Chapter 7

1. Chapter 7 The Democratic Republic, 1790-1820 Web

2. Life in Post-Revolutionary America • Overwhelmingly a nation of farmer householders in 1789 • First goal was to provide sustenance for families • Second was attaining “competence” • Living up to community standards and protecting long-term independence of their households • Most farmers produced a variety of crops and animals • Increase in foreign demand for American food, 1789-1815, helped to solidify sex segregation in farm work • Men increasingly worked fields • Women managed the household • Some farm families took in outwork to supplement their incomes

3. Life in Post-Revolutionary America (cont.) • Reinforced patriarchal familial structures • Interdependence between farm families very common • Barter rather than cash transactions • “Changing system” adopted in South and West • Changes in inheritance system • Land left to all sons with cooperation among them expected • Farm tenancy rose as land acquisition became more difficult’ • Standards of living varied

4. Life in Post-Revolutionary American (cont.) • Poor families lived simple lives • Couldn’t afford to paint their houses or landscape • Animals foraged near houses • Little furniture • Common bowl at meal times and communal sleeping arrangements • Richer families had more amenities • Ability to light their homes at night • Upholstered furniture • Larger homes with more privacy

5. Continued Westward Expansion after the Revolution • Indians in possession of almost all land granted to the United States in the Treaty of Paris • Pressure on woodlands Indians to surrender or evacuate was immense • Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794, secured much of Ohio and southeastern Indiana • Remaining Indians fell to squabbling among themselves • Indians decimated by disease, effects of alcohol • Alexander McGillivray tried unsuccessfully to unite Creeks between 1783 and 1793

6. Continued Westward Expansion after the Revolution(cont.) • Temskwatana and his brother Tecumseh (Shawnees) sought to unite the northwest Indians in 1805 • Defeated in battle at Tippecanoe in 1811 • Easterners looked down on backcountry settlers • Adopted Indian farming techniques and lived rustic lives • Backcountry farmers voiced two demands after 1789 • Federal protection from the Indians • Guarantee of right to navigate Ohio and Mississippi Rivers • Frontier settled and integrated into Union by 1803

7. Postwar Life in the Plantation South • Economic diversification to grain and livestock farming forced some planters in the Chesapeake to manumit their slaves • Manumission especially common in Delaware and Maryland • Much less common in Virginia • Cotton cultivation in Deep South gave slavery a new life • Invention of cotton gin in 1793 made profitable, large-scale production possible • Cotton planters purchased surplus slaves from the Chesapeake • Coastal South also made recommitment to slavery • Rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia • Developed task system for slave supervision

8. ©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license. Distribution of Slave Population, 1790-1820

9. Life in Urban America after 1790 • The nation’s five largest cities in 1790 were all seaport cities • Became centers for internal and international travel before and during the Revolution • Prosperity furthered during European wars from 1793 to 1815 • Merchants amassed large fortunes • New institutions created to support manufacturing and commerce • Masses of poverty remained in seaport cities • Demonstrated undemocratic distribution of wealth in society • Erosion of position of skilled artisans • Increasing reliance on unskilled “slop” workers • Undercut patriarchal status of fathers and husbands

10. Post-Revolutionary Challenges to established Authority • Decline of patriarchal authority affected many aspects of everyday life • Affected courtship and marriage patterns as young people increasingly made choices based on affection and personal attraction • Rise in number of pregnancies out of marriage • Dramatic increase in alcohol consumption • Whiskey became the national drink during the fifty years after the Revolution

11. Post-Revolutionary Challenges to established authority(cont.) • Getting drunk became an outright goal • Explosive growth in availability of reading material • Novels, read mostly by women • Proliferation of newspapers • Spread of silent reading as activity for the masses • Redefinition of citizenship • Increasing calls for equal rights for all white men • Calls for political rights for property/less men • Especially excluded women and African Americans

12. Religion in the Early Republic • Established churches in decline • New democratic sects grew in popularity • Renounced need for an educated, formally authorized clergy • Emphasized emotionalism and storytelling over doctrine and ritual • Spread of evangelical Protestantism in the South • Camp meeting used to win new converts • At its heart, a conservative acceptance of the established social hierarchy • Accommodated themselves to slavery

13. Religion in the Early Republic (cont.) • Christianity began to spread among African Americans • Thousands of slaves embraced Christianity between 178- and 1820 • Revivalists welcomed both slaves and free blacks • Churches internally segregated • Some African-American communities formed their own churches • Gave rise to thoughts among some slaves of seeking freedom • Hoped to foment a republican revolution in Virginia • Crushed brutally and completely Web