The Market Revolution/Democracy in America
Paper instructions:
Answer one of the questions to write your essay:
1. What were the main features of the new economy taking shape in early nineteenth-century America? What were the effects of the Market revolution?
2. What was “Manifest Destiny”? How did this theory change America?
3. How did the Market Revolution affect the lives of women and African-Americans?
4. Discuss Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Why did he retreat for two years to a cabin on Walden Pond during the Market Revolution?
5. What role did immigration play in the market revolution? Who were the largest number of immigrants and why? What were their lives like in the U.S.?
6. Why was there an immense demand for cotton, and why did cotton become the most important American export? Who produced cotton? Why was the Cotton Kingdom located in the Deep South? How did the invention of the cotton gin enhance cotton production?
7. What were the achievements of General Andrew Jackson? In what ways did he embody the democratic nationalism of this period?
8. What kind of president was Andrew Jackson? Why was the Bank of War so central to Jacksonian democracy?
9. The Cherokees were “civilized” Indians during the Jacksonian era. What efforts did they make to be assimilated into the American population?
10. What was the Indian Removal Act of 1830? Why is the tragedy of the Cherokee nation called “the Trail of Tears”? Why is it condemned as an American holocaust?