Key Terms (with significance)
513359432 | Cult of Domesticity/Separate Spheres | Middle class women developed a distinctive female culture. "Lady's" literature emerged... purely domestic concerns. Provided women greater material comfort than in the past and placed high value on "female virtues". Women outside the household were seen as a lower-class. Domestic service became frequent source of female employment. | 0 | |
513359433 | Nativism | Viewed growing foreign population with alarm. Native American Association (1837) became NA Party (1845) and joined other nativist groups to form the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (1850). Demands included banning Catholics or alien from holding public office, enacting more restrictive naturalization laws, and establishing literacy test for voting. | 1 | |
513359434 | Erie Canal | Simple ditch 40ft wide and 4ft deep with towpaths. Greatest construction projet Americans had ever undertaken. Provided a route to the Great Lakes and gave NY access to Chicago and growing markets of the West. Cheaper for western farmers to ship crops east, and inspired water connections between Lake Erie and Ohio River. Increased white settlement in the Northwest. | 2 | |
513359435 | Corporations/Limited liability | Corporations- Combined resources of large # of shareholders developed rapidly in 1830s. LL- Individual stockholders risked losing only the value of their own investment (and not corporation's larger losses) if enterprise failed. Made possible for larger manufacturing and business enterprises. | 3 | |
513359436 | Lowell System | Common in MA, the system enlisted young women (farmers' daughters in late teens/20s). Well fed, carefully supervised, had clean housing, and had relatively generous wages. Manufacturers could not maintain this for long and women protested. Switched over to immigrants for labor | 4 | |
513359437 | Commonwealth v. Hunt/Craft Unions | Greatest legal victory (1842) in which state supreme court declared unions were lawful organizations and that the strike was a lawful weapon (employers continued to resist). Manufacturers replaced striking workers with eager immigrants, which led workers channeling resentments into internal bickering. Transformed social relationships? | 5 | |
513359438 | Know-Nothing Party | Against immigration. Members of the movement who crated a new political organization, the American Party, after the 1852 elections. Did well in Penn, NY, and won control of state government in Mass. After 1854, the party soon disappeared. | 6 | |
513359439 | Baltimore and Ohio Railroad | First company to begin railroad operations, opening a 13mi stretch of track in 1830. By 1836, more than a thousand miles of track had been laid in 11 states. | 7 | |
513359440 | Samuel F.B. Morse | 1832 Morse found a way to send signals along an electrical cable (using pulses of electricity) and developed Morse code. Congress constructed an experimental telegraph line (1843) which worked...by 1860, more than 50,000mi of wire connected most parts of the country. Helped prevent accidents and benefitted American Journalism. | 8 | |
513359441 | Irish Immigration | These poorly paid construction gangs performed heavy, unskilled work. Many lived in grim conditions that endangered health (of families, too). Factories became large, noisy, unsanitary, and dangerous. Women and children (no matter what skills) earned less than men. | 9 | |
513359442 | Deskilling | Some artisans were unable to compete with new factory-made goods. Skilled workers formed societies, which failed, but did not end efforts by workers to gain control over their productive lives. | 10 | |
513359443 | Central Park | (1850s) Result of pressure from high society members who wanted an elegant setting for daily carriage rides. Wealthy people looked for ways to display wealth, showing inequality? | 11 | |
513359444 | Mary Lyon | Founded Mount Holyoke in MA as an academy for women. Women students were seldom encouraged to pursue education above the primary level, and they weren't accepted in any college/uni until 1837. | 12 | |
513359445 | Cyrus McCormick's reaper | Took the place of a sickle, cradle, and hand labor which quickened harvesting pace. By 1860, more than 100,000 reapers were in use. Revolution in grain production. | 13 |