Chapter 10
In This Chapter:
● Following the Revolutionary trail
● Fighting for survival
● Understanding the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution
● Becoming the United States
● Discovering the power of democracy
When George Washington heard the news about the fighting at Lexington and Concord (see Chapter 9) he wrote from Mount Vernon to a friend, “. . . the once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?”
Washington didn’t hesitate. The Second Continental Congress (1775) met in Philadelphia a month after the battle and appointed Washington to command the 30,000 militia troops currently bottling up 8,000 British soldiers in Boston.
The patient 43-year-old Washington was a good choice. He may not have been history’s most brilliant general, but he was competent and sometimes even daring. Most important, he had the strength of character to hold the army together through hard times and the aristocratic bearing to assure people with money that the rebels were more than just an angry mob. Those tough times, and their aftermath, are covered in this chapter.
Exciting as they are, battles and military campaigns seldom appear in the big AP exam. The test mavens are more interested in the meaning of conflicts and what social conditions contributed to and came out of the fights. Still, some knowledge of how the Revolution went down can provide handy ammunition for answering political, economic, and social questions. This chapter gives you the short version of the American war for independence.
Power of the Pen: Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence
The Continental Congress could have just mailed King George III a polite letter telling him to get the heck out of America, but educated people know giving reasons is always better when they want to make some major changes. The explaining-why-you’ve-got-to-go job went to 32-year-old Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Before the Declaration, though, people were talking about the writings of Thomas Paine.
Showing the power of an idea whose time had come, patriot Paine published a pamphlet called Common Sense (1776), arguing that it just made common sense for the colonies to be separated from Britain. Britain was a small island compared with the vast expanse of the colonies. Where in the universe does a small star control a large planet? Paine had a dream of a new kind of government — a republic in which power came from the people, not from some corrupt king.
America was ready to hear Paine’s words. People in Britain had slowly been increasing their freedom for years; many colonists knew the words of progressive British thinkers who supported the theory of a republic. Freedom was no theory in America; New England town meetings and elections throughout the colonies prepared patriots to launch the world’s first true republic.
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He called these natural rights, not theoretical or British or pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die rights. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1776) has served as a model for progressive people around the world ever since. In the Declaration, Jefferson calmly listed the ways the British king and government had trampled on America’s natural rights. The Declaration was officially approved on July 4, 1776.
Notice that both Paine and Jefferson referred to natural rights and common sense. They viewed the world as being rational, made for humans, and capable of being improved by people. They were children of the Enlightenment (1760), a giant wake-up call that started in the early 1700s and spread around the world. Despite the continued presence of fear and intolerance, people still live with the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Britain Versus the Patriots: The Fighting Escalates
The fighting between the patriots and the British loyalist forces began to look like more than just a family feud when the patriots surprised some British forts in northern New York and hauled off their cannons. With the extra firepower, the patriots marched up Bunker Hill (actually, Breed’s Hill), overlooking Boston.
The British eventually dislodged the patriots, but not without losing a lot of men. The British burned a couple of seaports; the patriots invaded Canada and kicked some Loyalist butt in the South. Then the British hired German professional soldiers, called Hessians, to help them whip the colonists.
Problems the British faced
Like any occupying power, the problem for the British army was that it really controlled only the ground it was standing on. Although as many as 50,000 Loyalist colonists fought alongside the British at one time or another, their numbers weren’t enough to keep any large part of America loyal to the king after the king’s army left town.
Things got pretty hot for Loyalists when the British army wasn’t around to protect them. Patriots weren’t above going from tar-and-feather parties to destruction of Loyalist property and violence that bordered on terrorism. Some 80,000 Loyalists moved out of the country to Canada or Britain.
Cutting it close to find freedom
Congress didn't officially declare the United States independent until 14 months after the first shots were fired. With both sides firing away, Congress's hesitation for more than a year shows how close the colonies still felt to Britain.
Another sign of how difficult it was to break the bond with Mother England was the fact that around one in six colonial people were loyal to the British crown. Not only did Loyalists not want to leave Britain, but they were also ready to fight the patriots who did.
Problems the patriots faced
The problem for the patriots was that the British had a larger and better-trained army — at least 35,000 British and Hessian troops supported by 500 ships. Washington had at most 18,000 men, mostly poorly trained and equipped. Although by the end of the war, Washington had around 8,000 properly trained regular-army Continental soldiers, many of the minuteman volunteers who made up most of the army were good for little more than a minute in a stand-up battle. Sniping from behind rocks went only so far in a real war; sooner or later, the armies faced each other across an open field. Minutemen volunteers tended to fire a round or two and then head home to their farms. Developing soldiers who would stand up to British cannon and massed musket fire took years of drilling and combat experience.
Slaves: Fighting for both sides
Thousands of African slaves fought with the British because they were promised freedom if they did. Many, but not most, were helped out of the country when the war ended. The black Loyalist Colonel Titus Tye became legendary for capturing supplies and patriots. Blacks fought for the Revolution as well: A black soldier is shown right next to Washington in the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Winning the American Revolution, in a Nutshell
Surrounded by angry colonists, the British cleared out of Boston and sailed to New York City, where they had a lot more fans. George Washington tried to defend New York but was quickly pushed out, almost losing his army and his life in the fallback. As winter closed off the ability of the armies to maneuver, Washington struck back bravely against detachments of the British army in New Jersey; famously rowing across the ice-clogged Delaware River at night on December 26, 1776.
Meanwhile, the British planned to cut troublesome New England off from the rest of the colonies by marching an army down from Canada through New York. Didn’t work. In the important Battle of Saratoga (1777), a patriot army forced the British to surrender in northern New York. That victory gave the French the courage to enter the war on the side of the patriots. French help was huge, because the French had the weapons, navy, and well-trained regular army that the patriots desperately needed. After their loss at Saratoga, the British offered the Americans home rule within the British empire, but it was way too late for that.
Question: What was the most important outcome of the Battle of Saratoga?
Answer: The win by the patriots in the Battle of Saratoga gave the French confidence to enter the war to help the rebels.
Valley Forge and help from France
Another British army managed to take Philadelphia, forcing the members of the Continental Congress to run for their lives. Washington’s army stayed gamely nearby, freezing through a terrible winter at its Valley Forge camp. With the French threatening them, the British hightailed it back to the safety of New York City, fighting a hot battle with Washington along the way. For the next three years, Washington stayed close to New York, tying down the British troops there. The French landed a powerful army of 6,000 soldiers to help the patriots.
Obviously, the British couldn’t win the war by sitting around New York. Because New England hadn’t worked for the British, and the Middle states were a little tough, they decided to try the South, where a large Loyalist population promised a happy welcome.
Cornwallis and losing morale
British General Charles Cornwallis took the South’s most important city, Charleston, forcing the surrender of the entire Southern patriot army. Then he marched through the Carolinas and Virginia constantly harassed by patriot forces who attacked any time they could isolate a bite-sized British force. Patriots stung Cornwallis but couldn’t stop him.
After four years of war, the patriots were running out of steam in 1780. Despite French help, the powerless Congress was so broke that it announced it could pay off patriot debts only at the rate of 2.5 cents on the dollar. Without food and supplies, Washington’s army was close to mutiny. Rich American merchants sold the patriots bad-quality supplies at huge profits. The South seemed to be going to the British. Many of the once-gung-ho revolutionaries despaired of ever winning their freedom. Soldiers worried about how their families were doing without them, the chronic lack of guns and food, and the fact that they got paid in almost-worthless paper money.
Question: What were the complaints of the Continental soldiers in Washington’s army?
Answer: Continental soldiers’ discontent came from home worries, not enough weapons, paper-money pay, and little food.
Victory and the Treaty of Paris
Then Cornwallis decided to do something really safe: He marched his army to what he thought was shelter and resupply in Yorktown on the Virginia coast. Instead of being met by the protective, well-stocked British fleet, he found the French navy controlling the escape routes by sea. Washington and his French allies marched 300 miles from New York in a few weeks to attack the trapped British.
Cornwallis surrendered with about one quarter of all the British troops in North America. After another year of small-scale fighting, the British government gave up. The Americans went from despair to joyous celebration.
In the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British formally recognized the independence of the United States. They took a satisfyingly broad view of what the new United States owned, signing over everything from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to Spanish Florida. America began its independence with the largest area of rich land in the world and with a priceless heritage of freedom.
Question: What were the major parts of the 1783 Treaty of Paris?
Answer: Under the Treaty of Paris, the United States was free and owned all the lands to the Mississippi.
Designing a New Country
The American Revolution introduced the reality, not just the theory, of democratic government to the world. The Revolution challenged the old order in Europe and South America by opposing inherited political power with the democratic idea that government rests on the consent of the governed. The example of the first successful revolution against a European empire provided a model for many other colonial peoples, who realized that they too could become self-governing nations. In the 20th century, revolutionaries sometimes even quoted Thomas Jefferson as they fought against American economic interests.
America won its independence with the help of the endless fights between European countries; it provided the model for what would become, 200 years later, the peaceful European Union. The United States remains the leading example of the extent to which a country with people from all around the world can remain a free society.
Before America could do all that, though, it had to figure out exactly what changes to make after it became independent. In their enthusiasm for new-found freedom, some lawmakers got ahead of the times.
After the Revolution, with 1 out of 30 of the American people (the most conservative Loyalist residents) taking a permanent vacation to Canada or Britain, the new United States had a distinctly progressive bent. Once, for example, the titles Mr. and Mrs. were reserved only for the upper classes; now everybody got called that. Even more social changes were to come.
Separation of church and state
Church and state were separated. Although the Congregationalist denomination hung on for a few years as the official religion of Massachusetts, one by one, the states dropped any affiliation with a particular denomination. One of Jefferson’s proudest accomplishments was the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), which separated religion from government in what was then the largest state. It served as a model for other states.
Early attempts to abolish slavery
The Continental Congress of 1774 called for the abolition of the slave trade. Some Northern states ended slavery as early as 1776. In writing the new Constitution, Southern slaveholders got a Three Fifths Compromise that allowed them to count part of each slave toward the representation they’d get in Congress.
Question: What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?
Answer: The Three-Fifths Compromise meant that slaves counted toward Congressional representation.
Even a few forward-thinking Southerners freed their slaves in a burst of Revolutionary zeal. Washington arranged for his slaves to be set free after he and his wife died. Although the U.S. set a deadline of 1808 to abolish the importation of new slaves, a slave rebellion in Haiti (1791) scared a lot of slave owners into harsher treatment of slaves. The slave revolt also made Napoleon rethink his involvement in the New World.
Question: What was the influence of the slave rebellion in Haiti on the U.S.?
Answer: The rebellion scared Southern slave owners into increasingly brutal treatment of slaves and gave Napoleon a reason to want to sell out of his interests in the New World, paving the way for the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson was embarrassed that he couldn’t free his slaves. Enslaved workers were worth as much as $50,000 each in modern money. A poor businessman, Jefferson had been forced to mortgage his slaves to the bank, which wouldn’t let Jefferson set them free. The Polish American Revolutionary war hero Thaddeus Kosciusko spent his army pay to help buy the freedom of slaves.
Women's gains and republican motherhood
Women made some early gains. New Jersey’s Revolutionary constitution of 1776 even briefly granted women the right to vote, 100 years before the rest of the world. Although that early right was overturned, women played a role in the freedom fight. John Adams’s wife, Abigail, warned him in her so-called Remember-the-Ladies letter before the Declaration of Independence that women were ready to start their own revolution. During the war, some women dressed like men fought in both the artillery and the infantry for the patriots. Two sisters dragged a British messenger off his horse and smuggled his secret dispatches through enemy lines to the Americans. He never knew what hit him.
Question: What did Abigail Adams, wife of future president John Adams, write about in a famous letter to him?
Answer: In an early call for women’s rights, Abigail advised John to “remember the ladies.”
The idea of republican motherhood (1780) elevated women to the role of keeper of the nation’s conscience and first educator of future patriots. The concept of republican motherhood resulted in increased educational opportunities for American women. By 1837, women had their own source of higher education: Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, the predecessor to Mount Holyoke College.
Question: What was the meaning of republican motherhood?
Answer: Republican motherhood meant that it was the important responsibility of women to raise the next generation of freedom-loving patriots.
Although republican motherhood kept women at home rearing children, it also produced an initiative that legitimized political activity. The Abolitionist movement, which began to gain strength in the 1830s and 1840s, found many of its strongest voices among educated Northern women. The Seneca Falls Convention (1848), which began the women’s-rights movement in the United States, owes some of its origin to the emphasis on republican motherhood at the time of the Revolution.
Trade, industry, and economic democracy
The rich Loyalists who split the country left behind some oversized chunks of land that were divided among deserving patriots. Although land that the king and his unrepentant subjects had owned was sold to help pay off the war debt, few attacks were made on former Loyalists who chose to stay in the new country. Economic democracy meant sharing fairly in the wealth of the land; because America didn’t have royalty or an aristocracy, it had some measure of economic democracy even before the political democracy of the Revolution got going. That may be one reason why the United States didn’t experience as much violence after its change of government as France did.
Trade and industry got off to a good recovery after the Revolution. Although the United States was outside the British family, it still had the whole non-British world with which to trade. American ships were landing in China as soon as they could get out of port after the peace treaty was signed. River-powered industry was encouraged in New England as soon as the restrictions of old England were gone. Building industry wasn’t always easy. The new country had to compete with British manufacturers that were dumping products that had been bottled up by the war for cheap prices.
Looking to make the country larger
The ink had barely dried on the peace treaty that ended the Revolution when Congress sat down to plan for the expansion of the United States into its western lands. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided that the land in the old Northwest Territory — covering what are now Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin — should be sold to help pay off the national debt. The proceeds from the sale of 1 out of 36 sections went to support local schools, a gift to education that was unheard-of in the rest of the world.
The even more important Northwest Ordinance (1787) let government of the new lands pass quickly from dependent territories to full partnership states as soon as any state had 60,000 residents. It also banned slavery in the Northwest Territory.
Question: What was the major purpose of the Northwest Ordinance?
Answer: The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided rules for admission of new states and prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory.
Setting Down the Legal Foundation of a Nation
To get a fresh start, the Continental Congress in 1776 asked the states to rewrite their state constitutions as republican documents. Written constitutions serve as the fundamental rules — laws that don’t change with the day-to-day ideas of ordinary legislation. Most of the state constitutions were similar, being contracts that defined the powers of government and the rights of citizens.
Massachusetts came up with the new idea of having the people of the state ratify any amendments to the state constitution. The amendment process for the U.S. Constitution still works that way: The legislatures of three-quarters of all the states must approve any changes. After the states began to think in a new way, almost half of the 13 original colonies decided to move their capitals to be closer to the people in the center of each state.
The Articles of Confederation
To set some permanent rules for the new nation, Congress had taken the time, between running the war and running from the British, to draft the Articles of Confederation (1777). The big deal at first wasn’t so much how to govern the new country as how to handle the land it was sitting on. Most colonial governments liked to think of themselves as extending all the way over the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi, if not to the Pacific. They each had claims on Western land. The central government got the states to give up these claims so that new states could be formed and land sold to settlers to support the central government. The individual states pooled their Western land resources for the common good.
This was an important start, because the Articles of Confederation gave no power to Congress to collect taxes. Congress established a tax quota for each state and then used the time-honored negotiating strategy of begging and pleading to get the states to pay up. How well this system worked is reflected in the number of brave Continential soldiers who were never even supplied shoes by the government. And tax collecting wasn’t the end of the Confederation government’s weakness. Congress wasn’t allowed to regulate commerce and set tariffs; each state did that individually. Oranges could be taxed at 10 cents in New York and $10 in Pennsylvania — possibly both ways if a cargo moved across state lines.
Question: What was the major government revenue weakness of the Articles of Confederation?
Answer: Under the Articles of Confederation, the United States couldn’t levy taxes or control commerce.
If the British have it, we don't want it!
The Confederation was an anti-King George machine; whatever the colonies didn’t like about the British government, they left out of the Articles of Confederation. Dictatorial administration? No problem. The articles allowed for no president, king, or executive at all. Crooked judges? Got it covered. The articles established no national judicial system; each state did its own thing. The central government got to negotiate treaties and run a postal system, though it was a little unclear where it would get the money to print the stamps.
The Articles of Confederation contained good things as well. First, the articles existed, giving the states a unified platform to work with. Second, pitiful as they were, the articles clearly spelled out the powers of the government. Unlike the unwritten, hard-to-define British Constitution, the articles were right there in black and white. They held the union together through a tough war and gave the states a stepping stone to something stronger and more permanent.
The states rebel
When the war was over, the states’ attentions drifted back to their own interests. Quarrels over boundaries generated minor battles between discharged state militias. A large but mostly peaceful uprising in western Massachusetts, led by a captain in the war, scared the government and the local courts.
Shays’ Rebellion (1786) was a series of armed demonstrations led by small farmers angered by debt and taxes. Failure to repay debts often resulted in imprisonment in debtor’s prisons or loss of the family farm. The rebels freed their friends from prison and stopped courts from ordering evictions. The rebellion lasted about six months before it was violently put down by a private army paid for by rich landowners. Without a standing army, the national government could do nothing. This scare helped lead to support for the Constitutional Convention (1787), which began a few months after the rebellion.
Question: What was Shays’ Rebellion?
Answer: In Shays’ Rebellion, debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers attacked courts. The Rebellion helped show the need for a more powerful federal government.
The Constitutional Convention
Delegates from all the states came to the Constitutional Convention, including Revolutionary superstars Ben Franklin (then 81 years old), Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. George Washington chaired the meeting.
The delegates knew they needed a strong central government, but they wanted to preserve the maximum rights to states and their individual citizens. Proposals broke down into a large-state plan and a small-state plan. Under the Confederation, the rule had been one state, one vote. The big states wanted representation by population size. In the end, the great compromise split the difference. Big states got the House of Representatives, based on population; the small states got the U.S. Senate, with two senators for every state no matter how small. As a tip to the big states, all tax and revenue bills had to start in the House. The many compromises took years to be finally approved.
Question: Did all the delegates agree with the new Constitution at the first meeting?
Answer: No, the Constitution was controversial and required compromise and years of discussion to be ratified by all 13 states.
Getting over King George-o-phobia, the delegates established a strong president who could appoint judges and other officials, serve as commander in chief of the military, and veto legislation. This strong president was to be chosen by the people indirectly through an electoral college as a supposed safeguard against mob rule.
Slavery: Reduced but not gone yet
The Southern states wanted to count slaves as part of their population to get more representatives in the House. The North said it was nice that the South finally wanted to count slaves as people, but the way Southerners treated slaves, Northerners may as well request representation for their horses.
The two sides split the difference: Slaves were partly counted in the Three-Fifths Compromise (1787). All but two of the states wanted to shut down the African slave trade; the compromise was to stop stealing people from Africa in 20 years (1807).
Reining in the states
The Constitution needed the approval of nine states to get going. Eventually, it was approved by all 13 states, but it took 3 years and some mighty close votes. In general, wealthy, well-educated people liked the strong central government called for by the new Constitution; people who supported the federal Constitution were Federalists (1788). They wrote the Federalist Papers, arguing that a large republic can best protect minority rights.
In the end, the laws that didn’t change in the Constitution served all the people. You can count on one hand the countries in the world that have had stable governments for the past 200 years. Although it’s far from an economic democracy, the United States has provided a shield for freedom and a chance for success to millions of people.
Question: What was the main point of the Federalist Papers?
Answer: The Federalist Papers argued that a large republic best protects minority rights.
As weary old Ben Franklin was leaving the convention hall, a woman asked him, “Well, doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” The elder statesman replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
First president: George Washington
George Washington became the first U.S. president in 1789. His ride from quiet Mount Vernon to the nation’s temporary capital of New York City was one big party: Bells rang, bands played, and the roads were strewn with flowers. Washington took the oath of office on a balcony overlooking Wall Street — something that some people have seen as a bad omen for economic democracy. Washington appointed the first Cabinet: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox.
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights (1791), the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was approved by all the states to guarantee that the new Constitution would mandate basic rights for all citizens. Spelling out these rights put critics of the new Constitution at ease by mandating freedom of speech and religion and other liberties.
Although the AP exam probably won’t trick you with individual amendment numbers, the Bill of Rights makes excellent essay fodder and can come in handy on multiple-choice questions. Here’s the short version:
First Amendment: freedom of religion, speech, and press Second Amendment: right to keep and bear arms
Third Amendment: protection from mandatory quartering of troops in private citizens’ homes
Fourth Amendment: protection from unreasonable search and seizure Fifth Amendment: due process under the law
Sixth Amendment: right to criminal trial by jury and other rights for the accused Seventh Amendment: right to civil trial by jury
Eighth Amendment: no excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment
Ninth Amendment: establishes that amendments don’t limit rights, just suggest some
Tenth Amendment: establishes that powers not listed belong to the states and people
Moving Along with the Young Republic
One thing that America was good at was growing people. By the time of the first official census in 1790, almost 4 million people inhabited the U.S., up from just over 2 million in 1770. Although business was picking up, the government was still deep in debt from the Revolutionary War.
Treasury Secretary Hamilton had a unique idea: He actually wanted to pay off the national debt. Even though the United States had won the war, investors still didn’t think government bonds were worth much more than 10 cents on the dollar. Hamilton proposed to pay them all back and got Congress to approve a duty on foreign imports and U.S.-made luxury items such as whiskey and carriages to raise money. The credit of the United States improved. Hamilton supported the development of a national bank, partially funded by the government, that could keep money in circulation and help boost the economy. He also wanted to give subsidies to business, but Congress wouldn’t buy that. Jefferson argued against the Bank of the United States, but it passed. Although he got the nation on a firm financial footing, Hamilton’s policies were seen by poorer farmers as serving the rich Eastern merchants.
Question: What was Alexander Hamilton’s economic policy?
Answer: Alexander Hamilton’s economic program included a Bank of the U.S., plus excise and tariff taxes. Congress rejected his idea of direct subsidies to manufacturers.
Question: How was Hamilton’s financial program viewed by poorer voters?
Answer: Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal policy was seen as favoring Eastern merchants.
As a states’-rights strict-constructionist, Jefferson believed that anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution was prohibited. Hamilton took a broad interpretation or loose-construction view of the Constitution. He thought the Constitution had implied powers, which allowed the government to do whatever was necessary to carry out the general tasks assigned in the Constitution. A modern example of implied power is the federal road-building program; the only power enumerated for this in the Constitution is the maintainence of postal roads. Therefore, every freeway is officially a postal road.
The Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) was a protest on the western Pennsylvania frontier against the tax Hamilton had gotten passed on booze. At almost $4 a gallon in modern money, the tax was more than most self-respecting moonshiners could come up with in a barter economy. Whiskey was distilled money for the frontier farmers, who had little cash and almost no transportation; whiskey was the easiest and most profitable thing to do with a crop of grain. Even preachers got paid with jugs of booze, which they could then exchange for food or supplies.
Hamilton’s tax may have raised money, but it really hurt small-time farmer/distillers. With local protests spreading throughout the states, Hamilton and Washington personally led an army of 13,000 armed men on a fruitless search for whiskey criminals near Pittsburgh. They didn’t catch many people, but they made their point. The whiskey business paid up for a while in Pennsylvania. On a larger scale, the new federal government showed it could use force to back up laws. But in other places without soldiers, the tax was difficult to collect, and it was repealed in 1803.
Forming political parties
Hamilton’s ambitious big-government programs created opposition from people like Jefferson, who believed in more individualism and less government. Political parties began to form around these opinions. People who liked Hamilton’s ideas were called Federalists (1795), and Jefferson’s followers called themselves Democratic-Republicans (1800). The Federalists died out around 1816. After trying silly party names like Whigs (1834) and Know-Nothings (1855), American’s factions divided the names of Jefferson’s party. Political parties weren’t an idea of the framers of the Constitution, but they’ve been a handy addition to democracy, always scraping just to the right or left of whoever is in power.
Trying to stay out of other people’s Wars
The French had a bloody revolution of their own, occasioning yet another war with Britain. The Franco-American Alliance (1788) that was key in helping the United States win its independence was still on the books, but Washington decided not to take sides and issued his Neutrality Proclamation (1793). That was okay with the French, who figured that the baby United States wouldn’t be much help anyway.
Meanwhile, on the Ohio frontier, the American Indians had gotten together in the Miami Confederacy (1790) and had twice beaten up small U.S. armies sent against them. The British were still lurking in forts on American soil, arming the American Indians. Finally, a serious U.S. force beat the American Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), and the American Indians sold most of their lands in the Treaty of Greenville (1795).
Rolling along the treaty trail, trying to stay out of trouble, the United States signed Jay’s Treaty (1794) with Britain to stop the British from lurking in forts. The agreement didn’t stop Britain’s nagging bad habit of seizing American ships at sea and forcing U.S. sailors to join its navy, but it did let the United States into the valuable trade with the British West Indies. Spain cut the United States a break with Pinckney’s Treaty (1795), giving the new country all the land down to Florida and free use of the Mississippi. America was getting a little respect. That little respect was more than Washington was getting from many people in the country he helped create.
Question: What was Pinckney’s Treaty?
Answer: Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795 with Spain fixed Southern boundaries and gave U.S. ships the right to use the Mississippi River.
Washington leaves office
Facing criticism and tired of politics, Washington left office at the end of his second term. His Farewell Address (1796) warned the nation to stay out of permanent alliances and asked people to be governed by moral religious principles.
Washington himself was a freethinking Freemason who welcomed all religions and avoided communion with sectarian statements of faith in his later years. He was an example of good behavior; after 200 years, his pure character still shines. He liked a good time, however; his major retirement project was the construction on his property of one of the largest whiskey stills in the country. His last words were “It is well.”
John Adams takes over
John Adams (1797), the second American president, sent envoys to France to try to solve a hissy fit. Angry that the Americans would be dating the British with Jay’s Treaty when they should be going steady with them under the Franco-American Alliance, the French were taking a leaf from the British playbook and seizing American ships at sea. After an aborted negotiation called the XYZ Affair (1797), for the coded names of three French envoys who tried to extort a bribe from the United States, both sides got over their emotions and signed the Convention of 1800, which ended their formal alliance.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees. The AP exam cares about trends, not a whirlwind of treaty names. The individual names are like a bonus round: you get extra points for remembering. The main trend to understand from all this early U.S. diplomacy is that the new nation was wisely avoiding war and slowly gaining respect. If the United States had fought a war with France in 1800, the French surely wouldn’t have sold America the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
What with all the international and domestic political tensions, the ruling Federalists in Congress freaked out and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). These acts made criticizing the president a crime, raised the waiting time for citizenship from 5 to 17 years, and allowed the government to deport any noncitizens it didn’t like.
The U.S. appeared to be on the path to becoming a police-state, but Jefferson fought the repressive laws every step of the way, and they expired at the end of Adams’s one term as president. Jefferson and James Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798), which were passed by these states to protest the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts.
In fighting the laws, Jefferson took an extreme turn in the antigovernment direction and introduced the concept of nullification, saying that any state could refuse to follow a federal law it didn’t like. This concept would come back to roost in a bad way before the Civil War.
Question: What were the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions?
Answer: Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions championed states’ rights against the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Thomas Jefferson: Moving into the 1800s
Thomas Jefferson (1801) narrowly squeaked past Federalist attacks to become the third president. This election marked the first change in political parties for the United States and was an important landmark for peaceful political transition. Jefferson believed in small government, and he reduced government programs; he pardoned the martyrs to the expired Alien and Sedition Acts, and the government returned many of their fines. A new naturalization act again let immigrants become citizens after only five years. In 1804, Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr; Burr fled the country.
Question: What was Thomas Jefferson’s political approach?
Answer: Jefferson reduced the activities of the federal government.
During his last days in office, Adams had appointed a new chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall. Marshall had only six weeks of formal legal training; he was President Adams’s last choice after three other men couldn’t take the job. Jefferson didn’t like Marshall’s strong-government views but couldn’t get rid of him.
Empowering the Supreme Court
Marshall had suffered from hunger and cold as a soldier at Valley Forge; he knew govenments had to be strong enough to deliver for their people. Marshall’s first landmark case was Marbury v. Madison (1803). In rejecting an appeal from a fellow Federalist, Marshall overturned a previous law as unconstitutional because it didn’t agree with the 15-year-old U.S. Constitution. This set the precedent that the Supreme Court can review all laws for their constitutionality.
Question: What was the importance of the case of Marbury v. Madison?
Answer: This decision gave the Supreme Court the power to review all laws for their constitutionality.
Jefferson’s small-government followers tried to strike back by filing impeachment charges against a judge they didn’t like. Congress dropped the charges, and the principles of independent judicial review and separation of powers got under way.
Making a deal with Napoleon
In France, famous Napoleon Bonaparte had two troubles on his mind: He was fighting almost every other country in Europe, and he had just lost a war to an island of slaves. Haiti was a rich sugar island where thousands of slaves had risen up in revolt against their French masters. Napoleon’s troops could shoot their way in, but diseases and guerilla warfare meant they really couldn’t stay. Napoleon needed money and wanted out of the New World.
Jefferson had sent negotiators to France to try to buy New Orleans. They had authorization to pay as much as $10 million (half a billion dollars in modern money) for the city. Napoleon surprised them by offering all of France’s holdings in North America, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, for $15 million. What the heck? They bought a wilderness to get a city.
Question: What was the background of the Louisiana Purchase?
Answer: The Louisiana Purchase resulted from Napoleon’s loss in Haiti, opened the whole trans-Mississippi area, and showed Jefferson’s flexibility with his own strict-constructionist views.
Lewis and Clark
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804) explored the new territory with the help of the American Indian woman Sacajawea. They wouldn’t have survived without her. The fact that Lewis and Clark’s expedition was traveling with a woman and her child showed the American Indians that the expedition wasn’t a hostile war party. Their 2K-year epic adventure pointed the way west for future settlers. Other early explorers, including Zebulon Pike (1805), brought back reports of the immense and unknown new territory of the United States. Pike showed the value of publicity; although Pikes Peak was only one of over 50 tall mountains in Colorado, it became the one everybody knows.
Caught between Britain and France
After winning a landslide reelection victory in 1804, Jefferson and the nation were caught between France and Britain in their seemingly endless war to control Europe. Jefferson was unpopular for keeping the United States out of an early war with the great powers; America couldn’t trade with either power without facing the other’s guns. Both sides grabbed American merchant ships and sailors. The British forced some 6,000 American sailors to join their navy between 1808 and 1811 alone.
Question: How was Jefferson’s policy of avoiding war received by the public?
Answer: Jefferson was unpopular for neutrality toward Britain and France.
Too weak to fight, the United States passed the Embargo Acts (1807), which were meant to stop all trade with foreign nations. While the United States held its breath and turned blue, the British and French managed to do without American goods. American exporters either smuggled goods or went out of business; many saw the acts as attacking Americans to fight foreigners.
To the extent that they kept foreign goods out, the Embargo Acts helped infant U.S. industries grow without competition. Some traders actually liked the cops-and-robbers aspects of the smuggling business; it was exciting, and the profits were great if you didn’t get busted. Just before Jefferson left office, Congress passed the Non-Intercourse Act (1809), which limited the embargo to Britain and France.
James Madison steps in
James Madison (1809), friend and follower of Jefferson, took over as president of a nation still caught in the French/British nutcracker. The 15-year U.S. headache of foreign entanglement without any foreign alliances showed the impossibility of separating the United States from the world, as both Washington and Jefferson had wished. As a trading nation, America couldn’t avoid the crossfire of belligerents.
Congress tried a finesse that was too tricky by half. Macon’s Bill No. 2 (1810) said that if either Britain or France would end its commercial blockade, the United States would restore its embargo against the nation that didn’t stop blocking trade. In other words, America would take sides, but it was first come, first served. France promised to be good; Britain didn’t. America was drawn closer to another conflict with Britain.
Britain's deal with Tecumseh
Meanwhile, in the green forests of the frontier, a strong Shawnee leader named Tecumseh (1811) united tribes from Canada to Mexico and prepared to push the settlers back. The British were more than happy to supply guns to the American Indians. William Henry Harrison, U.S. governor of Indiana, led a band of militia toward Tecumseh’s headquarters on the Tippecanoe River while the chief was away gathering together his allies.
Tecumseh’s brother unwisely attacked the militia before the American Indians could get together, telling the braves that his medicine-man powers would keep them from being wounded. When magic didn’t stop the militia’s bullets, the American Indians fled, and Tecumseh’s rebellion was over before it started. Tecumseh fought on, eventually charging alone into the middle of an American army. An old American frontiersman helped the American Indians give Tecumseh’s body an honored burial.
The U.S. Versus Britain — Version 1812
After being pushed around for years, the United States declared war on Great Britain in 1812. The United States could hardly have been more divided; war resolutions barely passed in Congress. The war was most popular in the South and in the Middle and Western states. New England greeted the news of war with mourning.
The young United States faced a war with its old enemy Britain, still the most powerful empire in the world. New England refused to let its militias fight and probably loaned more money to Britain than to the U.S. government. New England food helped supply British invaders from Canada.
How could New England, the hotbed of freedom and revolution, as well as a major shipping area, turn against an American government that was determined to preserve the freedom of international shipping? A lot of the answer was politics. New England was Federalist territory; the people there would rather lose a war than see Jefferson’s Republicans win. Faced with the experienced British military, the young United States was in trouble trying to go to war without the support of the whole country.
Like slipping on a banana peel and sliding into a gold mine, the War of 1812 was an embarrassment that turned out fine. New England didn’t want to fight; inexperienced American troops often ran from a British army hardened by years of combat with Napoleon, and old generals from the Revolutionary War proved that they needed to retire. U.S. invasions of Canada failed miserably; the British army burned Washington, D.C., and the British navy raided and blockaded.
The good news was that the United States got some victories to remember:
● The USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), with a crew that was one sixth free blacks, blew away proud British ships.
● The star-spangled banner continued to wave over Baltimore Harbor and inspired the national anthem.
● A thrown-together force of sailors, frontiersmen, free blacks, Frenchmen, and pirates smashed a larger force of experienced British regulars to save New Orleans.
When the smoke cleared, the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent (1814), without any formal gains for either side. The United States gained respect for standing up to the great British Empire, and Americans felt a new sense of national pride.
It had been a close thing. Toward the end of the war, the Hartford Convention (1814) was an angry meeting of the New England states demanding more power. Those states shut up when news of the victory at New Orleans reached the capital at about the same time as their complaints. Ironically, New England started all the talk about nullification and secession that would become popular in the South with respect to the issue of slavery.
Hopeful in the Era of Good Feelings
With so many years of embargo and blockade, the United States had time to develop its own industries. Following the war, Congress passed the protective Tariff of 1816, which taxed foreign imports to make American goods more competitive. Congressman Henry Clay launched the American System (1824), which included easy credit, increased tariffs, and roads and canals to move American products. An added bonus: Roads and canals were the most important way to encourage settlement of the West.
Question: What were the most important new forms of transportation in the early United States?
Answer: Roads and canals were the most important new avenues of transportation.
James Monroe (1817), the last of the Revolutionary War soldiers to be president, served two terms mellow enough to be called the Era of Good Feelings. Nothing with humans in it is really mellow all the time; Monroe faced plenty of debate about tariffs, the Bank of the United States, where and how to build canals and roads, and how much to charge for the sale of the millions of acres of public lands that were up for grabs.
Whatever its political challenges, the nation was on a transportation roll. The Cumberland Road began in 1811 and eventually stretched from Maryland to the frontier at Illinois. The first steamboat to make it down the Ohio River and on to New Orleans also sailed in 1811.