The Democratic Republic, 1790-1820 (c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved Chapter 7

The Democratic Republic, 1790-1820

(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Chapter 7Chapter 7

The Farmer’s Republic

• J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur: “bright idea of property”

• Propertied independence and associated social and political consequences

• Rural “competence”


Households

• Farm labor tasks: divided between the sexes

• Men in fields

• Women in households


Rural Industry

• Children and wives of farmers worked in household industries

• City merchants provided raw materials

• Country workers made and sold finished goods, furniture, cloth, brooms, shoes


Neighbors

• Farmers involved in networks of neighborly cooperation

• Neighboring farmers regularly worked for one another, borrowed and traded

• Some cooperative events brought entire communities together and fostered socializing– Barn-raising– Husking bees

• Barter economy


Inheritance

• Rural Republicanism– Widespread farm ownership and rough equality of all

households

• Many fathers unable to leave enough to all offspring• More and more young men left home• Populations in old farming communities: older and

more female• Populations in frontier settlements: younger and

male


Standards of Living

• 18th & 19th Centuries: improved living standards

• Greater gap between prosperous farmers and disinherited neighbors

• Typical housing: few rooms, many people

• Use of furniture and housewares spread


From Backcountry to Frontier

• 1790: America stretched almost 1500 miles inland

• However, most Americans lived on Atlantic

• Settlers were pushing North and West

• Indians occupied most interior lands


The Destruction of the Woodlands Indians

• Iroquois confined to NY & PA reservations

• Cherokees ceded 3/4ths of their land 1790

• Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794)– Shawnee & Miami vs. “Mad” Anthony Wayne

• Treaty of Greenville

• Indian civilization in despair



Native America, 1783-1812

The Failure of Cultural Renewal

• Alexander McGillivray– Creeks

• Cherokee: Nation within a nation

• Tenskwatawa (The Prophet)

• Tecumseh– William Henry Harrison– Battle of Tippecanoe (1811)


Sequoya, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet


The Backcountry, 1790-1815

• Many settlers melded Indian and white ways– Legends of Davy Crockett

• Easterners shocked at frontier life– Samuel Parsons “our white savages”

• 4 frontier states enter union by 1803: Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio

• Western backcountry settlers demand:– Protection from the Indians– Right to navigate Ohio and Mississippi Rivers


Caricature of a backwoods brawl(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Pittsburgh in 1790(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved


Population Density, 1790-1820

The Plantation South, 1790-1820: Slavery and the Republic

• Slavery faced uncertain future• Some began to free slaves

– Robert Carter and George Washington

• Thomas Jefferson– Slavery is wrong, but can’t end in a society of free

whites and free blacks


Early nineteenth century diagram of a slave ship(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

The Recommitment to Slavery

• Industrial Revolution creates demand for cotton

• long staple vs. short staple cotton

• Eli Whitney– cotton “gin”

• Cotton: Lower South’s new cash crop

• Plantation slavery rejuvenated



Distribution of Slave Population, 1790-1820

Race, Gender, and Chesapeake Labor

• Transition in economies meant changes in types of labor imposed on slaves

• Typical tasks for male and female slaves– Males: planting and raising crops, skilled

artisan trades, sometimes hired out to towns– Females: household manufacturing (sewing,

candle-making), as well as farm work – monotonous and unskilled


The Lowland Task System

• Slaves made up 80% of population in South Carolina and Georgia

• Task system of assigning labor to slaves

• Slaves turned task system to their own uses


The Seaport Cities, 1790-1815

• 5 seaport communities exceeded populations of 10,000:– Baltimore– Charleston– Boston– New York– Philadelphia


Commerce

• Seaport cities grew steadily during 18th century

• Handled imports and exports

• 1800-1810: first time that urban population outgrew the rural population

• Seaport merchants: financial infrastructure of commercialization and industrialization


Boston’s Faneuil Hall in 1789(c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved

Poverty• 1790-1820: unprecedented poverty and

depressed neighborhoods• New York City: 6 severe epidemics of

yellow fever, 1791-1822• Slums: evidence that monies created by

commerce were distributed undemocratically

• Wealthiest 4% owned more than half the wealth


The Status of Labor• Artisans: half male work force in cities

• Republican virtue

• Jefferson: artisans are “the yeomanry of the cities”

• Changes in technology displace skilled artisans with semi-skilled wage labor– Harder to live model of Republican virtue


The Withering of Patriarchal Authority

• Patriarchal Republic becomes democracy

• Decline of paternal authority in households

• Many slaves and women welcomed the changes

• By early 19th century: a new democratic faith emerged


Paternal Power in Decline

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Alexis de Tocqueville

• Young people realized that they must make their own way in the world

• Young men and women sought marriages based on affection – rather than on property

• Marriage to unite individuals, not families


The Alcoholic Republic

• Traditionally, drinking not seen as threat to social order

• Whiskey: farmer’s surplus of grain– Cheaper than coffee, tea, imported rum– Safer than water and milk

• Dramatic rise in alcohol consumption• Increased drinking among young men living

away from families and old social controls


The Democratization of Print

• Rise in literacy

• Emergence of print culture catering to popular tastes

• The Power of Sympathy

• Increase in literacy and printed matter accelerated the democratizing process


Citizenship

• “universal” male suffrage• Early 19th century suffrage reform

– Important steps from Republic of Founding Fathers to mass democracy

– Political rights to propertyless white men– Restrictions applied to African Americans and women


Republican Religion

• Founding Fathers: indifferent to organized religion– Washington: obligatory worship– Jefferson: Deism

• No mention of God nor religion in the Constitution– Alexander Hamilton “we forgot”


The Decline of Established Churches

• 1st Amendment• State support fades away• Episcopal• Congregational• Frontier settlements established with little

or no organized religion


The Rise of the Democratic Sects

• Methodists and Baptists: Camp meeting revivalism

• Joseph Smith and Mormonism

• Religion a matter of the heart not head

• Francis Asbury and Methodist circuit riders



Growth of American Methodism, 1775-1850

The Christianization of the White South

• Evangelical Protestantism dominates white South

• James McGready

• Camp meetings– Cane Ridge, Kentucky (1801)


Evangelicals and Slavery

• Slavery: went from “sin” to acceptance within Southern churches of– Methodists– Baptists– Presbyterians

• After 1820, few Southern evangelicals spoke out against slavery


The Beginnings of African American Christianity

• Evangelical revivals convert many African-Americans outside the deep South

• Independent black churches: Richard Allen and Absalom Jones


Richard Allen, one of the founders of the African

Methodist Episcopal Church


Black Republicanism: Gabriel’s Rebellion

• Example of Saint Dominque to Haiti

• Gabriel’s Rebellion in Virginia– Republican rebellion more than slave revolt– “Death or Liberty”– Death


Conclusion

• 1790-1820: Transformation of American republic– Doubled in size and population– Some classes gained, others lost– Catastrophic to non-white Americans– America more dependent on old world

economic centers– Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans


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The Democratic Republic, 1790-1820 (c) 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved Chapter 7