Civil Rights: 1840s Style
After the Emancipation Year in 1836, Americans the road to “All Men Were Created Equal.” was only beginning. In fact, progress started to stall until the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1840. The reason why almost four years went without any civil rights progress was partially due to the Panic of 1837, which caused all attention to be focused on the crashing economy. However, the US government was attempting… almost nothing. It didn’t think it could do much with the depression. Shuffling the cogs of the "American System" would be the new metaphor for "fiddling while Rome burns" as the adjustments to the American system were wholly insufficient for dealing with the economic crisis. In fact, more effort was going into settling the West, or sending volunteers to Canada to get an ally in the north. Many people saw Henry Clay as completely incompetent, and with his American system in ruins due to the Panic of 1837, so did he. Clay felt like there was nothing he could do about the depression—future historians would see this despair as tarnishing his reputation. He wasn’t terrible, but still among the bottom rung of Presidents due to inability to solve an economic depression, and insufficient progress on civil rights. This was despite his pioneering of the American system, the sorting out of Oklahoma as American (through negotiation with British authorities), and the beginning of a uniquely American culture.
The economy would finally improve by the early 1840s. The United States had more markets in Europe now that Europe had rebuilt from its spat of previous wars. The National Bank of the United States of America was now in good condition. People started feeling hopeful again, which could have been the reason for some of the various civil rights initiatives in those eras. They were going back to work; their lives were secure enough that they could start thinking bigger. The military spending could also decrease now that there was a friendly ally to the north and that Great Britain had little appetite for yet another American adventure. Part of the reason for why the Panic of 1837 was especially bad was that "British Columbia" was not getting much cotton out when it was fighting the British forces and when it was left in shambles. Its rebuilding (with tenant farming producing the cotton now that slavery was abolished), allowed some of the U.S. textile factories to recover. It was at this point that railroad construction exploded, with many new railroads crossing the United States of America. With the construction of the railroads came decreased travel times and increased prosperity for the nation.
The women’s rights movement also started in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Women were marginalized, especially because they were not allowed to vote in this era. Many marches and other peaceful protests started to occur in various cities around America. President Clay, however, did not take this seriously. He never paid them much attention, thinking the movement would simply fizzle out as police arrested the demonstrators. The police, however, had the opposite effect, especially after the election of Daniel Webster 1840. Webster was hopeful of the movement, but he thought it would take constitutional amendments to make permanent progress on this issue. He attempted to rally Representatives and Senators on the importance of a voting rights omnibus Constitutional Amendment to expand suffrage to African Americans and women. That Constitutional Amendment would have been the 13th. Its passage would be rather difficult and would outlast Webster. In the end, the 13th Amendment would take until 1852 to pass, after getting though 2/3 of the House of Representatives, 2/3 of the Senate, and 3/4 of the state legislatures. The last holdouts who had the most resistance supporting this Amendment would be the "upper South" of Kentucky, Virginia, and Missouri. An actual "Equal protection of the Laws" amendment was still in the future, many politicians being rather unwilling to pass such a law since they thought it would or could never be enforced.
The women’s rights movement stalled for some time, but it was not the only large civil rights push in this era. The Freedmen’s Bureau was formed in 1840 as one of the first achievements of Webster. He wanted to realize the Emancipation Year and start extending equal rights to African Americans. Providing education to the recently-freed African Americans was probably one of the successes of the program. It helped them get on their feet as Americans. Job opportunities arrived when laws that prohibited employment discrimination based on race passed. Webster attempted to make one such law, but it would be until Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s that one such law would finally pass. Other African Americans would join the large pool of western settlers trying to make their own farmsteads on the western prairies. A “Great Migration” toward the cities to find those urban factory jobs took most of the remaining African Americans.
However, the "Great Migration" would not always go as planned. The influx of African Americans competed with other immigrants (such as Germans, Irish, Scots, Italians, Spanish, etc.) for their places in urban society. Corporations and companies often exploited them, with staggering numbers of deaths on the job. The awful pay and dangerous conditions would make some people associate the United States with "broken promises"--specifically, the promise of helping the Freedmen after the end of slavery being broken due to their exploitation by the companies. Many neighborhoods in large cities became rife with gang warfare due to a broken police system, endemic poverty, and local political corruption. The United States of America would still have a long way to go before it could realize its dream of "all people are treated equally", despite making some big gains in the 1840s. Thankfully, the gains of the 1840s would be remembered by future generations of Americans, and serve as inspiration.