2 discussions due in 36 hours

  

Chapter 4 Discussion – 200 words

In textbook chapter 4 you learned about different legislative acts passed by British Parliament that impacted the American colonies, in addition to the ways colonists responded to that legislation. Both the British and the colonists felt as though their actions were justified.
 

If your last name begins with M-Z, you are an American colonist. Explain why the legislative acts are unnecessary and unjustified.
 

Post your response on the discussion board, supporting your position by citing information from scholarly, academic, or educational sources other than the course textbook. 

Chapter 8 Discussion – 200 words

In America’s early years as a nation, a debate erupted over how the U.S. Constitution was to be interpreted. Some Americans, like Alexander Hamilton, believed in a loose construction—Congress could establish laws, as long as the Constitution did not specifically prohibit those laws. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, believed in a strict construction—Congress could only enact those laws that the Constitution specifically authorized.

 

If your last name begins with M-Z, you are a strict constructionist.

 Post your response on the discussion board, supporting your position by citing information from scholarly, academic, or educational sources other than the course textbook. Your response should also include information regarding at least one current event that you feel supports your position (e.g., the mortgage crisis, the bank bailouts, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, etc.). Then read and reply to at least two classmates’ posts that oppose your position (i.e., loose constructionists reply to strict constructionists and vice versa). State the points with which you agree and those with which you disagree, as well as your reasons.

400 words2 Discussions36 hours

CHAPTER 4 Rule Britannia! The English Empire, 1660–1763

Figure 4.1 Isaac Royall and his family, seen here in a 1741 portrait by Robert Feke, moved to Medford, Massachusetts, from the West Indian island of Antigua, bringing their slaves with them. They were an affluent British colonial family, proud of their success and the success of the British Empire. Chapter Outline

4.1 Charles II and the Restoration Colonies

4.2 The Glorious Revolution and the English Empire

4.3 An Empire of Slavery and the Consumer Revolution

4.4 Great Awakening and Enlightenment

4.5 Wars for Empire

Introduction The eighteenth century witnessed the birth of Great Britain (after the union of England and Scotland in 1707) and the expansion of the British Empire. By the mid-1700s, Great Britain had developed into a commercial and military powerhouse; its economic sway ranged from India, where the British East India Company had gained control over both trade and territory, to the West African coast, where British slave traders predominated, and to the British West Indies, whose lucrative sugar plantations, especially in Barbados and Jamaica, provided windfall profits for British planters. Meanwhile, the population rose dramatically in Britain’s North American colonies. In the early 1700s the population in the colonies had reached 250,000. By 1750, however, over a million British migrants and African slaves had established a near-continuous zone of settlement on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia. During this period, the ties between Great Britain and the American colonies only grew stronger. AngloAmerican colonists considered themselves part of the British Empire in all ways: politically, militarily, religiously (as Protestants), intellectually, and racially. The portrait of the Royall family (Figure 4.1) exemplifies the colonial American gentry of the eighteenth century. Successful and well-to-do, they display fashions, hairstyles, and furnishings that all speak to their identity as proud and loyal British subjects.

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4.1 Charles II and the Restoration Colonies

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Analyze the causes and consequences of the Restoration • Identify the Restoration colonies and their role in the expansion of the Empire

When Charles II ascended the throne in 1660, English subjects on both sides of the Atlantic celebrated the restoration of the English monarchy after a decade of living without a king as a result of the English CivilWars.CharlesIIlostlittletimeinstrengtheningEngland’sglobalpower.Fromthe1660stothe1680s, Charles II added more possessions to England’s North American holdings by establishing the Restoration colonies of New York and New Jersey (taking these areas from the Dutch) as well as Pennsylvania and theCarolinas.InordertoreapthegreatesteconomicbenefitfromEngland’soverseaspossessions,Charles II enacted the mercantilist Navigation Acts, although many colonial merchants ignored them because enforcement remained lax.

CHARLES II The chronicle of Charles II begins with his father, Charles I. Charles I ascended the English throne in 1625 and soon married a French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, who was not well liked by English Protestants because she openly practiced Catholicism during her husband’s reign. The most outspoken Protestants, the Puritans, had a strong voice in Parliament in the 1620s, and they strongly opposed the king’s marriage and his ties to Catholicism. When Parliament tried to contest his edicts, including the king’s efforts to impose taxes without Parliament’s consent, Charles I suspended Parliament in 1629 and ruled without one for the next eleven years. The ensuing struggle between the king and Parliament led to the outbreak of war. The English Civil War lasted from 1642 to 1649 and pitted the king and his Royalist supporters against Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentary forces. After years of fighting, the Parliamentary forces gained the upper hand, and in 1649, they charged Charles I with treason and beheaded him. The monarchy was dissolved, and England

Figure 4.2

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became a republic: a state without a king. Oliver Cromwell headed the new English Commonwealth, and the period known as theEnglish interregnum, or the time between kings, began. Though Cromwell enjoyed widespread popularity at first, over time he appeared to many in England to be taking on the powers of a military dictator. Dissatisfaction with Cromwell grew. When he died in 1658 andcontrolpassedtohissonRichard,wholackedthepoliticalskillsofhisfather,amajorityoftheEnglish peoplefearedanalternatehereditarymonarchyinthemaking.TheyhadhadenoughandaskedCharlesII to beking.In 1660,theywelcomed theson of theexecuted kingCharles I back to thethrone to resume the English monarchy and bring the interregnum to an end (Figure 4.3). The return of Charles II is known as the Restoration.

Figure 4.3 The monarchy and Parliament fought for control of England during the seventeenth century. Though Oliver Cromwell (a), shown here in a 1656 portrait by Samuel Cooper, appeared to offer England a better mode of government, he assumed broad powers for himself and disregarded cherished English liberties established under Magna Carta in 1215. As a result, the English people welcomed Charles II (b) back to the throne in 1660. This portrait by John Michael Wright was painted ca. 1660–1665, soon after the new king gained the throne.

Charles II was committed to expanding England’s overseas possessions. His policies in the 1660s through the 1680s established and supported the Restoration colonies: the Carolinas, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. All the Restoration colonies started as proprietary colonies, that is, the king gave each colony to a trusted individual, family, or group.

THE CAROLINAS CharlesIIhopedtoestablishEnglishcontroloftheareabetweenVirginiaandSpanishFlorida.Tothatend, he issued a royal charter in 1663 to eight trusted and loyal supporters, each of whom was to be a feudalstyle proprietor of a region of the province of Carolina. These proprietors did not relocate to the colonies, however. Instead, English plantation owners from the tiny Caribbean island of Barbados, already a well-established English sugar colony fueled by slave labor, migrated to the southern part of Carolina to settle there. In 1670, they established Charles Town (later Charleston), named in honor of Charles II, at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers (Figure 4.4). As the settlement around Charles Town grew, it began to produce livestock for export to the West Indies. In the northern part of Carolina, settlers turned sap from pine trees into turpentine used to waterproof wooden ships. Political disagreements between settlers in the northern and southern parts of Carolina escalated in the 1710s through the 1720s and led to the creation, in 1729, of two colonies, North and South Carolina.ThesouthernpartofCarolinahadbeenproducingriceandindigo(aplantthatyieldsadarkblue dyeusedbyEnglishroyalty)sincethe1700s,andSouthCarolinacontinuedtodependonthesemaincrops.

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North Carolina continued to produce items for ships, especially turpentine and tar, and its population increasedasVirginiansmoved theretoexpandtheirtobacco holdings.Tobacco wastheprimaryexportof both Virginia and North Carolina, which also traded in deerskins and slaves from Africa.

Figure 4.4 The port of colonial Charles Towne, depicted here on a 1733 map of North America, was the largest in the South and played a significant role in the Atlantic slave trade.

Slavery developed quickly in the Carolinas, largely because so many of the early migrants came from Barbados,whereslaverywaswellestablished.Bytheendofthe1600s,averywealthyclassofriceplanters who relied on slaves had attained dominance in the southern part of the Carolinas, especially around CharlesTown.By1715,SouthCarolinahadablackmajoritybecauseofthenumberofslavesinthecolony. The legal basis for slavery was established in the early 1700s as the Carolinas began to pass slave laws based on the Barbados slave codes of the late 1600s. These laws reduced Africans to the status of property to be bought and sold as other commodities.

Visit the Charleston Museum’s interactive exhibit The Walled City (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/charleston) to learn more about the history of Charleston.

As in other areas of English settlement, native peoples in the Carolinas suffered tremendously from the introduction of European diseases. Despite the effects of disease, Indians in the area endured and, following the pattern elsewhere in the colonies, grew dependent on European goods. Local Yamasee and Creek tribes built up a trade deficit with the English, trading deerskins and captive slaves for European guns. English settlers exacerbated tensions with local Indian tribes, especially the Yamasee, by expanding their rice and tobacco fields into Indian lands. Worse still, English traders took native women captive as payment for debts. The outrages committed by traders, combined with the seemingly unstoppable expansion of English settlementontonativeland,ledtotheoutbreakoftheYamaseeWar(1715–1718),aneffortbyacoalitionof localtribestodriveawaytheEuropeaninvaders.Thisnativeefforttoforcethenewcomersbackacrossthe

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AtlanticnearlysucceededinannihilatingtheCarolinacolonies.OnlywhentheCherokeealliedthemselves with the English did the coalition’s goal of eliminating the English from the region falter. The Yamasee War demonstrates the key role native peoples played in shaping the outcome of colonial struggles and, perhaps most important, the disunity that existed between different native groups.

NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY Charles II also set his sights on the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The English takeover of New NetherlandoriginatedintheimperialrivalrybetweentheDutchandtheEnglish.DuringtheAnglo-Dutch wars of the 1650s and 1660s, the two powers attempted to gain commercial advantages in the Atlantic World. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664–1667), English forces gained control of the Dutch fur trading colony of New Netherland, and in 1664, Charles II gave this colony (including present-day New Jersey) to his brother James, Duke of York (later James II). The colony and city were renamed New York in his honor. The Dutch in New York chafed under English rule. In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674), the Dutch recaptured the colony. However, at the end of the conflict, the English had regained control (Figure 4.5).

Figure 4.5 “View of New Amsterdam” (ca. 1665), a watercolor by Johannes Vingboons, was painted during the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s. New Amsterdam was officially reincorporated as New York City in 1664, but alternated under Dutch and English rule until 1674.

The Duke of York had no desire to govern locally or listen to the wishes of local colonists. It wasn’t until 1683, therefore, almost 20 years after the English took control of the colony, that colonists were able to convene a local representative legislature. The assembly’s 1683 Charter of Liberties and Privileges set out the traditional

rights

of Englishmen, like the right to trial by jury and the right to representative government. The English continued the Dutch patroonship system, granting large estates to a favored few families. The largest of these estates, at 160,000 acres, was given to Robert Livingston in 1686. The Livingstons and the other manorial families who controlled the Hudson River Valley formed a formidable political and economic force. Eighteenth-century New York City, meanwhile, contained a variety of people and religions—as well as Dutch and English people, it held French Protestants (Huguenots), Jews, Puritans, Quakers, Anglicans, and a large population of slaves. As they did in other zones of colonization, native peoples played a key role in shaping the history of colonial New York. After decades of war in the 1600s, the powerful Five Nations of the Iroquois, composed of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, successfully pursued a policy of neutrality with both the English and, to the north, the French in Canada during the first half of the 1700s. This native policy meant that the Iroquois continued to live in their own villages under their own government while enjoying the benefits of trade with both the French and the English.

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PENNSYLVANIA The Restoration colonies also included Pennsylvania, which became the geographic center of British colonial America. Pennsylvania (which means “Penn’s Woods” in Latin) was created in 1681, when Charles II bestowed the largest proprietary colony in the Americas on William Penn (Figure 4.6) to settle the large debt he owed the Penn family. William Penn’s father, Admiral William Penn, had served the English crown by helping take Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. The king personally owed the Admiral money as well.

Figure 4.6 Charles II granted William Penn the land that eventually became the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to settle a debt the English crown owed to Penn’s father.

LikeearlysettlersoftheNewEnglandcolonies,Pennsylvania’sfirstcolonistsmigratedmostlyforreligious reasons. William Penn himself was a Quaker, a member of a new Protestant denomination called the Society of Friends. George Fox had founded the Society of Friends in England in the late 1640s, having grown dissatisfied with Puritanism and the idea of predestination. Rather, Fox and his followers stressed that everyone had an “inner light” inside him or her, a spark of divinity. They gained the name Quakers because they were said to quake when the inner light moved them. Quakers rejected the idea of worldly rank, believing instead in a new and radical form of social equality. Their speech reflected this belief in thattheyaddressedallothersasequals,using“thee”and“thou”ratherthantermslike“yourlordship”or “my lady” that were customary for privileged individuals of the hereditary elite. The English crown persecuted Quakers in England, and colonial governments were equally harsh; Massachusetts even executed several early Quakers who had gone to proselytize there. To avoid such persecution, Quakers and their families at first created a community on the sugar island of Barbados. Soon after its founding, however, Pennsylvania became the destination of choice. Quakers flocked to Pennsylvania as well as New Jersey, where they could preach and practice their religion in peace. Unlike New England, whose official religion was Puritanism, Pennsylvania did not establish an official church. Indeed,thecolonyallowedadegreeofreligioustolerancefoundnowhereelseinEnglishAmerica.Tohelp encourage immigration to his colony, Penn promised fifty acres of land to people who agreed to come to Pennsylvania and completed their term of service. Not surprisingly, those seeking a better life came in large numbers, so much so that Pennsylvania relied on indentured servants more than any other colony. One of the primary tenets of Quakerism is pacifism, leading William Penn to establish friendly relationships with local native peoples. He formed a covenant of friendship with the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe, buying their land for a fair price instead of taking it by force. In 1701, he also signed a treatywiththeSusquehannockstoavoidwar.Unlikeothercolonies,Pennsylvaniadidnotexperiencewar on the frontier with native peoples during its early history.

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As an important port city, Philadelphia grew rapidly. Quaker merchants there established contacts throughout the Atlantic world and participated in the thriving African slave trade. Some Quakers, who were deeply troubled by the contradiction between their belief in the “inner light” and the practice of slavery, rejected the practice and engaged in efforts to abolish it altogether. Philadelphia also acted as a magnet for immigrants, who came not only from England, but from all over Europe by the hundreds of thousands. The city, and indeed all of Pennsylvania, appeared to be the best country for poor men and women, many of whom arrived as servants and dreamed of owning land. A very few, like the fortunate Benjamin Franklin, a runaway from Puritan Boston, did extraordinarily well. Other immigrant groups in the colony, most notably Germans and Scotch-Irish (families from Scotland and England who had first lived in Ireland before moving to British America), greatly improved their lot in Pennsylvania. Of course, Africans imported into the colony to labor for white masters fared far worse.

AMERICANA

John Wilson Offers Reward for Escaped Prisoners The American Weekly Mercury, published by William Bradford, was Philadelphia’s first newspaper. This advertisement from “John Wilson, Goaler” (jailer) offers a reward for anyone capturing several men who escaped from the jail. BROKE out of the Common Goal of Philadelphia, the 15th of this Instant February, 1721, the following Persons: John Palmer, also Plumly, alias Paine, Servant to Joseph Jones, run away and was lately taken up at New-York. He is fully described in the American Mercury, Novem. 23, 1721. He has a Cinnamon coloured Coat on, a middle sized fresh coloured Man. His Master will give a Pistole Reward to any who Shall Secure him, besides what is here offered. Daniel Oughtopay, A Dutchman, aged about 24 Years, Servant to Dr. Johnston in Amboy. He is a thin Spare man, grey Drugget Waistcoat and Breeches and a light-coloured Coat on. Ebenezor Mallary, a New-England, aged about 24 Years, is a middle-sized thin Man, having on a Snuff colour’d Coat, and ordinary Ticking Waistcoat and Breeches. He has dark brown strait Hair. Matthew Dulany, an Irish Man, down-look’d Swarthy Complexion, and has on an Olivecoloured Cloth Coat and Waistcoat with Cloth Buttons. John Flemming, an Irish Lad, aged about 18, belonging to Mr. Miranda, Merchant in this City. He has no Coat, a grey Drugget Waistcoat, and a narrow brim’d Hat on. John Corbet, a Shropshire Man, a Runaway Servant from Alexander Faulkner of Maryland, broke out on the 12th Instant. He has got a double-breasted Sailor’s Jacket on lined with red Bays, pretends to be a Sailor, and once taught School at Josephs Collings’s in the Jerseys. Whoever takes up and secures all, or any One of these Felons, shall have a Pistole Reward for each of them and reasonable Charges, paid them by John Wilson, Goaler —Advertisement from the American Weekly Mercury, 1722 What do the descriptions of the men tell you about life in colonial Philadelphia?

Browse a number of issues of the American Weekly Mercury (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/philly1) that were digitized by New Jersey’s Stockton University. Read through several to get a remarkable flavor of life in early eighteenthcentury Philadelphia.

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THE NAVIGATION ACTS CreatingwealthfortheEmpireremainedaprimarygoal,andinthesecondhalfoftheseventeenthcentury, especially during the Restoration, England attempted to gain better control of trade with the American colonies. The mercantilist policies by which it tried to achieve this control are known as the Navigation Acts. The 1651 Navigation Ordnance, a product of Cromwell’s England, required that only English ships carry goods between England and the colonies, and that the captain and three-fourths of the crew had to be English. The ordnance further listed “enumerated articles” that could be transported only to England or to English colonies, including the most lucrative commodities like sugar and tobacco as well as indigo, rice, molasses, and naval stores such as turpentine. All were valuable goods not produced in England or in demand by the British navy. After ascending the throne, Charles II approved the 1660 Navigation Act, which restated the 1651 act to ensure a monopoly on imports from the colonies. Other Navigation Acts included the 1663 Staple Act and the 1673 Plantation Duties Act. The Staple Act barredcolonistsfromimportinggoodsthathadnotbeenmadeinEngland,creatingaprofitablemonopoly for English exporters and manufacturers. The Plantation Duties Act taxed enumerated articles exported from one colony to another, a measure aimed principally at New Englanders, who transported great quantities of molasses from the West Indies, including smuggled molasses from French-held islands, to make into rum. In 1675, Charles II organized the Lords of Trade and Plantation, commonly known as the Lords of Trade, an administrative body intended to create stronger ties between the colonial governments and the crown. However, the 1696 Navigation Act created the Board of Trade, replacing the Lords of Trade. This act, meanttostrengthenenforcementofcustomslaws,alsoestablishedvice-admiraltycourtswherethecrown could prosecute customs violators without a jury. Under this act, customs officials were empowered with warrants known as “writs of assistance” to board and search vessels suspected of containing smuggled goods. DespitetheNavigationActs,however,GreatBritainexercisedlaxcontrolovertheEnglishcoloniesduring most of the eighteenth century because of the policies of Prime Minister Robert Walpole. During his long term(1721–1742),Walpolegovernedaccordingtohisbeliefthatcommerceflourishedbestwhenitwasnot encumbered with restrictions. Historians have described this lack of strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts as salutary neglect. In addition, nothing prevented colonists from building their own fleet of ships to engage in trade. New England especially benefited from both salutary neglect and a vibrant maritime culture made possible by the scores of trading vessels built in the northern colonies. The case of the 1733 Molasses Act illustrates the weaknesses of British mercantilist policy. The 1733 act placed a sixpence-pergallon duty on raw sugar, rum, and molasses from Britain’s competitors, the French and the Dutch, in order to give an advantage to British West Indian producers. Because the British did not enforce the 1733 law, however, New England mariners routinely smuggled these items from the French and Dutch West Indies more cheaply than they could buy them on English islands.

4.2 The Glorious Revolution and the English Empire

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Identify the causes of the Glorious Revolution • Explain the outcomes of the Glorious Revolution

During the brief rule of King James II, many in England feared the imposition of a Catholic absolute monarchy by the man who modeled his rule on that of his French Catholic cousin, Louis XIV. Opposition to James II, spearheaded by the English Whig party, overthrew the king in the Glorious Revolution of

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1688–1689. This paved the way for the Protestant reign of William of Orange and his wife Mary (James’s Protestant daughter).

JAMES II AND THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION KingJamesII(Figure4.7),thesecondsonofCharlesI,ascendedtheEnglishthronein1685onthedeathof hisbrother,CharlesII.JamesthenworkedtomodelhisruleonthereignoftheFrenchCatholicKingLouis XIV,hiscousin.ThismeantcentralizingEnglishpoliticalstrengtharoundthethrone,givingthemonarchy absolute power. Also like Louis XIV, James II practiced a strict and intolerant form of Roman Catholicism after he converted from Protestantism in the late 1660s. He had a Catholic wife, and when they had a son, the potential for a Catholic heir to the English throne became a threat to English Protestants. James also worked to modernize the English army and navy. The fact that the king kept a standing army in times of peacegreatlyalarmedtheEnglish,whobelievedthatsuchaforcewould beusedtocrushtheirliberty.As James’sstrengthgrew,hisopponentsfearedtheirkingwouldturnEnglandintoaCatholicmonarchywith absolute power over her people.

Figure 4.7 James II (shown here in a painting ca. 1690) worked to centralize the English government. The Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, provided a template for James’s policies.

In 1686, James II applied his concept of a centralized state to the colonies by creating an enormous colony called the Dominion of New England. The Dominion included all the New England colonies (Massachusetts,NewHampshire,Plymouth,Connecticut,NewHaven,andRhodeIsland)andin1688was enlarged by the addition of New York and New Jersey. James placed in charge Sir Edmund Andros, a former colonial governor of New York. Loyal to James II and his family, Andros had little sympathy for New Englanders. His regime caused great uneasiness among New England Puritans when it called into questionthemanylandtitlesthatdidnotacknowledgethekingandimposedfeesfortheirreconfirmation. Andros also committed himself to enforcing the Navigation Acts, a move that threatened to disrupt the region’s trade, which was based largely on smuggling. InEngland,opponentsofJamesII’seffortstocreateacentralizedCatholicstatewereknownasWhigs.The Whigsworked todepose James,andinlate1688theysucceeded, aneventtheycelebrated astheGlorious Revolution while James fled to the court of Louis XIV in France. William III (William of Orange) and his wife Mary II ascended the throne in 1689. The Glorious Revolution spilled over into the colonies. In 1689, Bostonians overthrew the government of the Dominion of New England and jailed Sir Edmund Andros as well as other leaders of the regime (Figure 4.8).The removal ofAndros from power illustrates New England’s animosity toward theEnglish overlord who had, during his tenure, established Church of England worship in Puritan Boston and

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vigorouslyenforcedtheNavigationActs,tothechagrinofthoseinporttowns.InNewYork,thesameyear that Andros fell from power, Jacob Leisler led a group of Protestant New Yorkers against the dominion government. Acting on his own authority, Leisler assumed the role of King William’s governor and organized intercolonial military action independent of British authority. Leisler’s actions usurped the crown’s prerogative and, as a result, he was tried for treason and executed. In 1691, England restored control over the Province of New York.

Figure 4.8 This broadside, signed by several citizens, demands the surrender of Sir Edmund (spelled here “Edmond”) Andros, James II’s hand-picked leader of the Dominion of New England.

The Glorious Revolution provided a shared experience for those who lived through the tumult of 1688 and1689.SubsequentgenerationskeptthememoryoftheGloriousRevolutionaliveasaheroicdefenseof English liberty against a would-be tyrant.

ENGLISH LIBERTY The Glorious Revolution led to the establishment of an English nation that limited the power of the king and provided protections for English subjects. In October 1689, the same year that William and Mary took the throne, the 1689

Bill of Rights

established a constitutional monarchy. It stipulated Parliament’s independencefromthemonarchyandprotectedcertainofParliament’srights,suchastherighttofreedom of speech, the right to regular elections, and the right to petition the king. The 1689 Bill of Rights also guaranteedcertainrightstoallEnglishsubjects,includingtrialbyjuryandhabeascorpus(therequirement thatauthoritiesbringanimprisonedpersonbeforeacourttodemonstratethecauseoftheimprisonment). JohnLocke(1632–1704),adoctorandeducatorwhohadlivedinexileinHollandduringthereignofJames IIandreturnedtoEnglandaftertheGloriousRevolution,publishedhisTwoTreatisesofGovernmentin1690. In it, he argued that government was a form of contract between the leaders and the people, and that representativegovernmentexistedtoprotect“life,libertyandproperty.”Lockerejectedthedivinerightof kings and instead advocated for the central role of Parliament with a limited monarchy. Locke’s political philosophy had an enormous impact on future generations of colonists and established the paramount importance of representation in government.

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Visit the Digital Locke Project (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/jlocke) to read more of John Locke’s writings. This digital collection contains over thirty of his philosophical texts.

The Glorious Revolution also led to the English Toleration Act of 1689, a law passed by Parliament that allowedforgreaterreligiousdiversityintheEmpire.Thisactgrantedreligioustolerancetononconformist Trinitarian Protestants (those who believed in the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), such as Baptists (those who advocated adult baptism) and Congregationalists (those who followed the Puritans’ lead in creating independent churches). While the Church of England remained the official state religious establishment, the Toleration Act gave much greater religious freedom to nonconformists. However, this tolerance did not extend to Catholics, who were routinely excluded from political power. The 1689 Toleration Act extended to the British colonies, where several colonies—Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,Delaware,andNewJersey—refusedtoallowthecreationofanestablishedcolonialchurch,amajor step toward greater religious diversity.

4.3 An Empire of Slavery and the Consumer Revolution

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Analyze the role slavery played in the history and economy of the British Empire • Explain the effects of the 1739 Stono Rebellion and the 1741 New York Conspiracy Trials • Describe the consumer revolution and its effect on the life of the colonial gentry and other settlers

Slavery formed a cornerstone of the British Empire in the eighteenth century. Every colony had slaves, from the southern rice plantations in Charles Town, South Carolina, to the northern wharves of Boston. Slavery was morethanalaborsystem; italso influencedeveryaspect ofcolonial thought andculture.The uneven relationship it engendered gave white colonists an exaggerated sense of their own status. English liberty gained greater meaning and coherence for whites when they contrasted their status to that of the unfree class of black slaves in British America. African slavery provided whites in the colonies with a shared racial bond and identity.

SLAVERY AND THE STONO REBELLION ThetransportofslavestotheAmericancoloniesacceleratedinthesecondhalfoftheseventeenthcentury. In 1660, Charles II created the Royal African Company (Figure 4.9) to trade in slaves and African goods. His brother, James II, led the company before ascending the throne. Under both these kings, the Royal AfricanCompanyenjoyedamonopolytotransportslavestotheEnglishcolonies.Between1672and1713, the company bought 125,000 captives on the African coast, losing 20 percent of them to death on the Middle Passage, the journey from the African coast to the Americas.

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Figure 4.9 The 1686 English guinea shows the logo of the Royal African Company, an elephant and castle, beneath a bust of King James II. The coins were commonly called guineas because most British gold came from Guinea in West Africa.

The Royal African Company’s monopoly ended in 1689 as a result of the Glorious Revolution. After that date, many more English merchants engaged in the slave trade, greatly increasing the number of slaves being transported. Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage usually arrived in the West Indies, ofteninBarbados. Fromthere,theyweretransported tothemainlandEnglishcolonies oncompany ships. WhilemerchantsinLondon,Bristol,andLiverpoollinedtheirpockets,Africanstraffickedbythecompany endured a nightmare of misery, privation, and dislocation. Slaves strove to adapt to their new lives by forming new communities among themselves, often adhering to traditional African customs and healing techniques. Indeed, the development of families and communities formed the most important response to the trauma of being enslaved. Other slaves dealt withthetraumaoftheirsituationbyactivelyresistingtheircondition,whetherbydefyingtheirmastersor runningaway.Runawayslavesformedwhatwerecalled“maroon”communities,groupsthatsuccessfully resisted recapture and formed their own autonomous groups. The most prominent of these communities lived in the interior of Jamaica, controlling the area and keeping the British away. Slaves everywhere resisted their exploitation and attempted to gain freedom. They fully understood that rebellions would bring about massive retaliation from whites and therefore had little chance of success. Even so, rebellions occurred frequently. One notable uprising that became known as the Stono Rebellion took place in South Carolina in September 1739. A literate slave named Jemmy led a large group of slaves in an armed insurrection against white colonists, killing several before militia stopped them. The militia suppressed therebellionafterabattleinwhichbothslavesandmilitiamenwerekilled,andtheremaining slaves were executed or sold to the West Indies. Jemmy is believed to have been taken from the Kingdom of Kongo, an area where the Portuguese had introduced Catholicism. Other slaves in South Carolina may have had a similar background: Africaborn and familiar with whites. If so, this common background may have made it easier for Jemmy to communicate with the other slaves, enabling them to work together to resist their enslavement even though slaveholders labored to keep slaves from forging such communities. In the wake of the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed a new slave code in 1740 called An Act for the BetterOrderingandGoverningofNegroesandOtherSlavesintheProvince,alsoknownastheNegroAct of 1740. This law imposed new limits on slaves’ behavior, prohibiting slaves from assembling, growing their own food, learning to write, and traveling freely.

THE NEW YORK CONSPIRACY TRIALS OF 1741 Eighteenth-century New York City contained many different ethnic groups, and conflicts among them createdstrain.Inaddition,oneinfiveNewYorkerswasaslave,andtensionsranhighbetweenslavesand the free population, especially in the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion. These tensions burst forth in 1741.

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That year, thirteen fires broke out in the city, one of which reduced the colony’s Fort George to ashes. Ever fearful of an uprising among enslaved New Yorkers, the city’s whites spread rumors that the fires were part of a massive slave revolt in which slaves would murder whites, burn the city, and take over the colony. The Stono Rebellion was only a few years in the past, and throughout British America, fears of similar incidents were still fresh. Searching for solutions, and convinced slaves were the principal danger, nervous British authorities interrogated almost two hundred slaves and accused them of conspiracy. Rumors that Roman Catholics had joined the suspected conspiracy and planned to murder Protestant inhabitantsofthecityonlyaddedtothegeneralhysteria.Veryquickly,twohundredpeoplewerearrested, including a large number of the city’s slave population. After a quick series of trials at City Hall, known as the New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741, the governmentexecutedseventeenNewYorkers.Thirteenblackmenwerepubliclyburnedatthestake,while theothers(includingfourwhites)werehanged(Figure4.10).SeventyslavesweresoldtotheWestIndies. Little evidence exists to prove that an elaborate conspiracy, like the one white New Yorkers imagined, actually existed.

Figure 4.10 In the wake of a series of fires throughout New York City, rumors of a slave revolt led authorities to convict and execute thirty people, including thirteen black men who were publicly burned at the stake.

The events of 1741 in New York City illustrate the racial divide in British America, where panic among whites spurred great violence against and repression of the feared slave population. In the end, the Conspiracy Trials furthered white dominance and power over enslaved New Yorkers.

View the map of New York in the 1740s (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/NY1700s) at the New York Public Library’s digital gallery, which allows you to zoom in and see specific events. Look closely at numbers 55 and 56 just north of the city limits to see illustrations depicting the executions.

COLONIAL GENTRY AND THE CONSUMER REVOLUTION British Americans’ reliance on indentured servitude and slavery to meet the demand for colonial labor helped give rise to a wealthy colonial class—the gentry—in the Chesapeake tobacco colonies and elsewhere. To be “genteel,” that is, a member of the gentry, meant to be refined, free of all rudeness. The British American gentry modeled themselves on the English aristocracy, who embodied the ideal of

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refinement and gentility. They builtelaborate mansions to advertise theirstatus and power. William Byrd II of Westover, Virginia, exemplifies the colonial gentry; a wealthy planter and slaveholder, he is known for founding Richmond and for his diaries documenting the life of a gentleman planter (Figure 4.11).

Figure 4.11 This painting by Hans Hysing, ca. 1724, depicts William Byrd II. Byrd was a wealthy gentleman planter in Virginia and a member of the colonial gentry.

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MY STORY William Byrd’s Secret Diary

The diary of William Byrd, a Virginia planter, provides a unique way to better understand colonial life on a plantation (Figure 4.12). What does it show about daily life for a gentleman planter? What does it show about slavery? August 27, 1709 I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Josephus. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. I had like to have whipped my maid Anaka for her laziness but I forgave her. I read a little geometry. I denied my man G-r-l to go to a horse race because there was nothing but swearing and drinking there. I ate roast mutton for dinner. In the afternoon I played at piquet with my own wife and made her out of humor by cheating her. I read some Greek in Homer. Then I walked about the plantation. I lent John H-ch £7 [7 English pounds] in his distress. I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty. September 6, 1709 About one o’clock this morning my wife was happily delivered of a son, thanks be to God Almighty. I was awake in a blink and rose and my cousin Harrison met me on the stairs and toldmeitwasaboy.WedranksomeFrenchwineandwenttobedagainandroseat7o’clock. I read a chapter in Hebrew and then drank chocolate with the women for breakfast. I returned God humble thanks for so great a blessing and recommended my young son to His divine protection. . . . September 15, 1710 I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Thucydides. I said my prayers and ate milk and pears for breakfast. About 7 o’clock the negro boy [or Betty] that ran away was brought home. My wife against my will caused little Jenny to be burned with a hot iron, for which I quarreled with her. . . .

Figure 4.12 This photograph shows the view down the stairway from the third floor of Westover Plantation, home of William Byrd II. What does this image suggest about the lifestyle of the inhabitants—masters and servants—of this house?

One of the ways in which the gentry set themselves apart from others was through their purchase, consumption, and display of goods. An increased supply of consumer goods from England that became available in the eighteenth century led to a phenomenon called the consumer revolution. These products linked the colonies to Great Britain in real and tangible ways. Indeed, along with the colonial gentry, ordinarysettlersinthecoloniesalsoparticipatedinthefrenzyofconsumerspendingongoodsfromGreat Britain. Tea, for example, came to be regarded as the drink of the Empire, with or without fashionable tea sets.

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Theconsumer revolution also madeprintedmaterials more widely available.Before 1680,forinstance, no newspapershadbeenprintedincolonialAmerica.Intheeighteenthcentury,however,afloodofjournals, books, pamphlets, and other publications became available to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. This shared trove of printed matter linked members of the Empire by creating a community of shared tastes and ideas. Cato’s Letters, by Englishmen John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, was one popular series of 144 pamphlets. These Whig circulars were published between 1720 and 1723 and emphasized the glory of England, especially its commitment to liberty. However, the pamphlets cautioned readers to be ever vigilant and on the lookout for attacks upon that liberty. Indeed, Cato’s Letters suggested that there were constant efforts to undermine and destroy it. AnotherverypopularpublicationwastheEnglishgentlemen’smagazinetheSpectator,publishedbetween 1711 and 1714. In each issue, “Mr. Spectator” observed and commented on the world around him. What made the Spectator so wildly popular was its style; the essays were meant to persuade, and to cultivate among readers a refined set of behaviors, rejecting deceit and intolerance and focusing instead on the polishing of genteel taste and manners. Novels, a new type of literature, made their first appearance in the eighteenth century and proved very popularintheBritishAtlantic.DanielDefoe’sRobinsonCrusoeandSamuelRichardson’sPamela:Or,Virtue Rewarded found large and receptive audiences. Reading also allowed female readers the opportunity to interpret what they read without depending on a male authority to tell them what to think. Few women beyond the colonial gentry, however, had access to novels.

4.4 Great Awakening and Enlightenment

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Explain the significance of the Great Awakening • Describe the genesis, central ideas, and effects of the Enlightenment in British North America

Two major cultural movements further strengthened Anglo-American colonists’ connection to Great Britain: the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment. Both movements began in Europe, but they advocated very different ideas: the Great Awakening promoted a fervent, emotional religiosity, while the Enlightenmentencouragedthepursuitofreasoninallthings.OnbothsidesoftheAtlantic,Britishsubjects grappled with these new ideas.

THE FIRST GREAT AWAKENING During the eighteenth century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening. (A Second Great Awakening would take place in the 1800s.) During the First Great Awakening, evangelists came from the ranks of several Protestant denominations: Congregationalists,Anglicans(membersoftheChurchofEngland),andPresbyterians.Theyrejectedwhat appeared to be sterile, formal modes of worship in favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity. Whereas Martin Luther and John Calvin had preached a doctrine of predestination and close reading of scripture, new evangelical ministers spread a message of personal and experiential faith that rose above mere book learning. Individuals could bring about their own salvation by accepting Christ, an especially welcome message for those who had felt excluded by traditional Protestantism: women, the young, and people at the lower end of the social spectrum. The Great Awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the “New Lights”) and those who rejected it (the “Old Lights”). The elite ministers in British America were firmly

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Old Lights, and they censured the new revivalism as chaos. Indeed, the revivals did sometimes lead to excess.Inonenotoriousincidentin1743,aninfluentialNewLightministernamedJamesDavenporturged hislistenerstoburnbooks.Thenextday,hetoldthemtoburntheirclothesasasignoftheircastingoffthe sinful trappings of the world. He then took off his own pants and threw them into the fire, but a woman saved them and tossed them back to Davenport, telling him he had gone too far. Another outburst of Protestant revivalism began in New Jersey, led by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church named Theodorus Frelinghuysen. Frelinghuysen’s example inspired other ministers, including Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian. Tennant helped to spark a Presbyterian revival in the Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey), in part by founding a seminary to train other evangelical clergyman. New Lights also founded colleges in Rhode Island and New Hampshire that would later become Brown University and Dartmouth College. In Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards led still another explosion of evangelical fervor. Edwards’s best-known sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” used powerful word imagery to describe the terrors of hell and the possibilities of avoiding damnation by personal conversion (Figure 4.13).Onepassagereads:“ThewrathofGodburnsagainstthem[sinners],theirdamnationdon’tslumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do nowrageandglow.Theglitteringsword iswhet,andheldoverthem,andthepithathopenedhermouth under them.” Edwards’s revival spread along the Connecticut River Valley, and news of the event spread rapidly through the frequent reprinting of his famous sermon.

Figure 4.13 This image shows the frontispiece of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, A Sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8, 1741 by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an evangelical preacher who led a Protestant revival in New England. This was his most famous sermon, the text of which was reprinted often and distributed widely.

The foremost evangelical of the Great Awakening was an Anglican minister named George Whitefield. Like many evangelical ministers, Whitefield was itinerant, traveling the countryside instead of having his own church and congregation. Between 1739 and 1740, he electrified colonial listeners with his brilliant oratory.

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AMERICANA Two Opposing Views of George Whitefield

Not everyone embraced George Whitefield and other New Lights. Many established Old Lights decried the way the new evangelical religions appealed to people’s passions, rather than to traditional religious values. The two illustrations below present two very different visions of George Whitefield (Figure 4.14).

Figure 4.14 In the 1774 portrait of George Whitefield by engraver Elisha Gallaudet (a), Whitefield appears with a gentle expression on his face. Although his hands are raised in exultation or entreaty, he does not look particularly roused or rousing. In the 1763 British political cartoon to the right, “Dr. Squintum’s Exaltation or the Reformation” (b), Whitefield’s hands are raised in a similar position, but there the similarities end. Compare the two images above. On the left is an illustration for Whitefield’s memoirs, while on the right is a cartoon satirizing the circus-like atmosphere that his preaching seemed to attract (Dr. Squintum was a nickname for Whitefield, who was cross-eyed). How do these two artists portray the same man? What emotions are the illustration for his memoirs intended to evoke? What details can you find in the cartoon that indicate the artist’s distaste for the preacher?

The Great Awakening saw the rise of several Protestant denominations, including Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists (who emphasized adult baptism of converted Christians rather than infant baptism). Thesenewchurches gainedconverts andcompeted witholderProtestant groups likeAnglicans (members of the Church of England), Congregationalists (the heirs of Puritanism in America), and Quakers. The influence of these older Protestant groups, such as the New England Congregationalists, declined because of the Great Awakening. Nonetheless, the Great Awakening touched the lives of thousandsonbothsidesoftheAtlanticandprovidedasharedexperienceintheeighteenth-centuryBritish Empire.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout

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EuropeandtheAmericas.ManyconsidertheEnlightenmentamajorturningpointinWesterncivilization, an age of light replacing an age of darkness. Several ideas dominated Enlightenment thought, including rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, and cosmopolitanism. Rationalism is the idea that humans are capable of using their faculty of reason to gain knowledge. This was a sharp turn away from the prevailing idea that people needed to rely on scripture or church authorities for knowledge. Empiricism promotes the idea that knowledge comes from experience and observation of the world. Progressivism is the belief that through their powers of reason and observation, humans could make unlimited, linear progress over time; this belief was especially importantasaresponsetothecarnageandupheavaloftheEnglishCivilWarsintheseventeenthcentury. Finally, cosmopolitanism reflected Enlightenment thinkers’ view of themselves as citizens of the world andactivelyengagedinit,asopposedtobeingprovincialandclose-minded.Inall,Enlightenmentthinkers endeavored to be ruled by reason, not prejudice. TheFreemasonswereafraternalsocietythatadvocatedEnlightenmentprinciplesofinquiryandtolerance. FreemasonryoriginatedinLondoncoffeehousesintheearlyeighteenthcentury,andMasoniclodges(local units) soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies. One prominent Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, stands as the embodiment of the Enlightenment in British America (Figure 4.15). Born in Boston in 1706 to a large Puritan family, Franklin loved to read, although he found little beyond religious publicationsinhisfather’shouse.In1718hewasapprenticedtohisbrothertoworkinaprintshop,where he learned how to be a good writer by copying the style he found in the Spectator, which his brother printed. At the age of seventeen, the independent-minded Franklin ran away, eventually ending up in Quaker Philadelphia. There he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in the late 1720s, and in 1732 he started his annual publication Poor Richard: An Almanack, in which he gave readers much practical advice, such as “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Figure 4.15 In this 1748 portrait by Robert Feke, a forty-year-old Franklin wears a stylish British wig, as befitted a proud and loyal member of the British Empire.

Franklin subscribed to deism, an Enlightenment-era belief in a God who created, but has no continuing involvement in, the world and the events within it. Deists also advanced the belief that personal morality—an individual’s moral compass, leading to good works and actions—is more important than strict church doctrines. Franklin’s deism guided his many philanthropic projects. In 1731, he established a reading library that became the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to encourage the spirit of inquiry. In 1749, he provided the foundation for the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1751, he helped found Pennsylvania Hospital.

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His career as a printer made Franklin wealthy and well-respected. When he retired in 1748, he devoted himself to politics and scientific experiments. His most famous work, on electricity, exemplified Enlightenmentprinciples.Franklinobservedthatlightningstrikestendedtohitmetalobjectsandreasoned that he could therefore direct lightning through the placement of metal objects during an electrical storm. He used this knowledge to advocate the use of lightning rods: metal poles connected to wires directing lightning’s electrical charge into the ground and saving wooden homes in cities like Philadelphia from catastrophic fires. He published his findings in 1751, in Experiments and Observations on Electricity. Franklin also wrote of his “rags to riches” tale, his Memoir, in the 1770s and 1780s. This story laid the foundation for the American Dream of upward social mobility.

Visit the Worldly Ways section (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/bfranklin1) of PBS’s Benjamin Franklin site to see an interactive map showing Franklin’s overseas travels and his influence around the world. His diplomatic, political, scientific, and business achievements had great effects in many countries.

THE FOUNDING OF GEORGIA ThereachofEnlightenmentthoughtwasbothbroadanddeep.Inthe1730s,itevenpromptedthefounding of a new colony. Having witnessed the terrible conditions of debtors’ prison, as well as the results of releasing penniless debtors onto the streets of London, James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament and advocate of social reform, petitioned King George II for a charter to start a new colony. George II, understanding the strategic advantage of a British colony standing as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, granted the charter to Oglethorpe and twenty like-minded proprietors in 1732. Oglethorpe led the settlement of the colony, which was called Georgia in honor of the king. In 1733, he and 113 immigrants arrived on the ship Anne. Over the next decade, Parliament funded the migration of twenty-five hundred settlers, making Georgia the only government-funded colonial project. Oglethorpe’svisionforGeorgiafollowedtheidealsoftheAgeofReason,seeingitasaplaceforEngland’s “worthy poor” to start anew. To encourage industry, he gave each male immigrant fifty acres of land, tools,andayear’sworthofsupplies.InSavannah,theOglethorpePlanprovidedforautopia:“anagrarian model of sustenance while sustaining egalitarian values holding all men as equal.” Oglethorpe’s vision called for alcohol and slavery to be banned. However, colonists who relocated from other colonies, especially South Carolina, disregarded these prohibitions. Despite its proprietors’ early vision of a colony guided by Enlightenment ideals and free of slavery, by the 1750s, Georgia was producing quantities of rice grown and harvested by slaves.

4.5 Wars for Empire

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Describe the wars for empire • Analyze the significance of these conflicts

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Wars for empire composed a final link connecting the Atlantic sides of the British Empire. Great Britain fought four separate wars against Catholic France from the late 1600s to the mid-1700s. Another war, the War of Jenkins’ Ear, pitted Britain against Spain. These conflicts for control of North America also helped colonists forge important alliances with native peoples, as different tribes aligned themselves with different European powers.

GENERATIONS OF WARFARE Generations of British colonists grew up during a time when much of North America, especially the Northeast,engagedinwar.Colonistsknewwarfirsthand.Intheeighteenthcentury,fightingwasseasonal. Armiesmobilizedinthespring,foughtinthesummer,andretiredtowinterquartersinthefall.TheBritish army imposed harsh discipline on its soldiers, who were drawn from the poorer classes, to ensure they did not step out of line during engagements. If they did, their officers would kill them. On the battlefield, armiesdressedinbrightuniformstoadvertisetheirbraveryandlackoffear.Theystoodintightformation and exchanged volleys with the enemy. They often feared their officers more than the enemy.

Read the diary of a provincial soldier who fought in the French and Indian War on the Captain David Perry Web Site (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/DPerry) hosted by Rootsweb. David Perry’s journal, which includes a description of the 1758 campaign, provides a glimpse of warfare in the eighteenth century.

Most imperialconflicts hadbothAmerican andEuropeanfronts, leavinguswithtwo namesforeachwar. For instance, King William’s War (1688–1697) is also known as the War of the League of Augsburg. In America, the bulk of the fighting in this conflict took place between New England and New France. The war proved inconclusive, with no clear victor (Figure 4.16).

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Figure 4.16 This map shows the French and British armies’ movements during King William’s War, in which there was no clear victor.

Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713) is also known as the War of Spanish Succession. England fought against both Spain and France over who would ascend the Spanish throne after the last of the Hapsburg rulers died. In North America, fighting took place in Florida, New England, and New France. In Canada, the FrenchprevailedbutlostAcadiaandNewfoundland;however,thevictorywasagainnotdecisivebecause the English failed to take Quebec, which would have given them control of Canada. This conflict is best remembered in the United States for the French and Indian raid against Deerfield, Massachusetts,in1704.AsmallFrenchforce,combinedwithanativegroupmadeupofCatholicMohawks and Abenaki (Pocumtucs), attacked the frontier outpost of Deerfield, killing scores and taking 112 prisoners. Among the captives was the seven-year-old daughter of Deerfield’s minister John Williams, named Eunice. She was held by the Mohawks for years as her family tried to get her back, and became assimilated into the tribe. To the horror of the Puritan leaders, when she grew up Eunice married a Mohawk and refused to return to New England. In North America, possession of Georgia and trade with the interior was the focus of the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1742), a conflict between Britain and Spain over contested claims to the land occupied by the fledgling colony between South Carolina and Florida. The war got its name from an incident in 1731 in which a Spanish Coast Guard captain severed the ear of British captain Robert Jenkins as punishment for raiding Spanish ships in Panama. Jenkins fueled the growing animosity between England and Spain by presenting his ear to Parliament and stirring up British public outrage. More than anything else, the War of Jenkins’ Ear disrupted the Atlantic trade, a situation that hurt both Spain and Britain and was a major reason the war came to a close in 1742. Georgia, founded six years earlier, remained British and a buffer against Spanish Florida. King George’s War (1744–1748), known in Europe as the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), was fought in the northern colonies and New France. In 1745, the British took the massive French fortress at LouisbourgonCapeBretonIsland,NovaScotia(Figure4.17).However,threeyearslater,undertheterms oftheTreatyofAix-la-Chapelle,BritainrelinquishedcontrolofthefortresstotheFrench.Onceagain,war resulted in an incomplete victory for both Britain and France.

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Figure 4.17 In this 1747 painting by J. Stevens, View of the landing of the New England forces in ye expedition against Cape Breton, British forces land on the island of Cape Breton to capture Fort Louisbourg.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR Thefinalimperialwar,theFrenchandIndianWar(1754–1763),knownastheSevenYears’WarinEurope, proved to be the decisive contest between Britain and France in America. It began over rival claims along the frontier in present-day western Pennsylvania. Well-connected planters from Virginia faced stagnant tobacco prices and hoped expanding into these western lands would stabilize their wealth and status. Some of them established the Ohio Company of Virginia in 1748, and the British crown granted the company half a million acres in 1749. However, the French also claimed the lands of the Ohio Company, and to protect the region they established Fort Duquesne in 1754, where the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny Rivers met. The war began in May 1754 because of these competing claims between Britain and France. Twenty-twoyear-oldVirginianGeorgeWashington,asurveyorwhosefamilyhelpedtofoundtheOhioCompany,gave the command to fire on French soldiers near present-day Uniontown, Pennsylvania. This incident on the Pennsylvania frontier proved to be a decisive event that led to imperial war. For the next decade, fighting took place along the frontier of New France and British America from Virginia to Maine. The war also spread to Europe as France and Britain looked to gain supremacy in the Atlantic World. The British fared poorly in the first years of the war. In 1754, the French and their native allies forced Washington to surrender at Fort Necessity, a hastily built fort constructed after his attack on the French. In 1755, Britain dispatched General Edward Braddock to the colonies to take Fort Duquesne. The French, aided by the Potawotomis, Ottawas, Shawnees, and Delawares, ambushed the fifteen hundred British soldiers and Virginia militia who marched to the fort. The attack sent panic through the British force, and hundreds of British soldiers and militiamen died, including General Braddock. The campaign of 1755 proved to be a disaster for the British. In fact, the only British victory that year was the capture of Nova Scotia. In 1756 and 1757, Britain suffered further defeats with the fall of Fort Oswego and Fort William Henry (Figure 4.18).

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Figure 4.18 This schematic map depicts the events of the French and Indian War. Note the scarcity of British victories.

The war began to turn in favor of the British in 1758, due in large part to the efforts of William Pitt, a very popular member of Parliament. Pitt pledged huge sums of money and resources to defeating the hated Catholic French, and Great Britain spent part of the money on bounties paid to new young recruitsinthecolonies,helpinginvigoratetheBritishforces.In1758,theIroquois,Delaware,andShawnee signedtheTreatyofEaston,aligningthemselveswiththeBritishinreturnforsomecontestedlandaround Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1759, the British took Quebec, and in 1760, Montreal. The French empire in North America had crumbled. The war continued until 1763, when the French signed the Treaty of Paris. This treaty signaled a dramatic reversal of fortune for France. Indeed, New France, which had been founded in the early 1600s, ceased to exist. The British Empire had now gained mastery over North America. The Empire not only gained New France under the treaty; it also acquired French sugar islands in the West Indies, French trading posts in India, and French-held posts on the west coast of Africa. Great Britain’s victory in the French and Indian War meant that it had become a truly global empire. British colonists joyously celebrated, singing the refrain of “Rule, Britannia! / Britannia, rule the waves! / Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!” In the American colonies, ties with Great Britain were closer than ever. Professional British soldiers had fought alongside Anglo-American militiamen, forging a greater sense of shared identity. With Great Britain’s victory, colonial pride ran high as colonists celebrated their identity as British subjects.

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Thislastofthewarsforempire,however,alsosowedtheseedsoftrouble.ThewarledGreatBritaindeeply into debt, and in the 1760s and 1770s, efforts to deal with the debt through imperial reforms would have the unintended consequence of causing stress and strain that threatened to tear the Empire apart.

CHAPTER 8 Growing Pains: The New Republic, 1790–1820

Figure 8.1 “The happy Effects of the Grand Systom [sic] of shutting Ports against the English!!” appeared in 1808. Less than a year earlier, Thomas Jefferson had recommended (and Congress had passed) the Embargo Act of 1807, which barred American ships from leaving their ports. Chapter Outline

8.1 Competing Visions: Federalists and

Democratic-Republicans

8.2 The New American Republic

8.3 Partisan Politics

8.4 The United States Goes Back to War

Introduction The partisan political cartoon above (Figure 8.1) lampoons Thomas Jefferson’s 1807 Embargo Act, a movethathadadevastatingeffectonAmericancommerce.Americanfarmersandmerchantscomplainto President Jefferson, while the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte whispers to him, “You shall be King hereafter.” This image illustrates one of many political struggles in the years after the fight for ratification of the Constitution. In the nation’s first few years, no organized political parties existed. This began to change as U.S. citizens argued bitterly about the proper size and scope of the new national government. As a result, the 1790s witnessed the rise of opposing political parties: the Federalists and the DemocraticRepublicans. Federalists saw unchecked democracy as a dire threat to the republic, and they pointed to the excesses of the French Revolution as proof of what awaited. Democratic-Republicans opposed the Federalists’notionthatonlythewellbornandwelleducatedwereabletooverseetherepublic;theysawit as a pathway to oppression by an aristocracy.

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8.1 Competing Visions: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Describe the competing visions of the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans • Identify the protections granted to citizens under the Bill of Rights • Explain Alexander Hamilton’s financial programs as secretary of the treasury

In June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the federal Constitution, and the new plan for a strong central government went into effect. Elections for the first U.S. Congress were held in 1788 and 1789, and members took their seats in March 1789. In a reflection of the trust placed in him as the personification of republican virtue, George Washington became the first president in April 1789. John Adams served as his vice president; the pairing of a representative from Virginia (Washington) with one from Massachusetts (Adams) symbolized national unity. Nonetheless, political divisions quickly became apparent. Washington and Adams represented the Federalist Party, which generated a backlash among those who resisted the new government’s assertions of federal power.

FEDERALISTS IN POWER Though the Revolution had overthrown British rule in the United States, supporters of the 1787 federal constitution, known as Federalists, adhered to a decidedly British notion of social hierarchy. The Federalistsdidnot,atfirst,composeapoliticalparty.Instead,Federalistsheldcertainsharedassumptions. For them, political participation continued to be linked to property rights, which barred many citizens fromvotingorholdingoffice.FederalistsdidnotbelievetheRevolutionhadchangedthetraditionalsocial roles between women and men, or between whites and other races. They did believe in clear distinctions in rank and intelligence. To these supporters of the Constitution, the idea that all were equal appeared ludicrous.Women,blacks,andnativepeoples,theyargued,hadtoknowtheirplaceassecondarytowhite malecitizens.Attemptstoimposeequality,theyfeared,woulddestroytherepublic.TheUnitedStateswas not created to be a democracy. The architects of the Constitution committed themselves to leading the new republic, and they held a majority among the members of the new national government. Indeed, as expected, many assumed the new executive posts the first Congress created. Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton, a leading

Figure 8.2

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Federalist, as secretary of the treasury. For secretary of state, he chose Thomas Jefferson. For secretary of war, he appointed Henry Knox, who had served with him during the Revolutionary War. Edmond Randolph,aVirginiadelegatetotheConstitutionalConvention,wasnamedattorneygeneral.InJuly1789, CongressalsopassedtheJudiciaryAct,creatingaSupremeCourtofsixjusticesheadedbythosewhowere committed to the new national government. Congress passed its first major piece of legislation by placing a duty on imports under the 1789 Tariff Act. Intended to raise revenue to address the country’s economic problems, the act was a victory for nationalists, who favored a robust, powerful federal government and had worked unsuccessfully for similar measures during the Confederation Congress in the 1780s. Congress also placed a fifty-cent-pertonduty(basedonmaterialstransported,nottheweightofaship)onforeignshipscomingintoAmerican ports, a move designed to give the commercial advantage to American ships and goods.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS Many Americans opposed the 1787 Constitution because it seemed a dangerous concentration of centralized power that threatened the rights and liberties of ordinary U.S. citizens. These opponents, known collectively as Anti-Federalists, did not constitute a political party, but they united in demanding protection for individual rights, and several states made the passing of a bill of rights a condition of their acceptance of the Constitution. Rhode Island and North Carolina rejected the Constitution because it did not already have this specific bill of rights. Federalists followed through on their promise to add such a bill in 1789, when Virginia Representative JamesMadisonintroducedandCongressapprovedtheBillofRights(Table8.1).Adoptedin1791,thebill consisted of the first ten amendments to the Constitution and outlined many of the personal rights state constitutions already guaranteed.

Table 8.1 Rights Protected by the First Ten Amendments

Amendment1 Right to freedoms of religion and speech; right to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances

Amendment2 Right to keep and bear arms to maintain a well-regulated militia

Amendment3 Right not to house soldiers during time of war

Amendment4 Right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure

Amendment5 Rights in criminal cases, including to due process and indictment by grand jury for capital crimes, as well as the right not to testify against oneself

Amendment6 Right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury

Amendment7 Right to a jury trial in civil cases

Amendment8 Right not to face excessive bail or fines, or cruel and unusual punishment

Amendment9 Rights retained by the people, even if they are not specifically enumerated by the Constitution

Amendment10 States’ rights to powers not specifically delegated to the federal government

The adoption of the Bill of Rights softened the Anti-Federalists’ opposition to the Constitution and gave thenewfederalgovernmentgreaterlegitimacyamongthosewhootherwisedistrustedthenewcentralized power created by men of property during the secret 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention.

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Visit the National Archives (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/BillRights) to consider the first ten amendments to the Constitution as an expression of the fears many citizens harbored about the powers of the new federal government. What were these fears? How did the Bill of Rights calm them?

ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S PROGRAM Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s secretary of the treasury, was an ardent nationalist who believed a strong federal government could solve many of the new country’s financial ills. Born in the West Indies, HamiltonhadworkedonaSt.Croixplantationasateenagerandwasinchargeoftheaccountsatayoung age.HeknewtheAtlantictradeverywellandusedthatknowledgeinsettingpolicyfortheUnitedStates. In the early 1790s, he created the foundation for the U.S. financial system. He understood that a robust federal government would provide a solid financial foundation for the country. The United States began mired in debt. In 1789, when Hamilton took up his post, the federal debt was over $53 million. The states had a combined debt of around $25 million, and the United States had been unable to pay its debts in the 1780s and was therefore considered a credit risk by European countries. Hamilton wrote three reports offering solutions to the economic crisis brought on by these problems. The first addressed public credit, the second addressed banking, and the third addressed raising revenue.

The Report on Public Credit For the national government to be effective, Hamilton deemed it essential to have the support of those to whomitowedmoney:thewealthy,domesticcreditorclassaswellasforeigncreditors.InJanuary1790,he delivered his “Report on Public Credit“ (Figure 8.3), addressing the pressing need of the new republic to becomecreditworthy.Herecommendedthatthenewfederalgovernmenthonorallitsdebts,includingall papermoneyissuedbytheConfederationandthestatesduringthewar,atfacevalue.Hamiltonespecially wanted wealthy American creditors who held large amounts of paper money to be invested, literally, in thefutureandwelfareofthenewnationalgovernment.Healsounderstoodtheimportanceofmakingthe new United States financially stable for creditors abroad. To pay these debts, Hamilton proposed that the federalgovernmentsellbonds—federalinterest-bearingnotes—tothepublic.Thesebondswouldhavethe backing of the government and yield interest payments. Creditors could exchange their old notes for the new government bonds. Hamilton wanted to give the paper money that states had issued during the war the same status as government bonds; these federal notes would begin to yield interest payments in 1792.

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Figure 8.3 As the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton (a), shown here in a 1792 portrait by John Trumbull, released the “Report on Public Credit” (b) in January 1790.

Hamilton designed his “Report on Public Credit” (later called “First Report on Public Credit”) to ensure thesurvivalofthenewandshakyAmericanrepublic.HeknewtheimportanceofmakingtheUnitedStates financially reliable, secure, and strong, and his plan provided a blueprint to achieve that goal. He argued that his plan would satisfy creditors, citing the goal of “doing justice to the creditors of the nation.” At the same time, the plan would work “to promote the increasing respectability of the American name; to answer the calls for justice; to restore landed property to its due value; to furnish new resources both to agriculture and commerce; to cement more closely the union of the states; to add to their security against foreign attack; to establish public order on the basis of upright and liberal policy.” Hamilton’s program ignited a heated debate in Congress. A great many of both Confederation and state notes had found their way into the hands of speculators, who had bought them from hard-pressed veteransinthe1780sandpaidafractionoftheirfacevalueinanticipationofredeemingthematfullvalue at a later date. Because these speculators held so many notes, many in Congress objected that Hamilton’s planwouldbenefitthemattheexpenseoftheoriginalnote-holders.OneofthosewhoopposedHamilton’s 1790 report was James Madison, who questioned the fairness of a plan that seemed to cheat poor soldiers. Not surprisingly, states with a large debt, like South Carolina, supported Hamilton’s plan, while states with less debt, like North Carolina, did not. To gain acceptance of his plan, Hamilton worked out a compromisewithVirginiansMadisonandJefferson,wherebyinreturnfortheirsupporthewouldgiveup NewYorkCityasthenation’scapitalandagreeonamoresouthernlocation,whichtheypreferred.InJuly 1790, a site along the Potomac River was selected as the new “federal city,” which became the District of Columbia. Hamilton’s plan to convert notes to bonds worked extremely well to restore European confidence in the U.S. economy. It also proved a windfall for creditors, especially those who had bought up state and Confederation notes at far less than face value. But it immediately generated controversy about the size andscopeofthegovernment.Somesawtheplanasanunjustuseoffederalpower,whileHamiltonargued that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution granted the government “implied powers” that gave the green light to his program.

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The Report on a National Bank As secretary of the treasury, Hamilton hoped to stabilize the American economy further by establishing a national bank. The United States operated with a flurry of different notes from multiple state banks and nocoherentregulation.Byproposingthatthenewnationalbankbuyuplargevolumesofstatebanknotes anddemandingtheirconversionintogold,Hamiltonespeciallywantedtodisciplinethosestatebanksthat issuedpapermoneyirresponsibly.Tothatend,hedeliveredhis“ReportonaNationalBank”inDecember 1790, proposing a Bank of the United States, an institution modeled on the Bank of England. The bank would issue loans to American merchants and bills of credit (federal bank notes that would circulate as money) while serving as a repository of government revenue from the sale of land. Stockholders would own the bank, along with the federal government. Like the recommendations in his “Report on Public Credit,” Hamilton’s bank proposal generated opposition. Jefferson, in particular, argued that the Constitution did not permit the creation of a national bank. In response, Hamilton again invoked the Constitution’s implied powers. President Washington backed Hamilton’s position and signed legislation creating the bank in 1791.

The Report on Manufactures The third report Hamilton delivered to Congress, known as the “Report on Manufactures,” addressed the need to raise revenue to pay the interest on the national debt. Using the power to tax as provided under the Constitution, Hamilton put forth a proposal to tax American-made whiskey. He also knew the importance of promoting domestic manufacturing so the new United States would no longer have to rely on imported manufactured goods. To break from the old colonial system, Hamilton therefore advocated tariffs on all foreign imports to stimulate the production of American-made goods. To promote domestic industry further, he proposed federal subsidies to American industries. Like all of Hamilton’s programs, the idea of government involvement in the development of American industries was new. With the support of Washington, the entire Hamiltonian economic program received the necessary supportinCongresstobeimplemented.Inthelongrun,Hamilton’sfinancialprogramhelpedtorescuethe UnitedStatesfromitsstateofnear-bankruptcyinthelate1780s.Hisinitiativesmarkedthebeginningofan American capitalism, making the republic creditworthy, promoting commerce, and setting for the nation a solid financial foundation. His policies also facilitated the growth of the stock market, as U.S. citizens bought and sold the federal government’s interest-bearing certificates.

THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE FIRST PARTY SYSTEM James Madison and Thomas Jefferson felt the federal government had overstepped its authority by adopting the treasury secretary’s plan. Madison found Hamilton’s scheme immoral and offensive. He argued that it turned the reins of government over to the class of speculators who profited at the expense of hardworking citizens. Jefferson, who had returned to the United States in 1790 after serving as a diplomat in France, tried unsuccessfully to convince Washington to block the creation of a national bank. He also took issue with what he perceived as favoritism given to commercial classes in the principal American cities. He thought urban life widened the gap between the wealthy few and an underclass of landless poor workers who, because of their oppressed condition, could never be good republican property owners. Rural areas, in contrast,offeredfarmoreopportunitiesforpropertyownershipandvirtue.In1783Jeffersonwrote,“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people.” Jefferson believed thatself-sufficient,property-owningrepublicancitizensoryeomanfarmersheldthekeytothesuccessand longevityoftheAmericanrepublic.(Asacreatureofhistimes,hedidnotenvisionasimilarroleforeither women or nonwhite men.) To him, Hamilton’s program seemed to encourage economic inequalities and work against the ordinary American yeoman.

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Opposition to Hamilton, who had significant power in the new federal government, including the ear of President Washington, began in earnest in the early 1790s. Jefferson turned to his friend Philip Freneau to helporganizetheeffortthroughthepublicationoftheNationalGazetteasacountertotheFederalistpress, especially the Gazette of the United States (Figure 8.4). From 1791 until 1793, when it ceased publication, Freneau’s partisan paper attacked Hamilton’s program and Washington’s administration. “Rules for ChangingaRepublicintoaMonarchy,”writtenbyFreneau,isanexampleofthetypeofattackaimedatthe nationalgovernment,andespeciallyattheelitismoftheFederalistParty.Newspapersinthe1790sbecame enormously important in American culture as partisans like Freneau attempted to sway public opinion. These newspapers did not aim to be objective; instead, they served to broadcast the views of a particular party.

Figure 8.4 Here, the front page of the Federalist Gazette of the United States from September 9, 1789 (a), is shown beside that of the oppositional National Gazette from November 14, 1791 (b). The Gazette of the United States featured articles, sometimes written pseudonymously or anonymously, from leading Federalists like Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The National Gazette was founded two years later to counter their political influence.

Visit Lexrex.com (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/NatGazette) to read Philip Freneau’s essay and others from the National Gazette. Can you identify three instances of persuasive writing against the Federalist Party or the government?

Opposition to the Federalists led to the formation of Democratic-Republican societies, composed of men who felt the domestic policies of the Washington administration were designed to enrich the few while ignoring everyone else. Democratic-Republicans championed limited government. Their fear of

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centralized power originated in the experience of the 1760s and 1770s when the distant, overbearing, and seemingly corrupt British Parliament attempted to impose its will on the colonies. The 1787 federal constitution,writteninsecretbyfifty-fivewealthymenofpropertyandstanding,ignitedfearsofasimilar menacing plot. To opponents, the Federalists promoted aristocracy and a monarchical government—a betrayal of what many believed to be the goal of the American Revolution. While wealthy merchants and planters formed the core of the Federalist leadership, members of the Democratic-RepublicansocietiesincitieslikePhiladelphiaandNewYorkcamefromtheranksofartisans. These citizens saw themselves as acting in the spirit of 1776, this time not against the haughty British but by what they believed to have replaced them—a commercial class with no interest in the public good. TheirpoliticaleffortsagainsttheFederalistswereabattletopreserverepublicanism,topromotethepublic good against private self-interest. They published their views, held meetings to voice their opposition, andsponsoredfestivalsandparades.Intheirstridentnewspapersattacks,theyalsoworkedtoundermine the traditional forms of deference and subordination to aristocrats, in this case the Federalist elites. Some members of northern Democratic-Republican clubs denounced slavery as well.

DEFINING CITIZENSHIP While questions regarding the proper size and scope of the new national government created a divide among Americans and gave rise to political parties, a consensus existed among men on the issue of who qualified and who did not qualify as a citizen. The 1790 Naturalization Act defined citizenship in stark racial terms. To be a citizen of the American republic, an immigrant had to be a “free white person” of “good character.” By excluding slaves, free blacks, Indians, and Asians from citizenship, the act laid the foundation for the United States as a republic of white men. Full citizenship that included the right to vote was restricted as well. Many state constitutions directed that only male property owners or taxpayers could vote. For women, the right to vote remained out of reachexceptinthestateofNewJersey.In1776,thefervoroftheRevolutionledNewJerseyrevolutionaries to write a constitution extending the right to vote to unmarried women who owned property worth £50. Federalists and Democratic-Republicans competed for the votes of New Jersey women who met the requirements to cast ballots. This radical innovation continued until 1807, when New Jersey restricted voting to free white males.

8.2 The New American Republic

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Identify the major foreign and domestic uprisings of the early 1790s • Explain the effect of these uprisings on the political system of the United States

The colonies’ alliance with France, secured after the victory at Saratoga in 1777, proved crucial in their victory against the British, and during the 1780s France and the new United States enjoyed a special relationship. Together they had defeated their common enemy, Great Britain. But despite this shared experience,AmericanopinionsregardingFrancedivergedsharplyinthe1790swhenFranceunderwentits ownrevolution.Democratic-RepublicansseizedontheFrenchrevolutionaries’struggleagainstmonarchy asthewelcomeharbingerofalargerrepublicanmovementaroundtheworld.TotheFederalists,however, the French Revolution represented pure anarchy, especially after the execution of the French king in 1793. Alongwithotherforeignanddomesticuprisings,theFrenchRevolutionhelpedhardenthepoliticaldivide in the United States in the early 1790s.

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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The French Revolution, which began in 1789, further split American thinkers into different ideological camps, deepening the political divide between Federalists and their Democratic-Republican foes. At first, in 1789 and 1790, the revolution in France appeared to most in the United States as part of a new chapter in the rejection of corrupt monarchy, a trend inspired by the American Revolution. A constitutional monarchy replaced the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI in 1791, and in 1792, France was declared a republic. Republican liberty, the creed of the United States, seemed to be ushering in a new era in France. Indeed, the American Revolution served as an inspiration for French revolutionaries. The events of 1793 and 1794 challenged the simple interpretation of the French Revolution as a happy chapterintheunfoldingtriumphofrepublicangovernmentovermonarchy.TheFrenchkingwasexecuted in January 1793 (Figure 8.5), and the next two years became known as

the Terror

, a period of extreme violence against perceived enemies of the revolutionary government. Revolutionaries advocated direct representative democracy, dismantled Catholicism, replaced that religion with a new philosophy known astheCultoftheSupremeBeing,renamedthemonthsoftheyear,andrelentlesslyemployedtheguillotine against their enemies. Federalists viewed these excesses with growing alarm, fearing that the radicalism of the French Revolution might infect the minds of citizens at home. Democratic-Republicans interpreted the same events with greater optimism, seeing them as a necessary evil of eliminating the monarchy and aristocratic culture that supported the privileges of a hereditary class of rulers.

Figure 8.5 An image from a 1791 Hungarian journal depicts the beheading of Louis XVI during the French Revolution. The violence of the revolutionary French horrified many in the United States—especially Federalists, who saw it as an example of what could happen when the mob gained political control and instituted direct democracy.

The controversy in the United States intensified when France declared war on Great Britain and Holland in February 1793. France requested that the United States make a large repayment of the money it had borrowed from France to fund the Revolutionary War. However, Great Britain would judge any aid given to France as a hostile act. Washington declared the United States neutral in 1793, but DemocraticRepublican groups denounced neutrality and declared their support of the French republicans. The FederalistsusedtheviolenceoftheFrenchrevolutionariesasareasontoattackDemocratic-Republicanism in the United States, arguing that Jefferson and Madison would lead the country down a similarly disastrous path.

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Visit Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/revolution) for images, texts, and songs relating to the French Revolution. This momentous event’s impact extended far beyond Europe, influencing politics in the United States and elsewhere in the Atlantic World.

THE CITIZEN GENÊT AFFAIR AND JAY’S TREATY In 1793, the revolutionary French government sent Edmond-Charles Genêt to the United States to negotiate an alliance with the U.S. government. France empowered Genêt to issue

letters of marque

—documentsauthorizingshipsandtheircrewstoengageinpiracy—toallowhimtoarmcaptured British ships in American ports with U.S. soldiers. Genêt arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, amid great Democratic-Republican fanfare. He immediately began commissioning American privateer ships and organizing volunteer American militias to attack Spanish holdings in the Americas, then traveled to Philadelphia, gathering support for the French cause along the way. President Washington and Hamilton denounced Genêt, knowing his actions threatened to pull the United States into a war with Great Britain. The

Citizen Genêt affair

, as it became known, spurred Great Britain to instruct its naval commanders in theWestIndiestoseizeallshipstradingwiththeFrench.TheBritishcapturedhundredsofAmericanships and their cargoes, increasing the possibility of war between the two countries. In this tense situation, Great Britain worked to prevent a wider conflict by ending its seizure of American ships and offered to pay for captured cargoes. Hamilton saw an opportunity and recommended to WashingtonthattheUnitedStatesnegotiate.SupremeCourtJusticeJohnJaywassenttoBritain,instructed by Hamilton to secure compensation for captured American ships; ensure the British leave the Northwest outposts they still occupied despite the 1783 Treaty of Paris; and gain an agreement for American trade in the West Indies. Even though Jay personally disliked slavery, his mission also required him to seek compensation from the British for slaves who left with the British at the end of the Revolutionary War. Theresulting1794agreement,knownasJay’sTreaty,fulfilledmostofhisoriginalgoals.TheBritishwould turn over the frontier posts in the Northwest, American ships would be allowed to trade freely in the West Indies, and the United States agreed to assemble a commission charged with settling colonial debts U.S. citizens owed British merchants. The treaty did not address the important issue of

impressment

, however—the British navy’s practice of forcing or “impressing” American sailors to work and fight on Britishwarships.Jay’sTreatyledtheSpanish,whoworriedthatitsignaledanalliancebetweentheUnited States and Great Britain, to negotiate a treaty of their own—Pinckney’s Treaty—that allowed American commercetoflowthroughtheSpanishportofNewOrleans.Pinckney’sTreatyallowedAmericanfarmers, who were moving in greater numbers to the Ohio River Valley, to ship their products down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, where they could be transported to East Coast markets. Jay’sTreatyconfirmedthefearsofDemocratic-Republicans,whosawitasabetrayalofrepublicanFrance, cementingtheideathattheFederalistsfavoredaristocracyandmonarchy.PartisanAmericannewspapers triedtoswaypublicopinion,whiletheskillfulwritingofHamilton,whopublishedanumberofessayson the subject, explained the benefits of commerce with Great Britain.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION’S CARIBBEAN LEGACY Unlike the American Revolution, which ultimately strengthened the institution of slavery and the powers of American slaveholders, the French Revolution inspired slave rebellions in the Caribbean, including

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a 1791 slave uprising in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti). Thousands of slaves joinedtogethertooverthrowthebrutalsystemofslavery.Theytookcontrolofalargesectionoftheisland, burning sugar plantations and killing the white planters who had forced them to labor under the lash. In 1794, French revolutionaries abolished slavery in the French empire, and both Spain and England attackedSaint-Domingue,hopingtoaddthecolonytotheirownempires.ToussaintL’Ouverture,aformer domestic slave, emerged as the leader in the fight against Spain and England to secure a Haiti free of slavery andfurtherEuropean colonialism. Because revolutionary Francehadabolished slavery, Toussaint aligned himself with France, hoping to keep Spain and England at bay (Figure 8.6).

Figure 8.6 An 1802 portrait shows Toussaint L’Ouverture, “Chef des Noirs Insurgés de Saint Domingue” (“Leader of the Black Insurgents of Saint Domingue”), mounted and armed in an elaborate uniform.

Events in Haiti further complicated the partisan wrangling in the United States. White refugee planters from Haiti and other French West Indian islands, along with slaves and free people of color, left the Caribbean for the United States and for Louisiana, which at the time was held by Spain. The presence of these French migrants raised fears, especially among Federalists, that they would bring the contagion of French radicalism to the United States. In addition, the idea that the French Revolution could inspire a successful slave uprising just off the American coastline filled southern whites and slaveholders with horror.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION While the wars in France and the Caribbean divided American citizens, a major domestic test of the new national government came in 1794 over the issue of a tax on whiskey, an important part of Hamilton’s financial program. In 1791, Congress had authorized a tax of 7.5 cents per gallon of whiskey and rum. Although most citizens paid without incident, trouble erupted in four western Pennsylvania counties in an uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion. FarmersinthewesterncountiesofPennsylvaniaproducedwhiskeyfromtheirgrainforeconomicreasons. Without adequate roads or other means to transport a bulky grain harvest, these farmers distilled their grainsintoginandwhiskey,whichweremorecost-effectivetotransport.Sincethesefarmersdependedon the sale of whiskey, some citizens in western Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) viewed the new tax as further proof that the new national government favored the commercial classes on the eastern seaboard at the expense of farmers in the West. On the other hand, supporters of the tax argued that it helped stabilize the economy and its cost could easily be passed on to the consumer, not the farmer-distiller. However,

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in the spring and summer months of 1794, angry citizens rebelled against the federal officials in charge of enforcing the federal excise law. Like the Sons of Liberty before the American Revolution, the whiskey rebels used violence and intimidation to protest policies they saw as unfair. They tarred and feathered federal officials, intercepted the federal mail, and intimidated wealthy citizens (Figure 8.7). The extent of their discontent found expression in their plan to form an independent western commonwealth, and they even began negotiations with British and Spanish representatives, hoping to secure their support for independence from the United States. The rebels also contacted their backcountry neighbors in Kentucky and South Carolina, circulating the idea of secession.

Figure 8.7 This painting, attributed to Frederick Kemmelmeyer ca. 1795, depicts the massive force George Washington led to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of the previous year. Federalists made clear they would not tolerate mob action.

With their emphasis on personal freedoms, the whiskey rebels aligned themselves with the DemocraticRepublican Party. They saw the tax as part of a larger Federalist plot to destroy their republican liberty and, in its most extreme interpretation, turn the United States into a monarchy. The federal government lowered the tax, but when federal officials tried to subpoena those distillers who remained intractable, troubleescalated.Washingtonrespondedbycreatingathirteen-thousand-manmilitia,drawnfromseveral states,toputdowntherebellion.Thisforcemadeitknown,bothdomesticallyandtotheEuropeanpowers that looked on in anticipation of the new republic’s collapse, that the national government would do everything in its power to ensure the survival of the United States.

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DEFINING “AMERICAN” Alexander Hamilton: “Shall the majority govern or be governed?”

Alexander Hamilton frequently wrote persuasive essays under pseudonyms, like “Tully,” as he does here. In this 1794 essay, Hamilton denounces the whiskey rebels and majority rule. It has been observed that the means most likely to be employed to turn the insurrection in the western country to the detriment of the government, would be artfully calculated among other things ‘to divert your attention from the true question to be decided.’ Let us see then what is this question. It is plainly this—shall the majority govern or be governed? shall the nation rule, or be ruled? shall the general will prevail, or the will of a faction? shall there be government, or no government? . . . The Constitution you have ordained for yourselves and your posterity contains this express clause,‘TheCongressshallhavepowertolayandcollecttaxes,duties,imposts,andExcises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.’ You have then, by a solemn and deliberate act, the most important and sacred that a nation can perform, pronounced and decreed, that your Representatives in Congress shall have power to lay Excises. You have done nothing since to reverse or impair that decree. . . . But the four western counties of Pennsylvania, undertake to rejudge and reverse your decrees, you have said, ‘The Congress shall have power to lay Excises.’ They say, ‘The Congress shall not have this power.’ . . . There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy.” —Alexander Hamilton’s “Tully No. II” for the American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, August 26, 1794 What are the major arguments put forward by Hamilton in this document? Who do you think his audience is?

WASHINGTON’S INDIAN POLICY RelationshipswithIndianswereasignificantproblemforWashington’sadministration,butoneonwhich white citizens agreed: Indians stood in the way of white settlement and, as the 1790 Naturalization Act made clear, were not citizens. After the War of Independence, white settlers poured into lands west of the AppalachianMountains.Asaresult,from1785to1795,astateofwarexistedonthefrontierbetweenthese settlers and the Indians who lived in the Ohio territory. In both 1790 and 1791, the Shawnee and Miami had defended their lands against the whites who arrived in greater and greater numbers from the East. In response, Washington appointed General Anthony Wayne to bring the Western Confederacy—a loose alliance of tribes—to heel. In 1794, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Wayne was victorious. With the 1795 Treaty of Greenville (Figure 8.8), the Western Confederacy gave up their claims to Ohio.

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Figure 8.8 Notice the contrasts between the depictions of federal and native representatives in this painting of the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. What message or messages did the artist intend to convey?

8.3 Partisan Politics

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Identify key examples of partisan wrangling between the Federalists and DemocraticRepublicans • Describe how foreign relations affected American politics • Assess the importance of the

Louisiana Purchase

George Washington, who had been reelected in 1792 by an overwhelming majority, refused to run for a third term, thus setting a precedent for future presidents. In the presidential election of 1796, the two parties—Federalist and Democratic-Republican—competed for the first time. Partisan rancor over the French Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion fueled the divide between them, and Federalist John Adams defeated his Democratic-Republican rival Thomas Jefferson by a narrow margin of only three electoral votes. In 1800, another close election swung the other way, and Jefferson began a long period of Democratic-Republican government.

THE PRESIDENCY OF JOHN ADAMS The war between Great Britain and France in the 1790s shaped U.S. foreign policy. As a new and, in comparison to the European powers, extremely weak nation, the American republic had no control over European events, and no real leverage to obtain its goals of trading freely in the Atlantic. To Federalist president John Adams, relations with France posed the biggest problem. After the Terror, the French Directory ruled France from 1795 to 1799. During this time, Napoleon rose to power.

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AMERICANA

The Art of Ralph Earl

Ralph Earl was an eighteenth-century American artist, born in Massachusetts, who remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War. He fled to England in 1778, but he returned to New England in the mid-1780s and began painting portraits of leading Federalists. His portrait of Connecticut Federalist Oliver Ellsworth and his wife Abigail conveys the world as Federalists liked to view it: an orderly landscape administered by men of property and learning. His portrait of dry goods merchant Elijah Boardman shows Boardman as well-to-do and highly cultivated; his books include the works of Shakespeare and Milton (Figure 8.9).

Figure 8.9 Ralph Earl’s portraits are known for placing their subjects in an orderly world, as seen here in the 1801 portrait of Oliver and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth (a) and the 1789 portrait of Elijah Boardman (b). What similarities do you see in the two portraits by Ralph Earl? What do the details of each portrait reveal about the sitters? About the artist and the 1790s?

Because France and Great Britain were at war, the French Directory issued decrees stating that any ship carrying British goods could be seized on the high seas. In practice, this meant the French would target American ships, especially those in the West Indies, where the United States conducted a brisk trade with theBritish.Francedeclaredits1778treatywiththeUnitedStatesnullandvoid,andasaresult,Franceand the United States waged an undeclared war—or what historians refer to as the Quasi-War—from 1796 to 1800. Between 1797 and 1799, the French seized 834 American ships, and Adams urged the buildup of the U.S. Navy, which consisted of only a single vessel at the time of his election in 1796 (Figure 8.10).

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Figure 8.10 This 1799 print, entitled “Preparation for WAR to defend Commerce,” shows the construction of a naval ship, part of the effort to ensure the United States had access to free trade in the Atlantic world.

In 1797, Adams sought a diplomatic solution to the conflict with France and dispatched envoys to negotiateterms.TheFrenchforeignminister,Charles-MauricedeTalleyrand,sentemissarieswhotoldthe American envoys that the United States must repay all outstanding debts owed to France, lend France 32 millionguilders(Dutchcurrency),andpaya£50,000bribebeforeanynegotiationscouldtakeplace.News oftheattempttoextractabribe,knownastheXYZaffairbecausetheFrenchemissarieswerereferredtoas X,Y,andZinlettersthatPresidentAdamsreleasedtoCongress,outragedtheAmericanpublicandturned publicopiniondecidedlyagainstFrance(Figure8.11).Inthecourtofpublicopinion,Federalistsappeared to have been correct in their interpretation of France, while the pro-French Democratic-Republicans had been misled.

Figure 8.11 This anonymous 1798 cartoon, Property Protected à la Françoise, satirizes the

XYZ affair

. Five Frenchmen are shown plundering the treasures of a woman representing the United States. One man holds a sword labeled “French Argument” and a sack of gold and riches labeled “National Sack and Diplomatic Perquisites,” while the others collect her valuables. A group of other Europeans look on and commiserate that France treated them the same way.

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Read the “transcript” of the above cartoon in the America in Caricature, 1765–1865 (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/cartoon) collection at Indiana University’s Lilly Library.

The complicated situation in Haiti, which remained a French colony in the late 1790s, also came to the attention of President Adams. The president, with the support of Congress, had created a U.S. Navy that nowincludedscoresofvessels.MostoftheAmericanshipscruisedtheCaribbean,givingtheUnitedStates the edge over France in the region. In Haiti, the rebellion leader Toussaint, who had to contend with variousdomesticrivalsseekingtodisplacehim,lookedtoendanU.S.embargoonFranceanditscolonies, put in place in 1798, so that his forces would receive help to deal with the civil unrest. In early 1799, in order to capitalize upon trade in the lucrative West Indies and undermine France’s hold on the island, Congress ended the ban on trade with Haiti—a move that acknowledged Toussaint’s leadership, to the horror of American slaveholders. Toussaint was able to secure an independent black republic in Haiti by 1804.

THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS The surge of animosity against France during the Quasi-War led Congress to pass several measures that in time undermined Federalist power. These 1798 war measures, known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, aimedtoincreasenationalsecurityagainstwhatmosthadcometoregardastheFrenchmenace.TheAlien ActandtheAlienEnemiesActtookparticularaimatFrenchimmigrantsfleeingtheWestIndiesbygiving the president the power to deport new arrivals who appeared to be a threat to national security. The act expiredin1800withnoimmigrantshavingbeendeported.TheSeditionActimposedharshpenalties—up to five years’ imprisonment and a massive fine of $5,000 in 1790 dollars—on those convicted of speaking or writing “in a scandalous or malicious” manner against the government of the United States. Twentyfive men, all Democratic-Republicans, were indicted under the act, and ten were convicted. One of these wasCongressmanMatthewLyon(Figure8.12),representativefromVermont,whohadlaunchedhisown newspaper,The Scourge Of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth.

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Figure 8.12 This 1798 cartoon, “Congressional Pugilists,” shows partisan chaos in the U.S. House of Representatives as Matthew Lyon, a Democratic-Republican from Vermont, holds forth against his opponent, Federalist Roger Griswold.

TheAlienandSeditionActsraisedconstitutionalquestionsaboutthefreedomofthepressprovidedunder theFirstAmendment.Democratic-RepublicansarguedthattheactswereevidenceoftheFederalists’intent to squash individual liberties and, by enlarging the powers of the national government, crush states’ rights. Jefferson and Madison mobilized the response to the acts in the form of statements known as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which argued that the acts were illegal and unconstitutional. The resolutionsintroducedtheideaofnullification,therightofstatestonullifyactsofCongress,andadvanced theargumentofstates’rights.Theresolutionsfailedtorallysupportinotherstates,however.Indeed,most other states rejected them, citing the necessity of a strong national government. The Quasi-War with France came to an end in 1800, when President Adams was able to secure the Treaty of Mortefontaine. His willingness to open talks with France divided the Federalist Party, but the treaty reopened trade between the two countries and ended the French practice of taking American ships on the high seas.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1800 AND THE PRESIDENCY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON The

Revolution of 1800

refers to the first transfer of power from one party to another in American history, when the presidency passed to Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson (Figure 8.13) in the 1800election.Thepeacefultransitioncalmedcontemporaryfearsaboutpossibleviolentreactionstoanew party’s taking the reins of government. The passing of political power from one political party to another without bloodshed also set an important precedent.

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Figure 8.13 Thomas Jefferson’s victory in 1800 signaled the ascendency of the Democratic-Republicans and the decline of Federalist power.

The election did prove even more divisive than the 1796 election, however, as both the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties waged a mudslinging campaign unlike any seen before. Because the Federalistswerebadlydivided,theDemocratic-Republicansgainedpoliticalground.AlexanderHamilton, whodisagreedwithPresidentAdams’sapproachtoFrance,wrotealengthyletter,meantforpeoplewithin his party, attacking his fellow Federalist’s character and judgment and ridiculing his handling of foreign affairs. Democratic-Republicans got hold of and happily reprinted the letter. Jefferson viewed participatory democracy as a positive force for the republic, a direct departure from Federalist views. His version of participatory democracy only extended, however, to the white yeoman farmers in whom Jefferson placed great trust. While Federalist statesmen, like the architects of the 1787 federal constitution, feared a pure democracy, Jefferson was far more optimistic that the common American farmer could be trusted to make good decisions. He believed in majority rule, that is, that the majority of yeoman should have the power to make decisions binding upon the whole. Jefferson had cheered the French Revolution, even when the French republic instituted the Terror to ensure the monarchy would not return. By 1799, however, he had rejected the cause of France because of his opposition to Napoleon’s seizure of power and creation of a dictatorship. Over the course of his two terms as president—he was reelected in 1804—Jefferson reversed the policies of the Federalist Party by turning away from urban commercial development. Instead, he promoted agriculture through the sale of western public lands in small and affordable lots. Perhaps Jefferson’s most lasting legacy is his vision of an “empire of liberty.” He distrusted cities and instead envisioned a rural republicofland-owningwhitemen,oryeomanrepublicanfarmers.HewantedtheUnitedStatestobethe breadbasketoftheworld,exportingitsagriculturalcommoditieswithoutsufferingtheillsofurbanization and industrialization. Since American yeomen would own their own land, they could stand up against thosewhomighttrytobuytheirvoteswithpromisesofproperty.Jeffersonchampionedtherightsofstates and insisted on limited federal government as well as limited taxes. This stood in stark contrast to the Federalists’insistenceonastrong,activefederalgovernment.Jeffersonalsobelievedinfiscalausterity.He pushed for—and Congress approved—the end of all internal taxes, such as those on whiskey and rum. The most significant trimming of the federal budget came at the expense of the military; Jefferson did not believe in maintaining a costly military, and he slashed the size of the navy Adams had worked to build up. Nonetheless, Jefferson responded to the capture of American ships and sailors by pirates off the coast of North Africa by leading the United States into war against the Muslim Barbary States in 1801, the first conflict fought by Americans overseas.

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The slow decline of the Federalists, which began under Jefferson, led to a period of one-party rule in nationalpolitics.Historianscalltheyearsbetween1815and1828the“EraofGoodFeelings”andhighlight the “Virginia dynasty” of the time, since the two presidents who followed Jefferson—James Madison and James Monroe—both hailed from his home state. Like him, they owned slaves and represented the Democratic-Republican Party. Though Federalists continued to enjoy popularity, especially in the Northeast, their days of prominence in setting foreign and domestic policy had ended.

PARTISAN ACRIMONY Theearliestyearsofthenineteenthcenturywerehardlyfreeofproblemsbetweenthetwopoliticalparties. Early in Jefferson’s term, controversy swirled over President Adams’s judicial appointments of many Federalists during his final days in office. When Jefferson took the oath of office, he refused to have the commissions for these Federalist justices delivered to the appointed officials. OneofAdams’sappointees,WilliamMarbury,hadbeenselectedtobeajusticeofthepeaceintheDistrict ofColumbia,andwhenhiscommissiondidnotarrive,hepetitionedtheSupremeCourtforanexplanation fromJefferson’ssecretaryofstate,JamesMadison.Indecidingthecase,Marburyv.Madison,in1803,Chief Justice John Marshall agreed that Marbury had the right to a legal remedy, establishing that individuals had rights even the president of the United States could not abridge. However, Marshall also found that Congress’s Judicial Act of 1789, which would have given the Supreme Court the power to grant Marbury remedy, was unconstitutional because the Constitution did not allow for cases like Marbury’s to come directly before the Supreme Court. Thus, Marshall established the principle of judicial review, which strengthened the court by asserting its power to review (and possibly nullify) the actions of Congress and the president. Jefferson was not pleased, but neither did Marbury get his commission. The animosity between the political parties exploded into open violence in 1804, when Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s first vice president, and Alexander Hamilton engaged in a duel. When Democratic-Republican Burr lost his bid for the office of governor of New York, he was quick to blame Hamilton, who had long hated him and had done everything in his power to discredit him. On July 11, the two antagonists met in Weehawken, New Jersey, to exchange bullets in a duel in which Burr shot and mortally wounded Hamilton.

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE Jefferson, who wanted to expand the United States to bring about his “empire of liberty,” realized his greatest triumph in 1803 when the United States bought the Louisiana territory from France. For $15 million—a bargain price, considering the amount of land involved—the United States doubled in size. Perhaps the greatest real estate deal in American history, the Louisiana Purchase greatly enhanced the JeffersonianvisionoftheUnitedStatesasanagrarianrepublicinwhichyeomenfarmersworkedtheland. Jefferson also wanted to bolster trade in the West, seeing the port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River (then the western boundary of the United States) as crucial to American agricultural commerce. In his mind, farmers would send their produce down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where it would be sold to European traders. ThepurchaseofLouisianacameaboutlargelybecauseofcircumstancesbeyondJefferson’scontrol,though he certainly recognized the implications of the transaction. Until 1801, Spain had controlled New Orleans and had given the United States the right to traffic goods in the port without paying customs duties. That year, however, the Spanish had ceded Louisiana (and New Orleans) to France. In 1802, the United States lostitsrighttodepositgoodsfreeintheport,causingoutrageamongmany,someofwhomcalledforwar with France. Jefferson instructed Robert Livingston, the American envoy to France, to secure access to New Orleans, sending James Monroe to France to add additional pressure. The timing proved advantageous. Because black slaves in the French colony of Haiti had successfully overthrown the brutal plantation regime, Napoleon could no longer hope to restore the empire lost with France’s defeat in the French and Indian

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War (1754–1763). His vision of Louisiana and the Mississippi Valley as the source for food for Haiti, the most profitable sugar island in the world, had failed. The emperor therefore agreed to the sale in early 1803.

Explore the collected maps and documents relating to the Louisiana Purchase and its history at the Library of Congress (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/LaPurchase) site.

ThetrueextentoftheUnitedStates’newterritoryremainedunknown(Figure 8.14).Woulditprovidethe long-sought quick access to Asian markets? Geographical knowledge was limited; indeed, no one knew precisely what lay to the west or how long it took to travel from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Jefferson selected two fellow Virginians, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to lead an expedition to the new western lands. Their purpose was to discover the commercial possibilities of the new land and, most importantly, potential trade routes. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis and Clark traversed the West.

Figure 8.14 This 1804 map (a) shows the territory added to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Compare this depiction to the contemporary map (b). How does the 1804 version differ from what you know of the geography of the United States?

The Louisiana Purchase helped Jefferson win reelection in 1804 by a landslide. Of 176 electoral votes cast, all but 14 were in his favor. The great expansion of the United States did have its critics, however, especially northerners who feared the addition of more slave states and a corresponding lack of representation of their interests in the North. And under a strict interpretation of the Constitution, it

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remained unclear whether the president had the power to add territory in this fashion. But the vast majority of citizens cheered the increase in the size of the republic. For slaveholders, new western lands would be a boon; for slaves, the Louisiana Purchase threatened to entrench their suffering further.

8.4 The United States Goes Back to War

By the end of this section, you will be able to: • Describe the causes and consequences of the War of 1812 • Identify the important events of the War of 1812 and explain their significance

The origins of the War of 1812, often called the Second War of American Independence, are found in the unresolved issues between the United States and Great Britain. One major cause was the British practice of impressment, whereby American sailors were taken at sea and forced to fight on British warships; this issue was left unresolved by Jay’s Treaty in 1794. In addition, the British in Canada supported Indians in their fight against further U.S. expansion in the Great Lakes region. Though Jefferson wanted to avoid what he called “entangling alliances,” staying neutral proved impossible.

THE EMBARGO OF 1807 FranceandEngland,engagedintheNapoleonicWars,whichragedbetween1803and1815,bothdeclared openseasononAmericanships,whichtheyseizedonthehighseas.Englandwasthemajoroffender,since theRoyalNavy,followingatime-honoredpractice,“impressed”Americansailorsbyforcingthemintoits service. The issue came to a head in 1807 when the HMS Leopard, a British warship, fired on a U.S. naval ship, the Chesapeake, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. The British then boarded the ship and took four sailors. Jefferson chose what he thought was the best of his limited options and responded to the crisis through the economic means of a sweeping ban on trade, the Embargo Act of 1807. This law prohibited American ships from leaving their ports until Britain and France stopped seizing them on the high seas. As a result of the embargo, American commerce came to a near-total halt. ThelogicbehindtheembargowasthatcuttingoffalltradewouldsoseverelyhurtBritainandFrancethat the seizures at sea would end. However, while the embargo did have some effect on the British economy, it was American commerce that actually felt the brunt of the impact (Figure 8.15). The embargo hurt American farmers, who could no longer sell their goods overseas, and seaport cities experienced a huge increaseinunemploymentandanuptickinbankruptcies.Alltold,Americanbusinessactivitydeclinedby 75 percent from 1808 to 1809.

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Figure 8.15 In this political cartoon from 1807, a snapping turtle (holding a shipping license) grabs a smuggler in the act of sneaking a barrel of sugar to a British ship. The smuggler cries, “Oh, this cursed Ograbme!” (“Ograbme” is “embargo” spelled backwards.)

Enforcement of the embargo proved very difficult, especially in the states bordering British Canada. Smugglingwaswidespread;Smugglers’NotchinVermont,forexample,earneditsnamefromillegaltrade with British Canada. Jefferson attributed the problems with the embargo to lax enforcement. Attheveryendofhissecondterm,JeffersonsignedtheNon-IntercourseActof1808,liftingtheunpopular embargoes on trade except with Britain and France. In the election of 1808, American voters elected another Democratic-Republican, James Madison. Madison inherited Jefferson’s foreign policy issues involving Britain and France. Most people in the United States, especially those in the West, saw Great Britain as the major problem.

TECUMSEH AND THE WESTERN CONFEDERACY Another underlying cause of the War of 1812 was British support for native resistance to U.S. western expansion. For many years, white settlers in the American western territories had besieged the Indians living there. Under Jefferson, two Indian policies existed: forcing Indians to adopt American ways of agricultural life, or aggressively driving Indians into debt in order to force them to sell their lands. In 1809, Tecumseh, a Shawnee war chief, rejuvenated the Western Confederacy. His brother, Tenskwatawa, was a prophet among the Shawnee who urged a revival of native ways and rejection of Anglo-American culture, including alcohol. In 1811, William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Indiana Territory, attempted to eliminate the native presence by attacking Prophetstown, a Shawnee settlement named in honor of Tenskwatawa. In the ensuing Battle of Tippecanoe, U.S. forces led by Harrison destroyed the settlement (Figure 8.16). They also found ample evidence that the British had supplied the Western Confederacy with weapons, despite the stipulations of earlier treaties.

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Figure 8.16 Portrait (a), painted by Charles Bird King in 1820, is a depiction of Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa. Portrait (b) is Rembrandt Peele’s 1813 depiction of William Henry Harrison. What are the significant similarities and differences between the portraits? What was each artist trying to convey?

THE WAR OF 1812 The seizure of American ships and sailors, combined with the British support of Indian resistance, led to strident calls for war against Great Britain. The loudest came from the “war hawks,” led by Henry Clay from Kentucky and John C. Calhoun from South Carolina, who would not tolerate British insults to American honor. Opposition to the war came from Federalists, especially those in the Northeast, who knew war would disrupt the maritime trade on which they depended. In a narrow vote, Congress authorized the president to declare war against Britain in June 1812. The war went very badly for the United States at first. In August 1812, the United States lost Detroit to the British and their Indian allies, including a force of one thousand men led by Tecumseh. By the end of theyear,theBritishcontrolledhalftheNorthwest.Thefollowingyear,however,U.S.forcesscoredseveral victories. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry and his naval force defeated the British on Lake Erie. At the Battle of theThames inOntario, theUnited States defeated theBritish and theirnative allies, andTecumseh was countedamongthedead.Indianresistancebegantoebb,openingtheIndianaandMichiganterritoriesfor white settlement. Thesevictoriescouldnotturnthetideofthewar,however.WiththeBritishgainingtheupperhandduring the Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon’s French army on the run, Great Britain now could divert skilled combattroopsfromEuropetofightintheUnitedStates.InJuly1814,forty-fivehundredhardenedBritish soldiers sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and burned Washington, DC, to the ground, forcing President Madisonandhiswifetorunfortheirlives(Figure8.17).Accordingtoonereport,theyleftbehindadinner the British officers ate. That summer, the British shelled Baltimore, hoping for another victory. However, they failed to dislodge the U.S. forces, whose survival of the bombardment inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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Figure 8.17 George Munger painted The President’s House shortly after the War of 1812, ca. 1814–1815. The painting shows the result of the British burning of Washington, DC.

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AMERICANA Francis Scott Key’s “In Defense of Fort McHenry”

After the British bombed Baltimore’s Fort McHenry in 1814 but failed to overcome the U.S. forces there, Francis Scott Key was inspired by the sight of the American flag, which remained hanging proudly in the aftermath. He wrote the poem “In Defense of Fort McHenry,” which was later set to the tune of a British song called “The Anacreontic Song” and eventually became the U.S. national anthem, “The StarSpangled Banner.” Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream: Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand, Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! —Francis Scott Key, “In Defense of Fort McHenry,” 1814

What images does Key use to describe the American spirit? Most people are familiar with only the first verse of the song; what do you think the last three verses add?

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Visit the Smithsonian Institute (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/flag) to explore an interactive feature on the flag that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner,” where clickable “hot spots” on the flag reveal elements of its history.

With the end of the war in Europe, Britain was eager to end the conflict in the Americas as well. In 1814, British and U.S. diplomats met in Flanders, in northern Belgium, to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, signed inDecember.TheboundariesbetweentheUnitedStatesandBritishCanadaremainedastheywerebefore thewar,anoutcomewelcometothoseintheUnitedStateswhofearedaruptureinthecountry’sotherwise steady expansion into the West. The War of 1812 was very unpopular in New England because it inflicted further economic harm on a region dependent on maritime commerce. This unpopularity caused a resurgence of the Federalist Party in New England. Many Federalists deeply resented the power of the slaveholding Virginians (Jefferson and then Madison), who appeared indifferent to their region. The depth of the Federalists’ discontent is illustrated by the proceedings of the December 1814 Hartford Convention, a meeting of twenty-six Federalists in Connecticut, where some attendees issued calls for New England to secede from the United States. These arguments for disunion during wartime, combined with the convention’s condemnation of the government, made Federalists appear unpatriotic. The convention forever discredited the Federalist Party and led to its downfall.

EPILOGUE: THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS Due to slow communication, the last battle in the War of 1812 happened after the Treaty of Ghent had beensignedendingthewar.AndrewJacksonhaddistinguishedhimselfinthewarbydefeatingtheCreek Indians in March 1814 before invading Florida in May of that year. After taking Pensacola, he moved his force of Tennessee fighters to New Orleans to defend the strategic port against British attack. On January 8, 1815 (despite the official end of the war), a force of battle-tested British veterans of the Napoleonic Wars attempted to take the port. Jackson’s forces devastated the British, killing over two thousand. New Orleans and the vast Mississippi River Valley had been successfully defended, ensuring the future of American settlement and commerce. The Battle of New Orleans immediately catapulted Jackson to national prominence as a war hero, and in the 1820s, he emerged as the head of the new Democratic Party.

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Bill of Rights
Citizen Genêt affair
Democratic-Republicans
impressment
Louisiana Purchase
letters of marque

Marbury v. Madison

Revolution of 1800
the Terror
XYZ affair

Key Terms

the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee individual

rights

the controversy over the French representative who tried to involve the United States in France’s war against Great Britain

advocates of limited government who were troubled by the expansive domestic policies of Washington’s administration and opposed the Federalists

the practice of capturing sailors and forcing them into military service

the U.S. purchase of the large territory of Louisiana from France in 1803

French warrants allowing ships and their crews to engage in piracy

the landmark 1803 case establishing the Supreme Court’s powers of judicial review, specifically the power to review and possibly nullify actions of Congress and the president

the peaceful transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans with the election of 1800

a period during the French Revolution characterized by extreme violence and the execution of numerous enemies of the revolutionary government, from 1793 through 1794

the French attempt to extract a bribe from the United States during the Quasi-War of

1798–1800

Summary 8.1Competing Visions: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans While they did not yet constitute distinct political parties, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, shortly after the Revolution, found themselves at odds over the Constitution and the power that it concentrated in the federalgovernment.WhilemanyoftheAnti-Federalists’fearswereassuagedbytheadoptionoftheBillof Rights in 1791, the early 1790s nevertheless witnessed the rise of two political parties: the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. These rival political factions began by defining themselves in relationship to Hamilton’s financial program, a debate that exposed contrasting views of the proper role of the federal government. By championing Hamilton’s bold financial program, Federalists, including President Washington, made clear their intent to use the federal government to stabilize the national economy and overcome the financial problems that had plagued it since the 1780s. Members of the DemocraticRepublican opposition, however, deplored the expanded role of the new national government. They argued that the Constitution did not permit the treasury secretary’s expansive program and worried that the new national government had assumed powers it did not rightfully possess. Only on the question of citizenshipwastherebroadagreement:onlyfree,whitemaleswhomettaxpayerorpropertyqualifications could cast ballots as full citizens of the republic.

8.2The New American Republic Federalists and Democratic-Republicans interpreted the execution of the French monarch and the violent establishment of a French republic in very different ways. Revolutionaries’ excesses in France and the slaves’ revolt in the French colony of Haiti raised fears among Federalists of similar radicalism and slave uprisingsonAmericanshores.TheylookedtobetterrelationshipswithGreatBritainthroughJay’sTreaty.

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Pinckney’s Treaty, which came about as a result of Jay’s Treaty, improved U.S. relations with the Spanish and opened the Spanish port of New Orleans to American commerce. Democratic-Republicans took a more positive view of the French Revolution and grew suspicious of the Federalists when they brokered Jay’s Treaty. Domestically, the partisan divide came to a dramatic head in western Pennsylvania when distillers of whiskey, many aligned with the Democratic-Republicans, took action against the federal tax on their product. Washington led a massive force to put down the uprising, demonstrating Federalist intolerance of mob action. Though divided on many issues, the majority of white citizens agreed on the necessity of eradicating the Indian presence on the frontier.

8.3Partisan Politics Partisan politics dominated the American political scene at the close of the eighteenth century. The Federalists’ and Democratic-Republicans’ views of the role of government were in direct opposition to each other, and the close elections of 1796 and 1801 show how the nation grappled with these opposing visions. The high tide of the Federalist Party came after the election of 1796, when the United States engaged in the Quasi-War with France. The issues arising from the Quasi-War gave Adams and the Federalists license to expand the powers of the federal government. However, the tide turned with the close election of 1800, when Jefferson began an administration based on Democratic-Republican ideals. A major success of Jefferson’s administration was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which helped to fulfill his vision of the United States as an agrarian republic.

8.4The United States Goes Back to War The United States was drawn into its “Second War of Independence” against Great Britain when the British, engaged in the Napoleonic Wars against France, took liberties with the fledgling nation by impressing (capturing) its sailors on the high seas and arming its Indian enemies. The War of 1812 ended with the boundaries of the United Stated remaining as they were before the war. The Indians in the Western Confederacy suffered a significant defeat, losing both their leader Tecumseh and their fight for contested land intheNorthwest. The Warof 1812proved tobeof greatimportance because itgenerated a surgeofnationalpride,withexpressionsofAmericanidentitysuchasthepoembyFrancisScottKey.The United States was unequivocally separate from Britain and could now turn as never before to expansion in the West.

Review Questions 1. Which of the following isnotone of the rights the Bill of Rights guarantees? A. the right to freedom of speech B. the right to an education C. the right to bear arms D. the right to a trial by jury

2. Which of Alexander Hamilton’s financial policies and programs seemed to benefit speculators at the expense of poor soldiers? A. the creation of a national bank B. the public credit plan C. the tax on whiskey D. the “Report on Manufactures”

3. What were the fundamental differences between the Federalist and Democratic-Republican visions?

4. Which of the following wasnottrue of Jay’s Treaty of 1794? A. It gave the United States land rights in the West Indies. B. It gave American ships the right to trade in the West Indies. C. It hardened differences between the political parties of the United States. D. It stipulated that U.S. citizens