The Missouri Compromise had another important provision. It provided that slavery would be "forever prohibited" in all the territory gained from the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri's southern border, except for Missouri itself.

The Missouri Compromise satisfied many Americans as an answer to the slavery question. But large numbers of people still called for complete abolition. In 1821, Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, pleaded for gradual aboliin a journal called The Genius of Universal Emanci William Lloyd Garrison, a fiery New England journalist, opposed even gradual abolition. Garrison dean immediate end to slavery. He founded The Liberator, an important abolitionist journal, in 1831. Many blacks who had gained their freedom became imspeakers for the abolition movement. They inFrederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

The growing strength of the abolition movement raised fears among Southerners that the federal govern-ment would outlaw slavery. Increasingly, the South hardened its defense of slavery. Southerners had always argued that slavery was necessary to the plantation economy. But after 1830, some Southern leaders began arguing that blacks were inferior to whites, and there-fore fit for their role as slaves. Even many Southern whites who owned no slaves took comfort in the belief that they were superior to blacks. As a result, Southern support of slavery increased.

Cultural change. After 1820, the wilderness seemed less and less hostile to Americans, increasingly, society glorified the frontier and nature. The public eagerly read the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, which described Indians and pioneers as pure of heart and noble in deeds. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American phi-losophers praised nature as a source of truth and beauty available to all people, rich and poor alike.

The years of expansion see important so-cial changes. By the mid-1800's the United States had expanded westward across the North American continent. This era of expanbrought with it other profound changes in American society.

With new territory and a growing poputhe nation needed better transportation systems. In the early 1800's workers built hunof miles of canals to link the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers with the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast. Along these water routes, canal boats carried manufactured goods to the West and raw materials and agricultural products to the East. Railroads also developed during this period. Thousands of miles of track were built between 1820 and 1850.

Early reform efforts included movements to organize laborers and farmers. In 1886, skilled laborers formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL) — now the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Led by Samuel Gompers, this union bargained with employers and gained better wages and working conditions for its members. Farmers founded the National Grange in 1867 and Farmers Alli-ances during the 1870's and 1880's. These groups helped force railroads to lower their charges for hauling farm products and assisted the farmers in other ways.

Unskilled laborers had less success in organizing than did skilled laborers and farmers. The Knights of Labor, a union open to both the unskilled and skilled workers, gained a large membership during the 1880's. But its membership declined sharply after the Ha/marRiot of 1886. In this incident, someone threw a bomb during a meeting of workers in Haymarket Square in Chicago, and a riot erupted. At least seven police offiand one civilian died. Many Americans blamed the disaster on the labor movement. The Haymarket Riot aroused antilabor feelings and temporarily weakened the cause of unskilled workers.

The drive for woman suffrage became strong after the Civil War. In 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage AsThe Territory of Wyoming gave women the right to vote the same year. Soon, a few states allowed women to vote, but only in local elections.

Early reformers brought about some changes in gov-ernment. In 1883, their efforts led to passage of the Pendleton, or Civil Service, Act. This federal law set up the Civil Service Commission, an agency charged with granting federal government jobs on the basis of merit, rather than as political favors. The commission was the first federal government regulatory agency in the nahistory. In 1884, Democrats and liberal Republijoined together to elect Grover Cleveland PresiA reform-minded Democrat, Cleveland did much to enforce the Pendleton Act.

The Progressive Era. The outcry for reform in-creased sharply after 1890. Members of the clergy, soworkers, and others studied life in the slums and reon the awful living conditions there. Educators criticized the nation's school system. A group of writers—called muckrakers by their critics—published exposes about such evils as corruption in government and how some businesses cheated the public. The writincluded Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida M. Tarbell. Increasingly, unskilled workers resorted to strikes in an