Early National/Antebellum

Period: 1790-1860

Republicanism

Founders of American Republic

• Common Beliefs of Republicanism

1. Popular Sovereignty

2. Natural Law3. Mixed

Government4. Pastoral Lifestyle

Republicanism• Republicanism is the

ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by other means than hereditary, often elections.

• An important element of Republicanism is constitutional law to limit the state's power over its citizens.

• Early proponents of Republicanism put emphasis on the importance of civic virtues.

Popular Sovereignty

• Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the belief that the legitimacy of the state is created by the (true) will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power.

Popular Sovereignty • Right of Rebellion: With their

Revolution, Amer-icans substituted the sovereignty in the person of King George III, with a collective sovereign—composed of the people.

• Henceforth, American revolutionaries agreed and were committed to the principle that governments were legitimate only if they rested on popular sovereignty.

Consent of the Governed• Popular Sovereignty—

often linked with the notion of the consent of the governed—was not invented by American revolutionaries.

• Rather, the consent of the governed and the idea of the people as a sovereign had clear 17th and 18th century intellectual roots in English history.

Consensus

• If democracy adheres to principles of consensus, becoming a deliberative democracy, then party or factional dominance can be minimized and decisions will be more representative of the entire society.

Natural Rights

• Natural rights (also called moral rights or inalienable rights) are rights which are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular society or polity.

Declaration of Independence

• “Natural Rights1. Life2. Liberty3. Property4. Pursuit of

Happiness

• “Bill of Rights”First Ten Amend-

ments to the Constitution contain the rights considered to be Natural Rights

Mixed Government• Mixed

government, is a form of government that integrated facets of government by democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy.

Anti-Federalists• Anti-Federalism is a

political philosophy which opposes the concept of Federalism.

• In short, Anti-Federalists dictate that the central governing authority of a nation should be equal or inferior to, but not having more power than, the states.

Democratic-Republican Party

• The Democratic-Republican Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison around 1792.

Democratic-Republican Party• The most important of these

principles were states' rights, opposition to a strong national government, skepticism in regard to the federal courts, and opposition to a Navy and a National Bank.

• The party saw itself as a champion of republicanism and viewed its opponents as supporters of the aristocracy, not of the people.

Democratic-Republican Party

• It was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800 to 1824, when it split into competing factions, one of which became the modern Democratic Party.

• Rejected aristocracy

Pastoralism: Jeffersonian Democracy

• Pastoralism: Jeffersonian democracy is the set of political goals that were named after Thomas Jefferson.

• It dominated American politics in the years 1800-1820s.

Jeffersonian Democracy

• The yeoman farmer best exemplifies civic virtue and independence from corrupting city influences; government policy should be for his benefit.

• Financiers, bankers and industrialists make cities the cesspools of corruption, and should be avoided.

Whig Economics

• The Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the executive branch and favored a program of modernization [internal improvements] and economic protectionism.

Revivalism: Second Great Awakening

• The Second Great Awakening (1790–1840s) was a period of great religious revival that extended into the antebellum period of the United States, with widespread Christian evangelism and conversions.

Religion and Reform in Antebellum America

• Evangelical participation in social causes was fostered that changed American life in areas such as prison reform, abolitionism, and temperance.

Antebellum Reforms• Spurred on by the Second Great

Awakening, Americans entered a period of rapid social change and experimentation.

• New social movements arose as well as many new alternatives to traditional religious thought.

• This period of American history was marked by the destruction of some traditional role of society and the erection of new social standards.

Romanticism in America

• Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy and art.

• The movement appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement.

• The Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect.

Romanticism in America

• .• It appealed to those in

opposition of Calvinism, which involved the belief that the universe and all the events within it are subject to the power of God.

• The Romantic movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe.