Chapter 7 The First Republic 1776–1789

1. Chapter 7 The First Republic 1776–1789

2. Key Questions: • How did republicanism influence the political philosophy of the new state constitutions? • What were the internal problems in the United States under the Articles of Confederation? • How did Britain and Spain exploit the weaknesses of the United States after the Revolution? • What influenced the movement for stronger national government? • What characterized the drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution?

3. CONSTITUTION • Convention 1787 • The Plans • Other Compromises • Fight over ratification

4. I. Convention 1787 - Philadelphia • Who attended? • First Decisions • What did they want? • Major Issues

5. CONSTITUTION • Convention 1787 • The Plans • Other Compromises • Fight over ratification

6. II. The Plans • Virginia Plan (or Big State Plan) • Madison and Randolph • Legislature = bicameral • Executive • Judicial • Council of Revision • New Jersey (or Small State) Plan – Paterson revise Articles • Committee for compromise • Connecticut Plan or Great Compromise • Legislature • Executive and electoral college • Judiciary

7. CONSTITUTION • Convention 1787 • The Plans • Other Compromises • Fight over ratification

8. III. Other Compromises • 3/5ths compromise • 2/3rd vote on treaties • Signed September 1787

9. CONSTITUTION • Convention 1787 • The Plans • Other Compromises • Fight over ratification

10. IV. Fight over ratification • Federalists • Anti-Federalists • Ratified 1788

11. The New Order of Republicanism • Defining the People • The central tenet of republicanism was the people were sovereign. • Republicanism also suggested that political rights should be limited to those who owned property because economic self-sufficiency was considered necessary for informed political judgment. • Republicanism limited political participation to propertied adult white men, approximately 60–85 percent of all adult white men.

12. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • Defining the People, cont’d. • The traditional patriarchal assumptions that politics was a male domain did not change. Women were considered a dependent class. • Though some women protested their status, only New Jersey extended the suffrage to women and that was rescinded in 1807. • Women did benefit from slightly less restrictive divorce laws, somewhat greater access to education and business, and a higher moral status.

13. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • Defining the People, cont’d. • The Revolution stimulated the growth of free black communities and the development of African American culture. • One in ten African Americans in slavery gained their freedom. • Most northern states gradually abolished slavery but African Americans struggled against racial prejudice.

14. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • Defining the People, cont’d. • Most Native Americans stayed neutral during the Revolution but sought to free themselves from American domination. • Territorial demands on the Native Americans escalated. • To combat the growing pressure of white Americans, Native Americans forged new alliances. • In the 1780s, imperial rivalries continued to allow Native Americans to play the United States and European colonial powers off against each other.

15. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • State Constitutions • New state constitutions were in place by 1777 and were written documents that curbed the power of governors and strengthened legislatures. • The new state constitutions weakened the traditional ties between church and state for the support of religion.

16. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • The State Constitutions, cont’d. • Radicals and conservatives held differing visions of republicanism. Radicals wanted all male citizens to participate in government. Conservatives wanted limited government by substantial property holders. • Conservatives ruled in South Carolina and restricted suffrage to approximately 10 percent of white males. • Radicals ruled in Pennsylvania where all free males who paid taxes could vote.

17. The New Order of Republicanism, cont’d. • The Articles of Confederation • The Articles of Confederation delegated extremely limited powers to the central government. It was predicated on protecting the freedoms for which the Revolution was fought from oppressive, centralized power. • Congress was the sole national authority but constitutional safeguards made it impossible to to threaten state interests. • Congress was primarily responsible for foreign policy and national defense. • The issue of western lands hindered ratification of the Articles until 1781.

18. Problems at home • The fiscal crisis • The United States and the states had incurred heavy debts during the Revolution. • A group of nationalists wanted to strengthen the national government and reduce state power. Robert Morris organized a Bank of North America to hold government funds, make loans to the government, and issue paper money. • Morris wanted Congress to assume payment of the national debt but that required Congress gaining the power to tax. He proposed a constitutional amendment for a national impost or tariff but it failed.

19. Problems at home, cont’d. • Economic depression • After the war, Britain kept its markets closed to American goods, hoping to keep the United States weak and dependent. • British merchants flooded the American market with cheap consumer goods but ultimately required payment in hard currency. • Foreign loans were the United States’ only source of hard money. • Prevailing economic conditions led to an immense bubble of credit that burst in 1784 triggering a depression that lasted the remainder of the decade.

20. Problems at home, cont’d. • The economic policies of the states • Artisans, merchants, and workers pushed for tariffs against British goods to encourage domestic manufacturing and to protect jobs and wages. • Northern state legislatures passed tariffs, but the lack of a uniform, national policy rendered them ineffective. • Tariff policies raised sectional tensions between northern and southern states. Southern agrarian states favored free trade policies. • The most bitter divisions were between debtors and creditors. Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 showed the seriousness of this issue.

21. Problems at home, cont’d. • Congress and the West • Congress took several steps to establish jurisdiction in the West, including negotiating a series of treaties with Native Americans to gain their land, and passed several ordinances to organize the settlement of western lands. • Thomas Jefferson wrote the Northwest Ordinance that included an antislavery clause.

22. Diplomatic Weaknesses • Impasse with Britain • The Confederation Congress was unable to resolve major differences with Great Britain. • Issues included prewar American debts and treatment by the patriots of Loyalists that the British used to maintain their hold on western forts. • Spain and the Mississippi River • Spain refused to recognize the southern and western United States boundaries, denied United States free navigation of the Mississippi River, and sought to exploit the divided loyalties of westerners.

23. Toward a New Union • The Road to Philadelphia • A meeting at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate began the movement for a new constitution. • The subsequent Annapolis Convention was attended by nine states and called for a constitutional convention in Philadelphia in May 1787. • All states except Rhode Island sent delegates to the constitutional convention. • The delegates were largely lawyers, most had served in the Confederation Congress, over one-third had fought in the Revolution, were extremely well-educated, and wealthier than the average American.

24. Toward a New Union, cont’d. • The convention at work • Congress had authorized only a revision of the Articles of Confederation, but the delegates quickly moved to replace it. • The Virginia Plan called for a new national government with a bicameral legislature, executive, and judiciary. It granted Congress greater legislative powers and made representation proportional to population. It favored large states. • Small states responded with the New Jersey Plan that kept the one state, one vote rule of the Articles but expanded the powers of Congress and the national government.

25. Toward a New Union, cont’d. • The convention at work, cont’d. • The issue of state representation in the national government was solved by the Great Compromise. Equal representation was provided in the Senate and proportional in the House of Representatives. It also settled the issue of counting slaves for representation in the House. • The issue of trade legislation was solved by compromise. • A simple majority of Congress could enact trade legislation but Congress was barred from acting against the slave trade for 20 years. • Because Washington was the likely first president, the delegates provided the chief executive with broad discretionary powers.

26. Toward a New Union, cont’d. • Overview of the Constitution • The Constitution provided for a strong executive, a Supreme Court, and specifically delegated economic powers to Congress. • The powers of the states were restrained but provided for internal checks and balances on the national government. • The relationship between the state and national governments were based on federalism.

27. Toward a New Union, cont’d. • The struggle over ratification • Federalists supported the Constitution and antifederalists opposed it. • The Federalists skillfully built momentum for ratification and used the Federalist, a series of essays, to allay fears the national government would be too strong. • The key to ratification was passage by Virginia and New York. North Carolina joined the Union in 1789 and Rhode Island joined in 1790. • Map: The Ratification Vote on the Constitution, p. 203

28. Conclusion • Between 1776 and 1789, Americans developed a unique constitutional system. • Written constitutions were proclaimed supreme over legislation and detailed the powers of government, and protected freedom through the Bill of Rights. • Equally important, the nation’s constitution and government were changed peacefully.

29. MAP 7–1 Cession of Western Lands by the States Eight states had claims to lands in the West after the Revolution, and their willingness to cede them to the national government was an essential step in the creation of a public domain administered by Congress.

30. MAP 7–2 Disputed Territory in the West after the Treaty of Paris Throughout the 1780s, Spain asserted title to a large area in the West south of the Ohio River.

31. MAP 7–3 The Ratification Vote on the Constitution Aside from some frontier districts exposed to possible foreign attack, the strongest support for the Constitution came from coastal and interior areas tied into a developing commercial economy.

32. The illustration on this 1783 map of the United States pairs George Washington on the left with Liberty and Benjamin Franklin on the right with Justice in a symbolic identification of the new republic with the values of equality and individual dignity. The Granger Collection

33. With the exception of New Jersey, where women meeting the property qualifications were eligible to vote, the state constitutions of the Revolutionary era prohibited women from voting.

34. FIGURE 7–1 Growth of the Free Black Population between 1750 and 1800 Gradual emancipation in the North, the freeing of many slaves by their owners in the South, and the opportunities for freedom offered by the Revolution, all contributed to an explosive growth in the free population of African Americans in the second half of the eighteenth century. Source: A Century of Population Growth in the United States, 1790–1900 (1909). p. 80. Data for 1750 estimated.

35. Phillis Wheatley was an acclaimed African-American poet. Kidnapped into slavery as a child in Africa, she was a domestic slave to the Wheatley family of Boston when her first poems were published in 1773.

36. The Mother Bethel Church in Philadelphia, dedicated in 1794, was home to the first independent black congregation in America and the founding establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. Churches were central to the communal life of black northerners and provided leadership in the struggle for racial justice. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

37. Issued in 1777, this Georgia four-dollar banknote is an example of the type of paper money used to finance the Revolutionary War.

38. FIGURE 7–2 American Exports to and Imports from Britain between 1783 and 1789 During the 1780s, the United States imported far more from Britain than it exported there. The resulting huge trade deficit drained the country of gold and silver and was a major factor in the credit crisis that triggered an economic depression in the middle of the decade. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, pt.2 (1975) p. 1176.

39. Depicted here in a folding fan, the Empress of China was the first American ship to undertake an extensive trading voyage to China. Sailing from New York in February 1784, the Empress of China returned on May 11, 1785, and netted a profit of $37,000 for the investors who had financed the voyage. Building trading contacts with new markets in Asia and Europe helped the United States break its economic dependence on England. Courtesy of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia.

40. This clash between Shays’s rebels and government troops at the Springfield arsenal marked the violent climax of the agrarian protests of the 1780s.

41. FIGURE 7–3 Land Ordinance of 1785 The precise uniformity of the surveying system initiated in the Land Ordinance of 1785 created a rectangular grid pattern that was the model for all future land surveyed in the public domain.

42. This portrait, sketched in about 1790 by John Trumbull, is the only known likeness of Alexander McGillivray, a Creek leader who effectively played off Spanish and American interests in the Southeast to gain a measure of independence for the Creeks in the 1780s.

43. Washington presides over the Constitutional Convention.

44. The federal ship Hamilton was the center of attention in the grand procession staged by supporters of the Constitution in New York City in 1788.