America’s first two political parties were the federalists who favoured a strong President and central government and the Democratic Republicans who defended the rights of the individual states.

The first president of the United States, George Washington, governed in a Federalist style. When Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay a federal liquor tax Washington sent an army of 15,000 men to put down the “Whiskey Rebellion”. Under his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, the federal government set up a national bank. These financial measures were made to encourage investment and to persuade business interests to support the new government.

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In 1797 Washington was succeeded by another federalist, John Adams. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was elected President. In 1803 he bought the huge Louisiana territory from France for $ 15 million. Now the United States would extend as far as the Rocky Mountains

In 1812 President James Madison went to war with Britain. During the War of 1812 American warships had some impressive victories but British Navy blockaded American ports. Attempts to invade British Canada ended in disaster, and British forces captured and burned Washington, the nation’s new capital city. Britain and the United States agreed on a compromise peace in December 1814. After the war the United States enjoyed a period of rapid economic expansion. A national network of roads and canals was built, steamboats traveled the rivers and the first steam railroad opened in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1830.

The Industrial Revolution reached America. There were textile mills in New England, iron foundries in Pennsylvania. By the 1850s factories were producing rubber goods, sewing machines, shoes, clothing, farm implements, guns and clocks.

The frontier of settlement was pushed west to the

Mississippi River and beyond. In 1828 Andrew Jackson

became the first man born in a poor family and born in the

West to be elected President.

Portrait of Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully in 1824.

Jackson and his new Democratic party promoted democracy and appealed to the humble members of the society – farmers and laborers. Jackson broke the power of the Bank of the United States, which had dominated the nation’s economy He made land available to western settlers – mainly by forcing Indian tribes to move west of the Mississippi.

1837 cartoon shows the Democratic Party as donkey.

Civil war and Reconstruction

The Jacksonian era of optimism was clouded by the

existence in the United States of a social contradiction –

slavery. The words of the Declaration of Independence

“that all men are created equal” were meaningless for the

1,5 million black people who were slaves.

In 1828 Southern and Northern

politicians disputed the question

of whether slavery would be

legal in the western territories.

Congress agreed on a

compromise: slavery was

permitted in the new states of

Missouri and the Arkansas

territory, and it was barred

everywhere west and north of

Missouri.

Abraham Lincoln

In 1846 the United States got the southern part of the Oregon Country: the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Thus America became a truly continental power, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In 1861 Abraham Lincoln was elected President. South Carolina voted to leave the Union. It was soon joined by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. These 11 states proclaimed themselves an independent nation – the Confederate States of America – and the American Civil War began. Southerners proclaimed that they were fighting not just for slavery. The war was for independence.

Lincoln’s two concerns were to keep the United States one country and to rid the

nation of slavery. He realized that by making the war a battle against slavery that

is why he could win support for the Union at home and abroad. On January, 1,

1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted freedom to all

slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy.

The Civil War was the most dramatic episode in American history. This conflict

devastated the South and subjected that region to military occupation. America lost

more soldiers in this war than in any other – a total of 635,000 dead on both sides.

The war resolved two fundamental questions that had divided the United States

since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13th

Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided, once and for all, that America

was not a collection of semi-independent states, but a single indivisible nation.

President Andrew Johnson

Immediately after a Civil War, legislatures in

the Southern States attempted to block blacks

from voting. They did this by enacting “black

codes” to restrict the freedom of former

slaves.

Although “radical” Republicans in Congress

tried to protect black civil rights and to bring

blacks into the mainstream of American life,

their efforts were opposed by President Andrew

Johnson, a Southerner who had served as the

Republican vice president, and became the

President after assassination of Abraham

Lincoln.

Nevertheless, by 1870, many Southern blacks were

elected to state legislatures and to the Congress.

These “reconstructed” state governments did much to

improve education, develop social services and protect

civil rights.

Reconstruction was disliked by most Southern whites,

some of which formed the Ku Klux Klan, a violent

secret society that hoped to protect white interests and

advantages by terrorizing blacks and preventing them

from making social advances. By 1872, the federal

government had put an end to the Klan, but white

Democrats continued to use violence and fear to return

control to their state governments. Reconstruction

came to an end in 1877, when new constitutions were

ratified in all Southern states and all federal troops

were withdrawn from the South.

Toward the end of the century, the

system of segregation and oppression

of blacks grew far more rigid. Blacks

accused of minor crimes were

sentenced to hard labour, and violence

was sometimes used against them.

Most Southern blacks, as a result of

poverty and ignorance, continued to

work as tenant farmers.

Although blacks were legally free,

they still lived and were treated very

much like slaves.

Despite Constitutional guarantees,

Southern blacks were now

“second-class citizens” – that is,

they still had limited civil rights.

There was racial segregation in

schools and hospitals, but trains,

parks and other public facilities

could still generally be used by

people of both races.