As part of its major series The American Adventure, PBS offers two half-hour videotapes quite suitable for use in the classroom. The Jacksonian Persuasion deals with politics, including the nullification controversy, and emphasizes the democratic cast of the Jackson administration. Reforming the Republic concentrates on the great thrust of the humanitarian reform movements. These videotapes may be obtained directly from PBS Video. Films for the Humanities and Sciences offers a one-hour presentation, Presenting Mr. Frederick Douglass, that dramatically recreates Douglass's famous speech on slavery and human rights.

The American Heritage Media Collection's Making of the Nation Series offers a videotape entitled Jackson and the "Common Man." Like the others in this series, it is well done. It has a political orientation and leaves to the viewer the matter of alternative historical viewpoints.

Two novels by Edward Eggleston evoke the atmosphere of the time. The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871) deals with just what the name suggests, a schoolmaster who boards around in the traditional way and whose life is affected accordingly. The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age (1874) tells about preaching on the frontier after the War of 1812. Both novels provide the kind of texture that helps students cultivate a sense of historical reality.
Document Set 10-1

The New Politics of Popular Sovereignty: Andrew Jackson and The "Language of Democracy"

1. "The Hunters of Kentucky" and the Jackson Image, ca. 1820s
2. The Downfall of Mother Bank, 1833
3. Jackson's Bank Veto: A Campaign Document, 1832
4. Jackson's Farewell Address, 1837
5. Two Senators Explain Why They Support Jackson, 1839
6. John L. O'Sullivan Defines Republicanism, 1837
7. John Pendleton Kennedy Outlines Whig Political Philosophy, 1844
8. The Whigs Learn the "Language of Democracy," 1840The party battles and economic struggles of the Jacksonian period provide an opportunity for instructors to help students develop a sophisticated understanding of American democracy in its formative stage. To achieve this goal, it will be necessary to acquaint students with modern interpretations that reveal that social and economic democracy was not as widespread as once thought. While the text details the extension of the franchise as of 1828, instructors should remind students that the economic gap between classes was widening. A logical basis for discussion would be to define the term democracy in its nineteenth-century context.As students examine the documents, they should detect the significance of economic issues to Jackson and his followers. Instructors may wish to prepare students for discussion by lecturing on the rise of liberal capitalism and the central place of laissez-faire assumptions in the Jacksonian mentality. This background will enable students to link economic opportunity and political freedom as they analyze such revealing political documents as Jackson's bank veto message or his farewell address. Students should be asked to determine why economic issues became so divisive, particularly the problem of monopoly. What made the national bank such an attractive target?This chapter is also designed to foster students' development of language skills. Since the key theme involves the use and meaning of language, careful attention to detail in reading and interpretation form the heart of the analytical exercise. It is crucial that students be asked to devote attention to words, definitions, and contemporary usage as they grapple with such terms as republicanism, freedom, privilege, monopoly, and democracy. A useful assignment would require students to keep a notebook of important terms in the "language of democracy," including their definitions before and after classroom discussion. The result should be better student comprehension of the connection between democratic rhetoric and political practice in American history.In the final analysis, instructors should guide the discussion toward the subject of image as a factor in the political debate of the Jacksonian era. From political illustrations and senatorial reflections to Jackson's sharp rhetoric, the documents represent the president as a strong figure and decisive leader. Students should compare reactions to his leadership from both friends and enemies, seeking insight on the president's public image. It is equally important that students become aware of the Whig appropriation of the language of democracy in the Harrison "Log Cabin" campaign in 1840. Discussion of these issues builds on the focus questions that open the textbook's Chapter 10.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 10-1


John Ashworth. "Agrarians" and "Aristocrats": Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (1983).

Donald B. Cole. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1993).

Daniel W. Howe. The Political Culture of the American Whigs (1980).

Marvin Myers. The Jacksonian Persuasion (1957). A shortcut to the thesis may be found in Myers, "The Jacksonian Persuasion," American Quarterly 5 (Spring 1953): 3-15.

Robert Remini. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy (1984).

------. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom (1981).

Alexander Sexton. The Rise and Fall of the Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (1990).

John W. Ward. Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (1955).

Harry L. Watson. Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (1990).

Sean Wilentz. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 10-1


Andrew Jackson. Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation, 425 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 60611.

Era of the Common Man. Graphic Curriculum, Inc., 619 W. 54th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019.

The Jackson Years: The New Americans. Learning Corporation of America, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.

The Revolution of 1828. Audiotape Program 9, Annenberg/CPB Project American History Series. Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Document Set 10-2

Revivalism and Social Activism: The Roots of Reform

1. Charles G. Finney Defines Revivalism, 1834
2. Francis Lieber Reacts to Religious Enthusiasm, 1835
3. Bishop McIlvaine Decries the Curse of Intemperance, 1830s
4. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, 1854
5. William Lloyd Garrison Justifies Organization Against Slavery, 1833
6. Garrison Renounces War, 1838
7. Angelina Grimké Urges Northern Women to Fight Racial Prejudice, 1838Focusing on the outburst of reform enthusiasm in the antebellum years, the documents in set 10-2 are especially suited to comparison and linkage with those illustrating the "language of democracy" in the Jackson years. The key theme involves the connection between religious revivalism and reform activism, which is evident in most of the documents. Equally obvious is the evidence that in several ways, religion and social reform had intersected with politics by the 1840s.Instructors might devote considerable attention to the structure and drama of the conversion experience, with emphasis on both perfectionism and the converted sinner's responsibility to bear witness to the state of grace through deeds in the secular world. Fortunately, the text provides ample background, including evidence of the connection between the perception of salvation and reform enthusiasm. One instructional technique would be the assignment of individual student research projects keyed to particular reform leaders or the movements that they headed. Research on the religious identification of individual reformers, if shared in discussion, may clarify the link between revivalism and reform.Another approach would be to encourage student analysis of both the class composition of the reform movements and the sexual division of labor among their adherents. Students could search the documents for evidence of gender or class as determinants of social activism. Moreover, this investigation could expand to examine the route through which individuals came to embrace reform. These analyses should reveal much about the hopes, fears, and expectations of the reformers.Many students, detecting in the documents a sectional bias in the ranks of the reformers, will raise the question of northern dominance in the movements examined. Instructors should encourage students to develop their own explanation for this sectional phenomenon. Discussion is likely to lead back to the changing southern attitude toward slavery and the development of a closed society in the South, including sectional differences over the desirability of social change. Angelina Grimké's Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States can shed light on this issue.A related question addressed in the documents involves the strategies chosen by reformers to achieve their goals. Students will observe conflicting tendencies toward either personal testimony/ individual commitment or group action through association. Some will also note differences among the regenerate over engagement or withdrawal. The documents offer clues to the personal decisions made by individual reformers and their motives for commitment.Finally, it is likely that many students will see lines of continuity between the revivalism of the antebellum years and the new evangelicals of our own time. Yet significant differences between the social vision and political activism of reborn Christians in the two eras will emerge. These documents help instructors establish past-present linkage by encouraging discussion of similarities and differences between the social outlooks, methods, and outcomes that prevailed in two distinct historical periods.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 10-2


Robert H. Abzug. Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (1994).

Terry D. Bilhartz. Urban Religion and the Second Great Awakening (1986).

Whitney Cross. The Burned-Over District (1950).

Barbara Leslie Epstein. The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (1981).

C. S. Griffin. The Ferment of Reform 1830-1860 (1968).

Keith J. Hardman. Charles Grandison Finney, 1792-1875: Revivalist and Reformer (1987).

Steven Mintz. Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers (1995).

Ian Tyrell. Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 (1979).

Ronald G. Walters. American Reformers, 1815-1860 (rev., 1997).

Jean Fagan Yellin. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (1989).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 10-2


Domesticity and Moral Reform. Audiotape Program 16, Annenberg/CPB Project Legacies Series (audiotape--30 min.). Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Freedom's Ferment. Audiotape Program 10, Annenberg/CPB Project American History Series (audiotape--30 min.). Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.

New Harmony: An Example and a Beacon (film). Indiana University Audiovisual Center, Bloomington, Ind. 47401.

Reform Crusade, 1830-1860 (sound filmstrip). Educational Audio-Visual, Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570.

Walden Pond (film). University of Illinois, Visual Aids Center, Champaign, Ill. 61822.
Document Set 10-3

The Search for Community: Social Experimentation in A Reform Era

1. A Lowell Offering Correspondent Describes a Shaker Community, 1841
2. Orestes Brownson Views Brook Farm as an Expression of American Enlightenment, 1842
3. Marianne Dwight's Reflections on the Promise and Failure of Brook Farm Association, 1844, 1845
4. An Ohio Associationist Sees Women's Activism as the Key to Social Harmony, 1847
5. John Humphrey Noyes Outlines Free Love, as Practiced at Oneida, 1865
6. The Oneida Sisters Comment on Love and Labor in the Association, 1853, 1855, 1858
7. Noyes Acknowledges the Associationist Debt to the Shakers, 1869This unit samples primary source material relating to several of the communitarian experiments of the antebellum years. Although the associationist principle is the centerpiece of the set, the Shaker religious community is employed as a contrast to the utopian groups that created the Brook Farm and Oneida models for a perfected society. The use of three different communities will enable instructors and students to engage in comparative analysis.One technique for drawing out the contrasts would be to use a role-playing exercise in which students assume the identities of sect leaders asked to outline their respective models for a better community and society. Another approach would be role-playing that explores the reactions of prospective recruits for membership in the various communities. Students could be asked to explain how they might or might not fit into the groups sampled.As students explore the options and their own responses, it will be possible to discuss sexual relationships and gender roles in the utopian worlds created by Brook Farm, Oneida, and Shaker leaders. These documents are likely to spur classroom debate over the place assigned to women in the communal environment, as well as the reaction of female associationists to the values and assumptions accepted by the communities they joined. Instructors might encourage full exploration of this issue by asking students whether a greater measure of equality was available to women who chose to withdraw from the competitive world and embrace communal life. Moreover, the merits of free love and sexual communism are certain to interest students who are exploring their own value systems.Similarly, it will be possible to establish past-present linkage by comparing the utopian communities of the 1840s and 1850s with the communal experiments of the 1960s. By noting the limited longevity of most communitarian efforts in both eras, students may perceive the uneven fit between the collectivistic ethic espoused by utopian reformers and the individualistic impulse that permeated nineteenth-century society and the competitive economy. A fruitful line of inquiry would emphasize the unresolved issue of whether the road to perfection was to begin with the regenerate individual or the reconstructed social environment. Students might be asked which approach to reform was likely to be most effective in antebellum America. This discussion might easily lead to consideration of the deeper philosophical question of correct behavior for the moral person in an immoral society.Finally, these documents may be linked with those appearing in Document Set 10-2, through further discussion of the relationship between utopianism and Christianity. Students might be asked to identify the sometimes religious roots of commitment to the communal life, using Noyes's analysis as a springboard for discussion. At the same time, the distinction between primarily religious and essentially secular communities could be profitably explored.In the final analysis, these documents should draw student attention to the distinctiveness of those who chose a nontraditional path to social harmony. Through textual analysis, textbook reading, and personal research, students can come to know why some Americans chose the less-traveled route and what the results of their decisions were. In the process, they will be forced to grapple with the tension between individual interest and the social good that has always been central to the human struggle.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 10-3


Arthur Bestor. Backwoods Utopias: The Sectorian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829 (1950).

Maren L. Carden. Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation (1971).

Michael Fellman, The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteenth-Century American Utopianism (1973).

Lawrence Foster. Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century (1981).

Carl J. Guarneri. The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth Century America (1991).

Louis Kern. An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias (1981).

Spencer Klaw. Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community (1995).

Carol A. Kolmerten. Women in Utopia: The Ideology of Gender in the American Owenite Communities (1990).

Raymond Muncy. Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities (1973).

R. D. Thomas. The Man Who Would Be Perfect: John Humphrey Noyes and the Utopian Impulse (1977).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 10-3


Domesticity and Moral Reform. Audiotape Program 16, Annenberg/CPB Project Legacies Series (videotape--30 min.). Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.