Chapter 9 the Quest for a Republican Society

St. Jean de Crevecoeur a French essayist wrote that European Society was composed of “ great lords who

possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing.” America by contrast had “no aristocratical

families, no courts no kings, no bishops”

Society and the familyAs the power of

middling and poor white men grew, the rights of and status of Women and Free Blacks declined… New Jersey’s constitution of 1776 had granted suffrage to women, but in 1807, the state redefined citizens as White Males only.

Americans were willing to accept social divisions if they were based on personal achievement. By 1815 Republicanism meant voting rights for all white male taxpaying citizens.

Economic and cultural changes eroded customary paternal authority. Traditionally land owning fathers had arranged their children’s marriages to ensure the economic well being of themselves and their wives during old age. Unlike European Primogeniture , where only the oldest son inherited the land,

In America the wealth was divided up between all the Males and the females were given a dowry to pass on to the husband… As land holdings shrank, yeoman farmers could no longer pass on large inheritances, which they used to be able to hold over their children’s head, to compel them to marry the spouse of the parents choice. Arranged marriages disappeared and children began to choose their own marriage partners based on the culture of sentimentalism. The down side of this for women is that they couldn’t rely on parents and were now even more dependant on their husbands for financial and emotional support.

Republican Mothers in Republican MarriagesPolitical leaders called upon

women to become “Republican Wives and Mothers” who would shape the character of men and children. Physician Benjamin Rush argued that a young Woman should receive intellectual training so she could be an “ agreeable companion for a sensible man…” and that they instruct “their sons in the principles of liberty and government.”

Women began to take over the formerly male job of teaching, but not so much as a result of the idea of Republicanism, as the fact that Women were willing to do the job for much less pay than men.

In the 1790’s women tended to marry later in life and have fewer children. Women devoted more time to the church. Attitudes about women changed in the church… previous Religious ideas about women were were morally inferior to men, the temptress or witch; but now women were thought of as the holders of modesty and purity.

On the other hand, yeomen and tenet farmers influenced by the religious movement of the 2nd Great Awakening were strict disciplinarians.

Education, until the 1820’s still took place in the household, but in the Northern parts of the country the idea of public education was gaining ground.

Men such as Noah Webster championed the goal of American intellectual greatness. Webster developed a dictionary and spelling books which helped to standardize American Spelling and grammar.

The Republican Ideal may have spread to children, some evidence suggests that parental discipline relaxed, and children treated their parents with less respect.

The Republic And SlaveryIn the South, Republicanism meant something

different. Less interference from government, and a society of wealthy families that ran the State governments and took an almost Aristocratic approach to running the State…. The Planters believed that they had an obligation for public service, but that also meant they protected their positions of power and wealth..

The wealthy could afford to educate their children , but public education was not made available to the common man in the south, White or Black.

Nationally, the South relied upon the 3/5 clause to boost its power in the House and to insure the election of Southern Presidents. The balance of the Senate with equal numbers of Slave and free states allowed the Southern states enough power to prevent any anti slavery law from passing.

James Monroe, Henry Clay and others, founded the American Colonization Society as an alternative way of ending slavery. (without the nastiness of what to do with all of those free African Americans)

by Encouraging planters to free their slaves and the society would help to resettle the freed men in Africa.

To Justify the institution of slavery Southerners gave all of these rationales:

Slavery was a necessary evil for maintaining white living standards and preventing racial confrontations.

The Bible condoned and supported Slavery, in both the old testament and even in the new testament.

Slave owners took care of their slaves as a form of disinterested benevolence.

The Constitution was a contract which protected the institution of slavery.

The treatment of Slaves in the South was much more human than that of the factory system in Europe.

Slavery was a fact of history that was undeniable and unavoidable.Planters perpetuated the idea of Black inferiority and White equality among the classes to keep non-slave holding whites loyal to the institution.

The Price of replacing slaves kept most slave owners from putting their slaves in dangerous jobs. Reroofing the house would usually be the job of a poor white man, who, if he had the misfortune of falling from the roof and breaking his neck, was no cost to the slave owner.

There were two basic systems for managing the Slaves; The Gang Labor system which drove slaves in gangs of slaves with white overseers who made a liberal use of the the lash. The Task system where slaves were assigned specific tasks each day and if they finished early they had the rest of the day for themselves.

Slave opposition to gang labor, and the slave system in general was met with work slow downs, sabotage and arson. There may have been more than 200 slaves uprising from the 1700’s through til 1860s the most notable were the Stono rebellion in S. Carolina in 1739 Gabriel Prosser’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1800, Denmark Vesey’s rebellion in South Carolina in 1822, and Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1831. Nat Turners, was perhaps the biggest, bloodiest resulting in the death of 65 whites and the execution of 56 slaves.

Slavery and national politicsSlavery was not a single issue in national

politics, rather it was a symbol and the central focus of many differences between the Southern Culture and the Northern culture. When Missouri tried to enter the Union as a Slave State in 1819, Congressman Tallmadge of New York proposed a ban on importation of slaves in Missouri, and gradual emancipation, but Slavers refused to except and the conflict boiled for two years until Congressman Henry Clay Proposed The Missouri Compromise where Maine entered the Union as a Free State in 1820, Missouri as a slave state in 1821 and slavery would be prohibited in territories north of 36 degrees 30 minutes . This maintained the balance of 12 Free & 12 Slave States.

The Second Great AwakeningAnother round of Religious revivals that began around 1790,

but gathered a great deal of momentum around the 1840’s and lasted a few decades beyond that, came to be known as the 2nd Great awakening. This Awakening spurned a reform minded Christian following, that included Abolition, Prohibition & Social reforms.

The new Awakening further increased the membership of the non elite protestant churches with evangelical Baptists and Methodist churches taking the greatest growth of membership.

Part of the reason for growth and change was the challenge to the Calvinist Doctrine of Predestination and placed more emphasis on FREE WILL.

Almost as an antidote to the lower class appeal to the new emotional Awakening, Many wealthy and well educated Congregationalists rejected the concept of the Trinity, and subscribed to a Unitarian God that inspired the power of Human reasoning. They became Unitarians.

End of Chapter 9