Contextualizing Period 4 OBJECTIVE: Explain the context in which the republic developed from 1800 - 1848.
Growth and expansion we're defining features of the United States in the first half of the 19th century.
The economy was rapidly changing and growing, as an older semi-subsistence economy was giving way to
a market economy with a national, and even international, reach. The "market revolution" affected various
parts of the country differently. Reformers and intellectuals tried to make sense of these changes and
entered into debates about the meaning and shape of democracy. The area of land claimed by the United
States grew substantially during this period, as the country attempted to fulfill its professed "manifest
destiny," and American Indians resisted and changed in the process. In the northern states the beginnings
of industrialization appeared, while slavery grew dramatically in the South on the strength of cotton
cultivation. In some ways, the regions of the United States became more interlinked as local economies
were drawn into national markets, but at the same time, the issue of free labor vs slave labor pushed the
country further apart.
WRITE THE CONTEXTUALIZATION FOR PERIOD 4 BELOW: (See if you can do it in one or
two sentences)
ANSWER HERE: