Expansion & reform.
A young republic doubles in size, builds the world’s largest internal market, fractures along regional lines, and produces the first generation of U.S. reformers — most of them bent on one question: who counts as a U.S. citizen?
Jefferson buys Louisiana (1803), Marshall builds federal judicial supremacy (Marbury, McCulloch), Jackson breaks the Second Bank and removes the Cherokee, Polk takes half of Mexico (1846–48), and a Market Revolution — canals, steamboats, factories, the cotton gin’s grim multiplier — knits the country into one economy while pulling it apart on slavery. The Second Great Awakening (1820s–40s) seeds the abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights movements. By 1848 (Seneca Falls, Mexican cession, the gold rush, the Communist Manifesto — same year), the country looks nothing like 1800 except in its founding contradictions.
The CED, topic by topic.
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4.1
Contextualizing Period 4
Setting the table for Jeffersonian / Jacksonian democracy.
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4.2
The Rise of Political Parties & the Era of Jefferson
Republicans win, Marshall Court redefines federal power.
PCE -
4.3
Politics and Regional Interests
The Era of Good Feelings was neither.
PCE · NAT -
4.4
America on the World Stage
War of 1812, Monroe Doctrine, hemispheric sphere of influence.
WOR -
4.5
Market Revolution: Industry & Transportation
Erie Canal, railroads, cotton-and-textiles economy.
WXT · GEO -
4.6
Market Revolution: Society & Culture
Factory towns, Lowell Mills, immigration, urban working class.
WXT · SOC -
4.7
Expanding Democracy
Property requirements fall, the franchise expands (for white men).
PCE · NAT -
4.8
Jackson and Federal Power
Bank War, Nullification, Indian Removal, the imperial presidency in embryo.
PCE -
4.9
The Development of an American Culture
Transcendentalism, Hudson River School, an emerging literary identity.
NAT · SOC -
4.10
The Second Great Awakening
Revivalism, perfectionism, religious roots of antebellum reform.
SOC · NAT -
4.11
An Age of Reform
Abolition, women’s rights (Seneca Falls 1848), temperance, prison reform.
SOC · PCE -
4.12
African Americans in the Early Republic
Slave resistance, free Black communities, the colonization debate.
SOC · NAT -
4.13
The Society of the South in the Early Republic
Cotton kingdom, paternalist ideology, the slave economy.
SOC · WXT
Connect to the bigger picture
Era: The World of Empires
APWH cross-links: 5.5 Industrialization Continues; 5.7 Effects of the Industrial Revolution
Next: Period 5 — The Fight Over Slavery
