Chapter 8 - Review

US:  A Narrative History Volume 1 – Chapter 8 Review

Crisis and Constitution [1776-1789] 

The Revolution instilled in many humble folk a new sense of pride and potential. Typical of such groups were New York's Society of Pewterers. Their banner celebrates “The Federal Plan Most Solid & Secure/Americans Their Freedom Will Ensure/ All Art Shall Flourish in Columbia's Land/And All Her Sons Join as One Social Band.”

 “These United States”

I am not a Virginian, but an American,” Patrick Henry declared in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Most likely he was lying. Certainly no one listening took him seriously, for the newly independent colonists did not identify themselves as members of a nation. They would have said, as did Thomas Jefferson, “Virginia, Sir, is my country.” Or as John Adams wrote to another native son, “Massachusetts is our country.” Jefferson and Adams were men of wide political vision and experience: both were leaders in the Continental Congress and more inclined than most to think nationally. But like other members of the revolutionary generation, they identified deeply with their home states and even more deeply with their Home Counties and towns.

It followed that allegiance to the states, not the Union, determined the shape of the first republican political experiments. For a decade after independence, the revolutionaries were less committed to creating an American nation than to organizing 13 separate state republics. The Declaration of Independence referred explicitly not to the United States but to these United States. It envisioned not one republic so much as a federation of 13.

Only when peace was restored during the decade of the 1780s were Americans forced to face some unanswered questions raised by their revolution. The Declaration proclaimed that these “free and independent states” had “full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, and establish commerce.” Did that mean that New Jersey, as a free and independent state, could sign a trade agreement with France, excluding the other states? If the United States were to be more than a loose federation, how could it assert power on a national scale? Similarly, American borderlands to the west presented problems. If these territories were settled by Americans, would they eventually join the United States? Go their own ways as independent nations? Become new colonies of Spain or England?

Such problems were more than political; they were rooted in social realities. For a political union to succeed, the inhabitants of 13 separate states had to start thinking of themselves as Americans. When it came right down to it, what united a Vermont farmer working his rocky fields and a South Carolina gentleman presiding over a vast rice plantation? What bonds existed between a Kentuckian rafting the Ohio River and a Salem merchant sailing to China for porcelain?

The portraits of Captain and Mrs. Samuel Chandler, a New England couple, project the virtuous rectitude of the new republican era.

And in a society in which all citizens were said to be “created equal,” the inevitable social inequalities had to be confronted. How could women participate in the Revolution's bid for freedom if they were not free to vote or to hold property? How would free or enslaved African Americans live in a republic based on equality? How could black Americans feel a bond with white Americans when so often the only existing bonds had been forged with chains?

To such questions there were no final answers in 1781. There was ferment, excitement, and experimentation as 13 states each sought to create their governments anew; as Americans—or rather, Virginians and New Yorkers and Georgians and citizens of other countries—began to imagine how the revolutionary virtue of equality might transform their societies. But as the decade progressed, the sense of crisis deepened.

Republican Experiments

After independence was declared in July 1776, many of America's best political minds turned to drawing up constitutions for their individual states. Thomas Jefferson deserted the Continental Congress, leaving the conduct of the war and national affairs to other men, for the more important business of creating Virginia's new government.

In truth, the state constitutions were crucial republican experiments, the first efforts at establishing a government of and by the people. All the revolutionaries agreed that the people—not a king or a few privileged aristocrats—should rule. Yet they were equally certain that republican governments were best suited to small territories. They believed that the new United States was too sprawling and its people too diverse to be safely consolidated into a single national republic. They feared, too, that the government of a large republic would inevitably grow indifferent to popular concerns, being distant from many of its citizens. Without being under the watchful eye of the people, representatives would become less accountable to the electorate and turn tyrannical. A federation of small state republics, they reasoned, would stand a far better chance of enduring.

The State Constitutions

The new state constitutions retained the basic form of their old colonial governments, all except Georgia and Pennsylvania providing for a governor and a bicameral legislature. But although most states did not alter the basic structure of their governments, they changed dramatically the balance of power among the different branches of government. Americans responded to independence with rituals of “killing the king,” like the one enacted by this New York crowd in 1776 as it pulls down a statue of George III. Americans also expressed their mistrust of monarchs and their ministers by establishing new state governments with weak executive branches.

From the republican perspective in 1776, the greatest problem of any government lay in curbing executive power. What had driven Americans into rebellion was the abuse of authority by the king and his appointed officials. To ensure that the executive could never again threaten popular liberty, the new states either accorded almost no power to their governors or abolished that office entirely. The governors had no authority to convene or dissolve the legislatures. They could not veto the legislatures' laws, grant land, or erect courts. Most important from the republican point of view, governors had few powers to appoint other state officials. All these limits were designed to deprive the executive of any patronage or other form of influence over the legislature. By reducing the governors' power, Americans hoped to preserve their states from the corruption that they deplored in British political life.

What the state governors lost, the legislatures gained. Sam Adams, the Boston rebel leader, expressed the political consensus when he declared that “every legislature of every colony ought to be the sovereign and uncontrollable Power within its own limits of territory.” To ensure that those powerful legislatures truly represented the will of the people, the new state constitutions called for annual elections and required candidates for the legislature to live in the districts they represented.

Many states even asserted the right of voters to instruct the men elected to office about how to vote on specific issues. Although no state granted universal manhood suffrage, most reduced the amount of property required of qualified voters. Finally, state supreme courts were also either elected by the legislatures or appointed by elected governors.

By investing all power in popular assemblies, Americans abandoned the British system of mixed government. In one sense, that change was fairly democratic. A majority of voters within a state could do whatever they wanted, unchecked by governors or courts. On the other hand, the arrangement opened the door for legislatures to turn as tyrannical as governors. The revolutionaries brushed that prospect aside: republican theory assured them that the people possessed a generous share of civic virtue, the capacity for selfless pursuit of the general welfare.

In an equally momentous change, the revolutionaries insisted on written state constitutions. Whenever government appeared to exceed the limits of its authority, Americans wanted to have at hand the written contract between rulers and ruled. When eighteenth-century Britons used the word constitution, they meant the existing arrangement of government—not an actual document but a collection of parliamentary laws, customs, and precedents. But Americans believed that a constitution should be a written code that stood apart from and above government, a yardstick against which the people measured the performance of their rulers. After all, they reasoned, if Britain's constitution had been written down, available for all to consult, would American rights have been violated?

From Congress to Confederation

While Americans lavished attention on their state constitutions, the national government nearly languished during the decade after 1776. With the coming of independence, the Second Continental Congress conducted the common business of the federated states. It created and maintained the Continental Army, issued currency, and negotiated with foreign powers.

But while Congress acted as a central government by common consent, it lacked any legal basis for its authority. To redress that need, in July 1776 Congress appointed a committee to draft a constitution for a national government. The urgent business of waging the war made for delay, but Congress approved the first national constitution in November 1777. It took four more years—until February 1781—for all the states to ratify these Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation provided for a government by a national legislature—essentially a continuation of the Second Continental Congress. That body had the authority to declare war and make peace, conduct diplomacy, regulate Indian affairs, appoint military and naval officers, and requisition men from the states. In affairs of finance it could coin money and issue paper currency. Extensive as these responsibilities were, Congress could not levy taxes or even regulate trade. The crucial power of the purse rested entirely with the states, as did the final power to make and execute laws. Even worse, the national government had no distinct executive branch. Congressional committees, constantly changing in their membership, not only had to make laws but had to administer and enforce them as well. With no executive to carry out the policies of finance, war, and foreign policy, the federal government's influence was extremely limited.

Those weaknesses appear more evident in hindsight. For Congress in 1777 it was no easy task to frame a new government in the midst of a war. And most American leaders of the 1770s had given little thought to federalism, the means by which political power could be divided among the states and the national government.

In any case, to have given significant powers to the national government would have aroused only opposition among the states, each jealous of its independence. Creating a strong national government would also have antagonized many Americans, who after all had just rebelled against the distant, centralized authority of Britain's king and Parliament.

Guided by republican political theory and by their colonial experience, American revolutionaries created a loose confederation of 13 independent state republics under a nearly powerless national government. They succeeded so well that the United States almost failed to survive the first decade of its independence. The problem was that republican theory and lessons from the colonial past were not always useful guides to postwar realities. Only when events forced Americans to think nationally did they begin to consider the possibility of reinventing “these United States”; this time under the yoke of a truly federal republic.

The Temptations of Peace

The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 marked the end of military crisis in America. But as the threat from Britain receded, so did the source of American unity. The many differences among Americans, most of which lay submerged during the struggle for independence, surfaced in full force. Those domestic divisions, combined with challenges to the new nation from Britain and Spain, created conflicts that neither the states nor the national government proved equal to handling.

The Temptations of the West

The greatest opportunities and the greatest problems for postwar Americans awaited in the rapidly expanding West. With the boundary of the new United States now set at the Mississippi River, more settlers spilled across the Appalachians, planting farmsteads and raw frontier towns throughout Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. By 1790 places that had been almost uninhabited by whites in 1760 held more than 2.25 million people, one-third of the nation's population.

After the Revolution, as before, western settlement fostered intense conflict. American claims that its territory stretched all the way to the Mississippi were by no means taken for granted by European and Indian powers. The West also confronted Americans with questions about their own national identity. Would the newly settled territories enter the nation as states on an equal footing with the original 13 states? Would they be ruled as dependent colonies? Could the federal government reconcile conflicting interests, cultures, and traditions over so great an area? The fate of the West, in other words, constituted a crucial test of whether “these” United States could grow and still remain united.

Foreign Intrigues

Both the British from their base in Canada and the Spanish in Florida and Louisiana hoped to chisel away at American borders. Their considerable success in the 1780s exposed the weakness of Confederation diplomacy.

Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Paris, Britain's ministers were secretly instructing Canadians to maintain their forts and trading posts inside the United States' northwestern frontier. They reckoned—correctly—that with the Continental Army disbanded, the Confederation could not force the British to withdraw.

The British also made mischief along the Confederation's northern borders, mainly with Vermont. For decades, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys had waged a war of nerves with neighboring New York, which claimed Vermont as part of its territory.

After the Revolution the Vermonters petitioned Congress for statehood, demanding independence from both New York and New Hampshire. When Congress dragged its feet, the British tried to woo Vermont into their empire as a province of Canada. That flirtation with the British pressured Congress into granting Vermont statehood in 1791. Rivalries flared along the southwestern frontier of the United States as Spain vied to win the allegiance of Indians by supplying them with British trade goods. The Indians welcomed such goods.

The loyalty of the southwestern frontier was even less certain. By 1790 more than 100,000 settlers had poured through the Cumberland Gap to reach Kentucky and Tennessee. Along with the farmers came speculators, who bought up large tracts of land from the Indians. But the commercial possibilities of the region depended entirely on access to the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans, since it was far too costly to ship southwestern produce over the rough trails east across the Appalachians. And the Mississippi route was still dominated by the Spanish, who controlled Louisiana as well as forts along western Mississippi shores as far north as St. Louis. The Spanish, seeing their opportunity, closed the Mississippi to American navigation in 1784. That action prompted serious talk among southwesterners about seceding from the United States and joining Spain's empire.

The Spanish also tried to strengthen their hold on North America by making common cause with the Indians. Of particular concern to both groups was protecting Spanish Florida from the encroachment of American settlers filtering south from Georgia—backwoods folk, Florida's governor complained, who were “nomadic like Arabs and … distinguished from savages only in their color, language, and the superiority of their depraved cunning and untrustworthiness.” So Spanish colonial officials responded eagerly to the overtures of Alexander McGillivray, a young Indian leader whose mother was of French-Creek descent and whose father was a Scots trader. His efforts brought about a treaty of alliance between the Creeks and the Spanish in 1784, quickly followed by similar alliances with the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. What cemented such treaties were the trade goods that the Spanish agreed to supply the tribes, for, as McGillivray explained, “Indians will attach themselves to and serve them best who supply their necessities.” Securing European gunpowder and guns had become essential to southeastern Indians, because their entire economies now revolved around hunting and selling deerskins to white traders. So eager were the Spanish to “serve” the Indians in that matter that they even permitted British merchants, who could command a steady supply of manufactured goods, to monopolize the Indian trade. The largest dealers developed a trading network that reached all the way to the Mississippi by the 1790s. This flood of British merchandise sustained the alliance between the Spanish and the Indians, while British guns enabled the Creeks to defend their hunting territory from American invaders.

Disputes among the States

As if foreign intrigues were not divisive enough, the states continued to argue among themselves over western land claims. The old royal charters for some colonies had extended their boundaries all the way to the Mississippi and beyond. But the charters were often vague, granting both Massachusetts and Virginia, for example, undisputed possession of present-day Wisconsin. In contrast, other charters limited state boundaries to within a few hundred miles of the Atlantic coast. Landed states and landless states such as Virginia wanted to secure control over the large territory granted them by their charters. Landed states and landless states (which included Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New Jersey) called on Congress to restrict the boundaries of landed states and to convert western lands into a domain administered by the Confederation.

The landless states argued that the landed states enjoyed an unfair advantage from the money they could raise selling their western claims. That revenue would allow landed states to reduce taxes, and lower taxes would lure settlers from the landless states. Meanwhile, landless states would have to raise taxes to make up for the departed taxpayers, causing even more residents to leave. Speculators were also eager to see Congress control the western lands. Before the Revolution, many prominent citizens of landless Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey had purchased tracts in the West from Indians. These speculators now also lobbied for congressional ownership of all western lands—except those tracts that they had already purchased from the Indians. The landless states lost the opening round in the contest over ownership of the West. The Articles of Confederation acknowledged the old charter claims of the landed states. Then Maryland, one of the smallest landless states, retaliated by refusing to ratify the Articles. Since every state had to approve the Articles before they were formally accepted, the fate of the United States hung in the balance. One by one the landed states relented, Virginia being the last. Only then did Maryland ratify the Articles, in February 1781.

The More Democratic West

An even greater bone of contention concerned the sort of men westerners elected to political office. The state legislatures of the 1780s were both larger and more democratic in their membership than the old colonial assemblies. Before the Revolution no more than a fifth of the men serving in the assemblies were middle-class farmers or artisans. Government was almost exclusively the domain of the wealthiest merchants, lawyers, and planters. After the Revolution twice as many state legislators were men of moderate wealth. The shift was more marked in the North, where middle-class men predominated among representatives. But in every state, some men of modest means, humble background, and little formal education attained political power.

State legislatures became more democratic in their membership mainly because as backcountry districts grew, so too did the number of their representatives. Since western districts tended to be less developed economically and culturally, their leading men were less rich and cultivated than the eastern seaboard elite. But many of these eastern republican gentlemen, while endorsing government by popular consent, doubted whether ordinary people were fit to rule. The problem, they contended, was that the new western legislators concerned themselves only with the narrow interests of their constituents, not with the good of the whole state. As Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale College, observed, the new breed of politicians were those with “the all-prevailing popular talent of coaxing and flattering,” who “whenever a bill is read in the legislature … instantly thinks how it will affect his constituents.” And if state legislatures could not rise above narrow self-interest, how long would it be before a concern for the general welfare simply withered away?

The Northwest Territory

Such fears of “democratic excess” also influenced policy when Congress finally came to decide what to do with the Northwest Territory. Carved out of the land ceded by the states to the national government, the Northwest Territory comprised the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. With so many white settlers moving into these lands, Congress was faced with a crucial test of its federal system. If an orderly way could not be devised to expand the confederation of states beyond the original 13 colonies, the new territories might well become independent countries or even colonies of Spain or Britain. Congress dealt with the issue of expansion by adopting three ordinances.

The first, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, divided the Northwest Territory into 10 states, each to be admitted to the Union on equal terms as soon as its population equaled that in any of the existing states. In the meantime, Jefferson provided for democratic self-government of the territory by all free adult males. A second ordinance of 1785 set up an efficient mechanism for dividing and selling public lands. The Northwest Territory was surveyed into townships six miles square. Each township was then divided into 36 lots of one square mile, or 640 acres.

Congress waited in vain for buyers to flock to the land offices it established. The cost of even a single lot—$640—was too steep for most farmers. Disappointed by the shortage of buyers and desperate for money, Congress finally accepted a proposition submitted by a private company of land speculators who offered to buy some 6 million acres in present-day southeastern Ohio. That several members of Congress numbered among the company's stockholders no doubt added to enthusiasm for the deal.

The transaction concluded, Congress calmed the speculators' worries that incoming settlers might enjoy too much self-government by scrapping Jefferson's democratic design and substituting the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. That ordinance provided for a period in which Congress held sway in the territory through its appointees—a governor, a secretary, and three judges. When the population reached 5,000 free adult males, a legislature was to be established, although its laws required the governor's approval. A representative could sit in Congress but had no vote. When the population reached 60,000, the inhabitants might apply for statehood, and the whole Northwest Territory was to be divided into not less than three or more than five states. The ordinance also guaranteed basic rights—freedom of religion and trial by jury—and provided for the support of public education. Equally significant, it also outlawed slavery throughout the territory.

With the Northwest Ordinance in place, Congress had succeeded in extending republican government to the West and incorporating the frontier into the new nation. The Republic now had an orderly way to expand its federation of states in a way that minimized the tensions between the genteel East and the democratic West that had plagued the colonies and the Confederation throughout much of the eighteenth century. Yet ironically, the new ordinance served to heighten tensions in a different way. By limiting the spread of slavery in the northern states, Congress deepened the critical social and economic differences between the North and South, evident already in the 1780s.

The consequences of the new territorial system were also significant for hundreds of thousands of the continent's other inhabitants. In the short term, the ordinance ignored completely the rights of the Shawnee, Chippewa, and other Indian peoples who lived in the region. In the long term, the system “laid the blueprint,” as one historian noted, for bringing new lands into the United States.  The ordinance thus accelerated the pressures on Indian lands and aggravated the social and geographic dislocations already set in motion by disease and the western conflicts of the Revolutionary War.

Slavery and Sectionalism

When white Americans declared their independence, they owned nearly half a million black Americans. African Americans of the revolutionary generation, most of them enslaved, constituted 20 percent of the total population of the colonies in 1775, and nearly 90 percent of them lived in the South. Yet few political leaders directly confronted the issue of whether slavery should be permitted to exist in a truly republican society.

When political discussion did stray toward the subject of slavery, southerners—especially ardent republicans—bristled defensively. Theirs was a difficult position, riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, they had condemned parliamentary taxation as tantamount to political “slavery” and had rebelled, declaring that all men were “created equal.” On the other hand, enslaved African Americans formed the basis of the South's plantation economy. To surrender slavery, southerners believed, would be to usher in economic ruin.

Some planters in the Upper South resolved the dilemma by freeing their slaves. Such decisions were made easier by changing economic conditions in the Chesapeake. As planters shifted from tobacco toward wheat, a crop demanding a good deal less labor, Virginia and Maryland liberalized their manumission statutes, laws providing for freeing slaves. Between 1776 and 1789, most southern states also joined the North in prohibiting the importation of slaves, and a few antislavery societies appeared in the Upper South. But no southern state legally abolished slavery. Masters defended their right to hold human property in the name of republicanism.

Eighteenth-century republicans regarded property as crucial, for it provided a man and his family with security, status, and wealth. More important, it provided a measure of independence: to be able to act freely, without fear or favor of others. People without property were dangerous, republicans believed, because the poor could never be politically independent. Southern defenders of slavery thus argued that free, propertyless black people would pose a political threat to the liberty of propertied white citizens. Subordinating the human rights of blacks to the property rights of whites, southern republicans reached the paradoxical conclusion that their freedom depended on keeping African Americans in bondage.

The North followed a different course. Because its economy depended far less on slave labor, black emancipation did not run counter to powerful economic interests. Antislavery societies, the first founded by the Quakers in 1775, spread throughout the northern states during the next quarter century. Over the same period the legislatures of most northern states provided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery. Freedom for most northern African Americans came slowly, but by 1830 there were fewer than 3,000 slaves out of a total northern black population of 125,000.

The Revolution, which had been fought for liberty and equality, did little to change the status of most black Americans. By 1800 more enslaved African Americans lived in the United States than had lived there in 1776. Slavery continued to grow in the Lower South as the rice culture of the Carolinas and Georgia expanded and as the new cotton culture spread westward.

A larger number of slaves than ever before became free during the war and in the following decades, whether through military service, successful escape, manumission, or gradual emancipation. All these developments fostered the growth of free black communities, especially in the Upper South and in northern cities. By 1810 free African Americans made up 10 percent of the total population of Maryland and Virginia.

The composition of the postwar free community changed as well. Before independence most free blacks had been either mulattoes—the offspring of interracial unions—or former slaves too sick or aged to have value as laborers. In contrast, a larger proportion of the free population of the 1780s were darker skinned, younger, and healthier. This group injected new vitality into black communal life, organizing independent schools, churches, and mutual benefit societies for the growing number of “free people of color.”

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones led the way in these efforts after being ejected from their pews in the midst of prayers one Sunday at St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Both men ended up founding independent black churches.

After the Revolution, slavery ceased to be a national institution. It became the peculiar institution of a single region, the American South. The isolation of slavery in one section set North and South on radically different courses of social development, sharpening economic and political divisions.

Wartime Economic Disruption

With the outbreak of the Revolution, Americans had suffered an immediate economic loss. Formerly, Britain had supplied manufactured goods, markets for American exports, and credit that enabled commerce to flourish. No longer. Hardest hit were southern planters, who had to seek new customers for their tobacco, cotton, and rice as well as find new sources of capital to finance production. Northerners too faced difficulties, for their major seaports were occupied for a time by British troops, whose presence disrupted commercial activity.

Matters did not improve with the coming of peace. France and Britain flooded the new states with their manufactures, and postwar Americans, eager for luxuries, indulged in a most unrepublican spending spree. The flurry of buying left some American merchants and consumers as deeply in debt as their governments. When loans from private citizens and foreign creditors like France proved insufficient to finance the fighting, both Congress and the states printed paper money—a whopping total of $400 million. The paper currency was backed only by the government's promise to redeem the bills with money from future taxes, because legislatures balked at the unpopular alternative of levying taxes during the war. For the bills to be redeemed, the United States had to survive, so by the end of 1776, when Continental forces sustained a series of defeats, paper money started to depreciate dramatically. By 1781 it was virtually without value, and Americans coined the expression “not worth a Continental.”

The printing of paper money, combined with a wartime shortage of goods, triggered an inflationary spiral. As goods became, scarcer and scarcer, they cost more and more worthless dollars. In this spiral, creditors were gouged by debtors, who paid them back with depreciated currency. At the same time soaring prices for food and manufactured goods eroded the buying power of wage earners and small farmers. And the end of the war brought on demands for prompt repayment from the new nation's foreign creditors as well as from soldiers seeking back pay and pensions.

Congress could do nothing. With no power to regulate trade, it could neither dam the stream of imported goods rushing into the states nor stanch the flow of gold and silver to Europe to pay for these items. With no power to prohibit the states from issuing paper money, it could not halt depreciation.  With no power to regulate wages or prices, it could not curb inflation. With no power to tax, it could not reduce the public debt. Efforts to grant Congress greater powers met with determined resistance from the states. They refused Congress any revenue of its own, fearing the first steps toward “arbitrary” government.

In 1787 in Philadelphia, the year delegates to the Constitutional Convention met, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The first church was a former blacksmith's shop that the members hauled to a site they purchased on Sixth Street. By the time this illustration was created in 1829, a more spacious building had replaced the first church.

Within states, too, economic problems aroused discord. Some major merchants and large commercial farmers had profited handsomely during the war by selling supplies to the American, British, and French armies at high prices. Eager to protect their windfall, they lobbied state legislatures for an end to inflationary monetary policies. They pushed for the passage of high taxes to pay wartime debts, a paper currency that was backed by gold and silver, and an active policy to encourage foreign trade.

Less affluent men fought back, pressing legislatures for programs that met their needs. Western farmers, often in debt, urged the states to print more paper money and to pass laws lowering taxes and postponing the foreclosure of mortgages. Artisans opposed merchants by calling for protection from low-priced foreign imports that competed with the goods they produced. They set themselves against farmers as well by demanding price regulation of the farm products they consumed. In the continuing struggle, the state legislatures became the battleground of competing economic factions, each bent on gaining its own particular advantage.

As the 1780s wore on, conflicts mounted. As long as the individual states remained sovereign, the Confederation was crippled—unable to conduct foreign affairs effectively, unable to set coherent economic policy, unable to deal with discontent in the West. Equally dismaying was the discovery that many Americans, instead of being selflessly concerned for the public good, selfishly pursued their private interests.

Republican Society

The war for independence transformed not only America's government and economy but also its society and culture. Inspired by the Declaration's ideal of equality, some Americans rejected the subordinate position assigned to them under the old colonial order. Westerners, newly wealthy entrepreneurs, urban artisans, and women all claimed greater freedom, power, and recognition. The authority of the traditional leaders of government, society, and the family came under a new scrutiny; the impulse to defer to social superiors became less automatic. The new assertiveness demonstrated how deeply egalitarian assumptions were taking root in American culture.

The New Men of the Revolution

The Revolution gave rise to a new sense of social identity and a new set of ambitions among several groups of men who had once accepted a humbler status. The more democratic society of the frontier emboldened westerners to believe themselves the equals of easterners. As one Kentuckian explained to James Madison, the western migrants “must make a very different mass from one which is composed of men born and raised on the same spot…. They see none about them to whom or to whose families they have been accustomed to think themselves inferior.”

The war also offered opportunities to aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere, and often they were not the same men who had prospered before the war. At a stroke, independence swept away the political prominence of loyalists, whose ranks included an especially high number of government officials, large landowners, and major merchants. And while loyalists found their properties confiscated by revolutionary governments, other Americans grew rich. Many northern merchants gained newfound wealth from privateering or military contracts. Commercial farmers in the mid-Atlantic states prospered from the high food prices caused by wartime scarcity and army demand. The Revolution effected no dramatic redistribution of wealth. Indeed, the gap between rich and poor increased during the 1780s. But the republican ideal of equality emboldened city artisans to demand a more prominent role in politics.

Calls for men of their own kind to represent them in government came as a rude shock to such gentlemen as South Carolina's William Henry Drayton, who balked at sharing power with men “who were never in a way to study” anything except “how to cut up a beast in the market to best advantage, to cobble an old shoe in the neatest manner, or to build a necessary house.” The journeymen who worked for master craftsmen also exhibited a new sense of independence, forming new organizations to secure higher wages.

But the greatest gains accrued to those men newly enriched by the war and by the opportunities of independence. Representative of this aspiring group was William Cooper, a Pennsylvania Quaker who did not support the Revolution but in its aftermath strove to transform himself from a wheelwright into a gentleman. He hoped to become a gentleman by transforming thousands of acres of hilly, heavily forested land around Otsego Lake in upstate New York into wheat-producing farms clustered around a market village called Cooperstown. Yankee emigrants fleeing the shrinking farms of long-settled New England made Cooper's vision a reality and made him the leading land developer of the 1790s. But the influx of white settlement radically altered the environment of what had once been part of Iroquoia. Farmers killed off panthers, bears, and wolves to protect their livestock. Grains farming leeched nutrients from the thin topsoil, forcing farmers to clear more trees, and as the forest barrier fell, weeds and insects invaded. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the children of many small farmers were migrating even farther west, to western New York and northern Ohio.

Similar scenarios played out on frontiers throughout the new United States. And everywhere, too, men like William Cooper demanded and received social recognition and political influence. Even though some, like Cooper, never lost the crude manners that betrayed humble origins, they styled themselves as the “aristocracy of merit” enshrined by republican ideals.

The New Women of the Revolution

Not long after the fighting with Britain had broken out, Margaret Livingston of New York wrote to her sister Catherine, “You know that our Sex are doomed to be obedient in every stage of life so that we shan’t be great gainers by this contest.” By war's end, however, Eliza Wilkinson from rural South Carolina was complaining boldly to a woman friend: “The men say we have no business with political matters … it's not our sphere…. But, I won't have it thought that because we are the weaker sex (as to bodily strength my dear) we are Capable of nothing more, than minding the Dairy … surely we may have enough sense to give our Opinions.”

What separated Margaret Livingston's resignation from Eliza Wilkinson's assertion of personal worth and independence was the Revolution. Eliza Wilkinson had managed her parents' plantation during the war and defended it from British marauders. Other women discovered similar reserves of skill and resourcefulness.  When soldiers returned home, some were surprised to find their wives and daughters, who had been running family farms and businesses, less submissive and more self-confident.

But American men had not fought a revolution for the equality of American women. In fact, male revolutionaries gave no thought whatsoever to the role of women in the new nation, assuming that those of the “weaker sex” were incapable of making informed and independent political decisions. Most women of the revolutionary generation agreed that the proper female domain was the home, not the public arena of politics. Still, the currents of the Revolution occasionally left gaps that allowed women to display their keen political interests. When a loosely worded provision in the New Jersey state constitution gave the vote to “all free inhabitants” owning a specified amount of property, white widows and single women went to the polls. Only in 1807 did the state legislature close the loophole.

Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication

In the wake of the Revolution there also appeared in England a book that would become a classic text of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Attracting a wide, if not widely approving, readership in America as well, it called not only for laws to guarantee women civil and political equality but also for educational reforms to ensure their social and economic equality.

Like many young, single English women with more wit than fortune, Wollstonecraft started her working life as a governess and a school's headmistress. Then she turned to writing for her livelihood, producing book reviews, translations, a novel, and a treatise on women's education before dashing off Vindication in only six months. She charged that men deliberately conspired to keep women in “a state of perpetual childhood” by giving them inferior, frivolous educations. That encouraged young girls to fixate on fashion and flirtation and made them “only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.” Girls, she proposed, should receive the same education as boys, including training that would prepare them for careers in medicine, politics, and business. No woman should have to pin her hopes for financial security on making a good marriage, Wollstonecraft argued. On the contrary, well-educated and resourceful women capable of supporting themselves would make the best wives and mothers, assets to the family and the nation.

Vindication might have been written in gunpowder rather than ink, given the reaction it aroused on both sides of the Atlantic. At first, Wollstonecraft won more than a few defenders among both men and women. This favorable reception ended abruptly after her death in childbirth in 1797, when a memoir written by her husband revealed that she had lived out of wedlock with him—and before him, with another lover. Even so, some of her readers continued to admire her views. The Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Drinker confided to her diary that “In very many of her sentiments, [Wollstonecraft] … speaks my mind.”

Republican Motherhood and Education

Wollstonecraft's ideas also lent support to the leading educational reformers in the revolutionary generation. Her sentiments echo in the writings of Judith Sargent Murray, a New Englander who urged the cultivation of women's minds to encourage self-respect and celebrated “excellency in our sex.” Her fellow reformer, the Philadelphian Benjamin Rush, agreed that only educated and independent-minded women could raise the informed and self-reliant citizens that a republican government required.

The Revolution also prompted some states to reform their marriage laws, making divorce somewhat easier, although it remained extremely rare. But while women won greater freedom to divorce, courts became less concerned with enforcing a widow's traditional legal claim to one-third of her spouse's real estate. And married women still could not sue or be sued, make wills or contracts, or buy and sell property. Any wages that they earned went to their husbands; so did all personal property that wives brought into a marriage; so did the rents and profits of any real estate they owned. Despite the high ideals of republican motherhood, most women remained confined to the domestic sphere of the home and deprived of the most basic legal and political rights.

The Attack on Aristocracy

Why wasn't the American Revolution more revolutionary? Independence secured the full political equality of white men who owned property, but women were still deprived of political rights, African Americans of human rights.

Why did the revolutionaries stop short of extending equality to the most unequal groups in American society—and with so little sense that they were being inconsistent?

In part, the lack of concern was rooted in republican ideas themselves. Republican ideology viewed property as the key to independence and power. Lacking property, women and black Americans were easily consigned to the custody of husbands and masters. Then, too, prejudice played its part: the perception of women and blacks as naturally inferior beings.

But revolutionary leaders also failed to press for greater equality because they conceived their crusade in terms of eliminating the evils of a European past dominated by kings and aristocrats. They believed that the great obstacle to equality was monarchy—kings and queens who bestowed hereditary honors and political office on favored individuals and granted legal privileges and monopolies to favored churches and businesses. These artificial inequalities posed the real threat to liberty, most republicans concluded. In other words, the men of the Revolution were intent on attaining equality by leveling off the top of society. It did not occur to most republicans that the cause of equality could also be served by raising up the bottom—by attacking the laws and prejudices that kept African Americans enslaved and women dependent.

Disestablishment of State-Supported Churches

The most significant reform of the republican campaign against artificial privilege was the dismantling of state-supported churches. Most states had a religious establishment. In New York and the South, it was the Anglican Church; in New England, the Congregational church. Since the 1740s dissenters who did not worship at state churches had protested laws that taxed all citizens to support the clergy of established denominations. After the Revolution, dissenters argued that equality required ending such privileges. As more dissenters became voters, state legislators gradually abolished state support for Anglican and Congregational churches.

In the same anti-aristocratic spirit reformers attacked the Society of Cincinnati, a group organized by former officers of the Continental Army in 1783. The society, which was merely a social club for veterans, was forced to disband for its policy of passing on its membership rights to eldest sons. In this way, critics charged, the Cincinnati was creating artificial distinctions and perpetuating hereditary warrior nobility.

Today, many of the republican efforts at reform seem misdirected. While only a handful of revolutionaries worked for the education of women and the emancipation of slaves, enormous zeal went into fighting threats from a monarchical past that had never existed in America. Yet the threat from kings and aristocrats was real to the revolutionaries—and indeed remained real in many parts of Europe. Their determination to sweep away every shred of formal privilege ensured that these forms of inequality never took root in America.

From Confederation to Constitution

While Americans in many walks of life sought to realize the republican commitment to equality, Congress wrestled with the problem of preserving the nation itself. With the new republic slowly rending itself to pieces, some political leaders concluded that neither the Confederation nor the state legislatures were able to remedy the basic difficulties facing the nation. But how could the states be convinced to surrender their sovereign powers? The answer came in the wake of two events—one foreign, one domestic—that lent momentum to the cause of strengthening the central government.

The Jay-Gardoqui Treaty

The international episode was a debate over a proposed treaty with Spain. In 1785 southwesterners still could not legally navigate the Mississippi and still were threatening to secede from the union and annex their territory to Spain's American empire. To shore up southwestern loyalties, Congress instructed its secretary of foreign affairs, John Jay, to negotiate an agreement with Spain preserving American rights to navigate on the Mississippi River. But the Spanish emissary, Don Diego de Gardoqui, sweet-talked Jay into accepting a treaty by which the United States would give up all rights to the Mississippi for 25 years. In return, Spain agreed to grant trading privileges to American merchants.

Jay, a New Yorker, knew more than a few northern merchants who were eager to open new markets. But when the proposed treaty became public knowledge, southwesterners denounced it as nothing short of betrayal. The treaty was never ratified, but the hostility stirred up during the debate revealed the strength of sectional feelings. Only a decade later, when the Senate ratified a treaty negotiated with Spain by Thomas Pinckney in 1796, did Americans gain full access to the Mississippi.

Shays's Rebellion

On the heels of this humiliation by Spain came an internal conflict that challenged the notion that individual states could maintain order in their own territories. The trouble erupted in western Massachusetts, where many small farmers were close to ruin. By 1786 farm wages and prices had fallen sharply and farmers were selling little produce. Yet they still had to pay mortgages on their farms and other debts. In 1786 the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature obliged the farmers with a package of relief measures. But creditors in eastern Massachusetts, determined to safeguard their own investments, persuaded the upper house to defeat the measures.

In the summer of 1786 western farmers responded, demanding that the upper house of the legislature be abolished and that the relief measures go into effect. That autumn 2,000 farmers rose in armed rebellion, led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolution. They closed the county courts to halt creditors from foreclosing on their farms and marched on the federal arsenal at Springfield. The state militia quelled the uprising by February 1787, but the insurrection left many in Massachusetts and the rest of the country thoroughly shaken.

Alarmed conservatives saw Shays's Rebellion as the consequence of radical democracy. “The natural effects of pure democracy are already produced among us,” lamented one republican gentleman; “it is a war against virtue, talents, and property carried on by the dregs and scum of mankind.” He was wrong. The rebels with Daniel Shays were no impoverished rabble. They were reputable members of western communities who wanted their property protected and believed that government existed to provide that protection. The Massachusetts state legislature had been unable to safeguard the property of farmers from the inroads of recession or to protect the property of creditors from the armed debtors who closed the courts. It had failed, in other words, to fulfill the most basic aim of republican government. Other states with discontented debtors feared what the example of western Massachusetts might mean for the future of the Confederation itself. But by 1786 Shays's Rebellion supplied only the sharpest jolt to a movement for reform that was already under way. Even before the rebellion, a group of Virginians had proposed a meeting of the states to adopt a uniform system of commercial regulations. Once assembled at Annapolis in September 1786, the delegates from five states agreed to a more ambitious undertaking. They called for a second, broader meeting in Philadelphia, which Congress approved, for the “express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”

Framing a Federal Constitution

It was the wettest spring anyone could remember. The 55 men who traveled over muddy roads to Philadelphia in May 1787 arrived drenched and bespattered. Fortunately, most of the travelers were men in their 30s and 40s, young enough to survive a good soaking. Since most were gentlemen of some means—planters, merchants, and lawyers with powdered wigs and prosperous paunches—they could recover from the rigors of their journey in the best accommodations offered by America's largest city.

The delegates came from all the states except Rhode Island. The rest of New England supplied shrewd backroom politicians—Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth from Connecticut and Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry, Massachusetts men who had learned a trick or two from Sam Adams. The middle states marshaled much of the intellectual might: two Philadelphia lawyers, John Dickinson and James Wilson; one Philadelphia financier, Robert Morris; and the aristocratic Gouverneur Morris. From New York there was Alexander Hamilton, the mercurial and ambitious young protégé of Washington. South Carolina provided fiery orators Charles Pinckney and John Rutledge.

It was “an assembly of the demi-gods,” gushed Thomas Jefferson, who, along with John Adams, was serving as a diplomat in Europe when the convention met. In fact, the only delegate who looked even remotely divine was the convention's presiding deity. Towering a full half foot taller than most of his colleagues, George Washington displayed his usual self-possession from a chair elevated on the speaker's platform in the Pennsylvania State House, where the delegates met. At first glance, the delegate of least commanding presence was Washington's fellow Virginian, James Madison. Short and slightly built, the 36-year-old Madison had no profession except hypochondria; he read a great deal and dressed in black. But he was an astute politician and a brilliant political thinker who, more than anyone else; shaped the framing of the federal Constitution.

The delegates from 12 different states had two things in common. They were all men of considerable political experience, and they all recognized the need for a stronger national union. So when the Virginia delegation introduced Madison's outline for a new central government, the convention was ready to listen.

The Virginia and New Jersey Plans

What Madison had in mind was a truly national republic, not a confederation of independent states. His “Virginia Plan” proposed a central government with three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Furthermore, the legislative branch, Congress, would possess the power to veto all state legislation. In place of the Confederation's single assembly, Madison substituted a bicameral legislature, with a lower house elected directly by the people and an upper house chosen by the lower, from nominations made by state legislatures. Representatives to both houses would be apportioned according to population—a change from practice under the Articles, in which each state had a single vote in Congress. Madison also revised the structure of government that had existed under the Articles by adding an executive, who would be elected by Congress, and an independent federal judiciary.

After two weeks of debate over the Virginia Plan, William Paterson, a lawyer from New Jersey, presented a less radical counterproposal. Although his “New Jersey Plan” increased Congress's power to tax and to regulate trade, it kept the national government as a unicameral assembly, with each state receiving one vote in Congress under the policy of equal representation. The delegates took just four days to reject Paterson's plan. Most endorsed Madison's design for a stronger central government.

Even so, the issue of apportioning representation continued to divide the delegates. While smaller states pressed for each state's having an equal vote in Congress, larger states backed Madison's provision for basing representation on population. Underlying the dispute over representation was an even deeper rivalry between southern and northern states. While northern and southern populations were nearly equal in the 1780s, and the South's population was growing more rapidly, the northern states were more numerous. Giving the states equal votes would put the South at a disadvantage. Southerners feared being outvoted in Congress by the northern states and felt that only proportional representation would protect the interests of their section.

That division turned into a deadlock as the wet spring burned off into a blazing summer. Delegates suffered the daily torture of staring at a large sun painted on the speaker's chair occupied by Washington. The stifling heat was made even worse because the windows remained shut to keep any news of the proceedings from drifting out into the Philadelphia streets.

The Deadlock Broken

Finally, as the heat wave broke, so did the political stalemate. On July 2 a committee headed by Benjamin Franklin suggested a compromise. States would be equally represented in the upper house of Congress, each state legislature appointing two senators to six-year terms. That satisfied the smaller states. In the lower house of Congress, which alone could initiate money bills, representation was to be apportioned according to population. Every 30,000 inhabitants would elect one representative for a two-year term. A slave was to count as three-fifths of a free person in the calculation of population, and the slave trade was to continue until 1808. That satisfied the larger states and the South.

By the end of August the convention was prepared to approve the final draft of the Constitution. The delegates agreed that the executive, now called the president, would be chosen every four years. Direct election seemed out of the question—after all, how could citizens in South Carolina know anything about a presidential candidate who happened to live in distant Massachusetts, or vice versa? But if voters instead chose presidential electors, those eminent men would likely have been involved in national politics, have known the candidates personally, and be prepared to vote wisely. Thus the Electoral College was established, with each state's total number of senators and representatives determining its share of electoral votes.

An array of other powers ensured that the executive would remain independent and strong. He would have command over the armed forces, authority to conduct diplomatic relations, responsibility to nominate judges and officials in the executive branch, and the power to veto congressional legislation. Just as the executive branch was made independent; so too the federal judiciary was separated from the other two branches of government. Madison believed that this clear separation of powers was essential to a balanced republican government.

Madison's only real defeat came when the convention refused to give Congress veto power over state legislation. Still, the new bicameral national legislature enjoyed much broader authority than Congress had under the Confederation, including the power to tax and to regulate commerce. The Constitution also limited the powers of state legislatures, prohibiting them from levying duties on trade, coining money or issuing paper currency, and conducting foreign relations. The Constitution and the acts passed by Congress were declared the supreme law of the land, taking precedence over any legislation passed by the states. And changing the Constitution would not be easy.

Amendments could be proposed only by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or in a convention requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Ratification of amendments required approval by three-quarters of the states.

On September 17, 1787, 39 of the 42 delegates remaining in Philadelphia signed the Constitution. It was fortunate that the signatories included so many lawyers, because the summer's proceedings had been of such dubious legality that many skilled attorneys would be needed to make them seem otherwise. Charged only to revise the Articles, the delegates had instead written a completely new frame of government. And to speed up ratification, the convention decided that the Constitution would go into effect after only nine states had approved it, overlooking the fact that even a revision of the Articles would have required the assent of all state legislatures. They further declared that the people themselves—not the state legislatures—would pass judgment on the Constitution in special ratifying conventions. To serve final notice that the new central government was a republic of the people and not merely another confederation of states, Governor Morris of Pennsylvania hit on a happy turn of phrase to introduce the Constitution. “We the People,” the document begins, “in Order to form a more perfect Union …”

Ratification

With grave misgivings on the part of many, the states called for conventions to decide whether to ratify the new Constitution. Those Americans with the gravest misgivings—the Anti-Federalists as they came to be called—voiced familiar republican fears. Older and less cosmopolitan than their Federalist opponents, the Anti-Federalists drew on their memories of the struggle with England to frame their criticisms of the Constitution. Expanding the power of the central government at the expense of the states, they warned, would lead to corrupt and arbitrary rule by new aristocrats. Extending a republic over a large territory, they cautioned, would separate national legislators from the interests and close oversight of their constituents.

Madison responded to these objections in The Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays written with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay during the winter of 1787–1788. He countered Anti-Federalist concerns over the centralization of power by pointing out that each separate branch of the national government would keep the others within the limits of their legal authority. That mechanism of checks and balances would prevent the executive from oppressing the people while preventing the people from oppressing themselves.

To answer Anti-Federalist objections to a national republic, Madison drew on the ideas of an English philosopher, David Hume. In his famous tenth essay in The Federalist Papers, Madison argued that in a great republic, “the Society becomes broken into a greater variety of interests, of pursuits, of passions, which check each other.” The larger the territory, the more likely it was to contain multiple political interests and parties, so that no single faction could dominate. Instead, each would cancel out the others. The one Anti-Federalist criticism Madison could not get around was the absence of a national bill of rights. Opponents insisted on an explicit statement of rights to secure the freedoms of individuals and minorities from being violated by the federal government. Madison finally promised to place a bill of rights before Congress immediately after the Constitution was ratified.

Throughout the early months of 1788, Anti-Federalists continued their opposition. But they lacked the articulate and influential leadership that rallied behind the Constitution and commanded greater access to the public press. In the end, too, Anti-Federalist fears of centralized power proved less compelling than Federalist prophecies of the chaos that would follow if the Constitution were not adopted.

By the end of July 1788 all but two states had voted in favor of ratification. The last holdout—Rhode Island, to no one's surprise—finally came aboard in May 1790, after Madison had carried through on his pledge to submit a bill of rights to the new Congress. Indeed, these 10 amendments—ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution by the end of 1791—proved to be the Anti-Federalists' most impressive legacy. The bill of rights set the most basic terms for defining personal liberty in the United States. Among the rights guaranteed were freedom of religion, the press, and speech, as well as the right to assemble and petition and the right to bear arms. The amendments also established clear procedural safeguards, including the right to a trial by jury and protection against illegal searches and seizures. They prohibited excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishment, and the quartering of troops in private homes.

Within the span of a single generation, Americans had declared their independence twice. In many ways the political freedom claimed from Britain in 1776 was less remarkable than the intellectual freedom from the Old World that Americans achieved by agreeing to the Constitution. The Constitution represented a triumph of the imagination—a challenge to many beliefs long cherished by western Europe's republican thinkers.

Revolutionary ideals had been deeply influenced by the conflicts of British politics, in particular the Opposition's warnings about the dangers of executive power. Those concerns at first committed the revolutionaries to making legislatures supreme. In the end, though, Americans ratified a constitution that provided for an independent executive and a balanced government. The Opposition's fears of distant, centralized power had at first prompted the revolutionaries to embrace state sovereignty. But, in the Constitution, Americans established a national government with authority independent of the states. Finally, the common sense among all of Western Europe's republican theorists—that large national republics were an impossibility—was rejected by Americans, making the United States an impossibility that still endures.

What, then, became of the last tenet of the old republican creed—the belief that civic virtue would sustain popular liberty? The hard lessons of the war and the crises of the 1780s withered confidence in the capacity of Americans to sacrifice their private interests for the public welfare. The Constitution reflected the view that interest rather than virtue shaped the behavior of most people most of the time and that the clash of diverse interest groups would remain a constant of public life.

Yet Madison and many other Federalists did not believe that the competition between private interests would always foster the public welfare. That goal would be met instead by the new national government acting as “a disinterested and dispassionate umpire in disputes between different passions and interests in the State.”  A large republic, Federalists believed, with its millions of citizens, would yield more of that scarce resource—disinterested gentlemen dedicated to serving the public good. Such gentlemen, in Madison's words, “whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices,” would fill the small number of national offices.

Not all the old revolutionaries agreed. Anti-Federalists drawn from the ranks of ordinary Americans still believed that the national government should be composed of representations from every social class and occupational group, not dominated by “enlightened” gentlemen. “These lawyers and men of learning, and moneyed men, that talk so finely,” complained one Anti-Federalist, would “get all the power and all of the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folks.”

That fear made Patrick Henry so ardent an Anti-Federalist that he refused to attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787, saying that he “smelt a rat.” “I am not a Virginian, but an American,” Henry had once declared. Most likely he was lying. Or perhaps Patrick Henry, a southerner and a slaveholder, could see himself as an “American” only so long as sovereignty remained firmly in the hands of the individual states. Henry's convictions, 70 years later, would rise again to haunt the Union.

Chapter Summary

The American Revolution did not create an American national identity. Perhaps those who had served with the Continentals developed an allegiance to the army as a truly national institution, but most inhabitants of "these United States" and their political leaders did not yet think in terms of loyalty to a national cause. For a decade after independence, most revolutionaries remained less committed to creating an American nation, a single national republic, than to organizing 13 separate and loosely federated state republics.

Republican Experiments

Strong local loyalties, as well as the conviction that republics could not prosper over large territories, determined the shape of the first state constitutions. These crucial early experiments in establishing a republican government maintained the basic structure of the old colonial polities, but dramatically altered the balance of power among the branches of government. Popularly elected legislatures became the dominant force in the new governments, controlling not only weak executives but also the judiciary. Revolutionaries thus largely abandoned the British system of mixed government. They also departed from British practices by insisting on written state constitutions as a law superior to the government that defined the full scope of popular liberty.

From Congress to Confederation

While Americans focused on constructing their state constitutions, the national government received little attention. In fact, it took four years after 1777 for all the states to approve the Articles of Confederation. The Articles provided for a government by a national legislature, essentially a continuation of the Second Continental Congress. But they left the crucial power of the purse entirely to the states, as well as all final power to make laws for and execute control over undistributed western lands. Few leaders in the 1770s perceived the need for a defined distribution of power between the states and the national government. They gave more thought to this issue of federalism only as the events of the post-revolutionary period revealed that neither the states nor the national government could individually cope with international challenges and domestic dislocations.

The Temptations of Peace

Many of these conflicts arose from the expanding settlement process in the West. That region confronted not only international difficulties such as British efforts to lure Vermonters into Canada and Spanish attempts to encourage secession among southwesterners, but also internal problems as states squabbled over conflicting claims to western land. An even more serious contest arose between "landless" and "landed" states when the latter claimed large western tracts under the terms of their old colonial charters. Only in 1781 when the last of the landed states, Virginia, finally ceded its charter rights to the national government, did all the state governments ratify the Articles of Confederation. The settlement of the West also triggered controversy by democratizing state legislatures, a development some conservatives disdained. They warned that parochial western delegates lacked wealth, education, and a "larger view" of politics sufficient to prudently oversee the operations of government. Such fears of democratic excess shaped the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which withheld full self-government from these new territories until they had attained statehood. Even so, the Northwest Ordinance established an orderly way of incorporating the frontier into the federal system and outlawed slavery in the region. In fact, northern laws abolishing slavery, along with an increase in manumissions in the upper South, swelled the growth of the free black community and altered its character.

In the South as a whole, however, slavery continued to expand along with the cotton economy; more blacks lived in enslavement in 1800 than in 1776. The emergence of slavery as the "peculiar institution" of the South during the early national period would dominate the political agenda by the mid-nineteenth century.

During the Confederation era, though, contests over the West and battles over monetary policy remained the focal points of political debate. Alarmingly, both the national and state governments proved even more powerless to redress postwar economic disruption than they had in coping with the problems posed by the frontier.

Republican Society

As political leaders struggled to shape new republican governments, ordinary Americans struggled to define a new republican society. Newly rich families came to demand and receive greater status; workers began to organize; some women claimed a right to greater political consideration, more freedom to divorce, and better educational opportunities; religious dissenters clamored for disestablishment. Yet white male revolutionaries stopped short of extending equality to the most unequal groups in American society, blacks and women. Suggestions that women received equal rights were met with outright hostility; indeed, the popular form of "seduction literature" continued to emphasize the differences between men and women even as this society gave women new authority as the guardians of sexual virtue and as "republican mothers." Their view of equality was essentially conservative, one that emphasized leveling the top of society by abolishing aristocratic privilege rather than raising up the lowest social groups.

From Confederation to Constitution

In the mid-1780s, the political crisis of the Confederation peaked as a result of both the controversy over the Jay-Gardoqui treaty and the fear caused by Shays' Rebellion. In response, political leaders called the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Although the convention only held the power to revise the Articles of Confederation, it produced instead an entirely new frame of government establishing a truly national republic, the federal Constitution. Based largely on James Madison's "Virginia Plan," the new Constitution provided for a separation of powers among a judiciary, a bicameral national legislature, and a strong executive. They broke a deadlock among the delegates over the issue of representation, a crisis that reflected the deep rivalry between northern and southern states, through a compromise that provided for equal representation of states in the upper house of Congress and representation proportional to population in the lower house, with a slave counting as three-fifths of a free person.

Key Terms

Constitution: framework of government establishing the contract between rulers and ruled. American revolutionaries insisted upon written constitutions to protect individual rights and liberties; by contrast, Britons understood the term constitution to mean the existing arrangement of government—not an actual document but a collection of parliamentary laws, customs, and precedents. Page 140

State Constitution:

In the United States, each state has its own constitution. Usually, they are longer than the 8,500-word federal Constitution and are more detailed regarding the day-to-day relationships between government and the people. The shortest is the Constitution of Vermont, adopted in 1793 and currently 8,295 words long. The longest is Alabama's sixth and current constitution, ratified in 1901, at 357,157 words long. Both the federal and state constitutions are organic texts: they are the fundamental blueprints for the legal and political organizations of the United States and the states, respectively. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, provides that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Guarantee Clause of Article 4 of the Constitution states that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." These two provisions indicate states did not surrender their wide latitude to adopt a constitution, the fundamental documents of state law, when the U.S. Constitution was adopted. Typically state constitutions address a wide array of issues deemed by the states to be of sufficient importance to be included in the constitution rather than in an ordinary statute. Often modeled after the federal Constitution, they outline the structure of the state government and typically establish a bill of rights, an executive branch headed by a governor (and often one or more other officials, such as a lieutenant governor and state attorney general), a state legislature, and state courts, including a state supreme court (a few states have two high courts, one for civil cases, the other for criminal cases). Additionally, many other provisions may be included. Many state constitutions, unlike the federal constitution, also begin with an invocation of God. Some states allow amendments to the Constitution by initiative. Many states have had several constitutions over the course of its history. The organized territories of the United States also have constitutions or organic acts of their own, if they have an organized government through an Organic Act passed by the federal Congress. These constitutions are subject to congressional approval and oversight, which is not the case with state constitutions. If territories wish to enter the Union (that is, to attain statehood), they seek an enabling act from Congress and must draft an acceptable state constitution as a prerequisite to statehood. Page 140

Congressional Committees: A congressional committee is a legislative sub-organization in the United States Congress that handles a specific duty (rather than the general duties of Congress). Committee membership enables members to develop specialized knowledge of the matters under their jurisdiction. As "little legislatures", the committees monitor ongoing governmental operations, identify issues suitable for legislative review, gather and evaluate information, and recommend courses of action to their parent body. Congress divides its legislative, oversight, and internal administrative tasks among approximately 200 committees and subcommittees. Within assigned areas, these functional subunits gather information; compare and evaluate legislative alternatives; identify policy problems and propose solutions; select, determine, and report measures for full chamber consideration; monitor executive branch performance (oversight); and investigate allegations of wrongdoing. Page 141

Ethan Allen/Green Mountain Boys: During the French & Indian War, Ethan Allen served as a private in the colonial ranks. After moving to Vermont, he was elected colonel commandant of the local militia, better known as the "Green Mountain Boys." During the early months of the American Revolution, Allen held no official rank in the Continental Army. Upon his exchange and release by the British in 1778, Allen was given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army and major general of militia. After returning to Vermont later that year, he was made a general in the Army of Vermont. Page 142

Landed states and landless states: Some of the 13 colonies that became the United States had originally been granted land whose western boundaries were vague or overlapped the land granted to other colonies. During the Confederation period, the so-called "landless" states had boundaries that were firmly drawn on all sides, such as Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The so-called "landed" states possessed grants whose western boundaries were not fixed. Page 143

Articles of Confederation: The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a document signed amongst the 13 original colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. Its drafting by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress began on July 12, 1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification in late 1777. The formal ratification by all 13 states was completed in early 1781. Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. Nevertheless, the weakness of the government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key nationalists.

On March 4, 1789, general government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. The new Constitution provided for a much stronger federal government with a chief executive (the president), courts, and taxing powers. Pages 143-144

Northwest Territory Ordinances of 1784, 1785: Policy used when Congress finally came to decide what to do with the Northwest Territory. Carved out of the land ceded by the states to the national government, the Northwest Territory comprised the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. With so many white settlers moving into these lands, Congress was faced with a crucial test of its federal system. If an orderly way could not be devised to expand the confederation of states beyond the original 13 colonies, the new territories might well become independent countries or even colonies of Spain or Britain. Congress dealt with the issue of expansion by adopting three ordinances. The first, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, divided the Northwest Territory into 10 states, each to be admitted to the Union on equal terms as soon as its population equaled that in any of the existing states. In the meantime, Jefferson provided for democratic self-government of the territory by all free adult males. A second ordinance of 1785 set up an efficient mechanism for dividing and selling public lands. The Northwest Territory was surveyed into townships six miles square. Each township was then divided into 36 lots of one square mile, or 640 acres. Congress waited in vain for buyers to flock to the land offices it established. The cost of even a single lot—$640—was too steep for most farmers. Disappointed by the shortage of buyers and desperate for money, Congress finally accepted a proposition submitted by a private company of land speculators who offered to buy some 6 million acres in present-day southeastern Ohio. That several members of Congress numbered among the company's stockholders no doubt added to enthusiasm for the deal. Page 144

Northwest Ordinance, 1787: The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or The Ordinance of 1787) was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States (the Confederation Congress), passed July 13, 1787. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains, between British Canada and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south. The upper Mississippi River formed the Territory's western boundary. On August 7, 1789, first President George Washington signed a replacement, the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, in which the new U.S. Congress reaffirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the newly effective Constitution of the United States. The Ordinance purported to be not merely legislation that could later be amended by the Congress, but rather "the following articles shall be considered as Articles of compact between the original States and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent...."

Arguably the single most important piece of legislation passed by members of the earlier Continental Congresses and the Confederation Congress, other than the Declaration of Independence itself and the seminal, precedent-setting "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union", it established the precedent by which the Federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the old Articles of Confederation. It is the most important legislation that Congress has passed with regard to American public domain lands. The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for national competition over admitting free and slave states, the basis of a critical question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War. Pages 144 -145

Peculiar Institution: "(Our) peculiar institution" was a euphemism for slavery and the economic ramifications of it in the American South. The meaning of "peculiar" in this expression is "one's own", that is, referring to something distinctive to or characteristic of a particular place or people. The proper use of the expression is always as a possessive, e.g., "our peculiar institution" or "the South's peculiar institution". It was in popular use during the first half of the 19th century, especially in legislative bodies, as the word slavery was deemed "improper," and was actually banned in certain areas. Some[who?] see this expression as specifically intended to gloss over the apparent contradiction between lawful slavery and the statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal". But, in fact, at the time this expression became popular, it was used in association with a vigorous defense of slavery as a good thing. One of the leaders in using the phrase, and in advancing the argument that slavery was a "positive good", establishing the proper relation between the races, was John C. Calhoun, most notably in his Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions. The March 1861 "Cornerstone Speech" of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens even argued that Jefferson's words in the Declaration was mistaken, and that the Confederacy's new Constitution, establishing "our peculiar institution", had rectified the error. Page 146

Anti-slavery societies: The American Revolution created more free blacks, both through those who actively supported the Patriot cause and were freed and those who took the opportunity to work for or leave with the British. The rhetoric of liberty and human rights effected a change in some slaveholders who emancipated their slaves in the years after the Revolution. But these events were more than counterbalanced by the fact that the United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, protected the rights of slaveholders to slave property throughout the union. Some actions by the new American government and the individual states did limit slavery. The Northwest Territory was forbidden to slavery and the northern states enacted gradual emancipation laws. But the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 explicitly stated that slaveholders could retrieve their slave "property" from Free states and territories. That was to discourage enslaved persons from trying to reach free regions. Hundreds of slaves fled bondage each year in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Some stayed in the South, seeking family from whom they had been separated or a temporary refuge from slavery. Other fugitives stayed in southern towns and cities, often with forged "free" papers. Whether they sought free territory or remained in the south, they were primarily aided by other slaves and by free blacks while in the south. In each decade after the Revolution, the assistance of some whites became more apparent. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was prominent in the antislavery societies which sprang up after the Revolution, and, for a while, the Baptists and Methodists were antislavery. The early antislavery societies promoted gradual emancipation and they faded from the national scene by the War of 1812. As the free black population grew, their concern for the status of the African American became the center of the antislavery movement. Page 146

Manumission statues: Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. African slaves were freed in the North American colonies as early as the seventeenth century. Some (such as Anthony Johnson) went on to become landowners and slaveholders in the colonies. Slaves could sometimes arrange manumission by agreeing to "purchase themselves"; that is, to pay the master an agreed amount. Some masters demanded market rates; others set a lower amount in consideration of service. Regulation of manumission began in 1692, when Virginia established that in order to manumit a slave, a person must pay the cost for them to be transported out of the state. A 1723 law stated that slaves may not "be set free upon any pretense whatsoever, except for some meritorious services to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council." In some cases, when a master was drafted into the army, they sent a slave in their place, with a promise of freedom if they survived the war. The new government of Virginia repealed these laws in 1782 and declared freedom for slaves who had fought for the Colonies in the American Revolutionary War. The 1782 laws also permitted masters to free their slaves on their own accord; previously, manumission required obtaining consent from the state legislature, an arduous and rarely granted request. However, as population of free Negroes increased, the state passed laws forbidding free negroes from moving into the state (1778) and requiring newly freed slaves to leave within one year unless they had special permission (1806). Various other states at this time established laws governing manumission and tended to make it easier to accomplish. In the first two decades after the American Revolution, many of the new states passed laws allowing slaveholders to declare slaves free by filing papers, and numerous manumissions were made in the idealism of the war. The percentage of free blacks as a proportion of the total black population increased in the Upper South from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent in this period. In Virginia, the proportion of free blacks increased from 1% in 1782 to 7% in 1800. Together with several northern states abolishing slavery during this period, the percentage of free blacks nationally increased to 13.5 percent of the total black population. After invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which enabled the development of extensive new areas for new types of cotton cultivation, manumissions decreased due to increased demand for slave labor. Slave states such as Virginia made it easier for slaveholders to free their slaves. In the two decades following the American Revolutionary War, numerous slaveholders accomplished manumissions by deed or in wills, so that the percentage of free blacks to the total number of blacks rose from less than one percent to 10 percent in the Upper South. Some northern states quickly abolished slavery, adding to the national population of free blacks; New York and New Jersey adopted gradual abolition laws that kept the free children of slaves as indentured servants into their twenties. Of the Founding Fathers of the United States as defined by the historian Richard B. Morris, the southerners were the major slaveholders, but northerners also held them, in generally fewer numbers, as domestic servants. John Adams owned none; George Washington freed his slaves in his will (his wife independently held numerous dower slaves); Thomas Jefferson freed five slaves in his will, and the remaining 130 were sold to settle his estate debts; James Madison did not free his slaves and some were sold to pay off estate debts, and his wife and son retained most to work Montpelier plantation; Benjamin Franklin freed his slaves; Alexander Hamilton likely owned slaves and freed them, as he was an officer of the New York Manumission Society; the society was founded by John Jay, who freed his domestic slaves in 1798, the same year as governor he signed a gradual abolition law in New York; John Dickinson freed his slaves in a manumission process between 1776-1786, the only Founding Father to do so during this time. Page 146

Weaker sex: The Revolutionary rethinking of the rules for society also led to some reconsideration of the relationship between men and women. At this time, women were widely considered to be inferior to men, a status that was especially clear in the lack of legal rights for married women. The law did not recognize wives' independence in economic, political, or civic matters in Anglo-American society of the eighteenth century. Even future First Ladies had relatively little clout. After the death of her first husband; Dolley Todd Madison, had to fight her deceased spouse's heirs for control of his estate. And Abigail Adams, an early advocate of women's rights, could only encourage her husband John, to "Remember the Ladies" when drawing up a new federal government. She could not participate in the creation of this government, however. The Revolution increased people's attention to political matters and made issues of liberty and equality especially important. As Eliza Wilkinson of South Carolina explained in 1783, "I won't have it thought that because we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more than domestic concerns. They won't even allow us liberty of thought, and that is all I want." Page 146

Not worth a continental: When loans from private citizens and foreign creditors like France proved insufficient to finance the fighting, both Congress and the states printed paper money—a whopping total of $400 million. The paper currency was backed only by the government's promise to redeem the bills with money from future taxes, because legislatures balked at the unpopular alternative of levying taxes during the war. For the bills to be redeemed, the United States had to survive, so by the end of 1776, when Continental forces sustained a series of defeats, paper money started to depreciate dramatically. By 1781 it was virtually without value, and Americans coined the expression “not worth a Continental.”

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New Jersey State Constitution: The Constitution of the State of New Jersey is the basic governing document of the State of New Jersey. In addition to three British Royal Charters issued for East Jersey, West Jersey and united New Jersey while they were still colonies, the state has been governed by three constitutions. The first was issued on July 2, 1776, shortly before New Jersey ratified the United States Declaration of Independence; the second was issued in 1844; and the current document was issued in 1947. The state constitution reinforces the basic rights found in the United States Constitution, but also contains several unique provisions, such as regulations governing the operation of casinos. At 26,159 words, the document is slightly shorter than the average American state constitution (about 28,300 words). When a loosely worded provision in the New Jersey state constitution gave the vote to “all free inhabitants” owning a specified amount of property, white widows and single women went to the polls. Only in 1807 did the state legislature close the loophole. Page 148

Mary Wollstonecraft/A Vindication of the Rights of Women: Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. Published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the first great feminist treatise. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect will always govern and sought “to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.” Page 148

Republican motherhood: Republican motherhood, a phrase coined by scholars in the 1980s, is the idea that — after the American Revolution, circa 1760 to 1800 — women sought their place within the new representational government by raising the next generation of citizens. In essence, this meant women had to be educated to better serve the country. Their education then led to service because they could better raise children who could further the republican ideal. Children have to be raised by educated parents in order to better uphold the tenets of republicanism. Since this is a system of governance wherein the people are sovereign, it stresses liberty and the rights of the people. The civic duty of raising the next, well-educated generation has come to be known as republican motherhood. At the time of the U.S. revolution, mothers were entrusted with the education of their children at home. To do so, women had to be literate. By ensuring that the children were well educated, they would not only pass on the ideals of republicanism to their daughters, but would also raise young men who, in the social sphere, could help build a prosperous nation. Page 150

Benjamin Rush: Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress. He served as Surgeon General in the Continental army, and was blamed for criticizing George Washington. Later in life, Rush became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Rush was a leader of the American Enlightenment, and an enthusiastic supporter of the American Revolution. He signed the Declaration of Independence, and was a leader in Pennsylvania's ratification of the Constitution in 1788. He was prominent in many reforms, especially in the areas of medicine and education. He opposed slavery, advocated free public schools, and sought improved education for women and a more enlightened penal system.

As a leading physician, Rush had a major impact on the emerging medical profession. As an Enlightenment intellectual, he was committed to organizing all medical knowledge around explanatory theories, rather than rely on empirical methods. Rush argued that illness was the result of imbalances in the body's physical system and was caused by malfunctions in the brain. His approach prepared the way for later medical research, but Rush himself undertook none of it. He promoted public health by advocating clean environment and stressing the importance of personal and military hygiene. His study of mental disorder made him one of the founders of American psychiatry. Page 150

Judith Sargent Murray: Judith Sargent Murray was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the sexes—that women, like men, had the capability of intellectual accomplishment and should be able to achieve economic independence. Her landmark essay "On the Equality of the Sexes," published in the Massachusetts Magazine in March and April 1790 predated Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in Britain in 1792 and in Philadelphia in 1794. Page 150

Republican ideology: Republican ideology viewed property as the key to independence and power. Lacking property, women and black Americans were easily consigned to the custody of husbands and masters. Republicanism is the ideology of governing a society or state as a republic where the head of state is a representative of the people who hold popular sovereignty rather than the people being subjects of the head of state. The head of state is typically appointed by means other than heredity, often through elections. Page 150

John Jay: John Jay was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, Founding Father of the United States, signer of the Treaty of Paris, and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1789–95). Jay was born into a wealthy family of merchants and government officials in New York City. He became a lawyer and joined the New York Committee of Correspondence and organized opposition to British rule. He joined a conservative political faction that, fearing mob rule, sought to protect property rights and maintain the rule of law while resisting British violations of human rights. Jay served as the President of the Continental Congress (1778–79), an honorific position with little power.

During and after the American Revolution, Jay was a Minister (Ambassador) to Spain, France and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, helping to fashion United States foreign policy. His major diplomatic achievement was to negotiate favorable trade terms with Great Britain in the Treaty of London of 1794 when he was still serving as Supreme Court Chief Justice. Jay, a proponent of strong, centralized government, worked to ratify the new Constitution in New York in 1788 by pseudonymously writing five of the Federalist Papers, along with the main authors Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. As a leader of the new Federalist Party, Jay was the Governor of New York State (1795–1801), where he became the state's leading opponent of slavery. His first two attempts to end slavery in New York in 1777 and 1785 failed, but a third in 1799 succeeded. The 1799 Act, a gradual emancipation he signed into law, eventually gave all slaves in New York their freedom before his death in 1829. Page 151

Don Diego Gardoqui: Diego de Gardoqui, the fourth of eight children, was the financial intermediary between the Spanish Court and the Colonies during the American Revolutionary War, meeting with John Jay on various occasions. The mercantile business of "José de Gardoqui e Hijos" in Bilbao (of which Diego was one of three sons in a partnership with their father) supplied the patriots with 215 bronze cannon - 30,000 muskets - 30,000 bayonets - 51,314 musket balls - 300,000 pounds of powder - 12,868 grenades - 30,000 uniforms - and 4,000 field tents during the war. After the Revolution he became Spain's envoy to the United States. He arrived in New York in the Spring of 1785. In the summer of 1786, he and Jay, who was Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation, worked up a treaty in which the United States would receive a commercial treaty with Spain in exchange for giving up its claims to free navigation of the Mississippi. Although Jay backed the treaty, congress never ratified it. Page 151

Captain Daniel Shays/Shay's Rebellion: Daniel Shays was an American soldier, revolutionary, and farmer famous for being one of the leaders of Shays' Rebellion, a populist uprising against oppressive debt collection and tax policies in Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787. Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in Massachusetts (mostly in and around Springfield) during 1786 and 1787, which some historians believe "fundamentally altered the course of United States' history." Fueled by perceived economic terrorism and growing disaffection with State and Federal governments; Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led a group of rebels (called Shaysites) in rising up first against Massachusetts' courts, and later in marching on the United States' Federal Armory at Springfield in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. Although Shays' Rebellion met with defeat militarily, it bore fruit in forcing the Federal government to reconsider the extent of its own powers at the U.S. Constitutional Convention, and by drawing General George Washington out of retirement en route to his Presidency, among influencing other changes to America's young democracy.

Although - in the past and still to some extent today - often characterized as a revolt of poor, Western Massachusetts farmers embittered by land seizures and bankruptcies, recent research into the lives of Shays Rebellion's participants suggests that Shaysites came from diverse socio-economic backgrounds (from the wealthiest to the poorest families in the nation), professions, and locales - and also that their grievances extended beyond the specifics of Massachusetts' economic situation to issues ranging from rule by a faraway elite, cronyism and corruption at influential levels of government, and regressive tax policy. Page 151

Society of Cincinnati: The Society of the Cincinnati is the nation's oldest patriotic organization, founded in 1783 by officers of the Continental Army and their French counterparts who served together in the American Revolution. Its mission is to promote knowledge and appreciation of the achievement of American independence and to foster fellowship among its members. The society, which was merely a social club for veterans, was forced to disband for its policy of passing on its membership rights to eldest sons. In this way, critics charged, the Cincinnati was creating artificial distinctions and perpetuating hereditary warrior. Page 151

Annapolis Meeting 1786: The Annapolis Convention, formally titled as a Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government was a national political convention held September 11–14, 1786, at Annapolis, Maryland, in which twelve delegates from five states–New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia–gathered to discuss and develop a consensus about reversing the protectionist trade barriers that each state had erected. At the time, under the Articles of Confederation, each state was largely independent from the others and the national government had no authority to regulate trade between and among the states. Additionally, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina had appointed commissioners who failed to arrive in Annapolis in time to attend the meeting, while Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia had taken no action at all. The final report of the convention was sent to the Congress and to the states. The report asked support for a broader constitutional convention to be held the following May in Philadelphia. It expressed the hope that more states would be represented and that their delegates or deputies would be authorized to examine areas broader than simply commercial trade. It is unclear how much weight the Convention's call carried, but the urgency of the reform was highlighted by a number of rebellions that took place all over the country. While most of them were easily suppressed, Shay's rebellion lasted from August 1786 till February 1787. The rebellion called attention to both popular discontent, and government's weakness. The direct result of the Annapolis Convention report and the ensuing events was the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, during which the United States Constitution was drafted. Page 151

James Madison: James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman, political theorist and the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817). He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the United States Bill of Rights. He served as a politician much of his adult life. After the constitution had been drafted, Madison became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify it. His collaboration with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay produced the Federalist Papers (1788). Circulated only in New York at the time, they would later be considered among the most important treatises in support of the Constitution.

He was also a delegate to the Virginia constitutional ratifying convention, and was instrumental to the successful ratification effort in Virginia. Like most of his contemporaries, Madison changed his political views during his life. During the drafting and ratification of the constitution, he favored a strong national government, though later he grew to favor stronger state governments, before settling between the two extremes late in his life. In 1789, Madison became a leader in the new House of Representatives, drafting many basic laws. He is notable for drafting the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and thus is known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights". Madison worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government. Breaking with Hamilton and what became the Federalist Party in 1791, Madison and Thomas Jefferson organized what they called the Republican Party (later called by historians the Democratic-Republican Party). As Jefferson's Secretary of State (1801–1809), Madison supervised the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's size. After his election to the presidency, he presided over renewed prosperity for several years. As president (1809–17), after the failure of diplomatic protests and a trade embargo against Great Britain, he led the nation into the War of 1812. He was responding to British encroachments on American honor and rights; in addition, he wanted to end the influence of the British among their Indian allies, whose resistance blocked United States settlement in the Midwest around the Great Lakes. Madison found the war to be an administrative nightmare, as the United States had neither a strong army nor financial system; as a result, he afterward supported a stronger national government and a strong military, as well as the national bank, which he had long opposed. Like other Virginia statesmen in the slave society, he was a slaveholder who inherited his plantation known as Montpelier, and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime to cultivate tobacco and other crops. Madison supported the Three-Fifths Compromise that allowed three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves to be counted for representation. Page 152

Gouverneur Morris: Gouverneur Morris was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a native of New York City who represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation. Morris was also an author of large sections of the Constitution of the United States and one of its signers. He is widely credited as the author of the document's preamble, and has been called the "Penman of the Constitution." In an era when most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris advanced the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states. His first name came from his mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Gouverneur from a Huguenot family that had first moved to Holland then to New Amsterdam. A gifted scholar, Morris enrolled in 1764, at age 12, at King's College, now Columbia College of Columbia University in New York City. He graduated in 1768 and received a Master's degree in 1771. Page 152

Philadelphia 1787: The Constitutional Convention (also known as the Philadelphia Convention, the Federal Convention, or the Grand Convention at Philadelphia) took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the Convention. The result of the Convention was the creation of the United States Constitution, placing the Convention among the most significant events in the history of the United States. The most contentious disputes revolved around the composition and election of the Senate, how "proportional representation" was to be defined (whether to include slaves or other property), whether to divide the executive power between three persons or invest the power into a single president, how to elect the president, how long his term was to be and whether he could stand for reelection, what offenses should be impeachable, the nature of a fugitive slave clause, whether to allow the abolition of the slave trade, and whether judges should be chosen by the legislature or executive. Most of the time during the Convention was spent on deciding these issues, while the powers of legislature, executive, and judiciary were not heavily disputed. Once the Convention began, the delegates first agreed on the principles of the Convention, then they agreed on Madison's Virginia Plan and began to modify it. A Committee of Detail assembled during the July 4 recess and produced a rough draft. Most of this rough draft remained in place, and can be found in the final version of the constitution. After the final issues were resolved, the Committee on Style produced the final version, and it was voted on and sent to the states. Page 152

Bicameral legislature/unicameral legislature: A central feature of any constitution is the organization of the legislature. It may be a unicameral body with one chamber or a bicameral body with two chambers. Unicameral legislatures are typical in small countries with unitary systems of government (e.g., Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Israel, and New Zealand) or in very small countries (e.g., Andorra, Dominica, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Tuvalu). Federal states, whether large or small, usually have bicameral legislatures, one house usually representing the main territorial subdivisions. The classic example is the Congress of the United States, which consists of a House of Representatives, with 435 members elected for two-year terms from single-member districts of approximately equal population, and a Senate, consisting of 2 persons from each state elected by the voters of that state. The fact that all states are represented equally in the Senate regardless of their size reflects the federal character of the American union. The U.S. Senate enjoys special powers not shared by the House of Representatives: it must ratify by a two-thirds majority vote the international treaties concluded by the president and must confirm the president’s appointments to the cabinet and to other important executive offices. Page 152

Great Compromise: The Connecticut Compromise (also known as the Great Compromise of 1787 or Sherman's Compromise) was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house.

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Virginia Plan: On May 29, 1787, Edmund Randolph of the Virginia delegation proposed the creation of a bicameral legislature. Under his proposal, membership in both houses would be allocated to each state proportional to its population; however, candidates for the lower house would be nominated and elected by the people of each state. This allowed fairness and equality to the people. Whereas candidates for the upper house, would be nominated by the state legislatures of each state; and then elected by the members of the lower house. This proposal was known as the Virginia Plan. Page 152

New Jersey Plan: Less populous states like Delaware were afraid that such an arrangement would result in their voices and interests being drowned out by the larger states. Many delegates also felt that the Convention did not have the authority to completely scrap the Articles of Confederation, as the Virginia Plan would have. In response, on June 15, 1787, William Paterson of the New Jersey delegation proposed a legislature consisting of a single house. Each state was to have equal representation in this body, regardless of population. The New Jersey Plan, as it was called, would have left the Articles of Confederation in place, but would have amended them to somewhat increase Congress's powers. Page 152

Three-fifths Compromise: The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise reached between delegates from southern states and those from northern states during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. The debate was over if, and if so, how, slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population for constitutional purposes. The issue was important, as this population number would then be used to determine the number of seats that the state would have in the United States House of Representatives for the next ten years, and to determine what percentage of the nation's direct tax burden the state would have to bear. The compromise was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman. The Convention had unanimously accepted the principle that representation in the House of Representatives would be in proportion to the relative state populations. However, since slaves could not vote, non-slaves in slave states would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College. Delegates opposed to slavery proposed that only free inhabitants of each state be counted for apportionment purposes, while delegates supportive of slavery, on the other hand, opposed the proposal, wanting slaves to count in their actual numbers. A compromise which was finally agreed upon—of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers—reduced the representation of the slave states relative to the original proposals, but improved it over the Northern position. An inducement for slave states to accept the Compromise was its tie to taxation in the same ratio, so that the burden of taxation on the slave states was also reduced.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is found in Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution which reads:  Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. Page 153

Separation of powers: principle that each branch of government—the legislature (Congress), the executive (the President), and the judiciary (the Supreme Court)—should wield distinct powers independent from interference or infringement by other branches of government. During the debates of the Constitutional Convention in 1797, James Madison successfully argued that this separation of powers was essential to a balanced republican government. Page 153

Ratifying conventions: Article Seven describes the process for establishing the proposed new frame of government. Anticipating that the influence of many state politicians would be Antifederalist, delegates to the Philadelphia Convention provided for ratification of the Constitution by popularly elected ratifying conventions in each state. The convention method also made it possible that judges, ministers and others ineligible to serve in state legislatures, could be elected to a convention. Suspecting that Rhode Island, at least, might not ratify, delegates decided that the Constitution would go into effect as soon as nine states (two-thirds rounded up) ratified. Once ratified by this minimum number of states, it was anticipated that the proposed Constitution would become this Constitution between the nine or more that signed. It would not cover the four or fewer states that might not have signed. Page 153

Amendments: The Constitution and the acts passed by Congress were declared the supreme law of the land, taking precedence over any legislation passed by the states. And changing the Constitution would not be easy. Amendments could be proposed only by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or in a convention requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Ratification of amendments required approval by three-quarters of the states. In total there have been thirty-three amendments to the United States Constitution which have been adopted by the United States Congress and sent to the states for ratification since the Constitution was put into operation on March 4, 1789. Twenty-seven of these, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution. The first ten amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. Six amendments adopted by Congress and sent to the states have not been ratified by the required number of states. Four of these amendments are still technically open and pending, one is closed and has failed by its own terms, and one is closed and has failed by the terms of the resolution proposing it. Approximately 11,539 proposals to amend the Constitution have been introduced in Congress since 1789. Collectively, members of the House and Senate typically propose around 200 amendments during each two–year term of Congress. Most however, never get out of the Congressional committees in which they were proposed, and only a fraction of those that do receive enough support to win Congressional approval to actually go through the constitutional ratification process. The framers of the Constitution, recognizing the difference between regular legislation and constitutional matters, intended that it be difficult to change the Constitution; but not so difficult as to render it an inflexible instrument of government.

The amending process they devised, codified in Article Five of the United States Constitution, has two steps. Proposals to amend the Constitution must be properly Adopted and Ratified before becoming operative.

 A proposed amendment may be adopted and sent to the states for ratification by either:

The United States Congress, whenever a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives deem it necessary; OR   A national convention, called by Congress for this purpose, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds (presently 34) of the states.

    To become part of the Constitution, an adopted amendment must be ratified by either (as determined by Congress):

        The legislatures of three-fourths (presently 38) of the states, within the stipulated time period—if any;  OR  State ratifying conventions in three-fourths (presently 38) of the states, within the stipulated time period—if any.     Upon being properly ratified, an amendment becomes an operative addition to the Constitution. Page 153

Supreme Law of the Land: The Constitution and the acts passed by Congress were declared the “Supreme Law of the Land”. Page 153

Electoral College: The United States Electoral College is the institution that officially elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. The President and Vice President are not elected directly by the voters. Instead, they are elected by "electors" who are chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis. Electors are apportioned to each state and the District of Columbia, but not to territorial possessions of the United States, such as Puerto Rico and Guam. *The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled. while the Twenty-third Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. In total, there are 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 senators, and the three additional electors from the District of Columbia. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, including selection by Congress, by the governors of the states, by the state legislatures, by a special group of Members of Congress chosen by lot, and by direct popular election. Late in the convention, the matter was referred to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters, which devised the Electoral College system in its original form. This plan, which met with widespread approval by the delegates, was incorporated into the final document with only minor changes. It sought to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress, and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation. The Constitution gave each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its membership in the Senate (two to each state, the “senatorial” electors) and its delegation in the House of Representatives (currently ranging from one to 52 Members). The electors are chosen by the states “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct “(U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1). Qualifications for the office are broad: the only persons prohibited from serving as electors are Senators, Representatives, and persons “holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States.” In order to forestall partisan intrigue and manipulation, the electors assemble in their respective states and cast their ballots as state units, rather than meet at a central location. At least one of the candidates for whom the electors vote must be an inhabitant of another state. A majority of electoral votes is necessary to elect, a requirement intended to insure broad acceptance of a winning candidate, while election by the House was provided as a default method in the event of Electoral College deadlock. Finally, Congress was empowered to set nationwide dates for choice and meeting of electors. All the foregoing structural elements of the Electoral College system remain in effect currently. The original method of electing the President and Vice President, however, proved unworkable, and was replaced by the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804. Under the original system, each elector cast two votes for President (for different candidates), and no vote for Vice President. The votes were counted; the candidate receiving the most, provided it was a majority of the number of electors, was elected President, and the runner-up became Vice President. The 12th Amendment replaced this system with separate ballots for President and Vice President, with electors casting a single vote for each office. Page 153

Federalism: governing principle established by the constitution in which the national government and the state government divide power. Page 154

Checks and balances: mechanism by which each branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—keeps the others within the bounds of their constitutional authority; James Madison emphasized this feature of the federal constitution to assure the Anti-Federalists. Page 154

Anti-federalists: Anti-Federalism refers to a movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1788. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation, gave state governments more authority. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things; that the position of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy. A book titled "The Anti-Federalist Papers" is a detailed explanation of American Anti-Federalist thought. During the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, the term federal was applied to any person who supported the colonial union and the government formed under the Articles of Confederation.

After the war, the group who felt that the national government under the Articles was too weak appropriated the name Federalist for themselves. Historian Jackson Turner Main wrote that, "to them, the man of 'federal principles' approved of 'federal measures,' which meant those that increased the weight and authority or extended the influence of the Confederation Congress." As the Federalists moved to amend the Articles, eventually leading to the Constitutional Convention, they applied the term anti-federalist to their opposition. The term implied, correctly or not, both opposition to Congress and unpatriotic motives. The Anti-Federalists rejected the term, arguing that they were the true Federalists. In both their correspondence and their local groups they tried to capture the term. For example, an unknown anti-federalist signed his public correspondence as "A Federal Farmer" and the New York committee opposing the Constitution was called the "Federal Republican Committee." However the Federalists carried the day and the name Anti-Federalist forever stuck. Page 154

Federalists Papers: The Federalist (later known as The Federalist Papers) is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October of 1787 and August 1788. A compilation of these and eight others, called The Federalist; or, The New Constitution, was published in two volumes in 1788 by J. and A. McLean.  The series' correct title is The Federalist; the title The Federalist Papers did not emerge until the twentieth century. Page 154

Shawnee, Chippewa Indians: The Shawnee or Shawnee nation are an Algonquian-speaking people native to North America. In colonial times they were a semi-migratory Native American nation, at times inhabiting areas spanning present-day Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania in the United States. They were removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s. Today the three federally recognized Shawnee tribes: Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and Shawnee Tribe, are all headquartered in Oklahoma. The United Remnant Band of the Shawnee Nation is a state-recognized tribe based in Ohio, where it has bought some land. The Ojibwe (also Ojibwa), or Chippewa are one of the largest groups of Native Americans and First Nations on the North American continent. There are Ojibwe communities in both Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the second-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by the Cree. In the United States, they have the fourth-largest population among Native American tribes, surpassed only by the Navajo, Cherokee and Lakota. Because many Ojibwe were formerly located around the outlet of Lake Superior, which the French colonists called Sault Ste. Marie for its rapids, the early Canadian settlers referred to the Ojibwe as Saulteurs. Ojibwe who subsequently moved to the prairie provinces of Canada have retained the name Saulteaux. This is disputed, as some scholars believe only the name migrated west. Ojibwe who were originally located along the Mississauga River and made their way to southern Ontario are known as the Mississaugas. The Ojibwe Peoples are a major component group of the Anishinaabe-speaking peoples, a branch of the Algonquian language family. The Anishinaabe peoples include the Algonquin, Nipissing, Oji-Cree, Odawa and the Potawatomi. The majority of the Ojibwe peoples live in Canada. There are 77,940 mainline Ojibwe; 76,760 Saulteaux and 8,770 Mississaugas, organized in 125 bands, and living from western Quebec to eastern British Columbia. Ojibwe in the U.S. number over 56,440; living in an area stretching across the northern tier from New York west to Montana. They are historically known for their crafting of birch bark canoes, sacred birch bark scrolls, use of cowrie shells for trading, cultivation of wild rice, and use of copper arrow points. In 1745 they adopted guns from the British to defeat the Dakota in the Lake Superior area, pushing them to the south and west. The Ojibwe Nation was the first to set the agenda with European-Canadian leaders by signing detailed treaties before they allowed many European settlers into their western areas. Their Midewiwin Society is well respected as the keeper of detailed and complex scrolls of events, oral history, songs, maps, memories, stories, geometry, and mathematics.

Sample Quiz

1. The chapter introduction discusses the dilemma of citizens identifying with state and nation after the Revolution to make the point that:

A) No one immediately after the Revolution had a sense of identity or loyalty toward the nation, so it was predictable that the new United States would be politically decentralized.

B) Because of the Revolution, most felt a sense of identity and loyalty with the united cause, but political jealousies prevented a strong governmental structure until the crises of the 1780s forced the politicians to act.

C) Americans created one kind of united government with the Declaration of Independence; needing a better union, they overwhelmingly supported the new Constitution.

D) Americans had to experiment to find a way to create a united republic that confronted the realities of separate identities and inequalities.

2. Which one of the following changes did NOT occur in American law and polities in the aftermath of the Revolution?

                A) Anti-slavery arguments emerged, leading to outright abolition in some states and in the territory north of the Ohio.

                B) Most states lowered property-ownership requirements for voting.

                C) Americans insisted upon written constitutions.

                D) In most states, women were given the right to vote.

3. The new state constitutions were most concerned with:

                A) Reducing legislative power.

                B) Reducing executive power.

                C) Enlarging judicial power.

                D) all of the above.

4. What is the best description of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederation?

                A) An integrated republic with a decentralized structure of national government

B) 13 independent state republics loosely joined together under a virtually powerless representative body

C) A political system functioning like a corporate conglomerate with 13 wholly owned subsidiary companies

                D) 13 independent nations affiliated in a defensive alliance, like today's NATO

5. The young United States confronted strong challenges from foreign powers at its borders, including all EXCEPT:

                A) The Spanish to the south.

                B) The French to the west.

                C) The British to the north.

                D) Restrictions on trade with the West Indies.

6. The new state legislatures included more men:

                A) Of moderate economic means.

                B) From the wealthiest classes.

                C) From the coastal regions.

                D) Of greater education.

7. The Northwest Ordinance:

                A) Allowed for the unlimited spread of slavery in the territories.

                B) provided the first mechanism for allowing new states to enter the union.

                C) Was taken directly from Jefferson's plan for dividing the territory.

                D) Allowed for the purchase of land primarily by small farmers.

8. In the years after the Revolution, which of the following was NOT true?

                A) The number of blacks in slavery declined.

                B) Communities of free blacks grew in numbers and health.

                C) Most northern states abolished slavery by law either immediately or gradually.

                D) On balance, the Revolution brought few changes to the status of most African Americans.

9. After the Revolution, women in America gained:

                A) Greater property rights.

                B) The right to make wills and contracts.

                C) The right to vote.

                D) In literacy.

10. the most significant reform of the republican campaign against artificial privilege was:

                A) The disbanding of the Society of Cincinnati.

                B) The elimination of hereditary offices.

                C) The dismantling of state-supported churches.

                D) The widespread support for the temperance movement.

11. What was the most important result of the uprising of western Massachusetts debtor farmers led by Daniel Shays?

                A) It vindicated republican doctrine that the people could take the law into their own hands.

                B) It proved that the revolutionary spirit was still alive.

                C) It gave crucial momentum to the growing movement to strengthen the national government.

                D) It prompted the Massachusetts legislature to ratify the Constitution.

12. the most significant division during the Constitutional Convention occurred between:

                A) Eastern and western delegates.

                B) Slave and Free states.

                C) Virginia and New Jersey.

                D) Smaller and larger states.

13. The Federalist Papers presented strong and convincing arguments in favor of:

                A) Adopting the Constitution of 1787.

                B) Keeping the Articles of Confederation.

                C) Creating a unitary form of government.

                D) Becoming a federated unit within the British Empire.

14. In the debates over ratification, a major fear of the Anti-Federalists was that:

A) The most powerful groups in society would dominate, and eventually rule in a corrupt and arbitrary fashion.

                B) The common people would have too much control over the government.

C) Elected officials would be too narrowly and directly concerned with the interests of their own constituents, rather than the nation as a whole.

                D) Poorer groups were favored over the more substantial citizens in society.

 

15. Ratification of the Constitution completed the second declaration of independence, but it required Americans to give up some of their long-cherished republican beliefs, like the view that:

                A) Civic virtue rather than self-interest would sustain popular liberty.

                B) The United States should stay out of the affairs of Europe.

C) The national government needed to act as an impartial umpire in disputes between the various interests in the state.

D) A large republic was better suited to American conditions than a confederation of small republics.

16. The Constitution represented the triumph of compromise, and Americans who accepted the Constitution had to change many of their basic beliefs about government. These included all the following EXCEPT:

A) the assumption that republics were best suited to small geographic areas.

B) the preoccupation with severely limiting executive power.

C) the instinct to give ultimate loyalty and sovereignty to one’s own state.

D) the ability of free citizens to govern themselves through disinterested representatives.

17. When peace was restored in the 1780s, Americans were forced to face some unanswered questions raised by their revolution. These included all the following EXCEPT:

A) Could the individual states establish treaties and agreements with foreign countries, excluding the other states?

B) Would the lands in the West eventually become part of the United States, and how would this take place?

C) Would factions and self-interest groups pull the states apart and make union impossible?

D) What forces and issues united the very different types of people who populated the new states?

E) All the above are included.

F) None of the above are included.

18. The constitutions written by the states provided several important precedents for the later federal system created by the Constitution of 1787; one of the most important was the principle of:

A) a weak executive.

B) county divisions within a state structure.

C) direct popular rule.

D) creating a written document as supreme law.

19. Following the revolution, while most states did not alter the basic structure of their governments, they did alter the balance of power among the different branches of government. They did all the following EXCEPT:

A) severely restricted the power of the governor or abolished the office completely.

B) significantly strengthened the powers of the state legislatures.

C) insisted on written state constitutions.

D) abolished the state legislative assemblies.

20. The first state constitutions tried to make the government accountable to the people through:

A) annual elections and representation by district.

B) elections by secret ballot and representation of each social group.

C) restricting executive power and requiring a popular referendum for tax bills.

D) itemizing rights and prescribing virtual representation.

 

21. America’s first governing document was called:

A) the Articles of Confederation.

B) the Constitution.

C) the Bill of Rights.

D) the Jefferson Doctrine.

22. The Articles of Confederation provided for a government by:

A) national legislature.

B) national executive.

C) judicial authority.

D) all of the above.

23. Weaknesses of Congress under the Articles of Confederation included all EXCEPT:

A) it could not levy taxes or regulate trade.

B) it could not declare war or regulate Indian affairs.

C) it could not enforce its own resolutions.

D) its structure meant that national leadership was marked by weakness and discontinuity.

24. The two most pressing problems for the new nation, which neither the states nor the Confederation Congress could solve, were:

A) divisions between the states and border disputes with Britain and Spain.

B) slavery and the Indian question.

C) republicanism and federalism.

D) political ineffectiveness and the need to industrialize.

25.  Immediately after the Revolution, the United States began to have difficulties with Spain. The disputes related to the boundaries of Florida and:

A) ownership of Cuba.

B) the boundaries of Texas.

C) navigation rights on the Mississippi.

D) illegal trade with Spanish colonies.

26. One of the chief controversies that delayed initial ratification of the Articles of Confederation turned out to be the one area of substantial achievement by the Confederation Congress. This related to:

A) Indian policy.

B) slavery.

C) western lands.

D) location of the national capital.

27. The Northwest Ordinance, which established a basis for territorial government for lands between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, included all of the following provisions EXCEPT:

A) freedom of religion.

B) protection of civil and political rights for Indians.

C) encouragement of education.

D) eventual creation of three to five new states.

28. Which of the following is NOT a true statement concerning African Americans following the Revolution?

A) The number of blacks in slavery declined.

B) Communities of free blacks grew in numbers and health.

C) Most northern states abolished slavery by law either immediately or gradually.

D) On balance, the Revolution brought few changes to the status of most African Americans.

29. Which of the following is the most accurate statement describing the nature and extent of changes in American society brought about by the revolution?

A) The Revolution did not cause a massive restructuring of American society, but political institutions rooted in a commitment to equality and liberty made change in the future easier.

B) The Revolution did not cause a massive restructuring of American society, and the new political institutions, with their half-hearted commitment to equality and liberty, were not strong enough to produce much future change either.

C) The Revolution produced a substantial restructuring of American society, but the original commitment to equality and liberty was soon reversed.

D) The Revolution produced no substantial changes in American society, either immediately after the Revolution or in the future.

30. In American society after the Revolution, people believed more and more in _______________ , while in reality many parts of society were becoming _____________ .

A) religion; secular

B) capitalism; neo-feudal

C) equality; unequal

D) reforming society; complacent about the Republic’s future

31. One result of the harsh treatment of loyalists during and following the Revolution was:

A) Most of the urban merchant class was lost.

B) Revolutionary governments demonstrated their commitment to justice even toward those who disagreed.

C) The British army shrank in numbers.

D) New opportunities were created for enterprising “patriots” to move up the ladder of wealth and influence.

32. The Society of Cincinnati, a veterans’ club for former Continental Army officers, attracted criticism because:

A) it advocated the education of women in the West.

B) it was perceived as aristocratic.

C) it advocated abolishing slavery.

D) it constituted a federal standing army in the Ohio Valley.

33. Which of the following leaders shaped the framing of the federal Constitution more than anyone else?

A) George Washington

B) James Madison

C) Thomas Jefferson

D) Alexander Hamilton

34. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention, though from 12 different states, had two important things in common. These were:

A) they were men with a great deal of political experience who all favored weakening the central government.

B) they were all relatively inexperienced politically and they favored establishing a constitutional monarchy.

C) they were all former loyalists who also favored establishing strong ties with Great Britain.

D) they were all men of considerable political experience who recognized the need for a stronger national union.

35. The Constitutional Convention deadlocked until it could find a compromise solution to the issue of:

A) whether to keep or discard the Articles.

B) whether there was truly a need for a stronger national government.

C) representation in Congress.

D) powers of the executive.

36. How did James Madison imagine that a federal republic with a strong central government might work, especially one that governed such a vast land area as the United States?

A) He simply believed that a strong central government would lead to tyranny and was therefore against it.

B) He believed that a strong central government would have to be opposed by a well-organized opposition party.

C) He believed that various interests and factions would cancel each other out in a large republic, and that virtuous national leaders would govern on behalf of all the people.

D) He believed that he would be forced to run for President in order to save the union.

37. In the debates over ratification, the Federalists argued that the Constitution:

A) would solve the immigration problems of the nation.

B) was merely a temporary means to regain stability.

C) would protect the nation from itself by providing a system of checks and balances.

D) safeguarded individual freedoms through its built-in Bill of Rights.

Practice Test

1. Which event, more than any other, convinced George Washington that the Articles of Confederation needed to be revised?

A.      the Spanish threat to take New Orleans

B.      the British refusal to evacuate the forts of the Northwest

C.      Shays's Rebellion

D.     the Whiskey Rebellion

E.      the Battle of Fallen Timbers

2. The Constitution's most distinctive feature was its:

A.      separation of "powers" with "checks and balances."

B.      system for the direct election of the executive.

C.      lack of a national judicial system.

D.     single house legislature.

E.      lack of amendment provisions.

3. The prominent eighteenth-century essayist Judith Sargent Murray placed her greatest emphasis on the right of women to:

A.      vote.

B.      own property.

C.      divorce.

D.     an education.

E.      serve in combat.

4. The greatest complaint by opponents of the proposed Constitution of 1787 was the:

A.      absence of a specific listing of personal liberties.

B.      omission of references to God.

C.      creation of a federal military.

D.     naming of the new federal district after Washington.

E.      failure to abolish slavery.

5. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 recommended the document be ratified by:

A.      a direct vote of the people.

B.      special state ratifying conventions.

C.      another national convention.

D.     state legislatures.

E.      the Confederation Congress.

6. Under the Articles of Confederation:

A.      each state had one vote in Congress.

B.      all states had to approve any important measure.

C.      there could be no amendments to the Articles.

D.     no legislation could be passed without all states voting on the issue.

E.      the executive had the power to veto legislative decisions.

7. James Madison's Virginia Plan proposed:

A.      revision and strengthening of the Articles of Confederation.

B.      larger influence within a new national government for the richer and more populous states.

C.      a unicameral national legislature with equal representation for the states.

D.     a bicameral national legislature with state representatives in both houses chosen by popular vote.

E.      the direct election of the president.

8. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, for the purpose of political representation, slaves were classified as:

A.      three-fifths of a free person.

B.      non-taxable.

C.      property.

D.     equivalent to children.

E.      citizens.

9. The most significant division in the Constitutional Convention was between:

A.      slave and free states.

B.      large and small states.

C.      eastern and western interests.

D.     agricultural and manufacturing interests.

E.      the Federalists and the Republicans.

10. By 1786, even defenders of the Articles of Confederation accepted the fact that which of the following needed to be strengthened?

A.      the power to tax

B.      the executive

C.      the court system

D.     the army

E.      the navy

11.  New state constitutions drafted during the Revolutionary War sought to expand the power of the executive.

A.      True

B.      False

 

12. The "Great Compromise" was important because it solved the problem of representation.

A.      True

B.      False

13. Abiding by the rules set up under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution could not go into effect until it was ratified by all the states in the Union.

A.      True

B.      False

14. The Northwest Ordinance guaranteed freedom of religion and banned slavery.

A.      True

B.      False

15. The Constitution did not resolve the question of which law—state or national—would be the supreme law of the land.

A.      True

B.      False

16. The core of Anti-Federalist opposition to the Constitution of 1787 was its lack of a(n) ________.

bill of rights

17. The government plan adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777 was called the ________.

Articles of Confederation

 

18. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were the authors of ________.

The Federalist Papers

 

19. In a Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft charged that men deliberately conspire to keep women in "a state of perpetual ________" by giving them inferior educations.

childhood

20. The rejected Jay-Gardoqui Treaty and ________ were the two crisis events that gave momentum to calls for strengthening the central government.

Shays's Rebellion

 

21. In the new republic, the new image of women as the upholders of private virtue was known as "________" and inspired many educational reformers in the revolutionary generation.

republican motherhood

 

22. State legislators gradually abolished state support for ________, as a reform against artificial privilege.

churches

 

23. Due to the expansion of rice culture and the spread of cotton production to the interior, slavery continued to grow in the Lower ________.

South

 

24. Because the framers thought it would be unreasonable for a citizen to know anything about a presidential candidate that lived in a different section of the country, the ________ was created to elect the federal executive.

Electoral College

 

25. After independence was declared, all the revolutionaries agreed both that the people should rule and that ________ governments were best suited to small territories.

republican

 

26. On September 25, 1789, Congress approved twelve amendments, ________ of which came to comprise what we know as the Bill of Rights.

Ten

 

27. The ________ branch of government gained most of the power in the governments created by the initial state constitutions.

legislative

 

28. ________ led a failed rebellion of western farmers during the mid-1780s.

Daniel Shays

 

29. For Americans after the revolution, the greatest problems and greatest opportunities beckoned in the rapidly developing ________.

West

 

30.  ________ is the term that refers to an arrangement of government that divides power between the state and national governments.

Federalism

 

31. The first framing of government for the whole nation was known as the Articles of ________.

Confederation

32.  At the Philadelphia convention, the small state plan was called the ________.

New Jersey Plan

 

33.  More than anyone else, future president ________ was the architect of the Constitution.

James Madison

Chapter Test

1. How was slavery an obvious contradiction to the principles of the American republic?

A.    Slavery showed how poorly treated black women were.

B.     Americans claimed to be fighting for freedom, but still enslaved others.

C.     Slavery funded much of the Revolution, so it was part of the new republic.

D.    Slavery was a British institution and had no place in an independent America.

E.     People who fought in the war and enslaved others were too violent for a republic.

2. The most important issue not yet addressed when the Constitutional Convention adjourned was:

A.    the question of counting slaves for representation.

B.     whether to have an executive or not.

C.     the absence of a national bill of rights.

D.    the question of the power of the national government to tax.

E.     how the president would be elected

3. James Madison's Virginia Plan proposed:

A.    revision and strengthening of the Articles of Confederation.

B.     representatives to both houses apportioned according to the population, instead of each state having a single vote.

C.     a unicameral national legislature with equal representation for the states.

D.    a bicameral national legislature with state representatives in both houses chosen by popular vote.

E.     the direct election of the president.

4. The Articles of Confederation were adopted when states gave up their:

A.    power to regulate trade.

B.     power to make war.

C.     claims to western lands.

D.    right to levy their own taxes.

E.     plans for emancipation.

5. Ratification of the new Constitution:

A.    required only nine states, and special ratifying conventions for approval

B.     was done by state legislatures

C.     could not occurr until Rhode Island voted for ratification

D.    All of the above

  

6. The proposed new Constitution of 1787 called for the election of a president by ________.

A.    a direct vote of the people

B.     the state legislatures

C.     an electoral college

D.    the federal congress

E.     the Senate

7. The three-fifths rule concerned the issue of ________.

A.    whether to count slaves as part of the population

B.     the number of branches in the national government

C.     checks and balances

D.    presidential power

E.     the number of votes required in the House to pass legislation

8. The "Antifederalists" arguments included all of the following EXCEPT:

A.    cautioned that extending a republic over a large territory would separate national legislators  from the interests and close oversight of their constituents

B.     feared that the new government would widely abuse its powers.

C.     feared expansion of the power of the central government at the expense of the states

D.    feared that the government too much favored common people over the "well-born."

E.     warned expanding the powers of the central government would lead to corrupt and arbitrary rule by new aristocrats

9. Shays's Rebellion involved ________.

A.    discontented New England merchants

B.     western settlers demanding Indian territory

C.     supporters of freer trade with Great Britain

D.    discontented farmers in Massachusetts

E.     Continental Army officers who had been denied their pensions

10. The Articles of Confederation could not be amended until all thirteen state legislatures approved.

A.    True

B.     False

11. Which of the following was NOT proposed by William Paterson's New Jersey Plan ?

A.    a two-house national legislature, giving the federal government too much power.

B.     maintaining the national government  as a unicameral Congress with each state receivng one vote in Congress

C.     increased Congress's power to tax.

D.    increased Congress's power to regulate trade

E.     appealed to the smaller states since it preserved each state's power in Congress by giving them all an equal vote

12. The Northwest Ordinance laid out the requirements for western territories to become states.

A.    True

B.     False

13. The essays known collectively as The Federalist Papers called for the ratification of the Constitution.

A.    True

B.     False

14. The compromise that resolved the dispute between the large and the small states included each of the following EXCEPT ________.

A.    the states would be equally represented in the upper house

B.     the slave trade would end immediately

C.     the states would be proportionally represented according to population in the lower house

D.    a slave would count as three-fifths of a free person in the calculation of population for purposes of representation

E.     in the lower house, at the beginning, there would be one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants

15. The new constitution provided Congress with all of the following EXCEPT:

A.    power to tax

B.     power to regulate commerce

C.     veto power over state legislation

D.    made it independent and separate from the Executive and Judiciary