Mr. Benson's APUSH Blog

The Pre-Civil War South In the decades before the Civil War, northern and southern development followed increasingly different paths. By 1860, the North contained 50 percent more people than the South. It was more urbanized and attracted many more European immigrants. The northern economy was more diversified into agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, financial, and transportation sectors. In contrast, the South had smaller and fewer cities and a third of its population lived in slavery. In the South, slavery impeded the development of industry and cities and discouraged technological innovation. Nevertheless, the South was wealthy and its economy was rapidly growing. The southern economy largely financed the Industrial Revolution in the United States, and stimulated the development of industries in the North to service southern agriculture. The Impending Crisis For forty years, attempts were made to resolve conflicts between North and South. The Missouri Compromise prohibi...

Religious Transformation and the Second Great Awakening The American Revolution had largely been a secular affair. The Founding Fathers clearly demonstrated their opposition to the intermingling of politics and religion by establishing the separation of church and state in the first amendment to the Constitution. In part because religion was separated from the control of political leaders, a series of religious  REVIVALS  swept the United States from the 1790s and into the 1830s that transformed the religious landscape of the country. Known today as the  SECOND GREAT AWAKENING , this spiritual resurgence fundamentally altered the character of American religion. At the start of the Revolution the largest denominations were  CONGREGATIONALISTS  (the 18th-century descendants of Puritan churches),  ANGLICANS  (known after the Revolution as Episcopalians), and Quakers. But by 1800,  EVANGELICAL METHODISM  and  BAPTISTS , were becoming...

ANDREW JACKSON’S MILITARY CAREER Andrew Jackson, who served as a major general in the  War of 1812 , commanded U.S. forces in a five-month campaign against the Creek Indians, allies of the British. After that campaign ended in a decisive American victory in the Battle of Tohopeka (or Horseshoe Bend) in  Alabama  in mid-1814, Jackson led American forces to victory over the British in the  Battle of  New Orleans  (January 1815). The win, which occurred after the War of 1812 officially ended but before news of the Treaty of Ghent  had reached  Washington , elevated Jackson to the status of national war hero. In 1817, acting as commander of the army’s southern district, Jackson ordered an invasion of  Florida . After his forces captured Spanish posts at St. Mark’s and Pensacola, he claimed the surrounding land for the United States. The Spanish government vehemently protested, and Jackson’s actions sparked a heated debate in Washington. ...

  Digital History ID 2911 The United States was the first modern nation to win independence through a successful revolution against colonial rule. It set a precedent that was followed in the 19th century by nations across Latin America and in the 20th century by nations in Asia and Africa. Like those other countries, the United States faced severe political, economic, and foreign policy problems after achieving independence.  In this section you will learn about how the United States addressed those problems and established a stable political and economic system. You will learn about the creation of new state governments and a new federal government based on the principles of popular sovereignty, rule of law, and legislation by elected representatives. You will also learn about the internal difficulties besetting the new republic, such as financing the war, the threat of a military coup, a hard-hitting economic depression, and popular demands for tax...

LEAD UP TO THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR For more than a decade before the outbreak of the  American Revolution  in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the  Stamp Act  of 1765, the Townshend Tariffs of 1767 and the  Tea Act  of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects. Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the  Boston Massacre . After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor, an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts) designed to reassert imperial authority in...

Colonial America Traditionally, when we tell the story of “Colonial America,” we are talking about the English colonies along the Eastern seaboard. That story is incomplete–by the time Englishmen had begun to establish colonies in earnest, there were plenty of French, Spanish, Dutch and even Russian colonial outposts on the American continent–but the story of those 13 colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) is an important one. It was those colonies that came together to form the United States. ENGLISH COLONIAL EXPANSION Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation’s landowners were converting farmers’ fields into pastures for sheep. This led to a food shortage; at the same time, many agricultural workers lost their jobs. The 16th centur...