November 13th, 2006; Period 5:

• First of all, we somewhat recapped on Jackson’s incentives for destroying the Bank.
• …then, Congress introduces the Deposit Act (which suggests that money should be more spread out and circulated rather than being dumped in Jackson’s Pet Banks.) Jackson promptly vetoes this bill.
• Jackson introduces the Species Circular (1836), in which land speculators could buy large amounts of government land with species. This lowers the amount of buyers and slows down government income.
  
• Martin Van Buren wins election and takes office in 1837
  It is an unfortunate time for him to enter office, as currency more or less collapse and the Panic of 1837 has set in.
• Whigs blame the Panic on Jackson’s hard-money policy. They are in favor for another charter for the Second Natl. Bank, which had expired in 1839.
  -Buren counters this with the Independent Treasury Bill, which is passed in 1840.
• Democrats blame the Panic on paper money and speculators.
  -->All in all, Van Buren is discredited for the depression, and Harrison wins the election, as the two-party system is once again introduced.

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• The first part of the video covers what we have already read. It deals with minority (women, African Americans, and property less white men) and their rights in Colonial America as opposed to Revolutionary America.
  
• Jackson’s (“Old Hickory”) inauguration was symbolic of the growing power of the common man. He was himself somewhat the common man. He fought against “professional politicians”, wanted state rights, and less federal power. But you, of course, know that. In his path to killing the Bank, he earned the name “King Andrew I”, and his opponents formed the Whig Party.
  
• After 1815 and until 1849, rewriting the Constitution was seen in many states. It eliminated the property qualifications, but women were still not allowed to vote. And African Americans (who had been previously allowed to do so in a few Northern states) were no longer able to.
  
• Lorenzo Dow was a “fire and brimstone” preacher. He brought along with him the Second Great Awakening, and was the epitome of camp meeting revivals.
  -Other followers sought to revive the republic by reforming society, claiming that humanity was perfectible.
  
• Women took an active role in Churches.
  -Lee (I don’t want to risk spelling her first name) –partook a great role in an African Methodist Episcopal Church
  -And still, many could not have the same rights as men in churches, and began to construe some movements (i.e. anti-lynching movements.)
  
• Demon Rum: Many had at first believed alcohol to be healthy, usually as opposed to water (which was usually tainted). It became an issue for women because it directly correlated with domestic violence. This lead to the Temperance Movement (temperance means total abstinence from alcohol.) Women went public with the issue (speeches, female societies, taking active roles in societies, reform movements, etc.)
  
• Clothes showed the type of lifestyle a woman lead (if you wore a corset, you were not required to move much, and thus were a “woman of leisure”.) Households in the 1800s—women characterized the places they lived:
  -West: worked alongside men and had more say in community than urban women. They were among the first women to vote.
  -Slave South: limited ability to question their status
  -North: Their role as care takers had religious significance, and became symbols of complete virtue.
  -African American women were viewed as lesser beings
  -Stanton in 1848: Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments. Know it. Stanton and Anthony joined forces in 1851.
  -1841: Dorothy Adioles (sp?) discovered the mentally incapacitated where she worked in inhumane conditions and took an active role in reforming this situation. Many women who fought to reform the stance on this looked to bettering conditions through religious movements.
  
• Utopian communities: could be religious or secular societies, but was always a refuge from the “hustle and bustle” of life. An example of this was New Harmony.
  
• In New England, Transcendentalists such as Thoreau arose, who prized the individual over anything else. Thoreau introduced the concept of Civil Disobedience (the right to disobey unjust laws.) They claimed slavery to be against God’s love.
  
• Abolitionists lead the most divisive reform movements. The theory of “shipping” slaves back to Liberia or Haiti was introduced (and many were taken) but it was not a constant plan. Then again, many abolitionists believed in freedom from slavery, but not social equality for those freed. Some important abolitionists: Douglass, Tubman, Truth
  -Because of a law that did not let slaves be taught reading (as to prevent them from reading anti-slavery pamphlets), many abolitionists were fined and imprisoned for doing exactly so.