It has been written that Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton could barely stand to be in the same room together. If Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson had been contemporaries, they would have had difficulty being on the same planet with each other. The differences between Hamilton and Jefferson were to an extent differences between conservative and liberal philosophies. But Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Republican party, was by any definition an aristocrat, a thinker, a philosopher, a man who abhorred violence. He and Hamilton lived on the same social plane, though Hamilton's origins were more humble than those of Jefferson. Andrew Jackson, however, was a commoner, a man of humble origins, a fighter, a brawler who killed a man in a duel, and a figure who would have been distinctly out of place around Jefferson's table in the White House or at his home, Monticello. Andrew Jackson symbolized a new age, called by historians “the Age of the Common Man.”

The American Yawp constructs a coherent and accessible narrative from all the best of recent historical scholarship. Without losing sight of politics and power, it incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. Whitman’s America, like ours, cut across the narrow boundaries that strangle many narratives. Balancing academic rigor with popular readability, The American Yawp offers a multi-layered, democratic alternative to the American past.

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.

The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This same state of society has, moreover, engendered amongst them a multitude of feelings and opinions which were unknown amongst the elder aristocratic communities of Europe: it has destroyed or modified all the relations which before existed, and established others of a novel kind. The—aspect of civil society has been no less affected by these changes than that of the political world. The former subject has been treated of in the work on the Democracy of America, which I published five years ago; to examine the latter is the object of the present book; but these two parts complete each other, and form one and the same work.

The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly moved west by the United States government. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the "Trail of Tears."

The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.

As strange as it seems today, most Americans didn’t embrace the goal of democracy for most of American history. If they had, then it wouldn’t have been such a struggle for most people to attain citizenship and voting rights. The Federalists argued that those who owned the country should run it because it was they who paid property taxes. But the democratic tide turned with Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800 and gained momentum in the early 19th century. French travel writer Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America “had arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution” such as the tumultuous French Revolution. As noted in the Ratcliffe’s optional deep dive below, this gradual democratic transition traced to the tradition of representative government in the colonial era, the widespread availability of land that qualified freeholders to vote, and the liberalizing legacy of the American Revolution’s equal-rights ideology. Among white males, mass democracy was mostly in place by the Jacksonian Era, named for the two-term presidency of Andrew Jackson, aka “Old Hickory.” Reviled as a demagogue by some and beloved by others, Jackson catered to the very voters who had won the vote in the decades since the Revolution. He put such a decisive stamp on the 1820s and ’30s that they are often called the Age of Jackson. It’s also called the “Era of the Common Man” because it was when American politics adjusted to the implications of an enlarged electorate, becoming necessarily populist.

Andrew Jackson’s two terms as President (1829-1837) included many tests of the American Democratic system. Jackson vetoed twelve pieces of legislation, including the Maysville Road Bill and the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson also oversaw Indian Removal and weathered South Carolina’s nullification crisis over what the Carolinians called the Tariff of Abominations. Jackson’s presidency has been known as the “era of the common man,” a time when voting rights were extended to all white men in almost every state. This era also saw the rise of American Democratic Party. However, recent scholarship argues that the 1830s was a time of staunch nationalism as the Southern cottonocracy spread its plantation system further west. The purpose of this primary source set is to weigh both sides of the argument and decide whether Jackson’s presidency was a time of democracy, a time of rising nationalism or a combination of the two.

The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for ANDREW JACKSON. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent. This more than doubled the turnout in 1824; Jackson clearly headed a sweeping political movement. His central message remained largely the same from the previous election, but had grown in intensity. Jackson warned that the nation had been corrupted by "SPECIAL PRIVILEGE," characterized especially by the policies of the Second Bank of the United States.

Like his father who was also a one-term president, John Quincy Adams was an intelligent statesman whose strong commitment to certain principles proved to be liabilities as president.

A Journey of Injustice: Remember and commemorate the survival of the Cherokee people, forcefully removed from their homelands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee to live in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. They traveled by foot, horse, wagon, or steamboat in 1838-1839.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.