Fondation of the American Republic

Mercantilism an economic system (Europe in 18th C) to increase a nation's wealth by government regulation of all of the nation's commercial interests

Jamestown first permanent English settlement in North America

House of Burgesses the first official legislative assembly in the Colonies

Puritans A religious group who wanted to purify the Church of England. They came to America for religious freedom and settled Massachusetts Bay.

Bacon's Rebellion A rebellion lead by Nathaniel Bacon with back country farmers to attack Native Americans in an attempt to gain more land

Mayflower Compact 1620 - The first agreement for self-government in America. It was signed by the 41 men on the Mayflower and set up a government for the Plymouth colony.

New England Colonies Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire

Middle Colonies New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware

Southern Colonies Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia

Middle Passage the route in between the western ports of Africa to the Caribbean and southern U.S. that carried the slave trade

Triangular Trade A three way system of trade during 1600-1800s Africa sent slaves to America, America sent Raw Materials to Europe, and Europe sent Guns and Rum to Africa

This exhibition demonstrates that many of the colonies that in 1776 became the United States of America were settled by men and women of deep religious convictions who in the seventeenth century crossed the Atlantic Ocean to practice their faith freely. That the religious intensity of the original settlers would diminish to some extent over time was perhaps to be expected, but new waves of eighteenth century immigrants brought their own religious fervor across the Atlantic and the nation's first major religious revival in the middle of the eighteenth century injected new vigor into American religion. The result

was that a religious people rose in rebellion against Great Britain in 1776, and that most American statesmen, when they began to form new governments at the state and national levels, shared the convictions of most of their constituents that religion was, to quote Alexis de Tocqueville's observation, indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. The efforts of the Founders of the American nation to define the role of religious faith in public life and the degree to which it could be supported by public officials that was not inconsistent with the revolutionary imperatives of the equality and freedom of all citizens is the central question which this exhibition explores.

United StatesHistory > The American Revolution and the early federal republic > Foundations of the American republic

It had been far from certain that the Americans could fight a successful war against the might of Britain. The scattered colonies had little inherent unity; their experience of collective action was limited; an army had to be created and maintained; they had no common institutions other than the Continental Congress; and they had almost no experience of continental public finance. The Americans could not have hoped to win the war without French help, and the French monarchy—whose interests were anti-British but not pro-American—had waited watchfully to see what the Americans could do in the field. Although the French began supplying arms, clothing, and loans surreptitiously soon after the Americans declared independence, it was not until 1778 that a formal alliance was forged.

Most of these problems lasted beyond the achievement of independence and continued to vex American politics for many years, even for generations. Meanwhile, however, the colonies had valuable, though less visible, sources of strength. Practically all farmers had their own arms and could form into militia companies overnight. More fundamentally, Americans had for many years been receiving basically the same information, mainly from the English press, reprinted in identical form in colonial newspapers. The effect of this was to form a singularly wide body of agreed opinion about major public issues. Another force of incalculable importance was the fact that for several generations Americans had to a large extent been governing themselves through elected assemblies, which in turn had developed sophisticated experience in committee politics.

This factor of “institutional memory” was of great importance in the forming of a mentality of self-government. Men became attached to their habitual ways, especially when these were habitual ways of running their own affairs, and these habits formed the basis of an ideology just as pervasive and important to the people concerned as republican theories published in Britain and the European continent. Moreover, colonial self-government seemed, from a colonial point of view, to be continuous and consistent with the principles of English government—principles for which Parliament had fought the Civil Wars in the mid-17th century and which colonists believed to have been reestablished by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89. It was equally important that experience of self-government had taught colonial leaders how to get things done. When the Continental Congress met in 1774, members did not have to debate procedure (except on voting); they already knew it. Finally, the Congress's authority was rooted in traditions

of legitimacy. The old election laws were used. Voters could transfer their allegiance with minimal difficulty from the dying colonial assemblies to the new assemblies and conventions of the states.

United StatesHistory > The American Revolution and the early federal republic > Foundations of the American republic > Problems before the Second Continental Congress

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, revolution was not a certainty. The Congress had to prepare for that contingency nevertheless and thus was confronted by two parallel sets of problems. The first was how to organize for war; the second, which proved less urgent but could not be set aside forever, was how to define the legal relationship between the Congress and the states.

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General George Washington (riding white horse) and his staff welcoming a provision train of …

The Granger Collection, New York

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('55428','A','480','300')In June 1775, in addition to appointing Washington (who had made a point of turning up in uniform) commander in chief, the Congress provided for the enlistment of an army. It then turned to the vexatious problems of finance. An aversion to taxation being one of the unities of American sentiment, the Congress began by trying to raise a domestic loan. It did not have much success, however, for the excellent reason that the outcome of the operation appeared highly dubious. At the same time, authority was taken for issuing a paper currency. This proved to be the most important method of domestic war finance, and, as the war years passed, Congress resorted to issuing more and more Continental currency, which depreciated rapidly and had to compete with currencies issued by state governments. (People were inclined to prefer local currencies.) The Continental Army was a further source of a form of currency because its commission agents issued certificates in exchange for goods; these certificates bore an official promise of redemption and could be used in personal transactions. Loans raised overseas, notably in France and the Netherlands, were another important source of revenue.

In 1780 Congress decided to call in all former issues of currency and replace them with a new issue on a 40-to-1 ratio. The Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris, who was appointed superintendent of finance in 1781 and came to be known as “the Financier,” guided the United States through its complex fiscal difficulties. Morris's personal finances were inextricably tangled up with those of the country, and he became the object of much hostile comment, but he also used his own resources to secure urgently needed loans from abroad. In 1781 Morris secured a charter for the first Bank of North America, an institution that owed much to the example of the Bank of England. Although the bank was attacked by radical egalitarians as an unrepublican manifestation of privilege, it gave

the United States a firmer financial foundation.


John Dickinson's draft of the Articles of Confederation.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113269','A','360','349')The problem of financing and organizing the war sometimes overlapped with Congress's other major problem, that of defining its relations with the states. The Congress, being only an association of states, had no power to tax individuals. The Articles of Confederation, a plan of government organization adopted and put into practice by Congress in 1777, although not officially ratified by all the states until 1781, gave Congress the right to make requisitions on the states proportionate to their ability to pay. The states in turn had to raise these sums by their own domestic powers to tax, a method that state legislators looking for reelection were reluctant to employ. The result was that many states were constantly in heavy arrears, and, particularly after the urgency of the war years had subsided, the Congress's ability to meet expenses and repay its war debts was crippled.

The Congress lacked power to enforce its requisitions and fell badly behind in repaying its wartime creditors. When individual states (Maryland as early as 1782, Pennsylvania in 1785) passed legislation providing for repayment of the debt owed to their own citizens by the Continental Congress, one of the reasons for the Congress's existence had begun to crumble. Two attempts were made to get the states to agree to grant the Congress the power it needed to raise revenue by levying an impost on imports. Each failed for want of unanimous consent. Essentially, an impost would have been collected at ports, which belonged to individual states—there was no “national” territory—and therefore cut across the concept of state sovereignty. Agreement was nearly obtained on each occasion, and, if it had been, the Constitutional Convention might never have been called. But the failure sharply pointed up the weakness of the Congress and of the union between the states under the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation reflected strong preconceptions of state sovereignty. Article II expressly reserved sovereignty to the states individually, and another article even envisaged the possibility that one state might go to war without the others. Fundamental revisions could be made only with unanimous consent, because the Articles represented a treaty between sovereigns, not the creation of a new nation-state. Other major revisions required the consent of nine states. Yet state sovereignty principles rested on artificial foundations. The states could never have achieved independence on their own, and in fact the Congress had taken the first step both in recommending that the states form their own governments and in declaring their collective independence. Most important of its domestic responsibilities, by 1787 the Congress had enacted several ordinances establishing procedures for incorporating new territories. (It had been conflicts over western land claims that had held up ratification of the Articles. Eventually

the states with western claims, principally New York and Virginia, ceded them to the United States.) The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided for the phased settlement and government of territories in the Ohio valley, leading to eventual admission as new states. It also excluded the introduction of slavery—though it did not exclude the retention of existing slaves.

The states had constantly looked to the Congress for leadership in the difficulties of war; now that the danger was past, however, disunity began to threaten to turn into disintegration. The Congress was largely discredited in the eyes of a wide range of influential men, representing both old and new interests. The states were setting up their own tariff barriers against each other and quarreling among themselves; virtual war had broken out between competing settlers from Pennsylvania and Connecticut claiming the same lands. By 1786, well-informed men were discussing a probable breakup of the confederation into three or more new groups, which could have led to wars between the American republics.

The problems of forming a new government affected the states individually as well as in confederation. Most of them established their own constitutions—formulated either in conventions or in the existing assemblies. The most democratic of these constitutions was the product of a virtual revolution in Pennsylvania, where a highly organized radical party seized the opportunity of the revolutionary crisis to gain power. Suffrage was put on a taxpayer basis, with nearly all adult males paying some tax; representation was reformed to bring in the populations of western counties; and a single-chamber legislature was established. An oath of loyalty to the constitution for some time excluded political opponents and particularly Quakers (who could not take oaths) from participation. The constitutions of the other states reflected the firm political ascendancy of the traditional ruling elite. Power ascended from a broad base in the elective franchise and representation through a narrowing hierarchy of offices restricted by property qualifications. State governors had in some cases to be men of great wealth. Senators were either wealthy or elected by the wealthy sector of the electorate. (These conditions were not invariable; Virginia, which had a powerful landed elite, dispensed with such restrictions.) Several states retained religious qualifications for office; the separation of church and state was not a popular concept, and minorities such as Baptists and Quakers were subjected to indignities that amounted in some places (notably Massachusetts and Connecticut) to forms of persecution.

Elite power provided a lever for one of the most significant transformations of the era, one that took place almost without being either noticed or intended. This was the acceptance of the principle of giving representation in legislative bodies in proportion to population. It was made not only possible but attractive when the larger aggregations of population broadly coincided with the highest concentrations of property: great merchants and landowners from populous areas could continue to exert political ascendancy so long as they retained some sort of hold on the political process. The principle reemerged to dominate the distribution of voters in the House of Representatives and in the electoral college under the new federal Constitution.

Relatively conservative constitutions did little to stem a tide of increasingly democratic politics. The old elites had to wrestle with new political forces (and in the process they learned how to organize in the new regime). Executive power was weakened. Many

elections were held annually, and terms were limited. Legislatures quickly admitted new representatives from recent settlements, many with little previous political experience.

The new state governments, moreover, had to tackle major issues that affected all classes. The needs of public finance led to emissions of paper money. In several states these were resumed after the war, and, since they tended (though not invariably) to depreciate, they led directly to fierce controversies. The treatment of loyalists was also a theme of intense political dispute after the war. Despite the protests of men such as Alexander Hamilton, who urged restoration of property and rights, in many states loyalists were driven out and their estates seized and redistributed in forms of auction, providing opportunities for speculation rather than personal occupation. Many states were depressed economically. In Massachusetts, which remained under orthodox control, stiff taxation under conditions of postwar depression trapped many farmers into debt. Unable to meet their obligations, they rose late in 1786 under a Revolutionary War officer, Capt. Daniel Shays, in a movement to prevent the court sessions. Shays's Rebellion was crushed early in 1787 by an army raised in the state. The action caused only a few casualties, but the episode sent a shiver of fear throughout the country's propertied classes. It also seemed to justify the classical thesis that republics were unstable. It thus provided a potent stimulus to state legislatures to send delegates to the convention called (following a preliminary meeting in Annapolis) to meet at Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('55539','A','550','361')The Philadelphia Convention, which met in May 1787, was officially called for by the old Congress solely to remedy defects in the Articles of Confederation. But the Virginia Plan presented by the Virginia delegates went beyond revision and boldly proposed to introduce a new, national government in place of the existing confederation. The convention thus immediately faced the question of whether the United States was to be a country in the modern sense or would continue as a weak federation of autonomous and equal states represented in a single chamber, which was the principle embodied in the New Jersey Plan presented by several small states. This decision was effectively made when a compromise plan for a bicameral legislature—one house with representation based on population and one with equal representation for all states—was approved in mid-July. Though neither plan prevailed, the new national government in its final form was endowed with broad powers that made it indisputably national and superior.


Original copy of the U.S. Constitution, housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

© Steve Bronstein—The Image Bank/Getty Images

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('92032','A','384','450')The Constitution, as it emerged after a summer of debate, embodied a much stronger principle of separation of powers

than was generally to be found in the state constitutions. The chief executive was to be a single figure (a composite executive was discussed and rejected) and was to be elected by an electoral college, meeting in the states. This followed much debate over the Virginia Plan's preference for legislative election. The principal control on the chief executive, or president, against violation of the Constitution was the rather remote threat of impeachment (to which James Madison attached great importance). The Virginia Plan's proposal that representation be proportional to population in both houses was severely modified by the retention of equal representation for each state in the Senate. But the question of whether to count slaves in the population was abrasive. After some contention, antislavery forces gave way to a compromise by which three-fifths of the slaves would be counted as population for purposes of representation (and direct taxation). Slave states would thus be perpetually overrepresented in national politics; provision was also added for a law permitting the recapture of fugitive slaves, though in deference to republican scruples the word slaves was not used. (See also Sidebar: The Founding Fathers and Slavery.)

Contemporary theory expected the legislature to be the most powerful branch of government. Thus, to balance the system, the executive was given a veto, and a judicial system with powers of review was established. It was also implicit in the structure that the new federal judiciary would have power to veto any state laws that conflicted either with the Constitution or with federal statutes. States were forbidden to pass laws impairing obligations of contract—a measure aimed at encouraging capital—and the Congress could pass no ex post facto law. But the Congress was endowed with the basic powers of a modern—and sovereign—government. This was a republic, and the United States could confer no aristocratic titles of honour. The prospect of eventual enlargement of federal power appeared in the clause giving the Congress powers to pass legislation “necessary and proper” for implementing the general purposes of the Constitution.


Cartoon depicting attacks on the Pennsylvania state constitution by self-interest groups.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113531','A','442','350')The states retained their civil jurisdiction, but there was an emphatic shift of the political centre of gravity to the federal government, of which the most fundamental indication was the universal understanding that this government would act directly on citizens, as individuals, throughout all the states, regardless of state authority. The language of the Constitution told of the new style: it began, “We the people of the United States,” rather than “We the people of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, etc.”

The draft Constitution aroused widespread opposition. Anti-Federalists—so-called because their opponents deftly seized the appellation of “Federalists,” though they were really nationalists—were strong in states such as Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, where the economy was relatively successful and many people saw little need for such

extreme remedies. Anti-Federalists also expressed fears—here touches of class conflict certainly arose—that the new government would fall into the hands of merchants and men of money. Many good republicans detected oligarchy in the structure of the Senate, with its six-year terms. The absence of a bill of rights aroused deep fears of central power. The Federalists, however, had the advantages of communications, the press, organization, and, generally, the better of the argument. Anti-Federalists also suffered the disadvantage of having no internal coherence or unified purpose.


The Federalist, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John …

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Alexander Hamilton, detail of an oil painting by John Trumbull; in the National Gallery of Art, …

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew Mellon Collection

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('92033','A','550','415')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('11359','A','363','450')The debate gave rise to a very intensive literature, much of it at a very high level. The most sustained pro-Federalist argument, written mainly by Hamilton and Madison (assisted by Jay) under the pseudonym Publius, appeared in the newspapers as The Federalist. These essays attacked the feebleness of the confederation and claimed that the new Constitution would have advantages for all sectors of society while threatening none. In the course of the debate, they passed from a strongly nationalist standpoint to one that showed more respect for the idea of a mixed form of government that would safeguard the states. Madison contributed assurances that a multiplicity of interests would counteract each other, preventing the consolidation of power continually charged by their enemies.


U.S. Bill of Rights, 1791.

National Archives—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('94621','A','424','450')The Bill of Rights, steered through the first Congress by Madison's diplomacy, mollified much of the latent opposition. These first 10 amendments, ratified in 1791, adopted into the Constitution the basic English common-law rights that Americans had fought for. But they did more. Unlike Britain, the United States secured a guarantee of freedom for the press and the right of (peaceable) assembly. Also unlike Britain, church and state were formally separated in a clause that seemed to set equal value on nonestablishment of religion and its free exercise. (This left the states free to maintain their own establishments.)

In state conventions held through the winter of 1787 to the summer of 1788, the Constitution was ratified by the necessary minimum of nine states. But the vote was desperately close in Virginia and New York, respectively the 10th and 11th states to ratify, and without them the whole scheme would have been built on sand.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113532','A','454','350')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('92286','A','301','450')The American Revolution was a great social upheaval but one that was widely diffused, often gradual, and different in different regions. The principles of liberty and equality stood in stark conflict with the institution of African slavery, which had built much of the country's wealth. One gradual effect of this conflict was the decline of slavery in all the Northern states; another was a spate of manumissions by liberal slave owners in Virginia. But with most slave owners, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, ideals counted for nothing. Throughout the slave states, the institution of slavery came to be reinforced by a white supremacist doctrine of racial inferiority. The manumissions did result in the development of new communities of free blacks, who enjoyed considerable freedom of movement for a few years and who produced some outstanding figures, such as the astronomer Benjamin Banneker and the religious leader Richard Allen, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion. But in the 1790s and after, the condition of free blacks deteriorated as states adopted laws restricting their activities, residences, and economic choices. In general they came to occupy poor neighbourhoods and grew into a permanent underclass, denied education and opportunity.

The American Revolution also dramatized the economic importance of women. Women had always contributed indispensably to the operation of farms and often businesses, while they seldom acquired independent status; but, when war removed men from the locality, women often had to take full charge, which they proved they could do. Republican ideas spread among women, influencing discussion of women's rights, education, and role in society. Some states modified their inheritance and property laws to permit women to inherit a share of estates and to exercise limited control of property after marriage. On the whole, however, the Revolution itself had only very gradual and diffused effects on women's ultimate status. Such changes as took place amounted to a fuller recognition of the importance of women as mothers of republican citizens rather than making them into independent citizens of equal political and civil status with men.

Willard M. Wallace

Americans had fought for independence to protect common-law rights; they had no

program for legal reform. Gradually, however, some customary practices came to seem out of keeping with republican principles. The outstanding example was the law of inheritance. The new states took steps, where necessary, to remove the old rule of primogeniture in favour of equal partition of intestate estates; this conformed to both the egalitarian and the individualist principles preferred by American society. Humanization of the penal codes, however, occurred only gradually, in the 19th century, inspired as much by European example as by American sentiment.

Religion played a central role in the emergence of a distinctively “American” society in the first years of independence. Several key developments took place. One was the creation of American denominations independent of their British and European origins and leadership. By 1789 American Anglicans (renaming themselves Episcopalians), Methodists (formerly Wesleyans), Roman Catholics, and members of various Baptist, Lutheran, and Dutch Reformed congregations had established organizations and chosen leaders who were born in or full-time residents of what had become the United States of America. Another pivotal postindependence development was a rekindling of religious enthusiasm, especially on the frontier, that opened the gates of religious activism to the laity. Still another was the disestablishment of tax-supported churches in those states most deeply feeling the impact of democratic diversity. And finally, this period saw the birth of a liberal and socially aware version of Christianity uniting Enlightenment values with American activism.


Early 19th-century Methodist camp meeting.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('60681','A','519','350')Between 1798 and 1800 a sudden burst of revitalization shook frontier Protestant congregations, beginning with a great revival in Logan county, Ky., under the leadership of men such as James McGready and the brothers John and William McGee. This was followed by a gigantic camp meeting at Cane Ridge, where thousands were “converted.” The essence of the frontier revival was that this conversion from mere formal Christianity to a full conviction in God's mercy for the sinner was a deeply emotional experience accessible even to those with much faith and little learning. So exhorters who were barely literate themselves could preach brimstone and fire and showers of grace, bringing repentant listeners to a state of excitement in which they would weep and groan, writhe and faint, and undergo physical transports in full public view.

“Heart religion” supplanted “head religion.” For the largely Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ministers in the West, this led to dangerous territory, because the official church leadership preferred more decorum and biblical scholarship from its pastors. Moreover, the idea of winning salvation by noisy penitence undercut Calvinist predestination. In fact, the fracture along fault lines of class and geography led to several schisms. Methodism had fewer problems of this kind. It never embraced predestination, and, more

to the point, its structure was democratic, with rudimentarily educated lay preachers able to rise from leading individual congregations to presiding over districts and regional “conferences,” eventually embracing the entire church membership. Methodism fitted very neatly into frontier conditions through its use of traveling ministers, or circuit riders, who rode from isolated settlement to settlement, saving souls and mightily liberalizing the word of God.


Lyman Beecher, detail of an oil painting by Chester Harding; in the Yale University Art Gallery

Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, gift of W.T.R. Marvin

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('8806','A','348','450')The revival spirit rolled back eastward to inspire a “Second Great Awakening,” especially in New England, that emphasized gatherings that were less uninhibited than camp meetings but warmer than conventional Congregational and Presbyterian services. Ordained and college-educated ministers such as Lyman Beecher made it their mission to promote revivalism as a counterweight to the Deism of some of the Founding Fathers and the atheism of the French Revolution. (See Sidebar: The Founding Fathers, Deism, and Christianity.) Revivals also gave churches a new grasp on the loyalties of their congregations through lay participation in spreading the good word of salvation. This voluntarism more than offset the gradual state-by-state cancellation of taxpayer support for individual denominations.

The era of the early republic also saw the growth, especially among the urban educated elite of Boston, of a gentler form of Christianity embodied in Unitarianism, which rested on the notion of an essentially benevolent God who made his will known to humankind through their exercise of the reasoning powers bestowed on them. In the Unitarian view, Jesus Christ was simply a great moral teacher. Many Christians of the “middling” sort viewed Unitarianism as excessively concerned with ideas and social reform and far too indulgent or indifferent to the existence of sin and Satan. By 1815, then, the social structure of American Protestantism, firmly embedded in many activist forms in the national culture, had taken shape.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('3836','A','525','343')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('60656','A','600','324')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113533','A','451','300')The first elections under the new Constitution were held in 1789. George Washington was unanimously voted the country's first president. His secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, formed a clear-cut program that soon gave substance to the old fears of the Anti-Federalists. Hamilton, who had believed since the early 1780s that a national debt would be “a national blessing,” both for economic reasons and because it would act as a

“cement” to the union, used his new power base to realize the ambitions of the nationalists. He recommended that the federal government pay off the old Continental Congress's debts at par rather than at a depreciated value and that it assume state debts, drawing the interests of the creditors toward the central government rather than state governments. This plan met strong opposition from the many who had sold their securities at great discount during the postwar depression and from Southern states, which had repudiated their debts and did not want to be taxed to pay other states' debts. A compromise in Congress was reached—thanks to the efforts of Secretary of State Jefferson—whereby Southern states approved Hamilton's plan in return for Northern agreement to fix the location of the new national capital on the banks of the Potomac, closer to the South. When Hamilton next introduced his plan to found a Bank of the United States, modeled on the Bank of England, opposition began to harden. Many argued that the Constitution did not confide this power to Congress. Hamilton, however, persuaded Washington that anything not expressly forbidden by the Constitution was permitted under implied powers—the beginning of “loose” as opposed to “strict” constructionist interpretations of the Constitution. The Bank Act passed in 1791. Hamilton also advocated plans for the support of nascent industry, which proved premature, and he imposed the revenue-raising whiskey excise that led to the Whiskey Rebellion, a minor uprising in western Pennsylvania in 1794.


English caricature of Thomas Paine's involvement in the French Revolution.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113271','A','244','350')A party opposed to Hamilton's fiscal policies began to form in Congress. With Madison at its centre and with support from Jefferson, it soon extended its appeal beyond Congress to popular constituencies. Meanwhile, the French Revolution and France's subsequent declaration of war against Great Britain, Spain, and Holland further divided American loyalties. Democratic-Republican societies sprang up to express support for France, while Hamilton and his supporters, known as Federalists, backed Britain for economic reasons. Washington pronounced American neutrality in Europe, but to prevent a war with Britain he sent Chief Justice John Jay to London to negotiate a treaty. In the Jay Treaty (1794) the United States gained only minor concessions and—humiliatingly—accepted British naval supremacy as the price of protection for American shipping.


John Adams, oil painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1826; in the National Museum of American Art, …

© Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C./Art Resource, New York

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('8170','A','377','450')Washington, whose tolerance had been severely strained by the Whiskey Rebellion and by criticism of the Jay Treaty, chose not to run for a third presidential term. In his Farewell Address (see original text), in a passage drafted by Hamilton, he denounced the new party politics as divisive and dangerous. Parties did not yet aspire to national objectives, however, and, when the Federalist John Adams was elected president, the Democrat-Republican Jefferson, as the presidential candidate with the second greatest number of votes, became vice president. (See primary source document: Right of Free Elections.) Wars in Europe and on the high seas, together with rampant opposition at home, gave the new administration little peace. Virtual naval war with France had followed from American acceptance of British naval protection. In 1798 a French attempt to solicit bribes from American commissioners negotiating a settlement of differences (the so-called XYZ Affair) aroused a wave of anti-French feeling. Later that year the Federalist majority in Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which imposed serious civil restrictions on aliens suspected of pro-French activities and penalized U.S. citizens who criticized the government, making nonsense of the First Amendment's guarantee of free press. The acts were most often invoked to prosecute Republican editors, some of whom served jail terms. These measures in turn called forth the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, drafted respectively by Madison and Jefferson, which invoked state sovereignty against intolerable federal powers. War with France often seemed imminent during this period, but Adams was determined to avoid issuing a formal declaration of war, and in this he succeeded.

Taxation, which had been levied to pay anticipated war costs, brought more discontent, however, including a new minor rising in Pennsylvania led by Jacob Fries. Fries's Rebellion was put down without difficulty, but widespread disagreement over issues ranging from civil liberties to taxation was polarizing American politics. A basic sense of political identity now divided Federalists from Republicans, and in the election of 1800 Jefferson drew on deep sources of Anti-Federalist opposition to challenge and defeat his old friend and colleague Adams. The result was the first contest over the presidency between political parties and the first actual change of government as a result of a general election in modern history.

1789 to 1816 > The Jeffersonian Republicans in power


Thomas Jefferson, portrait by an anonymous artist, 19th century; in the National Museum of …

Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('2964','A','224','300')Jefferson began his presidency with a plea for reconciliation: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” (See First Inaugural original text.) He had no plans for a permanent two-party system of government. He also began with a strong commitment to limited government and strict construction of the Constitution. All these commitments were soon to be tested by the exigencies of war, diplomacy, and political contingency.


Map/Still

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.javascript:openRelativeAssembly('52117','A','291','300')

Shoshone guide Sacagawea with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, oil and tempera on panel by N.C. …

The Granger Collection, New York

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('89219','A','718','427')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('52117','A','291','300')On the American continent, Jefferson pursued a policy of expansion. He seized the opportunity when Napoleon I decided to relinquish French ambitions in North America by offering the Louisiana territory for sale (Spain had recently ceded the territory to France). This extraordinary acquisition, the Louisiana Purchase, bought at a price of a few cents per acre, more than doubled the area of the United States. Jefferson had no constitutional sanction for such an exercise of executive power; he made up the rules as he went along, taking a broad construction view of the Constitution on this issue. He also sought opportunities to gain Florida from Spain, and, for scientific and political reasons, he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an

expedition of exploration across the continent. This territorial expansion was not without problems. Various separatist movements periodically arose, including a plan for a Northern Confederacy formulated by New England Federalists. Aaron Burr, who had been elected Jefferson's vice president in 1800 but was replaced in 1804, led several western conspiracies. Arrested and tried for treason, he was acquitted in 1807.


John Marshall, crayon portrait by Charles-Balthazar-Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin; in …

Courtesy of Duke University, Durham, N.C.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('12849','A','370','450')As chief executive, Jefferson clashed with members of the judiciary, many of whom had been late appointments by Adams. One of his primary opponents was the late appointee Chief Justice John Marshall, most notably in the case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court first exercised the power of judicial review of congressional legislation.

By the start of Jefferson's second term in office, Europe was engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars. The United States remained neutral, but both Britain and France imposed various orders and decrees severely restricting American trade with Europe and confiscated American ships for violating the new rules. Britain also conducted impressment raids in which U.S. citizens were sometimes seized. Unable to agree to treaty terms with Britain, Jefferson tried to coerce both Britain and France into ceasing to violate “neutral rights” with a total embargo on American exports, enacted by Congress in 1807. The results were catastrophic for American commerce and produced bitter alienation in New England, where the embargo (written backward as “O grab me”) was held to be a Southern plot to destroy New England's wealth. In 1809, shortly after Madison was elected president, the embargo act was repealed.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('12769','A','249','300')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113534','A','499','350')Madison's presidency was dominated by foreign affairs. Both Britain and France committed depredations on American shipping, but Britain was more resented, partly because with the greatest navy it was more effective and partly because Americans were extremely sensitive to British insults to national honour. Certain expansionist elements looking to both Florida and Canada began to press for war and took advantage of the issue of naval protection. Madison's own aim was to preserve the principle of freedom of the seas and to assert the ability of the United States to protect its own interests and its citizens. While striving to confront the European adversaries impartially, he was drawn into war against Britain, which was declared in June 1812 on a vote of 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate. There was almost no support for war in the strong Federalist New England states.


Cartoon from 1812 showing Columbia (the United States) warning Napoleon I that she will deal with …

Library of Congress, Washington,

D.C.javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113536','A','550','389')

Cartoon showing Pres. James Madison fleeing from Washington, D.C., which is being burned by the …

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-

1559)javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113537','A','525','350')

A tableau of the Treaty of Ghent, signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113535','A','530','350')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113536','A','550','389')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113537','A','525','350')The War of 1812 began and ended in irony. The British had already rescinded the offending orders in council, but the news had not reached the United States at the time of the declaration. The Americans were poorly placed from every point of view. Ideological objections to armies and navies had been responsible for a minimal naval force. Ideological objections to banks had been responsible, in 1812, for the Senate's refusal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. Mercantile sentiment was hostile to the administration. Under the circumstances, it was remarkable that the United States succeeded in staggering through two years of war, eventually winning important naval successes at sea, on the Great Lakes, and on Lake Champlain. On land a British raiding party burned public buildings in Washington, D.C., and drove President Madison to flee from the capital. The only action with long-term implications was Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans—won in January 1815, two weeks after peace had been achieved with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent (Belg.). Jackson's political reputation rose directly from this battle.

In historical retrospect, the most important aspect of the peace settlement was an agreement to set up a boundary commission for the Canadian border, which could thenceforth be left unguarded. It was not the end of Anglo-American hostility, but the agreement marked the advent of an era of mutual trust. The conclusion of the War of 1812, which has sometimes been called the Second War of American Independence,

marked a historical cycle. It resulted in a pacification of the old feelings of pain and resentment against Great Britain and its people—still for many Americans a kind of paternal relationship. And, by freeing them of anxieties on this front, it also freed Americans to look to the West.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('52141','A','550','357')The young United States believed that it had inherited an “Indian problem,” but it would be equally fair to say that the victory at Yorktown confronted the Indians with an insoluble “American problem.” Whereas they had earlier dealt with representatives of Europe-based empires seeking only access to selected resources from a distant continent, now they faced a resident, united people yearly swelling in numbers, determined to make every acre of the West their own and culturally convinced of their absolute title under the laws of God and history. There was no room for compromise. Even before 1776, each step toward American independence reduced the Indians' control over their own future. The Proclamation Line of 1763 was almost immediately violated by men like Daniel Boone on the Kentucky frontier. In the western parts of Pennsylvania and New York, however, despite extensive Indian land concessions in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, they still had enough power to bar an advance toward the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes.


Battle of Tippecanoe, lithograph by Kurz and Allison c. 1889.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3b52292u)

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('161014','A','550','382')For armed resistance to have had any hope of success, unity would be required between all the Indians from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. This unity simply could not be achieved. The Shawnee leaders known as Tenskatawa, or the Prophet, and his brother Tecumseh attempted this kind of rallying movement, much as Pontiac had done some 40 years earlier, with equal lack of success. Some help was forthcoming in the form of arms from British traders remaining in the Northwest Territory in violation of the peace treaty, but the Indians failed to secure victory in a clash with American militia and regulars at the Battle of Tippecanoe Creek (near present-day West Lafayette, Ind.) in 1811.


An American cartoon attacking the alliance between the “Humane British” and the Indians …


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113246','A','567','350')The outbreak of the War of 1812 sparked renewed Indian hopes of protection by the crown, should the British win. Tecumseh himself was actually commissioned as a general in the royal forces, but, at the

Battle of the Thames in 1813, he was killed, and his dismembered body parts, according to legend, were divided between his conquerors as gruesome souvenirs.

Meanwhile, in 1814, U.S. Gen. Andrew Jackson defeated the British-supported Creeks in the Southwest in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The war itself ended in a draw that left American territory intact. Thereafter, with minor exceptions, there was no major Indian resistance east of the Mississippi. After the lusty first quarter century of American nationhood, all roads left open to Native Americans ran downhill.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('3837','A','523','377')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('13051','A','245','300')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('60745','A','256','350')The years between the election to the presidency of James Monroe in 1816 and of John Quincy Adams in 1824 have long been known in American history as the Era of Good Feelings. The phrase was conceived by a Boston editor during Monroe's visit to New England early in his first term. That a representative of the heartland of Federalism could speak in such positive terms of the visit by a Southern president whose decisive election had marked not only a sweeping Republican victory but also the demise of the national Federalist Party was dramatic testimony that former foes were inclined to put aside the sectional and political differences of the past.

Later scholars have questioned the strategy and tactics of the United States in the War of 1812, the war's tangible results, and even the wisdom of commencing it in the first place. To contemporary Americans, however, the striking naval victories and Jackson's victory over the British at New Orleans created a reservoir of “good feeling” on which Monroe was able to draw.


Note from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison commenting on the Monroe Doctrine, October 1823.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113276','A','550','267')Abetting the mood of nationalism was the foreign policy of the United States after the war. Florida was acquired from Spain (1819) in negotiations, the success of which owed more to Jackson's indifference to such niceties as the inviolability of foreign borders and to the country's evident readiness to back him up than it did to diplomatic finesse. The Monroe Doctrine (1823), actually a few phrases inserted in a long presidential message (see original text), declared that the United States would not become involved in European affairs and would not accept European interference in the Americas; its immediate effect on other nations was slight, and that on its own citizenry was impossible to gauge, yet its self-assured tone in warning off the Old World from the New reflected well the nationalist mood that swept the country.

Internally, the decisions of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Marshall in such cases as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) promoted nationalism by strengthening Congress and national power at the expense of the states. The congressional decision to charter the second Bank of the United States (1816) was

explained in part by the country's financial weaknesses, exposed by the War of 1812, and in part by the intrigues of financial interests. The readiness of Southern Jeffersonians—former strict constructionists—to support such a measure indicates, too, an amazing degree of nationalist feeling. Perhaps the clearest sign of a new sense of national unity was the victorious Republican Party, standing in solitary splendour on the national political horizon, its long-time foes the Federalists vanished without a trace (on the national level) and Monroe, the Republican standard-bearer, reelected so overwhelmingly in 1820 that it was long believed that the one electoral vote denied him had been held back only in order to preserve Washington's record of unanimous selection.

For all the signs of national unity and feelings of oneness, equally convincing evidence points in the opposite direction. The very Supreme Court decisions that delighted friends of strong national government infuriated its opponents, while Marshall's defense of the rights of private property was construed by critics as betraying a predilection for one kind of property over another. The growth of the West, encouraged by the conquest of Indian lands during the War of 1812, was by no means regarded as an unmixed blessing. Eastern conservatives sought to keep land prices high; speculative interests opposed a policy that would be advantageous to poor squatters; politicians feared a change in the sectional balance of power; and businessmen were wary of a new section with interests unlike their own. European visitors testified that, even during the so-called Era of Good Feelings, Americans characteristically expressed scorn for their countrymen in sections other than their own.

Economic hardship, especially the financial panic of 1819, also created disunity. The causes of the panic were complex, but its greatest effect was clearly the tendency of its victims to blame it on one or another hostile or malevolent interest—whether the second Bank of the United States, Eastern capitalists, selfish speculators, or perfidious politicians—each charge expressing the bad feeling that existed side by side with the good.

If harmony seemed to reign on the level of national political parties, disharmony prevailed within the states. In the early 19th-century United States, local and state politics were typically waged less on behalf of great issues than for petty gain. That the goals of politics were often sordid did not mean that political contests were bland. In every section, state factions led by shrewd men waged bitter political warfare to attain or entrench themselves in power.

The most dramatic manifestation of national division was the political struggle over slavery, particularly over its spread into new territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 eased the threat of further disunity, at least for the time being. The sectional balance between the states was preserved: in the Louisiana Purchase, with the exception of the Missouri Territory, slavery was to be confined to the area south of the 36°30′ line. Yet this compromise did not end the crisis but only postponed it. The determination by Northern and Southern senators not to be outnumbered by one another suggests that the people continued to believe in the conflicting interests of the various great geographic sections. The weight of evidence indicates that the decade after the Battle of New Orleans was not an era of good feelings so much as one of mixed feelings.

The American economy expanded and matured at a remarkable rate in the decades after the War of 1812. The rapid growth of the West created a great new centre for the production of grains and pork, permitting the country's older sections to specialize in

other crops. New processes of manufacture, particularly in textiles, not only accelerated an “industrial revolution” in the Northeast but also, by drastically enlarging the Northern market for raw materials, helped account for a boom in Southern cotton production. If by midcentury Southerners of European descent had come to regard slavery—on which the cotton economy relied—as a “positive good” rather than the “necessary evil” that they had earlier held the system to be, it was largely because of the increasingly central role played by cotton in earning profits for the region. Industrial workers organized the country's first trade unions and even workingmen's political parties early in the period. The corporate form thrived in an era of booming capital requirements, and older and simpler forms of attracting investment capital were rendered obsolete. Commerce became increasingly specialized, the division of labour in the disposal of goods for sale matching the increasingly sophisticated division of labour that had come to characterize production.

Edward Pessen

The management of the growing economy was inseparable from political conflict in the emerging United States. At the start the issue was between agrarians (represented by Jeffersonian Republicans) wanting a decentralized system of easy credit and an investing community looking for stability and profit in financial markets. This latter group, championed by Hamilton and the Federalists, won the first round with the establishment of the first Bank of the United States (1791), jointly owned by the government and private stockholders. It was the government's fiscal agent, and it put the centre of gravity of the credit system in Philadelphia, its headquarters. Its charter expired in 1811, and the financial chaos that hindered procurement and mobilization during the ensuing War of 1812 demonstrated the importance of such centralization. Hence, even Jeffersonian Republicans were converted to acceptance of a second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816.

The second Bank of the United States faced constant political fire, but the conflict now was not merely between farming and mercantile interests but also between local bankers who wanted access to the profits of an expanding credit system and those who, like the president of the Bank of the United States, Nicholas Biddle, wanted more regularity and predictability in banking through top-down control. The Constitution gave the United States exclusive power to coin money but allowed for the chartering of banks by individual states, and these banks were permitted to issue notes that also served as currency. The state banks, whose charters were often political plums, lacked coordinated inspection and safeguards against risky loans usually collateralized by land, whose value fluctuated wildly, as did the value of the banknotes. Overspeculation, bankruptcies, contraction, and panics were the inevitable result.


Wood engraving relating to the financial setback experienced on the U.S. frontier following the …


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113282','A','600','347')Biddle's hope was that the large deposits of government funds in the Bank of the United States would allow it to become the major lender to local banks, and from that position of strength it could squeeze the unsound ones into either responsibility or extinction. But this notion ran afoul of the growing democratic spirit that insisted that the right to extend credit and choose its recipients was too precious to be confined to a wealthy elite. This difference of views produced the classic battle between Biddle and Jackson, culminating in Biddle's attempt to win recharter for the Bank of the United States, Jackson's veto and transfer of the government funds to pet banks, and the Panic of 1837. Not until the 1840s did the federal government place its funds in an independent treasury, and not until the Civil War was there legislation creating a national banking system. The country was strong enough to survive, but the politicization of fiscal policy making continued to be a major theme of American economic history.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('101915','A','600','285')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('52433','A','365','450')Improvements in transportation, a key to the advance of industrialization everywhere, were especially vital in the United States. A fundamental problem of the developing American economy was the great geographic extent of the country and the appallingly poor state of its roads. The broad challenge to weave the Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, and Gulf and Atlantic coasts into a single national market was first met by putting steam to work on the rich network of navigable rivers. As early as 1787, John Fitch had demonstrated a workable steamboat to onlookers in Philadelphia; some years later, he repeated the feat in New York City. But it is characteristic of American history that, in the absence of governmental encouragement, private backing was needed to bring an invention into full play. As a result, popular credit for the first steamboat goes to Robert Fulton, who found the financing to make his initial Hudson River run of the Clermont in 1807 more than a onetime feat. From that point forward, on inland waters, steam was king, and its most spectacular manifestation was the Mississippi River paddle wheeler, a unique creation of unsung marine engineers challenged to make a craft that could “work” in shallow swift-running waters. Their solution was to put cargo, engines, and passengers on a flat open deck above the waterline, which was possible in the mild climate of large parts of the drainage basin of the Father of Waters. The Mississippi River steamboat not only became an instantly recognizable American icon but also had an impact on the law. In the case of Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Chief Justice Marshall affirmed the exclusive right of the federal government to regulate traffic on rivers flowing between states.


Barge near the western end of the Erie Canal, New York, mid-1800s.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('95721','A','550','397')Canals and railroads were not as distinctively American in origin as the paddle wheeler, but, whereas 18th-century canals in England and continental Europe were simple conveniences for moving bulky loads

cheaply at low speed, Americans integrated the country's water transport system by connecting rivers flowing toward the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes and the Ohio-Mississippi River valleys. The best-known conduit, the Erie Canal, connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, linking the West to the port of New York City. Other major canals in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio joined Philadelphia and Baltimore to the West via the Ohio River and its tributaries. Canal building was increasingly popular throughout the 1820s and '30s, sometimes financed by states or by a combination of state and private effort. But many overbuilt or unwisely begun canal projects collapsed, and states that were “burned” in the process became more wary of such ventures.


Early railroad scene, Little Falls, N.Y.



Henry Clay.

Stock Montage/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113275','A','550','299')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113542','A','372','450')Canal development was overtaken by the growth of the railroads, which were far more efficient in covering the great distances underserved by the road system and indispensable in the trans-Mississippi West. Work on the Baltimore and Ohio line, the first railroad in the United States, was begun in 1828, and a great burst of construction boosted the country's rail network from zero to 30,000 miles (50,000 km) by 1860. The financing alone, no less than the operation of the burgeoning system, had a huge political and economic impact. Adams was a decided champion of “national internal improvements”—the federally assisted development of turnpikes, lighthouses, and dredging and channel-clearing operations (that is, whatever it took to assist commerce). That term, however, was more closely associated with Henry Clay, like Adams a strong nationalist. Clay proposed an American System, which would, through internal improvements and the imposition of tariffs, encourage the growth of an industrial sector that exchanged manufactured goods for the products of U.S. agriculture, thus benefiting each section of the country. But the passionate opposition of many agrarians to the costs and expanded federal control inherent in the program created one battlefield in the long contest between the Democratic and Whig parties that did not end until the triumph of Whig economic ideas in the Republican party during the Civil War.

Economic, social, and cultural history cannot easily be separated. The creation of the “factory system” in the United States was the outcome of interaction between several characteristically American forces: faith in the future, a generally welcoming attitude toward immigrants, an abundance of resources linked to a shortage of labour, and a hospitable view of innovation. The pioneering textile industry, for example, sprang from an alliance of invention, investment, and philanthropy. Moses Brown (later benefactor of the College of Rhode Island, renamed Brown University in honour of his nephew Nicholas) was looking to invest some of his family's mercantile fortune in the textile business. New England wool and southern cotton were readily available, as was water power from Rhode Island's swiftly flowing rivers. All that was lacking to convert a handcraft industry into one that was machine-based was machinery itself; however, the new devices for spinning and weaving that were coming into use in England were jealously guarded there. But Samuel Slater, a young English mechanic who immigrated to the United States in 1790 carrying the designs for the necessary machinery in his prodigious memory, became aware of Brown's ambitions and of the problems he was having with his machinery. Slater formed a partnership with Brown and others to reproduce the crucial equipment and build prosperous Rhode Island fabric factories.


One of the first U.S. patents granted was to Oliver Evans in 1790 for his automatic gristmill. The …



Sketch submitted to the Patent Office by Eli Whitney, showing the operation of the cotton gin.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

javascript:openRelativeAssembly('60668','A','412','350')javascript:openRelativeAssembly('60675','A','263','350')Local American inventive talent embodied in sometimes self-taught engineers was available too. One conspicuous example was Delaware's Oliver Evans, who built a totally automatic flour mill in the 1780s and later founded a factory that produced steam engines; another was the ultimate Connecticut Yankee, Eli Whitney, who not only fathered the cotton gin but built a factory for mass producing muskets by fitting together interchangeable parts on an assembly line. Whitney got help from a

supportive U.S. Army, which sustained him with advances on large procurement contracts. Such governmental support of industrial development was rare, but, when it occurred, it was a crucial if often understated element in the industrializing of America.

Francis Cabot Lowell, who opened a textile factory in 1811 in the Massachusetts town later named for him, played a pathbreaking role as a paternalistic model employer. Whereas Slater and Brown used local families, living at home, to provide “hands” for their factories, Lowell brought in young women from the countryside and put them up in boardinghouses adjacent to the mills. The “girls”—most of them in or just out of their teens—were happy to be paid a few dollars for 60-hour workweeks that were less taxing than those they put in as farmers' daughters. Their moral behaviour was supervised by matrons, and they themselves organized religious, dramatic, musical, and study groups. The idea was to create an American labour force that would not resemble the wretched proletarians of England and elsewhere in Europe.


Boott Cotton Mills, Lowell, Mass.


javascript:openRelativeAssembly('113538','A','550','415')Lowell was marveled at by foreign and domestic visitors alike but lost its idyllic character as competitive pressures within the industry resulted in larger workloads, longer hours, and smaller wages. When, in the 1840s and 1850s, Yankee young women formed embryonic unions and struck, they were replaced by French-Canadian and Irish immigrants. Nonetheless, early New England industrialism carried the imprint of a conscious sense of American exceptionalism.

In the decades before the American Civil War (1861–65), the civilization of the United States exerted an irresistible pull on visitors, hundreds of whom were assigned to report back to European audiences that were fascinated by the new society and insatiable for information on every facet of the “fabled republic.” What appeared to intrigue the travelers above all was the uniqueness of American society. In contrast to the relatively static and well-ordered civilization of the Old World, America seemed turbulent, dynamic, and in constant flux, its people crude but vital, awesomely ambitious, optimistic, and independent. Many well-bred Europeans were evidently taken aback by the self-assurance of lightly educated American common folk. Ordinary Americans seemed unwilling to defer to anyone on the basis of rank or status.

George Washington: On the Lack of a National Spirit

Primary Source Document

At no time during the Revolution was there unity of public mind or purpose in America. Even many of those who generally accepted independence were reluctant to give wholehearted support with taxes or military service. General Washington's unequivocal devotion to the American cause made him unwilling, perhaps unable, to accept anything less from the public. He could not help censuring the men whose sense of duty did not equal his own and whose private interest normally came before the common cause. In the following letter of December 30, 1778, to Benjamin Harrison, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Washington expressed himself in no uncertain terms.

John Adams: The Foundation of Government


The prospect of independence meant more than fighting a war with Britain. It also entailed the formation of new governments in America. In January of 1776, George Wythe, of Virginia, asked John Adams to draw up a plan that would enable the colonies to make this transition. Adams responded with the following letter.

John Adams: The Meaning of the American Revolution


John Adams sent the following lucid essay to Hezekiah Niles, editor of the Weekly Register, on February 13, 1818, and Niles praised it three weeks later. "Those who delight to trace the early dawnings of the American Revolution," wrote Niles in an editorial note, ". . . will be grateful for this tribute to the memory of the illustrious dead, from the pen of such a distinguished co-adjutor and co-patriot, as John Adams." The essay may have produced more than gratitude; it is thought that it inspired Niles to collect and publish his monumental Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (1822), a leading source of our knowledge of the period.

The American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and consequences have already been awful over a great part of the globe. And when and where are they to cease?

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. While the king, and all in authority under him, were believed to govern in justice and mercy according to the laws and constitution derived to them from the God of nature, and transmitted to them by their ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and queen and all the royal family, and all in authority under them, as ministers ordained of God for their good. But when they saw those powers renouncing all the principles of authority, and bent upon the destruction of all the securities of their lives, liberties, and properties, they thought it their duty to pray for the Continental Congress and all the thirteen state congresses, etc.

There might be, and there were, others who thought less about religion and conscience, but had certain habitual sentiments of allegiance and loyalty derived from their education; but believing allegiance and protection to be reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn, they thought allegiance was dissolved.

Another alteration was common to all. The people of America had been educated in a habitual affection for England as their mother country; and while they thought her a kind and tender parent (erroneously enough, however, for she never was such a mother) no affection could be more sincere. But when they found her a cruel beldam, willing, like Lady Macbeth, to "dash their brains out," it is no wonder if their filial affections ceased and were changed into indignation and horror.

Thomas Jefferson: Debate on Independence


During the debate on R.H. Lee's resolution for independence in June 1776, many of the old arguments for and against independence were restated. Thomas Jefferson recorded the views of both sides in notes that he made during the proceedings of the Continental Congress. These notes were later included in Jefferson's Autobiography.

Friday, June 7, 1776. The delegates from Virginia moved, in obedience to instructions from their constituents, that the Congress should declare that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.

The House being obliged to attend at that time to some other business, the proposition was referred to the next day, when the members were ordered to attend punctually at 10 o'clock.

Saturday, June 8. They proceeded to take it into consideration and referred it to a committee of the whole, into which they immediately resolved themselves, and passed that day and Monday, the 10th, in debating on the subject.

The Basis of the American Republic"... A constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."

JOHN MARSHALL, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

The Constitution of the United States is the central instrument of American government and the supreme law of the land. For 200 years, it has guided the evolution of governmental institutions and has provided the basis for political stability, individual freedom, economic growth and social progress.

The American Constitution is the world's oldest written constitution in force, one that has served as the model for a number of other constitutions around the world. The Constitution owes its staying power to its simplicity and flexibility. Originally designed to provide a framework for governing four million people in 13 very different colonies along the Atlantic coast, its basic provisions were so soundly conceived that, with only 26 amendments, it now serves the needs of more than 240 million people in 50 even more

diverse states that stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The path to the Constitution was neither straight nor easy. A draft document emerged in 1787, but only after intense debate and six years of experience with an earlier federal union. The 13 British colonies, strung out along the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States, declared their independence from England in 1776. A year before, war had broken out between the colonies and Great Britain, a war for independence that lasted for six bitter years. While still at war, the colonies -- now calling themselves the United States of America -- drafted a compact which bound them together as a nation. The compact, designated the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," was adopted by a Congress of the states in 1777, and formally signed in July 1778. The Articles became binding when they were ratified by the 13th state, Maryland, in March 1781.

The Articles of Confederation devised a loose association among the states, and set up a federal government with very limited powers. In such critical matters as defense, public finance and trade, the federal government was at the mercy of the state legislatures. It was not an arrangement conducive to stability or strength. Within a short time -- less than six years -- the weakness of the Confederation was apparent to all. Politically and economically, the new nation was close to chaos. In the words of George Washington, the 13 states were united only "by a rope of sand."

It was under these inauspicious circumstances that the Constitution of the United States was drawn up. In February 1787, the Continental Congress, the legislative body of the republic, issued a call for the states to send delegates to Philadelphia to revise the Articles. The Constitutional, or Federal, Convention convened on May 25, 1787, in Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier on July 4, 1776. Although the delegates had been authorized only to amend the Articles of Confederation, they pushed the Articles aside and proceeded to construct a charter for a wholly new, more centralized form of government. The new document, the Constitution, was completed September 17, 1787, and was officially adopted March 4, 1789.

The 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution included most of the outstanding leaders, or Founding Fathers, of the new nation. They represented a wide range of interests, backgrounds and stations in life. All agreed, however, on the central objectives expressed in the preamble to the Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The primary aim of the Constitution was to create a strong elected government, directly responsive to the will of the people. The concept of self-government did not originate with the Americans; indeed, a measure of self-government existed in England at the time. But the degree to which the Constitution committed the United States to rule by the people was unique, and even revolutionary, in comparison with other governments around the world.

The Constitution departed sharply from the Articles of Confederation in that it established a strong central, or federal, government with broad powers to regulate relations between the states, and with sole responsibility in such areas as foreign affairs and defense.

Centralization proved difficult for many people to accept. America had been settled in large part by Europeans who had left their homelands to escape religious or political oppression, as well as the rigid economic patterns of the Old World, which locked individuals into a particular station in life regardless of their skill or energy. Personal freedom was highly prized by these settlers and they were wary of any power -- especially that of government -- which might curtail individual liberties. The fear of a strong central authority ran so deep that Rhode Island refused to send delegates to Philadelphia in the belief that a strong national government might be a threat to the ability of its citizens to govern their own lives.

The great diversity of the new nation was also a formidable obstacle to unity. The people who were empowered by the Constitution to elect and control their central government were of widely differing origins, beliefs and interests. Most had come from England, but Sweden, Norway, France, Holland, Prussia, Poland and many other countries also sent immigrants to the New World. Their religious beliefs were varied and in most cases strongly held. There were Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Huguenots, Lutherans, Quakers, Jews, agnostics and atheists. Economically and socially, the Americans ranged from the landed aristocracy to slaves from Africa and indentured servants working off debts. But the backbone of the country was the middle class -- farmers, tradesmen, mechanics, sailors, shipwrights, weavers, carpenters and a host of others.

Americans then, as now, had widely differing opinions on virtually all issues, up to and including the wisdom of breaking free of the British Crown. During the Revolution, a large number of British loyalists -- known as Tories -- fled the country, settling mostly in eastern Canada. Those who stayed behind formed a substantial opposition bloc, although they differed among themselves on the reasons for opposing the Revolution and on what accommodation should be made with the new American republic.

In the past two centuries, the diversity of the American people has increased, and yet the essential unity of the nation has grown stronger. From the original 13 states along the Atlantic seaboard, America spread westward across the entire continent. Today it encompasses 50 states, the most recent additions being Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. Throughout the 19th century and on into the 20th, an endless stream of immigrants contributed their skills and their cultural heritages to the growing nation. Pioneers crossed the Appalachian Mountains in the east, settled the Mississippi Valley and the Great Plains in the center of the continent, then crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean -- 4,500 kilometers west of the Atlantic coastal areas settled by the

first colonists. And as the nation expanded, its vast storehouse of natural resources became apparent to all: great stands of virgin timber, huge deposits of coal, copper, iron and oil, abundant water power and fertile soil.

The wealth of the new nation generated its own kind of diversity. Special regional and commercial interest groups sprang up. East coast shipowners advocated free trade. Midwest manufacturers argued for import duties to protect their positions in the growing U.S. market. Farmers wanted low freight rates and high commodity prices; millers and bakers sought low grain prices; railroad operators wanted the highest freight rates they could get. New York bankers, southern cotton growers, Texas cattle ranchers and Oregon lumbermen all had different views on the economy and the government's role in regulating it.

It was the continuing job of the Constitution and the government it had created to draw all these disparate interests together, to create a common ground and, at the same time, to protect the fundamental rights of all the people. The Founding Fathers had little precedent to guide them when they drafted the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation had also set up a federal government, but its powers were so limited that the states were united in name only. Although the people's experience with federalism was limited, their expertise in the art of self-government was considerable. Long before independence was declared, the colonies were functioning governmental units, controlled by the people. And after the revolution had begun -- between January 1, 1776, and April 20, 1777 -- 10 of the 13 states had adopted their own constitutions. Most states had a governor elected by the state legislature. The legislature itself was elected by popular vote.

Compared with the complexities of contemporary government, the problems of governing four million people in much less developed economic conditions seem small indeed. But the authors of the Constitution were building for the future as well as the present. They were keenly aware of the need for a structure of government that would work not only in their lifetime, but for generations to come. Hence, they included in the Constitution a provision for amending the document when social, economic or political conditions demanded it. Twenty-six amendments have been passed since ratification, and the flexibility of the Constitution has proven to be one of its greatest strengths. Without such flexibility, it is inconceivable that a document drafted more than 200 years ago could effectively serve the needs of 240 million people, and thousands upon thousands of governmental units at all levels in the United States today. Nor could it have applied with equal force and precision to the problems of small towns and great cities.

The Constitution and the federal government thus stand at the peak of a governmental pyramid which includes local and state jurisdictions. In the U.S. system, each level of government has a large degree of autonomy with certain powers reserved particularly to itself. Disputes between different jurisdictions are resolved by the courts. However, there are questions involving the national interest which require the cooperation of all levels of government simultaneously, and the Constitution makes provision for this as well. American public schools are largely administered by local jurisdictions, adhering to statewide standards. But the federal government also aids the schools, since literacy and educational attainment is a matter of vital national interest, and it enforces uniform standards designed to further equal educational opportunity. In other areas, such as housing, health and welfare, there is a similar partnership between the various levels of

government.

No product of human society is perfect. Despite its many amendments, the Constitution of the United States probably still contains flaws which will become evident in future periods of stress. But two centuries of growth and unrivaled prosperity have proven the foresight of the 55 men who worked through the summer of 1787 to lay the foundation of American government.

Penn's Plan for a Union 1697A brief and plain scheme how the English colonies in the North parts of America,--viz., Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jerseys, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina,--may be made more useful to the crown and one another's peace and safety with an universal concurrence.

1. That the several colonies before mentioned do meet once a year, and oftener if need be during the war, and at least once in two years in times of peace, by their stated and appointed deputies, to debate and resolve of such measures as are most advisable for their better understanding and the public tranquility and safety.

2. That, in order to it, two persons, well qualified for sense, sobriety, and substance, be appointed by each province as their representatives or deputies, which in the whole make the congress to consist of twenty persons.

3. That the king's commissioner, for that purpose specially appointed, shall have the chair and preside in the said congress.

4. That they shall meet as near as conveniently may be to the most central colony for ease of the deputies.

5. Since that may in all probability be New York, both because it is near the center of the colonies and for that it is a frontier and in the king's nomination, the governor of that colony may therefore also be the king's high commissioner during the session, after the manner of Scotland.

6. That their business shall be to hear and adjust all matters of complaint or difference between province and province. As, 1st, where persons quit their own province and go to another, that they may avoid their just debts, though they be able to pay them; 2nd, where offenders fly justice, or justice cannot well be had upon such offenders in the provinces that entertain them; 3rd, to prevent or cure injuries in point of commerce; 4th, to consider the ways and means to support the union and safety of these provinces against the public enemies. In which congress the quotas of men and charges will be much easier and more equally set than it is possible for any establishment made here to do; for the provinces, knowing their own condition and one another's, can debate that matter with more freedom and satisfaction, and better adjust and balance their affairs in all respects for their common safety.

7. That, in times of war, the king's high commissioner shall be general or chief commander of the several quotas upon service against the common enemy, as he shall be advised, for the good and benefit of the whole.

King William Addresses Parliament on the French Question 31 December 1701IntroductionKing William of Holland and his wife Mary, daughter of King James II of England, mounted the English throne at the invitation of Parliament after James II fled to France in 1688.

William III was a firm opponent of French expansion in Europe, either by the acquisition of territory or the development of overpowering political coalitions. He viewed with alarm a move by Louis XIV to install a Catholic pretender to the English throne; moreover, William saw the maneuver of Louis to gain control of the Spanish throne as a giant step toward French domination of Europe and America and thus the world - which was, in fact, the objective of the French sovereign.

My Lords and Gentlemen; I promise myself you are met together full of that just sense of the common danger of Europe, and the resentment of the late proceedings of the French king, which has been so fully and universally expressed in the loyal and seasonable Addresses of my people. The owning and setting up the pretended Prince of Wales for king of England, is not only the highest indignity offered to me and the nation, but does so nearly concern every man, who has a regard for the Protestant Religion, or the present and future quiet and happiness of his country, that I need not press you to lay it seriously to heart, and to consider what further effectual means may be used, for securing the Succession of the Crown in the Protestant line, and extinguishing the hopes of all Pretenders, and their open and secret abettors. By the French king's placing his Grandson on the throne of Spain, he is in a condition to oppress the rest of Europe, unless speedy and effectual measures be taken. Under this pretence, he is become the real Master of the whole Spanish Monarchy; he has made it to be intirely depending on France, and disposes of it, as of his own dominions, and by that means he has surrounded his neighbours in such a manner, that, though the name of peace may be said to continue, yet they are put to the expence and inconveniencies of war. This must affect England in the nearest and most sensible manner, in respect to our trade, which will soon become precarious in all the variable branches of it; in respect to our peace and safety at home, which we cannot hope should long continue; and in respect to that part, which England ought to take in the preservation of the liberty of Europe.

In order to obviate the general calamity, with which the rest of Christendom is threatened by this exorbitant power of France, I have concluded several Alliances, according to the encouragement given me by both houses of Parliament, which I will direct shall be laid before you, and which, I doubt not, you will enable me to make good. There are some other Treaties still depending, that shall be likewise communicated to you as soon as they are perfected. It is fit I should tell you, the eyes of all Europe are upon this Parliament; all

matters are at a stand, till your resolutions are known; and therefore no time ought to be lost. You have yet an opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to you and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your Religion and Liberties, if you are not wanting to yourselves, but will exert the ancient vigour of the English nation; but I tell you plainly, my opinion is, if you do not lay hold on this occasion, you have no reason to hope for another. In order to do your part, it will be necessary to have a great strength at sea, and to provide for the security of our ships in harbour; and also that there be such a force at land, as is expected in proportion to the forces of our Allies.

Gentlemen of the House of Commons; I do recommend these matters to you with that concern and earnestness, which their importance requires. At the same time I cannot but press you to take care of the public credit, which cannot be preserved but by keeping sacred that maxim, that they shall never be losers, who trust to a Parliamentary security. It is always with regret, when I do ask aids of my people; but you will observe, that I desire nothing, which relates to any personal expence of mine; I am only pressing you to do all you can for your own safety and honour, at so critical and dangerous a time; and am willing, that what is given, should be wholly appropriated to the purposes for which it is intended....

I should think it as great a blessing as could befall England, if I could observe you as much inclined to lay aside those unhappy fatal animosities, which divide and weaken you, as I am disposed to make all my subjects safe and easy as to any, even the highest offences, committed against me. Let me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of our enemies by your unanimity. I have shewn, and will always shew, how desirous I am to be the common father of all my people. Do you, in like manner, lay aside parties and divisions. Let there be no other distinction heard of amongst us for the future, but of those, who are for the Protestant Religion, and the present establishment, and of those, who mean a Popish Prince, and a French government. I will only add this; if you do in good earnest desire to see England hold the balance of Europe, and to be indeed at the head of the Protestant interest, it will appear by your right improving the present opportunity.

Albany Plan for a Union 1754It is proposed that humble application be made for an act of Parliament of Great Britain, by virtue of which one general government may be formed in America, including all the said colonies, within and under which government each colony may retain its present constitution, except in the particulars wherein a change may be directed by the said act, as hereafter follows.

8. That the said general government be administered by a President-General, to be appointed and supported by the crown; and a Grand Council, to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several Colonies met in their respective assemblies.

9. That within ___ months after the passing such act, the House of Representatives that happen to be sitting within that time, or that shall be especially for that purpose convened, may and shall choose members for the Grand Council, in the following proportion, that is to say,

Massachusetts Bay 7

New Hampshire 2

Connecticus 5

Rhode Island 2

New York 4

New Jersey 3

Pennsylvania 6

Maryland 4

Virginia 7

North Carolina 4

South Carolina 4

48

10. -----who shall meet for the first time at the city of Philadelphia, being called by the President-General as soon as conveniently may be after his appointment.

11. That there shall be a new election of the members of the Grand Council every three years; and, on the death or resignation of any member, his place should be supplied by a new choice at the next sitting of the Assembly of the Colony he represented.

12. That after the first three years, when the proportion of money arising out of each Colony to the general treasury can be known, the number of members to be chosen for each Colony shall, from time to time, in all ensuing elections, be regulated by that proportion, yet so as that the number to be chosen by any one Province be not more than seven, nor less than two.

13. That the Grand Council shall meet once in every year, and oftener if occasion require, at such time and place as they shall adjourn to at the last preceding meeting, or as they shall be called to meet at by the President-General on any emergency; he having first obtained in writing the consent of seven of the members to such call, and sent duly and timely notice to the whole.

14. That the Grand Council have power to choose their speaker; and shall neither be dissolved, prorogued, nor continued sitting longer than six weeks at one time, without their own consent or the special command of the crown.

15. That the members of the Grand Council shall be allowed for their service ten shillings sterling per diem, during their session and journey to and from the place of meeting; twenty miles to be reckoned a day's journey.

16. That the assent of the President-General be requisite to all acts of the Grand Council, and that it be his office and duty to cause them to be carried into execution.

17. That the President-General, with the advice of the Grand Council, hold or direct all Indian treaties, in which the general interest of the Colonies may be concerned; and make peace or declare war with Indian nations.

18. That they make such laws as they judge necessary for regulating all Indian trde.

19. That they make all purchases from Indians, for the crown, of lands not now within the bounds of particular Colonies, or that shall not be within their bounds when some of them are reduced to more convenient dimensions.

20. That they make new settlements on such purchases, by granting lands in the King's name, reserving a quitrent to the crown for the use of the general treasury.

21. That they make laws for regulating and governing such new settlements, till the crown shall think fit to form them into particular governments.

22. That they raise and pay soldiers and build forts for the defence of any of the Colonies, and equip vessels of force to guard the coasts and protect the trade on the ocean, lakes, or great rivers; but they shall not impress men in any Colony, without the consent of the Legislature.

23. That for these purposes they have power to make laws, and lay and levy such general duties, imposts, or taxes, as to them shall appear most equal and just (considering the ability and other circumstances of the inhabitants in the several Colonies), and such as may be collected with the least inconvenience to the people; rather discouraging luxury, than loading industry with unnecessary burdens.

24. That they may appoint a General Treasurer and Particular Treasurer in each government when necessary; and, from time to time, may order the sums in the treasuries of each government into the general treasury; or draw on them for special payments, as they find most convenient.

25. Yet no money to issue but by joint orders of the President-General and Grand Council; except where sums have been appropriated to particular purposes, and the President-General is previously empowered by an act to draw such sums.

26. That the general accounts shall be yearly settled and reported to the several Assemblies.

27. That a quorum of the Grand Council, empowered to act with the President-General, do consist of twenty-five members; among whom there shall be one or more from a majority of the Colonies.

28. That the laws made by them for the purposes aforesaid shall not be repugnant, but, as near as may be, agreeable to the laws of England, and shall be transmitted to the King in Council for approbation, as soon as may be after their passing; and if not disapproved within three years after presentation, to remain in force.

29. That, in case of the death of the President-General, the Speaker of the Grand Council for the time being shall succeed, and be vested with the same powers and

authorities, to continue till the King's pleasure be known.

30. That all military commission officers, whether for land or sea service, to act under this general constitution, shall be nominated by the President-General; but the approbation of the Grand Council is to be obtained, before they receive their commissions. And all civil officers are to be nominated by the Grand Council, and to receive the President-General's approbation before they officiate.

31. But, in case of vacancy by death or removal of any officer, civil or military, under this constitution, the Governor of the Province in which such vacancy happens may appoint, till the pleasure of the President-General and Grand Council can be known.

32. That the particular military as well as civil establishments in each Colony remain in their present state, the general constitution notwithstanding; and that on sudden emergencies any Colony may defend itself, and lay the accounts of expense thence arising before the President-General and General Council, who may allow and order payment of the same, as far as they judge such accounts just and reasonable.

ConclusionsIt is when one examines the period in which the progressive historians wrote that the most sense is made of their work. Historiography is nought if it is not a reflection of the times that spawned it. Just as the Progressives were involved in a movement to improve the lot of the common man in a time of technological change, so did the progressive historians see the fighters of the Revolution as fighters for the lot of the common man. And in just the same way, as the new country was first forging its nationalistic unity, did George Bancroft see the war as a virtuous, nationalistic struggle. And likewise did Charles Beard, the erstwhile firebrand, see the Constitution in a different light in 1944, when democratic governments were only just beginning to win the first round in a deadly fight for their lives, than he did in 1913, the last year in which Civilization was spelled with a capital "C." Could Beard have seen the war and its resulting constitution in any other light than the light in which the horrors of World War I were viewed in the 1920s and 1930s, that economic "special interests" held all the cards and manipulated the rest of us like so many puppets, making us fight and slaughter one another on a whim designed to make them still more money?

Historical literature is a reflection of the contemporary events of its writers. When one strips away the influence of the times that colored the views of the writers discussed in this essay, one must conclude by looking at the results that the war was one for independence, not a true revolution.

Voltaire was right on target when he said that there are truths that are not for all men, nor for all times.

The American Revolution started in 1775, climaxed in 1776, and, at least partially, ended in 1789 when the Constitution was ratified. But was it really a revolution? What criteria

must the new government possess to be considered a revolutionary regime? What kind of ideologies do the revolutionaries believe in and how do these differ from the old regime's ideologies and form of rule? How violent must the revolution be? How much of a social impact should there be? All of these questions can be answered differently depending on what constitutes one's definition of a revolution. For the purposes of this study, it will be assumed that the American Revolution was a real Revolution. The different theories of what is a revolution will be discussed with the intention of disproving the assumption that the American Revolution was a true Revolution. The conclusion will be an answer to the question: was the American Revolution a real revolution?

Background, History, And The Beginning Of The RevolutionThe thirteen colonies that became the USA were originally colonies of Great Britain. By the time the American Revolution took place, the citizens of these colonies were beginning to get tired of the British rule. Rebellion and discontent were rampant. For those people who see the change in the American government and society a real Revolution, the Revolution is essentially an economic one. The main reason the colonies started rebelling against 'mother England' was the taxation issue. The colonies debated England's legal power to tax them and, furthermore, did not wish to be taxed without representation. This was one of the main causes of the Revolutionary War. The Revenue Act of 1764 made the constitutional issue of whether or not the King had the right to tax the thirteen colonies an issue, and this eventually "became an entering wedge in the great dispute that was finally to wrest the American colonies from England" (Olsen, 6). It was the phrase 'taxation without representation' "that was to draw many to the cause of the American patriots against the mother country" (6).

The reaction against taxation was often violent and the most powerful and articulate groups in the population rose against the taxation (6). "Resolutions denouncing taxation without representation as a threat to colonial liberties" were passed (6). In October of 1765, colonial representatives met on their own initiative for the first time and decided to "mobilize colonial opinion against parliamentary interference in American affairs" (6). From this point on, events began to reach the point of no return for the colonies. In December 1773, the Boston Tea Party occurred as a reaction to the hated Tea Act of earlier that year. In 1774, the First Continental Congress met and formed an 'Association,' which ended up assuming leadership and spurred new local organizations to end royal authority (Olsen, 9). Because of the influence of these Associations, many people joined the movement, and collection of supplies and mobilization of troops began to take place. The leadership of the Association was able to fan "public opinion into revolutionary ardor" (9).

However, not everyone favored the revolutionary movement; this was especially true in areas of mixed ethnic cultures and in those that were untouched by the war. The citizens of the middle colonies were especially unenthusiastic about the revolution (Ward, 78).

Among those who did support a change in the government structure, not everyone who joined the movement favored violence. Quakers and members of other religions, as well as many merchants from the middle colonies, and some discontented farmers and frontiersmen from southern colonies opposed the use of violence, and instead favored "discussion and compromise as the proper solution" (Olsen, 9). The patriots were able to gain a great deal of support for a violent Revolution from the less well-to-do, from many of the professional class, especially lawyers, some of the great planters and a number of merchants (9). Support for the Revolution increased when it became clear that King "George III had no intention of making concessions" (9). By the Fall of 1774, the American people "had in place the mechanisms of revolutionary organization on the local and colony level. A Congress of the colonies would coordinate and control the revolutionary movement" (Ward, 53). The Revolutionary War erupted on April 19, 1775 (60). The reason the British and the Americans resorted to using arms after a decade of fighting verbally and ideologically over the rights of the British subjects in the colonies, was because both sides had finally "become convinced that force alone could decide the issues that divided the empire" (Miller, 167). In April 1775, the battle of Lexington occurred, closely followed by the battle of Concord. The shot at Lexington marked the first blood spilled in the war of the American independence (Ward, 3). "The American Revolution now had its martyrs" (409). These two very important instances of bloodshed served to evoke the spirit of American patriotism all over the colonies (Olsen, 10). The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775 and George Washington was elected commander of the patriotic forces. He and his army fought for the defense of American liberty and consequently led America to independence (Ward, 61-62). The British rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, which expressed a "general desire for the restoration of harmony between Britain and her colonies" (Thomas, 248), issued in the summer of 1775, "stiffened the patriots' resolve towards independence" (BMPL, 41). Another strong arguments for independence revolved around the issue of not becoming like the rotten Mother England. Americans believed that "the longer they remained within the British Empire, the greater was the danger of contamination" (Miller, 427). By early 1776, Americans were ready to denounce any allegiance to the British crown (Ward, 63). In January of that same year, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a brochure that strongly served to rally Americans to independence. Paine's writing convinced many of his countrymen to disown the monarchy and replace it with a republic (76-77). "As long as Americans deluded themselves with the hope that they could be free and yet remain British subjects, Paine believed that the cause of liberty was doomed" (Miller, 463). By this time, the movement toward revolution was rapidly gaining speed. By spring of that same year, all royal governors had been ousted and patriots replaced British authority in the colonies by makeshift governments. The Congress itself exercised sovereign powers (Ward, 79). In July 1776, Congress met and adopted the Declaration of Independence from Britain. The Articles of Confederation was the first document uniting the citizens of all thirteen colonies into one country. Under the Articles, the central government was very weak and the states held most power, but it was a beginning. As a result of Shay's Rebellion, the Articles were disowned and the Federal Constitution was written in 1787. It is still the basic law of the United States of America.

Summary.Many revolutions begin with the outbreak of violence, which is often a response to

heightened repression or other extraordinary demands from government against their people. The American Revolution is an obvious example of this (Rule, 160). The violence took the form of the Revolutionary War and Congress became the leadership. American Revolution was the first anti-colonial, democratic revolution in history. Americans insisted on representation and when the British denied it, they fought their colonizers. Americans won and set up their own government, a republic. Thus, what was initially undertaken to secure for British Americans guarantees of local autonomy and individual rights equivalent to those enjoyed by Englishmen in the home islands, ...quickly became in 1775-76 a struggle for political independence (Greene, 1).

Much of the revolutionary cause came from the "colonial challenge to Parliament's power of legislation... " (Thomas, 333). This was the beginning of the Revolution. Since the patriots' demands could not be met, the country proclaimed itself independent from 'mother England' and the United States of America were born.

Violence In The RevolutionOne of the more important facets of a revolution is violence. In this respect the American Revolution truly fits the description of a real Revolution. The most serious effect "of the colonies was the number and the force of the influences which were impelling large classes to violence..., ...accustoming them to an unrestrained exercise of power and breaking down among them salutary respect for authority" (Lecky, 283). While some scholars, especially English historians, may see this as an evil outcome of the Revolution, the violence and its consequences were an important part of the Revolutionary experience. It is from this violent uproar that the United States of America was born.

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A Democratic RevolutionAt the end of the Revolutionary War, in the 1780s, some people, most notably the Tories, wanted power to remain in the hands of the aristocracy; they believed that all men meant all gentlemen. Many Tories feared that "the Revolution would lead to a democratic upheaval" and these fears were not "without foundation" (Miller, 500). Some Americans certainly "regarded the principles of the Declaration of Independence as presaging a new social and political order" (500). The democratic features of the Revolution included a call for 'no taxation without representation' at home, denouncing certain titles such as 'His Excellency,' resentment against profiteers, demands for "all institutions to be subjected to the test of reason" (501) and other aspects.

One of the democratic features of the new country was the almost equal pay provided to the soldiers. This egalitarianism was defended by the New Englanders and attacked by the Southerners. The best example of democracy was the violent upheaval that swept away the Quaker oligarchy in Pennsylvania (503). The final draft of the Constitution is a great example of democracy all in itself. It made America safe for democracy. After the Peace of Paris, Americans finally put away their arms and "vigorously sought to apply the ideals for which they had fought to conditions at home" (505).

Theoretical Interpretation Of The American RevolutionA summary of the theories of revolution points to the conclusion that the American Revolution was a real revolution. The fact that scholars discuss it as part of a more general overview of revolutions is proof that they consider it to be a Revolution. Many people (both the educated and the uneducated) unquestioningly accept the fact that the American Revolution was a revolution. This paper has shown that these claims and the original assumption proved to be correct. The theories dealing with revolutions as the phenomenon helped prove that these assumptions are legitimate. A explanation of a revolution could be a complex one like Crane Brinton's, which traces a revolution through several stages, as well as entailing details of the pre- and post-revolutionary society. A definition could be as simple as Gottschalk's, which states that a revolution need not "be more than ...a popular movement whereby a significant change in the structure of a nation or society is effected'" (Paynton and Blackey, 27). Some analysts may not see the American Revolution as a revolution because it does not fit their narrow model. Theda Skocpol's discussion centers around social revolutions, like the one that occurred in Russia, and thus has no place for the American experience. For sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, the main aspect of the American Revolution that made it revolutionary is the ideas, values, and the beliefs that appeared after the event. These were revolutionary in their context alone, and were integrated into the American way of life. For many scholars the main aspect of a revolution is social change (27), an element that was obviously present in America in 1776 and later in 1783. The American Revolution was a true revolution.

ConclusionThe American Revolution was unlike any others in the history of revolutions. It "occurred in the empire distinguished above all others in the eighteenth century by the large measure of political, religious, and economic freedom it allowed its colonies overseas" (Miller, xiii). Thus, Ameri- cans, unlike other revolutionary people, had already experienced some forms of freedom. An important reason for the Revolution was the desire for even more than they already had. "Like all revolutions, the American one started with small, relatively unimportant demands that grew, during and after the conflict, far beyond the vision of the original participants" ( Lipset, 22). Would the American colonies not rebelled had they not been taxed without representation? Or would they have found another issue of discontent? Some historians view the American revolutionaries as clearly intending "to make a break with [their] European past" (Miller, xvii). These scholars believe the American Revolution was staged against Europe - against monarchy, imperialistic wars, feudalism, colonialism, mercantilism, established churches, the oppression of the many by the few. In this sense the United States declared itself independent in 1776 not only of Great Britain but of Europe (xvii). "...The revolutionary generation wanted benefits, not just protection," (Banning, 105)

from the British Crown. Some argue that "separation...was the act of the British Parliament itself, which had thrown the thirteen colonies out of the protection of the Crown" (Lecky, 237). Had it not been for taxation, more grievances are apt to have arisen. The American Revolution was inevitable.

In many respects, the American Revolution was the first of its kind. USA is one of the very few states in the world that underwent only one revolution. It is also among the small minority of the states, whose revolution, ideologies, and the regime established under it, lasted. There may be many theories of what constitutes a revolution but the simplest one is the definition of revolution. "While some elements in the definition of revolution have a degree of commonness, still no single one is to be found common to all" (Paynton and Blackey, 26). However, a sudden change in the government structure signifies a revolution. And the government that ensued in the late 1700s was very different from its Royal English predecessor. The people of America and the people of Great Britain view authority, and thus, government, in distinct terms. This is due to the varied experiences and points of view of the American and the English people towards their government. In contrast to the great revolutions that have marked the twentieth century, the American Revolution succeeded in accomplishing what it set out to do - "to give men more liberty than they had previously possessed" (Miller, xviii-xix).

While the question of how revolutionary the American Revolution was remains an inherently unresolved issue (Lipset, 10), there is no doubt that the American experience was a real Revolution. It was a struggle to progress from dependent colonies to independent states, from monarchy to republic, from membership in an extended empire in which the several members were connected only through the center to participation in a singly federal nation... (Greene, 1). And it succeeded.

2. Foundations of American Government

Henry Hudson's ship

Sea travel expanded the horizons of many European nations and created prosperity and the conditions for the Enlightenment. In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution.

Democracy was not created in a heartbeat. In a world where people were ruled by monarchs from above, the idea of self-government is entirely alien. Democracy takes

practice and wisdom from experience.

The American colonies began developing a democratic tradition during their earliest stages of development. Over 150 years later, the colonists believed their experience was great enough to refuse to recognize the British king. The first decade was rocky. The American Revolution and the domestic instability that followed prompted a call for a new type of government with a constitution to guarantee liberty. The constitution drafted in the early days of the independent American republic has endured longer than any in human history.

Where did this democratic tradition truly begin? The ideas and practices that led to the development of the American democratic republic owe a debt to the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, the Protestant Reformation, and Gutenberg's printing press. But the Enlightenment of 17th-century Europe had the most immediate impact on the framers of the United States Constitution.

The PhilosophesEuropeans of the 17th century no longer lived in the "darkness" of the Middle Ages. Ocean voyages had put them in touch with many world civilizations, and trade had created a prosperous middle class. The Protestant Reformation encouraged free thinkers to question the practices of the Catholic Church, and the printing press spread the new ideas relatively quickly and easily. The time was ripe for the philosophes, scholars who promoted democracy and justice through discussions of individual liberty and equality.

Washington Crossing the Delaware

The ideas of 18th-century philosophes inspired the Founding Fathers to revolt against what they perceived as unfair British taxation. Washington Crossing the Delaware is one of the most famous depictions of the American Revolution.

One of the first philosophes was Thomas Hobbes, an Englishman who concluded in his famous book, Leviathan, that people are incapable of ruling themselves, primarily because humans are naturally self-centered and quarrelsome and need the iron fist of a strong leader. Later philosophes, like Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau were more optimistic about democracy. Their ideas encouraged the questioning of absolute monarchs, like the Bourbon family that ruled France. Montesquieu suggested a separation of powers into branches of government not unlike the system Americans would later adopt. They found eager students who later became the founders of the American government.

John LockeThe single most important influence that shaped the founding of the United States comes from John Locke, a 17th century Englishman who redefined the nature of government. Although he agreed with Hobbes regarding the self-interested nature of humans, he was much more optimistic about their ability to use reason to avoid tyranny. In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke identified the basis of a legitimate government. According to Locke, a ruler gains authority through the consent of the governed. The duty of that government is to protect the natural rights of the people, which Locke believed to include life, liberty, and property. If the government should fail to protect these rights, its citizens would have the right to overthrow that government. This idea deeply influenced Thomas Jefferson as he drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Important English DocumentsIronically, the English political system provided the grist for the revolt of its own American colonies. For many centuries English monarchs had allowed restrictions to be placed on their ultimate power. The Magna Carta, written in 1215, established the kernel of limited government, or the belief that the monarch's rule was not absolute. Although the document only forced King John to consult nobles before he made arbitrary decisions like passing taxes, the Magna Carta provided the basis for the later development of Parliament. Over the years, representative government led by a Prime Minister came to control and eventually replace the king as the real source of power in Britain.

Philosophes

The ideas of the French Enlightenment philosophes strongly influenced the American revolutionaries. French intellectuals met in salons like this one to exchange ideas and define their ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice.

The Petition of Right (1628) extended the rights of "commoners" to have a voice in the government. The English Bill of Rights (1688) guaranteed free elections and rights for citizens accused of crime. Although King George III still had some real power in 1776, Britain was already well along on the path of democracy by that time.

The foundations of American government lie squarely in the 17th and 18th century European Enlightenment. The American founders were well versed in the writings of the philosophes, whose ideas influenced the shaping of the new country. Thomas Jefferson,

George Washington, James Madison, and others took the brave steps of creating a government based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, equality, and a new form of justice. More than 200 years later, that government is still intact.