Question

In what ways and to what extent did this democratic impulse impact American reform movements in the first half of the Nineteenth Century

Answer 1

Answer:

Once the nation became independent in 1776, a process of creation and regulation of the democratic institutions that would govern the destinies of the United States began, passing through the sanction of the Articles of Confederation to the creation of the Constitution and the guarantee of civil rights through the Bill of Rights. After that, the consolidation of these institutions began to take place and the defense of the independence of the young nation against external threats, until after the War of 1812 the European powers assumed the inevitable independence of the United States and their role in politics and the international economy.

It was only then that the nation began to take into account the underlying social conflicts: until then, only white men with a certain economic capacity were able to vote and hold public office, while the poor population, African Americans and women had a secondary role in democratic construction. Thus, these groups gradually began to claim a greater role in political life, as well as a greater guarantee of their civil rights. In this way, in the first half of the 1800s, both African-Americans and women began to create social struggle movements that, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, began to guarantee access to the rights they saw limited, especially the right to vote.