A Biography of America

Classroom Resources > A Biography of America > 8. The Reform Impulse > 8.2 The Events of 1831

The Events of 1831

January 1

Garrison publishes the Liberator
William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of the Liberator and emerges as the leader of the abolitionist movement in the United States.

February 17

Jackson-Calhoun correspondence published
Correspondence between President Andrew Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun over activities during the Seminole War is published in newspapers and as a result, the divide between president and vice president grows.

March 18

Supreme Court rules against Cherokee
The Supreme Court issues its decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and rules that the Cherokee are not an independent nation free from state laws.

April 7

Cabinet resignations begin
Jackson’s Cabinet dissolves over political differences, when Secretary of War John Eaton, Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, Secretary of Treasury Samuel Ingham, Attorney General John Berrien, and Secretary of Navy John Branch all resign.

April 26

New York abolishes crime of debt
The New York Legislature abolishes imprisonment for debt. Many states soon follow New York’s lead in abolishing terms of imprisonment for debtors, who often languished in jails for the inability to pay off minor debts if creditors swore out warrants against them.

May 10

Tocqueville and Beaumont arrive
Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave Beaumont arrive in New York from France and begin their tour of American society.

July 4

Hymn America debuts
At the Boston Sabbath School Union, the choir sings for the first time “My country ’tis of thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.”

July 25

McCormick invents reaper
Cyrus McCormick, a Virginia farmer and inventor, tests his mechanical reaper. The machine will transform American agriculture.

August 22

Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Nat Turner leads a rebellion of several dozen slaves in Southampton County, Virginia that lasts three days and results in the deaths of 55 whites.

September 3

Audubon arrives
John James Audubon, artist and naturalist famous for his depictions of birds, arrives in New York from England. This marks the beginning of a three-year tour in which the naturalist avidly hunts and draws birds and seeks subscribers for his Birds of America.

September 24

First rural cemetery
Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first rural burial ground in America, is consecrated. The opening of Mt. Auburn Cemetery marks a shift in attitudes toward death, away from fear and terror toward romantic ideals of peaceful rest and natural beauty.

September 28

First presidential nominating convention
The first presidential nominating convention in American history takes place, and the Anti-Masonic party puts forth William Wirt, former attorney general, as candidate.

September 30 - October 7

Free Trade Convention
The Free Trade Convention, opposed to all tariffs on imported goods, meets in Philadelphia.

October 23

Finney delivers sermon
Charles Grandison Finney delivers his sermon, “Sinners Bound to Change their Own Hearts.” Finney is the leading evangelical minister of the Second Great Awakening, a period of religious enthusiasm marked by vast increases in church membership in the United States.

October 26

Friends of Domestic Industry meet
The Friends of Domestic Industry, who support tariffs as an incentive to American manufacturing growth, meet in New York.

November 12

First steam-powered railroad
The John Bull, the first steam-powered railroad engine in America, makes its initial trip in Bordentown, New Jersey. Local dignitaries cheer as the steam engine makes its journey of a little over a mile. The John Bull cost $4,000 and arrived from England in boxes and was assembled by a local mechanic.

November 25

Confessions of Nat Turner published
Available for sale is The Confessions of Nat Turner, a pamphlet in which the rebel tells his story as edited by Thomas Gray, a lawyer.

December 12 - 16

National Republican convention
The National Republican Convention meets in Baltimore and nominates Henry Clay of Kentucky for president.

December 14

Virginia begins abolition debate
The Virginia Legislature begins to debate Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s bill to abolish slavery gradually. It is defeated the following month.

December 24

Biddle applies for Bank of U.S. charter
Nicholas Biddle, director of the Second Bank of the United States, decides to apply early for rechartering of the institution, a move that the following year will lead to the destruction of the Bank when Jackson vetoes the Bill.

December 26

Cholera epidemic
Newspapers report that the cholera epidemic has reached England and is headed for American shores.

Sections

8.1 The Reform Impulse – Key Events

8.2 The Events of 1831

Map: The U.S. in the 1830s

The U.S. in the 1830s

Units

Unit 1 New World Encounters

American history moves from west to east, beginning with Ice Age migrations, through the corn civilizations of Middle America, to the explorations of Columbus, de Soto, and other Spaniards.

Unit 2 English Settlement

As the American character begins to take shape in the early seventeenth century, English settlements develop in New England and Virginia. Their personalities are dramatically different. Professor Miller explores the origins of values, cultures, and economies that have collided in the North and South throughout the American story.

Unit 3 Growth and Empire

Benjamin Franklin and Franklin's Philadelphia take center stage in this program. As the merchant class grows in the North, the economies of southern colonies are built on the shoulders of the slave trade. Professor Miller brings the American story to 1763 with the Peace of Paris and English dominance in America.

Unit 4 The Coming of Independence

Professor Maier tells the story of how the English-loving colonist transforms into the freedom-loving American rebel. The luminaries of the early days of the Republic -- Washington, Jefferson, Adams -- are featured in this program as they craft the Declaration of -- and wage the War for -- Independence.

Unit 5 A New System of Government

After the War for Independence, the struggle for a new system of government begins. Professor Maier looks at the creation of the Constitution of the United States. The Republic survives a series of threats to its union, and the program ends with the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the Fourth of July, 1826.

Unit 6 Westward Expansion

At the dawn of the 19th century, the size of the United States doubles with the Louisiana Purchase. The Appalachians are no longer the barrier to American migration west; the Mississippi River becomes the country's central artery; and Jefferson's vision of an Empire of Liberty begins to take shape. American historian Stephen Ambrose joins Professors Maier and Miller in examining the consequences of the Louisiana Purchase -- for the North, the South, and the history of the country.

Unit 7 The Rise of Capitalism

Individual enterprise merges with technological innovation to launch the Commercial Revolution -- the seedbed of American industry. The program features the ideas of Adam Smith, the efforts of entrepreneurs in New England and Chicago, the Lowell Mills Experiment, and the engineering feats involved in Chicago's early transformation from marsh to metropolis.

Unit 8 The Reform Impulse

The Industrial Revolution has its dark side, and the tumultuous events of the period touch off intense and often thrilling reform movements. Professor Masur presents the ideas and characters behind the Great Awakening, the abolitionist movement, the women's movement, and a powerful wave of religious fervor.

Unit 9 Slavery

While the North develops an industrial economy and culture, the South develops a slave culture and economy, and the great rift between the regions becomes unbreachable. Professor Masur looks at the human side of the history of the mid-1800s by sketching a portrait of the lives of slave and master.

Unit 10 The Coming of the Civil War

Simmering regional differences ignite an all-out crisis in the 1850s. Professor Martin teams with Professor Miller and historian Stephen Ambrose to chart the succession of incidents, from 'Bloody Kansas' to the shots on Fort Sumter, that inflame the conflict between North and South to the point of civil war.

Unit 11 The Civil War

As the Civil War rages, all eyes turn to Vicksburg, where limited war becomes total war. Professor Miller looks at the ferocity of the fighting, at Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and at the bitter legacy of the battle -- and the war.

Unit 12 Reconstruction

Professor Miller begins the program by evoking in word and picture the battlefield after the battle of Gettysburg. With the assassination of President Lincoln, one sad chapter of American history comes to a close. In the fatigue and cynicism of the Civil War's aftermath, Reconstructionism becomes a promise unfulfilled.

Unit 13 America at Its Centennial

As America celebrates its centennial, 5 million people descend on Philadelphia to celebrate America's technological achievements, but some of the early principles of the Republic remain unrealized. Professor Miller and his team of historians examine where America is in 1876 and discuss the question of race.

Unit 14 Industrial Supremacy

Steel and stockyards are featured in this program as the mighty engine of industrialism thunders forward at the end of the nineteenth century. Professor Miller continues the story of the American Industrial Revolution in New York and Chicago, looking at the lives of Andrew Carnegie, Gustavus Swift, and the countless workers in the packinghouse and on the factory floor.

Unit 15 The New City

Professor Miller explores the tension between the messy vitality of cities that grow on their own and those where orderly growth is planned. Chicago -- with Hull House, the World's Columbian Exposition, the new female workforce, the skyscraper, the department store, and unfettered capitalism -- is the place to watch a new world in the making at the turn of the century.

Unit 16 The West

Professor Scharff continues the story of Jefferson's Empire of Liberty. Railroads and ranchers, rabble-rousers and racists populate America's distant frontiers, and Native Americans are displaced from their homelands. Feminists gain a foothold in their fight for the right to vote, while farmers organize and the Populist Party appears on the American political landscape.

Unit 17 Capital and Labor

The making of money pits laborers against the forces of capital as the twentieth century opens. Professor Miller introduces the miner as the quintessential laborer of the period -- working under grinding conditions, organizing into unions, and making a stand against the reigning money man of the day, J. Pierpont Morgan.

Unit 18 TR and Wilson

Professor Brinkley compares the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -- the Warrior and the Minister -- in the first decades of the twentieth century. Professor Miller discusses American socialism, Eugene Debs, international communism, and the roots of the Cold War with Professor Brinkley.

Unit 19 A Vital Progressivism

Professor Martin offers a fresh perspective on Progressivism, arguing that its spirit can be best seen in the daily struggles of ordinary people. In a discussion with Professors Scharff and Miller, the struggles of Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans are placed in the context of the traditional white Progressive movement.

Unit 20 The Twenties

The Roaring Twenties take to the road in Henry Ford's landscape-altering invention -- the Model T. Ford's moving assembly line, the emergence of a consumer culture, and the culmination of forces let loose by these entities in Los Angeles are all explored by Professor Miller.

Unit 21 FDR and the Depression

Professor Brinkley continues his story of twentieth century presidents with a profile of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brinkley paints a picture of America during the Depression and chronicles some of Roosevelt's programmatic and personal efforts to help the country through its worst economic crisis. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is at FDR's side and, in many respects, ahead of him as the decade unfolds.

Unit 22 World War II

America is enveloped in total war, from mobilization on the home front to a scorching air war in Europe. Professor Miller's view of World War II is a personal essay on the morality of total war, and its effects on those who fought, died, and survived it, including members of his own family.

Unit 23 The Fifties

World War II is fought to its bitter end in the Pacific and the world lives with the legacy of its final moment: the atomic bomb. Professor Miller continues the story as veterans return from the war and create new lives for themselves in the '50s. The GI Bill, Levittown, civil rights, the Cold War, and rock 'n' roll are discussed.

Unit 24 The Sixties

Professor Scharff weaves the story of the Civil Rights movement with stories of the Vietnam War and Watergate to create a portrait of a decade. Lyndon Johnson emerges as a pivotal character, along with Stokely Carmichael, Fanny Lou Hamer, and other luminaries of the era.

Unit 25 Contemporary History

The entire team of historians joins Professor Miller in examining the last quarter of the twentieth century. A montage of events opens the program and sets the stage for a discussion of the period -- and of the difficulty of examining contemporary history with true historical perspective. Television critic John Leonard offers a footnote about the impact of television on the way we experience recent events.

Unit 26 The Redemptive Imagination

Storytelling is a relentless human urge and its power forges with memory to become the foundation of history. Novelists Charles Johnson (Middle Passage), Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha), and Esmeralda Santiago (America's Dream) join Professor Miller in discussing the intersection of history and story. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., closes the series with a reflection on the power of the human imagination.