The Gold Rush

1. The Gold Rush • In 1848 a carpenter discovered gold at John Sutter’s sawmill in northern California. • News of gold spread and many migrated to California; this mass migration of miners, and businesspeople who made money from miners, was called the Gold Rush. • The 80,000 migrants called forty-niners left for California in 1849; this population boom enabled California’s statehood a year later. • In the 1850s the dream of finding gold brought people from all over the world, but mostly from America, to California. They came on the California Trail, on ships, and on mule trains. • In California, miners moved into camps and businesspeople moved into booming cities like San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton.

2. The Texas Revolution

3. Troubles between Mexico and Texas continued—Mexicans would not honor Santa Ana’s agreement to Texan independence. • In Texas’s first election, Sam Houston, who led the Texan victory at San Jacinto, was elected President of Texas. • Texans also voted to ask the U.S. to annex, or add, Texas as a state. • Americans had mixed feelings about annexation Opponents • Didn’t want America to take on Texas’s large debt • Northerners didn’t want another slave state in the Union • Texas remained independent for nine years, until President John Tyler allowed it to join the Union under certain conditions. • Texas became a state late in 1845. The Annexation of Texas • Supporters • Wanted more American land • Admired Texans’ fight for freedom • Southerners liked that Texas allowed slavery

4. The Mexican War

5. Results of the Mexican War • The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War • Under the treaty, Mexico gave up its claim to Texas, as well as to a huge tract of land that included present-day New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. • This land was known as the Mexican Cession. • The same year the treaty was signed, gold was discovered in California. • In return for the territory, America paid Mexico $15 million and dropped its claim for $3 million in damages. • In 1853 the Gadsden Purchase clarified the treaty boundary and transferred more land to the United States. • Causes and Effects of the Mexican War included Causes • Annexation of Texas • Boundary dispute between U.S. and Mexico • Manifest destiny and expansionism • Effects • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo • Mexican Cession • Gadsden Purchase • Debate that lingers to this day

6. A Push for Reform • The Main Idea • The Reform Era led to some improvements in American society as well as the beginning of the women’s movement and the abolition movement. • Reading Focus • How did religion spark reform in the early nineteenth century? • How did early immigration lead to urban reform? • What was the role of women in the Reform Era? • What was the abolition movement?

7. Religion Sparks Reform • Western New York became known as the Burned-Over District as the flames of religion took over the minds of the people. New movements included • Across the country, especially in the North, Americans experienced the Second Great Awakening, as people took up religion in huge numbers. • Preachers of the Second Great Awakening were Protestant, and they did not preach adherence to church rules or obedience to a minister, but rather that hard work and dedication could bring heaven on earth. • The Second Great Awakening’s moral focus sparked the Reform Era, a time when Americans tried to reshape their society. Mormon, started by Joseph Smith Seventh-day Adventist, started by William Miller Shaker farms, utopian communities, Spiritualism

8. The Reform Era lasted from about 1830 to 1860. • The men and women who participated in the many reform movements were called reformers. • Key reforms of this period included Prison Reform Dorothea Dix Worked for better conditions and new institutions for mentally ill The Temperance Movement Tried to lessen or eliminate the use of alcohol Education Reform Worked to improve the sub-par education system • One of the most remarkable movements of this era was the transcendentalism movement of New England. • Believed knowledge is not found only through observation of the world but by reason, intuition, and personal spiritual experience • Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were members. The Reform Era

9. Growing cities had many immigrants living in tenements, or poorly made, crowded apartment buildings that were filthy and dark. In an early reform effort, local boards of health set sanitation rules in some cities, though conditions remained bad for many years. From 1820 to 1860 the number of American manufacturing workers soared from 5 percent to more than 30 percent, which had far–reaching social results. Workers were given long hours, unsafe conditions, and low wages. Workers began to organize into groups, demanding better working conditions, and starting the American labor movement. The Ten-Hour Movement caused President Jackson to declare 10-hour work days for some federal workers. President Martin Van Buren later extended the rule to others in 1840. Reform in Cities and Industries Urban Reform Industrial Reform

10. Women Reformers Though women could not vote, serve on juries, or run for office, they played a large role in reform movements such as prison reform, education reform, and the temperance movement. All reform movements were rooted in the moral changes of the Second Awakening, and this opened doors for women. Many women did good works Started Bible groups Started missionary societies that later became reform societies Focused on issues from education to urban reform Women’s Right Movement The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the first women’s rights convention in America. Two generations of women had already worked for greater rights, but women still couldn’t vote or hold public office. Dedicated abolitionists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the convention. The Seneca Falls Declaration, held: “men and women were created equal.” The declaration was widely ridiculed, as were the women and few men who supported it. Women in the Reform Era

11. Life as an Enslaved Person • Enslaved African Americans were denied their most basic right — freedom. They had no choice but to work whenever the slaveholder demanded it. • Most enslaved people lived on farms or plantations in the South, doing farm work, hard labor, or servant duties in the household. • In cities, enslaved people worked in mills, offices, and homes; they also worked in the mines and in forests as lumberjacks. • Enslaved people mostly lived in intolerable conditions • Poor food and shelter • Non-existent medical care • Possibility of separation from family • Despite this, many found comfort in community, culture, and religion.

12. Anti-Slavery Efforts in the South • Some African Americans in the South were freemen, or African Americans who had been emancipated. • These men and women faced legal and social discrimination, yet still played a large role in anti-slavery activities. • Many freemen helped enslaved people escape, and many bravely spoke out for freedom for all African Americans. • In 1831 the deadliest slave uprising in American history took place. Nat Turner and his accomplices killed dozens of whites before the uprising was put down by a local militia. • Other enslaved African Americans chose to attempt escape, trying to reach the free states of the North, Canada, or Mexico. • Over the years, a constantly changing network of escape routes developed called the Underground Railroad. Sympathetic whites and freemen provided help to escaping slaves. Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery herself, helped many on their journey to freedom.

13. The number of enslaved people trying to escape increased in the 1830s, possibly encouraged by an anti-slavery movement in the Northern states. • The Second Great Awakening’s focus on morality caused many Northerners to see slavery as wrong and ungodly. • Many joined reform societies to stop slavery • Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery, was a leading abolitionist. • He published an 1845 biography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. • 1833: William Lloyd Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. • It was the first group to call for an immediate end to U.S. slavery. • In five years, had over 1,500 chapters in the North. • Many abolitionists were women. • Sarah and Angela Grimké, daughters of a Southern slaveholder, were abolitionists. • They moved to the North to support abolition and women’s rights. The Abolition Movement in the North

14. Opposition to Abolition • Though the majority of white southerners did not own enslaved people, the minority who did found abolition outrageous, as if it were an attack on their livelihood and, to some, their religion. • Slaveholders argued that slavery was essential to cotton production, which was a powerful argument even in the North, because cotton accounted for 55% of American exports. • In fact, most Northerners supported slavery as well, since freedom for slaves meant more competition for jobs. • Still, the pressure to abolish slavery in the U.S. was undeniable.