Reshaping the Republic 7

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Reshaping the Republic (7)

• Republican Society Government Peace
• The State Constitutions
• Social and Political Reform
• African Americans in the Republic
• Rethinking gender
• Republican Motherhood
• The West
• Northwest Ordinances
• Indian People
• The Lessons of Republicanism

Abigail Adams
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Learning Outcomes Republic

• Understand the state constitutions as reflection
  of the postwar view of republicanism
• Understand why the Articles of Confederation were
  the only form of government the new states would
  accept
• Account for the diplomatic domestic political
  conflict over western settlement
• Understand which Americans were willing to accept
  the Federal System (Constitution)
• Be able to describe the social changes evident in
  the new Republic

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Crisis Constitution (7)

• Preview For a decade after independence,
  American revolutionaries were less committed to
  creating a single national republic than to
  organizing 13 separate state republics, united
  only loosely under the Articles of Confederation.
  By the mid-1780s, however, the weakness of the
  Confederation seemed evident to many Americans.
  The Constitutional Convention of 1787 produced a
  new frame of government that was truly national
  in scope.
• The Highlights
• Republican Experiments
• The Temptations of Peace
• Republican Society
• From Confederation to Constitutions

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Republican Experiments

• The State Constitutions
• Desire to curb executive power
• Strengthen legislative powers
• Written constitutions legal codes to protect
  people
• From Congress to Confederation
• Articles of Confederation create a weak
  government that consists of a national legislature

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The Temptations of Peace

• The Temptations of the West
• Greatest opportunities exists in the West
  region beset with intense conflict
• Foreign Intrigues
• British continue to harass American interests in
  the Old Northwest
• Spanish designs on the Old Southwest
• Indians play pivotal roles in both regions

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The Temptations of Peace

• States Disputes
• Tensions between landed and landless states
• Dispute resolved - Articles of Confederation
  ratified in 1781
• The More Democratic West
• State legislatures become more democratic as a
  result of population growth in the backcountry

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• The Northwest Territory
• Congress adopts three ordinances in the 1780s to
  deal with issue of westward expansion
• Most important is the Northwest Ordinance of
  1787, which outlaws slavery north of the Ohio
  River
• By limiting the spread of slavery in the
  northern states, Congress deepened the critical
  social and economic differences between North and
  South, evident already in the 1780s(206).

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• Slavery and Sectionalism
• 1775 African Americans are 20 of nations
  population 90 live in the South
• Difficulty of squaring republican ideals with the
  continued presence of slavery
• Most northern states begin to abolish slavery
• Free black population grows in both the North
  South
• Slavery continues to exist in southern states

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• Wartime Economic Disruption
• Postwar consumption produces massive public and
  private debt
• Reckless printing of paper money and shortage of
  goods spark severe inflation
• Serious conflicts over economic policy
• So long as the individual states remained
  sovereign, the Confederation was crippledunable
  to conduct foreign affairs effectively, unable to
  set coherent economic policy, unable to deal with
  discontent in the West.

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Republican Society

• The New Men of the Revolution
• The American Revolution does not re-order
  socio-economics
• Urban artisans and even laborers attempt to carve
  out political and economic space
• The New Women of the Revolution
• Women excluded from politics but are less
  submissive after the Revolution

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Republican Society

• Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindication
• Published in 1792, Wollstonecrafts book calls
  for educational reforms and equality laws
• Virulent reaction to the book on both sides of
  the Atlantic

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Republican Society

• Republican Motherhood and Education
• 1780-1830 period of better schooling and
  literacy rates
• By 1850, as many women as men are literate
• Women continue to be second-class citizens in the
  legal terms

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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.

• The Attack on Aristocracy
• Limited success in achieving equality because of
  republicans obsession with rooting out vestiges
  of the monarchy rather than raising up the
  bottom of society
• Disestablishment of state-supported churches
• Example of Society of Cincinnati, which could no
  longer base membership on heredity

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From Confederation to Constitutions

• The Jay-Gardoqui Treaty
• Sectional animosity aggravated by proposed
  treatynever ratifiedbetween the United States
  and Spain over shipping rights on the Mississippi
  River
• Shays Rebellion
• 1786 Daniel Shays leads rebellion of disaffected
  farmers in western Massachusetts

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Reshaping the Republic

• Articles of Confederation Crisis ?
• Inventing a Federal Republic
• Compromise
• A Republic with Slaves
• We the People
• The Struggle for Ratification
• Federalists Antifederalists
• The Bill of Rights

Constitution of the United States 1789 page one
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• Framing a Federal Constitution
• May 1787 delegates meet in Philadelphia for the
  express purpose of revising the Articles of
  Confederation
• James Madison becomes key figure in the proposed
  overhaul of the government
• The Virginia and New Jersey Plans
• Madisons Virginia Plan three-branch government
  Congress could veto state legislation
• Patersons New Jersey Plan a weaker central
  government than Madisons plan provided for
• Deadlock between the plans

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• The Deadlock Broken
• Benjamin Franklin brokers a compromise over
  representation
• Creation of the Electoral College
• Separation of powers
• Possibility to amend the Constitution
• Ratification
• Anti-Federalists oppose Constitution because of
  perceived power it gives to aristocrats and the
  central government
• Madison, Hamilton, and Jay write The Federalist
  Papers to counter concerns
• Madison also promises a Bill of Rights

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Within the life 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 that Americans achieved by
agreeing to the Constitution.

• Changing Revolutionary Ideals
• Americans reject some republican beliefs by
  agreeing to a sovereign national government and
  an independent executive
• Behavior shaped by interest rather than virtue
• Constitutional debates will evolve into
  subsequent political tensions

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Keywords and Terms (7)

• deference
• Northwest Ordinance
• Jay-Gardoqui Treaty
• The Federalist Papers
• Alexander Hamilton
• Manumission Society, 1785
• disestablishment of religion

• liberty and order
• nationalists
• Shays Rebellion
• James Madison
• interest v. virtue
• Abigail Adams

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Learning Outcomes Republic

• Understand the state constitutions as reflection
  of the postwar view of republicanism
• Understand why the Articles of Confederation were
  the only form of government the new states would
  accept
• Account for the diplomatic domestic political
  conflict over western settlement
• Understand which Americans were willing to accept
  the Federal System (Constitution)
• Be able to describe the social changes evident in
  the new Republic