The US/American History I course was developed through the Ohio Department of Higher Education OER Innovation Grant. This work was completed and the course was posted in September 2019. The course is part of the Ohio Transfer Assurance Guides and is also named OHS043. For more information about credit transfer between Ohio colleges and universities, please visit: transfercredit.ohio.gov.Team LeadCraig Semsel                                     Lorain County Community College   Content ContributorsSharon Deubreau                              Rhodes State CollegeRuth Dubinsky                                   Stark State CollegePeter Manos                                      Cleveland State UniversityLibrarianTim Sandusky                                   Ohio Dominican UniversityReview TeamDavid Stebenne                                Ohio State University 

One of the most notable political developments in the years before the Civil War was the rise of American democracy. Whereas the founders of the new nation envisioned the United States as a republic, not a democracy, and had placed safeguards such as the Electoral College in the 1787 Constitution to prevent simple majority rule, the early 1820s saw many Americans embracing majority rule and rejecting old forms of deference that were based on elite ideas of virtue, learning, and family lineage. A new breed of politicians learned to harness the power of the many by appealing to the resentments, fears, and passions of ordinary citizens to win elections. The charismatic Andrew Jackson gained a reputation as a fighter and defender of American expansion, emerging as the quintessential figure leading the rise of American democracy. Characteristics of modern American democracy, including the turbulent nature of majority rule, first appeared during the Age of Jackson.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Americans’ endless commercial ambition—what one Baltimore paper in 1815 called an “almost universal ambition to get forward”—remade the nation. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, an old subsistence world died and a new more-commercial nation was born. [Image: William James Bennett, View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City, c. 1827, via Metropolitan Museum of New York]

"Nine new slave states entered the Union between 1789 and 1860, rapidly expanding and transforming the South into a region of economic growth built on slave labor... By the mid-nineteenth century, southern commercial centers like New Orleans had become home to the greatest concentration of wealth in the United States. While most white southerners did not own slaves, they aspired to join the ranks of elite slaveholders, who played a key role in the politics of both the South and the nation. Meanwhile, slavery shaped the culture and society of the South, which rested on a racial ideology of white supremacy and a vision of the United States as a white man’s republic. Slaves endured the traumas of slavery by creating their own culture and using the Christian message of redemption to find hope for a world of freedom without violence." - OpenStax U.S. History, Chap. 12 Intro[Image - a panel of "Slave Market of America", A broadside published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836 - Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division ]

"The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths. The war touched the life of nearly every American as military mobilization reached levels never seen before or since... The Civil War was a defining event in the history of the United States and, for the Americans thrust into it, a wrenching one." -The American Yawp, Chap. 14 Introduction[Image: 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Color Guard - Ohio History Connection]