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The Early American Republic:Creating a Government and the
Extension of Slavery
I. Main Ideasa. In order to deal with problems that arose after the American
Revolution (1775-1783), the new American government had to set precedents for how to solve them.
b. The earliest form of American government, the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate in addressing some major problems and eventually the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified to replace it.
c. One of those solutions, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set a precedent for excluding slavery in new American territory.
d. This precedent set the stage for future tension between northern free territories and southern slave territories.
II. The Articles of Confederation
a. The Articles of Confederation, America’s first form of government, was weak.i. It established a confederation—an association of
independent sovereign states with certain common goals.1. Each state retained its individual power.2. The national government had little control.
ii. The federal (national) government had a unicameral legislature (Congress) and no executive leader.
1. Each state only had one vote in it no matter its size.2. 9 of the 13 states had to agree to pass a national law.3. Congress could only conduct affairs with American Indians, coin money, set up post offices, build an army & declare war.
III. Problems facing the Early Republica. The new government’s major problems involved money.
i. Large debts to foreign governments & individuals, including veterans, from the American Revolution.
ii. No federal power to impose or collect taxes.iii. Could not afford an army or navy.
b. Other problems involved foreign nations and settlement west of the Appalachian mountains in territory won after the French & Indian War.i. The British did not all leave their forts in the Great Lakes region.ii. The British & their American Indian allies fought to keep American settlers
out of the Northwest Territory, but settlers were moving west.iii. Settlers also clashed with the Spanish to the south.iv. Negotiating with Spain about uses of the Mississippi & port of New Orleans
was difficult.
c. The Articles of Confederation did not establish how new territory would be governed.i. The original states had to give up their western land claims to the national
government in order to form new states.ii. It was unclear if slavery would be allowed in new lands.
IV. Jefferson’s Proposals
A. Thomas Jefferson, then a Congressman before becoming the minister to France, proposed to:
1. Divide the new land into separate territories & prepare them for statehood.
2. Ban slavery from the entire region west of the Appalachians in the east to the Mississippi River in the west and from Spanish Florida in the south to British Canada in the north by 1800.
B. Congress did not agree entirely to Jefferson’s proposals & instead passed two alternatives:
1. The Land Ordinance of 1785.2. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
V. The Land Ordinance of 1785
a. The Land Ordinance of 1785 solved the problem of organizing the settlement of the land called the Northwest Territory—present-day Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
i. The eastern states had to give up their land claims to the western lands.
ii. The territory was divided into 10 districts.iii. Land would be surveyed and divided into a neat grid of
townships, each 6 miles square.iv. Each township had 36 sections, each 1 mile square.
1. The government owned four of the sections.2. One section would be sold to support public
schools.
VI. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787a. The Northwest Ordinance kept the essence of Jefferson’s
proposals with two major changes**. It:i. Encouraged orderly settlement and the formation of new states, all
controlled by law.ii. Promised settlers religious freedom and other civil rights.iii. Put a single governor in charge. iv. Said a district could become territory with a population of 5,000 adult
males. Then could send a nonvoting representative to Congress.v. A territory could write a constitution and apply for statehood once it
had a population of 60,000.vi. **Did not allow slavery in the Northwest Territory immediately
rather than waiting until 1800; runaways, however, would be returned to their owners.
vii. **However, slavery was allowed to expand south of the Ohio River which was south of the Northwest Territory where this ordinance did not apply.
Primary Source: The Northwest Ordinance
“Article 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.”
(7 / 13 / 1787)
VII. Shays’ Rebelliona. Daniel Shays was a farmer and veteran of the American
Revolution from Massachusetts.i. He owed a great amount of debt.ii. Other small farmers could not pay their debts plus new state
taxes.
b. In 1786, a group of 1,200 farmers led by Shays took an arsenal of weapons.
i. They wanted to block the courts so the government could not hold hearings to foreclose on their farms.
ii. The state militia put down the revolt.
c. The rebellion…i. …proved that the federal government created by the Articles
of Confederation was weak.ii. …provoked Congress & President Washington to wonder if
their policies would allow the United States to be successful for a long time.
VIII. The Constitutional Convention
a. The subsequent Constitutional Convention that met in Philadelphia beginning in 1787, tried to write a document that would address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
b. The Constitution that was produced and effective in 1789 contained a series of compromises between the interests of the existing states.
i. Large and small states disagreed over representation so a bicameral legislature with one house apportioned by population (House) and one house equally apportioned (Senate) was created.GREAT COMPROMISE
c. The Federalists and Anti-Federalists continued to debate over the rights of states and citizens until a Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in 1791.
IX. The Constitutional ConventionD. Northern and southern states disagreed over the treatment of
slavery.i. The words slave and slavery appear nowhere in the
Constitution.ii. The Atlantic slave trade was prohibited after 1808.iii. Fugitive slaves were to be returned to their masters, even
from the North.iv. Enslaved people would be counted as only three-fifths of a
free person in determining a state’s representation in the House of Representatives. (American Indians would not be counted at all.)1. This also enhanced the south’s ability to elected a
slaveholding president as was the case in the 1800 election where Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams.
v. The issue of the expansion of slavery further west into new territories was still not finalized and so the debate continued as the country grew.
X. Jay’s Treatya. Jay’s Treaty of 1794 between the U.S. and Great Britain
was signed to help remove British influence in the Northwest Territory as the British had clung to forts around the Great Lakes despite loss in the Revolution. The Treaty:
i. Allowed anyone living in the NW Territory to choose American or British citizenship.
ii. Those who did not register to stay British, became American by default.
1. But it was unclear whether someone like Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a former slave from southern IL of mixed French & Black descent, was a citizen or not.
2. He traded fur in Chicago when it was still Fort Dearborn along the Chicago River where the Tribune Tower stands on Michigan Ave today.
3. Was the first Black person in Chicago.
No accurate drawing exists of du Sable and this rendering has commonly been used over time to approximate his image.
• How did the early American government deal with slavery and its expansion?
• What questions remained after the early republic was founded?
