Chapter 8 vocab
APUSH: CHAPTER 8 VOCABULARY
1. Alexis De Tocqueville: a young French aristocrat who visited the United States in the 1830s, and was amazed by the informal manners and democratic attitudes of Americans. The most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs,” Alexis de Tocqueville concluded in Democracy in America (1835). The reason, Tocqueville suggested, lay in the character of democracy itself. Most citizens ignored important policy issues, jealously refused to elect their intellectual superiors, and listened in awe to “the clamor of a mountebank [a charismatic fraud] who knows the secret of stimulating their tastes.”
2. Capitalism: Inspired by their political freedom, many citizens sought to extend republican principles throughout their society. But what were those principles? For entrepreneurial-minded merchants, farmers, and political leaders, republicanism meant the advance of capitalism: They wanted governments to solidify capitalist cultural values and create a dynamic market economy. Using their influence in state legislatures, they secured mercantilist policies that assisted private businesses and, they claimed, enhanced the “common wealth.”
3. John Lewis Krimmel: The Fourth of July in Philadelphia, c. 1811: By the early nineteenth century, the Fourth of July celebration of American independence had become a popular holiday, especially among Jeffersonian Republicans. (Federalists commemorated Washington’s birthday.) This detail from a painting by John Lewis Krimmel links the new nation to the Greek and Roman republics through architecture (the building and the statue), notes its social diversity (by including blacks as well as whites), and hints at the tenor of its social life. The young man buying an alcoholic drink and flirting with the young mother may well engage in some rowdy behavior before Independence Day is over.
4. First Bank of the United States: To finance such mercantile ventures, Americans needed banks.
1. Alexis De Tocqueville: a young French aristocrat who visited the United States in the 1830s, and was amazed by the informal manners and democratic attitudes of Americans. The most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs,” Alexis de Tocqueville concluded in Democracy in America (1835). The reason, Tocqueville suggested, lay in the character of democracy itself. Most citizens ignored important policy issues, jealously refused to elect their intellectual superiors, and listened in awe to “the clamor of a mountebank [a charismatic fraud] who knows the secret of stimulating their tastes.”
2. Capitalism: Inspired by their political freedom, many citizens sought to extend republican principles throughout their society. But what were those principles? For entrepreneurial-minded merchants, farmers, and political leaders, republicanism meant the advance of capitalism: They wanted governments to solidify capitalist cultural values and create a dynamic market economy. Using their influence in state legislatures, they secured mercantilist policies that assisted private businesses and, they claimed, enhanced the “common wealth.”
3. John Lewis Krimmel: The Fourth of July in Philadelphia, c. 1811: By the early nineteenth century, the Fourth of July celebration of American independence had become a popular holiday, especially among Jeffersonian Republicans. (Federalists commemorated Washington’s birthday.) This detail from a painting by John Lewis Krimmel links the new nation to the Greek and Roman republics through architecture (the building and the statue), notes its social diversity (by including blacks as well as whites), and hints at the tenor of its social life. The young man buying an alcoholic drink and flirting with the young mother may well engage in some rowdy behavior before Independence Day is over.
4. First Bank of the United States: To finance such mercantile ventures, Americans needed banks.