"Europe stretches to the Alleghenies: America lies beyond"
Impact of the west on the American Charter - pp.311-314
By 1850, population was still doubling every 25 years with a significant increase in immigration:
"American Letters"
1840's - Famine in Ireland (Potato famine) led to huge influx of Irish immigrants into eastern cities where they were discriminated against because of their Roman Catholic religion
1850's - Collapse of democratic revolution in Germany in 1848 led to influx of political refugees ("Forty-eighters") to the upper Midwest where they strongly supported public school and introduced their kindergarten: also "made Milwaukee famous"
Influx of immigrants inflamed the hate of American "Nativists' who in 1849 formed the order of the Star-Spangled Banner > "Know-nothing" party
U.S. was still a very religious country in 1850:
75% regularly attended church
Liberal doctrines of deism: believed in a supreme being who had created a knowable universe and created a knowable universe and endowed human beings with a capacity for moral behavior
Unitarians: Believed in free will, the rule of reason, and the possibility of salvation through good works
Second Great Awakening (1800) - wave of Evangelicalism spread to the masses by Charles G. Finney at "camp meetings" > increase in religious diversity by class and increase in the membership of Methodists & Baptists
Mormons: Founded by Joseph Smith, who was murdered in Illinois; Brigham Young led to trek to Salt Lake City which became a prosperous theocracy but practice of polygamy delayed statehood until 1896.
Tax supported public education grew from 1825-1850 - seen primarily as a way to educate the children of the poor.
Reform of schools urged by Horace Mann but by 1860 only 100 public high schools existed in the country.
Noah Webster published the first American Language Dictionary in 1828.
McGuffey's Readers (1830's) - Lessons in morality, patriotism, and idealism.
1st state supported universities: U. of North Carolina (1795)
U. of Virginia (1819)
1st colleges for women: Oberlin College - 1837
Mount Holyoke College - 1837
Adult education improved through libraries and lyceums.
The American family was also changing:
Women began to breathe the air of self-determination.
But in the home, they were still enshrined in a "cult of domesticity" which glorified the traditional functions of the homemaker.
More marriages were based on "love"
Families grew smaller as a result of "Domestic Feminism"> child centered families in which children were shaped, not broken.
1830's - "Penny" newspapers: N.Y. Sun & N.Y. Herald, which were forerunners of the modern tabloid.