Working with secondary sources 233W ORkIng WITH SECOnDARy SOURCES
AP® Short Answer Questions
PerioD Four
180 0–1848
Race and DemocracyAmerica’s complex history with race changes during this time period. Westward expan-
sion and the exclusion of Native Americans suggest that President Andrew Jackson
pushed for an elitist view of the ruling class. At the same time, the early part of the
nineteenth century saw an increase in abolitionists and a strong economy that required
contributions from an ever-expanding workforce. The Second Great Awakening saw the
beginnings of real reform in the social and economic spheres of America.
You have read various sources that illustrate different approaches toward reform dur-
ing this period. Now read the two passages below, and consider the extent to which each
perspective on the Jacksonian legacy accurately reflects the spirit of this era.The Jacksonian South’s political discussion of race and slavery revealed a variety
of racial attitudes and ideologies ranging from exclusion and marginalization
at one end of the spectrum to complete subordination of African Americans
at the other end, with a bewildering array of selectively cobbled together vari-
ations on either the exclusion or the subordination themes, or both, lying in
between. Full-voiced advocates of exclusion sought either to remove African
Americans from southern society altogether, or, more realistically, minimize
the role of blacks, slave and free, in the civic, social, and economic life of the
South....
— Lacy K. Ford, “making the ‘White man’s Country’ White: race, slavery and state-Building
in the Jacksonian south,” Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 719.The old image of the Jacksonians may have exaggerated their liberal egali-
tarianism; the new image, however, threatens to turn white supremacy into an
essential feature of Jacksonian politics, as if racism and proslavery were inevitable
ingredients of early nineteenth-century American democratic thought.... Such
a jaundiced view, however, not only confuses the expediency of some Jackson-
ian leaders with race hatred. It also slights those Jacksonians who, as early as
the 1830s, took principled stands against slavery and against the racism that
justified slavery. It ignores the vital contributions these antislavery Jacksonians
made toward enlarging the antislavery cause. It suggests that the Jacksonians left
behind a single odious legacy on slavery and race, when in fact their legacy was
much more complex.
— sean Wilentz, “slavery, antislavery, and Jacksonian Democracy,” in The Market Revo-
lution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880, ed. melvyn
stokes and stephen Conway (richmond: University press of Virginia, 1996), 202–224.10_STA_2012_ch9_213-234.indd 233 23/03/15 5:33 PM