The New Nation

The success of the Revolution gave Americans the opportunity to give legal form to the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

With the end of Revolution, the US again faced the old Western question – the problem of expansion. The rich land lured pioneers to the Appalachian Mountains and beyond. By 1790 the population of the trans-Appalachian region numbered well over 120,000.

The Congress appointed a governor and judges to rule the Northwest Territory. Thus the Northwest Ordinance was established in July 1787. It was based on Thomas Jefferson’s ordinance plan of 1784 and proposed the creation of three to five states to be equal with the original states, freedom of religion, the right of trial by jury, public education and a ban on slavery.

At the same time the country was working out a new form of government. They felt that three equal and coordinate branches of government should be established: legislative, executive and judicial.

The legislative branch should consist of two branches.

The representatives of the small states (e.g., New Jersey) objected to representation upon population. The representatives of the large states (e.g., Virginia) argued for proportionate representation. Other questions concerned counting of slaves when determining each state’s tax share but not representation; election; exclusion of the West from the opportunity of statehood and so on.

There was no serious difference on such national economic questions as paper money, the role of women and contract obligations.

At last the federal government got full power to levy taxes, borrow money, establish uniform duties and excise taxes, coin money, fix weights and measures, grant patents and copyrights, set up post offices and build post roads. It also could raise and maintain an army and navy, and regulate interstate commerce. It was given the management of Indian affairs, foreign policy and war; passed law for naturalizing foreigners and could admit new states on the basis of absolute equality with the old.

Delaware became the first state to ratify the new constitution (December 7, 1787), followed by Pennsylvania (December 12, 1787) and New Jersey (December 18, 1787).

By June 1788 nine states ratified the Constitution (Georgia – January 2, 1788; Connecticut – January 9, 1788; Massachusetts – February 6, 1788; Maryland – April 28, 1788; South Carolina – May 23, 1788; New Hampshire – June 21, 1788).

The country was divided into two forces – the Federalists, who favored a strong central government, and the Antifederalists, who preferred a loose association of separate states. The Federalists (led by Alexander Hamilton) represented the urban mercantile interest of the seaports; the Antifederalists (led by Thomas Jefferson) spoke for the rural and southern interests.

Hamilton advocated a strong central government acting in the interests of commerce and industry. He devised a Bank of the United States, with the right to establish branches in different parts of the country. He insisted on full payment of the national debt.

Jefferson advocated a decentralized agrarian republic. He feared tyranny and supported a strong central government in foreign relations but not in other respect.

Virginia’s Antifederalists were led by Patrick Henry and George Mason. The Federalists were led by James Madison. The opponents refused to sign the document because it did not enumerate individual rights. Indeed, five states, including Massachusetts, ratified the Constitution on the condition that the amendments are added immediately. Twelve amendments were quickly adopted. Collectively, they are known as the Bill of Rights.

President Washington.

One of the last acts of the Congress of the Confederation was to arrange for the first presidential election, setting March 4, 1789, as the date that the new government would come into being. But Congress did not achieve a quorum and the operation began in April 1, 1789.

On April 6, 1789, George Washington was elected President unanimously with 69 votes; and John Adams became Vice-President with 34 votes.

The new government had to create its own machinery. Congress quickly created the departments of state and Treasury and simultaneously established the federal judiciary. Since Washington generally preferred to make decisions after consulting those men whose judgment he valued, the American presidential Cabinet came into existence (it included the heads of all the departments the Congress might create).

Meanwhile, the country was growing – immigration from Europe was increasing; New Englanders and Pennsylvanians were moving into Ohio, Virginians and Carolinians into Kentucky and Tennessee.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island were laying the foundation of important textile industries; Connecticut was beginning to turn out tinware and cloaks; New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were producing paper, glass and iron. On the seas the United States were second only to British.

Washington organized a national government; developed policies for settlement of territories previously held by Britain and Spain, stabilized the northwestern frontier and oversaw the admission of 3 new states (Vermont- 1791, Kentucky – 1792 and Tennessee – 1796).

The cornerstones of Washington’s foreign policy were to preserve peace, to give the country time to recover from the war and to permit the slow work of national integration to continue. Unfortunately, the events in Europe – the French revolution – threatened those goals.

On March 4, 1793, Washington began his second term as president of the United States, and John Adams as Vice-President. His cabinet included Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox as Secretary of War, Edmund Randolph as Attorney General, and Timothy Pickering as Postmaster General.

In April 1793, France declared war on Great Britain and Spain.

According to the Franco-American Treaty of Alliance of 1778, the United States and France were perpetual allies, and America was obliged to help France defend the West Indies.

In April 1793, Citizen Genet (Edmond-Charles-Eduard Genet), a new French envoy arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. He was cheered by the Americans but the government, knowing its military and economically weak position, greeted him coolly. President Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality on the part of the United Sates in the war between the French Republic and England, Spain and the Netherlands.

In 1796 Washington retired. He published his Farewell Address in Philadelphia’s Daily American Advertiser, announcing his withdrawal from politics and presenting his reasons for deciding against running for a third term in office. The Farewell Address also enumerated the achievements of his administration, warned against the decisiveness of a party system and permanent foreign alliances, advised on an importance of a stable public credit system.

On December 7, 1796, in the nation’s third presidential election, Federalist candidate John Adams won the presidency with 71 electoral votes, and Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson gained the vice-presidency with 68 electoral votes.

In February 1801 (the election had been held in December 1800) Jefferson won the presidency.

Jefferson enjoyed extraordinary favor because of his appeal to American idealism. His mere presence in the White House encouraged democratic procedures. He urged a liberal naturalization law. The national debt was reduced; the area of the country was doubled. A big territory west of the Mississippi River - Louisiana – came from hands to hands. Napoleon made Spain return it to France which filled Americans with indignation. Jefferson asserted that if France took possession of Louisiana, “from that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.” Napoleon decided to sell the territory to the United States. But the Constitution gave no office the power to purchase territories. Jefferson’s advisers told him that the power to purchase was inherit in the power to make treaties. In Paris, American envoys James Monroe and Robert Livingston signed a treaty of cession with France – the territory of 2,600,000 square kilometers was bought at $15 million.

At the beginning of his second term in 1805, Jefferson declared American neutrality during the struggle between Great Britain and France.

James Madison succeeded Jefferson in 1809 and relations with Great Britain grew worse, leading two countries rapidly toward war.

War of 1812

Both Jefferson and Madison banned all American trade with England and France as long as those nations continued to harass neutral shipping. Northwestern settlers suffered from the Indian attacks which were believed to be incited by British agents in Canada. Many Americans favored conquest of Canada.

The South and West favored war, New York and New England opposed it because it interfered with their commerce. The declaration of war had been made with military preparations still far from complete. 7,000 regular soldiers were to be supported by the undisciplined militia of the states.

On June 19, 1812, President Madison officially proclaimed the Unites States to be in the state of war with Great Britain. The opponents to the war called it “Mr. Madison’s war.”

Connecticut and Massachusetts refused to provide militia forces to the federal government.

The western campaign against Canada was not successful – the British captured the US port of Michilimackinac and the Indians led by Tecumseh allied with the British. Soon Detroit was surrendered. That capitulation gave the British power over the Lake Erie – Lake Michigan region. The US Navy, however, scored successes and restored confidence.

The campaign of 1813 centered on Lake Erie. General William Henry Harrison – who would later become president – led an army of militia, volunteers and regulars from Kentucky with the object of reconquering Detroit. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry annihilated the British fleet on Lake Erie. Harrison occupied Detroit and pushed into Canada. The entire region came under American control.

A year later Commodore Thomas Macdonough won a point-blank gun duel with a British flotilla on Lake Champlain in upper New York. The British invasion force retreated to Canada.

As the war continued, Britain and America demanded concessions from the other. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte was overthrown, freeing the British to concentrate solely on the American war. Some 14,000 veterans of the Duke of Wellington’s Napoleonic campaigns were sent to fight in America.

In August 1814, in the Flemish town of Ghent, peace discussions began. Each side altered its demands, depending on the most recent news from the fields of battle.

On August 24, 1814, an expeditionary force burst into Washington, D.C., home of the federal government, and left it in flames. President James Madison fled to Virginia.

In November 1814, the Americans evacuated and blew up Fort Erie, finally abandoning their plan to invade Canada.

On December 24, 1814, American and British peace commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war of 1812. The pact provided for the release of prisoners; for the restoration of all conquered territories except West Florida, which remained in American hands and for an arbitration panel to resolve US-Canadian boundary disputes. Unaware that a peace treaty had been signed, the two sides continued fighting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Led by General Andrew Jackson, the Americans scored the greatest land victory of the war.

The news of the Treaty of Ghent reached America in February 1815.

After the war of 1812, the Unites States acquired equality in the family of nations. With a low national debt and the vast territories in the West the country began the building of a new nation.

Life after 1812.

The national unity was cemented by commerce. Economic independence of the American manufacturers was an important as political. Some politicians urged a policy of protectionism – imposition of restrictions on imported goods to foster the development of American industry. In 1816 the customs tariff was raised to protect woolen industry and iron suppliers. Another claim was to open frontier lands for settlement.

New economic factors made slavery in the South far more profitable than it had been before 1790.

Cotton-growing industry was rising as the Industrial Revolution had increased the demand for raw cotton. The opening of new lands in the West after 1812 greatly extended the area available for cotton cultivation.

Sugarcane also contributed to slavery’s extension in the South. By 1830 Louisiana was supplying the nation with about half its sugar supply. Tobacco growers moved westward taking slavery with them.

In 1818 the situation was like that: 10 states permitted slavery and 11 states prohibited it (when Alabama joined the Union it restored the balance). Then in 1819 Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine came in as a free state. Later Congress banned slavery on the territory north of Missouri’s southern boundary known as the “Great American Desert”.

The Monroe doctrine.

The people of Latin America raised a revolt after Napoleon’s conquest of Spain in 1808 and by 1812 all of Hispanic America – from Argentina and Chile in the south to Mexico and California in the north – had won independence from the mother country.

In 1822 President James Monroe recognized the new countries of Latin America - including the former Portuguese colony of Brazil – and soon exchanged ministers with them.

At this point, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed an association called the Holy Alliance to protect themselves against revolution. As long as the Holy Alliance acted in the Old World, it aroused no anxiety in the US, but when it announced its intension of restoring its former colonies to Spain, Americans became very concerned.

In December 1823, President Monroe in his annual message to Congress pronounced what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine – the refusal to tolerate any further extension of European domination in both Americas: “The American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their [political] system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

With the existing colonies… we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them… by any European power… as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Nullification crisis.

In 1828 Andrew Jackson – a Tennessee politician, Indian fighter and hero of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 – was elected the President. Toward the end of his first term in office, Jackson was forced to confront the state of South Carolina on the issue of the protective tariff. Business and framing interests in the state insisted on the modification of the tariff laws they had long opposed. In their view the tariff laws were profitable only for the Northern manufacturers. They strongly protested against the laws of 1828 and 1832 threatening to leave the Union. Finally, the Compromise Tariff was adopted. Nevertheless, South Carolina demonstrated that a single state could force its will on Congress.

At the same time labor organization was born and the spread of suffrage was leading to a new concept of education. Native-born Protestant Americans faced the opposition of immigrants who became a strong political force.

DeWitt Clinton (New York), Abraham Lincoln (Illinois) and Horace Mann (Massachusetts) were supported by organized labor, whose leaders demanded free, tax-supported schools open to all children. Another influential social movement was the temperance movement (the opposition to the sale and use of alcohol). Other reforms concerned the problems of prisons and care for the insane.

By the 1840s a group of American women headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first women’s rights movement.