TASK: Read TOPIC 4.1 Contextualizing Period 4 from the Key Concept Outline.

TASK: Identify three major policy decisions the US made in the early 1800s and
list a few effects of each decision:
TASK: For each identified region below, brainstorm examples for Period 4.
New England
Give an example of when New England opposed a federal government policy:

Give an example of when New England favored or requested a federal

government policy:

The South
Give an example of when the South opposed a federal government policy:

Give an example of when the South favored or requested a federal government

policy:

The West
Give an example of when the West opposed a federal government policy:

Give an example of when the West favored or requested a federal government

policy:
TASK: Explain how these 2 documents reveal the goals of American foreign policy
in this era:
TASK: Brainstorm innovations in those 3 categories for Period 4. Complete the
chart below.
Causes/Examples Effects
Innovations in Technology
(hint think about
communication,
transportation, and
manufacturing)

Innovations in Agriculture
(hint think about North,
South, and West)

Innovations in Commerce
(hint‐think Market
Revolution)
TASK: Analyze how this data reveals changes in American democracy and the
expansion of participatory democracy. Also, consider the limitations of the
changes (continuities—hint think about who didn’t get to vote).

electoral popular popular

year candidate political party votes votes %
no formally organized
1789 George Washington 4 parties 695
John Adams 34
John Jay 9
Other Candidates 26
1792 George Washington 4 Federalist 132
John Adams Federalist 77
George Clinton Democratic‐Republican 50
1796 John Adams Federalist 71
Thomas Jefferson Democratic‐Republican 68
Thomas Pinckney Federalist 59
Aaron Burr Antifederalist 30
1800 Thomas Jefferson Democratic‐Republican 736
Aaron Burr Democratic‐Republican 736
John Adams Federalist 65
Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney Federalist 64
1804 Thomas Jefferson Democratic‐Republican 162
Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney Federalist 14
1808 James Madison Democratic‐Republican 122
Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney Federalist 47
1812 James Madison Democratic‐Republican 128
DeWitt Clinton Fusion 89
1816 James Monroe Democratic‐Republican 183
Rufus King Federalist 34
1820 James Monroe Democratic‐Republican 231
John Quincy Adams Independent‐Republican 1
no distinct party
1824 John Quincy Adams designations 847 108,740 30.9
Andrew Jackson 99 153,544 41.3
Henry Clay 37 47,531 13.0
William H. Crawford 41 40,856 11.2
1828 Andrew Jackson Democratic 178 647,286 56.0
John Quincy Adams National Republican 83 508,064 43.6
1832 Andrew Jackson Democratic 219 687,502 54.2
Henry Clay National Republican 49 530,189 37.4
1836 Martin Van Buren Democratic 170 762,678 50.8
William Henry Harrison Whig 73 550,816 36.6
Hugh L. White Whig 26 146,107 9.7
Daniel Webster Whig 14 41,201 2.7
1840 William Henry Harrison Whig 234 1,275,016 52.9
Martin Van Buren Democratic 60 1,129,102 46.8
1844 James K. Polk Democratic 170 1,337,243 49.5
Henry Clay Whig 105 1,299,062 48.1
James Gillespie Birney Liberty 62,103 2.3
TASK: Brainstorm ways in which national culture emerged in this era. Also, keep
in mind that regional and local culture was still very important. Hint—don’t spend
much time on this one.

Thomas Cole (1801–1848), The Oxbow, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after
a Thunderstorm (1836), Metropolitan Museum of Art.
TASK: Read and highlight this article:
The Second Great Awakening (Source: Digital History)
The chief vehicle behind this outpouring of religious faith was the religious revival. Highly
emotional meetings were held by preachers in all sections of the country, which sought to
awaken Americans to their need for religious rebirth. So widespread were the revivals that the
early 19th century acquired the name the "Second Great Awakening."
The Second Great Awakening had its symbolic beginnings in a small frontier community in
central Kentucky. Between August 6 and 12, 1801, thousands of people‐‐perhaps 25,000‐‐
gathered at Cane Ridge to pray. At the time, the state's largest city only had 1,795 residents.
There was not one minister at Cane Ridge; there were more than a dozen. They came from
many denominations: Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist. There was at least one African
American minister. The people who attended the meeting came from all social classes. Perhaps
two‐thirds were women. A minister left a vivid first‐person description of the scene:
Sinners [were] dropping down on every hand, shrieking, groaning, crying for mercy...agonizing,
fainting, falling down in distress.
In the course of six months, 100,000 frontier Kentuckians joined together in search of religious
salvation. One observer estimated in 1811 that three to four million Americans attended camp
meetings annually.
Evangelical Revivalism
Evangelical revivalism was the dominant form of religious expression in early 19th century
America. The word evangelical refers to a belief that all people must recognize their depravity
and worthlessness, repent their sins, and undergo a conversion experience and a rebirth of
religious feelings.
What explains the rapid rise of revivalism? In part, revivals were a response to the growing
separation of church and state that followed the Revolution. But revivals also reflected the
hunger of tens of thousands of ordinary Americans for a more emotional religion. Even in the
late 18th century, Americans were not as indifferent to religion as church membership statistics
might suggest. Many Americans were put off by genteel clergy with aristocratic pretensions.
They were also alienated by the older denominations' stress on decorum, formality, and
unemotional sermons.
Revivals also meet a growing need for community and communal purpose. At a time when the
country was becoming more mobile, commercial, and individualistic, revivals ensured that
Americans would remain committed to higher values.
In the South, revivals largely attracted the dispossessed, including many slaves and free blacks.
In the North, revivals appealed to upwardly mobile groups. Middle‐class women were especially
attracted to the revivals. The revivals provided many women with avenues of self‐expression‐‐
through church societies and charitable and benevolent organizations.
The revivals left a lasting imprint on pre‐Civil War America. The rituals of evangelical religion‐‐
the camp meeting, group prayer, and mass baptisms along rivers and creeks‐‐were the truly
distinctive American experience in the decades before the Civil War. The revivals contributed to
a conception of the United States as a country with a special mission to lead the world to a
golden age of freedom and equality.
A key concept for the revivalists was that each person had a duty to combat sin. For the
revivalists, sin was not an abstraction. It was concrete. Dueling, profanity, and drinking hard
liquor were sins. In the future, many northern evangelicals regarded slavery as the sum of all
sins.
Enslaved African Americans and Religious Revivalism
One of the most dramatic consequences of the revivals was the conversion of hundreds of
thousands of enslaved African Americans to Christianity. During the 17th century, many
slaveholders feared that baptized slaves would have to be set free. But by the second quarter of
the 18th century, a growing number of slave owners concluded that Christianity would make
slaves more conscientious.
Within the Baptist and Methodist churches, slaves created a hybrid form of Christianity,
blending Christian rituals and beliefs with elements of West and Central African cultures. The
result was a religion with its distinctive forms of preaching and worship, including rhythmic
sermons, ecstatic behavior induced by spiritual possession, and singing and dancing influenced
by African traditions. This African heritage gave many slaves a hopeful, optimistic view of life,
which contrasted sharply with the evangelical stress on human sinfulness.
In evangelical religion, many slaves found a stress on love and spiritual equality that
strengthened their faith in eventual deliverance from bondage. Spirituals such as Go Down,
Moses, with its refrain, "Let my people go," indicate that slaves identified with the Hebrew
people who had overcome oppression and enslavement.
TASK: Read the following list of reforms from this era and develop an explanation
for WHY this was such a strong era of reform. You should have at least two
reasons.
The reform movements that arose during the antebellum period in America focused on
specific issues: temperance, abolishing imprisonment for debt, pacifism, antislavery,
abolishing capital punishment, amelioration of prison conditions (with prison's purpose
reconceived as rehabilitation rather than punishment), the establishment of public
institutions for the care of the destitute, orphans, blind, and mentally ill, the
establishment of public schools, woman's rights (including, at first, especially the
establishment of a woman's right to own property apart from her husband and her right
to sue for divorce), and the amelioration of labor conditions (including higher pay, the
right to form unions, the right to strike, and the demand for limits on the number of
work hours, and safe working conditions).
(Source: https://teachinghistory.org/history‐content/ask‐a‐historian/24100)

Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

TASK: Using this data, consider the major changes and continuities African
Americans experienced in this era.

Black and slave population of the United States from 1790 to 1880
TASK: Connect this learning objective to the following three documents: