FREEDOM’S CONSEQUENCES

MILITARY & LAW

• Military operations were complex due to the state’s supplying local militia
• For example, they insisted on electing officers & debated controversial orders & rejected those they did not like
• State & Local courts experimented with easier divorce proceedings & expanded women’s property rights (liberal for their times, not by today’s standards)
• Pennsylvania was the first state in 1790 to restrict the death penalty – only in matters of homicide (spreading throughout the USA by the 1840’s)
• Michigan abolished the death penalty altogether in 1840
• Most states abolished prison for debtors (largest single cause for incarceration in colonial times)

RELIGION & DEMOCRACY

• Ridding any trappings of aristocracy & tyranny:
• First half of the 19^th century saw a dramatic shift from ‘establishment’ religions (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians)
• Placed less emphasis on trained & learned ministry
• Preached universal salvation
• Less Hierarchy & centralized structures – new loose ‘federalism’ of the Baptists & Methodists
• Baptists grew 5 fold, Methodists 10 fold in 40 years (1800 – 40)
• New sects were suited for the frontier – trained ministers are scarce – armed only with a Bible
• Ministers did the circuit, preaching free grace, individual responsibility, conversion...
• Revivals were modeled on those in the 1730’s (Great Awakening) – second one (1790’s) originated in New England at Yale – at a time when the Republic’s leaders were being confronted as Atheism & infidelities
• Nation needs to reassert its orthodox heritage
• In revivals – Pentecostal in nature – emotional & ecstatic outbursts, dancing & laughter, "the jerks," prayers, sobbing, sudden spasms, which would cause dozens to be dashed to the ground

WHIGS

• Led by Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, National Republicans advocated an active federal role in the nation's economic development
• Known as the American System, their program called for federally sponsored roads and canals, a high tariff to protect American manufacturers, a powerful national bank, and a go-slow policy on the sale and settlement of public lands.
• The leaders and the program proved no match against the popularity of Jackson. He defeated Adams in 1828, rejected federal aid for roads in 1830, vetoed the re-charter of a National Bank in 1832
• initially united on little but hostility to Jackson's bold use of executive power & joining the economic nationalists in the party were several state-rights southerners
• The opponents of "King Andrew" took their name from the American Whigs of 1776 and earlier English Whigs who had opposed the power of the British crown
• In 1840 the Whigs backed a single candidate, Harrison, who, like Jackson, was a military hero
• The Whigs campaigned to victory through slogan and song, parading Harrison as a humble "log cabin" candidate who wore homespun clothes and drank common hard cider.
• As president, Harrison was prepared to let Clay seek congressional passage of an energetic Whig program that included a new tariff and national bank. But Harrison died in April 1841
• The Whigs nominated Clay for president in 1844
• The Democrats made the "re-annexation of Texas" the campaign's major issue, thereby reviving the dangerous controversy over the extension of slavery
• Ultimately the slavery issue destroyed the Whigs