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324. The Mormons. But there was a social movement started at this time which still exists. In 1827, at Palmyra, in New York, a young man named Joseph Smith announced that he had received a new bible from an angel of the Lord. It was written, he said, on golden plates, which he claimed to have read by the aid of two wonderful stones; and in 1830 he gave to the world The Book of Mormon.

After the book appeared, Smith and a few others organized a church. Many at once began to believe in the new religion. But the West seemed so much better a field that in 1831 Smith and his followers started for Ohio, and at Kirtland established a Mormon community. There the Mormons lived for several years, and then went to Missouri, whence they were expelled, partly because they were an antislavery people. In 1840 they settled on the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois and built the town of Nauvoo. At Nauvoo they remained till 1846, when, having adopted polygamy, they were driven off by the people of Illinois, and, led by Brigham Young, marched to Council Bluffs, in Iowa. There they stopped to look about them for a safe place of abode, and finally, in 1848, left Council Bluffs for Great Salt Lake, then in the dominions of Mexico.1

SUMMARY

1. The rise of the new states in the West, and the appearance of the steamboat on the Mississippi, were the causes of a great revival of public interest in internal improvements.

2. The first to build a great western highway was New York state, which, between 1817 and 1825, built the Erie Canal.

3. This cut down the cost of moving freight to the West, led to settlement along the banks of the canal, and made New York city the metropolis of the country.

4. It was during this period, 1815-1830, that many inventions, discoveries, and improvements were made in the arts and sciences. 5. The railroad was introduced, and the steam locomotive successfully used.

6. The cities grew, and in New York the omnibus and the street car began to be used.

1 Kennedy's Early Days of Mormonism.

The movement of population into the West. - The formation of new states there. The rise of manufactures in the East. The fine market the West offers for the products and importations of the Eastern States.

Lead to great rivalry between the Atlantic seaboard cities for Western trade.

This rivalry leads to the development of three routes to the West.

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The expansion of the country. - The development of the steamboat, the railroad, and manufactures, and the increased opportunities for doing business.

Lead to a demand for labor-saving and time-saving machinery.

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CHAPTER XXIII

POLITICS FROM 1824 TO 1845

325. New Political Institutions. Of the political leaders of Washington's time few were left in 1825. The men who then conducted affairs had almost all been born since the Revolution, or were children at the time. The same is true of the mass of the people. They too had been born since the Revolution, and, growing up under different conditions, held ideas very different from the men who went before them. They were more democratic and much less aristocratic, more humane, more practical. They abolished the old and cruel punishments, such as branding the cheeks and foreheads of criminals with letters, cutting off their ears, putting them in the pillory and the stocks; they partly abolished imprisonment for debt; they established free schools, reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries. They amended their state constitutions or made new ones, and extended the right to vote, and introduced new political institutions, some of which were of doubtful value, but are still used.

One of these

326. Political Proscription; the Gerrymander. was the custom of turning men out of public office because they did not belong to the party in power, or did not "work" for the election of the successful candidate. As early as 1792 this vicious practice was in use in Pennsylvania, and a few years later was introduced in New York by De Witt Clinton. Jefferson resorted to it when he became President, but it was

1 John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were born in 1767; Henry Clay, in 1777; John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas H. Benton, in 1782.

not till 1820 that it was firmly established by Congress. In that year William H. Crawford, who was Secretary of the Treasury and a presidential candidate, secured the passage of a "tenure of office" act, limiting the term of collectors of revenue, and a host of other officials, to four years, and thus made the appointments to these places rewards for political service.

Another institution dating from this time is the gerrymander. In 1812, when Elbridge Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, his party, finding that at the next election they would lose the governorship and the House of Representatives, decided to hold the Senate by marking out new senatorial districts. In doing this they drew the lines in such wise that districts where there were large Federalist majorities were cut in two, and the parts annexed to other districts, where there were yet larger Republican majorities.

The story is told that a map of the Essex senatorial district was hanging on the office wall of the editor of the Columbian

Centinel, when a famous artist named Stuart en

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tered. Struck by the peculiar outline of the towns forming the district, he added a head, wings, and claws with his pencil, and turning to the editor, said: "There, that will do for a salamander." "Better say a Gerrymander," returned the editor, alluding to Elbridge Gerry, the Republican governor who had signed the districting act. However this may be, it is certain that the name "gerrymander" was applied to the odious law in the columns of the Centinel, that it came rapidly into use, and has remained in our political nomenclature ever since. Indeed, a huge cut of the monster was prepared, and the next year was scattered as a broadside over the commonwealth, and so aroused

SOUTH

the people that in the spring of 1813, despite the gerrymander, the Federalists recovered control of the Senate, and repealed the law. But the example was set, and was quickly imitated in New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. This established the institution, and it has been used over and over again to this day.

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327. The Third-term Tradition. Another political custom which had grown to have the force of law was that of never electing a President to three terms. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent a President serving any number of terms; but, as we have seen, when Washington finished his second he declined another, and when Jefferson (in 1807– 1808) was asked by the legislatures of several states to accept a third term, he declined, and very seriously advised the people never to elect any man President more than twice.1 The example so set was followed by Madison and Monroe and had thus by 1824 become an established usage.

328. New Political Issues. The most important change of all was the rise of new political issues. We have seen how the financial questions which divided the people in 1790-1792 and gave rise to the Federalist and Republican parties, were replaced during the wars between England and France by the question, "Shall the United States be neutral?" It was not until the end of our second war with Great Britain that we were again free to attend to our home affairs.

During the long embargo and the war, manufactures had arisen, and one question now became, "Shall home manufactures be encouraged?" With the rapid settlement of the Mississippi valley and the demand for roads, canals, and river improvements by which trade might be carried on with the West, there arose a second political question: "Shall these internal improvements be made at government expense?"

Now the people of the different sections of the country were not of one mind on these questions. The Middle States and Kentucky and some parts of New England wanted manufac1 McMaster's With the Fathers, pp. 54-70.

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