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Launching the New Republic,1789–1800

CHAPTER 7

Early in 1789 a mysterious stranger from New Orleans named André Fagotappeared in Nashville, Tennessee. Fagot was officially there to talk busi-

ness with local merchants, but in reality he was a Spanish agent sent toexploit discontent. For years, westerners had agonized over the Americangovernment’s failure to win Spanish permission for them to export cropsthrough New Orleans, without which their settlements would never flourish.Fagot made westerners a tempting offer—unrestricted export privileges atNew Orleans, which promised to ensure them prosperity. But in return theywould have to request that Spain annex Tennessee to its Louisiana colony.

Fagot found many local residents willing to discuss becoming Spanishsubjects. One of his more enthusiastic contacts was a young lawyer recentlyarrived from the Carolinas. Aware that poor communities could support onlypoor lawyers, the Carolinian was irresistibly drawn to the plot. Learning thatSpain would give valuable land grants in the lower Mississippi valley to any-one who renounced U.S. citizenship, the lawyer began visiting Louisiana reg-ularly to investigate settling there. Fagot probably placed little reliance onthis brash conspirator, who had a wild temper and a reputation for gamblingand drinking, and who seemed just another western opportunist. Theobscure lawyer’s name was Andrew Jackson.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Constitutional Government TakesShape, 1789–1796

Hamilton and the Formulation ofFederalist Policies, 1789–1994

The United States on the World Stage,1789–1796

The Emergence of Party Politics,1793–1800

Economic and Social Change

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195

The fact that a future patriot and president such asJackson was talking secession with the Spanish under-scores the fragility of the United States in 1789, the yearof George Washington’s first inauguration. NorthCarolina (which controlled Tennessee territory) andRhode Island had not yet joined the Union. Thousandsof western settlers appeared to be abandoning the newgovernment. Native Americans and their Spanish andBritish allies were effectively challenging the UnitedStates’ claims to western territories. The development ofAmerican economic power was severely limited by for-eign restrictions on U.S. exports and by the govern-ment’s inability to obtain credit abroad.

During the 1790s Americans fought bitterly over thesocial and economic course their new nation shouldtake, and these conflicts merged with the dissensionbetween Americans loyal to revolutionary France andthose favoring its British opponents. By 1798 voters haddivided into two parties, each of which accused theother of threatening republican liberty. Only when theelection of 1800 had been settled—by the narrowest ofmargins—could it be said that the United States hadmanaged to avoid dissolution.

This chapter focuses on four major questions:

■ What were the principal features of Hamilton’s eco-nomic program, and what were its opponents’ pri-mary objections?

■ Why was the United States at odds with Spain,Britain, and France at various times at the end of theeighteenth century?

■ What principal issues divided Federalists andRepublicans in the presidential election of 1800?

■ What were the primary factors contributing to thedeclining status and welfare of nonwhites in the newRepublic?

CONSTITUTIONALGOVERNMENT TAKES SHAPE,

1789–1796Traveling slowly over the nation’s miserable roads, themen entrusted with launching the federal experimentbegan assembling in New York, the new national capital,in March 1789. Because so few members were on hand,Congress opened its session a month late. GeorgeWashington did not arrive until April 23 and took hisoath of office a week later.

The slowness of these first steps disguised the seri-ousness of the tasks at hand. The country’s elected lead-ers had to make far-reaching decisions on several criticalquestions left unresolved by the Constitution’s framers.“We are in a wilderness,” wrote James Madison, “withouta footstep to guide us.”

Defining the Presidency

No office in the new government aroused more suspi-cion than the presidency. Many feared that the president’s powers could make him a virtual king. Public apprehension remained in check only be-cause of George Washington’s reputation for honesty.Washington tried to calm fears of unlimited executivepower.

The Constitution mentioned the executive depart-ments only in passing, required the president to obtainthe Senate’s “advice and consent” to his nominees tohead these bureaus, and made all executive personnelliable to impeachment. Otherwise, Congress was free todetermine the organization and accountability of whatbecame known as the cabinet. The first cabinet, estab-lished by Congress, consisted of four departments, head-ed by the secretaries of state, treasury, and war and by theattorney general. Vice President John Adams’s tie-break-ing vote defeated a proposal that would have forbiddenthe president from dismissing cabinet officers withoutSenate approval. This outcome reinforced the president’sauthority to make and carry out policy; it also separatedthe powers of the executive and legislative branchesbeyond what the Constitution required, and so made thepresident a more equal partner with Congress.

President Washington proposed few laws toCongress and generally limited his public statements tomatters of foreign relations and military affairs. He gen-erally deferred to congressional decisions concerningdomestic policy and cast only two vetoes during hiseight-year tenure (1789–1797).

Washington tried to reassure the public that he wasabove favoritism and conflicts of interest. Accordingly,he strove to understand the aspirations of the twogroups that dominated American society—northeasternmerchants and entrepreneurs, and southern planters—and he balanced his cabinet between them. Eventually,when Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson opposed cer-tain policies of Secretary of the Treasury AlexanderHamilton, Washington implored Jefferson not to leavehis post, even though the president supportedHamilton. Like most republican elites, Washingtonbelieved that the proper role for ordinary citizens wasnot to set policy through elections but rather to choose

196 CHAPTER 7 Launching the New Republic, 1789–1800

well-educated, politically sophisticated men who wouldmake laws in the people’s best interest, though inde-pendently of direct popular influence.

The president endured rather than enjoyed thepomp of office. Suffering from a variety of ailments thatgrew as the years passed, Washington longed to escapethe presidency and Philadelphia (the nation’s capitalfrom 1790 to 1800). Only with difficulty was he persuad-ed to accept reelection in 1792. He dreaded dying whilein office and thus setting the precedent for a lifetimepresidency. With great anxiety he realized that “thepreservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destinyof the republican model of government are . . . deeply,perhaps finally, staked on the experiment entrusted tothe hands of the American people.” Should he con-tribute to that experiment’s failure, he feared, his namewould live only as an “awful monument.”

National Justice and the Bill of Rights

The Constitution authorized Congress to establish fed-eral courts below the level of the Supreme Court, but it

offered no guidance in structuring a judicial system. Nordid it go far in protecting citizens’ individual rights. TheConstitution did bar the federal government from com-mitting such abuses as passing ex post facto laws (crimi-nalizing previously legal actions and then punishingthose who had engaged in them) and bills of attainder(proclaiming a person’s guilt and stipulating punish-ment without a trial). Nevertheless, the absence of acomprehensive bill of rights had led several delegates atPhiladelphia to refuse to sign the Constitution and hadbeen a condition of several states’ ratification of the newframe of government. The task of filling in these gaps fellto the First Congress.

In 1789 many citizens feared that the new federalcourts would ride roughshod over local customs. Everystate had gradually devised its own time-honored blendof judicial procedures. Any attempt to force states toabandon their legal heritages would have producedstrong counterdemands that federal justice be narrowlyrestricted.

In passing the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress man-aged to quiet popular apprehensions by establishing ineach state a federal district court that operated according

Constitutional Government Takes Shape, 1789–1796 197

to local procedures. As the Constitution stipulated, theSupreme Court exercised final jurisdiction. Congress hadstruck a compromise between nationalists and states’rights advocates, one that respected state traditionswhile offering wide access to federal justice.

Behind the movement for a bill of rights layAmericans’ long-standing fear that a strong central gov-ernment would lead to tyranny. Many Antifederalistsbelieved that the best defense against tyranny would beto strengthen the powers of state governments at theexpense of the federal government, but many moreAmericans wanted the Constitution to guarantee basicpersonal liberties to all American citizens. JamesMadison, who had been elected to the House ofRepresentatives, played the leading role in drafting theten amendments that became known as the Bill ofRights (see Appendix).

Madison insisted that the first eight amendmentsguarantee personal liberties, not strip the national gov-ernment of any necessary authority. The FirstAmendment guaranteed the most fundamental free-doms of expression—religion, speech, press, and politi-cal activity—against federal interference. The SecondAmendment ensured that “a well-regulated militia”would preserve the nations’ security by guaranteeing“the right of the people to bear arms.” Along with theThird Amendment, it sought to protect citizens fromwhat eighteenth-century Britons and Americans alikeconsidered the most sinister embodiment of tyrannicalpower: standing armies. The Fourth through EighthAmendments limited the police powers of the state byguaranteeing individuals’ fair treatment in legal andjudicial proceedings. The Ninth and Tenth Amendmentsreserved to the people or to the states powers not allo-cated to the federal government under the Constitution,but Madison headed off proposals to limit federal powermore explicitly. In general, the Bill of Rights imposed noserious check on the framers’ nationalist objectives.

Once the Bill of Rights was ratified by the states inDecember 1791, the federal judiciary moved decisivelyto establish its authority. In 1793, in Chisholm v. Georgia,the Supreme Court ruled that a state could be sued infederal courts by nonresidents. But Congress decidedthat the Court had encroached too far on states’ author-ity in Chisholm; in 1794 it voted to overturn this decisionthrough a constitutional amendment. Ratified in 1798,the Eleventh Amendment revised Article III, Section 2,so that private citizens could no longer use federalcourts to sue another state’s government in civil cases.The defeat of Chisholm stands as one of the handful ofinstances in American history in which the Supreme

Court was subsequently overruled by a constitutionalamendment.

In endorsing the Eleventh Amendment, Congresssought to limit federal power vis-à-vis that of the states,delivering another blow to the nationalist coalition thathad written the Constitution, secured its ratification,and dominated the First Congress. The catalyst of thissplit was Alexander Hamilton, whose bold programraised fears that federal policies could be shaped toreward special interests.

HAMILTON AND THEFORMULATION OF

FEDERALIST POLICIES,1789–1794

Washington’s reluctance to become involved with pending legislation and with domestic affairs enabledhis energetic secretary of the treasury, AlexanderHamilton, to set many of the administration’s priorities.Hamilton quickly emerged as an imaginative anddynamic statesman with a sweeping program forstrengthening the federal government and promotingeconomic development.

Hamilton and His Objectives

Born on the British Caribbean island of Nevis in 1755,Hamilton had sailed to New York in 1772 and entered theContinental Army in 1775. Serving on Washington’s staff,the brilliant Hamilton gained extraordinary influenceover Washington. Born outside the thirteen colonies, hefelt little identification with his adopted state, New York,or any other American locale. His background likewisereinforced his insensitivity to Americans’ concerns forliberty and fears of centralized authority.

In Hamilton’s mind, the most immediate dangerfacing the United States concerned the possibility of warwith Britain, Spain, or both. The Republic could financea major war only by borrowing heavily, but becauseCongress under the Confederation had not assumedresponsibility for the Revolutionary debt, the nation’scredit was weakened abroad and at home.

Hamilton also feared that the Union might disinte-grate because of Americans’ tendency to think first oftheir local loyalties and interests. For him, theConstitution’s adoption had been a close victory ofnational over state authority. Now he worried that thestates might reassert power over the new government. Ifthis happened, he doubted whether the nation could


prevent ruinous trade discrimination between states,deter foreign aggression, and avoid civil war.

Both his wartime experiences and his view ofhuman nature forged Hamilton’s political beliefs. Likemany nationalists, he believed that the American peoplewere incapable of displaying consistent self-sacrificeand virtue. Hamilton concluded that the federal govern-ment’s survival depended not on building popular sup-port but by cultivating politically influential citizensthrough a straightforward appeal to their financial inter-ests. Private ambitions would then serve the nationalwelfare.

Charming and brilliant, vain and handsome, a noto-rious womanizer, and thirsting for fame and power,Hamilton himself exemplified the worldly citizen whosefortunes he hoped to link to the Republic’s future. But tohis opponents, Hamilton embodied the dark forces lur-ing the Republic to its doom—a man who, Jeffersonwrote, believed in “the necessity of either force or cor-ruption to govern men.”

Report on the Public Credit, 1790

Dominated by nationalists, Congress directed Hamilton’sTreasury Department to evaluate the status of theRevolutionary debt in 1789. Hamilton responded inJanuary 1790 with the Report on the Public Credit, con-taining recommendations that would at once strength-en the country’s credit, enable it to defer paying its debt,and entice wealthy investors to place their capital at itsservice. The report listed $54 million in U.S. debt, $42million of which was owed to Americans, and the rest toforeigners. Hamilton estimated that on top of thenational debt, the states had debts of $25 million, anamount that included several million dollars that theUnited States had promised to reimburse, such asVirginia’s expenses in defending settlements in the Ohiovalley.

Hamilton’s first major recommendation was that thefederal government support the national debt by “fund-ing” it—that is, raise the $54 million needed to honor thedebt by selling an equal sum in new securities.Purchasers of these securities would choose from sever-al combinations of federal “stock” and western lands.Those who wished could retain their original bonds andearn 4 percent interest. All of the options would reduceinterest payments on the debt from the full 6 percent setby the Confederation Congress. Hamilton knew thatcreditors would not object to this reduction becausetheir investments would now be more valuable andmore secure.

Second, the report proposed that the federal gov-ernment pay off the state debts remaining from theRevolution. Such obligations would be funded alongwith the national debt in the manner described above.

Hamilton exhorted the government to use themoney earned by selling federal lands in the West to payoff the $12 million owed to Europeans as quickly as pos-sible. The Treasury could easily accumulate the interestowed on the remaining $42 million by collecting cus-toms duties on imports and an excise tax (a tax ondomestic products transported within a nation’s bor-ders) on whiskey. In addition, Hamilton proposed thatmoney owed to American citizens should be made a per-manent debt. That is, he urged that the government notattempt to repay the $42 million principal but insteadkeep paying interest to people wishing to hold bonds as

Hamilton and the Formulation of Federalist Policies, 1789–1794 199

an investment. If Hamilton’s recommendation wereadopted, the only burden on taxpayers would be thesmall annual cost of interest. It would then be possibleto uphold the national credit at minimal expense, with-out ever paying off the debt itself.

Hamilton advocated a perpetual debt as a lastingmeans of uniting the economic fortunes of the nation’screditors to the United States. In an age when financialinvestments were notoriously risky, the federal govern-ment would protect the savings of wealthy bondholdersthrough conservative policies while offering an interestrate competitive with the Bank of England’s. The guaran-tee of future interest payments would unite the interestsof the moneyed class with those of the government. Fewother investments would entail so little risk.

Hamilton’s Report on the Public Credit provokedimmediate controversy. Although no one in Congressdoubted that its provisions would greatly enhance thecountry’s fiscal reputation, many objected that thoseleast deserving of reward would gain the most. The orig-inal owners of more than three-fifths of the debt certifi-cates issued by the Continental Congress were Revo-lutionary patriots of modest means who had long beforesold their certificates for a fraction of their promisedvalue, usually out of dire financial necessity. ForeseeingHamilton’s intentions, wealthy speculators had boughtthe certificates and now stood to reap huge gains at theexpense of the original owners, even collecting interestthat had accrued before they purchased the certificates.“That the case of those who parted with their securitiesfrom necessity is a hard one, cannot be denied,”Hamilton admitted. But making exceptions would beeven worse.

To Hamilton’s surprise, Madison—his longtime col-league and initially a supporter of the plan—emerged asone of the chief opponents of reimbursing current cer-tificate holders at full face value. Sensing opposition tothe plan in his home state of Virginia, Madison tried butfailed to obtain compensation for original owners whohad sold their certificates. Congress rejected his sugges-tions primarily because some members feared that theywould weaken the nation’s credit. Hamilton’s policy gen-erated widespread resentment because it rewarded richprofiteers while ignoring the wartime sacrifices of sol-diers and other ordinary citizens.

Opposition to Hamilton’s proposal that the federalgovernment assume states’ war debts also ran high. OnlyMassachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina hadfailed to make effective provisions for satisfying theircreditors. Understandably, the issue stirred the fiercestindignation in the South, which except for South

Carolina had paid off 83 percent of its debt. Madison andother southerners maintained that to allow residents ofthe laggard states to escape heavy taxes while others hadliquidated theirs at great expense was to reward irre-sponsibility. South Carolina became the sole southernstate that supported Hamilton’s policies.

Southern hostility almost defeated assumption. Inthe end, however, Hamilton managed to save his pro-posal by exploiting the strong desire among Virginians torelocate the national capital in their region. Virginiansexpected that moving the capital would make their statethe crossroads of the country and thus help preserve itsposition as the nation’s largest, most influential state. Inreturn for the northern votes necessary to transfer thecapital to the Potomac River, Hamilton secured enoughVirginians’ support to win the battle for assumption. Yetthe debate over state debts alienated many white south-erners by confirming their suspicions that other regionswould monopolize the benefits of a stronger union.

Congressional enactment in 1790 of the Report onthe Public Credit dramatically reversed the nation’s fiscalstanding. Thereafter, European investors grew so enthu-siastic about U.S. bonds that by 1792 some securitieswere selling at 10 percent above face value.

Creating a National Bank, 1790–1791

Having significantly expanded the stock of capital avail-able for investment, Hamilton intended to direct thatmoney toward projects that would diversify the nationaleconomy through a federally chartered bank. Ac-cordingly, in December 1790 he presented Congresswith a second message, the Report on a National Bank.

The proposed bank would raise $10 million througha public stock offering. Private investors could purchaseshares by paying for three-quarters of their value in gov-ernment bonds. In this way, the bank would capture asignificant portion of the recently funded debt and makeit available for loans; it would also receive a substantialand steady flow of interest payments from the Treasury.Anyone buying shares under these circumstances hadlittle chance of losing money and was positioned toprofit handsomely.

Hamilton argued that the Bank of the United Stateswould cost the taxpayers nothing and greatly benefit thenation. It would provide a safe place for the federal gov-ernment to deposit tax revenues, make inexpensiveloans to the government when taxes fell short, and helprelieve the scarcity of hard cash by issuing paper notesthat would circulate as money. Furthermore, it wouldpossess authority to regulate the business practices of


state banks. Above all, the bank would provide muchneeded credit to expand the economy.

Hamilton’s critics denounced his proposal for anational bank, interpreting it as a dangerous schemethat would give a small, elite group special power toinfluence the government. These critics believed thatthe Bank of England had undermined the integrity ofgovernment in Britain. Shareholders of the new Bank ofthe United States could just as easily become the tools ofunscrupulous politicians. If significant numbers inCongress owned bank stock, they would likely supportthe bank even at the cost of the national good. ToJefferson, the bank was “a machine for the corruption ofthe legislature [Congress].” John Taylor of Virginia pre-dicted that its vast wealth would enable the bank to takeover the country, which would thereafter, he quipped, beknown as the United States of the Bank.

Opponents also argued that the bank was unconsti-tutional. In fact the Philadelphia convention had reject-ed a proposal giving Congress just such power. UnlessCongress adhered to a “strict interpretation” of theConstitution, critics argued, the central governmentmight oppress the states and trample individual liber-ties, just as Parliament had done to the colonies. Strictlylimiting federal power seemed the surest way of prevent-ing the United States from degenerating into a corruptdespotism.

Congress approved the bank by only a thin margin.Uncertain of the bank’s constitutionality, Washingtonturned to both Jefferson and Hamilton for advice beforesigning the measure into law. Like many southernplanters whose investments in slaves left them short ofcapital and often in debt, Jefferson distrusted banking.Moreover, his fear of excessively concentrated economicand political power led him to favor a “strict interpreta-tion” of the Constitution. “To take a single step beyondthe boundaries thus specifically drawn around the pow-ers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless fieldof power no longer susceptible of any definition,”warned Jefferson.

Hamilton fought back, urging Washington to signthe bill. Because Congress could enact all measures“necessary and proper” (Article I, Section 8), Hamiltoncontended that the only unconstitutional activities werethose actually forbidden to the national government. Inthe end, the president accepted Hamilton’s argument fora “loose interpretation” of the Constitution. In February1791 the Bank of the United States obtained a charterguaranteeing its existence for twenty years. Washington’sacceptance of the principle of loose interpretation wasan important victory for those advocating an active,

assertive national government. But the split betweenJefferson and Hamilton, and Washington’s siding withthe latter, signaled a deepening political divide withinthe administration.

Hamilton’s Legacy

Hamilton’s attempt to erect a base of political support byappealing to economic self-interest proved highly suc-cessful but also divisive. His arrangements for rescuingthe nation’s credit provided enormous gains for the spec-ulators, merchants, and other “monied men” of the portcities who by 1790 held most of the Revolutionary debt.As holders of bank stock, these same groups had yetanother reason to use their prestige on behalf of nationalauthority. Assumption of the state debts liberated NewEngland, New Jersey, and South Carolina taxpayers froma crushing burden. Hamilton’s efforts to promote indus-try, commerce, and shipping struck a responsive chordamong the Northeast’s budding entrepreneurs.

Those attracted to Hamilton’s policies called them-selves Federalists, implying (incorrectly) that theiropponents had formerly been Antifederalist opponentsof the Constitution. In actuality, Federalists favored ahighly centralized national government instead of atruly “federal” system with substantial powers left to thestates. Federalists dominated public opinion in NewEngland, New Jersey, and South Carolina and enjoyedconsiderable support in Pennsylvania and New York.

Hamilton’s program sowed dissension in sections ofthe country where it offered few benefits. Resentmentran high among those who felt that the governmentappeared to be rewarding special interests. Southernreaction to Hamilton’s program, for example, was over-whelmingly negative. Outside of Charleston, SouthCarolina, few southerners retained Revolutionary cer-tificates in 1790. The Bank of the United States attractedfew southern stockholders, and it allocated very littlecapital for loans there.

Hamilton’s plans offered little to the West, whereagriculture promised to be exceptionally profitable ifonly the right to export through New Orleans would beguaranteed. In Pennsylvania and New York, too, theuneven effect of Hamiltonian policies generated dissat-isfaction. Resentment against a national economic pro-gram whose main beneficiaries seemed to be eastern“monied men” and New Englanders who refused to paytheir debts gradually united westerners, southerners,and some mid-Atlantic citizens into a political coalitionthat challenged the Federalists and called for a return tothe “true principles” of republicanism.

Hamilton and the Formulation of Federalist Policies, 1789–1794 201

For many Americans, the question of manufactur-ing or farming was not only economic and political butalso ideological and moral. As outlined in his Report onthe Subject of Manufactures (1791), Hamilton admiredefficiently run factories in which a few managers super-vised large numbers of workers. Not only would manu-facturing provide employment opportunities, promoteemigration, and expand the applications of technology;it would also offer “greater scope for the talents and dis-positions [of] men,” afford “a more ample and variousfield for enterprise,” and create “a more certain andsteady demand for the surplus produce of the soil.”Jefferson, on the other hand, idealized white, landown-ing family farmers as bulwarks of republican liberty andvirtue. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosenpeople,” he wrote in 1784, whereas the dependency ofEuropean factory workers “begets subservience andvenality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fittools for the designs of ambition.” For Hamilton, capital,technology, and managerial discipline were the surestroads to national order and wealth. Jefferson, puttingmore trust in white male citizens, envisioned land as thekey to prosperity and liberty for all. The argument overthe relative merits of these two ideals would remain aconstant in American politics and culture for at leastanother two centuries.

The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794

Hamilton’s program not only sparked an angry debate inCongress but also helped ignite a civil insurrectioncalled the Whiskey Rebellion. Reflecting serious regionaland class tensions, this popular uprising was the youngrepublic’s first serious crisis.

To augment the national government’s revenues,Hamilton had recommended an excise tax on domesti-cally produced whiskey. He insisted that such a taxwould not only distribute the expense of financing thenational debt evenly but would improve Americans’morals by inducing them to drink less liquor, a con-tention enthusiastically endorsed by Philadelphia’sCollege of Physicians. Though Congress complied withHamilton’s request in March 1791, many membersdoubted that Americans (who on average annuallyimbibed six gallons of hard liquor per adult) would sub-mit tamely to sobriety. James Jackson of Georgia, forexample, warned the administration that his con-stituents “have long been in the habit of getting drunkand that they will get drunk in defiance of a dozen col-leges or all the excise duties which Congress might beweak or wicked enough to pass.”

The accuracy of Jackson’s prophecy became ap-parent in September 1791 when a crowd tarred andfeathered an excise agent near Pittsburgh. Western Penn-sylvanians found the new tax especially burdensome.Unable to ship their crops to world markets throughNew Orleans, most farmers had grown accustomed todistilling their rye or corn into alcohol, which could becarried across the Appalachians at a fraction of the pricecharged for bulkier grain. Hamilton’s excise equaled 25percent of whiskey’s retail value, enough to wipe out afarmer’s profit.

The law also stipulated that trials for evading the taxbe conducted in federal courts. Any western Penn-sylvanian indicted for noncompliance thus had to travelthree hundred miles to Philadelphia. Not only would theaccused face a jury of unsympathetic easterners, but hewould also have to bear the cost of the long journey andlost earnings while at court, in addition to fines andother court penalties if found guilty. Moreover, Treasuryofficials rarely enforced the law rigorously outside west-ern Pennsylvania. For all these reasons, westernPennsylvanians complained that the whiskey excise wasexcessively burdensome.

In a scene reminiscent of pre- and post-Revolutionary popular protests, large-scale resistanceerupted in July 1794. One hundred men attacked a U.S.marshal serving sixty delinquent taxpayers with sum-monses to appear in court at Philadelphia. A crowd offive hundred burned the chief revenue officer’s houseafter a shootout with federal soldiers assigned to protecthim. Roving bands torched buildings, assaulted tax col-lectors, chased government supporters from the region,and flew a flag symbolizing an independent country thatthey hoped to create from six western counties.

Echoing elites’ denunciations of earlier protests,Hamilton condemned the rebellion as simple lawless-ness. He pointed out that Congress had reduced the taxrate per gallon in 1792 and had recently voted to allowstate judges in western Pennsylvania to hear trials.Showing the same anxiety he had expressed six yearsearlier during Shays’s Rebellion (see Chapter 6),Washington concluded that failure to respond stronglyto the uprising would encourage outbreaks in otherwestern areas where distillers were avoiding the tax.

Washington accordingly mustered nearly thirteenthousand militiamen from Pennsylvania, Maryland,Virginia, and New Jersey to march west under his com-mand. Opposition evaporated once the troops reachedthe Appalachians, and the president left Hamilton incharge of making arrests. Of about 150 suspects seized,Hamilton sent twenty in irons to Philadelphia. Two men


received death sentences, but Washington eventuallypardoned them both, noting that one was a “simpleton”and the other “insane.”

The Whiskey Rebellion set severe limits on publicopposition to federal policies. In the early 1790s, many Americans—including the whiskey rebels—stillassumed that it was legitimate to protest unpopular lawsusing the same tactics with which they had blocked par-liamentary measures like the Stamp Act. Indeed, west-ern Pennsylvanians had justified their resistance withexactly such reasoning. By firmly suppressing the firstmajor challenge to national authority, Washingtonserved notice that citizens who resorted to violent orother extralegal means of political action would feel thefull force of federal authority. In this way, he gave voiceand substance to elites’ fears of “mobocracy,” now resur-facing in reaction to the French Revolution (see below).

THE UNITED STATES ONTHE WORLD STAGE,

1789–1796By 1793 disagreements over foreign affairs had emergedas the primary source of friction in American public life.The political divisions created by Hamilton’s financialprogram hardened into ideologically oriented factionsthat argued vehemently over whether the country’s for-eign policy should favor industrial and overseas mercan-tile interests or those of farmers, planters, small busi-

nesses, and artisans. Moreover, having ratified itsConstitution in the year that the French Revolutionbegan (1789), the new government entered the interna-tional arena as European tensions were once againexploding. The rapid spread of pro-French revolutionaryideas and organizations alarmed Europe’s monarchsand aristocrats. Perceiving a threat to their social ordersas well as their territorial interests, most Europeannations declared war on France by early 1793. For mostof the next twenty-two years—until Napoleon’s finaldefeat in 1815—Europe and the Atlantic world remainedin a state of war.

While most Americans hoped that their nationcould avoid this latest European conflict, the fact wasthat the interests and ambitions of many of their compa-triots collided at critical points with those of Britain,France, and Spain. Thus, differences over foreign policyfused with differences over domestic affairs, furtherintensifying the partisanship of American politics.

Spanish Power in Western North America

Stimulated by its winning Louisiana from France in 1762(see Chapter 5), Spain enjoyed a limited revival of itsNorth American fortunes in the late eighteenth century.Influenced by the Indian policies of France and Britain,Spanish officials shifted from futilely attempting to con-quer hostile Native Americans in the Southwest andsouthern Plains to a policy of peaceful trade. Under the

The United States on the World Stage, 1789–1796 203

new plan, they would, as Louisiana’s Governor Bernardode Gálvez put it, provide Native Americans with the“sundry conveniences of life of whose existence theypreviously knew nothing, and which they now look uponas indispensable.” Among the “conveniences” Gálvezhad in mind were alcohol and poorly made guns, whichthe Indians would need to have regularly repaired bySpanish gunsmiths. By 1800 the new policy had enabledSpain to make peace with the Comanches, Utes,Navajos, and most of the Apache nations that had previ-ously threatened their settlements in New Mexico andTexas.

These reforms were part of a larger Spanish effort tocounter European rivals for North American territoryand influence. The first challenge came in the northPacific Ocean, where Spain had enjoyed an unchal-lenged monopoly for two centuries. Lacking any mar-itime rivals, Spain dispatched its “Manila galleons,”which sailed north from Mexico’s Pacific coast toMonterey Bay in California and then turned westwardfor the long voyage to Asia’s shores. But in the 1740sRussian traders in Siberia crossed the Bering Sea andbegan brutally forcing the indigenous Aleut peoples tosupply them with sea-otter pelts, spreading deadly dis-eases in the process. Using Aleut hunters, the Russiansgradually moved farther south to expand their quest for

otterskins, eventually as far as northern California. TheRussians carried the otterskins overland through Siberiato China, where they exchanged them for silk cloth,porcelain ware, and other fine objects.

By the 1770s the exploring voyages of Britain’sCaptain James Cook and others revealed the wealth suchpelts were bringing to Russian merchants. Sensing thatthey could undercut the Russians, British and Americanmaritime traders began plying northwestern coastalwaters in the 1780s. Trading cloth, metal tools, and othergoods to the Indians, they carried furs to Hawaii—alsomade known to Europeans and Americans by Cook—and traded them to China-bound merchants for Chinesegoods. They then returned with these luxuries to Europeand America and sold them to affluent consumers whoprized them for their exotic designs and fine craftsman-ship. Thus began the “China trade,” which brought tidyprofits to many a Boston merchant and fueled Americandreams of expanding to the Pacific.

Spain responded to these inroads by boldly expand-ing its empire northward from Mexico. In 1769 it estab-lished “New California” along the Pacific coast to the SanFrancisco Bay area (see Map 7.1). Efforts to encouragelarge-scale Mexican immigration to New Californiafailed, leaving the colony to be sustained by a chain ofreligious missions, several presidios (forts), and a fewlarge ranchos (ranches). Seeking support against inlandadversaries, coastal Indians welcomed the Spanish atfirst. But the Franciscan missionaries sought to convertthem to Catholicism and “civilize” them by imposingharsh disciplinary measures and putting them to workin vineyards and in other enterprises. Meanwhile,Spanish colonists’ spreading of epidemic and venerealdiseases among natives precipitated a decline in theNative American population from about seventy-twothousand in 1770 to about eighteen thousand by 1830.

Having strengthened its positions in Texas, NewMexico, and California, Spain attempted to befriendIndians in the area later known as Arizona. Spain hopedto dominate North America from the Pacific to Louisianaon the Gulf of Mexico. But resistance from the Hopi,Quechan (Yuma), and other Native Americans thwartedthese hopes. Fortunately for Spain, Arizona had not yetattracted the interest of other outside powers.

Challenging American Expansion,1789–1792

Between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River,Spain, Britain, the United States, and numerous Indiannations jockeyed for advantage in a region that all con-


San Francisco 1776

San José1777

San Antonio de Padua 1771

Monterey1770

Santa Barbara 1782

San Luis Obispo 1772

San Gabriel 1771Los Angeles 1781

San Juan Capistrano1776

San Diego 1769

Mission

Town

Presidio and mission

Town and mission

San

JoaquinR.

Colorado

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PACIFICOCEAN

BajaCalifornia

New (Alta) California

CALIFORNIA

NEVADA

AR

IZO

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SIERRANEVADA

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MAP 7.1Spanish Settlements in New California, 1784While the United States was struggling to establish itsindependence, Spain was extending its empire northward along the Pacific coast.

sidered central to their interests and that NativeAmericans regarded as homelands. Unable to preventAmerican settlers from occupying territory it claimed inthe Southeast (see Map 7.2), Spain sought to win thenewcomers’ allegiance by offering them citizenship.Noting that Congress seemed ready to accept the per-manent closing of New Orleans in return for Spanishconcessions elsewhere (see Chapter 6), many western-ers began talking openly of secession. “I am decidedly ofthe opinion,” wrote Kentucky’s attorney general in 1787,“that this western country will in a few years Revolt fromthe Union and endeavor to erect an IndependentGovernment.” In 1788 Tennessee conspirators boldlyadvertised their flirtation with Spain by naming a largedistrict along the Cumberland River after Louisiana’sgovernor. Most westerners who accepted Spanish favorsand gold meant only to pocket badly needed cash inreturn for vague promises of goodwill. The episodeshowed, however, that leading citizens were susceptibleto foreign manipulation. As young Andrew Jackson con-cluded in 1789, making some arrangements with theSpanish seemed “the only immediate way to obtainpeace with the Savage [Indians].”

Realizing that he could not quickly resolve the com-plex western problem, President Washington pursued a

course of patient diplomacy that was intended “to pre-serve the country in peace if I can, and to be preparedfor war if I cannot.” The prospect of peace improved in1789 when Spain unexpectedly opened New Orleans toAmerican commerce, although exports remained sub-ject to a 15 percent duty. Although westerners bitterlyresented paying the Spanish duty on exports, secession-ist sentiment gradually subsided.

Thereafter, Spanish officials continued to bribewell-known political figures in Tennessee and Kentucky,among them a former general on Washington’s staff,James Wilkinson. Thomas Scott, a congressman fromwestern Pennsylvania, meanwhile schemed with theBritish. Between 1791 and 1796, the federal governmentanxiously admitted Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennesseeto the Union, partly in the hope of strengthening theirresidents’ flickering loyalty to the United States.

Washington also tried to weaken Spanish influenceby neutralizing Spain’s most important ally, the CreekIndians. The Creeks numbered more than twenty thou-sand, including perhaps five thousand warriors, andthey bore a fierce hostility toward Georgian settlers,whom they called Ecunnaunuxulgee, or “the greedy peo-ple who want our lands.” In 1790 the Creek leaderAlexander McGillivray signed the Treaty of New York


Spanish territory

U.S. territory

Disputed territory

Spanish forts

Gulf of Mexico

VIRGINIA

NORTH CAROLINA

GEORGIA

TENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

NORTHWESTTERRITORY

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Fort Nogales

Fort San Fernando

L O U I S I A N AM

issi

ssi p

piR

.

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ATLANTICOCEAN

Ohio

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MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY

Baton Rouge

Vicksburg

Mobile

St. Augustine

Savannah

New Smyrna

New Madrid

FortConfederación

Pensacola

Fort San Fernandode las Barrancas

Castillo de San Marcos

San Marcosde Apalachee

Cherokee

Chickasaw

ChoctawCreek

AlabamaLower Creek

(Apalachicola)

New OrleansSeminole

WESTFLORIDA

EASTFLORIDA

MAP 7.2Disputed Territorial Claims, Spain and the United States, 1783–1796The two nations’ claims to lands east of the Mississippi and north of the thirty-first parallelwere a principal point of contention until the Treaty of San Lorenzo was ratified in 1796.

with the United States. The treaty permitted Americansettlers to remain on lands in the Georgia Piedmontfought over since 1786 (see Chapter 6), but in otherrespects preserved Creek territory against U.S. expan-sion. Washington insisted that Georgia restore to theCreeks’ allies, the Chickasaws and Choctaws, the vastarea along the Mississippi River known as the YazooTract, which Georgia claimed and had begun selling offto white land speculators (see Chapter 8).

Washington adopted a harsher policy towardBritain’s Indian allies in the Ohio valley. In 1790 his firsteffort to force peace through military action failed whenallied Native Americans defeated General Josiah Harmaron the Maumee River. A second campaign ended in dis-aster in November 1791 when one thousand warriorsassembled on the Wabash River killed nine hundred outof a total of fourteen hundred soldiers led by GeneralArthur St. Clair.

While employing military force, the Washingtonadministration, led by Secretary of War Henry Knox, alsopursued a benevolent policy similar to that proclaimedby the British in 1763 (see Chapter 5). Alarmed by thechaos in the West, where trespassers invaded Indianlands and Native peoples rejected U.S. claims to sover-eignty, the government formally recognized Indian titleas secure and inalienable except by the “free consent” ofthe Indians themselves. To reinforce this policy,

Congress enacted laws prohibitingtrespassing on Indian lands, punish-ing crimes committed there by non-Indians, outlawing alcohol, and, inthe Indian Non-Intercourse Act(1790), regulating trade. In addition,the administration sought to encour-age Indians to leave off their “savage”ways and become “civilized,” bywhich it meant above all abandoningcommunal landownership and sea-sonal migrations for hunting, gather-ing, and fishing. By adopting privateproperty and an agricultural way oflife, Knox and others thought, Indianswould join American society whilemaking much additional land avail-able for whites.

Knox recognized that his “civiliza-tion” policy would have limitedappeal. Although most Indians werereceptive to European material goods,they were unwilling to give up theirtraditional ways entirely and assimi-

late into an alien culture. Most whites were equallyaverse to integrating Native Americans into their society.Accordingly, the United States continued to pressuremost Native Americans to sell their lands and move far-ther west.

With many Indians refusing to abandon their landsand cultures, and with their having twice defeated U.S.forces in the Northwest Territory, Washington’s westernpolicy was in shambles. Matters worsened in 1792 whenSpain persuaded the Creeks to renounce the Treaty ofNew York and resume hostilities. Ultimately, the damagedone to U.S. prestige by these setbacks convinced manyAmericans that the combined strength of Britain, Spain,and the Native Americans could be counterbalancedonly by an alliance with France.

France and Factional Politics, 1793

One of the most momentous events in history, theFrench Revolution began in 1789 with the meeting (forthe first time in almost two centuries) of France’s legisla-tive assembly, the Estates General. Americans remainedfundamentally sympathetic to the revolutionary causeas the French abolished nobles’ privileges, wrote a con-stitution, and bravely repelled invading armies fromAustria and Prussia. France became a republic early in1793; it then proclaimed a war of all peoples against all


kings, in which it assumed the United States wouldeagerly enlist.

White southern slaveowners were among France’sfiercest supporters. In 1793 a slave uprising in theCaribbean colony of Saint Domingue became a revolu-tion against French rule. Thousands of terrified Frenchplanters fled to the United States, recounting how Britishinvaders had supported the uprising. Inspired by theAmerican and French Revolutions, blacks had foughtwith determination and inflicted heavy casualties onFrench colonists. Recalling British courting of their ownslaves during the Revolution, southern whites conclud-ed that the British had intentionally sparked the blood-bath and would do the same in the South. Anti-Britishhysteria even eroded South Carolina’s loyalty toFederalist policies.

Many northerners, on the other hand, were morerepelled by the blood being shed in revolutionaryFrance. The revolution was an abomination—“an openhell,” thundered Massachusetts’ Fisher Ames, “still ring-ing with agonies and blasphemies, still smoking withsufferings and crimes.” New England was the most mili-tantly Protestant region, and most of its middle-classand elite citizens came to detest the French govern-ment’s punishing its opponents and its substituting theadoration of Reason for the worship of God. MiddleAtlantic Federalists, while perhaps less religious thanNew Englanders, condemned French leaders as evil rad-icals who incited the poor against the rich.

Northern and southern reactions to the FrenchRevolution also diverged for economic reasons. In theNorth merchants’ growing antagonism toward Francereflected the facts that virtually all the nation’s merchantmarine operated from northern ports and that most ofthe country’s foreign trade was with Great Britain.Merchants, shippers, and ordinary sailors in NewEngland, Philadelphia, and New York feared that analliance with France would provoke British retaliationagainst this valuable commerce, and they argued thatthe United States could win valuable concessions bydemonstrating friendly intentions toward Britain.Indeed, some influential members of Parliament nowseemed to favor liberalizing trade with the United States.

Southerners had no such reasons to favor Britain.Southern spokesmen viewed Americans’ reliance onBritish commerce as a menace to national self-determi-nation and wished to divert most U.S. trade to France.Jefferson and Madison repeatedly demanded thatBritish imports be reduced through the imposition ofsteep discriminatory duties on cargoes shipped fromEngland and Scotland in British vessels. In the heat of

the debate, Federalist opponents of a discriminatory tar-iff warned that Britain, which sold more manufacturedgoods to the United States than to any other country,would not stand by while a weak French ally pushed itinto depression. If Congress adopted this program oftrade retaliation, Hamilton predicted in 1792, “therewould be, in less than six months, an open war betweenthe United States and Great Britain.”

Enthusiasm for a pro-French foreign policy raged inthe southern and western states, in particular afterFrance went to war against Spain and Great Britain in1793. Increasingly, western settlers and speculatorshoped for a decisive French victory that, they reasoned,would induce Britain and Spain to cease blocking U.S.expansion. The United States could then insist on freenavigation of the Mississippi, force the evacuation ofBritish garrisons, and end both nations’ support ofIndian resistance.

After declaring war on Britain and Spain in 1793,France actively tried to embroil the United States in the conflict. The French dispatched Edmond Genet asminister to the United States with orders to mobilize


republican sentiment in support of France, enlistAmerican mercenaries to conquer Spanish territoriesand attack British shipping, and strengthen the alliancebetween the two nations. Much to the French govern-ment’s dislike, however, President Washington issued aproclamation of American neutrality on April 22.

Meanwhile, Citizen Genet (as he was known inFrench Revolutionary style) had arrived on April 8. Hefound no shortage of southern volunteers for hisAmerican Foreign Legion despite America’s official neu-trality. Making generals of George Rogers Clark ofKentucky and Elisha Clarke of Georgia, Genet directedthem to seize Spanish garrisons at New Orleans and St.Augustine. Clark openly defied Washington’s NeutralityProclamation by advertising for recruits for his missionin Kentucky newspapers, and Clarke began drilling threehundred troops on the Florida border. But the Frenchfailed to provide adequate funds for either campaign.Although the American recruits were willing to fight forFrance, few were willing to fight for free, so both expedi-tions eventually disintegrated.

However, Genet did not need funds to outfit priva-teers, who financed themselves with captured plunder.By the summer of 1793, almost a thousand Americanswere at sea in a dozen ships flying the French flag. Theseprivateers seized more than eighty British vessels andtowed them to U.S. ports, where French consuls sold theships and cargoes at auction.

Avoiding War, 1793–1796

Even though the Washington administration swiftlyclosed the nation’s harbors to Genet’s buccaneers andrequested the French ambassador’s recall, his exploitsprovoked an Anglo-American crisis. George III’s minis-ters decided that only a massive show of force woulddeter American support for France. Accordingly, onNovember 6, 1793, the Privy Council issued secret ordersconfiscating any foreign ships trading with Frenchislands in the Caribbean. The council purposely delayedpublishing these instructions until after most Americanships carrying winter provisions to the Caribbean leftport, so that their captains would not know that theywere sailing into a war zone. The Royal Navy then seizedmore than 250 American vessels.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy inflicted a second gallingindignity—the impressment (forced enlistment) of crew-men on U.S. ships. Thousands of British sailors had previ-ously fled to the U.S. merchant marine, where they hopedto find an easier life than under the tough, poorly payingBritish system. In late 1793 British naval officers beganroutinely inspecting American crews for British subjects,whom they then impressed as the king’s sailors.Overzealous commanders sometimes broke royal ordersby taking U.S. citizens, and in any case the British did notrecognize former subjects’ right to adopt American citi-zenship. Impressment scratched a raw nerve in most


Americans, who recognized that their government’s will-ingness to defend its citizens from such contemptuousabuse was a critical test of national character.

Meanwhile, Britain, Spain and many NativeAmericans continued to challenge the United States forcontrol of territory west of the Appalachians. During alarge intertribal council in February 1794, the Shawneesand other Ohio Indians welcomed an inflammatoryspeech by Canada’s royal governor denying U.S. claimsnorth of the Ohio River and urging destruction of everywhite settlement in the Northwest. Soon British troopswere building an eighth garrison on U.S. soil, FortMiami, near present-day Toledo. Meanwhile, theSpanish encroached on territory owned by the UnitedStates by building Fort San Fernando in 1794 at what isnow Memphis, Tennessee.

Hoping to halt the drift toward war, Washingtonlaunched three desperate initiatives in 1794. He author-ized General Anthony Wayne to negotiate a treaty withthe Shawnees and their Ohio valley allies, sent Chief

Justice John Jay to Great Britain, and dispatched ThomasPinckney to Spain.

Having twice defeated federal armies, the Indiansscoffed at Washington’s peace offer. “Mad Anthony”Wayne then led thirty-five hundred U.S. troops deepinto Shawnee homelands, building forts and ruthlesslyburning every village within his reach. On August 20,1794, his troops routed four hundred Shawnees at theBattle of Fallen Timbers just two miles from British FortMiami. (The British closed the fort’s gates, denying entryto their fleeing allies.) Wayne’s army then built an impos-ing stronghold to challenge British authority in theNorthwest, appropriately named Fort Defiance. Indianmorale plummeted, not only because of the Americanvictory and their own losses but also because of Britain’sbetrayal.

In August 1795 Wayne compelled the Shawnees andeleven other tribes to sign the Treaty of Greenville, whichopened most of modern-day Ohio and a portion ofIndiana to white settlement and ended U.S.-Indian hos-


tilities in the region for sixteen years. But aside from theolder leaders who were pressured to sign the treaty, mostShawnees knew that American designs on Indian land inthe Northwest had not been satisfied and would soonresurface. Among them was a rising young warriornamed Tecumseh (see Chapter 8).

Wayne’s success helped John Jay win a British prom-ise to withdraw troops from American soil. Jay also man-aged to gain access to West Indian markets for smallAmerican ships, but only by bargaining away otherAmerican complaints as well as U.S. rights to load car-goes of sugar, molasses, and coffee from French coloniesduring wartime. Aside from fellow Federalists, fewAmericans would interpret Jay’s Treaty as preservingpeace with honor.

Jay’s Treaty left Britain free not only to violateAmerican neutrality but also to ruin a profitable com-merce by restricting U.S. trade with France. Opponentscondemned the treaty’s failure to end impressment andpredicted that Great Britain would thereafter force evenmore Americans into the Royal Navy. Slave owners wereresentful that Jay had not obtained compensation forslaves taken away by the British army during theRevolution. As the Senate ratified the treaty by just onevote in 1795, Jay nervously joked that he could find hisway across the country at night by the fires of ralliesburning him in effigy.

Despite its unpopularity, Jay’s Treaty defused anexplosive crisis with Great Britain before war becameinevitable and finally ended Britain’s post-Revolutionaryoccupation of U.S. territory. The treaty also helped stim-ulate an enormous expansion of American trade. Uponits ratification, British governors in the West Indies pro-claimed their harbors open to U.S. ships. Other Britishofficials permitted Americans to develop commercialties with India, even though such trade infringed on theEast India Company’s monopoly. Within a few years after1795, American exports to the British Empire shot up300 percent.

On the heels of Jay’s controversial treaty came anunqualified diplomatic triumph engineered by ThomasPinckney. Ratified in 1796, the Treaty of San Lorenzowith Spain (also called Pinckney’s Treaty) won western-ers the right of unrestricted, duty-free access to worldmarkets via the Mississippi River. Spain also promised torecognize the thirty-first parallel as the United States’southern boundary, to dismantle all fortifications onAmerican soil, and to discourage Indian attacks againstwestern settlers.

By 1796 the Washington administration could claimto have successfully extended American authority

throughout the trans-Appalachian West, opened theMississippi for western exports, enabled northeasternshippers to regain British markets, and kept the nationout of a dangerous European war. As the popular outcryover Jay’s Treaty demonstrated, however, the nation’sforeign policy left Americans much more deeply dividedin 1796 than they had been in 1789.

THE EMERGENCE OF PARTYPOLITICS, 1793–1800

Since the pre-Revolutionary era, many Americans (likemany Britons) believed that deliberately organizing apolitical faction or party was a corrupt, subversiveaction. The Constitution’s framers had neither wantednor planned for political parties. Republican ideologyassumed that factions or parties would fill Congress withpoliticians who would pursue selfish goals and conspireagainst the people’s liberty. Indeed, in Federalist No. 10,Madison (a future partisan) had argued that theConstitution would prevent the rise of national politicalfactions.

These ideals began to waver as controversy mount-ed over Federalist policies and the French Revolution.Before the end of Washington’s second term, politicallyconscious Americans had split into two hostile parties,Federalists and Republicans, as instruments for advanc-ing their interests, ambitions, and ideals. Thereafter, abattle raged over the very future of representative gov-ernment, culminating in the election of 1800, whoseoutcome would determine whether the nation’s politicalelite could accommodate demands from ordinary citi-zens for a more active and influential role in determin-ing government policy.

Ideological Confrontation,1793–1794

American attitudes about events in France prompted apolarization of American opinion along ideological andregional lines. Recalling Shays’s Rebellion and theWhiskey Rebellion, Federalists trembled at the thoughtof guillotines and “mob rule.” They also dreaded thesight of artisans in Philadelphia and New York bandyingthe French revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality,Fraternity” and admiring pro-French politicians such asJefferson. Citizen Genet had openly encouraged opposi-tion to the Washington administration; and, even moretroubling, he had found hundreds of Americans willingto fight for France. Federalists worried that all of this wasjust the tip of a revolutionary iceberg.


By the mid-1790s Federalists’ worst fears of publicparticipation in politics seemed to have been con-firmed. The people, they believed, were not evil-mindedbut simply undependable and vulnerable to rabblerousers such as Genet. As Senator George Cabot ofMassachusetts put it, “the many do not think at all.” ForFederalists, democracy meant “government by the pas-sions of the multitude.” They consequently argued thatordinary white male property owners should not be pre-sented with choices over policy during elections, butshould vote simply on the basis of the personal merits ofelite candidates. Elected officials, they maintained,should rule in the people’s name but be independent ofdirect popular influence.

A very different perspective on government and pol-itics surfaced, especially in urban areas of New Englandand the Middle Atlantic states and in the South.Republicans stressed the corruption inherent in a pow-erful government dominated by a highly visible few, andinsisted that liberty would be safe only if power were dif-fused among virtuous, independent citizens. WhereasFederalists denounced self-interest as inimical to thepublic good, Republicans argued that self-interest couldbe pursued virtuously in a society in which property andother means to economic independence were widelyavailable rather than being monopolized by a wealthyfew. Jefferson, Madison, and other republicans inter-preted the American and French Revolutions as openingthe way to a new kind of human community in whichself-interested individuals recognized their commoninterest in maintaining a stable society responsive to theneeds of all.

A radical ideology like republicanism, with itsemphasis on liberty and equality, might seem anom-alous among southern slaveowners. In fact, however,such men were among its most forceful proponents.Although a few southern republicans advocated abolish-ing slavery gradually, most declined to trouble them-selves unduly over their ownership of human beings.Although articulated in universal terms, the liberty andequality they advocated were intended for white menonly. With their own labor force consisting of enslavedblacks rather than of free white wage workers, southernelites feared popular participation in politics far lessthan did their northern counterparts. Overlooking thepossibility that their slaves understood their ideas andtheir debates, they maintained a confidence built on theloyalty toward them of nonelite whites.

Ambition, too, drove men like Jefferson andMadison to rouse ordinary citizens’ concerns about civicaffairs. The widespread awe in which Washington was

held inhibited open criticism of him, his policies, andhis fellow Federalists. If, however, the Federalists couldbe held accountable to the public, they would thinktwice before enacting measures opposed by the majori-ty; or if they persisted in advocating misguided policies,they would ultimately be removed from office. Such rea-soning led Jefferson, a wealthy landowner and largeslaveholder, to say, “I am not among those who fear thepeople; they and not the rich, are our dependence forcontinued freedom.”

Jefferson’s frustration at being overruled at everyturn by Hamilton and Washington finally prompted hisresignation from the cabinet in 1793, and thereaftereven the president could not halt the widening politicalsplit. Each side saw itself as the guardian of republicanvirtue and attacked the other as an illegitimate “cabal” or“faction.”

Efforts to turn public opinion against the Federalistshad begun as early as October 1791 with the publicationof the nation’s first opposition newspaper, the NationalGazette. Then in 1793–1794, opponents of the Federalistpolicies began organizing Democratic (or Republican)societies. The societies formed primarily in seaboardcities but also in the rural South and West. Their mem-berships ranged from planters and merchants to arti-sans and sailors; conspicuously absent were clergymen,the poor, nonwhites, and women.

Federalists interpreted the Democratic societies’emotional appeals to ordinary people as demagogueryand denounced their followers as “democrats, mobo-crats, & all other kinds of rats.” They feared that the soci-eties would grow into revolutionary organizations.During the Whiskey Rebellion, Washington publiclydenounced “certain self-created societies.” Although thesocieties did not support the rebellion, so great was thepresident’s prestige that the societies temporarily brokeup. But by attacking them, Washington had at last endedhis nonpartisan stance and identified himself unmistak-ably with the Federalists. The censure would cost himdearly.

The Republican Party, 1794–1796

Neither Jefferson nor Madison belonged to a Demo-cratic society. However, these private clubs helped pub-licize their views, and they initiated into political activitynumerous voters who would later support a newRepublican party.

In 1794 party development reached a decisive stageafter Washington openly identified himself with Fed-eralist policies. Calling themselves Republicans (rather

The Emergence of Party Politics, 1793–1800 211

than the more radical-sounding “Democrats”), followersof Jefferson successfully attacked the Federalists’ pro-British leanings in many local elections and won a slightmajority in the House of Representatives. The electionsignaled the Republicans’ transformation from a coali-tion of officeholders and local societies to a broad-basedparty capable of coordinating local political campaignsthroughout the nation.

Federalists and Republicans alike used the press tomold public opinion. In the 1790s American journalismcame of age as the number of newspapers multipliedfrom 92 to 242, mostly in New England and the MiddleAtlantic states. By 1800 newspapers had perhaps 140,000paid subscribers (about one-fifth of the eligible voters),and their secondhand readership probably exceeded300,000. Newspapers of both camps were libelous andirresponsible. They cheapened the quality of public dis-cussion through incessant fear-mongering and charac-ter assassination. Republicans stood accused of plottinga reign of terror and of conspiring to turn the nation overto France. Federalists were charged with favoring ahereditary aristocracy and even an American dynastythat would form when John Adams’s daughter marriedGeorge III. Such tactics whipped up mutual distrust and made political debate emotional and subjective.Nevertheless, newspaper warfare stimulated many citi-zens to become politically active.

Behind the inflammatory rhetoric, the Republicans’central charge was that the Federalists had evolved into afaction bent on enriching wealthy citizens at the taxpay-ers’ expense. In 1794 a Republican writer claimed thatFederalist policies would create “a privileged order ofmen . . . who shall enjoy the honors, the emoluments,and the patronage of government, without contributing afarthing to its support.” While many of their claims werewildly exaggerated, the Republicans effectively identifiedthe Federalists’ fundamental assumption: that citizens’worth could be measured in terms of their money.

Washington had long dreaded the nation’s growingpolarization into hostile factions. Republican chargesthat he secretly supported alleged Federalist plots toestablish a monarchy enraged the president. “By God,”Jefferson reported him swearing, “he [Washington]would rather be in his grave than in his present situa-tion . . . he had rather be on his farm than to be madeemperor of the world.” Lonely and surrounded bymediocre advisers after Hamilton returned to privatelife, Washington decided in the spring of 1796 to retireafter two terms. Washington recalled Hamilton to give asharp political twist to his Farewell Address.

The heart of Washington’s message was a vigorouscondemnation of political parties. Partisan alignments,

he insisted, endangered the Republic’s survival, espe-cially if they became entangled in disputes over foreignpolicy. Washington warned that the country’s safetydepended on citizens’ avoiding “excessive partiality forone nation and excessive dislike of another.” Otherwise,“real patriots” would be overwhelmed by demagogueschampioning foreign causes and paid by foreign govern-ments. Aside from scrupulously fulfilling its existingtreaty obligations and maintaining its foreign com-merce, the United States must avoid “political connec-tion” with Europe and its wars. If the United States gath-ered its strength under “an efficient government,” itcould defy any foreign challenge; but if it became suckedinto Europe’s quarrels, violence, and corruption, therepublican experiment was doomed. Washington andHamilton had skillfully turned republicanism’s fear ofcorruption against their Republican critics. They hadalso evoked a vision of an America virtuously isolatedfrom foreign intrigue and power politics, which wouldremain a potent inspiration until the twentieth century.

Washington left the presidency in 1797 and died in1799. Like many later presidents, he went out amid abarrage of criticism. As he retired, the division betweenRepublicans and Federalists hardened into a two-partysystem.

The Election of 1796

With the election of 1796 approaching, the Republicanscultivated a large, loyal body of voters. Their efforts tomarshal support marked the first time since theRevolution that political elites had effectively mobi-lized ordinary Americans to take an interest in publicaffairs. The Republicans’ constituency included theDemocratic societies, workingmen’s clubs, and immigrant-aid associations.

Immigrants became prime targets for Republicanrecruiters. During the 1790s the United States absorbedabout twenty thousand French refugees from SaintDomingue and more than sixty thousand Irish, includ-ing some who had been exiled for opposing British rule.Although potential immigrant voters were few—com-prising less than 2 percent of the electorate—the Irishcould make a difference in Pennsylvania and New York,where public opinion was closely divided and a few hun-dred immigrant voters could tip the balance toward theRepublicans.

In 1796 the presidential candidates were the Fed-eralist Vice President John Adams and the Republicans’Jefferson. Republicans expected to win as many south-ern electoral votes and congressional seats as theFederalists counted on in New England, New Jersey, and


South Carolina. The crucial “swing” states werePennsylvania and New York, where the Republicansfought hard to win the large immigrant (particularlyIrish) vote with their pro-French and anti-British rheto-ric. In the end, the Republicans took Pennsylvania butnot New York, so that Jefferson lost the presidency byjust three electoral votes. The Federalists narrowlyregained control of the House and maintained their firmgrip on the Senate. But because the Constitution did notforesee the emergence of parties, Jefferson—as the sec-ond-highest vote-getter in the electoral college—became vice president. (This provision would later besuperseded by the Twelfth Amendment; see Chapter 8).

Adams’s brilliance, insight, and idealism have rarelybeen equaled among American presidents. But the newpresident was more comfortable with ideas than withpeople, more theoretical than practical, and ratherinflexible. He inspired trust and often admiration butcould not command personal loyalty. His wisdom andhistorical vision were drowned out in highly emotionalpolitical debate. Adams’s rational, reserved personalitywas likewise ill suited to inspiring the electorate, and heultimately proved unable to unify the country.

The French Crisis, 1798–1799

Adams was initially fortunate that French provocationsproduced a sharp backlash against the Republicans. TheFrench interpreted Jay’s Treaty as an American attemptto assist Britain in its war against France. On learning ofJefferson’s defeat, France began seizing American shipscarrying goods to British ports, and within a year hadplundered more than three hundred vessels. The Frenchrubbed in their contempt for the United States by direct-ing that every American captured on a British naval ship(even those involuntarily impressed) should be hanged.

Hoping to avoid war, Adams sent a peace commis-sion to Paris. But the French foreign minister, Charles deTalleyrand, refused to meet the delegation, insteadpromising through three unnamed agents (“X, Y, and Z”)that talks could begin after he received $250,000 andFrance obtained a loan of $12 million. This barefaceddemand for a bribe became known as the XYZ Affair.Americans reacted to it with outrage. “Millions fordefense, not one cent for tribute” became the nation’sbattle cry as the 1798 congressional elections began.

The XYZ Affair discredited the Republicans’ foreignpolicy views, but the party’s leaders compounded thedamage by refusing to condemn French aggression andopposing Adams’s call for defensive measures. TheRepublicans tried to excuse French behavior, whereasthe Federalists rode a wave of militant patriotism. In the

1798 elections, Jefferson’s supporters were routedalmost everywhere, even in the South.

Congress responded to the XYZ Affair by armingfifty-four ships to protect American commerce. Duringthe Quasi-War—an undeclared Franco-American navalconflict in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1800—U.S. forcesseized ninety-three French privateers at the loss of justone vessel. The British navy meanwhile extended theprotection of its convoys to America’s merchant marine.By early 1799 the French remained a nuisance but wereno longer a serious threat at sea.

Meanwhile, the Federalists in Congress tripled theregular army to ten thousand men in 1798, with an auto-matic expansion of land forces to fifty thousand in caseof war. But the risk of a land war with the French wasminimal. In reality, the Federalists primarily wanted amilitary force ready in the event of a civil war, for the cri-sis had produced near-hysteria about conspiracies thatwere being hatched by French and Irish malcontentsflooding into the United States.

The Adams administration was aware that theFrench legation not only engaged in espionage but wasalso continuing Spain’s policy of undermining westerncitizens’ loyalty to America. The government knew, forexample, that in 1796 General Victor Collot had traveledfrom Pittsburgh to New Orleans under orders to investi-gate the prospects for establishing an independent pro-French nation west of the mountains, and also that hehad examined strategic locations to which rebelliouswesterners might rally. In 1798 the State Departmentheard that France had created “a party of madAmericans ready to join with them at a given Signal” inthe West.

The Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798

The most heated controversies of the late 1790s arosefrom Federalists’ insistence that open war with Francewas likely and that stringent legislation was needed to protect national security. In 1798 the Federalist-dominated Congress accordingly passed four measuresknown collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Adamsneither requested nor particularly wanted these laws,but he deferred to Federalist congressional leaders andsigned them.

The least controversial of the four laws, the AlienEnemies Act, outlined procedures for determiningwhether the citizens of a hostile country posed a threatto the United States as spies or saboteurs. If so, they wereto be deported or jailed. The law established fundamen-tal principles for protecting national security andrespecting the rights of enemy citizens. It was to operate


only if Congress declared war and thus was not useduntil the War of 1812 (see Chapter 8).

Second, the Alien Friends Act, a temporary peace-time statute, authorized the president to expel any for-eign residents whose activities he considered danger-ous. The law did not require proof of guilt, on theassumption that spies would hide or destroy evidence oftheir crime. Republicans maintained that the law’s realpurpose was to deport prominent immigrants critical ofFederalist policies.

Republicans also denounced the third law, theNaturalization Act. This measure increased the residen-cy requirement for U.S. citizenship from five to fourteenyears (the last five continuously in one state), with thepurpose of reducing Irish voting.

Finally came the Sedition Act, the only one of thesemeasures enforceable against U.S. citizens. Its allegedpurpose was to distinguish between free speech andattempts at encouraging others to violate federal laws orto overthrow the government. But the act neverthelessdefined criminal activity so broadly that it blurred anyreal distinction between sedition and legitimate politicaldiscussion. Thus it forbade an individual or group “tooppose any measure or measures of the United States”—wording that could be interpreted to ban any criticism ofthe party in power. Another clause made it illegal tospeak, write, or print any statement about the president

that would bring him “into contempt or disrepute.”Under such restrictions, for example, a newspaper editormight face imprisonment for disapproving of an actionby Adams or his cabinet members. The Federalist Gazetteof the United States expressed the twisted logic of theSedition Act perfectly: “It is patriotism to write in favor ofour government—it is sedition to write against it.”

Sedition cases were heard by juries, which coulddecide if the defendant had really intended to stir uprebellion or was merely expressing political dissent.However one looked at it, the Sedition Act interferedwith free speech. Ingeniously, the Federalists wrote thelaw to expire in 1801 (so that it could not be turnedagainst them if they lost the next election) and to leavethem free meanwhile to heap abuse on Vice PresidentJefferson.

The principal target of Federalist repression was theopposition press. Four of the five largest Republicannewspapers were charged with sedition just as the elec-tion of 1800 was getting under way. The attorney generalused the Alien Friends Act to threaten Irish journalistJohn Daly Burk with expulsion (Burk went undergroundinstead). Scottish editor Thomas Callender was beingdeported when he suddenly qualified for citizenship.Unable to expel Callender, the government tried him forsedition before an all-Federalist jury, which sent him toprison for criticizing the president.


Federalist leaders never intended to fill the jails withRepublican martyrs. Rather, they hoped to use a smallnumber of highly visible prosecutions to silenceRepublican journalists and candidates during the elec-tion of 1800. The attorney general charged seventeenpersons with sedition and won ten convictions. Amongthe victims was Republican congressman Matthew Lyonof Vermont (“Ragged Matt, the democrat,” to theFederalists), who spent four months in prison for pub-lishing a blast against Adams.

Vocal criticism of Federalist repression erupted dur-ing the summer of 1798 in Virginia and Kentucky. Militiacommanders in these states mustered their regimentsnot to drill but to hear speeches demanding that the fed-eral government respect the Bill of Rights. Entire unitsthen signed petitions denouncing the Alien and SeditionActs. The symbolic implications of these protests weresobering. Young men stepped forward to sign petitionson drumheads with a pen in one hand and a gun in theother, as older officers who had fought in theContinental Army looked on approvingly. It was not hardto imagine Kentucky rifles being substituted for quillpens as the men who had joined one revolution took uparms again.

Ten years earlier, opponents of the Constitution hadwarned that giving the national government extensivepowers would eventually endanger freedom. By 1798their prediction seemed to have come true. ShockedRepublicans realized that because the Federalists con-trolled all three branches of the government, neither theBill of Rights nor the system of checks and balances protected individual liberties. In this context, theyadvanced the doctrine of states’ rights as a means of pre-venting the national government from violating basicfreedoms.

Madison and Jefferson anonymously wrote twomanifestos on states’ rights that the legislatures ofVirginia and Kentucky approved in 1798. Madison’sVirginia Resolutions and Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolu-tions declared that the state legislatures had never sur-rendered their right to judge the constitutionality of fed-eral actions and that they retained an authority calledinterposition, which enabled them to protect the liber-ties of their citizens. A set of Kentucky Resolutionsadopted in November 1799 added that objectionablefederal laws might be “nullified” by the states. The reso-lutions did not define the terms interposition and nulli-fication, but their intention was to invalidate theenforcement of any federal law in a state that haddeemed the law unconstitutional. Although the resolu-tions were intended as nonviolent protests, they chal-lenged the jurisdiction of federal courts and could have

enabled state militias to march into a federal courtroomto halt proceedings at bayonet point.

Although none of the other twelve states endorsedthese resolutions (ten expressed disapproval), their pas-sage demonstrated the great potential for disunion inthe late 1790s. So did a minor insurrection called theFries Rebellion, which broke out in 1799 when crowds ofPennsylvania German farmers released prisoners jailedfor refusing to pay taxes needed to fund the nationalarmy’s expansion. But the disturbance collapsed whenfederal troops intervened.

The nation’s leaders increasingly acted as if a crisiswere imminent. Vice President Jefferson hinted thatevents might push the southern states into secessionfrom the Union, while President Adams hid guns in hishome. After passing through Richmond and learningthat state officials were purchasing thousands of mus-kets for the militia, an alarmed Supreme Court justicewrote in January 1799 that “the General Assembly ofVirginia are pursuing steps which will lead directly tocivil war.” A tense atmosphere hung over the Republic asthe election of 1800 neared.

The Election of 1800

In the election campaign, the two parties once again ral-lied around the Federalist Adams (now an incumbent)and the Republican Jefferson. That the nation survivedthe election of 1800 without a civil war or the disregardof voters’ wishes owed much to the leadership of moder-ates in both parties. Thus Jefferson and Madison dis-couraged radical activity that might provoke interven-tion by the national army, while Adams rejecteddemands by extreme “High Federalists” that he ensurevictory by deliberately sparking an insurrection or ask-ing Congress to declare war on France.

“Nothing but an open war can save us,” argued oneHigh Federalist cabinet officer. But when Adams sud-denly discovered the French willing to seek peace in1799, he proposed a special diplomatic mission.“Surprise, indignation, grief & disgust followed eachother in quick succession,” said a Federalist senator onhearing the news. Adams obtained Senate approval forhis envoys only by threatening to resign and so makeJefferson president. Outraged High Federalists triedunsuccessfully to dump Adams, but this ill-consideredmaneuver rallied most New Englanders around theirstubborn, upright president.

Adams’s negotiations with France did not achieve asettlement until 1801, but the expectation that normal—perhaps even friendly—relations with the French wouldresume prevented the Federalists from exploiting


charges of Republican sympathy for the enemy. Withoutthe immediate threat of war, moreover, voters grewresentful that in merely two years, taxes had soared 33percent to support an army that had done nothingexcept chase terrified Pennsylvania farmers. As the dan-ger of war receded, voters gave the Federalists less creditfor standing up to France and more blame for adding$10 million to the national debt.

As High Federalists spitefully withheld the backingthat Adams needed to win, the Republicans redoubledtheir efforts to elect Jefferson. They were especially suc-cessful in mobilizing voters in Philadelphia and NewYork, where artisans, farmers, and some entrepreneurswere ready to forsake the Federalists, whom they saw asdefenders of entrenched privilege and upstart wealth. Asa result, popular interest in politics rose sharply. Voterturnout in 1800 leaped to more than double that of 1788,rising from about 15 percent to almost 40 percent; inhotly contested Pennsylvania and New York, more thanhalf the eligible voters participated.

Playing on their opponent’s reputation as a religiousfreethinker, the Federalists forged a case againstJefferson that came down to urging citizens to vote for“GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT” or impiouslydeclare for “JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!” The ploy did notprevent thousands of pious Baptists, Methodists, and other dissenters from voting Republican. (TheFederalists overlooked the fact that Adams was scarcelymore conventional in his religious views than Jefferson.)

Adams lost the presidency by just 8 electoral votesout of 138. He would have won if his party had not lostcontrol of New York’s state senate, which chose the elec-tors, after a narrow defeat in New York City. Jefferson andhis running mate, New York’s Aaron Burr, also carriedSouth Carolina after their backers made lavish promisesof political favors to that state’s legislators.

Although Adams lost, Jefferson’s election was notassured. Because all 73 Republican electors voted forboth of their party’s nominees, the electoral collegedeadlocked in a Jefferson-Burr tie. Even more seriouslythan in 1796, the Constitution’s failure to anticipateorganized, rival parties affected the outcome of the elec-toral college’s vote. The choice of president devolvedupon the House of Representatives, where thirty-fiveballots over six days produced no result. Aware thatRepublican voters and electors wanted Jefferson to bepresident, the wily Burr cast about for Federalist sup-port. But after Hamilton—Burr’s bitter rival in New Yorkpolitics—declared his preference for Jefferson as “by farnot so dangerous a man,” a Federalist representativeabandoned Burr and gave Jefferson the presidency byhistory’s narrowest margin.

ECONOMICAND SOCIAL CHANGE

During the nation’s first twelve years under theConstitution, the spread of economic production formarkets, even by households, transformed the lives ofmany Americans. For some people the changes were forthe better and for others for the worse, but for most theultimate outcome remained uncertain in 1800. At thesame time, many Americans were rethinking questionsof gender and race in American society.

Households and Market Production

For centuries the backbone of European societies andtheir colonial offshoots had been economies in whichmost production took place in household settings. At thecore of each household was a patriarchal family—the malehead, his wife, and their unmarried children. Beyondthese family members, most households included otherpeople. Some outsiders were relatives, but most wereeither boarders or workers—apprentices and journeymenin artisan shops, servants and slaves in well-off urbanhouseholds, and slaves, “hired hands,” and tenant farmersin rural settings. (Even slaves living in separate “quarters”on large plantations labored in an enterprise centered ontheir owners’ households.) Unlike in our modern world,before the nineteenth century nearly everyone worked atwhat was temporarily or permanently “home.” The notionof “going to work” would have struck them as odd.

Although households varied in size and economicorientation, in the late eighteenth century the vastmajority were on small farms and consisted of only anowner and his family. By 1800 such farm families typical-ly included seven children who contributed to produc-tion. While husbands and older sons worked in fieldsaway from the house, women, daughters, and youngsons maintained the barns and gardens near the houseand provided food and clothing for all family members.Women, of course, bore and reared all the children aswell. As in the colonial period, most farm families pro-duced food and other products largely for their ownconsumption, adding small surpluses for bartering withneighbors or local merchants.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, house-holds in the most heavily settled regions of theNortheast began to change. Relatively prosperous farmfamilies, particularly in the mid-Atlantic states, increas-ingly directed their surplus production to meet thegrowing demands of urban customers for produce,meat, and dairy products (see Technology and Culture:Mid-Atlantic Daily Production in the 1790s).


Poorer farm families, especially in New England,found less lucrative ways to produce for commercialmarkets. Small plots of land on New England’s thin,rocky soil no longer supported large families, leadingyoung people to look beyond their immediate locales formeans of support. While many young men and youngcouples moved west, unmarried daughters more fre-quently remained at home where they could help satisfya growing demand for manufactured cloth. Before theRevolution, affluent colonists had imported cloth as wellas finished clothing, but the boycott of British goods ledmany women to either spin their own or purchase itfrom other women (see Chapter 5). After the Revolution,enterprising merchants began catering to urban con-sumers as well as southern slaveowners seeking toclothe their slaves as cheaply as possible. Making regularcircuits through rural areas, the merchants suppliedcloth to mothers and daughters in farm households. Afew weeks later they would return and pay the women incash for their handiwork.

A comparable transition began in some artisans’households. The shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts,had expanded their production during the Revolutionwhen filling orders from the Continental Army. After thewar, some more-successful artisans began supplyingleather to other shoemakers, paying them for the fin-ished product. By 1800 these merchants were takingleather to farm families beyond Lynn in order to fill anannual demand that had risen to 400,000 from 189,000pairs in 1789.

Numerous other enterprises likewise emerged,employing men as well as women to satisfy demandsthat self-contained households could never have met ontheir own. For example, a traveler passing throughMiddleborough, Massachusetts, observed,

In the winter season, the inhabitants . . . areprincipally employed in making nails, of which theysend large quantities to market. This business is aprofitable addition to their husbandry; and fills upa part of the year, in which, otherwise, many ofthem would find little employment.

Behind the new industries was an ambitious, aggressiveclass of businessmen, most of whom had begun as mer-chants and now invested their profits in factories, ships,government bonds, and banks. Such entrepreneursstimulated a flurry of innovative business ventures thatpointed toward the future. The country’s first privatebanks were founded in the 1780s in Philadelphia,Boston, and New York. Philadelphia merchants createdthe Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement ofManufactures and the Useful Arts in 1787. This organiza-

tion promoted the immigration of English artisansfamiliar with the latest industrial technology, includingSamuel Slater, a pioneer of American industrializationwho helped establish a cotton-spinning mill atPawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790 (see Chapter 9). In1791 investors from New York and Philadelphia, withHamilton’s enthusiastic endorsement, started theSociety for the Encouragement of Useful Manufactures,which attempted to demonstrate the potential of large-scale industrial enterprises by building a factory town atPaterson, New Jersey. That same year, New York mer-chants and insurance underwriters organized America’sfirst formal association for trading government bonds,out of which the New York Stock Exchange evolved.

White Women and the Republic

Along with the growing importance of women’s eco-nomic roles, whites’ discussions of republicanism dur-ing and after the Revolution raised larger questions ofwomen’s equality. The Revolution and the adoption ofrepublican constitutions had not significantly affectedthe legal position of white women, although some stateseased women’s difficulties in obtaining divorces. Nor didwomen gain new political rights, except in New Jersey.That state’s 1776 constitution, by not specifying genderand race, left a loophole that enabled white female andblack property holders to vote, which many began to do.During the 1790s, New Jersey explicitly permitted other-wise qualified women to vote by adopting laws that stip-ulated “he or she” when referring to voters. In the hotlycontested state election of 1797, women’s votes nearlygave the victory to a Federalist candidate. His victoriousRepublican opponent, John Condict, would get hisrevenge in 1807 by successfully advocating a bill to dis-enfranchise women (along with free blacks).

Economic and Social Change 217

Mid-Atlantic Dairy Production in the 1790s

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

Nine out of ten white Americans lived on farms in1800, and virtually every farm included a dairy

operation. Although the work of dairying was divided bygender, it involved men and women alike. Along withother responsibilities in the fields, men maintained andfed the farm’s herd of dairy cattle. Among their manytasks in the house, yard, and outbuildings, womenmilked the cows and turned most of the milk into creamand butter. In dairying, as in all farm work, men andwomen drew on the labor of their sons and daughters,respectively, and often of live-in relatives or laborers.

At the end of the eighteenth century, a growingurban demand for dairy products spurred farmers nearnortheastern cities, especially Philadelphia, whose popu-lation surpassed forty-two thousand in 1790, to seekcost-effective ways to increase production. The farmersoften turned to agricultural experts, whose advice theirparents and grandparents had usually, and proudly,

spurned. Many farm men introduced clover into the pas-tures they tended, following the suggestion of one authorwho maintained that clover “flushes [a cow] to milk.” Menalso recognized that while milk production was lowerduring winter, when most cattle remained outdoors, pro-tecting their herds then would improve milk productionyear-round. Accordingly, they expanded acreage devot-ed to hay and built barns to shelter the cows in coldweather and to store the hay. A federal census in 1798revealed that about half the farms in eastern Penn-sylvania had barns, usually of logs or framed but occa-sionally of stone. After the turn of the century, men wouldalso begin to shop for particular breeds of cattle that pro-duced more milk for more months of each year.

Farmwomen of the period—often referred to as“dairymaids”—likewise sought to improve cows’ produc-tivity. The milking process itself changed little. Mid-Atlantic women milked an average of six animals twice a

218

day, with each “milch cow” producing about two gallonsper day during the summer. Most of women’s efforts toincrease production had to do with making butter, thedairy product in greatest demand among urban con-sumers.

During the 1780s and 1790s many farmwomenmoved butter making from the cellar to the springhouse,or milkhouse, a structure (originating in ContinentalEurope) built of logs or stone over a spring or stream. Thewater flowing under a springhouse was diverted to asmooth-bottomed trench. The house also featuredshelves for storage and counters on which the womenworked. Women carried the milk in six-gallon pails fromthe barn to the springhouse (typically a distance of onehundred to two hundred yards), where they poured it intoshallow pans or tubs. Although most women preferredpans made of glazed earthenware, some used woodentubs out of fears that lead in the glaze of the pans couldpoison their milk. The glaze in American earthenware “ispure lead, and consequently a strong poison,” warned afarm advice book published in 1801. Women placed thepans or tubs in the trench, allowing the milk to cool forabout a day or two until the cream rose to the top. Thenthey skimmed off the cream, using a paddle with holes,and placed the cream in a barrel. Once the barrel was fullor the contents began to sour, it was time to churn thecream into butter.

Churning separates the fat particles incream from the liquid encasing them, there-by allowing the fat to clump together. Aseighteenth-century farmers phrased it,churning was the way “to bring the butter.”Butter churns had been developed inEngland as early as the fifteenth century,but were used only by the most affluentfarmers there and in the colonies until thelate eighteenth century. These early churnswere called plunger or dasher churns.Women moved the plungers up, down, andaround to agitate the cream. Although tak-ing about three hours to produce a poundor two of butter, plunger churns were ade-quate for supplying the family and a fewlocal customers. But as women sought toincrease production for urban markets,those who could afford it purchased barrelchurns in which they turned a handle thatmoved a barrel of cream around an axle.

They then pressed the churned butter with their hand ora wooden utensil to remove the remaining liquid and salt-ed it to preserve it during storage and transport to mar-ket.

The innovations undertaken by “dairymaids” andmale farmers at the end of the eighteenth century appearminimal compared with those that would be undertakenduring the decades that followed. But it was these smallbeginnings that set in motion a series of technologicalchanges in churning and other aspects of dairy produc-tion. These changes eventually led to the point where atypical farm was, as one visitor described a Pennsylvaniafarm in 1867, “a butter factory rather than a farm.”Central to these innovations were women, whose laborand knowledge of their craft enabled their households tochange from simple subsistence farming to lucrativecommercial operations.

Focus Questions:

• What conditions led mid-Atlantic farm families tostrive to increase dairy production at the end of theeighteenth century?

• What were the most important technologicalchanges enabling women to increase their produc-tion of butter?

219

In other areas of American life, social change andrepublican ideology together fostered more formidablechallenges to traditional attitudes toward women’srights. American republicans increasingly recognizedthe right of a woman to choose her husband—a strikingdeparture from the continued practice among someelites whereby fathers approved or even arranged mar-riages. Thus in 1790, on the occasion of his daughterMartha’s marriage, Jefferson wrote to a friend that, fol-lowing “the usage of my country, I scrupulously sup-pressed my wishes, [so] that my daughter might indulgeher sentiments freely.”

Outside elite circles, such independence was evenmore apparent. Especially in the Northeast, daughtersincreasingly got pregnant by prospective husbands, thus

forcing their fathers to consent to their marrying inorder to avoid a public scandal. In Hallowell, Maine, inMay 1792, for example, Mary Brown’s father objected toher marrying John Chamberlain. In December, he finallyconsented and the couple wed—just two days beforeMary Chamberlain gave birth. By becoming pregnant,northeastern women secured economic support in aregion where an exodus of young, unmarried men wasleaving a growing number of women single.

White women also had fewer children overall thanhad their mothers and grandmothers. In Sturbridge,Massachusetts, women in the mid-eighteenth centuryaveraged nearly nine children per marriage, comparedwith six in the first decade of the nineteenth century.Whereas 40 percent of Quaker women had nine or morechildren before 1770, only 14 percent bore that manythereafter. Such statistics testify to declining farm sizesand urbanization, both of which were incentives forhaving fewer children. But they also indicate that somewomen were finding relief from the near-constant stateof pregnancy and nursing that had consumed theirgrandmothers.

As white women’s roles expanded, so too did republican notions of male-female relations. “I objectto the word ‘obey’ in the marriage-service,” wrote afemale author calling herself Matrimonial Republican,“because it is a general word, without limitations or def-inition. . . . The obedience between man and wife is, orought to be mutual.” Lack of mutuality was one reasonfor a rising number of divorce petitions from women,from fewer than fourteen per year in Connecticut beforethe Revolution, to forty-five in 1795.

A few women also challenged the sexual doublestandard that allowed men to indulge in extramaritalaffairs while their female partners, single or married,were condemned. Writing in 1784, an author calling her-self Daphne pointed out how a woman whose illicitaffair was exposed was “forever deprive[d] . . . of all thatrenders life valuable,” while “the base [male] betrayer issuffered to triumph in the success of his unmanly arts,and to pass unpunished even by a frown.” Daphnecalled on her “sister Americans” to “stand by and sup-port the dignity of our own sex” by publicly condemningseducers rather than their victims.

Gradually, the subordination of women, which oncewas taken for granted among most whites, became thesubject of debate. In “On the Equality of the Sexes”(1790), essayist and poet Judith Sargent Murray con-tended that the genders had equal intellectual abilityand deserved equal education. “We can only reasonfrom what we know,” she wrote, “and if an opportunityof acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferi-


ority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from there.”Murray hoped that “sensible and informed” womenwould improve their minds rather than rush into mar-riage (as she had at eighteen), enabling them to instillrepublican ideals in their children.

Like many of her contemporaries, Murray support-ed “republican motherhood.” Republicans emphasizedthe importance of educating white women in the valuesof liberty and independence in order to strengthenvirtue in the new nation. It was the duty of women toinculcate these values in their sons as well as theirdaughters. Even so conservative a man as John Adamsreminded his daughter that she was part of “a younggeneration, coming up in America . . . [and] will beresponsible for a great share of the duty and opportunityof educating a rising family, from whom much will beexpected.” Before the 1780s only a few women hadacquired an advanced education through private tutors.Thereafter, urban elites broadened such opportunitiesby founding numerous private schools, or academies,for girls. Massachusetts also established an importantprecedent in 1789 when it forbade any town to excludegirls from its elementary schools.

By itself, however, the expansion of educationalopportunities for white women would have a limitedeffect. “I acknowledge we have an equal share of curiosi-ty with the other sex,” wrote Mercy Otis Warren toAbigail Adams, but men “have the opportunities of grat-ifying their inquisitive humour to the utmost, in thegreat school of the world, while we are confined to thenarrow circle of domesticity.” Although the great strug-gle for female political equality would not begin until thenext century, republican assertions that women wereintellectually and morally men’s peers provoked scat-tered calls for political equality. In 1793 Priscilla Mason,a young woman graduating from one of the femaleacademies, blamed “Man, despotic man” for shuttingwomen out of the church, the courts, and government.In her salutatory oration, she urged that a women’s sen-ate be established by Congress to evoke “all that ishuman—all that is divine in the soul of woman.” Warrenand Mason had pointed out a fundamental limitation torepublican egalitarianism in the America of the 1790s:while women could be virtuous wives and mothers, theworld outside their homes still offered them few oppor-tunities to apply their education.

Native Americans in the New Republic

By 1795 Native Americans in eastern North America hadsuffered severe losses of population, territory (see Map

7.3), and political and cultural self-determination.Thousands of deaths had resulted from battle, famine,and disease during the succession of wars since the1740s and from poverty, losses of land, and discrimina-tion during peacetime as well. From 1775 to 1795, theCherokees declined from sixteen thousand to ten thou-sand and the Iroquois fell from about nine thousand tofour thousand. During the quarter-century before 1800,Native Americans east and west of the Appalachians for-feited more land than the area inhabited by whites in1775. Ignoring the Indian Non-Intercourse Act, easternstates seized Indian lands without congressionalapproval, crowding Native Americans onto tiny, widelyseparated reservations. Settlers, liquor dealers, andcriminals trespassed on Indian lands, while governmentagents and missionaries pressured Native Americans togive up their communal lands and traditional cultures.Indians who sold land or worked for whites were oftenpaid in the unfamiliar medium of cash and then foundlittle to spend it on in their isolated communities otherthan alcohol.

In the face of such losses and pressures, manyNative Americans became demoralized. Unable to strikeback at whites, Indian men often drank heavily andinflicted violence on one another. All too typical werethe tragedies that beset Mary Jemison, born a half-cen-tury earlier to white settlers but a Seneca Iroquois sinceher wartime capture at age ten. Jemison saw one of hersons murder his two brothers in alcohol-relatedepisodes before meeting a similar fate himself.

Such predicaments spawned a profound social andmoral crisis within tribes, like the Seneca, threatened bywhites’ expansion. But in 1799 a Seneca prophet,Handsome Lake, emerged and led his people in aremarkable spiritual revival. Severely ill, alcoholic, andnear death, he experienced a series of visions, whichIroquois people traditionally interpreted as spirituallymeaningful. As in the visions of the Iroquois prophetHiawatha in the fourteenth century (see Chapter 1),spiritual guides instructed Handsome Lake first in hisown recovery and then in the healing of his people.Invoking Iroquois religious traditions, Handsome Lakepreached against alcoholism and sought to revive unityand self-confidence among the Seneca. At the sametime, he welcomed Quaker missionaries and federal aidearmarked for teaching Euro-American agriculturalmethods to Seneca men, whose older roles as tradersand warriors were no longer tenable.

The most traditional Senecas rejected the notionthat Native men should work like white farmers; saidone, only “squaws and hedgehogs are made to scratchthe ground.” But many Seneca men welcomed the


change. It was women who resisted most, because theystood to lose their collective ownership of farmland, theircontrol of the food supply, and their considerable politicalinfluence. Other Senecas accused women who rejectedHandsome Lake’s teachings of witchcraft, and even killeda few of them. As among other Native Americans, the con-flict between traditional and new ways among the Senecaswas divisive and proceeded fitfully.

Redefining the Color Line

The Republic’s first years marked the high tide of African-Americans’ Revolutionary era success in bettering theirlot. Although racism had not disappeared, Jefferson’s elo-quent words “all men are created equal” had stirred blacks’aspirations and awakened many whites’ consciences. By1790, 8 percent of all African-Americans enjoyed freedom—many having purchased their liberty or earned it

through wartime service. Ten yearslater 11 percent controlled theirown fates (see Figure 7.1). Variousstate reforms meanwhile attempt-ed to improve slaves’ conditions.In 1791, for example, the NorthCarolina legislature declared thatthe former “distinction of crimi-nality between the murder of awhite person and one who isequally an human creature, butmerely of a different complexion,is disgraceful to humanity” andauthorized the execution ofwhites who murdered slaves.Although for economic as muchas for humanitarian reasons, by1794 most states had outlawed theAtlantic slave trade.

Hesitant measures to ensurefree blacks’ legal equality alsoappeared in the 1780s and early1790s. Most states droppedrestrictions on African Americans’freedom of movement and pro-tected their property. Of the six-teen states in the Union by 1796,all but three either permitted freeblacks to vote or made no specificattempt to exclude them. But bythen a countertrend was reversingmany of Revolutionary eraadvances. Before the 1790s ended,

abolitionist sentiment ebbed, slavery became moreentrenched, and whites resisted accepting even freeblacks as fellow citizens.

Federal law led the way in restricting the rights ofblacks and other nonwhites. When Congress establishedprocedures for naturalizing aliens in 1790, it limited eli-gibility for U.S. citizenship to foreign whites. The federalmilitia law of 1792 required whites to enroll in local unitsbut allowed states to exclude free blacks, an option thatstate governments increasingly chose. The navy and themarine corps forbade nonwhite enlistments in 1798.Delaware stripped free, property-owning black males ofthe vote in 1792, and by 1807 Maryland, Kentucky, andNew Jersey had followed suit. Free black men continuedto vote and to serve in some integrated militia organiza-tions after 1800 (including in the slave states of NorthCarolina and Tennessee), but the number of places thattreated them as the political equals of whites droppedsharply.


British

Spanish

British fort onAmerican soil

Spanish fort onAmerican soil

American fort

Battle

Fort Natchez

Fort Nogales

Fort San Fernando

Fort Greenville

Battle ofFallen Timbers

1794

Fort Miami

Fort Detroit

Fort Michilimackinac

Fort Niagara

Fort Oswego

Fort Oswegatchie

17

84

BRITISH NORTHAMERICA(CANADA)

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIAN.J.

MD.

VIRGINIA

N. CAROLINA

S. CAROLINA

GEORGIA

MISSISSIPPI TERRITORY 1790

1773

1785-17911785

1774-177517 6 8

- 177

4

1795

1795

1797

NORTHWESTTERRITORY

LO

UIS

IA

NA

Mis

s iss

ipp

iR

.

Ohio R.

0 200 Miles

200 Kilometers0

KY.

TENN.

VT.

N.H.

MASS.

CONN.R.I.

MAINE(MASS.)

DEL.

territory

territory

1784-1799Land ceded

F L O R I D A landsUnceded

prior to 1768Land ceded

1768-1783Land ceded

MAP 7.3Indian Land Cessions, 1768–1799During the last third of the eighteenth century, Native Americans were forced to give up extensivehomelands throughout the eastern backcountry and farther west in the Ohio and Tennessee Rivervalleys.

In the face of growing constric-tions on their freedom and opportu-nities, free African-Americans in theNorth turned to one another for support. Self-help among African-Americans flowed especially throughreligious channels. During the 1780stwo recently freed black Christians,Richard Allen and Absalom Jones,formed the Free African Society ofPhiladelphia, a community organi-zation whose members pooled theirscarce resources to assist one anoth-er and other blacks in need. After thewhite-dominated Methodist churchthey attended tried to restrict blackworshippers to the gallery, Allen,Jones and most of the black mem-bership withdrew and formed a separate congregation. Comparabledevelopments unfolded in othernorthern communities, eventuallyleading to the formation of a newdenomination, the African Metho-dist Episcopal Church (see Chapter9).

An especially revealing indica-tion of whites’ changing racial atti-tudes occurred in 1793, whenCongress enacted the Fugitive SlaveLaw. This law required judges toaward possession of an escaped slaveupon any formal request by a master or his representa-tive. Accused runaways not only were denied a jury trialbut also were sometimes refused permission to presentevidence of their freedom. Slaves’ legal status as proper-ty disqualified them from claiming these constitutionalprivileges, but the Fugitive Slave Law denied free blacksthe legal protections that the Bill of Rights guaranteedthem as citizens. Congress nevertheless passed thismeasure without serious opposition. The law marked astriking departure from the atmosphere of the 1780s,when state governments had moved toward grantingwhites and free blacks legal equality.

The slave revolution on Saint Domingue (which vic-torious blacks had renamed Haiti) notably underminedthe American trend toward abolition and helped trans-form many whites’ image of blacks from victims to amenacing threat. In August 1800 such fears were kindledwhen a slave insurrection broke out near Virginia’s capi-tal, Richmond. Amid the election campaign that year, inwhich Federalists and Republicans accused one another

of endangering liberty and hinted at violence, a slavenamed Gabriel calculated that the split among whitesafforded blacks an opportunity to gain their freedom.Having secretly assembled weapons, he and severalother blacks organized a march on Richmond by morethan a thousand slaves. The plot was leaked on the eve ofthe march. Obtaining confessions from some partici-pants, the authorities rounded up the rest and executedthirty-five of them, including Gabriel. “I have nothingmore to offer than what General Washington would havehad to offer, had he been taken by the British officersand put to trial by them,” said one rebel before his exe-cution. “I have ventured my life in endeavoring to obtainthe liberty of my countrymen, and I am a willing sacri-fice to their cause.” In the end, Gabriel’s Rebellion onlyconfirmed whites’ anxieties that Haiti’s revolution couldbe replayed on American soil.

A technological development also strengthenedslavery. During the 1790s demand in the British textileindustry stimulated the cultivation of cotton in coastal


100%

100%

99%

90%

89%

85%

57%

33%

26%

16%

6%

5%

2%

2%

2%

2%

11%

Massachusetts 7,378

Vermont 557

New Hampshire 855

Rhode Island 3,304

Pennsylvania 14,564

Connecticut 5,300

Delaware 8,268

New York 10,374

New Jersey 4,402

Maryland 19,587

Virginia 20,124

North Carolina 7,043

South Carolina 3,185

Georgia 1,019

Kentucky 741

Tennessee 309

UNITED STATES 108,395*

* Total includes figures from the District of Columbia, Mississippi Territory, and Northwest Territory. These areas are not shown on the chart.

StateFree Blacks as

a Percentage of Total Black PopulationTotal Numberof Free Blacks

FIGURE 7.1Number and Percentage of Free Blacks, by State, 1800Within a generation of the Declaration of Independence, a large free-black populationemerged that included every ninth African American. In the North, only in New Jersey and NewYork did most blacks remain slaves. Almost half of all free blacks lived in the South. Everysixth black in Maryland was free by 1800.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census.

South Carolina and Georgia. The soil and climate wereideal for growing long-staple cotton, a variety whosefibers could be separated easily from its seed by squeez-ing it through rollers. In the South’s upland and interiorregions, however, the only cotton that would thrive wasthe short-staple variety, whose seed stuck so tenaciouslyto the fibers that rollers crushed the seeds and ruinedthe fibers. It was as if growers had discovered gold onlyto find that they could not mine it. But in 1793 a NewEnglander, Eli Whitney, invented a cotton gin that suc-cessfully separated the fibers of short-staple cotton fromthe seed. Quickly copied and improved upon by others,Whitney’s invention removed a major obstacle to thespread of cotton cultivation. It gave a new lease on life toplantation slavery and undermined the doubts of thosewho considered slavery economically outmoded.

By 1800 free blacks had suffered noticeable erosionof their post-Revolutionary gains, and southern slaveswere farther from freedom than a decade earlier. Twovignettes poignantly communicate the plight of African-Americans. By arrangement with her late husband,Martha Washington freed the family’s slaves a year afterGeorge died. But many of the freed blacks remainedimpoverished and dependent on the Washington estate

because Virginia law prohibited the education of blacksand otherwise denied them opportunities to realizetheir freedom. Meanwhile, across the Potomac, enslavedblacks were performing most of the labor on the newnational capital that would bear the first president’sname. African-Americans were manifestly losing ground.

CONCLUSIONThe survival of the United States was by no meansassured during its first twelve years under the newConstitution. With the country badly divided along linesof region, economic interest, and ideology, Hamiltonpushed through a series of bold innovations thatstrengthened the federal government by giving it respon-sibility for the nation’s debt and for overseeing a nationalbank. Jefferson, Madison, and many others opposedthese measures, arguing that they favored northeasterncommercial interests at the expense of other Americansand that they threatened liberty with their concentrationof economic and political power in relatively few hands.At the same time Spain and Britain resisted U.S. expan-sion west of the Appalachians, while Britain and revolu-tionary France each tried to coerce the young Republicinto supporting it against the other. All these issues bit-terly divided white elites, finally causing them to formtwo rival political parties—the Federalists and theRepublicans. Only with the peaceful transfer of powerfrom Federalists to Republicans in 1800 could thenation’s long-term political stability be taken for granted.

Meanwhile, some whites granted limited recogni-tion of women’s independence, while most abandonedthe Revolution’s loftiest goals for nonwhites, placing newrestrictions on free and enslaved blacks’ quest for free-dom and new obstacles to Native Americans’ physicaland cultural survival. In the face of such barriers, bothpeoples persisted, but they did not flourish.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE

READINGS

Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia SlaveConspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (1993). A thorough, well-written narrative that presents slave resistance againstthe backdrop of post-Revolutionary society and politics.

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism:The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (1993). A magis-terial account of politics and diplomacy through theelection of 1800.

Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The RevolutionaryGeneration (2000). A vivid study of the role of personali-ties and personal relationships among political leadersin shaping the new nation.


Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics inthe New Republic (2001). An insightful discussion of poli-tics in the 1790s and the passions that underlay them.

Ramón A. Gutiérrez and Richard J. Orsi (eds.), ContestedEden: California and the Gold Rush (1998). A fine collec-tion of essays, introducing the history of the Pacificcolony under Spanish and Mexican rule.

Joan M. Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic FarmWomen, 1750–1850 (1986). A study of the interplay ofwomen’s roles and commercialization in what was thenAmerica’s most dynamic agricultural region.

Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation ofPhiladelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (1988). Alandmark study of how North America’s largest African-American community formed and survived in the face ofracism and poverty.

Claudio Saunt, A New Order of Things: Property, Power, andthe Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733–1816(1999). A pathbreaking account of how eastern NorthAmerica’s most powerful Indian nation adapted to politi-cal, economic, and cultural change, and of the price itspeople paid for their survival.

Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasionon the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1995).The compelling story of one elite Federalist’s fall in theface of the Republicans’ rise to power.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of MarthaBallard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (1990). A PulitzerPrize-winning study of a rural woman’s life in northernNew England.

WEBSITES

Africans in America: The Constitution and New Nationhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr5.htmlA segment of a very informative site devoted to African-Americans from 1450 to 1865, documenting legislationand the activism of blacks, white abolitionists, andproslavery planters.

DoHistoryhttp://www.dohistory.org/An outstanding website that uses the diary of midwifeMartha Ballard to demonstrate how historians and stu-dents can reconstruct and interpret the history of anysubject through evidence from primary sources.

The Papers of George Washingtonhttp://gwpapers.virginia.edu/An excellent introduction to Washington’s multifacetedlife and to his public and private writings.

For additional readings please consult the bibliography atthe end of the book.

For Further Reference 225

CHRONOLOGY, 1789–1800

1789 First Congress convenes in New York.George Washington inaugurated as first president.Judiciary Act.French Revolution begins.

1790 Alexander Hamilton submits Reports on Public Credit and National Bank to Congress.Treaty of New York.

1791 Bank of the United States established with twenty-year charter.Vermont admitted to the Union.Bill of Rights ratified.Slave uprising begins in French colony of Saint Domingue.Society for the Encouragement of Useful Manufactures founded.Hamilton submits his Report on Manufactures to Congress.

1792 Washington reelected president.Kentucky admitted to the Union.

1793 Fugitive Slave Law.Chisholm v. Georgia.French planters flee slaves’ revolution in Saint Domingue for the United States.

France declares war on Britain and Spain.Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation.Citizen Genet arrives in United States.First Democratic societies established.

1794 Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.General Anthony Wayne’s forces defeat Shawnees in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

1795 Treaty of Greenville.Jay’s Treaty with Britain ratified.

1796 Tennessee admitted to the Union.Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty) ratified.Washington’s Farewell Address.John Adams elected president.

1798 XYZ Affair.Alien and Sedition Acts.Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution ratified.

1798–1799 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.1798–1800 Quasi-War between United States and France.1799 Fries Rebellion in Pennsylvania.1800 Gabriel’s Rebellion in Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson elected president.

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