I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s

1. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s A. The Federalists Implement the Constitution 1. Devising the New Government – Washington received the highest number of votes from the electoral college and was elected president in 1788; • John Adams was elected vice president; • Washington insisted that only the president had the right to remove appointed government officials. • He appointed a cabinet: T. Jefferson (head of Dept. of State), A. Hamilton (head of Treasury Dept.), and H. Knox (Sec. of War). • Judiciary Act of 1789 established a federal district court in each state with three circuit courts to hear appeals; Supreme Court would have final judicial say.

2. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s A. The Federalists Implement the Constitution 2. The Bill of Rights – Added to the Constitution; • Madison (now a member of Congress) submitted 19 amendments; • 10 were approved by 1791; these 10 consisted the nation’s first Bill of Rights to protect individual citizens against an oppressive national government.

3. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s B. Hamilton’s Financial Program 1. Public Credit: Redemption and Assumption – (January 1790) Was extremely controversial because it would create a permanent national debt; suggested that Congress redeem at face value the $55 million in Confederation securities held by foreign and domestic investors to create good credit; critics said this policy would unfairly increase the profits of speculators; Hamilton wanted to improve public credit by having the national government assume the war debt of the states.

4. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s B. Hamilton’s Financial Program 2. Creating a National Bank – (December 1790) Hamilton argued that a national bank would be jointly owned by private stockholders and the national government; bank would make loans to merchants, handle government funds, and issue bills of credit; Jefferson and Madison opposed a national bank (preferred a strict interpretation of Constitution) on the grounds that the government did not have the right/power to create such an institution.

5. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s B. Hamilton’s Financial Program 3. Raising Revenue Through Tariffs – Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” (December 1791) urged the expansion of American manufacturing; called for Congress to impose excise taxes to pay the interest on the national debt; advocated moderate revenue tariffs and not protective tariffs.

6. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s C. Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision • 1. Southern planters and western farmers – By 1793, the Federalists had split over Hamilton’s financial plans for the nation; southern Federalists supported Jefferson and Madison (called themselves Democratic Republicans or simply Republicans), while northerners supported Hamilton (Federalists); Jefferson argued that the wage-labor of the North could not sustain a republican nation; therefore, he focused instead on yeoman farmers and their families, whose work he argued could support the nation as well as European countries. The French Revolution’s disruption of European farming lent credibility to Jefferson’s ideas.

7. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s D. The French Revolution Divides Americans 1. Ideological Politics – Americans made large profits from the French Revolution but argued over the ideologies that led to the revolution; some Americans supported the Jacobin ideas of social egalitarian/democratic society; Americans with strong Christian beliefs disliked the Jacobins closing the churches and feared a similar social rebellion in the U.S.; still other Americans were critical of the revolution’s bloodshed. In 1794, western Pennsylvania farmers mounted the Whiskey Rebellion to protest Hamilton’s excise tax on alcohol.

8. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s D. The French Revolution Divides Americans 2. Jay’s Treaty – Disagreements between the British and Americans over shipments to France led to Jay’s Treaty (1793/1794), accepting Britain’s right to stop neutral ships; in return, Americans could make claims to the British for illegal seizures and required the British to remove their troops and Indian agents from the Northwest Territory; was seen as a decidedly pro-British treaty.

9. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s D. The French Revolution Divides Americans 3. The Haitian Revolution – Saint-Domingue was a French plantation colony in the West Indies; elite planters ruled a population of 40,000 free whites; some 28,000 free blacks were excluded from white privileges; a half million black slaves worked the sugar plantations; French Revolution intensified conflicts on the island and inspired a massive slave uprising that aimed to abolish slavery. Toussaint L’Ouverture seized control of the country and in 1803 proclaimed the independent nation of Haiti, the Atlantic World’s first black republic. Haitian refugees flood into the U.S.; American slaveholders feared contagion of slave revolution; many Americans saw Haiti as a perversion of the republican ideal.

10. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s E. The Rise of Political Parties 1. Public interest – Many Americans believed organized political parties were dangerous because they feared that they did not serve the public interest; debate over Hamilton’s financial policies led to further divide among politicians. By the 1796 election, the two groups were holding public festivals and processions to celebrate their perspectives and candidates; Adams was elected president; maritime disputes with the British erupted in the XYZ Affair.

11. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s E. The Rise of Political Parties 2. The Naturalization, Alien, and Sedition Acts of 1798 – Federalists took a hard line against Republic critics; they passed Naturalization Act (lengthened residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years), Alien Act (authorized deportation of foreigners), and Sedition Act (prohibited publication of insults or attacks on president or members of Congress), which limited individual rights and threatened the fledgling party system; Federalist prosecutors arrested many Republican newspapers editors and politicians and jailed some of them; resulting constitutional crisis led Kentucky and Virginia legislatures to declare Alien and Sedition Acts to be “unauthoritative, void, and of no force”; the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions set forth a states’ rights interpretation of the Constitution, asserting that the states had a “right to judge” the legitimacy of national laws.

12. I. The Political Crisis of the 1790s E. The Rise of Political Parties 3. The “Revolution of 1800” – The presidential election of 1800 was an intense partisan contest; Federalists attacked Jefferson as an irresponsible radical; election was contested, but Federalist Hamilton supported Jefferson, leading in new Republican era; bloodless transfer of power showed that popularly elected governments could be changed in an orderly way, even in times of bitter partisan conflict.

15. II. A Republican Empire Is Born A. Sham Treaties and Indian Lands 1. The Treaty of Greenville – Disagreements continued in the West; government asserted control over trans-Appalachian west, arguing that the natives who lived there were “conquered”; Indians disagreed because they had not signed the Treaty of Paris; native peoples were forced to cede huge tracts of land in New York and Pennsylvania; land speculators used liquor and bribes to take additional land; conflict arose between allying native groups, white settlers, and the U.S. Army. The Treaty of Greenville ceded most of Ohio to U.S. and started a wave of migration from the east; by 1805, Ohio was a new state with more than 100,000 people.

16. II. A Republican Empire Is Born A. Sham Treaties and Indian Lands 2. Assimilation Rejected – To prevent conflict, U.S. government encouraged assimilation to white culture; some converted to Christianity but kept their cultural practices.