had a new idea, the factory town.  He took the general workings of the cotton mill and improved on it with his chief engineer, Paul Moody.  The Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts used water power, and all parts of the manufacturing process, cleaning, carding and spinning the cotton and weaving it on power looms, were completed under one roof.  His labor source was innovative for the times; he hired young, unmarried farm girls with the intent of employing them for a short time until they earned enough money for a dowry or to help out their families.  They lived in factory-provided boarding houses.

Social Movements

At the end of the War of 1812, Britain and the United States agreed in the Treaty of Ghent to cooperate in suppressing the slave trade, but the trade actually expanded as U.S. clipper ships built at Baltimore and Rhode Island ports outsailed ponderous British men-of-war to deliver cargoes of slaves.   Expanding beyond specifically religious activities were groups such as the American Colonization Society, 1817, an early antislavery organization that sought to establish colonies of free blacks in Africa.  These national reform associations came to be known as the benevolent empire. Racial disharmony was not uncommon.  1n 1819, in Philadelphia, three white women stoned a black woman to death. But the abolition movement was growing. In 1819, Representative John W. Taylor of New York asked the Congress to provide that the further introduction of slavery be prohibited from the Arkansas Territory. His motion was defeated, and Arkansas was organized without any restriction on slavery. Controversy over the slave question continued.

Activism in some of the societies of the benevolent empire encouraged women to re-examine their roles in marriage and all of society. Martha Moore Ballard, a midwife in Maine, kept a remarkable diary of everyday life from 1785 to 1812. She documented a woman's perspective on events such as marriage, death, economics, and social customs. Women such as Hannah Webster Foster, Judith Sargent Stevens Murray, Susanna Haswell Rowson and Mercy Otis Warren became authors. Mary Bosanquet Fletcher became a deconess in the Methodist church. Women began to be active in auxiliary female antislavery, temperance and suffrage societies. Conventional organizational structures remained. Men took leadership roles and headed the state and national societies while women were expected to raise money to support  lecturers and official newspapers.