V. United States: 1824-1848
Learning Objective:
Understand the development of increased regionalism.
The period 18l5-1824 has been labeled the "Era of Good
Feelings" by historians because of the death of the Federalist
party. As each area of the country developed a specialized economy
it became interdependent with the other sections. This development
helped create a national economy but the economic differences
also increased sectional tension.
The Northeast developed a manufacturing base. By l820 manufacturing
was more important than foreign trade. Manufacturing developed
in the Northeast because it had urban centers, a large labor
supply, and the necessary capital. The development of manufacturing
created two new social classes: 1) industrial capitalists; and,
2) factory workers.
The West's economy was based on small family farms. The people
of this region wanted internal transportation improvements so
goods could get to eastern and world markets, and to enable
them to purchase eastern and imported goods at lower prices.
In 1811 the steamboat came into use and the cost of transporting
goods on the Mississippi River fell by 90 percent over the transportation
costs by keelboat. The Erie Canal cut the cost of transportation
from the Great Lakes basin to the east to $8.00 a ton — a 90
percent reduction.
The South's economy was based on plantation slavery. In 1793
the invention of the cotton gin made cotton production feasible,
and the number of slaves in the South jumped from 800,000 in
1800 to 1,500,000 in 1820. The South viewed slavery as a way
of controlling the black race and as a viable and profitable
labor system representing an enormous investment in capital.
The Missouri Compromise (1820). This political compromise illustrates
the regional conflicts that began to develop due to the differing
labor systems that evolved during this period. In 1819 Missouri
applied for statehood as a slave state. Rep. Tallmadge (D-NY)
put forth an amendment to the statehood bill forbidding slavery
in Mo. This was the first time that slavery became a national
issue. After much debate a compromise allowed Maine to come
into the Union as a free state and Missouri to enter as a slave
state. Slavery was forbidden in the Louisiana Purchase territories
north of 36 degrees 30 minutes. The issue did not involved the
rights of black slaves (since MO came in as a slave state),
but the political power of the regions (there was an equal number
of slave and free states in the U.S. Senate).
Learning Objective:
Understand the presidential elections of 1824 and 1828.
The Federalist party was no longer in existence. James Monroe
(1817-1823) was president. The Republican Congressional caucus
nominated Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford. Other
candidates were John Q. Adams, the Secretary of State, from
Mass.; Henry Clay, Speaker of the House, from Kentucky; and
Andrew Jackson from Tennessee.
| CANDIDATE |
ELECTORAL
VOTES |
POPULAR
VOTES |
| Andrew
Jackson |
99 |
153,740 |
| John
Quincy Adams |
84 |
108,544 |
| William
Crawford |
41 |
46,618 |
| Henry
Clay |
37 |
47,136 |
Since no candidate had a majority of the electoral vote, the
top three candidates went to the House of Representatives. Crawford
was ill and out of the race. Clay threw his support to Adams
because he believed in his policies more than Jackson's and
because he and Jackson were from the same region and were bitter
political enemies. Adams awarded Clay with the Secretary of
State position (seen as a stepping stone to the Presidency).
Jackson and his supporters cried "corrupt bargain,"
and they began immediately campaigning for the 1828 election
.
In the election of 1828 Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams
with 56 percent of the popular vote (178 to 83 in the electoral
college). Jackson was the first president that did not come
from Virginia or Massachusetts — his election illustrates the
growing power of the West. The campaign was a dirty one — both
sides were accused of sexual misconduct; Jackson for living
with his wife before his divorce to his first wife became final;
Adams for procuring the sexual services of a young American
girl for the Tzar when he was ambassador to Russia. Jackson's
victory caused a permanent split in the Democratic party and
his opponents formed the Whig party. The Whig party took its
name from the king's opposition party in Britain, and Jackson's
opponents took to calling him "King Andrew."
Learning Objective:
Understand the political issues of the "Jackson Era."
The Age of the Common Man. During this time political propaganda
emphasized that this was the era of the "common man."
Indeed, per capita income in the U.S. was well ahead of Western
Europe. Yet, Indians, slaves, free blacks, and women to a large
extent, were totally outside the mainstream of economic advancement.
Even excluding these groups, economic inequality increased substantially
from l820 to l860 due to the introduction of the factory system,
and the increased difficulty of making a living on a "family"
farm.
By 1860 the upper 5% of families owned over half of the nation's
wealth; the upper 10% owned 70% of the wealth. The farther east,
the more concentrated the wealth. For example, Philadelphia's
top 1% of the population owned half of the city's wealth: the
lower 80% controlled only 3% of the wealth. These figures are
roughly comparable to the inequalities in northern Europe in
the late l9th century.
The odds were heavily against an unskilled laborer acquiring
a higher occupational status. It was extremely rare for the
children of manual workers to rise to the levels of clerical,
managerial, or professional employment. The average worker worked
a 12 to 15 hour day six or seven days a week. Skilled workers
made $4.00 to $10.00 a week. Unskilled workers made $1.00 to
$6.00 a week.
The "Spoils System." Jackson removed 20% of the bureaucrats
in the federal government and replaced them with political appointments
— "To the victor belongs the spoils." Jackson took
this action to reward those who supported him, and to have people
in office that would help in his re-election campaign. This
action set a precedent that became worse over time until the
assassination of President Garfield in 1881 caused the Pendelton
Civil Service Act (1883) to be passed.
Indian Removals. The Indian tribes in the southwest were "civilized"
— they had their own written language, were farmers, not hunters,
and some even owned slaves. When the state of Georgia tried
to take the Cherokees' land, the Cherokees took Georgia to court.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokees could keep their
land, but President Jackson and Georgia refused to abide by
the Supreme Court decision and the Indians were all moved west
of the Mississippi River to "Indian Territory" (present-day
Oklahoma). Thousands of Indians died during the removal on the
"Trail of Tears" during the winter of 1832-1833.
The Tariff Controversy. United States' tariffs during the early
l9th century were already high, and they increased during this
period. In l8l6 tariff duties were 25%. By l828 the rates had
increased to an ad valorem duty of 50%. This so-called "Tariff
of Abominations" hurt those who had to buy imported goods,
especially in the South. In South Carolina, land depletion,
cotton production competition from southwestern states, and
a fear of federal intervention over slavery, led South Carolinians
to blame the tariff of l828 for their economic problems. John
C. Calhoun was Vice President of the U.S., but he had lost the
support of President Jackson, and he needed to keep his power
base in SC. Calhoun secretly wrote The South Carolina Exposition
and Protest. In this work he restated the theory of nullification.
Calhoun took the theory to its logical conclusion and he wrote
that the federal government could: l) accept the nullification
of a federal law and not enforce that particular law in the
state(s) that nullified it; or, 2) an amendment could be added
to the Constitution that would force the state to obey the nullified
law. If the latter happened, the state could either obey the
law or secede from the Union. The Tariff of 1832 reduced duties
to 35%, but this reduction did not satisfy SC. The state legislature
nullified the tariff and a crisis developed. Calhoun resigned
from the Vice Presidency and took a seat in the Senate to lead
the fight against the tariff. A compromise tariff was worked
out that reduced the duties to 20%, and Congress passed a Force
Act that allowed President Jackson to use force if SC refused
to obey the law. SC accepted the new tariff, but nullified the
Force Act. Jackson overlooked the nullification since the issue
had been resolved. But, the question of "states rights"
had not been settled — the South still believed that a state
could leave the Union if it so desired.
The Bank War. The Second Bank of the United States had been
chartered in 1816 for a 20 year term. It acted as the government's
financial agent, providing vaults for its gold and silver, paying
its bills out of its accounts, investing deposits, and selling
national bonds (borrowing money for the government when it was
needed). With its 29 branches, it controlled 20% of all the
bank notes in the U.S. and 33% of all bank deposits and specie
— thus it had great economic power.
In 1819 a severe depression hit the United States. Many banks,
including the Bank of the U.S., had extended credit too generously
to land speculators. Cotton production doubled and the price
of cotton fell 200 percent; from 30 cents a pound to 10 cents
a pound. Financial troubles in Europe caused a decline in exports,
and the National Bank, under new management, began to call in
its loans. Many state banks collapsed under the economic pressure
and many people in the West and South (Jackson's political power
base regions) blamed the National Bank for their economic problems.
Jackson, and thousands of other land speculators, had been ruined
in 1819 when the National Bank called in its loans.
In 1832 the Whigs nominated Henry Clay for the presidency.
Clay persuaded the president of the bank, Nicholas Biddle, to
apply for a new charter, although the charter did not expire
until 1836. Clay wanted to use the bank as a campaign issue
in the presidential election. Jackson vetoed the recharter of
the National Bank and easily won reelection in 1836 (55% of
the popular vote; electoral votes 219 to 49). After the veto
Jackson took government money out of the National Bank and distributed
it to state "pet banks" throughout the U.S. He did
this to win political support in the regions where the money
was deposited, and because he honestly believed that the government's
resources should be distributed throughout the country and not
concentrated in the East.
The election of 1840. In 1836 Martin Van Buren, Jackson's close
political ally, won a narrow victory over the Whigs. But Van
Buren had to cope with a long period of economic depression
which was blamed on the destruction of the Bank of the U.S.
(even though that was not the real cause). The Whigs used the
depression and Van Buren's aloofness against him in the election
of 1840. An old Indian fighter, William Henry Harrison, won
the election. The election of 1840 was the first "modern"
election in that the Whigs appealed to the voters by emphasizing
Harrison's rustic background, and his victory at Tippecanoe
(the log cabin was their campaign symbol, and their campaign
slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler too"). From now on,
every American Presidential candidate would try to identify
himself as "the people's candidate." Harrison caught
a cold at the inauguration ceremony and died one month later.
Learning Objective:
Understand United States Continental Expansion.
The Webster-Asburton treaty (1842). This treaty was a major
accomplishment of the Tyler administration because it solved
a series of potentially dangerous disputes with Great Britain.
The imprecision of the Treaty of Paris, 1783 spawned serious
boundary disputes between British Canada and the U.S.. Overlapping
claims around Maine involved over 12,000 square miles. In addition
to the northeastern tangle, another difference developed over
the correct boundary line between Lake Superior and the Lake
of the Woods.
In 1827 Britain and the U.S. agreed to let the King of the
Netherlands arbitrate the issue, and he divided the disputed
territory equally between the two claimants. The U.S. Senate
rejected the proposal. In the 1838-39 "Aroostook War"
rival lumberjacks and land agents from New Brunswick and Maine
clashed. Authorities on both sides of the border mobilized the
militia, and Congress appropriated $10 million for the defense
of Maine.
Secretary of State Daniel Webster, an Anglophile, and the British
ambassador Ashburton (who had an American wife and long advocated
Anglo-American friendship) were eager to avoid war over "a
few miles more or less of a miserable pine swamp" [British
foreign minister Peel]. They met and divided the contested area.
The U.S. received 7,000 square miles to Britain's 5,000 — Britain
received an important road to its eastern provinces, and the
President could get Senate approval for the treaty because the
U.S. received more land than Britain. Ashburton also yielded
some 6,500 square miles of territory between Lake Superior and
the Lake of the Woods to the Americans. The Webster-Ashburton
Treaty terminated an era of accumulating grievances between
the U.S. and Britain, and it opened the way for steady improvement
in American-British relations.
The 1846 acquisition of Oregon. Oregon was claimed by both
the U.S. and Britain (the U.S. received Spain's claims through
the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819). The U.S. claimed to the
southern border of Russian Alaska (54( 40" latitude) and
Britain claimed to the southern border of present-day Oregon
(42( latitude). In 1844 the Democratic presidential nominee,
James K. Polk, ran on a platform calling for "the re-occupation
of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas." Polk's inaugural
address asserted that America's title to Oregon was "clear
and unquestionable," and led to excited talk of a possible
war. Yet neither the U.S. nor Britain wanted war and a compromise
was reached by extending the Convention of 1818 line (49(latitude)
to the Pacific. Both sides were satisfied with this compromise
because the major issue involved was harbors on the Pacific
for trade with the Orient, not a few thousand more miles of
territory. The U.S. received the Strait of Juan de Fuca (Seattle)
and Britain received Vancouver.
The Texas-Mexican War. Beginning in 1821, Americans, under
the leadership of Stephen Austin, began moving into eastern
Texas. The Mexican government, in a short-sighted move, wanted
the American-Mexicans to act as a buffer against future American
expansion. In return for land, the Americans agreed to abide
by Mexican law, learn Spanish, and become Catholics. By the
early l830s Texas had a population of about 30,000 American
settlers and several thousand slaves. The Mexican government
became alarmed at the large influx of American settlers (who
were not becoming Mexican citizens), and in 1830 Mexico barred
further immigration from the USA, prohibited the additional
importation of slaves (in 1831 Mexico abolished slavery), tightened
the requirement for the profession of the Catholic faith by
all citizens, and increased the Mexican military establishment
in Texas.
In 1835, the Mexican president Santa Anna tried to re-establish
Mexican control over the Americans in Texas. Up to this time
they had considerable autonomy. American settlers rebelled and
established a provisional government. The 188 defenders at the
Alamo held out against 4,000 Mexican solders for 13 days and
bought the Texans time to prepare their defense. At the battle
of San Jacinto (April, l835) Santa Anna was defeated and captured.
Santa Anna recognized Texas independence as a condition of his
release, although he repudiated his agreement once he was back
in Mexico City. The Mexican army was too weak to recapture Texas.
Texas applied for admission to the Union, but President Jackson
refused because he did not want to split the Democratic party
over the slavery issue, and he wanted to avoid war with Mexico.
From 1835-1845 Texas was an independent country. Finally, after
expansionist president James K. Polk was elected (but 3 days
before he was inaugurated) Texas came into the Union for the
following reasons: 1) Texas cotton was competing with U.S. cotton
for European markets; 2) The U.S. was afraid that Britain and
France were interested in securing territory in Texas; and,
3) Polk had been elected on a program of "Manifest Destiny"
(a slogan coined by a journalist that implied that God and nature
intended Americans to possess the North American continent).
Texas was necessary to achieve Polk's goal of U.S. expansion
to the Pacific. Politically, the slave state of Texas could
be counterbalanced by the soon-to-be-acquired free territory
of Oregon. Northern Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas because
of the slavery issue.
The Mexican War (1846-1848). Mexico refused to recognize the
annexation of Texas, and President Polk was determined to get
California with its fine harbors on the Pacific. While neither
side was looking for war, neither side was willing to go out
of the way to avoid one. Polk offered Mexico $30 million for
California and New Mexico. When Mexico refused his offer he
ordered U.S. troops into land claimed by both the U.S. and Mexico
between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers. There was a clash
between U.S. and Mexican troops, 16 American soldiers were killed,
and Polk used this incident as an excuse to have Congress declare
war. Mexico was easily defeated (the U.S. suffered only 13,000
deaths, 2,000 by combat — the rest from disease — 9,000 men
deserted). On September 14, 1847 a small American army of around
14,000 men under general Winfield Scott captured Mexico City
("the halls of Montezuma" in the Marine Corps Hymn).
The landing of this force at Veracruz, 220 miles east of Mexico
City, was the largest amphibious landing in the world up to
this time (this record would last until Gallipoli in World War
I).
Mexico sued for peace, and in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
(February, l848) Mexico ceded to the U.S. the Rio Grande boundary,
California, and the province of New Mexico. The U.S. paid Mexico
$l5 million and assumed responsibility for about $3 million
that the Mexican government owed U.S. citizens. The war added
over half a million square miles to the U.S., at a total cost
of 48 cents an acre; and on January 22, 1848, eleven days before
the peace treaty was signed, gold was found in California. No
thought was given to any oil or gas; those riches would come
later. But in the first decade after the discovery of gold,
over $550 million worth of gold came from California's mines.
The Mexican War brought the slavery question onto the national
scene. After the Mexican War Congress would have to decide whether
all of the new territory acquired would be slave or free. During
the war itself, Pennsylvania Representative David Wilmont had
put forth a proviso to an appropriations bill that would have
forbidden slavery in any land taken from Mexico. The Proviso
passed the House in 1846 and 1847, but it was defeated in the
Senate where half the seats were held by men from the slave
states.
The Gadsden Purchase (1853). This purchase completed the continental
expansion of the U.S.. President Pierce wanted to purchase the
area for $10 million for a transcontinental railroad route.
Northern Senators opposed the purchase because they did not
want slavery to spread into an area that under Mexico was free.
Nine thousand square miles were cut out of the territory that
Mexico agreed to sell. This is the only time in American history
that the Senate ever turned down territory offered to it.
Learning Objective:
Understand ante-bellum reform.
Definition of Reform: "Change that the people advocating
it present as an improvement in the present system."
Transcendentalism. Ante-bellum reformers all believed in the
importance of trying to perfect the society in which they lived.
The philosophy of transcendentalism put forth by Henry David
Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed that God was in everyone,
and therefore everyone had the ability of becoming "God-like."
A person could transcend his human weakness and achieve perfection.
This perfection would be achieved through education—through
raising a person's consciousness. Once people were educated
about society's evils these ills would disappear.
Thoreau carried the idea of education one step further in his
essay "Civil Disobedience" in which he stated that
above man's law was a higher law, and that if man's law was
unjust and violated the higher law (not unlike Jefferson's Natural
Laws) it was the duty of a citizen not to obey man's laws. Most
transcendentalists thought that the Mexican War was immoral
for two reasons. First, they saw it as a war of aggression,
and second, they saw it as a war to spread slavery. Since slavery
was sanctioned in the Constitution, Thoreau's theory allowed
a person to protest slavery and the Mexican War in good conscience.
One should not use violence in his disobedience, but through
his actions raise the conscience of his oppressors. This philosophy
had a great influence on Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Social reform. Reformers tried to improve American society
by improving conditions and treatment for those less fortunate
than others — the blind, deaf, prisoners, and the insane. Dorothea
Dix publicized the plight of the insane.
Women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton tried to
improve the legal status of women. Women could not vote, nor
hold public office. Most colleges and professions were closed
to them. Married women could not control their own property,
and in divorce the husband received the children. The Seneca
Falls Conference and Declaration in 1848 was a failed attempt
to correct these faults.
The abolitionist movement. This movement was the primary reform
movement of the ante-bellum North. Some abolitionists wanted
to work within the political system and others (like William
Lloyd Garrison and the escaped slave Frederick Douglass) believed
the system was so corrupted by slavery that it was impossible
to change the system from within. Both groups demanded immediate
abolition. By 1840 about 200,000 people called themselves abolitionists.
While the abolitionists themselves did not abolish slavery they
did make it a national issue — they raised people's consciousness.
Prohibition. Americans drank heavily and always had. Nevertheless,
drunkenness was universally regarded as sinful and socially
unacceptable. With the rush of the moral-betterment campaigns
of the 1830s, reformers published statistics showing that a
substantial number of crimes were committed by people who were
drunk. They also drew a connection between poverty and drinking.
Drunkenness, the moralists claimed, led to poverty. Once evangelicals
took up the theme of temperance, the movement spread rapidly.
By 1835 over 1 million Americans belonged to temperance societies,
and several states passed laws limiting the consumption of alcohol.
In the 1830s and 1840s the crusade against alcohol took on
a new dimension because of the huge influx of immigrants who
had different customs, among which was a seemingly inordinate
devotion to beer, wine, and whiskey. Only 8,400 Europeans came
to the U.S. in 1820. More than 23,000 arrived in 1830 and 84,000
came in 1840. In 1850 at least 370,000 people immigrated into
the U.S. Not only were the numbers larger than before, most
of the new immigrants were non-Protestant and non-English speaking.
Thus, while 3,600 Irish came to the U.S. in 1820, most of them
Protestant, 164,000 arrived in 1850, most of them Roman Catholic.
In 1820, 968 Germans entered the U.S.; in 1850, 79,000 arrived.
Between 1830 and 1860 the Roman Catholic population of the U.S.
increased tenfold — from 300,000 to more than 3 million, or
from 3 percent of the total population to 13 percent.
The Know-Nothings. The growth of Catholicism in the U.S. was
difficult for many Protestant Americans to accept. Since the
days of the Puritans they had been taught the Church of Rome
was not merely another Christian denomination but a fount of
evil. In addition, in the Italian Papal States the Pope was
seen as the leader of a reactionary and repressive state. The
political principles of Catholicism seemed to be the very antithesis
of American traditions of democracy. Because the Irish immigrants
were devoted Catholics, many Protestants feared that they were
the shock troops for political reaction. Moreover, the vast
majority of the Irish immigrants were destitute. Once in the
U.S., they were willing to work at any rate of pay. Protestant
workingmen regarded them as a threat to their own standard of
living. Economic uneasiness combined with the evangelical crusade
against the new immigrants' religious beliefs and their apparently
heavy drinking. Street wars between Protestant and Irish Catholic
workingmen regularly erupted in northeastern cities.
Anti-Catholicism eventually took on political form with the
founding of the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a secret
organization that was dedicated to immigration restriction.
The order's members came to be known as "Know-Nothings"
because when asked by outsiders about the organization, they
replied, "I know nothing." After 1850, the order came
above ground as the American party. At its peak, the American
party elected 75 congressmen. By 1860 the party merged with
the Republican party.
The Second Great Awakening. In the Second Great Awakening,
as in the First in the mid-eighteenth century, eloquent preachers
crisscrossed New England and New York with the message that
human nature was tainted, just as the Puritans had preached.
Unlike the Puritans, however, these preachers said that not
just a few "Elect" were saved through God's grace;
everyone who repented and prayed for deliverance from their
sinful natures would be saved. This view of religion fit in
with American view of democracy — Heaven was not reserved for
the elite; it was an egalitarian place.
A well-turned revivalist sermon began with an emotional description
of the sinfulness of human beings. The second part of the sermon
gruesomely detailed the sufferings of hell, for which all unrepentant
sinners were destined. The revivalist then concluded on a note
of hope. Any person could be saved if he repented and declared
faith in Jesus Christ. While the revivalism of the Second Great
Awakening spread through every state to some extent, revival
fires burned hottest in New England and in New York, long-settled
regions that seemed left behind in the 19th century, and on
the frontier, where life was equally hard and uncertain.
Beginning at the turn of the century camp revival meetings
were held. The people who lived isolated, lonely lives responded
to the calls by the thousands — more than 20,000 in one instance
— and came to the camp meeting from as far away as 200 miles.
The atmosphere of the camp meeting was electrifying. As many
as 40 preachers simultaneously harangued the crowd. The meeting
went on day and night for a week or more. Conversions were passionate.
Some people fell to their hands and knees, weeping uncontrollably.
Others scampered around on all fours, barking like dogs. A common
manifestation was the "jerks." Caught up in the mass
hysteria, people lurched about, their limbs jerking quite beyond
their control. Many Americans went just for the show and the
chance to take advantage of the crowd by thieving, heckling
preachers, heavy drinking, and sexual philandering.
The excesses of the camp meeting eventually led to a reaction.
In place of the periodic revival the Methodist, and later other
Protestant groups, offered the circuit rider. He was a minister
who was assigned to visit ten or twenty little western settlements
that were too poor to support a permanent parson.
The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. The founder
of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons,
was Joseph Smith, a poor farm boy from Vermont. When he was
20 years old he announced that he had been visited by the angel
Moroni who had shown him where some mysterious gold plates were
buried. Moroni later provided Smith with spectacles that enabled
him to read the strange inscriptions on the plates.
The story he translated was the Book of Mormon, a Bible of
the New World that told of a lost tribe of Israel in America
(the Nephites), and history of their wars with the Indians (the
Lamanites). Christ had founded Christianity in America as he
had done in Palestine. In 384 the Indians wiped out the Nephites,
sparing only the prophet Mormon, who wrote the book that Smith
published in 1830.
Tales similar to this one had long circulated in the folklore
of the region, and novel that incorporated some of the details
of the Book of Mormon was written about the same time as Smith's
revelations. To many Americans, told from childhood that their
country was a new Eden, there was nothing preposterous in the
idea that Christ should have visited the New World. Smith first
took his congregation to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally,
in 1840, to Nauvoo, Illinois. There they prospered, and by 1844
Nauvoo was the largest city in Illinois.
In Nauvoo the Mormons were resented and harassed, because of
their practice of polygamy, their prosperity and because of
their defensive attitude toward outsiders, whom they called
Gentiles. Both the Whigs and Democrats courted Nauvoo's votes
because the Mormons voted as a bloc, but in 1844 Smith spurned
both parties and announced that he would be a candidate for
the presidency. On June 27, 1844, This news, added to rumors
that Smith commanded a well-armed private militia of 2,000,
led to his arrest. On June 27, 1844, with the complicity of
officials, he and his brother were taken from the jailhouse
and murdered.
Brigham Young, also a Vermonter, took over from Smith. Young
also claimed that he had received revelations directly from
God. The most important of these was the command that the Latter-Day
Saints move beyond the boundaries of the U.S.. Young organized
the great migration of the Mormons down to the last detail.
Advance parties planted crops that would be ready for harvesting
when the thousands of migrants, pulling their few possessions
in handcarts, arrived on the trail. Young selected the basin
of the Great Salt Lake as the Mormon's new homeland, and by
1847 Salt Lake City had a population of 11,000. With the end
of polygamy, Utah became a state in 1896.
Next
Chapter >
Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
