What Hath God Wrought Summary

History from 1815 to 1848: A Review of What Hath God Wrought
Native Americans had been all throughout the United States in early history, keeping to themselves living their lives. Americans believed the Indians to be savage and not worth the life they lived and some thought they should be exterminated, however, there were those who had compassion that believed that the Indians should be converted to Christianity and then everything would be fine (23). Native Americans showed as much willingness as white people to participate in the market economy (48). The Indians figured out different ways to communicate with the whites so that they would be able to trade and barter with them effectively (27).
It was rare for there to be unmarried farmers
because it took both a man and woman to operate the farm effectively. Typically American farms were economically individualistic only being operated by the single nuclear family, not an extended kinship or communal enterprise (34). Almost all the farm families living activities were done within the household setting. They included production, consumption, birthing, child rearing, transmitting the fundamentals of reading, and caring for the sick and the old (36). The United States in 1815 resembled the economically developing countries of today in many ways because of their high birth rate and rapid population growth (43).
After the battle of New Orleans it took four full weeks for the news to reach Washington. The news of Jackson’s victory came as a big relief to Madison. Under Madison’s presidency, his secretary of war John Armstrong dismissed the possibility of any invasion coming from Britain, so no preparations for defense were made (63). The British found their way to the public buildings of central Washington easily. They burned the capitol and the departments of state, war, navy, and treasury. It started to rain which helped put out the fires but not before the damage had been done (65).
James Monroe had lost against Madison in the election for a seat in the House of Representatives and then again during the election for president. In March of 1811 Madison and Monroe reconciled their differences and became friends once again. After which Monroe became Madison’s “right-hand man”, and was appointed as secretary of war after the resignation of Armstrong. Monroe emerged from the war a convert to nationalism and was the people’s choice to become president after Madison (91). His inaugural address emphasized continuity with his Jeffersonian predecessors and the new republican nationalism (92). Monroe expected and wanted the one-party system to evolve into true nonpartisanship. However because almost all ambitious politicians joined the republican party, the other party ceased to have coherence (95).
Relations between the United States and Spain turned out to be much more problematic than those with Britain.
After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 eastern and western Florida still belonged to the Spanish empire cutting off the United States access to the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the limiting of economic development in the southwest (97).
After the defeat of the Red Stick Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, Creek refugees fled into Florida. On November 12, 1817 troops under the command the command of General Edmond Gaines burned the Creek village of Fowltown on the Georgia side of the border and killed several villagers. On November 30 those who had been made homeless hit back hard, the warriors from Fowltown allied with escaped slaves and attacked a boat carrying forty soldiers and eleven of their dependents. These two events are what caused the first Seminole War to begin
(98).
The administration decided to turn things over to Jackson after the war had started. There was a letter from the president stating that Jackson needed to be informed that there were to be no attacks on Spanish occupied forts. However the letter never made it to Jackson, there is no specific reason for why it wasn’t delivered but it has been speculated that maybe the president changed his mind or that it should have been understood that the same rules applied to Jackson that had applied to the general in charge before him (99). Jackson took a thousand volunteer militiamen with him to Fort Scott, at the fort Jackson was able to obtain reinforcements but little provisions. After gaining provisions and having up to three-thousand soldiers, Jackson moved his army toward the east attacking and destroying village after village on his way (100). On April 6th Jackson’s army arrived at the Spanish fort of St Marks, here he demanded the commandant to surrender so he could prevent the fort from falling into the hands of the Indians and the blacks (101).
In May Jackson heard rumors that Seminoles were gathering together at Pensacola, however the rumors were false but Jackson didn’t know that. Jackson welcomed the opportunity to move against the capitol of Spanish Florida, on his way he warned that if the city offered any resistance that any man found in arms would be put to death. The governor of Florida surrendered on May 28, 1818; Jackson proclaimed that Florida would be under American occupation until Spain provided sufficient troops there to control the border (102).
The election of 1824 was the end of the nonparty politics and created the foundation for a new party system. An alliance between Adams and Clay formed the basis of the party called the National Republican which later became the Whig party. Followers of Jackson and Crawford’s would become known as the Democratic Republican and later as the Democratic Party (210). Adams ended up winning the election and became president with Calhoun as his vice president.
The invention of the steamboat enhanced the advantages of water transportation, John Fitch had actually built the first American steamer but he couldn’t get any one to financially back the project and died in obscurity. Robert Fulton’s Clermont was the first commercially successful steamboat; it plied the Hudson River starting in 1807. Steamboats seemed to be the most valuable form of water transportation when traveling upstream on a river with a strong current. The invention of the steamboat reduced the amount of time it took to make a trip. Even after the invention of the steamboat many merchants continued to prefer sailing ships for ocean voyages because they didn’t have to have as much space for fuel for the longer trips (215).
On July 4, 1826 the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson died in his home hours before old adversary and friend John Adams. As Adams was dying he said “Thomas Jefferson still survives”, but he was mistaken in his remark because in all actuality Jefferson had died first. With the deaths of these two men that meant that only one of the original signers of the declaration was still alive, Charles Carroll an eighty-nine year old man from Maryland was all that was left of those who had signed the declaration (243).
In September of 1814 during the most serious invasion of the War of 1812, commander of the British nave General George Prevost suddenly ordered the army to withdraw after the battle at Plattsburg. Captain William Miller only had one theory for the withdraw assuming that it was a form of divine intervention. After the war Miller went back to his farm and would study the Bible every chance he got. Due to his lack of knowledge in Hebrew and Greek he used a mixture of ingenuity and common sense to help interpret it (289). While interpreting the scripture in Daniel he believed he was given the key to predicting the future. The verse read “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed”, Miller read days to mean years and the cleansing of the sanctuary to mean the second coming of Christ to judge the world. Miller felt as though he had experienced a calling from God and in 1831 he began to preach about his finding. He had done the calculations and estimated that the event would occur sometime between March 1843 and April of 1844 (290). When the target year expired on April 18th Miller publicly apologized for his mistake, but his followers were not ready to give up on the theory. One follower Samuel Snow recalculated and decided that the correct date of Christ’s return would be the next Jewish Day of Atonement, October 22, 1844. The followers were convinced that it had to be right this time so they paid their debts, quit their jobs, and left their crops needing to be harvested in their fields. All waited on that day for the world to actually end only to find that it was all a hoax the day became known as the “Great Disappointment” (291). On March 4, 1829; Andrew Jackson was dressed in black at his presidential inauguration because his wife Rachel had suffered had suffered a heart attack on December, 17 and had died five days after. Jackson had blamed her death on his political enemies because during his presidential campaign his and Rachel’s relationship had been made an issue. The depressed and bitter president-elect managed to avoid having to attend the celebration that had been planned to welcome him to Washington. He refused to pay the customary courtesy call on the outgoing president, who reciprocated by not attending Jacksons inaugural (329). It was estimated that Jackson removed nine-hundred and nineteen federal officials during his first year in office. By the time Congress assembled in December of 1829; Jackson had already removed thirteen district-attorneys, nine marshals, twenty-three registers and receivers, and twenty-five customs collectors replacing them all with recess appointments. At first the removals were routinely justified with accusations of malfeasance, Jackson leader’s dresses up their patronage policy as a reform of the corruption the alleged had prevailed under Monroe and Adams (333). Indian removal was a major issue during the first year of Jackson’s administration.
Although Jackson avoided committing himself on the tariff of internal improvements, his favoring of rapid removal was well know and accounted for his popularity in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The issue involved Indian tribes all over the country, but the ones with the most to lose were the civilized tribes which included the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and the Seminoles. These people practiced agriculture and animal husbandry and still processed substantial domains in the Deep South states plus in Tennessee, North Carolina, and the Florida Territory (342). The Indian removal bill took high priority in the Jackson’s legislative agenda. Both getting the bill to pass and the latter enforcement of it took Jackson’s full attention. However the Indian removal bill called for another round of treaty-making, intended to secure the complete removal of the Indians to west of the Mississippi (347). The president signed Indian removal into law on May 28, 1830. Jackson wasted no time implementing his favorite measure. While the nations focus was on Georgia and the Cherokees, he sent John Coffee and Secretary of War Eaton to Mississippi to obtain the removal of the Choctaws (352). The efforts the commenced secured the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek on September 27, 1830. Some Choctaws in the forests of eastern Mississippi contrived to avoid the government’s attention until 1918,
the majority were forced to move to Oklahoma. The first large party of Choctaws crossed the Mississippi River during the severe winter of 1831-32 (353). The word telegraph was used to describe long-distance optical signaling, by the 1820’s the word telegraph had become a popular name for newspapers. In May of 1844 politicins were eager to learn news from the party conventions taking place in Baltimore, help was at hand because in March of 1843 congress had finally passed an appropriation for Samuel Finley Breese Morse to demonstrate an electromagnetic telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore (691). Unlike the telephone, invented later in the nineteenth century, the telegraph was used more for commercial purposes rather than social (696). After the Texan gained their independence from Mexico they signed a treaty with the United States, which basically said that they would become their territory once more and would eventually become a state under the union. Several years later the United States annexed Texas back into the country. Mexico took offense to this even though Texas had already had their revolution, starting the Mexican American war. The War was from 1846 to 1848 when the United States and Mexico agreed that the Rio Grande would be the territory border which resulted in the end of the war. Society had come a long way in the years between 1815 and 1848, from advancement in technologies and the rapid changes in the federal government. Jackson changed everything during his presidency, going the complete opposite of those who had served before him. Many of his actions during his time as president would account for legislation created later on. Technological innovations like the steamboat made carrying cargo much easier and cut down the time it took to deliver. As well as the telegraph and its ability to relay messages from father away much sooner than a messenger on horse. Also during this time the United States expanded an annexed more states into the union making the country bigger.