6. The Issue of Slavery

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this final module, we turn to look at the issue of slavery. While slavery would be crucial to opening up the divisions which would cause the Civil War in 1861, during the time of the Second Party System the issue was not readily apparent. While many politicians stood on pro-slavery and anti-slavery platforms at the local level, the issue remained out of politics on the national level. Both Whigs and Democrats in this period actively kept slavery out of national debate to prevent competition between northerners and southerners.

Course

In this course, Professor Sean Adams (University of Florida) examines the presidency of Andrew Jackson and how it relates to federal power in the United States. With this in mind, the course seeks to explain the causes and effects of the continuing policy debates about the role of the federal government from 1800 to 1848. We start by looking at Andrew Jackson and the rise of the Democratic Party - the first modern political party in the United States. We then turn to look at the Nullification Crisis and Jackson’s response. After this, we examine Native American removal and how Jackson used it to restrict citizenship. We then turn to Jackson’s involvement in the Bank War of 1832-6. In the final two modules we look at the arrival of the Whig Party and the issue of slavery.

Lecturer

Professor Sean Adams is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of History at the University of Florida. He specialises in the history of American capitalism, as well as the history of energy. He is the author of a number of books on 19th century US History including - Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the 19th Century (Johns Hopkins, 2014); Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America (2004); The American Coal Industry, 1789-1902 (2013); A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson (2013); and The Early American Republic: A Documentary History (2009).